This works better:
(••)
( ••)>⌐■-■
(⌐■_■),
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Oh, snap.
Could this have been from EMP?
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I think you mean it was an EMP, don’t you?
I liked
csi-miami-david-caruso-sunglasses.gif
better … there’s something elegant in its simplicity. Plus we’re all headed to the caveman days of the internet anyway, so learning how to communicate with limited means again has merit.
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20 years ago it was hackers, rebels, and punks with grand ideas of a decentralized distributed system that could survive a nuclear war and still maintain connectivity. But somehow we ended up with just a few authoritative DNS servers and a few SSL certificate authorities. Bitcoin tried a decentralized currency with great intentions, but somehow it ended up in control of just a few miners. Kind of surprised we haven’t ended up with just a few systems in control of all torrents (although really where else can compete with pirate bay?)
Maybe it’s human nature, or maybe we just need more rebellious punks in power. But punks abhor power, especially rebellious ones.
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Punks with power become the status quo.
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For Pete’s sake, while we decry concentration of power and authority, could we perhaps try and remember that there are reasons for such concentration? It’s efficiency.
I understand the nostalgia for the past, but can we look at it a tiny bit logically? Specialization and the massive gains that come from it are a thing. Moreover, efficiency naturally replaces the less efficient because we don’t actually want to be pay way more. Or sometimes the old people-powered way still exists, and we totally ignore it because it can’t possibly be associated with the misery of the third world.
With respect to the Internet, I certainly remember when the Internet was a lot more decentralized, and how only a few could be a member of that global elite. I remember printing out the map of the entire Internet (such as it was) along with every (public) connection. It had a fun and social aspect to it, and it was powered almost entirely by volunteers.
However, the amount of effort per bit meant that it would never be either cheap or popular. It would be always be a toy for the elites (in this case, academic elites) and a few hangers-on.
Honestly, this is like pining for the days of subsistence farming. Yay, it’s democratized! Small scale and artisinal! And so miserably inefficient that 90% of the population has to eke our their existence doing it so that they don’t all starve. Agreed, it was, however, a lot more social. No centralized authority controlling all the production. And people flee to sweat shops and crime infested slums to escape a life of subsistence farming.
The reality is that big and soulless almost always engenders the efficiencies that allow prices to be low enough that everyone to enjoy the benefit of the item instead of just us elites.
Sure, we rich might delight in paying the price so that such we can enjoy the benefits of smaller, less soulless production. I like organic, local food production as well.
But denying that the big, soulless and most of all, efficient organizations should exist at all is tantamount to declaring war on all who are not as privileged as you.
You want a new people-powered Internet? Grow it yourself. The technology is 30 years better (and truly, good luck - your success can only help the world).
But keep your paws off the huge, uncaring, soulless Internet that allows billions of people access to information and each other in a manner unimaginable to me 30 years ago.
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That was the cringiest thing I’ve ever seen. And I’ve seen Hackers.
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