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Comment by aaron695 | Hacker News Reader

Internet in a Box DOES NOT WORK

I don't know how many more times this needs to be proven.

You do not understand data, you do not understand the reality around you, you do not understand 80:20 style engineering rules, you can't look at previous implementations of the Internet in a Box and see it didn't work.

Worse, you now live in a Starlink era where you can give them a real "Internet in a Box" and there is no solution people can just roll out. Talking a proper Linux setup, real hacker and nerd stuff, but because it's not Data Hording 101 no one will tackle it.

Internet in a Box is a great example of why Western foreign aid is failing and China is moving in. The West no longer builds infrastructure for the poor (like a Linux build) and feeds them wishy washy stuff. Facebook does more for the poor in this area.

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Could you elaborate on/point us towards resources about why it does not work?

It's been around since 2012 and the best Wikipedia has - "explored using these boxes in the Dominican Republic for three months." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet-in-a-Box

Where is a follow up study 3 years later? Are there any follow up studies [1]?

(I have said in past comments the medical version might work, it failed in the Dominican Republic [1])

One follow up study - [1] https://www.sipa.columbia.edu/sites/default/files/2023-01/In... which is not real positive.

Why does it not work? An idea to think about, physical encyclopedias and university textbooks have been around forever and accessible.

I've worked in schools with 1000's on one ADSL trying to use proxies to cache. I've volunteered for a few years in country on mobile apps for use in very low PPI villages without internet. I'm not coming at this with zero experience.

It's impossible to discuss these things on HN, there is neither the technical or process knowledge here, I could be totally wrong but I have looked hard to disprove myself.

The solution I propose Starlink -> box with billing / access control + terabytes of offline vids/books + fun online games, that an idiot with determination can manage and make a profit or run free and works well in a country where the MPAA doesn't exist.

Your analogy with books doesn't really work. As a book is only usable by one individual at a time. Whereas a digital book can be shared.

I've spent the past 8 years focused on this theme, more or less, because my conclusion after finding things like internet on a box (and various similar projects) was that they offer too much information (and also present it in a useless manner).

I've lived in many deeply impoverished communities, and they don't need a full version of Wikipedia, or a medical encyclopedia. They need to know how to easily and cheaply implement basic sanitation and hygiene, basic first aid and nutrition, efficient sustainable cooking and agricultural practices etc... Plenty of effort was spent on that stuff in the Appropriate Technology movement, but all I ever see from it all is wiki articles or 70 page pdfs (which many can't even read, even even if they were in their native language). No one is learning anything from those resources.

I brought this up with some orgs similar to IIAB, and they were just bewildered. So, I made it my life's work to address this in a genuinely useful, accessible, practical way. Hopefully I'll be able to share something in the next year or two...

This, of course, is not to say that they don't have the current or future potential to learn these things, let alone that such info should be withheld. But it's just a matter of practicality of time, resources, efficacy etc. If they can get out of extreme poverty - which many basic things can very much help with - maybe they'll have more time, health and money to pursue academic education, etc

The proof of this, of course, is that we have access to all of humanity's knowledge, and have self-evidently done very little with it.

Agreed - it's not all of wikipedia, it's the parts that matter. They could do this with much less storage. Maybe just an SD card in an old phone?

What I'm getting at is that even wikipedia is not useful for communities who completely lack education (and perhaps even reading ability), technology, and economic stability. They need, more than anything, to get sanitation, clean air, nutrition, larger crop yields from healthier soil and better practices, etc... Wikipedia doesn't have any of that info. Even Appropedia doesn't really - its too superficial (and not translated) to be actionable, especially for these groups of people.

Once those issues are sorted out via more appropriate teaching and logistical methods, solidarity, etc... they'll have health, time, and money with which academics and anything else can be pursued.

Its just basic Maslow's hierarchy of needs...

All of the people who are working on these sorts of offline education projects are completely out of touch.

Just read the follow up study. A local affiliate of Rachelplus was the one who I mentioned in my other comment as being bewildered and worthless. It's just some clueless and not particularly invested bureaucrats running it, and they are evidently incentivized to just get devices in schools, with little regard for how effective it ends up being (or if the devices even end up working at all)

The guy running it was bewildered and even offended when i said a huge medical encyclopedia was worthless - there's like 10 conditions that affect the majority of people here (smoke, parasites, diabetes, dental issues, obesity, malnourishment, sleep deprivation, emotional/psychological trauma, etc), all of which are simple to treat and also to fix/prevent with basic technologies and living practices. As with people who have access to all information, they don't actually need it - just live well. If they need real medical knowledge, they'll need to find their way to a doctor anyway. The same applies to the rest of the knowledge - they'd learn more effectively anyway through practical, effective projects.

I also tried to talk to/work with the people in charge of rachelplus technology in improve it in many ways, but they were enormously disinterested as well. Such are the ways of the majority of non-profit orgs in the social/economic development world (and probably in most other realms as well)

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