i’ve been cultivating a fascination with grassroots network infrastructure ever since i had the pleasure of reading unwirer by charles stross and cory doctrow.
a walking tour of copley square in boston inspired me to consider what sanctuary might be like for post_humans – certainly connectivity is high on the list of essential post_human rights.
it was with great delight that i had the chance to catch up with new york’s own band of unwirers, the nyc mesh crew.
nyc mesh is enabling the usa to join in the international movement for free and community-owned internet connectivity; guifi.net in spain is the world’s largest such network, with 27,000+ nodes that provide internet coverage to catalonia and other parts of spain. freifunk.net is another large network, in germany, whose community has been instrumental in developing the batman node firmware that is deployed on many such mesh networks.
i connected to the nyc mesh on my smartphone, right there on the spot. once connected, i could surf the web as normal – and i also had access to content that is available only on the mesh servers, such as wiki.mesh.
we brainstormed about content that might be helpful to serve up on the local mesh. i’d like to use a collaborative wordsmithing tool, such as etherpad or an expressive web chat client like meatspac.es – something that might simulate the feeling of sitting on the front porch, chatting with your post_human neighbors.
i was a bit dubious about my own ability to start hosting content on the mesh, but i was assured that i could easily configure a raspberry pi to be a perfectly functional web server – and start contributing to the growing mesh community in nyc.
i’m still doing a bit of research before installing a node of my own – and clearing it with my flat mates who own the “roof access” that would be valuable real estate for the router – and i look forward to linking up soon!
this rad cadre of post_human network evangelists meets weekly at d.b.a. in the east village.