#othernet

[ms2253]

[zine] Circumlunar Transmissions - Issue 1, April 2021

gemini://republic.circumlunar.space/zine/issue001/

[kenyatta]

What Is The Othernet

Imagine another internet. Location specific, not through geofencing, but through the physical limits of its infrastructure. There are webpages here that do not exist there. They are not meant for you. Like a street mural, this internet island becomes a projection and a reflection of the network neighborhood.

[...]

The Othernet began with a vision of internet islands: a world of tiny independent networked communities with their own character and rules. Its a project about the possibility of escape from systems that seem inevitable. A practical course of action for reclaiming the potential of networks that are shaped by the communities they serve.

The Othernet is another network in Bed Stuy – new infrastructure and applications that enable neighbors to browse and create “web” content. The result is an alternative constellation of web pages that are only accessible in Bed Stuy and are made by neighbors.

The Daily Green has an excellent interview with Othernet creator Dhruv Mehrotra

Back in 2003, my roommate Erin and I set up a Linksys WRT54G with flashed firmware and a couple of cantennas on our rooftop in Downtown Brooklyn so that we could provide free internet access for our neighbors for about 2-3 blocks in each direction.

We installed forum software to host a bulletin board, we scanned in menus from all of our local restaurants for people to download, and we hosted minutes from our local community board meetings.

To make it easy to access, we posted flyers around the neighborhood and we made it part of a larger city-wide collective called NYCWireless that encouraged people to set up public guest networks to increase internet access to the community.

While I can’t remember how many people used our node, it was significant and meaningful enough that folks would donate Amazon gift cards to us as a thank you every month.

For reasons civic, privacy, and political, community lans feel like a really important idea again.

[ms2253]

https://sectordisk.pw

Sector Disk is an online community where users (up to 2880 on a single disk!) can write to and read from the individual, physical sectors on a REAL 1.44mb floppy disk hooked up to a good ol' fashioned Unix server. Users can request sectors (512 bytes) on the disk and then they're theirs to do whatever they want: self-advertise, joke around, create some pixel art, or just say hi. Occasionally everyone'll even get together for a big floppy disk party and view the floppy disk in action LIVE on video and chat together via IRC or the stream chat! It's one heck of a way to party - a new way with an old medium at the heart.

[ms2253]

Tech Workers Rebel Against a Lame-Ass Internet by Bringing Back 'GeoCities-style' WebRings - The Debrief

In response to today’s lame-ass Internet, mediated by big corporations, tech workers are bringing back 'GeoCities' style WebRings.

[vvampa]

new poem on my capsule: sweetallergies

gemini://wampa.xyz/poetry/2024/sweetallergies.gmi