Giovanni's blog: I'm building a parallel internet, and it's called The Thinnernet

Monday, June 8, 2026

I'm building a parallel internet, and it's called The Thinnernet

Since 2020, I've taken on a Steve Jobs alter-ego (on a very, very part time basis, and often for humor purposes). The first essay I wrote wasn't even related to hardware, or solar powered-conscious operating systems that began around the same time. It was actually about one of my former jobs, regarding Knowledge Bases. Using one every day, I thought there had to be a better way to integrate steps taken into a ticket management system, to show proof of work. I won't say which system and which company, since it doesn't matter. I thought back at the time, where else did someone care so much about not only user experience, but the employee's experience? And I realize it was Steve Jobs. Here is the essay I wrote, on a higher level Knowledge Base called Experience Base, later included in part of a concept CMS called TicketMS.<br>A month ago, I read an article by Dr. Nathalie Martinek that basically described the exact problem my organization had- inability or unwillingness, or slowness to adopt new or improved changes to a workflow.<br>If you were a futurist and tried to predict the future using only today's news headlines as a indicator, you might think that the future will consist of a bunch of buzznig drones delivering Doritos and Dr. Pepper. That is for the most part true. However, what isn't really flashy or covered is what the internet will/might look like. Fiber optic tech has seen significant improvements, and it's likely that more households will have access to something like 1Tbps before 2050. But very few people will need that much data- maybe- I suppose 125GB/s might be useful for 16K uncompressed video, but I am not sure what else. Maybe lots of coordination feeds with other autonomous agents.<br>In 2023, I started thinking and writing about a parallel internet:

You might also be wondering, wasn't Steve Jobs more of a device guy, and not an infrastructure or web design auteur? And the answer is yes! While he was one of the first to include a TCP/IP stack in his Unix OS & hardware in 1987, he wasn't really focused on laying down internet undersea cables. There was plenty of optimizing the user experience on the personal computer alone. Most desktop programs didn't even need an internet connection, and some still don't. Plus, internet traffic at the time was very limited, and there was very little damage and "CDN" could do. I say that because there was so little data being transferred, that few limitations could be placed on files, formats, protocols, browsers, and services.<br>If you were to wonder what a 21st century (post 2011) Steve Jobs "type" wanted to accomplish, he would be focused on the same exact thing: The user experience. But the user experience today is being shaped less by hardware but the infrastructure and the social networks that many are dwelling on. Often times, still voluntary. If Steve Jobs really wanted to ensure that users could get the same user experience as they reliably could on a spotty, but flat delivery of data on a 2G or 3G connection, he would be focused much more on ensuring the apps would use limited data. Because internet speed is part of the user experience.<br>There is a funny email that had been released after Jobs's passing where a user complained of a spotty signal, and his advice was basically to not hold the phone in that direction (or with his hand over the top part where the antenna was positioned). One of the most influential CEOs at the time was basically suggesting rabbit ears fiddling like on analog television receivers. But I defend his actions, because 3G technology at the time wasn't robust, and one shouldn't have expected him to have all the solutions out of his control (even if they tried to build their own modem and it was inadequately developed compared to Qualcomm's, which DID happen, but that's not really a major part of the problem). It's that all technologies take time to mature, and once a lot of the EMI kinks are worked out, a certain level of reliability becomes expected. And I have absolutely no proof, but I think that would be one new frontier that, had Jobs lived to 70 or 80, might have embarked on.<br>What am I referring to? In order to ensure the user experience is consistent across every device, the entire transmission of application data/content would have to be completed in an real time deadline. Asynchronous communication is certainly welcome and important, but many features can be standardized to a point where interactions become constructable and replicable. This can be important when accessing a website or service and hoping to get the same format view, with the same data loading in the same amount of time. With static HTML, the page might be wide and the text small, because the browser has no autoresize feature. But at least it might not have any problems loading the text...