«In 1993, John Gilmore famously said that "The Internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it." That was technically true when he said it but only because the routing structure of the Internet was so distributed. As centralization increases, the Internet loses that robustness, and censorship by governments and companies becomes easier.»
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2018/06/russian_censors.html

@kensanata
> only because the routing structure of the Internet
At that time, the Internet was Usenet, a multicast system with distributed routing mechanism builtin. Now it's the World Wide Web, a unicast system with no distribution, not even Mastodon. It's the time for a distributed infrastructure to take control the Internet again.

@niconiconi @kensanata I’m going to say it.

No, I won’t. I won’t say.

Oh, alright...

What we need is... blockchain!

(Ducks from flying objects.)

@Shufei @niconiconi you definitely need to duck! 😂
But regarding resilience of the network: I really like the Cold War idea of the Internet. It can take blows. You connect to friendly nodes you trust. You disconnect misbehaving nodes. Nodes are small and postmasters are real people that help run the system.

@kensanata @niconiconi It’s still the only foundation level model which makes sense. And yet, vetting that web of trust is one of the key weaknesses which needs a real fresh look.

And soon. It looks like we may need a Fidonet reboot just to do anything we used to outside the corporate state panopticon.

@Shufei @kensanata

> Fidonet reboot
many people want to literally revive the old protocols and networks beyond retrocomputing purpose, e.g Gopher, NNTP, but none of them supports things like global hash identifier, public key cryptography, onion routing, P2P/Mesh net, <joke>blockchain</joke> or any modern inventions at the protocol layer.

IMHO, old protocols are dead, and we should leave it alone, what should be revived is __the philosophy__ of the old protocols, in our new systems.

@niconiconi @Shufei Actually gopher over Tor works, @tomasino does it; and gopher over TLS also works, I do it; but yeah, other things don’t work like that. And securing emails is super cumbersome and people rarely do it. And I don’t even know about people trying to revive nntp. I agree about the philosophy of the old Internet.

@kensanata @niconiconi @Shufei gopher is compatible with mesh networks as well. What gopher does not have on it's own is smart support for secure two way data transfer. I think that's okay. That's not what it's for.

Moreover, I think dusting off old protocols and composing them with newer tech is a brilliant way to move forward. The old stuff is simple and easy grok. Layer on well tested systems like Tor and you get something pretty fantastic.

@tomasino @kensanata @niconiconi Is there a name for this sort of effect, when old tech becomes revitalized or at least fertilizes inspiration in a new context?

I’ve noticed it in ham radio, where the preservation of retro tech is often reputed as overly stodgy, yet allows for a lot of weird cross fertilization into novel ideas when people play with in new ways.

@Shufei @kensanata @niconiconi Hrm, something like upcycleing maybe? I wouldn't mind having a term for it if you find one. That would be convenient.