Participating in a discussion is a great way to learn and contribute to ideas for superstructing. When you post a comment, try to provide information that others may not know, and avoid getting into arguments. Winning discussions are all about working together to get smarter.

Please login or register to post


    21st Century Ideas: Building the New Pony Express

    let's get the new postal system up and running!

    Started by: suzanne Raves:7 Badge Winner! Influency

    Subscribe » RSS

    Let's discuss the hows of building the global networked mail system (http://superstructgame.org/SuperstructView/67) in detail. Who's going to carry items? How will we coordinate distribution? Can anyone become a NPE volunteer and deliver the mail? Should we try to deliver mail person-to-person or establish mail drops/community postal nodes? How can we get around biosmuggling regulations to transport biological items such as seeds or the weather? Are there some kinds of things we won't deliver? How can we guarantee the safety of NPE volunteers and of the mail? All ideas welcome.

    I think that if I\\\'ve learned anything over the past couple decades, it\\\'s that decentralization is the surest way to sustain any organization - think of the P2P networks of the \\\'00s. P2P networks require little information for/from any one node, a common communication protocol, and data to act upon. In the New Pony Express, the data will be provided by the \\\"end user.\\\" The protocol and minimal node data will be the key to success. For instance, what happens if a mail distribution center closes - how do users find the next nearest center, and how does the mail get redirected to that point seamlessly? What\\\'s the addressing scheme? What\\\'s the routing methodology? I\\\'m loathe to map technology concepts to this directly in a one-to-one map, but it gives us a starting point for pro/con analysis of the issue.

    We have begun forming a network here in Kentucky and are able to do small item actual transport and large esoterics via telepathy. Visit our PonyXpressions Blog for updates! http://ponyxpressions.blogspot.com

    Interesting questions. I\\\'ll start with who carries items. Anyone who currently travels could become a carrier. Imagine it as a volunteer community service: say I regularly drive from St. Louis to Kansas City every week due to my job. I\\\'m heading that way anyway, So I can take packages with me from the st. louis distribution chain to the KC one. If we could hook up with truckers, railway conductors, airline workers, etc, we could piggyback.

    Locally, I\\\'d look into bike courriers. As for routing: what I think we could do is create a system whereby people are making regular trips from one location to another, back and forth. Then we develop a protocol by which packages are sent from one distribution center to another, making their way. This way one person doesn\\\'t make the whole trip the package makes, it\\\'s more like the package hitchhikes across the country. Does anyone know how the post office does their routing? That\\\'s got to be a good system to start with, their pretty efficient.

    It\\\'s possible that there is a tight synergy between this superstruct and the Extended Family superstruct ( http://superstructgame.org/SuperstructView/235 ). If the Extended Family concept takes off and is encouraged, it could help with the node-mapping and routing issues I mentioned earlier, by using the trust network and communications links of each Extended Family for the needs of the networked mail system...

    USPS postal routing, if I recall correctly, is very similar to what you describe, PlatonicJensen - I do recall seeing semi trucks that were taking point-to-point loads of \\\"data\\\" from one distribution center to another (based on the first three digits of the ZIP code on each end - for instance, a truck going back and forth between Syracuse, NY and Albany, NY was marked \\\'132-122\\\').

    I like the community node concept. There could be established drop off/pick-up points that individuals visit to do their mailing - community centres for example. An online alert system could be published to tell individuals that mail has arrived for them. This would mean basic online registration to use the system. Deliveries to be done by anyone registered that is travelling in that way (maybe more ID required at this point as I\\\'m not sure I trust just anybody to deliver my mail) or perhaps a more established system of postal staff who work with the community groups to begin with. A few details to work out but it can easily work.

    Hey, I like the idea... BUT! don't forget that we're living in an increasingly dangerous world - and so authorities have clamped down really hard. People carrying things onto any form of transport attracts "attention" - especially if you don't know what you're carrying! We need mechanisms to support trust and transparency. Maybe literal transparency - everything shipped in plastic baggies and clear plastic boxes that can be easily opened. Every stage in shipment needs to be tracked, creating a chain of accountability - both to insure that things get where they're going, and to assure that if someone abuses the system to ship a hidden bomb or something equally nasty, we can back-track it.

