Life is a Mystery
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High speed for public housing

/ 29 March 2008

OK, Thinking Machines was cool. Then to have the gall to imagine not just indexing, but also archiving the internet. And then to believe that for $10 a book we could scan the content of our libraries. Brewster Kahle just finds one amazing thing to do after another, this list isn’t even half complete. Anything seems possible. Now I hear that he has turned IA’s highspeed switch into a pathway to the internet for public housing projects in San Francisco.

The apartments are connected to the Internet at 100 megabits a second, a speed that contrasts sharply with the normal high-speed Internet service offered by telephone and cable companies, which is usually less than 6 megabits a second. […]

“We are pleased to be the first nonprofit organization to bring public housing online,” Mr. Kahle said. “We are excited to see much faster access to the Internet as a way to experiment with advanced applications, and are pleased that the underserved get first access to advanced technology.”

He just can’t be stopped! Way to go, Brewster.