I read ew0k's post about Sneakernets and it made me think about the wonderful time I happened to grow up in.
In middle school I was connecting to a local BBS (Cherryland BBS in Sturgeon Bay, Wi). I had to sneak over to my grandfather's construction company at night to get access to his better phone system, he had free long distance while we did not. Dialed in, read some posts, sent some messages and started the download of a game or app and let the system run through the night as it was sloooooow.
Then as soon as the UW University system announced they were providing a dial-up service, we now had a portal I had access to from my house. Gopher, Archie and Veronica, IRC. So much more information, such little bandwidth. But we had a huge box of floppy disks and a bunch of us at school would exchange copies of whatever we found interesting. While there wasn't that much out there, we still seemed to find enough to keep a pretty regular flow of disks going between the half a dozen of us.
Now this wasn't a true "Sneakernet" as there was no rotating media cycling across the group. We had a disk box, people dropped some in with whatever they downloaded on the label, You pick up what you wanted to look at, drop off what you found. It was more a "Little Free Library" than a net.
Before I could post this story, I saw that ew0k posted a response to many of those who replied to his original post.
The real question ew0k was looking for is what purpose would a true to word Sneakernet have in a world where we have cheap, high speed internet. Those disks we shared in Middle School would now just be an attachment or a link posted in whatever IM client we all used. We are so connected today that there seems to be no need for Sneakernets. None of us are so special that anyone is monitoring our web traffic, aside from those wanting to sell our info to ad companies.
But I think that's the easy answer for why no one needs a Sneakernet when they live in the US or EU. I think the bigger question is, what is it that we find so important or interesting that we'd be willing to spend the time and effort to regularly do IRL meet ups, swapping a drive, taking it home to process all incoming and outgoing information. When my friends in school and I were swapping floppies it was all new and interesting information. It was things that was well worth downloading slowly, finding a disk we no longer needed, format, copy, label and bring to school.
The sneakernets that exist today serve a real purpose. They provide communication access to areas that do not have access to the internet. Not for sending memes or cat pictures but for the things you and I take for granted. Real correspondence, for legal and educational purposes. In Amateur Radio we have a system for passing messages all over the air. I have a pad of paper that looks similar to the old Western Union Telegram forms. In cases of major disasters I can setup shop with my radio and forms and people can get a call out to loved ones to inform them they are safe when no power, cell or internet service is available. This is the level of need that a real sneakernet would require. Anyone living in a country with 100MB connections to their smart phone has no need for a sneakernet.
I've been thinking all day of a use case I have in my daily life where I need to communicate with an individual electronically. I couldn't think of one. While most interfacing between utilities, debts and friends/family is done online, for me they would no longer be electronic if the internet suddenly went away. As for interesting, useful information, nearly everything online is garbage these days. You're reading this from Gemini space, a place where all the crap has been stripped away and all we are left with is human interactions. But would Gopher and Gemini pages really be worth passing around a drive? Probably not.
Sadly it feels like the days of Sneakernets is behind us. I miss those days, or rather I miss the newness of the internet. Hopefully we can kindle that spirit with Gemini.
$ published: 2022-09-24 23:08 $
$ tags: tech $
-- CC-BY-4.0 jecxjo 2022-09-24