I wonder sometimes what would happen if there was ever a situation where the publicly available Internet were unavailable. Where you would only be able to get on the Internet to Google or wherever with some kind of token, and even then, you were being tracked and led down roads where you might think are free to go, but are really dead ends.

Truthfully, I do see this happening sooner rather than never. And for some people that visit MMM, I’ve been told that this is their reality now. That the networks while “open” are really being monitored and tweaked so that the Word doesn’t get out. I keep wondering if there is a way around or through this that is legal, and only come to one really solid conclusion – mesh networking can be a short term, short distance solution.

Now, what I mean by mesh networking is that there are people whose computing devices are designated as the main connections – if you will, like a teacher in a classroom as the gateway point to inserting knowledge into a session. The other students (computers) would be able to connect to that computer over what is called an ad-hoc connection. Ad-hoc being a connection that is computer to computer, and does not have a router or third party network in-between.

Once connected, those computers would share that connection, and that main computer would have the information needed by the others to collaborate, share, and edify. Once that session is over, all persons with a computer would have that information, and then go to other places to be a node and share information with others. In a sense, creating a network that multiplies itself through the introduction of a “fellowship” event.

This idea of mesh networking to share ideas isn’t really new. In terms of how we pass information from one to another, its pretty much how we’ve always done it. But in the context of those communities where the Internet is so heavily censored that passing this “Body knowledge” over the web is hazadorous, using computing devices within these fellowhsip events to share information and push out the Body might be a solid idea.

This isn’t the first time I’ve had this thought, but a conversation brought it back up as something that the Body might be good to understand better, and then take advantage of. And who knows, this might be the future of how we have to pass our electronic bibles from one person to another.