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Revision as of 01:59, 13 December 2013
, 01:59, 13 December 2013Added Altermundi interview excerpts
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<Paul> get a mix of Freestations, Nanosations, Omnitiks, and whatever else is cheap and robust, at least that is what we've been doing | <Paul> get a mix of Freestations, Nanosations, Omnitiks, and whatever else is cheap and robust, at least that is what we've been doing | ||
</pre> | </pre> | ||
=Altermundi Interviews (Argentina)= | |||
These excerpts are from Gordon Cook's interview on 6 May 2013 with Nico, one of the leaders of Altermundi and Buenos Aires Libre: | |||
Nico: I started with Buenos Aires libre. This was the free network project in the city of Buenos Aires. It still exists. I devoted a lot of time to that project and built one of the first working nodes of the network. The problem in Buenos Aires was that it was too much of a geek network. | |||
COOK Report: Do you mean: by techies and only for techies? | |||
Nico: Yes exactly. We call them "ping" networks – that is to say networks where geeks "ping" each other. But also networks where nothing else happens. Nothing social and no interesting content or services. I worked on their behalf for quite some time and then I got involved in the free culture movement. This included work with people who were fighting against intellectual property laws. We worked together trying to reduce restrictions and focused on a modification of Argentine intellectual property laws that were really old and out of date. | |||
COOK Report: When was the big Argentinean debt crisis? | |||
Nico: it was 2000 and 2001 and everyone was out in the street. | |||
COOK Report: did this influence you to move away from the "ping" and more to network as social media? | |||
Nico: I was already "there." I had been involved for a long while with things that had more to do with the social stuff – for example –I have been involved for a long time with the eco-village movement. I had lived in an eco village for a while and then founded a new one where I lived for five years and worked a lot with appropriate technology and renewable energy sources. Natural building and architecture. Sustainable living. I began to want to merge all these things. | |||
==The Goal of a Society Based on the Freedom of Peer-to-Peer Collaboration== | |||
I started thinking about what does everything that I do have in common? Free software, free networks, perma-culture; eco-villages, people who fight to protect local seeds. I came up with a system to measure these things. | |||
The system we live in is on designed for concentration in the hands of a few while all these other alternatives are in the direction of collaboration among peers and the freedom that comes from that. The goal seems to be freedom built on peer-to-peer collaboration. I found that this concept was central to what was going on within local exchanges, eco-villages and so on. | |||
Consequently I started an NGO called Altermundi in 2004 as an idea to focus on building a peer-to-peer, local and sustainable economy where people could act locally and think globally. We need to act locally but do so everywhere and consequently, we must maintain and control our own local communications. With the emphasis on local action it becomes the inverse of globalization. I started working with idea at least eight years ago but the actual Alter Mundi NGO organization was founded only two years ago oriented very much along the lines of the other free networks projects. The charter for the NGO clearly states that the main objective is to facilitate this new paradigm based on peer-to-peer collaboration as opposed to concentration and control. | |||
... | |||
We do for ourselves a lot of what, in North America or Europe, you would just purchase as commercial solutions. For example we use home routers that are usually not enabled for Power over Ethernet. We modify them internally by soldering a couple of cables to make them power over Ethernet. For no additional money, we do mounting of antennas and the nodes. The advantage of power over ethernet is that you need only a single cable from you computer to where ever the radio and its antenna is located. That cable carries both your data and power. Otherwise you use four wires for data and four for power. You can buy routers made for this kind of outdoor operation, but they are much more expensive than the home routers we upgrade. | |||
AlterMundi is an organization that aims for the emergence of a new paradigm based on freedom gained through collaboration among peers. We explore different manifestations of these peer-to-peer alternatives and in particular we do a great deal of work in relation to Wireless Community Networks. We have developed a Wireless Community Network model that we call [http://docs.altermundi.net/RedesMiniMaxi/ MiniMaxi]. | |||
Editor: Click on mini maxi for access to the detailed altermundii handbook and planning and installation guide. According to the guide: "The guiding principle of mni maxi is to achieve maximum results with minimal resources. This model focuses on a low economic cost and low complexity of installation and operation, enabling their high versatility and ease of deployment." | |||
MiniMaxi is based on very low-cost, multi-radio mesh nodes running the [http://docs.altermundi.net/AlterMesh/ AlterMesh firmware], which automatically configures the mesh network. The firmware can be customized using a web tool we call the Chef[3]. We also provide [http://docs.altermundi.net/LibreNet6/ tunnel broker service] for community networks that don't have native IPv6 connection. Several network projects in South America have already adopted the [https://colectivo.altermundi.net/projects tools we have developed]. | |||
Nico: In Quintana we invite our neighbors to come to the place where we build our routers and antennas. When someone wants to connect to the network we invite them to come and spend a few days where we teach them what they need to know. Starting for example with soldering a home router to convert it to power over Ethernet, how to build the boxes for the nodes how to wrap the antennas and so on. Finally we try to do the installation work with the family so that everyone will be involved in the process. We usually ask them to invite us for food. That is the exchange. This way we get to know everyone in town. | |||
We make a human network that works underneath and acts as a foundation for the digital network. This gives psychological support to the digital network because the captive portal, that is the web page you see when you want to browse the internet, is like a home page that you cannot avoid. | |||
... | |||
COOK Report: What else is going on with these kinds of networks else where in Latin America? | |||
Nico: There were many geeks for geeks projects. I have had contact with most of them I think. There are two or there in Argentina. In Uruguay there is Montevideo libre that is very much related to Buenos Aires Libre. It is the same model. It is also the same firmware development. Then there was another project in Bogota. | |||
The meaning of AlterMundi’s motto is a technology foundation for another possible world. We are now in the second wave of free networks mounted on experiences from previous projects. For example Buenos Aires Libre still exists but many of the people who were part of it are now operating through AlterMundi. and we are working in faraway places like Quintana or other small towns in Cordoba. | |||
... | |||
Many of us have decided to take what we have learned and move away from the big cities in order to start projects in smaller places. When someone says to me "I like your ideas, but how do I do this in a city like Buenos Aries?" my answer is first you need to leave Buenos Aries. There are too many entrenched interests and too many things that are already embedded and very difficult to challenge. In small places you can design your own solution and make sure it’s fully compatible with local desires. | |||
... | |||
Nico: I think they are beginning to realize. The laptops were given out without economic distinction. However the children of the most wealthy citizens did not receive them because they do not go to public schools. Having all these computers will linux installed on them represents an enormous opportunity to do stuff. It makes a huge difference because n a town like Quintana I know that if I set up an asterisk server I can run a Voice over IP network for the whole town because basically every household will have a school laptop. | |||
With these laptops already spread it become possible to go into and organize a small town to join forces and buy the equipment together hat is necessary for basic voice service and basic internet. We look for viable links, do the links and pay for he needed equipment as a collective. This program, these procedures are perfectly applicable to every small town in all of Argentina. I think it would work in many places because small tows are being abandoned. The world cannot become more and more urbanized and remain stable. I think that making small towns more interesting places to live could help to maintain a more reasonable balance. | |||
If the town is really connected. If it can internally solve its energy needs. If it can have a local currency and a strong local economy along with local media and communication – under such conditions, I believe that living in a small town is much much more interesting than in a big, "secure" and expensive city. | |||
COOK Report: Well I think you probably represent the most advanced expression of wireless for the people in Latin America, | |||
Nico: Yes I think so | |||