My town has a steampunk festival every spring, and this idea would fit right in
this post was submitted on 05 Jul 2025
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Welcome to Fallout.
So like Star Wars?
No
While it could be interesting, I don't think it's realistic. Before everyone had Internet, there was Fidonet. Trolls were on BBS FidoNet.
Before FidoNet there were Ham radio operators relaying across the world. There were Trolls on Ham when Ham was used by many during the 1970's CB craze.
There is something inherently cool about communicating with people across the globe. So a few technical people make it happy and the masses use it.
So any communication medium evolves into an Internet even if the underlying technology is different.
The best you could realistically do is assume something causes an bandwidth limit of say 9600 bps. There would still be an Internet with all the problems but it would be text based.
I dabble in ham radio stuff, you can (and many people do) send data, video, etc. using ham radio equipment. It's a bit more specialized than just sending voice or Morse code, but it's absolutely doable.
Not amateur radio, but back in about the 80s there were even a couple countries that experimented with distributing computer programs over regular FM radio. They'd play some electronic buzzing noises that you'd record to a tape then to run it as a program. I know the BBC did it, and I believe Finland also had a radio station doing it for a bit.
In a world where the internet as we know it never came together, I could definitely imagine those sorts of technologies evolving into something that still looks a hell of a lot like the internet.
Huh, I wonder what kind of throughput you get on a video encoded via ham (audio I guess?)
It's not something I've personally played around with so I can't really comment on the technical details, but AFAIK the main way of transmitting video over ham radio is basically the same as over the air TV. If you wanted to do a deeper dive into that, look up Amateur Television (ATV)
There's also various methods of sending digital data over ham- D-STAR, APRS, etc. I don't know that any of them are particularly well-suited to sending video, but they're things that exist and I'm sure some dedicated ham has figured out a way to do it somewhere.
I watched a video (can't remember who or what it was called) that looked into the early days of radio. In the early 1900s it was a massive craze, especially among teenage boys, and quickly resulted in kids transmitting "obscene messages" and calling in fake commands and reports to naval radio operators. At the time there was no encryption or restriction on amateur radio use, and it lead to some embarrassing and dangerous moments for the navy.
The government finally acted in 1912 by forcing amateur radio to be restricted to the shortwave frequencies, decimating the hobby. This was partly driven by an incorrect rumor that these radio trolls had been responsible for, or interfered with the rescue of, the Titanic a few months earlier.
It was interesting to learn that trolls have always been with us, and also that the government could so decisively shape a new form of communication. If the 1980s giverments had banned use of the Internet by anyone outside the military and a small number of commercial or academic licence holders, things would be very different. Sure, the technology would be there and people would run amateur ip networks, or secretly piggyback of official uses, but it would be more like the dark net / tor than what actually happened.
. Sure, the technology would be there and people would run amateur ip networks, or secretly piggyback of official uses, but it would be more like the dark net / tor than what actually happened.
The early Internet was exactly like Tor and darknet. Before DNS servers were ubiquitous, I'd go to an ftp site every morning that kept hosts lists and downloaded a hosts file to give me names matched to ip addresses. If darknet was the norm, a darknet DNS would be created and it would be the "Internet" but on different protocols.
The only scenario I can imagine is something like North Korea where people are so poor that they don't have access to computers/phones which allows the government to restrict Internet to official cafes.
Amish?
the Internet and the Web are fine – Web 2.0 was where things started going wrong – the cancer that begat the parasites of Web 3.0, crypto coin, and LLMs feeding off the twitching remains
The Internet was nice in the begining... But like everything ...I guess it's capitalism and marketing that destroy it.
It used to be an alternative reality of freedom now it's like a cancer just as much as it is good.
I liked life before in the era of flip phones.
We are all being watched used and manipulated almost constantly now. And I don't think the trade off is worth it anymore.
You were then too you just are aware of it now.
They could only incept me from the back and occasionally the side of the cereal box back then
And the TV. And remember the radio 😂
You make perfect sense, and I'm inclined to agree with you. I think an argument can be made that the internet, for all it's positive aspects, has made our society worse in a lot of ways. I would love to go back, even though I know it's not possible.
and the internet (in the current form) never gets developed.
based on my recent online shopping experiences, we may get there, soon.
It feels like nobody knows how to Java a Script anymore.
Is this the radiopunk kids are talking about?
Maybe a step further: dialup-punk?
Maybe the technology doesn’t exist to transfer data electronically at high speeds.