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DistortoiseLP t1_iy5p5zu wrote

I still remember back in 2010 when people thought social media was going to turn out better than this.

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irkli OP t1_iy5scn5 wrote

The failure of the American internet began 1 Jan 1993 when the military and commercial domains were split, commerce sold to the corps the owned the lines.

The internet infrastructure should have been handed to the US Postal Service, which was exactly the sort of entity needed to run it. They already "thought that way" -- equal service to rural and city.

Most sensible countries run internet that way. Yet another way the US is inferior, like health care.

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rangeDSP t1_iy5ukit wrote

For a second this reads like a lore shard from Cyberpunk 2077. Their satire of corpo control on the internet is spot on

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Zachariot88 t1_iy5yn3z wrote

Goddamn Elonorobu Arasaka suppressing my tweets again

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kwangqengelele t1_iy61umk wrote

Buy New Blue Checkmark XXL to secure your FreeSpeech+

Only 8 eddies a month!

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Cognitive_Spoon t1_iy6b8nh wrote

It's a scam. Those eight eddies are nothing compared to the botnets being propped up by eight million eddies.

You can use an AI to make 5 pics of someone who doesn't exist in thirty seconds. Take those five pics, slap them on a bot account, and viola, you got a bit that "looks" like someone who can't be reverse image searched. Someone unique.

Social Media is about to get massively less easy to parse.

It's always been a game played by corpos, it's just going to get harder to play if you don't got the buy in money.

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Fun-Gap4015 t1_iy7yr86 wrote

Whats even more dystopian is that when presented with reality, our citizens first thoughts are "this is just like my video game"

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akatokuro t1_iy8tec1 wrote

It's almost like fiction is an avenue to critique and act as a mirror for our shared common experiences. It's like saying that it's dystopian that when facing drought and economic hardship people think about The Grapes of Wrath.

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HaloGuy381 t1_iy919qs wrote

Sounds like much of the next century will be the sequel to Grapes of Wrath, then.

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Fun-Gap4015 t1_iydpai5 wrote

You're comparing a work of literature to loot boxes. Good effort though, not all art is created equally.

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akatokuro t1_iye10tw wrote

Oh I forgot, because it's Steinbeck it's hallowed and up on a pedestal. Meanwhile because some games include extremely predatory gambling mechanics, that means the writers for other games must be low-brow and deplorable.

In order to get a quick jibe in you also ignored the substance of why your original comment didn't work. Cyberpunk fiction has been one of the most prognosticative sub-genres since its' appearance over the last half century and 2077 is no different. It is yet another example of reality seeming to imitate the art that critiques our own reality.

A person experiencing drought and economic depression thinking about how much The Grapes of Wrath is like the reality they are going through is just the same--art based off reality being prescient of events that have not yet come to pass. It literally doesn't matter what type of art it is because your criticism is that it's dystopian that people relate to art.

But sure, video games bad and OP should be ashamed for experiencing emotion.

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Fun-Gap4015 t1_iyepou2 wrote

I'm not reading your thesis on the comparison of cyber punk and grapes of wrath.

I wish you put as much effort into proving your point on the internet to strangers, as you do with the rest of your life.

This is such a reddit moment am I right

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akatokuro t1_iyespvs wrote

Yes it is, you exemplify it brilliantly

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Fun-Gap4015 t1_iyfeigo wrote

You're upset because I don't think you're right. That upsets you because you're emotionally immature. How else could my simple trolling upset you, oh modern man.

Controlling narcissistic behavior, upset because I won't do what you want. Congratulations, in wisdom we call that a freebie.

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a8bmiles t1_iy9ncpv wrote

There used to be a Shadowrun subreddit highlighting events in real life and their already existing parallel in Shadowrun lore. Maybe it's still around and I just can't find it now.

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Aazadan t1_iyabmgs wrote

There’s one for EU4 and other paradox games

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JohnGillnitz t1_iy6p3jx wrote

Let me tell you how cool (and expensive) it was to have a dedicated 1.5 T1 in 1994.

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irkli OP t1_iy6zmyb wrote

It was! In late 1993 we had the very first commercial T1 from MCI Govt Sys Div. From SF we could ping London in 10 mS (I think it was), two hops.

Ummm maybe with you? Lol

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JohnGillnitz t1_iy9d4pe wrote

Not in London I'm afraid. There wasn't much in the way of security back then and every workstation had a real IP address. Even though Windows 3.1 didn't have an IP stack (Trumpet Winsock to the rescue!). I found a web server that ran on Windows (limited to short file names) and turned my office desktop into one. We would also do DOOM II LAN parties and see who could find the most disgusting pornographic picture (before Netscape was a thing). My supervisors, 40-something ladies who were mostly former school teachers, were instigating the whole thing. It was nuts.

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vanman33 t1_iy6d6ny wrote

Do you have any source info for better understanding this?

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irkli OP t1_iy70z9f wrote

Not off hand. I'm not sure it was ever seriously proposed that USPS run it. In 92 I was managing an internet "share" that grew into in ISP ("toasternet") in 93, 94. Before that I was doing FidoNet stuff. I had my hands full then.

Maybe cypherpunk archives. Early/pre EFF. Though I later ran then sold an ISP I was in it for the network building. By 95 it was over, big money taking over as is now quite obvious.

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HokieScott t1_iydvd13 wrote

Wow, I haven't heard FidoNet mentioned in a VERY VERY long time.. Back in the BBS days.

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joe-re t1_iyak19k wrote

That's the way it was handled in the beginning in Germany. Telekom, a state owned company, had a monopoly on the infrastructure. It was privatized in 1996, but the state owned most of it.

Internet access and speed severely lagged behind other countries, but costs were higher. This is still the case.

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irkli OP t1_iyau1bd wrote

Bummer. Recalling experience back in the BBS modem days, yeah, a lot of European telcos were quite retrograde. So I can see how that would happen.

"Someone" must have done a survey of approaches to this. Maybe eff would know.

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OS6aDohpegavod4 t1_iy835nd wrote

How does a public internet utility affect social media spam in any way? You're talking about an ISP, not running a website.

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irkli OP t1_iy8z8dg wrote

That is an excellent question. Many eu countries do it this way. But pipes don't have the same liabilities/exposures as the media sites do. Some of this is long and we'll studied, tl;dr here.

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dofffman t1_iy9pbbn wrote

omg yes. I never thought of that despite the fact I keep on wishing you could get an email from the post office that you would be assured of not losing. allow one for free with limited storage per citizen and then sell additional addresses and storage.

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HokieScott t1_iydv5xx wrote

There were rumors back then that the USPS was going to collect money for each email sent. Under a law that only the USPS can handle letters except if it had to be there nextday/2day, thus allowing UPS/FeDex/DHL/AirboneExpress/etc. to also deliver documents.

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jschubart t1_iy7aqvq wrote

The Arab Spring did not turn out so great. A couple failed states and a few that went to democracy only to end with authoritarian rule.

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tawaydont1 t1_iy83b5f wrote

It sounds like America we are headed that way we keep thinking we are a representive democracy and we aren't any more thanks to the wage gap being huge.

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