fab lab

Also published on the TechSoup Blog.

I wrote a blog post a few months ago about Fab Lab, a network of community-operated workshops springing up all over the world. I was excited about Fab-Fi, Fab Lab's name for the simple directional antennas they're using to build a mesh wireless network all over Jalalabad, Afghanistan.

Of course, to get the full effect of what's cool about Fab Lab, it's useful to take a step back. Fab Lab isn't about free wi-fi; it's about providing people with tools to produce whatever they want, tools that were inaccessible to consumers only a few years ago. Afghans are using the same set of tools to bring the Internet to Jalalabad that this young man in south Boston used to build an electric violin: