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SolarNetOne Wants Stable Internet Connections For Developing Nations
There are many initiatives to bring tech to developing areas of the globe; things like OLPC, Geekcorps, and UN programs. One new approach from SolarNetOne strives to allow users in those developing areas to have access to an internet connection without having to depend on unreliable infrastructure. "Each SolarNetOne kit is a self-powered communications network. Energy is produced from a solar array sized to each locale's latitude and predominant weather conditions. The generated power is stored in a substantial battery array, and circuit breakers and electronics protect the gear from overloads and other perturbations. A basic kit includes five 'seats,' implemented as thin clients connected through a LAN to a central server. The networking gear also includes a long-range, omnidirectional WiFi access point, and a Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) device. Each kit also includes all the cables and wires required to assemble the system, so few additional materials are required for an installation."
Think of it this way, before 2000, or so, most people in the developed countries were not connected to the internet either. But that did not prevent us from attaining a high level of education, standard of living, etc. We landed a man on the moon with most engineers still using slide rules!
So I'm not buying it that the life of the average African would be substantially improved by their ability to download videos from YouTube. The article uses the example of Rwanda, that only 1% of the population can connect to the internet. OK, that is very low, I admit. But maybe decades of genocidal tribal warfare might also be a factor here, and addressing the root causes might a higher priority than the ability to set up a Facebook page.
I think it comes down to the basics: pubic safety, rule of law, market structures, literacy, infrastructure, etc. A connection to the internet can certainly help, in some cases. But in no way is it a necessity. Lower tech solutions may be more robust and effective, e.g., long distance shortwave radios, packet radio BBS's, etc.
I was just wondering how this system would work inside a nation or region that is actively trying to censor internet access or jam any "illegal networks"; or if it is possible to create a system from this concept that would work in such nations.
The Long Now Foundation
That way, you'll have the most stable and reliable connection imaginable.
"The Y chromosome is genetic. The odds are very good that if you are male then your father was too." -Internet Commenter
Now I just need a trailer to tow this baby along on our next family "camping" trip. God I love the great outdo.... wait! someone is wrong on the Internet! Kids your going to have to go hiking on your own.
The U.S. has nearly broken the bank, fighting for freedom by, well, fighting.
Even in 2001, some technical people felt the better way to promote freedom would be to work to establish communications in countries that are now beset with violence and poverty and totalitarian control by oppressive governments (none of these three problems necessarily being related, mind you).
There exist problems with doing this. One is addressed by this idea, how do you even make computers work where the utilities and support are unreliable if not non-existent. But the advantage of this is limited if you don't deal with a second problem: How you link people into the internet in a way that denies oppressors and/or conflicts from breaking these connections (as Iran has attempted to do lately)?
Then of course, there is the problem of actually doing something. How do you get governments/people/companies to invest in the tiny costs (when compared to fighting in Iraq and elsewhere) of deploying such technology in places where it would be needed. The U.S. and its government is much more interested in dropping million dollar bombs to blow up stuff, than dropping a few bills in a way that would actually have leverage with the people of this world, and that would actually be appreciated.
Bombs and war are disruptive and prevent people from both hearing the ideas about peace and tolerance and telling their own ideas and stories to the world. We need a technology that both gives people a voice no matter what their circumstances, and the ability to join the dialog about such problems even if the power doesn't run all the time.
I hope people take such ideas seriously, and actually do something other than just sell these systems to rich people that like mountain cabins.
"While I agree with you, there are also some things to be gained from having access to the internet. For example how many people would care about the situation in Iran if Iran had no internet?"
They'd care even less if cell-phones didn't come with cameras.
Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
While that statement is true on it's surface, it's also missing the point entirely. You also can't pull a people out of poverty by giving them food. You pull them out of poverty by teaching them how to do things for themselves (and minimizing corruption, but that's another discussion).
Put another way, giving developing nations access to information is the long term solution...food aid is the short term one.
Projects like this are part of "all of the above", part of getting food, clean water and medicine. The things needed to help people's and nations get to be better. I see a lot of comments about how useless this would be. On the contrary, given a village access to the net means they can learn about new ways to make indigenous water filters using cheap available resources. They can find out about newer methods of farming/sustainable agriculture. Look for new markets for their goods, or sources for cheaper goods they might need, tools, seeds etc. The access to just a lot of books and papers could help, from the schoolkids to the local overwhelmed medical person. It's not just one or the other that is needed in a lot of these places, it is all of it, all of the above. Civilization.
Some orgs concentrate on medicines/vaccines, others on food aid, others on..whatever. This is just another way to help, and to do it cheaper, to leapfrog the old model of very expensive centralized wired infrastructure for both power and communications, and go directly to decentralized models that are faster/cheaper and easier to deploy.
And socially, once people start to realize there is more than just the local tribe and the surrounding few square miles and whatever the local warlord or shaman dictates to them, beyond the abstract, with just a narrow and skewed jingoistic viewpoint, they can start to see we all need to get along better, because we are all human and have to share this planet, that we have more in common than what they might have been brainwashed into believing previously.
In other words, with less viewpoints being available, remaining insular and cutoff, it is easier for the local warlords and power goons to keep their populations controlled and under their thumb and doing nutso stuff. Once they see there are other ways to "think and do", at least it gets them considering saner and more rational alternatives.
We see it daily, look around at the headlines, dictatorship/regime X, the first thing they try to do if it looks like their rule might be threatened is they cut off and restrict and censor communications. This is *precisely* why we should encourage more widespread and open and free-er communications, *especially* in areas that have a rather severe lack of them to begin with.
I'm not sure that no-infrastructure internet is possible in a heavily-bureaucratized, corporate-dominated country like this.
Unless you're talking about just the "unreliable" infrastructure part. In which case it's still impossible in a heavily-bureaucratized, corporate-dominated country like this.
I have been working the IT related fields in Latin America for over 10 years, both rural and urban. I have also spent some time teaching in China.
One problem I see with this article is that it makes no mention of how they get the internet connectivity. Is it sat? Is it connecting to an existing upstream provider? Both are often unrealistic is developing countries even inside urban areas because of reliability issues, corruption, cost, monopolies, and so on. In rural areas there simply are not options, and because of low population with limited economic resources it is too expensive to provide it.
The other problem that is an even greater issue is when the dam thing breaks, there are very very few people to maintain them. If someone has sufficient know how to fix something like this, chances are they are working for someone that pays a lot more (in local terms) because there is high demand for very few qualified IT people. Again, in rural areas they are often none existent. Anyone with those sorts of skills leaves. I have run in to this problem, even when money was no issue. There simply is no one to provide the support.
Living in Chile
"Reliable" would be good enough for me.
I can't fix the roof cause it's raining...boo hoo
Why bother
all by itself it mights not seem like much but if that selfsustainable minilan were deployed in a school, or an other education center, or a hospital, than it would make a significant difference.