    I'm really interested in the hard infrastructure of transit itself. This discussion is great because it's about the uses of such systems. The PRT struct is here: http://ponyxpressions.blogspot.com

    If you're really concerned with transporting sensitive or contraband items, one useful strategy is redundancy. Instead of sending just the secret item itself, make sure that the postal system is constantly sending all kinds of innocent things everywhere too. It will make it harder to track where an item came from, or where its going. Also, when you want to send a contraband item, send it to somewhere else first, and have the first recipient open the outer packaging, and reship it to either the ultimate destination (along with a number of other packages to various places) or to another "blind" recipient who will further "shuffle" the packages and resend the contrand to its destination in a new package.

    A bunch of thoughts that first come to mind: how do we protect our couriers against ambush? Is there a cost to the user and if so how is this conveyed? Can you pay for your own mail being delivered through delivering (or taking part in the delivery of) someone else's mail? Are there any size/weight restrictions on what you can send? And, going back to the original 'keeping in touch with friends and relatives' thread, how does the NPE serve people of no fixed abode? I instinctively feel that I would want my mail tracked ...but if I was acting as a transporter, I'd feel uncomfortable with that. How do we track recipients, especially if a hitch-hiking item of mail could take a long time to reach its destination?

    Here's a challenge: to test the feasibility of the distributed distribution model, how about we actually try it? Can we get a letter from Missouri to California, before November the 17th, without using the remnants of the old postal service? If people are going to buy into The NPE, we're going to have to demonstrate that it works.

    Great ideas, folks! I like TomC's comment that we need to promote trust and transparency, to encourage use of the system and be able to track dangerous items--but as weather2019 wonders, how can we also preserve and privacy? Redundancy is a neat strategy; any other ideas for how to balance the need for open information with the need to send sensitive items? As for sending a package through the NPE in the next six weeks, yes, let's try it! Absolutely!

    I've been looking at the SEHI map http://tinyurl.com/3vkpou Shall we keep Missouri - California as a nod to the Old Pony Express, or shall we go coast-to-coast? Should we pass the mail using a SEHI network, or shall we involve trusted non-SEHIs? If we're going the SEHI route we should probably have a drive to get more to mark their location on the map...

    To be a useful test, I've been thinking we should also send at least 3 separate packages (maybe even by different routes?) A letter, some seeds and a weather-collecting kit. That should help us answer some of our questions about transporting bio and fragile items.

    Bikes are charming - and a great subset of courier vehicles - but I maintain horses are among the best capable of transpersing rugged terrain. I think we should connect up with people who been working and playing with pigeons (rock doves) for a source of transport for lightweight items: microchips, the new PX (Pony Xpress) MegagGigagTetraSupra hard drives the size of a TicTac. That this hobby never completely died out - that rock doves love our cities - this is a real boon to this entire effort! Finally, telepathy is an option for those willing to employ it.

    All good ideas, some of which have been evoked during the preparatory work for a similar SuperStructure in France called La Sourdine. One thing though - using animal carriers for very light items, although tempting, is still being debated as animals passing through ReDS infected zones can all too easily become another kind of carrier...

    I think how NPE works is the transports (bikes, horses, birds, fish, people, nanobots, etc) don't actually cross through e=regions but pass/hand off being to being along the network.

    PX, that's a good point: the network might not consist of set routes, but instead the connections between people and nodes.

    I built a new superstructure for this: http://superstructgame.org/SuperstructView/315

    I am interested in achieving a global supply chain for "just gotta have it" items i.e. medicines, seeds, 6-axis machined parts, etc. Maintaining some form of gobalization is neccessary even at times like this.

    Regarding the revival of carrier pigeons:if the ReDS transmission risk can be managed this has a lot of potential. This could be tackled through a)vaccination or b)selection of ReDS resistant strains of Columba livia. The other limitation, of course, is that in traditional homers, the bird only will return to its home roost, requiring an elaborate network of birds to send data to a given destination. My cousin Peter has been working on a system to "reprogram" the homing instinct. Pigeons navigate by reading the magnetic signatures of their route. His prototype uses a micro-helmet attached to a GPS unit that simulates the appropriate magnetic signals to send a bird to a novel "home."




    Nominate For A Badge

    Badge:
    More detail on badges



    NOMINATE CANCEL