Group items tagged

One aspect of the digital divide includes urban-rural connectivity disparity. Jeanine mentions Jessamyn West earlier in diigo, and I thought this woman required at least one more bookmark here (I'm a huge fan of her work, writing, presentations.)! The link is to the audio recording of Jessamyn's facilitation of the "Offline America" session at last year's SXSW (South by Southwest) conference. You can get the lecture notes, slides and more here: http://librarian.net/talks/sxsw2011/.

The article I want to bring into the digital divide class discussion this week is about a project that is "creating Internet networks for eastern Afghanistan whose main components can be built out of trash" such as boards, wires, plastic tubs, and cans. Most importantly, the networks built "can be deployed by anyone anywhere where local infrastructure will not permit a conventional network" (they can even run "off-grid" via car-battery).