Net neutrality died more quietly than expected. It’s been almost two months since the FCC’s ruling to make internet access vulnerable to corporate meddling, thanks to FCC chairman and Verizon advocate Ajit Pai. And not much seems to have changed on the web browsing citizen’s end. Major ISPs Comcast, Verizon and AT&T have all indicated that they have no plans to block or throttle traffic, or to prioritize paid content. So rest easy, dear ones. The sharks have promised not to bite.
Of course, that’s really no reason to celebrate. As of June 11th, “there is nothing legally preventing companies like Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T from arbitrarily censoring entire categories of apps, sites and online services, or charging Internet users expensive new fees to access them,” notes Evan Greer, deputy director of Fight for the Future, a nonprofit advocating for digital equality.
Fight for the Future is just one organization working for a free digital world. All around, and in part thanks to the FCC’s ruling, people are switching on to the notion that open connectivity should be a right and not a privilege. And some folks are getting a crazy idea: if we can’t have net neutrality, we may just have to build another internet.
Building Our Own Internet
That’s exactly what people have been doing in Detroit. To combat the emergence of a “digital class system,” and in response to the scarcity and prohibitive costs of ISP connection, residents and volunteer members of the Equitable Internet Initiative, or EII, are building their own internet infrastructure.
Over on the Pala Reservation in Southern California, meanwhile, indigenous communities are tired of waiting for a connection. So they’re taking matters into their own hands and repurposing unused analog TV channels to broadcast their own free and neutral internet across the rez. They call it Tribal Digital Village.
Efforts like the EII and Tribal Digital Village are proving that we can take control of our connectivity and decouple it from the stratification of economic privilege.
Reinventing the Internet Altogether
Radical community efforts to build DIY networks are inspiring and powerful. But perhaps we can go even farther. The internet still works on an old model that has plenty of room for improvement. Let’s say you’re sitting in a public library, messaging your zine collaborator across the table. There’s no direct internet connection between your phones, so your message has to go up into the nebulous cloud of internet before it bounces back down to their phone. Not entirely efficient, considering they’re sitting right there.
If you had a direct connection, the signal could just travel across the table. That would be possible using a mesh network, like the one proposed by RightMesh. In their mesh network model, every device becomes a hotspot in a decentralized connective network.
Why volunteer your device as a public hotspot? Because you get tokens, of course. This is blockchain! Like the EII and Tribal Digital Village, this is a cooperative and participatory system that relies on no centralized authority (like a corporate ISP). Everyone volunteers their device as a hotspot, gets rewarded with tokens, and just like that, we have a decentralized internet.
Without the need for ISPs, we would be free from Verizon, Comcast, and AT&T. We could run open-armed through the proverbial fields of digital wildflowers. The possibilities of this go well beyond urbanite convenience. A global mesh network could bring internet connection to any part of the globe where there are phones—even phones not connected to wifi. In this system, the phones create the wifi.
An Off-the-Grid Internet
RightMesh’s stated goal is to “connect the next billion people and lift 100 million out of poverty.” They claim to be the first P2P network that requires neither infrastructure nor network connectivity to operate.
That said, they’re not alone. Blockmesh is doing something similar. Moeco’s ‘global IoT connectivity platform’ uses mesh network principles for IoT gadgets. And Open Garden allows ISP customers to ‘sell’ your underutilized connection (extra bandwidth at home, or unused data from your mobile plan) to your neighbors for tokens.
All these ideas are packed with possibility. But the point is, with the grassroots efforts of groups like the EII and Tribal Digital Village, and with blockchain innovation pushing the definition of the internet forward, we’re looking at a future where the connection is universal, accessible, fast, cheap, self-generating, decentralized and off the grid. Someday soon we might be thanking the FCC for spurring these advances.
Prix De Cialis En France generic 5mg cialis best price Cialis Generico Barato Acheter Baclofen En France Cialis Generika Per Paypal
Having read this I thought it was extremely informative.
I appreciate you taking the time and energy to put this short article together.
I once again find myself spending a lot of time both reading and commenting.
But so what, it was still worth it!
Interesting blog! Is your theme custom made or did you download it
from somewhere? A design like yours with a few simple
tweeks would really make my blog stand out. Please let me know where you got your theme.
Thanks a lot
excellent points altogether, you simply won a brand new reader.
What could you suggest in regards to your post that you
made a few days ago? Any positive?
I have been browsing on-line greater than three hours these
days, but I never found any attention-grabbing article
like yours. It’s beautiful worth enough for me. In my view, if all webmasters and bloggers made just right content
as you probably did, the net shall be much more useful than ever before.
It’s amazing to go to see this web site and reading the views of all friends about this piece of
writing, while I am also zealous of getting familiarity.
Superb site you have here but I was wanting to know if you knew of any message
boards that cover the same topics discussed here? I’d really like
to be a part of group where I can get feedback from other
knowledgeable individuals that share the same interest.
If you have any recommendations, please let me know.
Appreciate it!
Great post. I was checking constantly this weblog and I’m inspired!
Very useful info specifically the closing part 🙂 I maintain such information a lot.
I was looking for this particular information for
a very long time. Thanks and best of luck.
I have been exploring for a little bit for any high quality
articles or weblog posts on this kind of house .
Exploring in Yahoo I eventually stumbled upon this web site.
Reading this information So i am glad to show that I’ve an incredibly good uncanny feeling I discovered just what I needed.
I so much surely will make certain to don?t put out of your mind this site and provides it
a look on a continuing basis.
There is definately a lot to learn about this topic. I like all
of the points you have made.
Amazing! Its truly awesome piece of writing, I have got much
clear idea on the topic of from this piece of writing.