Comment on Could the internet go offline? Inside the fragile system holding the modern world together
phoenixz@lemmy.ca 1 day ago
The Internet originally was designed to be able to survive and keep on going because by its original design, there wouldn’t be major key points to take out.
This is something that happened when major companies were allowed to run crazy unchecked and centralize everything. There are even parts of the world where people think that (for example) Facebook IS the Internet, as that is all that they can see.
This is an obvious bad thing yet it was allowed to go unchecked for decades now and here we are.
Could the current Internet completely break? Oh hells yes. Would it be a bad thing? Oh hells no. Let it die. The current Internet is a shit show that should have been aborted before it became what it is today.
what mostly will go down are last sites and large providers. Smaller or distributed sites like Lemmy will survive
vacuumflower@lemmy.sdf.org 23 hours ago
The Internet is fine. It’s not going anywhere and working as intended. The services over it, however, are centralized and crappy, and in part that’s due to the Internet being built for the big centers - militaries, corporations, - to impose their policy. It’s by design that it’s no use to you if the big guys don’t want it to be.
if you want something else, you need to reinvent the Internet, this one was made with a clear purpose. For militaries and universities, both quite hierarchical structures. I guess a Lemmy instance is a bit similar to such a thing.
Anything connection-oriented creates chokepoints in attempts to make it a truly open system. So if you want that, you need a data-oriented system. Such worked over the Internet once (technically still works), meaning Usenet. It was hierarchical, but its architectural principles don’t mandate hierarchy.
It’s just the way the world is.
People at some point hoped to make radio communication what the Internet was in the 90s. Yet radio eventually settled on being for one-way stations serving many people first, for professionals in aviation, military and hiking second, and for ham enthusiasts third.
People at some point dreamed of videophones, before anything digital became common, and there were such two-way communication solutions built and demonstrated even in 60s. Yet analog video settled on cable TV. Sometimes radio.
While the open and alive communication happened, like before, in public places like libraries, parks, thematic events.
It feels nice to type this comment here, but some kinds of magic just don’t work. Today’s possession of some people, me included, with digital communication being a liberating tool to change everything is similar to early XX century possession with flying machines. The machines are real and change the world, but the possession is irrational.