Technically speaking, maintenance is a capital investment.
Use of some rare natural consumable (lubricating a machine with whale oil?) would still require a) labor b) capital and c) paying rent to whoever owned that slice of nature. So consumption, broadly, may take from nature, but the returns (if there are any) go only to people - as rent, interest, or wages. If there are no returns, then it is just consumption proper.
Building an Alternative internet seems like a fools errand to me, like building an alternative road network. How are you going to reach a critical mass of users? What should stop the powers that control the old internet from taking off your network as soon as you beat the odds and gain popularity?
That's the thing though, no?
Depending on the use-case, do you >really< need a global network?
Don't get me wrong, an uncensorable and free internet for everyone is something I am very much for, but when we start to talk about nations limiting access while information has to flow, the question is not about mass-adoption anymore, but rather seeing the right tools reaching the right people.
A good example of this, imho, is the situation in Iran, when they cut off the internet. Some people were able to help themselves thanks to VPN-like apps and outside help, but that is not the majority of people.
this is the thing. an alternative internet is often suggested but whos gonna host a global switching network and put cables in the seasnfor that, and will it be allowed? what about cables in the ground or antenae everywhere to spread the network? it could simply be made illegal if it isnt already
I mean it would be amazing if one day access to the internet could be truly free (from costs for users, and censorship).
But as the world is now, it's not feasible in any sense yet.
The current internet is the best we have and it >can< work, we have to find solutions inside the current possibilities until tech is advanced, cheap and accessible enough for everyone interested to easily host their own infra.
But this is not easy, because what is the real goal... really?
It feels like most of the internet is about making money or involving money, even from the end users. Is there even something to fix when most people don't care enough to ditch knowingly harmful products like Facebook, TikTok, etc?
People in small towns and some cities in the Americas (North and South) have somewhat casually set up CJDNS an Reticulum networks. CJDNS had a lot of buzz in the 2010s.
In some places these mesh networks have nodes that offer paid gateways to the conventional internet.
Writing user-facing social/messaging applications that can work seamlessly between emergent mesh networks and the conventional internet, using cryptography based zero-knowledge tricks to preserve privacy, is necessary for these mesh networks to gain traction outside of just tech enthusiasts.
Some rural areas centered around some small towns have already done this but have kept it to themselves (understandably so).
It seems relatively simple to me to detect fibers hanging around cities as soon as the network is bigger than two nerdy neighbors. Same for lasers and telescopes.
technically fruit would be free in tropical countries all year round, though in somewhere like Europe you would need to preserve it (drying would be cheapest long term preservation)
Technically I could survive on rats and pigeons, but that strategy doesn’t scale as easily as washing machines and electricity. I would also need to figure out an energy efficient way of cooking them if I wanted to beat the washing machine on emissions.
It is much easier to pick up fruit with zero skills and you can eat it it raw compared to rats/pigeons + it scales with no issues, there is enough fruit for everyone.
You make a good point but I do have some excess fat stored that I need to shed lol
And 0.2 kWh? Always cold water and barely any spin? I'm firmly middle aged and can't get my head around people washing bed linen etc at cold temperatures and not worrying about dustmites etc.
But maybe it was a lie all along to get us to use more energy.
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