When Wikileaks was thrown off Amazon's servers, some people began to wonder about the security of their communications on the Internet in a new way. When Egypt shut down access to the Internet and mobile phones for the whole country, more people began to think about how easy it seems to be to pull the plug, even in the USA. News that "Beijing plans to track all mobile phone movements" (http://topics.scmp.com/...), a test run in two areas of the city going on this summer, doesn't help either.
Now, people are beginning to think about what may turn out to be a People's Internet, a non-corporate, non-governmental Internet, that can't be shut down or turned off, perhaps in a variety of massively resilient and redundant systems.
Can it be done? Should it be done? Here are some initiatives that move in that direction:
FabFi is an open-source (http://code.google.com/...) , MIT Fab Lab-grown (http://fab.cba.mit.edu/) system using off-the-shelf electronics and reflectors made of common building materials to transmit wireless ethernet signals across distances of up to several miles, a wireless mesh network. With Fabfi, communities can build their own wireless networks for high-speed internet, connecting to each other and educational, medical, and a wide range of other resources. FabFi services are working in both Jalalabad, Afghanistan and in Mountain View, Kenya, where JoinAfrica (http://www.joinafrica.org/...) operates an Internet service provider at three sites.
[Incidentally, both Afghanistan (http://janchipchase.com/...) and Kenya (http://gigaom.com/...) have mobile banking systems which are beyond anything available in the USA presently.]
FabFi and other wireless networks can be offgrid and low power as this 2008 Babson student's project providing solar wireless proves:
http://picasaweb.google.com/...
More on solar wireless networks at http://solarwirelessmile.com/
Jhai Foundation (http://jhai.org/), which has 13 years experience in the field using information and communication technologies (ICT) for development, has also run their JhaiPC (http://jhai.org/...) telecom systems offgrid with pedal, solar, wind, and hydro power.
Jhai is just beginning work in Uige, Angola, integrating sustainable telemedicine, education, and business systems featuring low cost, low power technology working at 2G or better speed with field tested components. They are part of a team consisting of Xavier University in New Orleans, the Angolan government and some of its universities, and Neurosynaptic, a telemedicine provider. Jhai is also working with Neurosynaptic on a 2000 village telemedicine network in Bihar, India.
The work in Uige will use proven participatory planning methods and include training in bookkeeping, business and operations, technology, and telemedicine. [They are looking for additional funding at http://jhai.org/... if you are interested in helping.]
Since writing the first diary on Can We Build a People's Internet? (http://www.dailykos.com/...) in March, 2011, I've seen a couple of other tidbits:
Freedom Box Foundation (http://freedomboxfoundation.org/) is "building software for smart devices whose engineered purpose is to work together to facilitate free communication among people, safely and securely, beyond the ambition of the strongest power to penetrate, they can make freedom of thought and information a permanent, ineradicable feature of the net that holds our souls."
On the other side of the coin is scanning and trolling social media for opposition research, disinformation, and electronic astroturfing. This introduction to the HBGary and Persona software story gives you some idea of what that can mean:
http://www.dailykos.com/...!
Cyberwar is already happening, on many different fronts.
From Can We Build a People's Internet? (Part 1)
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Buy This Satellite
http://buythissatellite.org/
A people's owned satellite Internet service
Open Mesh Project
http://www.openmeshproject.org/
Mesh networking is built into the One Laptop Per Child (http://one.laptop.org/) computer ($100 laptop). If two machines are within broadcast distance of each other, they can connect. Open Mesh networking is a type of networking wherein each computer or device in the network may act as an independent router, be a "smart" device, regardless of whether it has an Internet connection or not.
Contact Conference on October 20, 2011
http://contactcon.com/
Douglas Rushkoff, author and activist, is convening a conference in NYC to build a community of interest around innovating new forms of social media, including a non-hierarchical Internet.
Can we build a people's Internet? I don't know but it looks like a number of people are trying.