In this opinion piece (in Dutch), David Oldenhof-Boks and yours truly argue that libraries are decentralised information centres where people can meet locally to exchange information and contact the government, even in dire times.
To ensure people are secured in their right to Internet connectivity, we argue that a public secondary ‘back up’ network is needed:
- infrastructure that is completely separated/independent from the current commercialised Internet,
- as energy efficient as possible to sustain electricity blackouts for the longest time,
- fully decentralised and local-first where libraries are essential hubs,
- that must remain available in times of distress, for example when the Internet becomes massively unavailable and we are in the dark.
However, during peace time, this infrastructure can be used to give us a public network with alternatives for BigTech, such as DeltaChat, Mastodon, PeerTube, PixelFed, and many more free and open source apps that can be deployed on top, as envisioned by the Waag Futurelab.
And of course the technology that supports this secondary mission-critical network, that is designed to survive Internet fallouts, is the #SCION technology. A big thank you to SCION Association for maintaining the free and open source implementation of this disruptive core networking technology!
See article (in Dutch):
https://lnkd.in/ezYFB9B2