2003-01-01»
Lee Felsenstein and the Jhai Remote IT project»It was back in February of 1998, and I'd written a throwaway line in NTK about a story I'd heard regarding John Carmack, creator of Quake.
... JOHN CARMACK wins $20,000 at Blackjack by making himself "consistently behave like a robot" (donates it to Free Software Foundation) ...
A few days later, I got an email. From Richard M. Stallman. He'd had my rumour forwarded to him. Would it be possible for me to put him in contact with this John Carmack, so they could confirm that he'd like to make a donation, and work out the best way of doing so?
So I found myself writing a reply to Richard Freaking Stallman, with Only Bloody John Carmack in the cc: field. It ended:
Mr Stallman, meet Mr Carmack.
Bcc:d on the same mail was almost everybody I knew in the whole world ever.
I was grinning for days. I had done practically nothing, of course - but what a great way of doing nothing: putting other people's money, opportunities and genius together and then standing well back.
Which is why Lee Felsenstein is such a personal hero to me. As the moderator of the Homebrew Computer Club, Felsenstein made it his life's work to introduce opportunity to genius, in a framework where everyone benefitted - and maybe made money too. He pushed Jobs and Woz closer together, stitched together alliances between dozens of fledgling Silicon Valley companies in the Seventies, and encouraged them all to co-operate openly, without proprietary controls. He saw his job as putting the right people together to make the world a better place.
Oh, but there's more. Felsenstein wasn't just a co-ordinator of genius: he was an engineering genius himself. He designed the Osborne-1, the first popular portable computer. He was rolling out free networked public-access terminals in the Bay Area in 1972. In 1993, he wrote a piece for Dr. Dobbs Journal, whose mere title should give you a taste of how far-thinking it was. It was called "The Commons of Information", and it ended with this call to arms:
Our task, as technologists, is to build the tools that get us through ... to the future we want. We've already done half the job by creating the personal computer such that it took on a life of its own and evaded capture. Now the task of furnishing the agora remains. Anyone up for another adventure?
I often wondered what adventure Felsenstein was up to these days. Earlier this year, I got a chance to interview him and find out. A lot of the details are in this Irish Times piece, but here's the capsule summary:
Felsenstein's friend, Lee Thorn, was a bomb loader on an aircraft carrier in 1966 and participated in the US bombing of Laos, between Thailand and Vietnam. Years later, he formed the Jhai Foundation with a Laotian refugee, by means of small reparation. Last year, he approached Felstein with a challenge: could he spread the power of his revolution to the agricultural communities of Laos?
Felsenstein got to work. He's built the solution. It's a bicycle-powered, ruggedised luggable, with a localised version of Linux and constructed from cheapo commodity parts. It's got an aerial, too: it uses WiFi to connect to a central Internet hub in the market town.
Using it, villages that currently have no electricity, telephone or decent roads can monitor the prices of crops, negotiate group purchases with other villages, and make business deals without spending days away from the farm. And with email and built-in VoIP, the families will be able to make direct contact for the first time with the Laotian Diaspora - the relatives who left the war-torn zone to earn money in the capital and beyond.
It's an incredible project. The New York Times named it one of its best ideas of 2002. And Felsenstein, using his old-style Silicon Valley wiles, has brought the cost of full five village system to just $25,000.
Unfortunately, it looks like the international grants they secured to do this won't come through in time before the first Monsoon rains begin in May. So they're scouting around for this tiny amount, before the whole project gets flooded out.
Here's Lee's email plea in full. Here's his list of what the money can do:
Your donation will pay for:
- $10 20 lbs. shipping costs
- $25 Keyboard
- $50 Headset
- $75 Antenna
- $100 Battery
- $250 Bicycle Powered Generator
- $450 CPU or Mountain Top Solar Panel
- $850 Base Station
- $1,000 One RT US-Laos Trip for One Technical Consultant
- $1,500 One Complete Jhai Computer
- $2,500 One Complete Village Set-up
- $3,000 Relay Station
- $25,000 The Full 5 Village System
You can PayPal the Jhai Foundation on their donations page (mention that it's for "Remote IT").
Better still, send them ten bucks or more and then blog about it.
You see, I'm no good at this. I'm trying to give the foundation publicity, but I've already screwed up. I must have scared away 99% of the potential donators just by talking about Stallman and Carmack. I wrote the Irish Times piece too early - and I even mispelled the name of the Foundation in the print version. This entry is too long. It's in this titchy little font. Dooomed!
But you - you're good at this meme-spreading thing. Your blog has bazillions of readers. They're all rich, sensitive, and good-looking just like you. You can just link to the Jhai donation page and mention the project and why it's cool, and it will become cool, and have enough money to make it to Lhaos before the rainy season. Put in a link to the New York Times piece or my Irish Times piece for more info, if you like.
And remember, because this is charity, you don't have to worry about how popular it is. You can blog it even if it's already on Daypop! Everyone will still love you and admire your charity. Lee Felsenstein, the rabble-rousing fomenter of the digital revolution, and you, the best goddamn fomenter in the Distributed Republic of Blogistan, working together at last. Or, in other words:
Mr and Ms Blogger, meet Mr Felsenstein.
Anyone up for another adventure?
