Tag Archives: decentralization

Solarpunk Phones Part 2: Decentralize

antique broken cell phone communication

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

[This is Part 2 of a series about solarpunk phones. Here’s a link to Part 1: Repair and Part 3: Design.]

Humans have an amazing capacity for cognitive dissonance. Even though we may know something is bad for us or has significant negative consequences, we’ll still trudge ahead, even if the benefit to an action is small. As Steven Szpajda from This Week in Law is fond of saying, people will give up large amounts of privacy and security for a very small perceived benefit.

Solarpunk Druid had a recent post to this effect, “It’s the events stupid: Why FB is the hardest media to quit” discussing the titular quandary. As we have with fossil fuels, we’ve become reliant on systems whose existence is at cross-purposes with our own.

For this second part of my exploration of what a solarpunk communication device might look like, I want you to consider your relationship with your carrier and web service providers — Verizon, Facebook, etc.

antenna clouds equipment frequency

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Most of us have become comfortable, complacent even, with the idea that the companies that control our communications know everything about our habits. What might be surprising though, is that the information they collect isn’t just available to other multi-national megacorporations, but that private citizens can easily get access to the location of customers of at least AT&T, Sprint, and T-Mobile in the US.

Solarpunk, as a subgenre of speculative fiction is all about “what-if,” so what if we weren’t beholding to megacorps for our communications? What if we decentralized our cellphone and internet access? With the increasing presence of AI subservient to known bad actors, it’s time we start examining how to wean ourselves off of the corporations that feed our information addictions. While taking a break from technology can be beneficial for our mental well-being, I don’t think it’s practical to completely give it up either.

Solarpunk is also about making the “what-if” into a concrete reality, so what technologies exist to help us break free and decentralize our digital lives?

Mesh Networks

Mesh networking, which we’ve mentioned before, allows various parts of a network to communicate without a single central node, like a cellphone tower, controlling all of the traffic. If everyone in a given geographic area had a smartphone that worked on a mesh network, they wouldn’t need a carrier to contact their friends in that area. This has been touted as a potentially life-saving measure for natural disasters, and is also a powerful tool for people protesting authoritarian regimes. Mesh networks are still in the early stages of development, but they point toward a possibile future of decentralized communication where the users themselves are the network, not some centralized authority that could leave users in the dark either intentionally or because of a cyber attack. Some current implementations include the mesh network going up in Detroit, the Serval Project, GoTenna, and the Althea Mesh.

three person holding smartphones

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Leaving for greener social pastures

Between the shuttering of GeoCities a decade ago and recent major changes to Tumblr and Flikr, denizens of the internet have witnessed great swaths of the web be deleted at the whim of a single entity. At the same time, data breaches like Equifax and direct manipulation of users by Facebook and their partners has made it more clear than ever that you’re the product for these companies.

The Open Source Community has been experimenting with alternative social networks for some time, and with the W3C ActivityPub standard, we’re seeing the emergence of an interconnected, social media Fediverse. What’s really cool about the Fediverse is that people on different platforms can follow each other without having to sign up for a different network. If the current behemoths had started this way, then you could follow your friend on Twitter from your Facebook account without having a Twitter account yourself. Since these platforms are Open Source, anyone can start their own instance, so there are communities built up around common interests (like solarpunk) but you can still hang out online with your friends from a different instance. There are a number of different platforms modeled off existing networks like FB and Twitter, but I’m sure we’ll see new concepts emerge as well. There are even some beta plugins to allow WordPress websites to be federated with ActivityPub, so maybe you’ll see Solarpunk Station in the Fediverse soon!

The Fediverse isn’t the only decentralized social networking solution out there either. Other clients like Scuttlebutt and Steemit have also cropped up in recent years. Scuttlebutt has a large solarpunk contingent already as seen in the partial graph of the network below, while Steemit skews heavily toward the cryptocurrency crowd as it is itself based on the blockchain. Scuttlebutt has some really cool features like being designed around intermittent connections. There’s a lot more information and a fun intro video on their website.

Have you tried any of these new social media sites or built a mesh network? Let us know how it went below!

 

Solarpunk: A decentralized society

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 “Ginko tree” by tree-species via a Creative Commons CC BY 2.0 license

Decentralization

One of the most important things for solarpunk society is decentralization. Most major complaints about society can be traced to over-centralization of power. In the United States, I’m feeling especially conscious of how our country was founded on the belief that power should be distributed among the people, not concentrated into the hands of the elite.

To continue this dream of protecting people’s rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, the best protection against overly-powerful central governments and corporations is decentralization. Recent developments in decentralization include blockchain, mesh networks, platform cooperatives, decentralized social media, and the growth of grassroots democracy.

Blockchain

Blockchain has opened up the door for decentralization of many different services. The most obvious example is cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, but other projects include data storage (FileCoin, Storj), computer processing time (Golem), genetic data management (Nebula), and global UBI. If you’re interested in learning more about blockchain, check out this Blockchain 101 episode of Unchained with Laura Shin.

Mesh Networks

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NetworkTopology-Mesh by Foobaz

Mesh networks work by connecting people to each other in a non-hierarchical way. Mesh networks are more robust since they are not dependent on a single central device such as a cell tower to connect all of the devices in the network. This allows for increased redundancy during natural disasters as well as communications in areas that don’t have any infrastructure like National Parks or developing countries. Current implementations include the mesh network going up in Detroit, Serval and GoTenna for cell phones, and the Althea Mesh for building decentralized ISPs.

Platform cooperatives

Platform cooperatives are what the sharing economy was supposed to be before Uber and AirBNB ate everything. Governed by the actual service providers (hosts, drivers, etc.) the rules and profits are determined more equitably. The P2P Foundation and the New School’s Platform Cooperativism are good starting points for more information. If you prefer audio, Team Human has episodes with both Stacco Troncoso of the P2P foundation and Juho Makkonen of Sharetribe. Robin Chase’s Peers INC is a great book on the power of platform cooperatives.

If you are ready to start you own platform cooperative, Sharetribe makes an open source platform designed to help get things up and running. Forbes and Yes! Magazine have both covered platform cooperatives and Shareable covers them along with the more traditional “sharing economy” companies. Some platform cooperatives in the wild include Open Bazaar (shopping/commerce), LibreTaxi (transportation), Stocksy (stock photos), and your local credit unions. More services can be found at the Platform Cooperativism Directory.

Decentralized Social media

If you’re concerned about how Twitter, Facebook, and other social media companies handle your data, Scuttlebutt and Mastodon are two options that are not controlled by any one entity. Their user bases are much smaller at the moment, but it costs nothing to join the party. In The Mesh, a decentralization news site, has more here.

Grassroots democracy

Grassroots democracy is a group of political ideologies based on the idea that decision making should be left as local as possible since the people impacted by policies should be the ones who vote on their implementation. Subsidiarity, which is practiced by the European Union, is one example wherein the EU may only pass laws when an issue comes up that can’t be adequately addressed by separate legislation in its member countries. ROAR Magazine, a great resource for grassroots democracy news, has an excellent piece about how municipalism empowers women and others typically left out of the political process.

What do you think? Is centralization the enemy of democracy and free agency? Leave your thoughts below!