Room Service

Transcript

1. Julian Pankratz

   This is Audio Logs. I’m Julian Pankratz, and I’m speaking with J. Bone, who leads LoTek and helped build its first network in Newark in 2008. Welcome.

2. J. Bone

   Good to be here, man. Long way from the rooftops.

3. Julian Pankratz

   I have to ask about the episode title. You suggested “Room Service.” Why?

4. J. Bone

   Years back we took in a guy who was having a very bad week. Big shot, used to hotels, used to everything being done for him. First night in the neighborhood he’s standing on a roof shouting that he wants room service. Somebody handed him a ladder and a radio. That’s room service here. You want it, you build it.

5. Julian Pankratz

   Did he help?

6. J. Bone

   Eventually. Everybody helps eventually.

7. Julian Pankratz

   Tell me about that first network.

8. J. Bone

   One block. A few secondhand radios, some borrowed tools and a relay we mounted under an old bridge, because from under there you could see every roof we cared about. The phone company had told us for years we weren’t worth upgrading. So we stopped asking.

9. Julian Pankratz

   And the signal work?

10. J. Bone

    That was Jones. Smartest one of us, no contest. Jones could pull a clean signal out of noise like nobody I’ve ever met. Retired now, with honors. We still talk about Jones like a founding member, because that’s what Jones was.

11. Julian Pankratz

    Seventeen years later there are sixty-four LoTek networks. What makes one last?

12. J. Bone

    Not the gear. The gear is easy. Networks die when the two people who understand them move away, or when one big repair comes along and there’s no money. So every network elects stewards, keeps a maintenance fund, trains new people every month, and has a legal home, a co-op, something that outlives any one of us. Do those four things and you’re fine.

13. Julian Pankratz

    And it changes how people use the internet?

14. J. Bone

    Completely. When it’s yours, you use it for your own stuff. Tenant meetings, the corner store’s orders, the kids’ homework group, the neighborhood board. People stop thinking of the internet as something that happens to them and start thinking of it as something they run.

15. Julian Pankratz

    Advice for a neighborhood thinking about starting one?

16. J. Bone

    Find the roof with the best view and the person with the most patience. Then call us. We’ll bring the ladder.

17. Julian Pankratz

    J. Bone, thank you.

18. J. Bone

    Anytime. Stay connected.