McFilter

Interesting Things on the Internet: May 31st 2021 Edition

• Ideas on a lower-carbon internet through scheduled downloads and Quality of Service requests. Interesting thoughts on time-shifting Internet usage, from Sam Foster. I think the big challenge is working out the user interface—that's not quite the right term, but how the concept is communicated to people, and how they schedule things or indicate preferences. There have been an assortment of QoS attempts at the network layer in the past, but none have made things stick because the just-add-more-bandwidth simplicity wins out. That said, I do just time-shift my BBC 6Music listening, so could quite easily schedule that to download in the wee hours of the morning. Maybe there could be an extension/replacement for cron that picks a low-carbon-intensity time to run its tasks?
• Giving consent. A useful description of sociocracy, which is (very broadly) governing by consensus. I don't think we're too far from this sort of approach with DoES Liverpool, so maybe worth a closer look.
• The Great Online Game. Lots of this rings true, and at times I hope there's a way we can weave a collective, social story through this, in place of the individualistic, personal-wealth-as-end-goal, burn-the-world-for-crypto alternative.

And this short video is excellent. If worrying.