This cover is a clear knockoff of this, made by an artist named Karan Singh. They make some pretty rad stuff so check it out. I liked this image and thought I would try an render it in blender. It’s a learning moment for me, but if it needs to be taking down, PLEASE ask.
Geographic Separation
August 9, 2023
There’s been a lot of talk lately (and by lately, I mean quite a few years). Block chain, web3, bit coin, all the buzzword trendy stuff. Most of this has been a huge focus on updates from the technology side (obviously), but more specifically the software side. Some of the downfalls is that it relies heavily on a decent amount of computing power, which has questionable environmental impacts. There are trust issues, transparency issues, collusion issues, and a few other critiques. Now, I’m not in a position to make any claims to whether these are valid critiques or overblown fear mongering. And that’s not what this post is about.
What this post is about is shifting the thinking from decentralized software, to decentralized hardware. We’ve all got Wifi networks in our houses, people tend to live in clusters. What if we started to think of internet, networks, and connections in a physical way. People that are close in groups would form their own clusters that would host their own networks. Visitors could then view these unique areas and input their own ideas. Kind of like travelers and messengers from pre-electronic communication ages. The Pony express, marathon runners (I believe that connection is accurate).
Now I’m not saying that this should replace the internet. I think the instant connection for a lot of things is really good and productive. But maybe physical barriers would bring us back to a time when the internet was a mysterious place that was worth exploring. Not something that’s been taken over by tech landlords that steal your data and track your every move. More grounded in our day to day life. Connected to the physical world in a way that the current internet isn’t. Something more human.
This thought comes from my recent dive into city planning, urbanism, and how to promote community, connection, and help people thrive through the physical world.
I know there’s been a few attempts at something like this, but I’m having trouble finding them again… will report back with more diagrams, thoughts, and hopefully links to these projects that have come before.
The Weight of Data
August 18, 2023
In addition to the distribution and along the lines of making the internet more dynamic that the basic hyperlink markup idea. Is there a way to add weight to ideas. Weight to data. Weight to content. Much in the same way that gravity interacts with space time.
The internet has IP addresses. It’s known where data originates. It’s known who is looking and where they are. Can we use these two attributes to curate what people see. Beyond that, can the weight of the idea become a property. Can something that’s interacted with more start to grow. Start to warp the internet and reach more people. Spread like ideas spread word of mouth. There could be some interesting ways to decide how the “weight” is calculated. Maybe there are different internet lenses. Pure quantity of data, interactions, your network, etc. Do things start to lose weight as time moves on? What aspect of the internet does this apply to? Hashtags, articles, web pages, IP addresses.
Of course there are VPNs. Maybe that’s a way to “travel” in this internet. It starts to relate to the Geographic Impact idea.
The internet has just been this thing. It’s been largely the same since it’s inception. The only thing that’s really changed is visual, back end, and interaction capabilities. But the hardware at the back end hasn’t been innovated or changed to be as dynamic as the initial invention was. Now that everything is connected, let’s disconnect. But in a way that’s more interesting, in a way that changes what people see, in a way that actually has groundings in reality. Something just slightly more interesting.