Re: <nettime> [Augmentology] _A Warcry for Birthing Synthetic Worlds_

["chad scov1lle" <chad@chadscoville.com>]

> What maybe interesting is potential influence of ever-increasing
> edge computing power (things in end users' hands) and increasing
> bandwidth, on the 20th century networking topology. If any.

I agree. That???s impetus forexponential growth indecentralization. When
the individual possessescomputational leverage on par with the
military-industrial complex, which I don???tfeel is that far away in light
of the recent advances in quantum computing,witness accelerated demise of
the nation state. Unfortunately, it most likelywill also actualize an
increasing scale of international violence and organizedcrime. The Russian
Business Network is a current example of this type ofscenario operating
today. Even the so-called war on terror against rogueinternationalists is
coopted by advanced encryption technologies, globalcommunications
infrastructures, and the decentralization of capital.

> Routing for example.
> 
> Is it technologically required that this mail to
> nettime-l@kein.org moderator first travels from north america to
> Cologne, DE, subject to good will of severalgovernments and
> commercial entities, and then gets picked by the moderator from
> who knows where? Is this centralised (server-based) architecture
> today technologically or commercially/politically mandated? Mesh
> self- and source-routed networks worked well on limited basis in
> 2000. Today, with all these gates crammed in tiny PDAs, access
> points, etc., it's totally conceivable that routing could be done
> without centralised servers and likely implemented at least in
> dense areas fully covered with wireless (and let's not forget
> IR). Moving terabytes without ever touching an ISP does not have
> technologicalbarriers today.

That???s a really interesting idea aswell. So, thequestion really is, I
think, how we can decouple ourselves notfrom TCP/IP, SMTP, or HTTP, but
rather, from the OSI paradigm. Several yearsago the OSI model created a
framework forinteroperation between different modulated layers of protocols
and data. TCP/IP operated at Layer???s 3 and 4.Ethernet atlayer 2. SMTP at
layer 6. For the time, standardization in terms ofhow data was transmitted
and how different protocols encapsulated data forprocessing by different
applications was a real contingency when it came to developinga
military-based highly scalable and redundant communications framework in
the event that the PSTN becomes nil. It is reliability and interoperabilitiy
a crossplatforms and disparate systems which alloted this grand scale
capitalization.

So here we are now, with somereally good examples based upon our historical
experience. And I think networkcoding is the only thing that I???ve heard
which is making waves in terms ofradical change in how data is communicated
across communication networks.

But also, it might be important forus to consider the case of the PSTN and
IPT. So, we all know that IPT has been trying tounseatconverntional
telephony for at least a decade. As someone with some practicalexperience
engineering these solutions for enterprises, it???s a issue of
usersexpecting a certain level of service guaranteed by conventional PSTN
which isn???tas reliable as IPT. Dial-tone is acultural definite. It is
expected that when someonepicks up the handset of a telephone, you will
hear dial-tone. IPT has difficultyleveraging the sameservice ??? and
principally because of the inherent engineering issues concerningreal-time
applications and their requisite for strong QoS which isn???t thereyet.

In terms of routing maili traffic,well one could also create an entirely
separate messaging based network whichexists physically separate from the
existing internet. Perhaps we will be ableto do this when the cost to put
satellites up in the air comes down and we???llbe able to form our own
ephemeral networks which aren???t reliant on routers, butinstead are
reliant on oxygen and hydrogen ions moving between wearablecomputing.

> Yet it's not happening. There is not much incentive for
> self-organised networks these days.
> 
> The point is that technology is not the barrier.The demand is the
> barrier. We simply cannot figure out WTF it is that we want from
> the technology. Most of technology today is like dark fiber -
> sitting there being available but of no use. There is really no
> new content class, save computer games and consumer-generated
> drivel. It's no wonder that 90+% of all bits moved is stolen
> content from 100 years old industry - movies.
> 
> Web was big success primarily because it further automated the
> mail order concept - everything else was a side-effect. For the
> next big thing we will need something else to automate, and it
> seems that we are running out of ideas. Automating captivity -
> virtual worlds etc. - ain't it.


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