Western Europe is slowly coming to grips with the fact that all the digital infrastructures we depend on, may not be as dependable as we all thought. Network architectures come with their own infrastructural ideologies embedded in them. They are not just a medium for the circulation of digital messages, but also distribute power in particular ways. With the wars in Ukraine and Gaza intensifying, and the U.S. taking a more antagonistic approach than Europe had been used to, Europe is increasingly re-evaluating its choices with regards to our communications infrastructures.
Some community-led initiatives are gaining prominence that focus on implementing pilots or prototypes of mesh networks: communication infrastructures that are by design much more decentralised or federated than the centralised communications infrastructures we have become used to. Thereby pinpointing and highlighting key weaknesses in how we have come to depend on central providers that are not infallible. Perhaps itās these mesh-type networks that are essential to becoming a more resilient society?
In this session, we hear from Radical Data and their mesh networks initiative, which participants of the conference can join themselves and experiment with. Next to that, Maxigas will describe the Reticulum protocol for building local and wide-area networks with readily available hardware, which comes with an anti-military licence and a bottom up user community also active in Amsterdam. It is an interesting example because of the attempt of its designers and users to embed social values into the technical choices of protocol design, implementation and deployment. Lastly, we learn about the Black-out Box, an initiative by Waag Futurelab which is part of the Meshtastic network, a network of hackers and organisations experimenting with a LoRa mesh-network that functions fully independent of the internet. And may be part of an emergency network in case all else fails.