Conversation

Notices

1. Embed this notice
   Jan Wildeboer 😷:krulorange: (jwildeboer@social.wildeboer.net)'s status on Sunday, 15-Sep-2024 04:51:32 JST Jan Wildeboer 😷:krulorange:

   Quite some years ago, we brought the #OLPC AKA the 100$ laptop to Rwanda [1]. A surprising thing happened. The laptops were often without battery power in the morning. A thing that wasn’t anticipated. It had two reasons. One was the keyboard LED. It was used by the parents to have a light at home. The other was a bigger surprise. The parents used the mesh networking to discuss market prices for their produce. Fascinating. 1/3

   [1] https://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_Rwanda

   • Haelwenn /элвэн/ :triskell: likes this.
   • Tim Chambers and GreenSkyOverMe (Monika) repeated this.
   • Embed this notice
     Jan Wildeboer 😷:krulorange: (jwildeboer@social.wildeboer.net)'s status on Sunday, 15-Sep-2024 04:51:40 JST Jan Wildeboer 😷:krulorange:

     in reply to

     With the mesh network built in to the OLPC, a local network that worked without needing a central access point, farmers used the chat function to compare prices offered for their produce and found out that merchants offered different prices. This led to pressure on the merchants to pay better. The government was not amused. And mesh networking became a problem. Ultimately an inspiring story that was never told, IMHO. 2/3

     Haelwenn /элвэн/ :triskell: likes this.
     GreenSkyOverMe (Monika) repeated this.
   • Embed this notice
     Simon Jaeger (simon@dragonscave.space)'s status on Sunday, 15-Sep-2024 08:37:24 JST Simon Jaeger

     in reply to

     @jwildeboer I think a lot about the fact that we all have pocket communicators with many different radios in them, but if disaster ever strikes, none of them can communicate with each other. The more I think about it, the more it feels like a sign of a world gone mad.

     Haelwenn /элвэн/ :triskell: and kuteboiCoder like this.
   • Embed this notice
     Jan Wildeboer 😷:krulorange: (jwildeboer@social.wildeboer.net)'s status on Sunday, 15-Sep-2024 08:37:25 JST Jan Wildeboer 😷:krulorange:

     in reply to

     Decentralisation remains an underexplored field in commerce and communication, IMHO. For obvious reasons. Capitalism relies on control and centralisation. Kind of a contradiction, IMHO. A reason why decentralisation and transparency are often touted as goals, but never really implemented. 3/3

     GreenSkyOverMe (Monika) and kuteboiCoder repeated this.
   • Embed this notice
     Jan Wildeboer 😷:krulorange: (jwildeboer@social.wildeboer.net)'s status on Sunday, 15-Sep-2024 08:37:34 JST Jan Wildeboer 😷:krulorange:

     in reply to

     (In a flat and open field, the mesh network of an OLPC, that didn’t need the CPU for transmitting network traffic, so still worked when the OLPC was „sleeping“ had a range of up to 4 kilometres)

     Haelwenn /элвэн/ :triskell: likes this.
     GreenSkyOverMe (Monika) repeated this.
   • Embed this notice
     Jan Wildeboer 😷:krulorange: (jwildeboer@social.wildeboer.net)'s status on Sunday, 15-Sep-2024 08:38:09 JST Jan Wildeboer 😷:krulorange:

     in reply to

     (And thank you all for being kind and respectful in the comments thus far. The OLPC was (and is) a defining part of my private and professional life. I was only involved on the sidelines but I met people that ware so deeply invested into the ideas. Developers. Children. Teachers. But also aggressive opponents, lobbyists that did everything possible to kill the project. It teached me a lot. And I still feel sad it never lived up to its potential. Maybe it will. I'm still a believer) Me, 2007 :)

     Haelwenn /элвэн/ :triskell: likes this.
     GreenSkyOverMe (Monika) repeated this.
   • Embed this notice
     Jan Wildeboer 😷:krulorange: (jwildeboer@social.wildeboer.net)'s status on Sunday, 15-Sep-2024 08:38:10 JST Jan Wildeboer 😷:krulorange:

     in reply to

     Going through my archives, I notice I might have been confused. This goes back even further. This happened 2008 in the pilot in Ethiopia. Rwanda was 2014. At that time the LED was already long gone. My apologies. I have corrected the original toot.

