Not sure what you mean by "threshold for action" but I think cost has a great deal to do with it.
Running a cable (copper or fibre) along a street is expensive. So is putting up a wireless tower. And either have to be connected to the next town (cable, microwave, satellite, etc) and so on.
Passing around some USB sticks is much cheaper - has rather poor latency but fine bandwidth :)
I'd like to see some kind of peer-to-peer system doing the same thing. I imagine small devices (phones, raspberry pis etc) close enough that they could propagate updates or messages autonomously, and providing local wifi access to their collection of data. Perhaps fetching more recent updates from users when someone with more recent data wanders into town. Wouldn't work for streaming movies but might provide a nice sneakernet alternative.
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Not sure what you mean by "threshold for action" but I think cost has a great deal to do with it.
Running a cable (copper or fibre) along a street is expensive. So is putting up a wireless tower. And either have to be connected to the next town (cable, microwave, satellite, etc) and so on.
Passing around some USB sticks is much cheaper - has rather poor latency but fine bandwidth :)
I'd like to see some kind of peer-to-peer system doing the same thing. I imagine small devices (phones, raspberry pis etc) close enough that they could propagate updates or messages autonomously, and providing local wifi access to their collection of data. Perhaps fetching more recent updates from users when someone with more recent data wanders into town. Wouldn't work for streaming movies but might provide a nice sneakernet alternative.