Continuing on the thought-provoking post by Sanjay, I wanted to share a very interesting story of human endeavor and social entrepreneurship. The amalgamation of right ideas, right minds and right knowledge can definitely change human perspective and enlighten society.
A Silicon Valley escapist, members of the old-school computer security group called the Cult of Dead Cow have ventured with residents of the Tibetan-dominated town of Dharamsala to establish a wireless mesh network which caters the community with high-speed data and telephony services. The whole project runs on solar power, cheap hacked hardware and open source software.
The story in itself is amazing and awe-inspiring. This Xanadu called Dharamsala has already witnessed a cultural revolution of sorts. A kingdom in exile, an escapist hippie-hideout and now the witness of a technology frontier.
This hacker illuminati is also organizing AirJaldi Summit to share ideas on making this pilot a “social elephant” as Sanjay terms it 🙂
- Imbuing the Public Service with Entrepreneurialism - September 10, 2008
- Indian SMBs to spend $1.26 billion for Internet services in ’08 - August 7, 2008
- Two new web security (SaaS) startups - August 7, 2008
hmm, was in dharamsala for a trek last weekend, and didnt see anyone making use of the network! maybe they should also distribute some laptops (and maybe they cant be wireless otherwise they would get stolen; so maybe tether them :))
Check:
http://www.xeni.net/trek/2006/08/nonprofit-offers-vaccines-to-gaddi.html#links