1 From: Boris Kraut <krt@nurfuerspam.de>
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3 Date: Thu, 09 Feb 2012 00:00:01 +0100
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5 Message-ID: <20120208230001.UejXsz@silberbruch>
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8 To: undisclosed-recipients: ;
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9 Subject: Zitat des Tages
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12 > We have created a centralized communications infrastructure.
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13 > [...] This seems the natural order of things, but it is
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14 > entirely an echo of the commercial requirements of these
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15 > networks. In order to bill you, your communications must
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16 > pass through a point where they can be measured, metered
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19 > There is another way. Years before the Internet came along,
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20 > we used UUCP and FidoNet to spread mail and news posts
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21 > throughout a far-flung, only occasionally connected global
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22 > network of users. It was slower than we're used to these
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23 > days, but no less reliable. Messages would forward from
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24 > host to host, until they reached their intended destination.
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25 > It all worked if you had a phone line, or an Internet
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26 > connection, or, well, pretty much anything else. I presume
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27 > that a few hardy souls printed out a UUCP transmission on
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28 > paper tape, physically carried it from one host to another,
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29 > and fed it through.
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31 > A hierarchy is efficient, but the price of that efficiency
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32 > is vulnerability. A rhizomatic arrangement of nodes within
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33 > a mesh is slow, but very nearly invulnerable. It will
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34 > survive flood, fire, earthquake and revolution. To abolish
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35 > these dangerous hierarchies, we must reconsider everything
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36 > we believe about 'the right way' to get bits from point A
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37 > to point B. Every transport must be considered -- from
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38 > point-to-point laser beams to wide-area mesh networks using
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39 > unlicensed spectrum down to semaphore and smoke signals.
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40 > Nothing is too slow, only too unreliable. If we rely on
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41 > TCP/IP and HTTP exclusively, we risk everything for the
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42 > sake of some speed and convenience. But this is life during
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43 > wartime, and we must shoulder this burden.
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projects / krt-msg / blob