Re: <nettime> Community WiFi in UK and Germany, a round-up

[lotu5 <lotu5@resist.ca>]

Morlock Elloi wrote:
> BTW, I never said that self-made infrastructures are a bad idea. I complained
> about sapping of the general angst with feel-good "solutions" which ultimately
> do nothing but reinforce the established system. 
> 
> I think it's important to distinguish two issues here:
> 
> 1 - free access for all to Internet as it is, and
> 
> 2 - alternative fully-connected inter-net without governmental or commercial
> mediators.
> 
> They are somewhat connected, as you can have free access (but not to Internet)
> if you have (2), but these are essentially separate issues.
> 
> I don't really want to discuss (1) ... 

I agree here mostly, but isn't community wi-fi, based on mesh networks,
a way to begin (2) by going around the phone companies? it seems to me
that with net neutrality in question, the phone companies are the real
threat, even bigger than google, since they're even more invisible but
we're all totally dependent on them. it seems to me that currently our
best chance at (2) is to have lots and lots of local community mesh
networks and then figure out a good way to route between them quickly.
for that, some of the best work done in projects like the gnutella
network, using emergent super-nodes and hash file searches might be
really useful.

> I'm looking forward to the first year on
> this inter-net, where the amount of intelligence and interesting people
> will
>probably equal that of mid 90s, before unwashed retards discover it.
> Will it
> happen? Will the exclusivity, the knowledge that your packets are being
> switched in a special way, that there is no yahoo or google there, be
> impressive enough? I don't know. Maybe it's too late.

now there's some elitist crap if i've ever heard it. not very morlock if
you ask me.

-- 

blog: http://bang.calit2.net/tts
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