     GreenSkyOverMe (Monika) repeated this.
   • Embed this notice
     Jan Wildeboer 😷:krulorange: (jwildeboer@social.wildeboer.net)'s status on Sunday, 15-Sep-2024 08:38:23 JST Jan Wildeboer 😷:krulorange:

     in reply to

     • tom jennings
     • Simon Jaeger

     @tomjennings The totally weird thing is that Apple implemented such a thing with Airdrop. It was used in the Hong Kong protests to distribute warnings and calls for demonstrations. Ultimately Apple had to change its implementation after pressure by the Chinese government. @simon

     Haelwenn /элвэн/ :triskell: likes this.
   • Embed this notice
     tom jennings (tomjennings@tldr.nettime.org)'s status on Sunday, 15-Sep-2024 08:38:24 JST tom jennings

     in reply to

     • Simon Jaeger

     @simon @jwildeboer

     Other than the Briar Project, I know of nothing that addresses handset to handset direct comms. And no one I know is even vaguely interested in it and few, other than activisty tech types, even think the idea has value.

     It's maddening. castoff phones on thrift stores, wifi only even, no sim, have more computing power than most people had in 1990. And no interest in them except as commodity platforms for whatever it is we do.

     https://briarproject.org/

   • Embed this notice
     Jan Wildeboer 😷:krulorange: (jwildeboer@social.wildeboer.net)'s status on Sunday, 15-Sep-2024 20:04:26 JST Jan Wildeboer 😷:krulorange:

     in reply to

     https://laptop.org is still around, though I haven’t been in contact with them since years. They distributed around 3 million laptops to children in total. Mostly unnoticed by us here in the west.

     GreenSkyOverMe (Monika) repeated this.
   • Embed this notice
     Jan Wildeboer 😷:krulorange: (jwildeboer@social.wildeboer.net)'s status on Sunday, 15-Sep-2024 22:19:42 JST Jan Wildeboer 😷:krulorange:

     in reply to

     (as expected, the naysayers and opponents are now in the comments trying to turn my thread into negativity. As always. It's the internet :) Well, I still hope I could give some of you some positive food for thought on unintended, but fascinating effects that we observed many years ago when the project started.) 8/8

   • Embed this notice
     GreenSkyOverMe (Monika) (greenskyoverme@ohai.social)'s status on Sunday, 15-Sep-2024 22:20:09 JST GreenSkyOverMe (Monika)

     in reply to

     @jwildeboer It was very interesting!

   • Embed this notice
     Jan Wildeboer 😷:krulorange: (jwildeboer@social.wildeboer.net)'s status on Wednesday, 18-Dec-2024 20:23:49 JST Jan Wildeboer 😷:krulorange:

     in reply to

     • Elias Probst
     • DJGummikuh
     • Harald Geyer

     @haraldgeyer And IIRC, I posted the links to https://wiki.laptop.org/go/XO_Giving and the discussion page at https://wiki.laptop.org/go/Talk:XO_Giving @eliasp @DJGummikuh

   • Embed this notice
     Elias Probst (eliasp@mastodon.social)'s status on Wednesday, 18-Dec-2024 20:23:50 JST Elias Probst

     in reply to

     • DJGummikuh
     • Harald Geyer

     @haraldgeyer this actually happened. There was a "buy one, give one" program and I bought 4 back then.

     @DJGummikuh @jwildeboer

   • Embed this notice
     Harald Geyer (haraldgeyer@mastodon.social)'s status on Wednesday, 18-Dec-2024 20:23:50 JST Harald Geyer

     in reply to

     • Elias Probst
     • DJGummikuh

     @eliasp Thanks for sharing. It's strange: Somebody (probably @DJGummikuh or @jwildeboer ) wrote the same back when I posted this originally, but it's gone now and my reply dropped from the thread.

     Anyways, here is my reply from back then: https://mastodon.social/@haraldgeyer/113143036090113982

   • Embed this notice
     DJGummikuh (djgummikuh@mastodon.social)'s status on Wednesday, 18-Dec-2024 20:23:51 JST DJGummikuh

     in reply to

     @jwildeboer yeah I also remember there was a huge outcry that it would destroy the mobile devices market and people should rather pay hundreds of Euros for Hardware they don't need to "not upset the market" 🤮

   • Embed this notice
     Harald Geyer (haraldgeyer@mastodon.social)'s status on Wednesday, 18-Dec-2024 20:23:51 JST Harald Geyer

     in reply to

     • DJGummikuh

     @DJGummikuh @jwildeboer I remember back then there was a huge demand from people in Europe saying "Give me one as well! I'm paying 200$ and you can give one child one for free." I always wondered, why this never happened.

