We can build such a society. I am not sure why you think this is never possible.
People can work for a better world. That sometimes works, too.
Maybe we can, but it is A) a far bigger, older, and more difficult problem than how to structure a computer network, and B) fundamentally not solvable through technological means.
No matter how much technologists love the idea of technology as a liberating force, our worst instincts and dynamics always reassert themselves and soon figure out how to use that same technology to destroy liberty.
However, large institutions are also slow to move, grow, and change. At the leading edge of technological adoption small groups and individuals can use the amplified power to resist supression.
The trick is to remain at the leading edge and to remind early adopters of the power they wield. If enough of us fight for liberty many institutions will follow.
Where does such informed political and economic interest and power exist? With whom do we construct such society? Do they have the power and will to fight for it?
Normies live with normie standards and with incresing social media exposure with more and more emotional animal-like manipulated world views. They are either ignorant or ambivalent.
Will tech people gather on a piece of land and declare independence? Most of my tech worker colleagues are also quite pro-social media and they heavily use it to boost their apparent social status. We cannot even trust our kind.
Similar examples of new technology being used to motivate and mobilize masses have always ended with devastating wars and genocides. Previously the speed of propagation of information gave advantages to statespeople like FDR to put an end to increasing racism/Nazism/violent tendencies (of course not everywhere, when let to its own devices new technology almost perfect for constructing dictatorships). Now everybody has equal access to misinformation.
Capitalism is not the only way of life, and FYGM is a mental illness outside of the US
Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes.
Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.
When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."
Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community.
Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents. Omit internet tropes.
Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity.
except we cant agree exactly HOW the new utopia should be and we end up splintering into two groups at loggerheads, fighting each other and back to square one, talking about how if we just followed someone else idea of a utopia we would have to fight all the time. dream on
You* maybe cannot, but that certainly isn't everywhere.
We plebs are just driftwood floating in massive waves of nation state decision making. I don't doubt there are people who literally work at ISPs who are depressed at the state of things, depressed that theyre not allowed to take action on certain things, depressed that they see first-hand what kind of control mechanisms they're forced to implement or disallowed from implementing and more. It's got to be a trove of BS in an age of misinformation which has always been an information systems problem that humanity has implemented checks notes zero solutions for. And at the end of the day they, probably like all of us, just want to live a good and meaningful life.
That's not to say just... give up on ideals. But instead to acknowledge the realities of ideals not being enough on their own. Have some real conversations on what it would actually take to embed these types of fundamentals into a society, get comfortable with the uncomfortable realities. So much work needs to be done before new ideals can even be shared. Outreach alone to spread ideals is a massive uphill battle at this point due to conglomerate control of broadcast media and concentrated ownership of social media apps. A lot of these particular ideals require a decent understanding/background of technology in general which most people don't even have, making these things an incredibly unlikely basis for a society where these things are well-enough understood. So the circus trick here is how do you make it a digestable topic that touches the souls of many and galvanizes them to take the correct stance so that these things become embodied in the set of ideals a society values, so that legislators and whatever other proxies that are tasked with decision making give these things the resourcing or policy making attention they deserve. That's the mega hard part, which is then additionally compounded in difficulty by ... most households in our societies just never having these types of discussions make it to their TV/computer screens. Hackernews types like to call these people "normies" and tack the blame on them, but they can't seem to wrap their mind around that not everyone could or should have a deep compsci background. We should be coexisting with people of a variety of backgrounds and instead we should be looking at their "normie"-ness as a thing to account for, not blame. It would be absurd to have a "normie" expect us to be exceptional at rebuilding car engines or any other broad subset of knowledge that we haven't ourselves committed our own lives/spare time to.
So that leaves the other route to take which is just... renegade fine-we'll-do-it-ourselves. Which can succeed, but has its own set of challenges. Fronting infrastructure for a lot of stuff is expensive, so donors are needed on sometimes vast scales. To another commenters point like... ain't none of us on the renegade front laying undersea cables any time soon which are multi-billion dollar projects to cross the Pacific. Often times we see these underground efforts fail in their infancy simply because the UX just flat out sucks and we're up against entities who can giga-scale all their infrastructure/resources & ultimately capitalize on making whatever app thing fast&pleasant for users. It feels like we're drowning against titans sometimes, it's overwhelming.
One problem you face are high profile leaders apparently being "replaced" with ones that are a lot more "conformist." So yesteryear's Bezos might've said yes, today's Bezos: no. See here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WqlEtPBNgLc (members only)
This is similar to Bill Joy and his unlimited music device in about 2000.
Having something local means superfast response times, even if there's a delay in freshness.
The key is moderation. I suppose it could end up like a magazine. Maybe charge micropayments to have content included with that fee changing according to a slop-scale?
It's a good idea to couple with something like the upcoming Linux handheld - Mecha. Need multi-TB SSDs - maybe AI can help navigate? Have different versions according to how much storage the user has available.
Maybe there's demand for something local that new AIs can train from. Something other than Internet Archive.
Are there any products that can minimize online-time by building a backlog of jobs to run when online, but also enabling a pause for offline-time?
Also, websites could queue requests, eliminate the AI thumping, and notify the client when their request is allowed? It's like queuing up for a niteclub and eventually getting passed the droid-hostile bouncer.
Not when people make arguments based on dreams, hope, and optimism.
If somebody tells me that we can build a shed, I want them to talk about wood, nails and concrete, or to stop talking.
If everyone was a normal (as far as anyone is normal) law abiding citizen perhaps I would agree, but sadly that is far from the case. I think history has quite clearly shown that there is a minority of people out there that will take advantage and ruin things for everyone else. It's the same reason we have militaries, police forces, government checks and balances, etc. The internet is no exception to this.
I don't think the world is simple enough where anyone could be absolutist about freedom, it's all grey areas and complicated lines drawn.