Make it available Offline: Digital divide, censorship, and application performance

GOTO Copenhagen 2017

Remember what was before the Internet? How you listened to music and watched movies without having individualized HQ data streamed from thousand of kilometers away to your muted browser tab? Before streaming, we used downloads and Sneakernet - the idea of data carried by humans (in sneakers). Also today, the Sneakernet carries an enormous bandwidth thanks to more affordable and larger capacity storage media. There are many reasons to discuss Offline applications and data, and it makes a big difference to millions of people – so let’s talk more about it!

In FAIR Denmark, we have learned that providing hardware access isn't going to solve the digital divide. In order to leverage ICT for education and knowledge building, we need to distribute and appropriate digital contents, too. Working in Malawi, one of the poorest economies in the world, we find a context where Internet is rarely available. Thus, we started to work with offline content distribution many years ago. This talk presents the applications and deployments that we work with and gives a more general overview of contemporary Offline ideas and goals.