Mesh networks tie decentralized communication to physical place

Evidence

But while Mastodon instances begin to reintroduce context, that context is not necessarily aligned with physical space, nor is it intended to be. When I asked my friend Taeyoon Choi, cofounder of the School of Poetic Computation in New York, about a network that would allow you to “listen to a place,” he suggested local mesh networks like Oakland’s PeoplesOpen.net. The nonprofit Sudo Room, whose volunteers develop the mesh network, describe it as a people-powered, “free-as-in-freedom alternative” to centralized, corporate servers: “Imagine if the wifi router in your home connected to the wifi routers in your neighbours’ homes and they again connected to their neighbours to form a huge free wireless network spanning the city! That’s exactly what a mesh network is, or at least what it can be.” — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing, 582

Categorization

• XREF: Directly relevant to the reader’s question about whether Odell’s method is capaciousness or evasion — here she proposes concrete technological alternatives that reground attention in physical place; also links to the ‘listen to a place’ theme echoing Deep Listening
• QUESTION: Is the mesh-network proposal itself vulnerable to the privilege critique? Sudo Room-style volunteer infrastructure requires considerable technical skill and leisure