In this video I speak with Peter Fein and The Doctor of the digital activist group Telecomix, which worked to keep the Internet available in the middle east during the Arab Spring by providing dial-up Internet access and even using fax machines to send information into Libya. The Doctor also works on the wireless mesh darknet project Project Byzantium. In this interview we talk about what Telecomix does and why it matters.

This interview has been a long time coming. It was conducted at Contact Summit in October, 2011. It was recorded at the end of a long day and we were all pretty tired. Please excuse the background noise, this was the quietest place we could find.

See also:

Forbes article on Telecomix

Ars Technica’s article on darknets

An idea for solving the distance problem in wireless darknets from acrylicist

My lists of “government-less Internets”: Part 1 and Part 2

Technoccult posts on decentralizing the Web and/or Internet