• baines@lemmy.cafe
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    1
    arrow-down
    3
    ·
    edit-2
    2 days ago

    human transportation in the abstract is the internet

    data is people

    data packets / rates (related tech) are the various vehicle types

    there was a time of no highways, what need do horse drawn carriages have for paved asphalt?

    highways are a direct though not immediate consequence of American car and civic planning policy

    if instead we had focused on mixed use walkable cities with connected mass transit instead of urban sprawl highways would be much reduced if not gone, just look at existing examples in eu etc

    so yes American cars and every nuance that implies in our current American reality are fucking highways

    • Encrypt-Keeper@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      edit-2
      2 days ago

      Incorrect. Let me help you out here:

      Human transportation in the abstract is computer networking in the abstract.

      The highway is the internet, the current physical implementation of the computer networking transportation system we call The Internet.

      You can go into minute detail on what the cars and trucks are, horse drawn carriages, people etc, but ultimately, the internet is the highway. It is separate from and fundamentally not responsible for what you choose to put on it.

      • baines@lemmy.cafe
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        edit-2
        2 days ago

        my whole fucking point is that roads in the US didn’t start with highways

        highways in the US came about because of American car culture and fossil fuel policy

        so American cars are American highways as far as how intertwined they are, this idea is so old it is literally a plot point in fucking Roger Rabbit

        the internet today isn’t the internet 5 years ago, you the end personal user is no longer the focus of the infrastructure in the same way no one gives a shit about the horse drawn buggy

        the internet we have now is designed for bots, you can thank google and meta and the like

        it has accelerated to ludicrous speeds this year if you are paying attention and dead internet theory already had shit pegged as high as in the 60s before the ai boom