From: Ken Meyering (ken@define.com)
Date: Thu Nov 26 1998 - 22:49:59 MST
Dan@Clemmensen.ShireNet.com (Dan Clemmensen) writes:
> Mike Linksvayer wrote:
> >
> > There was some discussion of a "free internet" on slashdot (the
> > open source hangout, <http://slashdot.org/>) a few months ago.
> > As a result someone created a page at
> > <http://www.dnaco.net/~kragen/decentralized-networks.html>
> > summarizing such efforts, all of which seem to be wireless.
> >
> Again, look at the usable bandwidth per node for the given solutions.
> It's below 100Kbps. Radio is wonderful, but I want 100Mbps per node,
> and I want a high node density.
Dan:
Yesterday I enjoyed a Thanksgiving meal with my mother, Marsha,
hosted at the home of one of her coworkers from Boeing, Dan, who's
wife, Jo, makes great coffee. Also present was a very intellegent
gentleman named Gail Griebel, who also works at Boeing, and his
wife, Norma, who works at a bank. The six of us had a good visit.
Gail was very kind and informative. He's a very good listener, and
is very enthusiastic about about the Open Source community's efforts
to build a decentralized, broadband Internet, from the ground up.
We discussed how much the world is changing as a result of ubiquitous
affordable telecommunications and personal computing. I ranted about
how satellite surveillance, robotics, and gps chips have nearly made
military hardware and armies obsolete. And how networked PCs
will soon lead to government by referendum, instead of by
representative elected officials. How in the world can industrial
lobbyists get their elected representatives to justify defense
spending, when we can send enough electricity to any x,y,z coordinate
to completely disintegrate whatever happens to be there?
Dan and Gail are electric train enthusiasts. This weekend at the
Pacific Science Center (http://www.pacsci.org/public/menu/) there is
a model railroad show. Interestingly, my father's last memory of his
father, Donald, was of the two of them playing with electric trains
(see http://www.lionel.com/), on a model railroad. Donald would come
home from his job at Kodak (http://www.kodak.com), and he and my
father, Tom, would play with electric trains.
Imagine all that Hoover Dam (http://www.hooverdam.com/) electricity
that's wasted in overflow! IMHO, we ought to mass produce flywheels
(http://www.trinityflywheel.com/flytech.htm), with the same scale and
production line efficiency of GE's mass produced dishwashers and
refridgerators (http://www.ge.com/oac/appliance.htm). We could place
them in backyard underground storage arrays! In the event of thunder
storms or lightning strikes, your home-based web site serving Bob
Villa style home-improvement videos (http://www.thisoldhouse.org/)
would stay up! How's that for redundant systems, Uninterruptible
Power Supplies, and fault tolerance??
Pardon the tangent!
Anyway, back to the subject of broadcast vs. point-to-point...
Gail mentioned that we works closely with a brilliant gentleman named
Perry Towles. He said that Perry "lives and breathes" laser
communications, and loves to talk shop. He said Perry might even be
willing to join a mailing list and provide advice. I overheard Gail
mentioning something to Dan about Lucent (http://www.lucent.com)
terrestrial laser heads.
Although this is outside my area of expertise, I'd like very much to
for you to make contact with Gail, to see if he and Perry could join
this discussion. Better than I, you would be able to provide both of
them with a general sense of how Foresight, Open Source, and the
"extropian" list fit together as a private, informal, problem-solving
mechanism. You might want to tell them about using anymous
remailers, so they don't get into trouble at work.
Gail's work e-mail address is Gail.A.Griebel@Boeing.com. His private
e-mail address is ggriebel@aol.com. I'd advise using his home
address, since he works on something regarding Teledesic, and we
wouldn't want any conflict of interest problems popping up at work.
I personally shared my feelings that I didn't think Teledesic was
going to make it off the ground, since Bill Gates isn't Open Source.
That remains to be seen, of course.
-------------------
ken@define.com
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