Saturday, January 29, 2011

OPENMESH Is Seeking Alternatives To Egypt-Style Internet Blackouts - Charles Stross's Unwirer is the vision

OPENMESH Is Seeking Alternatives To Egypt-Style Internet Blackouts:
"Galvanized by the unprecedented Internet shutdown in Egypt, angel investor Shervin Pishevar has launched OPENMESH a forum for people who want to discuss ways of preventing governments from blocking communications networks. The site (which is admittedly sparse at the moment) was up within hours of Pishevar tweeting out his ideas, designed and built by followers @Laksman and @garyjaybrooks."

Should read Charles Stross's Unwirer:
Strangehorizons.com
Perhaps the most surprising of Stross's looks backward is "Unwirer," which Stross cowrote with Cory Doctorow, in an "experiment in weblog mediated collaborative fiction." The premise is that preposterously tight telecommunications regulation in the United States created a situation in which "open Internet access is as illegal as cannabis." In exploring the theme "Unwirer" harkens back to '80s-style cyberpunk in its feel, invoking the contact between high-tech and low life as it was often imagined before the Internet became mundane, an affectation that can now appear as quaintly historical as steampunk. (While certainly reflecting one of Stross's major concerns—the encroachment of the surveillance state, a subject which he frequently and articulately tackles on his blog, Charlie's Diary—I have to say that the prose itself made me think more of Doctorow tales like "When SysAdmins Ruled the Earth.")

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