disruptive technologies: from swarming to mesh networking
How Hong Kong Protesters Are Connecting, Without Cell Or Wi-Fi Networks
messaging one another through a network that doesn’t require cell towers or Wi-Fi nodes. They’re using an app called FireChat that launched in March and is underpinned by mesh networking, which lets phones unite to form a temporary Internet.
My note: seems that civil disobedience provides excellent innovations in using technology; examples are-
- the 1999 World Trade Organization Protests in Seattle, where the “swarming” idea was implemented and later transformed by Bryan Alexander into “swarming for education” (http://www.educause.edu/ero/article/going-nomadic-mobile-learning-higher-education) and depicted on this blog in September 2013
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims/tag/bryan-alexander/
to be continued by Britt in Learning Swarms? (http://bwatwood.edublogs.org/2010/08/05/learning-swarms/) and Howard Rheingold in his interview with Bryn Alexander in 2004 (http://www.thefeaturearchives.com/topic/Culture/M-Learning_4_Generation_Txt_.html and as Howard calls it “moblogging” and lately is becoming finally popular (at least in K12 if not in higher ed) as “backchanneling.” - In a very similar scenario as the 1999 Seattle unrest, people in Venezuela (#venezuelalibre – Zello) and Ukraine (Ukrainian roots shine through at WhatsApp) are turning to mobile apps to organize themselves and defy governments blocking of traditional social media (Protesters in Venezuela, Ukraine turn to peer-to … – CNN.com)The ideas using Zello and WhatsApp in education poured in:A WhatsApp for education?, How to use Whatsapp Chat Messenger for Education
Mesh networking is still only an IT term. Internet and dbase search has no returns on mesh networking as a tool for education and/or civil disobedience. Will it be the continuation of moblogging, backchanneling and swarming?
related IMS blog post: https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims/2014/09/19/mobile-elearning/
