Lantern – Free Data Forever… from Space

This must be the best thing to happen to education since, well since forever. One laptop per child couldn’t come close to Lantern. With almost everyone in Africa having access to a mobile phone and soon smart mobile devices with Wifi. This could unlock a huge amount of potential for the continent. I first found out about this via one of the TED Fellows. Imagine having access to all the wwworld’s information & education from space for free. The folks at Lantern want to make it a reality and you can back this project on indiegogo. They’ve already reached $200,000 in backing but are aiming to reach $10,000,000. You can make it happen.

Lantern is an anonymous portable library that constantly receives free data from space.

Like the water we drink or the air we breathe, the information we consume feeds the very essence of what it means to be human. Lantern establishes a new baseline of human knowledge. We are not fixing the world for people, we are giving them the information they need to fix it themselves.

Lantern continuously receives radio waves broadcast by Outernet from space. Lantern turns the signal into digital files, like webpages, news articles, ebooks, videos, and music. Lantern can receive and store any type of digital file on its internal drive. To view the content stored in Lantern, turn on the Wi-Fi hotspot and connect to Lantern with any Wi-Fi enabled device. All you need is a browser.

Oh, and Outernet is free to use, always.

Wow, just wow. A solar powered, wifi hotspot which you can charge your phone that receives data from the internet, via space, for free. Is that even a sentence? Find out more on indiegogo. Scientia est potentia.