Post #1567677

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• @kworker@kolektiva.social 2026-05-10 17:55

  @adamgreenfield@social.coop ok I read through the full pdf and have thoughts! They don't stray far from my earlier skimming, but they're based on actually reading it now. I agree with the Meshtastic -> Reticulum progression and I'm pursuing that myself. I really love the good advice throughout the book on organizing and the social aspect of things. The tech is important but organizing with others is what will actually make or break this. It's also broken down into lists, roadmaps, pitches, and useful tips that make it much easier for someone new to organizing. The recommendation to have food at a meeting is an easily underestimated thing that is very important. I also really like that adapting these strategies to your local context is covered with an example of LA. I look forward to examples in other areas, especially rural ones. I also like the emphasis on just getting started with a friend, and that this can help get something off the ground even if there's nothing else in the area yet. I also think the advice on keeping up momentum and avoiding drift is good, as well as treating reticulum as a next step for people going in depth on mesh networking, rather than a requirement for everyone to switch to. I'm somewhat bugged by a few things like talking about meshtastic/reticulum as "layers", and as dirt roads/highways. I think this can give the false impression that they interoperate and that reticulum runs on top of meshtastic. I also wish the nrf52840 based boards were covered more, imo the limited battery life of esp32 based boards make them mostly useful for grid-based or proof-of-concept things, and serious off-grid meshtastic needs to use something more power efficient. I also feel like there's some tech entrepreneur mentality seeping in with things like covering "first mover" advantage. It is real that people who are early in a "space" can influence it a lot, and so imo should help establish welcoming norms for communities that push back against capitalist norms like running everything as a business and trying to monetize everything. But to its credit the book does also talk about the mesh as something one person doesn't own or control. I also think there's a missed opportunity in assuming the reader is the first one experimenting with meshtastic in their area, they may find other people already using it that they can connect with. Also meshcore would've been good to at least mention, but I understand omitting it to keep things streamlined. It also didn't mention the typical shortcomings someone would experience in meshtastic, like only getting half of a conversation because of the low hop count. I think my biggest criticism is the "web 4" framing and the explicit inclusion of "web 3". I do think there's people into "web 3" who are into privacy and autonomy who could be good to bring into community mesh efforts, but IMO they have to be willing to ditch the capitalism obsession that would bring in baggage like unnecessarily cramming Merkle trees (excuse me, I mean blockchains) into things. There was already a LoRa "web 3" company called Helium that IMO is a better example of corporate capture of these kinds of things than an actual community network. "Web 3" is an old marketing buzzword that's most associated with the amazing NFT scam, unregulated securities and a scummy rugpull-of-the-week industry that has some very specific useful applications. Meanwhile reticulum offers a way to build an autonomous data network that can use whatever existing hardware is laying around that feels most promising for building a resilient ability to communicate regardless of governments/ISPs/power grids, and without being locked in to a particular technology or business model. It's more of a departure from the web as it is than a continuation of increasingly desperate business models like the "web 1, 2, 3, 4" framing implies. IMO the "web 3" world is fully tied in with capitalist pipedreams that are killing us like hyperscalar AI data centers, while the best of the mesh network efforts are building a tangible step away from that death cult, which is a huge part of what makes them interesting. Your off-grid autonomous community network isn't actually off-grid or autonomous if you need an LLM in a hyperscalar datacenter to write its software for you, but I digress. "Web 4" silliness aside, I overall like this book and think it's great for encouraging people to just get started, and providing enough of a practical roadmap to actually follow through on it. Getting started and keeping momentum is the hard part, but once an active community forms you'll get active tech experimentation and opportunities to bring new people in. You'll also have the "web 3" acolytes balanced by other people ;). As much as I'd nitpick or criticize things in the book or the project as it's presented, if this gets people to start a local group of people getting to know each other and building out a mesh network that people actually use, that's a big win. Such things can't really be reduced to a number, but 7/10

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