This isn't so much a scenario as a question springing from a scenario. We're living through 'interesting times' so I'll ask forgiveness in advance for a dark theme. Most of our dystopia stories involve violent catastrophes - nuclear holocausts, zombie apocalypse, etc. I'm not much interested in those. My sense is that the scope of human cooperation tends to be hid under a bushel. Generally, when the worst happens, cooperation seems to increase (think East Enders during the Blitz).
Europe's Dark Age (a contentious term, I know) seems mainly to have been a result of the economic collapse of the Western Roman Empire. That process may have begun in the 2nd Century AD but, by the 6th, Europe was a much poorer place. So, the scenario here is what happens to a critical element of modern Western Civilization if all the money were to run out?
In the medieval period, practical information was mainly transmitted orally or by watch-and-learn. Of course, there were learned tomes but you needed wealth or privilege to get access. A stereotypically view of the Dark Ages was a loss of knowledge and complex skill sets. Some of the latter was purely a matter of base economics - no
solidi, no aqueduct built. The former seems to me more about the difficulty of spreading oral information in uncertain times. We no longer have that problem - the last month having demonstrated the value of the internet very well.
Without getting too lyrical, it strikes me that the modern equivalents to epic poetry and medieval apprenticeship are the information exchanges of the internet or even - Pixies preserve us! - all those how-to videos on YouTube. If correct, the simplest way for preserving practical/technical information and continuing the distribution of that information is to maintain the internet in something approaching its current form.
"Everything's gonna be put on electricity and run on a paying basis."So, what is that form? First, I should acknowledge that I am well out of my depth here. I get that internet routers are owned and run by an array of ISP firms. And somewhere in there are the data centres with server farms which the internet has come to rely upon for storage. So, a bunch of redundancy and decentralization - just like ARPA originally intended. But what happens if the profit-motive is removed? Put another way, what are the potential alternatives to Big Corporate ISPs?
Grid computing - working on problems by networking multiple computers online - the provider side of grid computer is a good example of the sort of cooperation instinct I was referring to. Being an online phenomenon, obviously grid computing (or volunteer computing) is not the answer to post-money server farms. So what could be?
I've read a little (and understood even less) about cluster computing like a Beowulf cluster assembled out of standard PCs. Could such arrangements conceivably step in for internet router systems? If scale is a key issue, could a greater number of decentralized clusters stand in for internet routers abandoned as uneconomical by ISP firms? Are there other approaches that could simulate the current internet (even if they meant a much reduced bandwidth)?
"'Reliable', 'sensible', 'dependable', and lots of others words that end in '-ible'".Systems that survive have features that are durable, reliable, flexible, and possibly redundant. That sounds handy for the non-zombie apocalypse! So what kinds of computer hardware, operating systems, etc. fit that bill?
Here, I'm mainly concerned about people who don't code, can't hack, have never assembled their own PC, barely understand the simplest computing concepts ... okay, I mean me
What is the simplest, most durable form of computing hardware out there? Ditto for software? I remember some ancient story about a ruggedized, 64K laptop that would survive being dropped out of tree in Africa. What's the 21st Century version of that story?
Still reading? Good on ya! Thanks for sticking with it
So, that's it: If/when all the cash is hoovered out of the system (and it doesn't come back), how do we build jury-rigged crutch for the internet? Then, how do hapless computer illiterates like me get access to this spit-and-sticks interweb?