Android started out as an open ecosystem that is slowly being closed. How much funding would it take to re-create a credible open-source ecosystem for phones?
That old maxim - the internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it - no longer true unfortunately.
Larger and larger swathes of the world population are coming under the purview of governments and corporations that are technologically strangling the free flow of information over the intertubes. China, Russia, India, Iran, UK, US (corporations a.t.m.) are the prominent examples.
Just having a resilient software stack is no longer sufficient. An open source hardware stack AND infrastructure is critical.
Eventually there will be need for an open source manufacturing base as well. Even if it is only at the level of 1980s computing, that is better than nothing.
The world needs some big thinkers to start working on this yesterday. A civ resilient project to avoid the dystopian futures or something like the dark ages coming back.
There is a case to be made that overcoming oppression is extremely hard to achieve in populations over 50 million. Are there any successful examples where this has happened?
The Soviet Union had a population larger than the United States' at the time of its collapse. North of 100 million people were liberated virtually overnight from direct Russian rule, from USSR states (over 50 million in Ukraine alone); and another 100+ million from Russian-backed communist governments in Warsaw Pact states (40 million in Poland alone).
British India (three modern states) had a population of 400 million at the time of its independence from Britain. That was famously a coordinated, nation-wide movement.
Indonesia was around 200 million people at the end of the Suharto dictatorship and its transition towards democracy.
Soviet Union - was that really opposition to oppression that succeeded or the state collapsed internally - disintegrated?
British India could be good example - but there's a case to be made that it was overthrow of an external colonial rule that never integrated with the local population, so not sure there is a good parallel with the Iran situation.
Indonesia - this appears to be a really good example, along with Phillipines (1986). So what's different about Iran - why the repeated failures there?
The Revolutions of 1989 that led to the fall of the iron curtain were bottom up in a region with a large population.
In August of 1989, 2 million people held hands to create a chain. This was one of the large protests in human history. It led to the death of communism in Europe. More information in “The Baltic Way” article below.
I think this is one of the arguments for the 2nd amendment that too often gets overlooked. Overthrowing the government is a lot easier if the populace is legally armed AND the government doesn't know who owns what or how many guns. Which is why it is that way specifically here in the US.
That old maxim - the internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it - no longer true unfortunately.
Larger and larger swathes of the world population are coming under the purview of governments and corporations that are technologically strangling the free flow of information over the intertubes. China, Russia, India, Iran, UK, US (corporations a.t.m.) are the prominent examples.
Just having a resilient software stack is no longer sufficient. An open source hardware stack AND infrastructure is critical.
Eventually there will be need for an open source manufacturing base as well. Even if it is only at the level of 1980s computing, that is better than nothing.
The world needs some big thinkers to start working on this yesterday. A civ resilient project to avoid the dystopian futures or something like the dark ages coming back.
> Anything persistent at all is downright unusable - they'll be tracked and destroyed, people near them arrested etc.
That's a really good point. Maybe the tech needs to be in reasonably widespread use prior to when it's needed, then it becomes harder to strangle in the moment. A product in everyone's home and office.
Wi-fi routers with long-range capabilities and automatic mesh fallback in case of isp outage?
perhaps it needs to be tech that is useful in daily life, with the ability to switch channels automatically when the main isp is unavailable. An example is the HNT helium network - an alternative data transport mechanism. Not saying that is what should be used - that's a crypto thing - but the principle is the same.
thinking about it in terms of "getting caught" might be the less ideal way to approach it - think of it in terms of building a more reliable system, which is a goal everyone can get behind.
There is apparently a post and discussion thread here [1] but only available to logged in users. Reddit discussion here [2] has conflicting information on whether this is temporary or permanent, and is apparently due to ai bot ddos.
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