KNOWLEDGE FARMING ON THE OUTERNET
What is the Outernet? It's what the Internet isn't. Now, instead of
your reaching "in" to access the Internet, you simply sit back
and let the others to reach "out" to you on the Outernet. It's not
going to be over the info superhighway either, but some country dirt
roads - over dialup modem and temperarily assigned networking addresses.
And the flow would not be vast information but bits of knowledge. On the
Outernet, you are not the gold-rush Niners, but simple homestead farmers.
This new model would increase public participation on the Net. Using the
following packages out of Linux: Perl, Minicom, Expect, Apache and
Netscape, it is possible to turn your PC into a wakeupable personal
server(PS) and a software-generating knowledge accumulator. In this way,
the millions of PC's that would normally be sitting idle at home could now
become wakeupable nodes on the Net. If these PCs were empowered with
natural-language software-automation tools, the resulting network of
PS' opens up many new possibilities.
Predominant among them is the sharing of computer resources. For one thing,
the latest and the most useful, free and open software should be
installed on each and everyone of these Outernet nodes. In fact,
eventually that is where they shall all be developed. But the software
possibilities are only minor upgrades when compared to those of hardwares,
which are major installation efforts.
Experimenting with the idea of sharing hardwares, I have constructed a
simple software package called the "GIVE 'N TAKE". This package does the same
kind of things as the website Ebay.com, except that it's not the package
itself, but rather a package that spouts off the various modules when
needed. One important difference is while it tries to enable "GIVE 'N TAKE"
of computers and associated equipments on the site, no flow of cash is
involved. This is because, on the Outernet, it makes little difference
whether the computer is on your desk or the desk of the person you give
the computer to.
TOWARD BUILDING THE OUTERNET
Three steps are needed to build the Outernet around the Internet and
to farm the knowledge and experience of all persons willing to contribute
regardless of how much computer background they have.
- Mobilize the open-source software developers to cultivate the necessary
environment needed to accommodate a global community of knowledge farmers.
- Sprout a network of Personal Servers to form the Outernet, in which unlike
the Internet, univeral participation precedes commercialization.
- Build the tool for knowledge farming in the form of natural-language,
robotic programming language that allows knowledge contribution, cumulation
and harvesting by everyone.
