iOS逆天隐性功能有望颠覆传统互联网

    几周前，有一个叫做FireChat的信息应用发布了。第一眼看去，它好像和本来就已经很拥挤的应用市场上的其他同类应用没有什么区别，但实际上它是一款具有潜在颠覆性的应用，说不定还是自1995年国际集线箱开始成形以来，对于互联网来说最重要的一件大事。

    （可能这时你会问：“等一下……你说什么？为什么？”）

    FireChat使用了一个iOS 7尚未充分开发的功能——“多点连线框架”。这个功能听起来很新潮又很复杂，其实它只是意味着一台苹果设备（iPhone、iPad甚至是iPod touch）无需使用互联网就可以与另一台苹果设备互联。这句话的后半部分是最重要的地方，值得再强调一遍：这台设备不需要传统的网络连接——无论是3G还是无线网，它可以和另一台设备建立自己的网络。也就是说，两台智能设备，通过自己的无线信号或蓝牙进行互联，这就是所谓的点对点连接，也即苹果的点对点共享功能的原理。

    （你可能会想：“我看不出来它有什么颠覆性，或者有什么特别重要的地方。”）

    对！但是首先我们回溯到1995年，当时互联网还比较年轻和混乱，很多科技宅坐在电脑前面联络其它的科技宅，这些科技宅的电脑就是连接点，同时也是节点——即其他人加入网络的接入点，而其他接入网络的人又创造了另一个节点。基本上，一个人的电脑可以直接连到另一个人的电脑，这样就形成了一个“电脑链”。一个个电脑链组成了一个所谓网状网络。在很长的一段时间里，互联网都保持着这样的形态，也就是由大量“小蚂蚁”构成的完全分散化的计算机群。随着互联网的发展，互联网出现了一个重要的哲学上和物理上的变迁。它不再是一个均匀分布的网状网络，而依赖于一个个中心，也就是集线箱。看看实体互联网的地图，你就会明白这一点。

    （看到这里，大家会问：“那么这是一种不同的连接方式了，但它是一种更好的方式吗？”）

    这是个好问题。不过答案是否定的，当然不是，至少现在还不是。多点连接存在严重的缺陷，而且现在FireChat的连接范围仅限于30英尺内的另一部安装了FireChat的设备。但是——这是一个重大的、关键的、重要的“但是”——网状网络的运作方式是，网络的规模越大，连接就越好，它的连接范畴也就越广。因此如果你在一个体育馆里，这里还有许多使用着FireChat的其他人，那么一瞬间你就有了一个很强大的网络，而且它的范畴也远远不止３０英尺。

    （“怎么会这样？”）

    想象一下“串行”理论，或者很久以前消防队员排成的传递水桶的队列。一台设备连接到另一台大概20英尺远的设备，这台设备又连接到另一台大概10英尺远的设备，距离叠加了起来，但是网络仍然存在，而且其中的每个环节都增强了这个链条（而且每台设备都连接了不只一台设备——所以叫“网状”网络）。两个相隔1000英尺远的人，通过20或30个人产生的链接就可以互联。这个网络的直径可能达到几英里远，理论上甚至可以覆盖整个城镇。

    A few weeks ago, a messaging app called FireChat launched. It looks, at first, like just about any other messaging app in an already very crowded market, but FireChat is sneakily subversive and quite possibly the most important thing to happen to the Internet since international network hubs began to form in 1995.

    (This is the moment when you ask: "Wait ... what? Why?")

    FireChat uses a criminally underexploited feature in iOS 7 called the Multipeer Connectivity Framework. This sounds fancy and complicated, but all it means is that one Apple (AAPL) device (an iPhone, an iPad, even an iPod touch) can connect to another without using the Internet. That last part is the most important and worth repeating: The device need not have a traditional network connection -- 3G, wireless, whatever -- but is instead creating its own network with another device. Two smart, connected machines, communicating via their own wireless signals, or Bluetooth, to talk to one another: This is what's called a peer-to-peer connection. It's also how Apple's Airdrop feature works.

    (You're probably thinking: "I don't see how this is subversive, or particularly important.")

    Right! Well, let's first go back to 1995, or even earlier, when the Internet was young and wild and mostly on university campuses, where various nerds in front of computers connected with various other nerds in front of computers, and those nerds' computers were connection points, but also nodes -- an entry point for others to join the network, and in so doing create another node, too. Basically, one person's computer could directly access the other person's computer, and so on, along a chain of computers. This evenly distributed, wholly interconnected web of machines is called a mesh network. It's the way the Internet was, mostly, for a long while: entirely decentralized constellations of connectivity among a vastness of, well, nothingness, 'net-wise. As the Internet grew, an important philosophical and physical shift occurred. Rather than an evenly distributed mesh network, the Internet became dependent on centers -- hubs for all those spokes. Look at a map of the physical Internet, and you'll see.

    (At which point you might ask: "So this is a different way to connect, but is it better?")

    Great question! No, of course not. Not yet. Multipeer connectivity has serious drawbacks, and FireChat only works when you are within about 30 feet of another person with a device that has FireChat. But -- and this is a huge, crucial, important "but" -- the way a mesh network works is that the larger the network, the greater the connections, the farther its reach. So if you are, say, in a stadium with a bunch of people using devices with FireChat, then presto: You have a rather robust network, over distances much greater than 30 feet.

    ("How's that?")

    Think of a daisy chain, or an old-timey firefighter bucket brigade. One device connecting to another, maybe 20 feet away, and that one connects to another, maybe 10 feet away, and so on and so forth, the distances pile up, but the network remains, and each link is a link that strengthens the chain (and connects to more than one device -- hence the "mesh"). Two people that are 1,000 feet away from one another are able to connect using the links caused by 20 or 30 other devices. The network could be miles in diameter, even. Or the size of an entire town, theoretically.