Folks: haha, that Aral guy, he really knows how to articulate the problem, what a gas! Let’s get him to perform at our shindig.
Me: *offers solution*
Folks: *fucking crickets*
It’s almost as if people prefer living with a dramatic problem to having a boring solution.
Especially if the boring solution means no one gets a fuckall huge floating penis extension that you have to dismantle a bridge to fit.
And I’m sorry but the solution IS boring. You want people to remain people (not properly) and you want democracy in the age of the digital network? You give individuals the means of communication.
You want autocracy on a scale hitherto unseen in human history? You give it to corporations instead.
Simple. Boring. True.
@aral What does it mean to give individuals, not corporations, the means of communication? People own their cell phones, but corporations own the networks. Even if people own their servers, the ISPs will continue to own the infrastructure linking your server to my client. Encryption may mitigate the privacy risks but you're still paying rent to deliver your content to me.
On top of that, the idea that this URL corresponds to this IP address, corresponds to this physical machine, is oversimplified in the modern web. A practical consequence is that, if you have your own server, you're at a performance disadvantage compared to a competitor who can serve clients from a local node in a CDN, even if he has to rent that network from a corporation.
