Dark Blue Monstropolis

There once was a time in which I could e-mail a friend on the other end of the continent and I know that the information I needed or wanted my friend to see would arrive in his inbasket. It would happen promptly, securely but most importantly, it would happen.

The Exodus cost us many things, not the least or most of which was our technological infrastructure. Heavy Tech was the rock upon which we decided to build our church and the rock turned out to be, like in one of those fantasy novels, a giant living creature who was pissed off that we were all living on its back. (Updated 08132170: some people have reached the bizarre conclusion from this statement that I’m comparing Heavy Tech to a chupacabra or Gojira or something…that’s what I get for trying to mix the Bible with Roald Dahl so just forget it.)

The good news is we were already well on our way to carrying our own infrastructure around with us when the end came. Mesh computing meant that as long as I’ve got people with packs between me and my friend, my e-mail will hop-hop-hop along until it reaches him. It will do so, though perhaps not as promptly as in the past (the price we pay for ultimate portability, yes?) It will do so securely, because we all have secure tunnels on our pieces of the mesh that allow for bits and bytes to pass without us ever knowing what’s inside them. Soon the blimps will go up which will give us some additional stability and speed as well.

This how things were before the Net. Bulletin Board Systems (BBS) would call each other and pass messages back and forth. FidoNet one version was called. It’s the same thing, except the calls are now happening much more frequently. As long as there’s another pack within range, the call is made, the message is passed.

Sneakernet is what they called the version of this that involved shoe leather. I would walk over and hand you media that had the items on it that I wanted you to see. And that’s what I’m proposing for the areas our mesh network can’t reach.

Many people are throwing themselves heroically against the Bowl, trying to create some kind of landline that will connect us with those people unfortunate enough to live out there. Like the people in Arkansas who tried to run a Cat-5 cable through I-75 and out to their little area. It worked…for a while, then died. In the Exodus, when the weather control systems died, they took the middle of North America with them. Long range communications just simply don’t work out there. They just wither and are gone. And no one’s quite figured out why.

Our satellite communications network was destroyed as well. Which is why we can’t get off world, thanks to the fact that the debris field would shred anything we tried to send up.

Therefore, until someone can come up with a strategic, long-term solution to establish a channel of communications with those outside the Atlantic Union, and indeed with the west coast, then I propose going back to what I call Sneakernet 1.0.

Storage media does not seem to be affected by the Bowl. Therefore, anything that needs to be taken out or brought back in to the Union, we simply create a Node that converts e-mails and other communications into a stored form that can then be trotted out to the folks in the Bowl who need it. And they in turn can use the storage media to send things back in.

It’s like TCP/IP but on a macro scale. Break things down into packets and then send them out. Like a Pony Express for our times.

Is it elegant? No. But will it work? I think so. We need to do something in order to ensure that channels remain open. Because there are still numerous questions about what happened and what will continue to happen…and who knows where the answer is going to come from?

Darin Thommson, 08092170