FOCUS AREAS

Internet Decentralization

Communication systems are the nervous system of our culture and society, so let’s build them in a way where we feel and see and hear each other and be in relationship with each other.

As the world gets hotter, as the forests burn and cities flood, our devices will start to fail, too. In data centers around the world, where the vast majority of the internet is stored, cooling and energy costs will rise exponentially. The electromagnetic frequency that Wi-Fi travels along will be disrupted, mangled by the increased intensity of ultraviolet rays from the sun. In the next 15 years, the coastal tubes and wires (4,067 miles of fiber conduit, to be exact) that transmit Americans’ data will drown under salt water. The materials that prop up the web, such as rare earth minerals, will become harder and harder to come by.

"The internet is inextricably tied to the coming horrors of the climate crisis. It is both a major force behind that crisis and one of its likely casualties."

As the world gets hotter, as the forests burn and cities flood, our devices will start to fail, too. In data centers around the world, where the vast majority of the internet is stored, cooling and energy costs will rise exponentially. The electromagnetic frequency that Wi-Fi travels along will be disrupted, mangled by the increased intensity of ultraviolet rays from the sun. In the next 15 years, the coastal tubes and wires (4,067 miles of fiber conduit, to be exact) that transmit Americans’ data will drown under salt water. The materials that prop up the web, such as rare earth minerals, will become harder and harder to come by.

"If you look at the margins, where the poor and the neglected live, you can see an early version of how climate change will make internet access even more unequal."

A more localized internet is something to root for. Maybe an internet owned and operated by the dispossessed and vulnerable could tackle the problems that the internet for the rich and comfortable could never address. The big, homogenous, world-consuming internet we know today is unsustainable. And if this network is going to have any chance of surviving, it has to be disrupted, destroyed, and broken down.