Technology and Infrastructure for Emerging Regions

 Wireless mesh networks have gained a bit of popularity lately as a mechanism for bypassing Internet censorship. We in TIER have a bit of collective experience actually building wireless mesh networks and have come to see that they are impractical to build and operate at any meaningful scale. I wrote a piece this weekend about some of the technical reasons why mesh networks cannot work. Worse, the recent fascination with the technology itself threatens to divert resources from more effective real-world action in support of Internet free speech: wireless networks are great, but censorship and government oppression cannot be countered through technology alone.