Qatar's pearl: creating a “digital” island by Neil Stevenson
The cyberpunk classic Neil Stephenson has thrown more than one good idea for our gray world. Until now, the most successful of his fantasies was the Second Life game, which Linden Labs had precisely designed according to the story Avalanche .
Now the rich Middle Eastern state of Qatar claims to be the most amazing implementation. The authorities of the emirate began to build near the shores in the Persian Gulf the man-made island of Pearl-Qatar (Pearl of Qatar) covering an area of 4 million square meters. The island should become a real digital haven for 40 thousand of its residents in ten townships. Qatar’s pearl will be connected to the Network via optical fiber, and all 15,000 houses on the island will be connected via broadband communication channels and literally packed with modern technological devices, including intelligent elevators, invisible security systems, RFID tracking devices, and more .d
Qatar is the third (after Russia and Iran) in the world exporter of natural gas and a major exporter of oil and oil products. And although at the moment the whole country is connected through one provider via NAT and all citizens have the same IP address, their huge gold reserves and the desire for scientific and technological progress create all the conditions for the construction of this Crypt, which is described in detail in the cult novel of Neil Stevenson "Kryptonomicon".
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Here are some analogies and differences between the Pearl of Qatar and the Crypt, although geographically the latter is located far from Qatar, namely, near the Philippines.
The crypt is an island independent of any government in the world, approximately comparable in size to the territory of Qatar.
The crypt has become a cryptographic certification center for the global global digital payment system (the WebMoney system is a very accurate equivalent). Unlike the Russian “offshore shelter” for the WebMoney cryptographic center, the reliability of the Crypt payment system was guaranteed both politically and technologically. The network was also connected to the largest backbones through the Philippines and nearby Taiwan: “The coastal cable stretches into a new reinforced concrete building a hundred meters from the upper tidal mark. Actually, this is one large room, full of batteries, generators, air conditioners and electronic equipment. The other end of the cable goes to where in the South China Sea the buoy is swinging on the waves. It is a few kilometers away. The buoy marks the end of the North Luzon Cable owned by FiliTel. If you move along it, you will enter the building on the northern tip of the island, where a large cable from Taiwan is suitable. To Taiwan, in turn, the whole underwater cable network converges. Transferring data to and from Taiwan is easy and cheap . ”
Of course, there is no rock on the Pearl of Qatar, in which one could absolutely reliably place the largest router in the world, as for the Crypt.
The political reliability of the Crypt was guaranteed by the Kinakuta Sultanate, an independent state that was created on the island and lived off of oil revenues. The political structure of the Sultanate is similar to the emirate of Qatar. The population of the sultanate - Muslims and ethnic Chinese around the edges, animists - in the central part. The island is rich.
Financial reliability Crypt guaranteed tons of gold, which fell to the creators of the payment system in the form of gold reserves of the Third Reich. This is an analogue of the super-profits of the world's third largest gas supplier and a major oil supplier - Qatar.
You can finish a quote from the Sultan Kinakuta. This is the most important, because it is precisely this kind of thinking that the Qatar authorities need to fully implement the idea of the great Neal Stevenson.
Now the rich Middle Eastern state of Qatar claims to be the most amazing implementation. The authorities of the emirate began to build near the shores in the Persian Gulf the man-made island of Pearl-Qatar (Pearl of Qatar) covering an area of 4 million square meters. The island should become a real digital haven for 40 thousand of its residents in ten townships. Qatar’s pearl will be connected to the Network via optical fiber, and all 15,000 houses on the island will be connected via broadband communication channels and literally packed with modern technological devices, including intelligent elevators, invisible security systems, RFID tracking devices, and more .d
Qatar is the third (after Russia and Iran) in the world exporter of natural gas and a major exporter of oil and oil products. And although at the moment the whole country is connected through one provider via NAT and all citizens have the same IP address, their huge gold reserves and the desire for scientific and technological progress create all the conditions for the construction of this Crypt, which is described in detail in the cult novel of Neil Stevenson "Kryptonomicon".
')
Here are some analogies and differences between the Pearl of Qatar and the Crypt, although geographically the latter is located far from Qatar, namely, near the Philippines.
The crypt is an island independent of any government in the world, approximately comparable in size to the territory of Qatar.
The crypt has become a cryptographic certification center for the global global digital payment system (the WebMoney system is a very accurate equivalent). Unlike the Russian “offshore shelter” for the WebMoney cryptographic center, the reliability of the Crypt payment system was guaranteed both politically and technologically. The network was also connected to the largest backbones through the Philippines and nearby Taiwan: “The coastal cable stretches into a new reinforced concrete building a hundred meters from the upper tidal mark. Actually, this is one large room, full of batteries, generators, air conditioners and electronic equipment. The other end of the cable goes to where in the South China Sea the buoy is swinging on the waves. It is a few kilometers away. The buoy marks the end of the North Luzon Cable owned by FiliTel. If you move along it, you will enter the building on the northern tip of the island, where a large cable from Taiwan is suitable. To Taiwan, in turn, the whole underwater cable network converges. Transferring data to and from Taiwan is easy and cheap . ”
Of course, there is no rock on the Pearl of Qatar, in which one could absolutely reliably place the largest router in the world, as for the Crypt.
The political reliability of the Crypt was guaranteed by the Kinakuta Sultanate, an independent state that was created on the island and lived off of oil revenues. The political structure of the Sultanate is similar to the emirate of Qatar. The population of the sultanate - Muslims and ethnic Chinese around the edges, animists - in the central part. The island is rich.
Financial reliability Crypt guaranteed tons of gold, which fell to the creators of the payment system in the form of gold reserves of the Third Reich. This is an analogue of the super-profits of the world's third largest gas supplier and a major oil supplier - Qatar.
You can finish a quote from the Sultan Kinakuta. This is the most important, because it is precisely this kind of thinking that the Qatar authorities need to fully implement the idea of the great Neal Stevenson.
Many Internet users are convinced that the Internet is reliable, because the communication lines stretch across the globe. In fact, almost all intercontinental traffic goes through a small number of bottlenecks. They are usually controlled and monitored by the local government. Obviously, any Internet initiative that requires freedom from government interference is doomed from the very beginning because of fundamental structural flaws.
Constrictions are just one of the structural barriers to creating free, sovereign cyberspace independent of geography.
Another obstacle is the intersection of laws and even legislative systems in the area of non-interference in private life, freedom of speech and telecommunications.
Each legislative system has evolved from amendments made over the centuries by the judicial and legislative branches. With all due respect, they little meet modern requirements of confidentiality.
Legislation in the field of freedom of speech, telecommunications and cryptography is the result of a series of simple, rational decisions. However, today they are so complex that no one is able to understand them even within one country, let alone the whole world.
Time to start from the beginning. It is very difficult in a big country where lawmakers compose laws and interpret the courts, where the tail of historical precedents stretches behind them. However, here is the Kinakuta Sultanate. I am a sultan and I say that the law here will be extremely simple: complete freedom of information. I give up all administrative authority over information flows within the country and across its borders. Under no circumstances will the government pry into information flows or use its power to restrict these flows. This is the new Kinakuta law. I invite you, gentlemen, to use it. Thank.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/24488/
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