Afghans Build Open-Source Internet From Trash

Douglas Rushkoff has championed the idea that the current corporate-controlled internet is far from the open commons we pretend it is.

"If we have a dream of how social media could restore peer-to-peercommerce, culture, and government, and if the current Internet is too tightly controlled to allow for it, why not build the kind of network and mechanisms to realize it?" Rushkoff asks.

Sounds daunting. And expensive, right? Wrong.

Funded primarily by the personal savings of group members and a grant from the National Science Foundation, residents of Jalalabad have built the FabFi network: an open-source system that uses common building materials and off-the-shelf electronics to transmit wireless ethernet signals across distances of up to several miles.

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