I was reading a book, The Victorian Internet, which talked about how connected the Victorian era was, with wires stretching everywhere above the roads. It’s probably exaggerated, but it got me thinking. There are many ways to engage in en masse interconnectivity. Computers, of course, are one of them, but we also have had, for example, messenger pigeons, drones we can send to different places, search dogs with an interconnected sniff system (I forgot what that was called), etc.
Suppose you had a civilization. Maybe it’s on a planet whose environment interferes with the capabilities of a classic internet, or maybe it’s a normal fantasy setting where the classic internet is cursed. However, the civilization still needs some kind of apparatus of interconnectivity. What’s the best/closest thing you can think of as a replacement for the internet without it being the internet as we know it?
Ah, what you’re describing here is Plato’s cave; a place underground so deep that you cannot see the stars. The starry sky, of course, is a metaphor for the internet, or for universal knowledge.
I think in such a world where there can be no internet, there can be no energy either. Because just like the internet, energy requires a straight line to travel along. But the internet could only not exist, if such straight lines were impossible, like in a very wrapped space (i.e. Jungle). In this case, Information could only be exchanged within small neighbourhoods, leading to the fragmentation of the space.
Plato, of course, provides a solution: You have to get out of the cave first, before you can reach enlightenment. In real life, such a thing is equivalent so “lifting yourself out of the swamp you have surrounded yourself with, and let go of earthly affections”. In a jungle, you could rise above the trees, to have a direct line of sight to the sky. Then, you can communicate. This idea is often expressed in the form of an arrow, which you shoot up at its origin, rising it above the trees and obstacles, only for it to travel in a straight line and come down somewhere else. So basically, the internet is arrows of information being exchanged.
Does that give you some ideas?
Cuba might be a good place to look for a real world example of this. They had the concepts of “SNET” and “el paquete semanal” that were solutions to poor internet penetration, expensive internet costs (pay per MB), and heavy restrictions on that internet.
El paquete semanal is a weekly payload of the latest movies, TV episodes, manga, comics, etc. that gets brought into the country and spread by sneakernet.
SNET is widespread guerilla LAN networking to the point where Cuba had a well populated private WoW server. Also solved some of the Internet cost issues because you could game and share content locally without paying for every little MB.
As of 2020, SNET is now “illegal” and those existing networks are being absorbed into their ISP.
Ham Radio?
Oh damn. Am I really so old now that people can’t imagine a world without Internet?
I was born six months before Google was founded. I am now 25.
I’m the same age as MTV.
My point is, there are adults older than me who have never lived in a time where the internet wasn’t a thing
Terry Pratchett’s Discworld has The Clacks, a network of semaphore towers that can transmit messages, later including encoded images, across the disc.
this sounds more like you can’t have computers. I mean once you have computers its sorta impossible not to have something that is the internet all but in name.
No, i disagree. Imagine a jungle, you might have a computer, but you can’t lay out cables due to lack of free space/straight lines. You would have to run the cables in such convoluted directions, that they might end up running in circles. Or the roots of the trees might hinder the cables, or destroy them over time.
The internet transports information. Roads transport goods and people. Both require straight lines from origin to destination, otherwise they’re inefficient.
see you don’t need the cables though. any communication medium will do. strobing lights, subsonci pulses, as long as the computer has input and output capability it can technically use any communication medium we use and by using it in a digital manner an mimic the internet.
All you need is something reliable that sends and receives data.
Game of Thrones/ASOIF used ravens.
You could use specially trained rats in underground tunnels.
Relays of lights or fires in hill tops is always an option, as is smoke signals.
Lasers or spotlights projected on clouds could work. Or the dark of the moon. If everyone just agreed to a patch of lunar dust and projected binary flashes there, encrypted to respond to others, a crazy flashing dot covered moon would be the equivalent or a public internet.
Or same concept with blimps.
Technically, the internet has multiple layers and only the lowest ones are dependent on the physical network implementation—you could totally send network packets via messenger pigeon and still have it be a valid part of the internet. But I think the scenario you most likely have in mind is one where we don’t have wired or wireless networks, and/or we don’t have computers to function as endpoints. And the goal is to have some kind of long-distance user-to-user exchange of non-sensory data (i.e., not just telephones or broadcast media.)
One solution might be to shine lasers on a distant object, like the moon: everyone has a designated signaling target on the object, and you could send them data by shining a pattern of light on their target.
OSI Model gang represent!
Also, I’m sure you already know this, but RFC 1149 (IP over Avian Carriers) was actually tested by Bergen Linux User Group. They successfully sent packets several kilometers.
Low cost newsletter publishing with a network of delivery mechanisms from vacuum tube’s, to pigeons and weasels, to street urchins.
the Brazilverse
sneakernet of course
