[liberationtech] Ensuring Free Access to Ideas in Public Spaces?

[Julian Oliver]

..on Fri, Jul 19, 2013 at 07:58:43AM -0500, Nick Daly wrote:
> Hi folks,
> 
> Thanks to the awesomeness that is TA3M [0], I've had a chance to talk
> with a few librarians who're somewhat disappointed by the fact that it's
> difficult to freely access knowledge at libraries: all Internet access
> is filtered and surveiled, reducing the freedom of expression and the
> free exchange of ideas.  So, I promised I'd reach out to folks to see
> what, if anything, we can do about the situation.
> 
> First, what technologies could public libraries employ that would ensure
> or best facilitate intellectual freedom, free expression and free access
> to ideas when people use the library?  Different libraries will have
> different connectivity structures, so this is a fairly broad question.

Host the data locally and allow people to connect to it using computers at the
library or their own phones associated with the libraries own 'offline' wireless
network. Move terabyte archives to each partner library over snail-mail or
securely copy it between libraries over the Internet, for local hosting.

Here's a project of ours, that albeit artistic and conceptual in its goals, is a
fully functioning wireless web-server that even takes the form of a book:

    http://weise7.org/book/

Being Internet independent the book can be read on wireless-capable devices in
a cave, out on the ocean etc.

Cheers,

-- 
Julian Oliver
PGP B6E9FD9A
http://julianoliver.com
http://criticalengineering.org