Techno-rebels spread wireless network vision

On the surface, it looks like an ordinary weeknight gathering of aimless guys. A dozen men on a back porch chew thick slices of delivered pizza between rat-a-tat banter. One wears a bandanna. Another sports a John Deere T-shirt. Several have counterculture beards.

But beneath the raffish exterior lie some high-watt minds. The talk is about bandwidths and binary codes.

Meet the geeks, a selective handful of Portland’s brightest computer science gurus who gather weekly at Node 236 – aka Tom Higgins’s house – to discuss all things wireless. They are modern-day freedom fighters trying to encourage people to host wireless connections to the Internet, with the hope of eventually unplugging the entire city.

The idea: If enough people share bandwdith and a spot on their window ledge for a small radio antenna, eventually anyone in the city will be able to go online free. It’s a new form of civic activism – driven by computer programmers who want to pool their collective knowledge for the greater good.

By Elizabeth Armstrong Moore | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

Full Story: http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0615/p01s03-ussc.html?s=hns