Taming Limits with Approximate Networking.

Internet is the linchpin of modern society, which the various threads of modern life weave around. But being a part of the bigger energy-guzzling industrial economy, it is vulnerable to disruption. It is widely believed that our society is exhausting its vital resources to meet our energy requirements, and the cheap fossil fuel fiesta will soon abate as we cross the tipping point of global oil production. We will then enter the arc of scarcity, constraints, and limits---a post-peak long emergency that may subsist for a time. To avoid the collapse of the networking ecosystem in this emergency, it is imperative that we start thinking about how networking should adapt to these adverse undeveloping societal conditions. We propose using the idea of approximate networking ---which will provide good-enough networking services by employing contextually-appropriate tradeoffs---to survive, or even thrive, in the conditions of scarcity and limits.