[MLB-WIRELESS] Wireless rural story on cnn

[Richard Van Orsouw]

hmmm,

you reckon the villagers have a use for a rs232 to bongo drum converter ?

> ----------
> From: 	Tom Parker
> Reply To: 	tparker at netspace.net.au
> Sent: 	Wednesday, 19 February 2003 7:05 PM
> To: 	melbwireless at wireless.org.au
> Subject: 	[MLB-WIRELESS] Wireless rural story on cnn
> 
> 
> http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/internet/02/18/laos.onlinebybicycle.ap/index.
> ht
> ml
> 
> 
> 
> Pedaling onto the Information Superhighway
> Laos villagers to get online with bike-powered PCs
> 
> Tuesday, February 18, 2003 Posted: 10:21 AM EST (1521 GMT)
> Tavee Pularmjit pedals a bike-powered generator intended to run a
> custom-built computer.
> 
> BAN PHON KHAM, Laos (AP) -- Villagers in this remote jungle hamlet have
> lived for years without electricity or telephones, relying on occasional
> visitors and a sluggish postal system for news of the outside world.
> 
> But soon many of its residents will be jumping on stationary bikes to
> pedal
> their way onto the Information Superhighway.
> 
> Custom-built computers -- running on bicycle-powered generators -- will
> transport villagers from rice fields to chat rooms and Web sites
> worldwide.
> They'll be able to monitor rice and vegetable prices, sell handicrafts and
> e-mail relatives.
> 
> The project, expected to launch as early as this spring, gets around the
> lack of phone lines through a clever application of the increasingly
> popular
> WiFi technology, which is used to wirelessly connect laptops, handhelds
> and
> other devices elsewhere.
> 
> For the first time, villagers will also be able to make phone calls, using
> Internet-based voice technologies. And because much of the project is
> built
> around nonproprietary, or "open source," software, villagers will
> essentially own the system.
> 
> The project is the brainchild of the Jhai Foundation, a San Francisco aid
> organization started by Vietnam War veteran Lee Thorn.
> 
> While Thorn wants to build the local economy and help poor villagers enter
> the digital age, he also hopes to heal the wounds of a war he helped wage
> as
> a bomb loader for Navy warplanes that flew missions over Laos, where the
> United States was fighting communist insurgents and their North Vietnamese
> allies.
> 
> The ingenious system -- not much different from a school science project
> --
> comprises five computers built with discarded microchips.
> 
> They connect to the Internet with a radio network and are powered by
> hulking
> batteries attached to stationary bicycles imported from India. One minute
> of
> pedaling yields five minutes of power.
> 'Low-tech solutions'
> Lee Thorn, right, founder of the Jhai Foundation, oversees a demonstration
> by Laotian schoolgirls of the bike-powered computer.
> Lee Thorn, right, founder of the Jhai Foundation, oversees a demonstration
> by Laotian schoolgirls of the bike-powered computer.
> 
> "In a country where the population is isolated ... it becomes necessary to
> think about decidedly low-tech solutions," said Andy Carvin of the Benton
> Foundation, a nonprofit organization that studies global Internet access.
> 
> Elsewhere, Carvin said, communities have turned to hand cranks and even
> cow
> manure where electricity is unavailable. He said the Lao project
> represents
> the latest of the "homegrown solutions."
> 
> The first of the computers is being set up in a freshly painted classroom
> of
> the local schoolhouse, a single-story concrete building in a clearing in
> the
> center of the village. The others will go to neighboring villages.
> 
> All five will use WiFi to send data wirelessly to a central radio
> transmitter and antenna dish at the school. From there, microwave signals
> will be zapped to a treetop antenna on a nearby mountain ridge and routed
> to
> a dial-up Internet account at a nearby hospital, which has two of the
> region's few phone lines.
> 
> Though the bikes will power much of the system, the relay stations will
> have
> solar panels. WiFi offers pretty decent speeds, and the hospital's dial-up
> connection will likely be the primary bottleneck.
> 
> "We're trying to make this as simple as possible so it can be replicated
> anywhere in the world," Thorn said, after firing off e-mail to the United
> States from his laptop perched on a 50-gallon oil drum.
> 
> But Carvin said access is only the start.
> 
> "Time will tell how successful this is going to be," he said. "Do they
> have
> the training program set up and enough content available in Lao as well as
> some of the tribal languages of the indigenous population?"
> 
> Organizers say some of that is being addressed.
> 
> Although English Web sites will remain in English, villagers will be able
> to
> send and receive messages in their native language. Software will also
> feature menus translated into Lao.
> 
> Students in Phon Kham will be trained to use the system and teach older
> villagers.
> 
> The network, designed and built for about $19,000 plus donated labor, will
> cost about $21 a month to operate, Thorn said.
> 
> Central to the network is the Jhai PC, a plastic-encased computer smaller
> than a laptop and built to withstand the punishing heat and monsoon rains
> of
> the Lao countryside. The units were built by Lee Felsenstein, inventor of
> the world's first portable computer.
> 
> Because the equipment was customized, last-minute technical glitches
> forced
> a delay in the project's launch, originally scheduled for this week.
> 
> Settled in 1975 by refugees who fled U.S. bombing over Laos during the
> Vietnam War, Phon Kham has been a quiet haven for the likes of Pahn
> Vongsengthong, a 78-year-old retired rice farmer.
> 
> Like many other villagers, Pahn has family scattered around the globe.
> 
> "The first thing is that I miss my daughters," said Pahn, who lives in a
> simple thatch-roof farmhouse and has never used a computer. "Whenever I
> miss
> them, I will be able to walk down the road and talk to them" through a
> computer.
> 
> Tavee Pulaimchit, 60, the village's chief, said the high-tech outpost will
> help residents compete for lucrative contracts from businesses elsewhere
> in
> Laos, one of the world's poorest countries.
> 
> "This village is isolated from the bigger towns and cities," he said, "and
> we need to keep in contact with the markets there."
> 
> ----------------------------------
> Tom Parker tparker at netspace.net.au
> http://www.wiresncode.com/projects
> 
> 
> 
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