thru oblomovka:
Bicycle? Rube Goldberg?
Felsenstein got to work. He's built the solution. It's a bicycle-powered, ruggedised luggable, with a localised version of Linux and constructed from cheapo commodity parts. It's got an aerial, too: it uses WiFi to connect to a central Internet hub in the market town.
Using it, villages that currently have no electricity, telephone or decent roads can monitor the prices of crops, negotiate group purchases with other villages, and make business deals without spending days away from the farm. And with email and built-in VoIP, the families will be able to make direct contact for the first time with the Laotian Diaspora - the relatives who left the war-torn zone to earn money in the capital and beyond.
Here's his list of what the money can do:
Your donation will pay for:
* $10 20 lbs. shipping costs
* $25 Keyboard
* $50 Headset
* $75 Antenna
* $100 Battery
* $250 Bicycle Powered Generator
* $450 CPU or Mountain Top Solar Panel
* $850 Base Station
* $1,000 One RT US-Laos Trip for One Technical Consultant
* $1,500 One Complete Jhai Computer
* $2,500 One Complete Village Set-up
* $3,000 Relay Station
* $25,000 The Full 5 Village System
"I sketched out a system of rugged bicycle-powered computers, one per village, interconnected by Wi-Fi (802.11b) digital data links and coupled to the local phone system several miles away. Through this system VOIP (digital telephone) calls could be placed to the local phone lines as well as long-distance calls through Internet telephony to relatives overseas. E-mail would provide a kind of "telegraphy" and the system could be operated by village kids (100 percent literate) trained through an existing local network of Internet Learning Centers affiliated with this project."
Lee Felsenstein writes to danny o'brien
{oblomovka sets perfect trap. impossible-to-resist outlet for all frustrated altruistic impulses, or at least a place to begin. it's my first online transaction. people with notoriety in a world I inhabit the fringe of are doing things that are at the heart of what is noble in the human spirit.}
