txt/rw.txt

~1 minute read | 2024-08-15

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rw -- healthy internet usage
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You should not habit the internet as a temporal space, but rather as an archive.

Rationale
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The monetisation model of the internet requires that visitors to sites stay as long as possible, so as to consume more ads. This drives all commercial web development; social media, video sharing platforms -- any curated media is designed to keep you online as long as possible.

Ideally, one would be able to:
a) complete the majority of work offline
b) easily connect and disconnect from the internet
c) easily transfer files to local storage on the internet

Relations:
b & c -> a
~b -> a
(~c v ~b) & (c v b)


Adaptation
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I have been fortunate enough to have most of my academic and other work be entirely offline -- the most I'm obligated to do is send emails with attachments (which can be done at my leisure via offline mail). Even journals can be obtained directly by email now-a-days. Isn't that something.

Most people will use the internet to:
a) surf the web
b) send/receive email
c) file sharing
d) communication

while (a) is less than necessary, it can be done in spates with less harm.
(b) can be done via offline email -- every time you connect to the internet, your local email client syncs with your email server, and downloads mail.
(c) can be done fairly simply through either elegant means (ftp) or less than elegant means (some self hosted, or paste-bin). If you're sharing anything secure, you should definitely; encrypt it, and absolutely don't put it on an outside server (e.g. Google, Microsoft, Amazon WS, etc). Ideally, you'd be able to use ssh + ftp, or even just ssh + scp.
(d) is tricky -- in most cases it refers to email OR instant messaging. The former is already covered, the latter isn't in scope. If you truly wanted instant messaging, put it on you phone. The point of carrying a phone, or a beeper, or any other personal communication device, is for this explicit situation. 

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