TL;DR - The Mesh Internet

    Scientific American, March 2012 -- "The Shadow Web," Julian Dibbell

    The internet is powerful, but a little too fragile as-is.  In an internet controlled by centralized ISPs, it becomes possible for a strong force, such as a repressive regime or a natural disaster, to bring the network down.  Dibbell describes an alternate approach to the current centralized system (which, incidentally, is much closer to its original formulation).  A mesh network relies on point users, people with a network connection, owning their own networking hardware.  Once the community of users becomes large enough, the network becomes resilient to attack or damage, such that many different nodes can go down without affecting the overall network activity.  These mesh networks are currently being developed, and are available for ~ 150$, but costs are expected to go down soon.  Dibbell points out that this would not be a replacement of the ISP model, but rather would provide a poor-man's substitute, maximizing basic access and providing competition to induce the ISPs to improve service and pricing.