I was reading a book, The Victorian Internet, which talked about how connected the Victorian era was, with wires stretching everywhere above the roads. It’s probably exaggerated, but it got me thinking. There are many ways to engage in en masse interconnectivity. Computers, of course, are one of them, but we also have had, for example, messenger pigeons, drones we can send to different places, search dogs with an interconnected sniff system (I forgot what that was called), etc.
Suppose you had a civilization. Maybe it’s on a planet whose environment interferes with the capabilities of a classic internet, or maybe it’s a normal fantasy setting where the classic internet is cursed. However, the civilization still needs some kind of apparatus of interconnectivity. What’s the best/closest thing you can think of as a replacement for the internet without it being the internet as we know it?
Ah, what you’re describing here is Plato’s cave; a place underground so deep that you cannot see the stars. The starry sky, of course, is a metaphor for the internet, or for universal knowledge.
I think in such a world where there can be no internet, there can be no energy either. Because just like the internet, energy requires a straight line to travel along. But the internet could only not exist, if such straight lines were impossible, like in a very wrapped space (i.e. Jungle). In this case, Information could only be exchanged within small neighbourhoods, leading to the fragmentation of the space.
Plato, of course, provides a solution: You have to get out of the cave first, before you can reach enlightenment. In real life, such a thing is equivalent so “lifting yourself out of the swamp you have surrounded yourself with, and let go of earthly affections”. In a jungle, you could rise above the trees, to have a direct line of sight to the sky. Then, you can communicate. This idea is often expressed in the form of an arrow, which you shoot up at its origin, rising it above the trees and obstacles, only for it to travel in a straight line and come down somewhere else. So basically, the internet is arrows of information being exchanged.
Does that give you some ideas?