The military helped develop the technology, but they run their own “Internet” networks that are completely segregated and independent from the public Internet.

They helped with protocols and standards and such more than anything else. Military interest in Internet technologies relates to the ability to have redundant, interconnected sites so that if one site goes dark for any reason, the other sites don’t lose their connection to eachother as a result. Obviously this world help with keeping the military operating and orders flowing in the event of an international incident where some of their sites are taken down or otherwise disabled.

The public Internet, while following similar models, isn’t nearly as decentralized as you may expect. Almost all of the connectivity and data is warehoused in datacenters at, or near Internet exchange locations, or "IX"es. IXes and their locations are not secret and taking out a few IX sites is a good military tactic to disrupt communications, at least for the civilians in a country, which would create significant issues trying to keep everyone calm and safe. Almost all telecommunications today are Internet based, regardless of all other factors. The only somewhat decentralized civilian communication technology is radio, specifically broadcast radio (like FM), but even getting a message to an emergency broadcast FM station would be a challenge if the Internet was disabled, taking out phones (both cellular and landline), and all data communication. The only way to get an emergency message to an emergency broadcast station in that circumstance, would be to physically send someone there with a military communications system (generally two way radio), to relay the messages for broadcast to the public. There’s enough FM stations and emergency broadcast stations that effectively disabling all of them is strategically difficult.

All of your communications, whether landline, cellular or Internet is basically all routed through your local IX before it can go anywhere; so if that goes down, you can kiss all of your methods of communication goodbye, unless, of course, you’re a qualified amateur radio operator (or HAM).

Ham radio has a bit of an image problem as an obsolete hobby, but it really isn’t. There’s continual efforts to develop new and interesting wireless technology to run on the radio bands. Hams also have a network of repeaters and radio relays that can be brought online in geographically diverse locations for the purposes of enabling communication when commercial networks (like cellphones) become unavailable. Hams have saved lives and relayed critical information to and from first responders in natural disasters like hurricanes and tornados when all other communications have been disrupted.

But if you don’t know how to use a radio, like a ham radio, then even having the gear is useless. The best way to understand enough to be competent in using a radio when it matters is to get certified. Unless you have, or seek that certification before there’s a major incident, natural or otherwise, you may be shit out of luck when it happens.

🚩 nice try FBI agent.

I understand your argument, and I recognize that you’re discussing the current state of affairs on the current political and social landscape.

My statements, as a whole, are not specific to the current state of affairs. Religion and belief tried to deny that the earth revolves around the sun, as an example. Of course, there’s hundreds of examples of this kind of interference. Darwin’s evolution theory is another prime example. I won’t go on or this will turn into an anti-religion rant.

The problems I’m pointing at are much broader in scope and longer in the timeline / deeper in history than what you seem to be discussing.

I’m only generalizing about “religion” rather than a specific group or religion, because it’s happened so often and come from so many different sources that it’s hard to not generalize as “religion” vs naming all the various belief systems that have hindered scientific progress and understanding.

Certainly religion, as a concept as a much more broad and lingering effect on our society, from state religions (mostly eliminated in developed nations), like the church of England, and other, similar religious organizations, where you were obligated to believe in that religion if you lived in that nation or state, to policy set by proxy, by religious groups or extremist believers. Things that oppose bodily autonomy, and equality… Among others. While these are relevant to our society, both historically, and presently, they are not necessarily blocking, refuting, denying, or otherwise trying to remove scientific knowledge and understanding. It’s a sad state of affairs that we allow such things to have a significant impact on our society, but these things are not significantly impacting our ability to make scientific discovery and progress.

Speaking strictly of direct interference from religious organizations and belief, both now and especially historically, and the damage it has caused to scientific progress and discovery, is difficult to quantify. Needless to say, it has been a significant detriment to scientific progress.

I cannot think of any examples of Science, or any scientist, trying to influence what religion teaches, or what the followers of that religion believe. Science is happy to let entire swaths of people deny what they say and believe whatever the hell they want. Science and scientists will proceed with the information they have; nobody cares what you think your sky daddy has to say about it.

There will always be people using Science to denounce bad teachings from the church, but this is limited in scope, and generally on an individual basis; typically atheists who are anti-religion will use scientific truths to dissuade beliefs in general, not any specific teaching. Any/all scientific organizations have no comment on the matter.

To put it bluntly, Science wouldn’t give any shits about religion if religion would stay in their lane.

While there’s plenty of atheists who have taken up the charge of destroying religion as much as they possibly can, with limited success, Science has, to my knowledge, never tried to influence religious teachings. Religion, conversely, has tried to stop, slow or otherwise discredit, scientific research, and understanding.

It seems to me that if religion would stay in its lane, this problem wouldn’t exist.

I think that more than a few highly successful people who are both religious and not stupid, have realized what religion actually is and manipulate it to their advantage.

Not all, but I suspect there’s more than a few.

You don’t need to tell us about this. Religion needs to learn this.

Other than storing programs in it?

Oh boy. I remember seeing an 8 track system once… I was very curious, and honestly, I still don’t have any of the answers I wanted. They’re just no longer relevant. The tech was old when I was a kid.

I used dial up, so anything that’s post-Internet, I’m probably older than. I still remember the idiot news anchors going “move over Internet, here comes the world wide Web”… They’re literally the same thing. What the fuck are you talking about?

I’m older.

Let’s just leave it at that

Narrator: they didn’t.

I can likely fall into some version of a category of learned professional. IMO, it’s fine, many of us have made our migration to Lemmy. Reddit can burn.