Martin Hardie on Sat, 31 Jan 2004 00:18:04 +0100 (CET) |
[Date Prev] [Date Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Date Index] [Thread Index]
<nettime> Bicycle-powered Wifi - people offline revisited |
HI Nettimers After a little break from Africa in the beautiful Basque lands I am back here facing the stark, dirty reality of Maputo. I haven't had a chance to read all things on the list yet and maybe I won't even try. But this just popped up on Fibreculture and not only did I go "wow" I was reminded of a thread late last year concerning people who live outside of the internet. (Re: <nettime> People offline [2x] From: "nettime's on/off connector" ... 26/11/2003 18:16) I thought this was relevant to that - outside but inside ... I have a vision of some post modern 3rd world Kevin Kostner's fighting evil by ensuring that the mail gets delivered! Txao Martin ---------- Forwarded Message ---------- Subject: ::fibreculture:: Bicycle-powered Wifi Date: Friday 30 January 2004 07:29 From: Chris Chesher <c.chesher@unsw.edu.au> To: fibreculture@lists.myspinach.org http://wifinetnews.com/archives/002839.html Sunday, January 25, 2004 Cambodian hybrid motorcycle/WiFi network In Cambodia, WiFi-equipped motorcyclists pull up to schools, download all the email, drive to the next village, and dump off copies of locally-destined mail, picking up that community's load and delivering it along to the next town. It is a digital pony express: five Motomen ride their routes five days a week, downloading and uploading e-mail. The system, developed by a Boston company, First Mile Solutions, uses a receiver box powered by the motorcycle's battery. The driver need only roll slowly past the school to download all the village's outgoing e-mail and deliver incoming e-mail. The school's computer system and antenna are powered by solar panels. Newly collected data is stored for the day in a computer strapped to the back of the motorcycle. At dusk, the motorcycles converge on the provincial capital, Ban Lung, where an advanced school is equipped with a satellite dish, allowing a bulk e-mail exchange with the outside world. -- - Dr Chris Chesher Work phone 61 2 9385 6814 Senior Lecturer Mobile: 04040 95 480 School of Media and Communications Messages: 61 2 9385 6811 Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences Fax: 61 2 9385 6812 University of New South Wales Email: c.chesher@unsw.edu.au UNSW Sydney 2052 http://mdcm.arts.unsw.edu.au/ UNSW CRICOS No: 00098G ::posted on ::fibreculture:: mailinglist for australasian ::critical internet theory, culture and research ::(un) subscribe info and archive: http://www.fibreculture.org ::please send announcements to separate mailinglist: :: http://lists.myspinach.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fibreculture-announce ------------------------------------------------------- -- :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: http://openflows.org/~auskadi/ "Mind you, I am not asking you to bear witness to what you believe false, which would be a sin, but to testify falsely to what you believe true - which is a virtuous act because it compensates for lack of proof of something that certainly exists or happened." Bishop Otto to Baudolino in Umberto Eco's Baudolino. # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: majordomo@bbs.thing.net and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net