[FRIAM] The Last Mile, again

Tue Apr 24 11:44:24 EDT 2018

Gill, 

Oh the Musk idea was not mine.  To me Musk is something you find in Weasel pee.  

Nick 

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

 <http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/> http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

From: Friam [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com] On Behalf Of Gillian Densmore
Sent: Tuesday, April 24, 2018 10:45 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam at redfish.com>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] The Last Mile, again

@Elon Musk  Hmm maybie. I subscribe to ScienceNow.  And get regular reeely cool and hopeful news.

I'm a little skeptical

And I want to be proven wrong.

The ScienceNow aroticle I read reminded me a lot of the Starry, 'Starnet, and StarLink', and Motorla's Iridium satalite stunts. Part of my skeptisism is Musk has a thing geeking out via press confrences, and their also being enormous issues between his brainstorming phase: and getting it into action phase. He almost reminds me of the real life version of Doc Brown: Tesela has had issues from word go./ His  hyperloop project keeps running into issues and drama. On the other hand SpaceX  is starting get someplace, 

On the other hand I do agree with him about needing to do something to keep sciences moving. It looked like NASA was starting to stagnate. 

On the other hand Nick you might be right. Musk tends to go for really big ideas.  StarLink  and or something like it on paper looks hopefull for filling the gaps and that is reeely cool

On Mon, Apr 23, 2018 at 7:43 PM, Nick Thompson <nickthompson at earthlink.net <mailto:nickthompson at earthlink.net> > wrote:

Dear friends and relations,  

There is a movement afoot to bring broad band to us here in the mosquito infested bog.  A group of locals is forming a for=profit company to bring internet (25/3) to hundreds of subscribers in our hilly, rural town.  They will put 4 “Radwin” transmitters atop 150 foot towers on two local hill tops with smaller repeaters as necessary.  The transmitters look for all the world like Mac Powerbooks.   Each house will have a waffle sized receiver. The plan for 200 dollar initial buy-in cost and a one hundred dollar per month subscription cost for UNLIMITED service at the advertised rate.  (No “up to”.)  I now pay about a hundred dollars a month for a Verizon jetpack which pays for only ten gigs of data.  To stay within that limit I have to turn off anything that moves on the internet, and go to the local library to get podcasts, movies, or to update software, or do a cloud backup.  

In short, I am enthusiastic about the idea.  What’s wrong with it?  And if nothing is wrong with it, why haven’t  all you Eldorado folks done it already.  Go ahead.  Rain on my parade.   I asked them if they were afraid that Verizon would get religion and put in DSL at the last moment just to put them out of business.   Their response was that  local DSL service is so crappy that it probably wouldn’t make any difference.  They say their real competitor is Elon Musk who is planning a vast satellite service that will light up everyone in the universe

I gather you have all been suffering gale force winds and duststorms.  Ugh.  We, for our part, have had seven snowfalls since we got here. (All minor, but still, relentlessly gray and chilly) The weather broke this weekend and the garden is beginning to be populated.   I hope the equivalent break is happening for you.  

Miss you lots, 

Nick  

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

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