The Internet – All knowledge, all languages, all global open resources, all devices, all humans and all AIs

Richard K Collins All Global Open Devices, All knowledge, All Languages August 29, 2024

The Internet – All knowledge, all languages, all global open resources, all devices, all humans and all AIs

I get a lot of things on my page on X each day and try to comment on a few things. I have rather substantial collections of life experiences I think are relevant to groups trying to solve global problems, work on the Internet, work with lots of data and people. But every group and person is different. Often, unless I spend a few hours researching the backgrounds of the individuals and groups, I have to guess who I am writing to, what they might need, and then draw things from my experiences.

Maybe it is not useful at all. The few “likes” and “follows” do not tell me much. Only a handful of people ever write to me.

I mostly work on problems that groups eventually face after they have worked on something for a few decades. When they are thinking about doing something, or have only done it for a few years, they still do not know what will happen next – precisely or sometimes at all.

I studied what happens to countries using the Internet, to schools, to corporations, to sets of many schools, to sets of corporations, to ad hoc networks that emerge to try to address a global or systemic issue. Many of the groups hardly know how to make a workable website, and most do not know how to – or it is actually not possible to – combine information from many sources.

It there a “theory of the Internet”? Can the whole, at global human species scale, be “solved” or optimized? Are there “internet best practices” for group collaboration at global scales”? Actually, yes. In so much as I have written down things I found.

Unfortunately generalities are too vague and require massive experiences that are not easy to share. So for the last decade or so, I have been writing to groups and individuals with comments, suggestions, ideas and directions.

I think that “solar system exploration and development” is going to happen. I think that “gravitational engineering” is not only possible now, but a relatively easy extension to electrical engineering, digital and analog communication, to nuclear engineering, to data engineering.

I think “let the AI do it, record everything, verify everything, check if the AI is doing a good job on many dimension and views – and get humans out of the loop for regulations, laws, policies, methods, prices, performance, values. Now I have worked on the details of all those kinds of things at global scale. I am good at them when I “work by hand” or “use a computer and data”. But generalizing, I know what to do, how to do it, and cannot afford to do it the right way.

This here is just something I was thinking about today (and for the last 3 or 4 decades). But when I see stuff on climate change, or global conflicts (about 70 countries have them now), or economic collapse, or inequity, or poverty, of city government failing badly, or all kinds of crises and issues on the Internet — I feel bad, I want to help, I think I can help. But when I look for groups who might be part of global solutions – they are trained in their academic backgrounds to ignore most of reality. Or they are trained in their hard shoes market mentality “everyone for themselves, take no prisoners”.

I think I will have to retire. 26 years every day it a long time. At about 18 hours a day really long. But it is hardly a scratch on the problem, let alone solutions or changes. The UN has sprawled and grown, so have governments and corporations, nonprofits, schools, think tanks, groups – all invent their own methods for building websites, and online communities — and none of them do it in a truly global framework.

Not a few thousand or a few million voice offering opinions, but all humans, connected fairly and efficiently to use all human knowledge, not have to go through “experts” who are busy, expensive, biased, lazy, or whatever. Or “AIs” made by people and group selling a few things they managed to get the computer to do. Not really “all knowledge, for all humans, for AIs, for the survival of humans and related species”.

How to set goals for the whole humans species where so many incompatible technologies and methods are not the norm for the way we all store and use all human knowledge. Those chat AIs and search engine corporations certainly are not doing it. The UN method of sticking paper on sites that has nothing to do with the needs and actions of humans in the world – is just wrong. Libraries that completely gave up on trying to serve all humans and all countries.

I am tired and rambling a bit.

Most sites, no matter their sponsors or funding, only serve themselves, not the people who use the site, and not the 5.4 Billion Internet users from all countries and all situations. I say “all humans”, “all human languages”, “all domain specific languages”, “all global topics”, “all global issues”, “all global opportunities”. That helps to strive so one day, perhaps, a domain “gov” or “gov.*” will actually have an index, a clear purpose, an intent to help the whole world. Where laws and projects intend to funnel benefits to “Americans” or “some group”, usually much of the effort also would benefit all countries, all cities, all groups.

Every city and country and university and school now has massive stuff on “climate change” and it is mostly just dumped on the web. You might say “carefully crafted and places on out site”, but it has a global chaotic and disorganize place in the whole Internet, the whole of human knowledge. I have tried to map and organize the whole of human knowledge, all things on the Internet, on computers, in electronic form or potentially so. I can do wonderful things because it helps.

If you know how to do something, it can take a few minutes or days. You have a plan, you do it. If you do not know and need to find it on the Internet, and you do not know the precise names of things – you cannot find it, or you will be funneled (gently or not so) into sales channels and schemes and groups, rants and chaos.

Filed as (The Internet – All knowledge, all languages, all global open resources, all devices, all humans and all AIs)

Richard Collins, The Internet Foundation

The Internet – All knowledge, all languages, all global open resources, all devices, all humans and all AIs

About: Richard K Collins

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