I'm a novice, so I have to ask, How would I be connected to the ZeroNet if my cable Internet went down? Would I have to be near someone else on ZeroNet who has his/her WiFi on?
Essentially yes, but the cool part would be that your system would have access to any content you've already interacted with. This has some downsides, I remember at the time people were pretty aggressive with deleting their cache because of it. But the network was entirely peer-to-peer so it didn't really matter how people were connected. Sometimes there would be suggestions that you could just occasionally connect to get new information and otherwise work offline, or have local "PirateBoxes" for it. This would be really useful in scenarios where the goal is to prioritize local or otherwise curated information.
As the online information landscape degrades, I fully expect valuable information to be gated behind these kinds of mechanisms in the future. While I agree that out-engineering censorship is not an actual solution, not everyone is going to be fighting in the "digital town square(s)" especially as it becomes more hostile and tyrannical. This concerns me quite a bit, because I believe the best case scenario is that the best information is public. Sadly, that's a difficult thing to maintain for a wide variety of reasons.
I don't know how a meshnet type of tech (pirate box?) might work for someone like me who lives in a rural area, but I do think people living in a city should get connected now so they can communicate if the Internet goes dark. If I were an evil oligarch and I wanted to make a switch to some horrendous new form of tyranny, I would turn off the Internet while carrying out the basic changes to infrastructure to accommodate the new laws and procedures.
Yep that's a big concern I have, especially with Starlink out-competing local options. (Is satellite internet a natural monopoly? Certainly looks like it might be)
Though their full product is still in development and is not all released yet, they seem to want to use blockchain to store encrypted messaging for enhanced privacy (for common individuals, journalists, businesses). The idea / use case is obviously a good one. It could be a good 'solutions' project.
Anyway, if ever you have time to check it out (from a tech perspective) please let me know any thoughts you may have about it (either here or via email).
Looks like the company is doing contracts for the military industrial complex, but I see some pretty versatile applications for decentralized community based peaceful oligarch resistance groups too.
I hadn't, this looks like a very refined commercial equivalent to Meshtastic. Looking around it seems like these devices are quite pricey, but it's absolutely a model to consider!
(OpenNIC) This might be the easiest to demo but you would have to look up which domains on the system are worth checking out. I think it would take quite some time to set up your own fancy domain on it, but I could be wrong!
(PirateBox) the project hasn't been updated but apparently the files are still available, so you could set one up. Time consuming, but it would be cool to setup a system with various new services (matrix/xmpp & fediverse/nostr) with a page that explains them. All it really needs is various services with open registration, a web page for onboarding and a wired/wireless access point!
(Gun) There are several applications or systems build on Gun already, so you'll want to see if there's any of those you'd want to show off. (https://github.com/amark/gun/wiki/awesome-gun) But fireship also has a tutorial on building a simple chat application if you want to demo building with it.
You always push me in ways that spiral out, applying what you teach me to what would be possible within my system changes.
In many ways, the concept of internet privacy and anonymity is a response to what's gone wrong. We live in a malevolent system in which your only protection is your own wits. There's no community, virtual or physical, that's going to arbitrate what's right and wrong, and either come to your defense or enact consequences for wrongdoing.
But let's say there's a new internet model, supplemental to the existing, that's a matrix of interconnected PirateBoxes, with each hub around 2000 people all hardwired--so there's no G's needed. You may use a pseudonym but your name and hub are easy to find out. All hubs operate by the principle of sovereignty--it's your right to do whatever doesn't take away an equal or greater right away from anyone else.
This is the same size as my economic hamlet, which makes up a village unique to it with the eight hamlets surrounding it, and a commonwealth unique to its village with the eight villages surrounding it. All of your economic activity goes through your hamlet bank, with pension contributions (Soc Sec) on money going in, along with contributions to tax-free retirement savings getting 4% interest.
Each month, you can transfer up to a maximum set by the hamlet of imperial currency into carets. These circulate with no income or sales tax or added fees or surcharges for local goods and services. If you buy something non-local, it comes out of your empire account at the hamlet bank and charges 50% in combined income and sales tax.
Let's say that someone scams you or hacks into your empire account and transfers it to South Africa where your mail-order bride awaits ;-) Your commonwealth security techies would contact the South African techies and ask for it back. Let's say they refused. Your commonwealth would exile that commonwealth, placing them under a matrix watch list until the problem was addressed.
What are your thoughts, Gabe? I like the idea that the internet could be decentralized, especially economically.
You're hitting on what I think is the most important take-away self/community sovereign/independent digital infrastructure doesn't have to be mutually exclusive with empire tech, both systems can run in parallel. As far as the particular aspects of governance over the fine details of such a system and how rules are enforced, I think that's very much up to the balance the community wants to strike between freedom and safety. I think the biggest problem there is that it's genuinely hard to find that balance in a scenario where anyone who disagrees has an incentive to adopt and push empire tech.
But now seems to be a particularly interesting time to figure these questions out. In the past, empire tech had an incentive to bring people all over the world together, so that it would have revolutionary advantages. But now that window is closing, the goal is to become the toll barrier between people and communities. I think that localized internets are going to become standard practice in the near-ish future, but the question is what form will they take? There is a great many things that can be configured for good or for ill, and I hope those interested in these problems take the time to look at it deeply.
I'm a novice, so I have to ask, How would I be connected to the ZeroNet if my cable Internet went down? Would I have to be near someone else on ZeroNet who has his/her WiFi on?
Essentially yes, but the cool part would be that your system would have access to any content you've already interacted with. This has some downsides, I remember at the time people were pretty aggressive with deleting their cache because of it. But the network was entirely peer-to-peer so it didn't really matter how people were connected. Sometimes there would be suggestions that you could just occasionally connect to get new information and otherwise work offline, or have local "PirateBoxes" for it. This would be really useful in scenarios where the goal is to prioritize local or otherwise curated information.
