Egypt, Digital Networks, and the Free Network Movement

We are all witnesses, living through the first great social upheaval of the 21st century. Throughout the Middle East, people are seeking to rid their nations of oppressive government, of corruption, of the anti-democratic forces that have long plagued their region. In so doing, they are employing today’s new, Internet based communications technologies. The Egyptian government has caught on, and already it has shut down the terrestrial Internet in Egypt, along with the cell phone networks. This turn of events lends credence to two of the Free Network Movement’s most deeply help beliefs, the first being that the Internet is a tool of empowerment that has the ability to change the world, and the second being that the Internet is no longer a luxury, but rather a human right. The Internet has provided the mechanisms necessary to trigger such upheaval, and to sustain them through the fastest, broadest, and most democratic form of communication humanity has ever known. But if the government can pull the plug on this technology in Egypt, ridiculous though it may seem, we must consider what recourse we would have if similar events were to transpire in the United States. Already Wired Magazine has published an extensive wiki (an article anyone can access or edit) called “How to Communicate if Your Government Shuts Off Internet”. Their last suggestion is “have an air horn or other loud instrument handy”. While the Free Network Movement in no way denies that chalk, megaphones, posters, and fog horns are still valuable tools of communication, our top priority is to make the digital communications network secure, reliable, and fast. It is the only one we have, and everyone ought to have access to it, all of the time. Mesh networking has been a hot topic at Free Network Movement meetings lately, and several students are hard at work trying to build a mesh network in Grinnell. The advantage of a mesh network is that the Internet is more distributed, more localized. So for example, if I want to instant message Gabe Schechter in the SGA offices, my instant message travels all the way from Loose first to the AIM servers, where they can be read by all interested parties with access to the server, and are then sent back down from the server to Gabe’s computer. A mesh network shortens the path that my information travels to Gabe. Each computer in the network serves as a “node”, and information passes from computer to computer, eventually reaching its intended destination. This is a much harder network to shut down, because it is decentralized and provides for many paths through which information might travel, instead of just one. This is how the internet was meant to work. Building a mesh-network in Grinnell means establishing network access that can never be impeded.