zlacker

I think it's a conflict that was baked into the Internet at its conception. A non-geographic service overlaid on top of a world with a huge amount of geography and borders.

>>afandi+(OP)
Yeah. We had a chance to invent our own governance on the internet. But we abdicated, and made the internet a free for all. As a result, national governments have stepped in to provide the governance we didn’t program in. And they do it - of course - in an inconsistent, ad hoc way.

There was a period a couple hundred years ago when it was all the rage internationally to write constitutions. Lots of countries got constitutions within a few decades, and almost no constitutions have been written since then. I wonder sometimes how the internet would be different if it were implemented in an era or culture in which people believed in that sort of thing.

>>joseph+tm1
I don't think it would make much difference; an internet constitution would be worth about as much as the paper it's not written on.

>>zerocr+Yr1
Paper is so wasteful, prone to the vagaries of time, and also to forgery.

It could be written into blockchain to avoid this, as I hear that is quite popular nowadays.

>>zerocr+Yr1
Yeah; you need an enforcement system too. And some way to amend rules and adjudicate. But we could implement all that if we actually wanted to. Eg, have broad rules to refuse to peer with anyone who doesn’t agree with the rules of the internet.

That is in essence already in place just for CSAM. We just pretend the internet is a free for all in all other cases.

>>widerw+iK1
Yes, think of all the paper wasted printing the US constitution. It would have been much more environmentally friendly if they stored it in a blockchain! polite coughs

>>afandi+(OP)
The bordered nature of geography is just as much of a social construct as the borderless nature of the internet is. It's not a given that this war will be won by the former.