Probably not an original thought, but I’m just thinking about how Apple originally wanted nothing to do with cell carriers and for the iPhone to use WiFi instead, and how 15 years later we have Apple’s “Find My” network
It would be neat if e.g. iMessage (starting with text-only messages) worked peer-to-peer via this decentralized mesh network, only using carrier/ISP networks as a fallback
And it’d be even better, of course, if such a mesh network was as broadly-deployed and yet operated by a community of individuals/volunteers, on hardware of their choosing (e.g. cheap single-board computers instead of Apple iDevices)
It reminds me of the zero-trust mesh networks that are described in science fiction like Cory Doctorow’s “Walkaway”
as I understand it “Find My” isn’t a mesh network at all. It’s just that the smaller devices report to devices that are connected to the internet. Never more than one hop.