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Skriven 2008-10-13 01:02:32 av FidoNews Robot (2:2/2.0)
Ärende: FidoNews 25:41 [02/05]: General Articles
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                        GENERAL ARTICLES
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      "Rumors of my demise have been greatly exaggerated"
                    Richard Webb, 1:116/901

Over the years I've read plenty of articles in fidonews sounding off
about the immanent death  of fidonet.  Though we're no longer
distributing  large volumes of echomail and our nodelist is no longer
growing, said rumors always have a touch of exaggeration  as did the
rumors about the old leader which are quoted above. The latest
doomsayer posits that in the age of instant connectivity peer to peer
networking such as fidonet will no longer be viable, especially when
coupled with voice over internet technology.  Yet, he notes in his
article that all this broadband connectivity isn't expanding outside
the larger cities  in many parts of the world.

Yes, these voIp technologies won't support modem speeds over 28.8 kbps
reliably.  But, you can bet that the folks in a small village served
by a couple of pots lines would even be glad to have a 9600 modem
connected to an older computer at the village hall.  An enterprising
soul could donate that old unused hardware to them, set them up as a
point.  Yes it means setting up the equivalent of Maximus or your
favorite package, set it up as a point off an in country node willing
to feed it.  With a little thought the local sysop could even access
web pages for locals with an interest and send the data over that
connection when the point polls for mail. Other enterprising souls,
and there are plenty out here in the world, could raise funds to help
the local village pay the toll charges  for a mail call once a day.
Local villagers when visiting the town hall could then sit down at the
bbs, participate in echos of interest to them and then leave it for
the next user.

A few months ago I read in another publication about an enterprise
where they had couriers accessing web pages for people in remote
villages and delivering the downloaded pages to the people in said
villages via courier, stored on cd or floppy disks.  A courier on a
bicycle or riding the local bus picks up the access requests from the
village, takes them all to the central location.  Here the pages are
downloaded, disks created and a courier drops off the requested
information at the appropriate village.  Turnaround time is close to a
week.

Those of us in fidonet who aren't in Europe or North America can beat
this.  Even with one old fashioned pots line and a 28.8k modem we can
beat this by a long shot.  By undertaking such things we can
accomplish quite a bit which benefits us too.  Consider the new users
we'd gain.  The locals who want to learn about sustainable agriculture
practices and techniques which are usable by him without a lot of
technology.  The village teacher who wants information for his/her
students, etc.

While bringing connectivity to these otherwise disconnected points we
can also show the world that good ol' FIdonet is still alive and well.
Fourteen years ago in the snooze I note articles sounding off about
the immanent death of fidonet.  The same 15 years ago, 10 years, etc.
Instead of pondering the near extinction of fidonet, maybe we should
be thinking about ways to bring it to folks who would find it
beneficial to them.  For many we would be the only link to this wide
world of information sharing.

Yes, it will take a bit of thinking outside the box.  Instead of
nattering on in the sysop echoes about the latest meaningless
controversy we could be reaching out to the information have-nots and
in the process give us a reason to look toward a bright future for
fidonet instead of its slow painful death.

THe scenario I described above is just one way of going about this.
I'm sure there are improvements could be made on it.  AFter all, any
system conceived on the fly over one's first cup of coffee in the
morning can be imrpvoed upon.  We have people with the knowledge to do
just that.  All we need do is wrap our brains around some ideas.

Just some thoughts from out here in the hills of Tennessee.



Regards,
           Richard


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