I kinda wanna see an alt-history TV show where every technology gets developed but then technology stagnates around the internet era and the internet (in the current form) never gets developed.
What do you think of this type of society?
I think a sort of like text packet-radio of public chatrooms would be so cool as an alternative to the current “internet”. Like a meshtastic sort of thing, and Libraries would have info on how to build them, and some stores will sell them.
So basically like a internet-but-not-really-internet sort of “internet”, and there would be range limited, and you have the option to not pass on messages you deem hateful. And no corporation will control it, no central servers. Less trolling.
Am I making any sense?
I watched a video (can’t remember who or what it was called) that looked into the early days of radio. In the early 1900s it was a massive craze, especially among teenage boys, and quickly resulted in kids transmitting “obscene messages” and calling in fake commands and reports to naval radio operators. At the time there was no encryption or restriction on amateur radio use, and it lead to some embarrassing and dangerous moments for the navy.
The government finally acted in 1912 by forcing amateur radio to be restricted to the shortwave frequencies, decimating the hobby. This was partly driven by an incorrect rumor that these radio trolls had been responsible for, or interfered with the rescue of, the Titanic a few months earlier.
It was interesting to learn that trolls have always been with us, and also that the government could so decisively shape a new form of communication. If the 1980s giverments had banned use of the Internet by anyone outside the military and a small number of commercial or academic licence holders, things would be very different. Sure, the technology would be there and people would run amateur ip networks, or secretly piggyback of official uses, but it would be more like the dark net / tor than what actually happened.
The early Internet was exactly like Tor and darknet. Before DNS servers were ubiquitous, I’d go to an ftp site every morning that kept hosts lists and downloaded a hosts file to give me names matched to ip addresses. If darknet was the norm, a darknet DNS would be created and it would be the “Internet” but on different protocols.
The only scenario I can imagine is something like North Korea where people are so poor that they don’t have access to computers/phones which allows the government to restrict Internet to official cafes.