Against Chokepoints: Optical, Audio, and Wireless Mesh as a Community Software Bus
Modern “open” software still depends on fragile chokepoints: corporate-controlled CDNs, app stores, DNS, captive portals, web application firewalls, cloud accounts, Wi-Fi, BLE identifiers, and infrastructure that can be blocked, surveilled, or simply unavailable. This talk demonstrates a tiny app runtime where people trade/propagate bite-size WebAssembly and WGSL code, audio/video/photo media, map/wiki diffs, and forum messages directly through physical presence: full-duplex QR/fountain codes, data-over-audio, and BLE mesh when user deems it safe. The point is not nostalgia for the bygone era of the Sneakernet. The goal is a practical, inspectable, community-owned software and media commons that can move through rooms, protests, disasters, schools, hackerspaces, and border cases to/from most digital devices (including smart watches) without needing permission from the Internet network operators.
Friday 1500 Gramercy Park Suite
