Interesting stuff. The Lantern device is basically just a neat little package for receiving
Outernet, which may be a great tool to have around if you feel Outernet is useful. The upside is that there's a fairly impressive array of educational and reference material available for free; the downside is that despite the claims of "free data forever," the reality is that the data you will get is what someone else chooses, and "forever" means "as long as we can profitably maintain this complex system."
I'm a huge fan of sneaker-net when it comes to maintaining a digital reference library within a community. Simple is good for that sort of thing. In fact, I deliberately try to steer people away from the mindset of "how do we keep doing Internet things without the Internet." If connections to the Internet become unavailable, unaffordable, unreliable, or just undesirable for some reason, there are a whole bunch of things provided by that commercial infrastructure that we simply won't be able to replicate. Community life will re-organize to do without FaceTime and Snapchat.
I'm interested in thinking about high-value use cases and procedures for
infrastructure-independent telecomms, not just ways of extending Internet and cell phones. SHTF scenarios are worth considering, but are only one end of the spectrum. If we're simply somewhat decoupled from global infrastructure, by choice or by circumstance, what and with whom do we really want to communicate? Which kinds of systems are worth maintaining and which are excess baggage? What really helps us get the important things done and contributes to community life? Then, what tools can we bring to bear whose utility doesn't depend on a third party's profit stream? HF radio, IP telephony, local two-way radio, open source electronics and software, even non-electronic signaling systems. Fun stuff, or at least I think so. What's the best solution? "It depends..."
