[Lee Konstantinou]

How do we create and safeguard an open Internet? The answer’s simple. If we want to create and safeguard an open Internet, all we have to do is . . . create and safeguard it. The thornier problem, in my view, is that many people regard an open Internet as undesirable. Some owners of intellectual property see an open Internet as an instrument that enables theft. Many governments see an it as a threat to their capacity to control their own populations. They’d jump at the opportunity, as one NSA presentation put it, to “Collect it All; Process it All; Exploit it All; Partner it All; Sniff it All . . . Know it All.”

I dislike nostalgic paeans that celebrate the great freedom that once-up-a-time defined online culture. Nonetheless, it’s clear that the Internet is developing in ways that will narrow our capacity to use it freely. As Jonathan Zittrain notes in The Future of the Internet—And How to Stop It, many large technology companies — Apple chief among them — have tried to re-imagine the Internet as a commerce-oriented proprietary walled garden. AOL, it turns out, was just ahead of its time. Governments, meanwhile, are doing everything they can to Know it All.

In my contribution to Hieroglyph, I describe a future where every device, every network, and every server is filtered — and where encryption is effectively illegal for ordinary Internet users. Powerful corporate interests, allied with increasingly militarized state power, regulates online life. I call this closed network the mediasphere (this system also features centrally in my novel, Pop Apocalypse). Most mediasphere users don’t notice much of a change from today’s Internet, but a dissident minority wants to resist the new regime. The dronepunk community builds the Drone Commons, a solar-powered decentralized mesh network of semi-autonomous 3d-printer fabricated hobbyist drones that effectively bypass corporate ISPs and state surveillance.

But I think it’s important to emphasize that building a Drone Commons is only a tactic. It’s a contingent way that dronepunks come up with, within the world of the story, to bypass the mediasphere. The true “hieroglyph” of my story, the positive future I was trying to imagine, is a political community that — whatever its serious internal differences and contradictions — creates and sustains the Commons. The open question at the end of the story, the question I’m not able to answer with any confidence, is whether such a community might be able to agree on a common vision for the future of the Internet, let alone overcome the powerful political forces arrayed against it.

That’s why I say that creating an open Internet is, in one sense, easy. All we have to do is build it. The hard part is creating the political coalition capable of robustly defending it, and creating a new regime of democratic governance that not only respects individual privacy but also serves the interests, and reflects the preferences, of the community as a whole.

[Lee Konstantinou]

Interestingly, Brenda, Google’s apparently working on something very much like this now:

Attached to the bottom of each envelope is the 22-pound “payload.” It’s topped by a sheet of solar paneling the size of a basketball backboard. Beneath the solar sheet is a construct resembling a large camera tripod, whose legs are antennas that allow the balloons to transmit to their peers in a mesh network. And on the bottom of the structure is a metal-sided container resembling a deep fuse box, which contains the computers, electronics, GPS devices, and batteries to store the energy gathered by the solar panels (each about 10 times the size of a laptop battery). It also controls valves that go inside the balloon’s internal chambers, allowing the balloon to find the desired altitude to maintain its flight path. Dangling from the box is a cable ending in a piece of foam that looks like a slice of a kid’s swimming noodle; inside is a transponder that beams location to air-traffic controllers and other trackers.

It’s called “Project Loon.”

As for hiding things in plain sight using good encryption, using existing networks, I agree in principle, but part of my assumption is that as cloud computing becomes ubiquitous — and as advanced AI-driven filtering becomes economical — it’ll be much more difficult to avoid corporate and state surveillance (and effective control). Part of the motive for the Commons, as I’m imagining it, is to bypass these sorts of controls in a way that’s hard to subvert. The other goal is to make the Commons, well, common. The subversive stuff shouldn’t be hidden under layers of encryption but in plain sight, accessible to all who have the right device (which should be cheap and easy to fabricate), and near impossible to take down once it’s up.

