3/ Recovering free will online

Free our physical and data link layers. You don't have to use Internet from a phone company. Try #LoRA or #XBee radios, or 5GHz point-to-point. Or, heck, NNCP over USB sticks in a car. #Meshtastic is an off-the-grid IM system that does this. What else could you do if you dream big here?

4/ Recovering free will online

We are used to thinking that it is quite difficult for two devices on the Internet to talk to each other. What would be possible if it were easy?

Actually, today, it is. #Tor, #cjdns, #libp2p and others make this happen.

5/ Recovering free will online

We're used to costs rising dramatically when something gets popular. What if that weren't the case? Could you take on Youtube from your garage?

Things like #IPFS, #dat, and #Peertube are making these ideas possible, right now.

6/ Recovering free will online

We have so many walled gardens, from Github to Facebook. It doesn't have to be this way.

#Mastodon itself is a powerful example.

7/ Recovering free will online

What about freedom from manipulation? Isn't that, fundamentally, what the attention economy is all about?

If we could dramatically lower the cost of running services and the barrier to entry, would that make non-profits more common? Would it weaken the ad economy? Think of the possibilities.

8/ Recovering free will online

If privacy and anonymity were more common, what would that mean for us? No more creepy ads because targeting wouldn't be possible? Less guarded conversations?

9/ Recovering free will online

Let's look at the tech. For data link and networking, of course there are #LoRA, and #XBee. #meshtastic is atop #LoRA. #Briar can form a #Bluetooth mesh. #NNCP is a powerful delay-tolerant network. #cjdns and #Hyperboria form mesh networks, optionally using the existing Internet as a backhaul; their goal is nothing less than replacing the Internet. #Tor of course provides some of this too, at a different layer.

10/ Recovering free will online

P2P infrastructure is being built out. #IPFS, #dat, #libp2p, and #Bittorrent are all common. Did you know you can build an offline-capable, delay-tolerant mesh with #Syncthing? Or run #git atop #scuttlebutt?

11/ I've written a lot about instant messengers and chat here lately, so I'll not repeat myself, but check out those threads if you're interested.

Also in social media, of course, there is #Mastodon, #Pixelfed, and #Peertube - particularly interesting due to its use of #Webtorrent.

12/ Recovering free will online

My points are: 1) to get you to dream big, and 2) to show you how those dreams may already be reality, or very close.

/end

@jgoerzen I don't think less guarded conversations is a positive selling point, or am I wildly misunderstanding this point?

@LovesTha I meant in the context of private IMs among friends. Good point, I could have been more clear there.

@jgoerzen okay, even now 99.9% of people treat email as private enough to be completely free in their conversation, let alone any of the privacy featured IM platforms. I don't think this is a big selling point.

@LovesTha From a global perspective, this is huge; it's literally a life-and-death matter in a number of countries. Though I agree that in Western democracies, it's not the most compelling. Nevertheless, there are plenty of compelling reasons to value privacy and anonymity even in Western democracies.

@jgoerzen yeah, my bad.

@jgoerzen while I love most of this thread, are decentralized internets really viable as a useful thing?

I don't see how they can be, there just isn't enough spectrum to use wireless options in densely populated places and cables have good reason to favor single operator role outs.

@LovesTha It doesn't mean that the world rids itself of copper and fiber. Rather that we decentralize power. Running a layer stop existing long haul fiber makes sense. Also don't forget that highly directional antennas mitigate a lot of RF congestion.

@LovesTha There are also some large successful meshes. See NYCMesh for instance

@jgoerzen
But LoRa is proprietary, isn't it? A bit different from 802.11 family. I can also mention HAM radio solutions using AX.25 and it's derivatives for transport layer. It should handle nncp perfectly

@kotowski I think Lora is open. NNCP is always encrypted, so can't run over amateur radio. UUCP could though.

@jgoerzen uh, Never heard of encription restrictions over HAM radio, but I can belive that it may vary from country to country.

I am not into much detailes regarding LoRa, but from search I can see that there are still some concerncs
"The LoRa RF protocol that does the radio transmission, is proprietary to Semtech": https://www.embeddedcomputing.com/technology/open-source/linux-freertos-related/how-open-source-is-the-lorawan-iot-community

@jgoerzen it's free for non commecrcial users right now. But as soon as it's proprietary, the Semtech controlls it and may possibly go against specific use cases.