It can do useful things, certainly, but it’s easy for people to misunderstand what it actually is and does. It’s closer in function to texting than it is the web.
Texting to whom, though, no? Especially online communication suffers from the people you want to communicate to not being on the platform. And since people organize in loose clusters you need to convince a majority of your cluster to adopt the platform. This is especially difficult when there are more popular alternatives that are not interoperable with others.
Mesh networks are potentially better because they are more resilient and don’t lock you into inoperability with other systems. But before this resilience is tested, how do you demonstrate the upside? Especially mesh networks require nodes in proximity.
Functions could be extended and you could provide services over the mesh using automatic messaging (all with reasonable respect for the available bandwidth). But more complex services require reliability. Isn’t this why it lacks adoption?
I think it lacks adoption because people assume it’s trying to compete with the Internet as it exists now.
There have been experiments in delivering Wikipedia pages over sms.
If the current Internet fails (or is encouraged to become useless), Meshtastic might be the only way to get information from Wikipedia (mirrors).
Right, that wouldbe the “testing resilience” case I mentioned. Setting up a node ain’t trivial though (I’m procrastinating to do just that right now), so I wonder about the required preparedness.
I expect the utility and reliability to grow with the number of users though.
It can do useful things, certainly, but it’s easy for people to misunderstand what it actually is and does. It’s closer in function to texting than it is the web.
You’re right, it is closer to texting. Which means you’re competing with private gargantuan monopolies with only $50 and a few friends.
Texting to whom, though, no? Especially online communication suffers from the people you want to communicate to not being on the platform. And since people organize in loose clusters you need to convince a majority of your cluster to adopt the platform. This is especially difficult when there are more popular alternatives that are not interoperable with others.
Mesh networks are potentially better because they are more resilient and don’t lock you into inoperability with other systems. But before this resilience is tested, how do you demonstrate the upside? Especially mesh networks require nodes in proximity.
Functions could be extended and you could provide services over the mesh using automatic messaging (all with reasonable respect for the available bandwidth). But more complex services require reliability. Isn’t this why it lacks adoption?
I think it lacks adoption because people assume it’s trying to compete with the Internet as it exists now.
There have been experiments in delivering Wikipedia pages over sms.
If the current Internet fails (or is encouraged to become useless), Meshtastic might be the only way to get information from Wikipedia (mirrors).
Right, that wouldbe the “testing resilience” case I mentioned. Setting up a node ain’t trivial though (I’m procrastinating to do just that right now), so I wonder about the required preparedness.
I expect the utility and reliability to grow with the number of users though.
I picked ours up as an emergency backup communication to radios during disasters. Wouldn’t want to rely on it though, not always super dependable