     I guess, your stories of pressure explain this nicely. Thanks for sharing!

   • Embed this notice
     Jan Wildeboer 😷:krulorange: (jwildeboer@social.wildeboer.net)'s status on Wednesday, 18-Dec-2024 20:23:52 JST Jan Wildeboer 😷:krulorange:

     in reply to

     • DJGummikuh

     @DJGummikuh It’s IMHO one of the reasons we never saw the OLPC concept being introduced in a western country. I tried at the time. But we were always destroyed by government agencies with the „it doesn’t run Microsoft Office“ argument.

   • Embed this notice
     DJGummikuh (djgummikuh@mastodon.social)'s status on Wednesday, 18-Dec-2024 20:23:53 JST DJGummikuh

     in reply to

     @jwildeboer this story is extraordinarily stupid (as far as the government goes) because the goal of #OLPC was to improve education, and then the government fumes because their population starts to make educated decisions...

   • Embed this notice
     Harald Geyer (haraldgeyer@mastodon.social)'s status on Wednesday, 18-Dec-2024 20:31:13 JST Harald Geyer

     in reply to

     @jwildeboer Yes exactly. I remember now reading these links. Any idea, why your post disappeared?

     I now some people have automatically disappearing posts, but all your others are still present. It seems like a strange #mastodon issue.

   • Embed this notice
     Harald Geyer (haraldgeyer@mastodon.social)'s status on Wednesday, 18-Dec-2024 20:41:47 JST Harald Geyer

     @jwildeboer Yes, this explains this nicely.

     I wonder, why you do this? In my experience many replies in very interesting technical threads or other deep discussions between a small group of people won't make it. But random opinion bits will stay around forever. That seems to introduce quite the bias.

   • Embed this notice
     Chris [list of emoji] (suetanvil@freeradical.zone)'s status on Wednesday, 18-Dec-2024 23:24:51 JST Chris [list of emoji]

     in reply to

     @jwildeboer

     How does that work?!?!? Does the mesh subsystem have its own processor with access to the keyboard and screen?

     (Yes, *this* is the part I'm fixating on.)

   • Embed this notice
     hcv13 🇵🇸 (hcv13@mastodon.la)'s status on Thursday, 19-Dec-2024 00:46:18 JST hcv13 🇵🇸

     in reply to

     @jwildeboer In Argentina, an experience in the development of community Internet networks based on mesh networks was developed at the time.

     1. Comunidades haciendo Internet- Experiencia QuintanaLibre

     https://yewtu.be/watch?v=DcOAePVwafs

     2. Comunidades Haciendo Internet - Nuevas Redes

     https://yewtu.be/watch?v=fnHJfDJwEiY

     Now, in message number four afirma que " the mesh network of an OLPC, that didn’t need the CPU for transmitting network traffic, so still worked when the OLPC was „sleeping“ had a range of up to 4 kilometres". [https://mastodon.la/@jwildeboer@social.wildeboer.net/113137659879899521]

     The question is the following: what kind of technological devices were those computers equipped with that allowed the transmission of information up to a radius of action of four kilometers?

     Do you have any specialized references that would allow me to go deeper into this technical aspect that you mention?

     Note: the image that I attach is from a computer acquired in La Guajira, Colombia, known as “Canaima” of second generation and I have it for two years. They have MX-Linux installed and it works great.

   • Embed this notice
     Reiner (muenchengene@digitalcourage.social)'s status on Friday, 20-Dec-2024 05:22:19 JST Reiner

     in reply to

     @jwildeboer
     Hey Jan, great to read your story about #OLPC here :-)
     Back then, I have been excited about this project and other meshwork thingies like https://freifunk.net/en/ #freifunk
     Nowadays a new round of meshwork thingies is on the horizon with mobile phone Quintus? by volla.com and #Holochain
     https://www.holochain.org
     https://blog.holochain.org/mobile-holochain-applications-shipped/

     But this is nö more in the lane of 'One Laptop Per Child' as it is 6 times more expensive.
     Did you have hands-on experience with this hardware or software back then?

     @anlomedad