As the online information landscape degrades, I fully expect valuable information to be gated behind these kinds of mechanisms in the future. While I agree that out-engineering censorship is not an actual solution, not everyone is going to be fighting in the "digital town square(s)" especially as it becomes more hostile and tyrannical. This concerns me quite a bit, because I believe the best case scenario is that the best information is public. Sadly, that's a difficult thing to maintain for a wide variety of reasons.
I don't know how a meshnet type of tech (pirate box?) might work for someone like me who lives in a rural area, but I do think people living in a city should get connected now so they can communicate if the Internet goes dark. If I were an evil oligarch and I wanted to make a switch to some horrendous new form of tyranny, I would turn off the Internet while carrying out the basic changes to infrastructure to accommodate the new laws and procedures.
Yep that's a big concern I have, especially with Starlink out-competing local options. (Is satellite internet a natural monopoly? Certainly looks like it might be)
Hi Gabriel,
I recently came across this decentralised [crypto] project called Cryptalk (see https://cryptalk.net/ and https://crytalk-technical-documentation.gitbook.io/cryptalk-docs).
Though their full product is still in development and is not all released yet, they seem to want to use blockchain to store encrypted messaging for enhanced privacy (for common individuals, journalists, businesses). The idea / use case is obviously a good one. It could be a good 'solutions' project.
Anyway, if ever you have time to check it out (from a tech perspective) please let me know any thoughts you may have about it (either here or via email).
Thanks!
Thanks Dan, I'll look into this!
As a general rule I think it's a bad idea to put communications on blockchain, but I'll be curious what their specific strategy is!
Have you ever looked into this tech?
https://gotennapro.com/products/gotenna-pro-x2
Looks like the company is doing contracts for the military industrial complex, but I see some pretty versatile applications for decentralized community based peaceful oligarch resistance groups too.
I hadn't, this looks like a very refined commercial equivalent to Meshtastic. Looking around it seems like these devices are quite pricey, but it's absolutely a model to consider!
Outstanding! LOVE IT!!
How difficult would it be to arrange a live demo of some or all of these solutions Gabriel?
I'm keen to do a livestream showing real-time setup and usage of some of these. Maybe Pirate Box or Gun?
Thanks Michael!
(ZeroNet) I've been informed there is a fork that's being maintained called 0net. (https://github.com/zeronet-conservancy/zeronet-conservancy) I'd say showing off how to get started with it would be kinda neat.
(OpenNIC) This might be the easiest to demo but you would have to look up which domains on the system are worth checking out. I think it would take quite some time to set up your own fancy domain on it, but I could be wrong!
(PirateBox) the project hasn't been updated but apparently the files are still available, so you could set one up. Time consuming, but it would be cool to setup a system with various new services (matrix/xmpp & fediverse/nostr) with a page that explains them. All it really needs is various services with open registration, a web page for onboarding and a wired/wireless access point!
(Gun) There are several applications or systems build on Gun already, so you'll want to see if there's any of those you'd want to show off. (https://github.com/amark/gun/wiki/awesome-gun) But fireship also has a tutorial on building a simple chat application if you want to demo building with it.
https://youtu.be/J5x3OMXjgMc
I like that last one....a lot!
You always push me in ways that spiral out, applying what you teach me to what would be possible within my system changes.
In many ways, the concept of internet privacy and anonymity is a response to what's gone wrong. We live in a malevolent system in which your only protection is your own wits. There's no community, virtual or physical, that's going to arbitrate what's right and wrong, and either come to your defense or enact consequences for wrongdoing.
But let's say there's a new internet model, supplemental to the existing, that's a matrix of interconnected PirateBoxes, with each hub around 2000 people all hardwired--so there's no G's needed. You may use a pseudonym but your name and hub are easy to find out. All hubs operate by the principle of sovereignty--it's your right to do whatever doesn't take away an equal or greater right away from anyone else.
This is the same size as my economic hamlet, which makes up a village unique to it with the eight hamlets surrounding it, and a commonwealth unique to its village with the eight villages surrounding it. All of your economic activity goes through your hamlet bank, with pension contributions (Soc Sec) on money going in, along with contributions to tax-free retirement savings getting 4% interest.
Each month, you can transfer up to a maximum set by the hamlet of imperial currency into carets. These circulate with no income or sales tax or added fees or surcharges for local goods and services. If you buy something non-local, it comes out of your empire account at the hamlet bank and charges 50% in combined income and sales tax.
Let's say that someone scams you or hacks into your empire account and transfers it to South Africa where your mail-order bride awaits ;-) Your commonwealth security techies would contact the South African techies and ask for it back. Let's say they refused. Your commonwealth would exile that commonwealth, placing them under a matrix watch list until the problem was addressed.
What are your thoughts, Gabe? I like the idea that the internet could be decentralized, especially economically.
You're hitting on what I think is the most important take-away self/community sovereign/independent digital infrastructure doesn't have to be mutually exclusive with empire tech, both systems can run in parallel. As far as the particular aspects of governance over the fine details of such a system and how rules are enforced, I think that's very much up to the balance the community wants to strike between freedom and safety. I think the biggest problem there is that it's genuinely hard to find that balance in a scenario where anyone who disagrees has an incentive to adopt and push empire tech.
But now seems to be a particularly interesting time to figure these questions out. In the past, empire tech had an incentive to bring people all over the world together, so that it would have revolutionary advantages. But now that window is closing, the goal is to become the toll barrier between people and communities. I think that localized internets are going to become standard practice in the near-ish future, but the question is what form will they take? There is a great many things that can be configured for good or for ill, and I hope those interested in these problems take the time to look at it deeply.
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