MetaFilter posts tagged with connectivity

The End of Solitude

sarabeth — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 18:17:14 -0800

The End of Solitude. In an age when many people are rarely alone, in near-constant contact with social networks composed of both friends and strangers, are we facing the end of solitude as we once knew it? Have we lost the ability to enjoy our own company, and learned to fear loneliness instead? William Deresiewicz seems to think so.

Internet Event Horizons

Kronos_to_Earth — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 20:46:30 -0800

Having trouble connecting to a site? It may be you and many others got too close to a network event horizon and the packets ...disappeared.... The internets has black holes, too. via

Voices of Africa

infini — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 11:37:55 -0800

"Thanks to tremendous progress achieved by the General Packet Radio System (GPRS), the wireless communication protocol, it is now possible for Africans to send articles and images (still and moving) about events taking place in their countries without using a computer and without having internet connection. Under those circumstances, the bigger the number of people expressing their opinions through that technology, the stronger becomes democracy, and the more valuable is the contribution to good governance efforts in Africa" - Voices of Africa, Mobile stories and videos from Africa. Quote above from article Mobile Reporters in Africa.

Voyageman — Fri, 07 Jun 2002 09:12:47 -0800

Next move - nationalizing the internet infrastructure in Europe ? 300 staff and union officials have blockaded themselves at the network operations centre in Belgium following Dutch telecoms company KPNQwest bankruptcy filing. Stocked up on provisions, taking shifts unpaid to keep the centre fully operational. "If we leave, then in three to five days there will be the largest internet slowdown in European history." From the article - KPNQwest's infrastructure covers 60 cities around Europe, estimated between one third and one half of all European internet traffic.