[Lee Konstantinou]

I like the idea of microdrone balloon carriers and something like htbtp. As revelations about the NSA’s metadata collection schemes and its PRISM program come out, I am becoming convinced that having a Drone Commons is desirable — but not enough. One would also need something like distributed or decentralized server services — free or open-source — alongside and integrated with the commons. After all, it wouldn’t be very meaningful to access one’s Facebook account via the Drone Commons if Facebook is giving access to one’s data to the government.

[Lee Konstantinou]

Thanks for the links, Julian, and for your questions, Darusha! My present idea is that in low-density zones — as much as in high-density zones — the drones would be the network. Individuals with compatible devices would use the drone network to communicate with each other. The same drones would probably also serve as distributed servers/routers, but that’s secondary.

Some nodes could be static, but mobility would be useful for a few reasons.

You’d want to be able to have the swarm automatically respond when some portion of it went out of commission. The network would degrade over time, either naturally or because of anti-drone attacks launched by the FAA, so people would have to constantly replenish the supply of drones. At least until small-scale automated factories became affordable.

I want to assume a very small number of drone enthusiasts (e.g. Johnny Appledrone) who would take responsibility for maintaining a huge network everyone could use. If the drones are being mostly released in (say) Cheyenne, but the overall network is weaker in Nebraska, the drones should be able to get there on their own, and make themselves hard to find.

There should be a low barrier of entry for those who want to grow the Commons — and earn the equivalent of a Drone Commons Barnstar.

[Lee Konstantinou]

Over the last couple years, I’ve been reading a lot about “brain reading” technologies. It seems not improbable that we’ll all be wearing the equivalent of tinfoil hats in less than a decade, to protect ourselves from brain hacking.

Nathan Spreng has recently published a study on using fMRIs to predict what subjects are thinking about — and other research has been able to reconstruct “videos” of brain imagery. There’re also lots of examples of using the brain to control machines. One presumes this’ll only get more common in the near future. What I haven’t seen is much research focused on writing directly onto the brain. One can use deep brain stimulation to treat chronic depression, Parkinson’s disease, and other ailments, and there’s evidence that electrical stimulation can improve intelligence, but I don’t yet know of a mechanism whereby one could write onto the brain in a general way.

One wonders how far we are from Gibson’s “simstim.”

[Lee Konstantinou]

I don’t agree with the core assumption of the initial post, that we’d have ubiquitous airships but for the evils of socialism. It’s premised on the idea that capitalists are leaving money on the table because of irrational prejudice. But in the spirit of this Big Idea, why not go beyond merely staging airship contests and aim to create extrajudicial Zeppelin Casinos — or better still, Floating Tax Shelters? Take that Cayman Islands!

[Lee Konstantinou]

Thanks for the comments.

I very much like the idea of “drone hunters,” Melodie. I’ve become obsessed recently with mosquito lasers. One can imagine an arms race between drone-killing lasers and drones. This does recommend the idea of wearable “nodes,” Greg, since it seems less likely (though by no means impossible) that authorities would be able to identify — or shoot down — people wearing nodes.

Wearable nodes are good for dense areas — and for areas where many people are opting into the system — but to extend the Drone Commons, I am convinced you need autonomous and mobile drones of some sort. Especially if you want to serve low-density areas, as Melodie suggests. Drone-nodes should be able to detect areas of strong and weak signal, calculate where they are most “needed,” and move to an optimal location. The Commons would need to be resilient even if only a small number of people were concerned with its maintenance. It would need to be designed to be self-regulating and self-healing.

Whatever the specific physical substrate, the goal is global saturation, so anyone could get pretty reliable and fast connectivity anywhere on earth. One could imagine networks of high-altitude balloons acting as relay stations. I don’t know what special problems crossing bodies of water would pose. At some point, as the cost of sending a payload into orbit was reduced, one might imagine the Drone Commons expanding into space. For now, I want to imagine a system we could build today or in the very near future.

Though this may change, I am imagining a character who calls himself Johnny Appledrone, dedicated to releasing little drones from the back of his heavily modded VW Bus as he traverses the interstate highway system. What would he need to do his work?

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