I use Ubuntu Mate myself on an old PC that has problems running newer OS's. It's primarily used to browse the web for quick lookups as well as SSH'ing into other machines on my local net when the need arises and I don't want to walk to another building or room and a tablet just won't do. It's a great, compact, fast OS with a simple clean user interface!

FTP is an older protocal than HTTP but very similar. It's still used for downloading and uploading files from servers. If you create web pages it is often the method used to upload your pages to a server. If you substitute "ftp://" instead of "http://" in your address bar in your web browser and specify the name of an ftp server instead of the web server you will get a listing of files and directories that you can browse and download from. You can also replace the DNS name of a server (ftp or web) with its IP address. Most servers these days make sure you are addressing them by name but some will respond to just their IP address. Try it!

Your suggestions on methods to share resources are something that we all need to start thinking about. How do we do this fairly without someone once again hogging ownership and exerting vital controls over the entire network yet compensating them for their generosity in sharing?

The Ad-hoc protocol on wifi is an interesting start but it has a number of technical flaws that prevent it from scaling up to global (or even city-wide) scope. The way it connects people in a small group is great but it needs routing protocols that can address a much larger address space, physically and logically, as well as better ways to keep it from getting bogged down with many users.

The problem of having your phone signal go directly from America to China, even if it had the power and capability, is that your phone would be the only call possible at the time. Small coverage areas make it possible to have many simultaneous "calls" going on at the same time by hopping signals from one small area to another.

There is so much to be said for decentralization, not just for communication infrastructure, but for energy and even transportation. I believe the we would all be much better off if we each had the means to harness the energy we need for our own needs and had a means to share the excess. Even in transportation I worked on a project looking at building on the idea of sending packages using tubes kind of like used in drive up tellers at banks but much larger, using standard packaging and addressing, and physical routers that could scan and send packages down the right pipe every step along the way. It would be expensive to put it in at first but it could follow the existing right-of-ways of streets and other utility easements and would replace our current delivery services with something that would be much cheaper, cleaner, and faster in the long run. Maybe we need Elon Musk's Boring company to make a small digger for digging 4 foot wide tunnels? Maybe he needs another project?

It's important to remember that breakthroughs happen in spurts, not incrementally. They are discontinuities of thought. We think a certain way and that constrains how we see the world and what is possible. Breakthroughs shatter those ways of being and afterword the world becomes a different place with different possibilities and we think "Of course! Why didn't I see that before?" We all have that ability. We should use and exercise it. “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.” ― George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman