Comment by cduzz
7 months ago
The "internet" has died several times already.
I doubt I could send email to anyone on bitnet or via a UUCP bang path, for example.
This iteration of the internet is pretty big; it may not die (where you live) but it will likely continue fragmenting into a loosely coupled set of affiliated networks with semi-realtime gateways between them (see also UUCP / bitnet).
> This iteration of the internet is pretty big; it may not die (where you live) but it will likely continue fragmenting into a loosely coupled set of affiliated networks [...]
Isn't the Internet already a "loosely coupled set of affiliated networks", with each AS being a separate network?
Yes -- to some degree. And "AS" could mean "BGP AS" or it could mean "country or alliance of countries" -- the internet as seen in the west vs iran are likely very different things.
Maybe skynet uses one set of roots and thenet uses a different set of roots and freenet has taken the IPs of the roots and sends you to their dns heirarchy and they also mandate that you have their set of CAs.
But as of right now people don't carry different phones to communicate on different internets (though they do have different chat / voice communication applications / networks).
UUCP / bitnet were (are?) store-and-forward gateway mechanisms. "If you want to send email to that google address you have to send it as friend@gmail.com@@freenet_audit and it'll be forwarded if the filters approve."
My point is that there have been a variety of different internets in the past; this one got the name "the internet" but there's no reason it won't fragment (more) into a morass semi-incompatible fragments.
When I go to parties, people think I know a lot about the internet.
I can't tell you how much I enjoyed reading this comment and realizing that I don't have a clue what half of this means. :D
Even plain ol' HTTP (no S) is slowly dying.
And if you boot up a machine from 10+ years ago, many sites won't work because they require TLS1.2+.
Nothing lasts forever :-/