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Tech rebel is...
SUPURBO!
ONNO PURBO had barely finished delivering his paper on
liberation technology when a siren sounded and two uniformed men ran down
the aisle and placed him under arrest. Dragging him from the podium, they
thrust him into a police vehicle and took him away.
Of course, it wasn’t for real. The police vehicle was
actually a supermarket trolley – fortunately for the actors, Purbo is a
small man – physically, that is. In the ways that count, he is a giant. So
what has Purbo done that made this entertaining charade - Purbo himself was
giggling helplessly – so relevant?
Fundamentally, Purbo has gone over the heads of the government direct to the
Indonesian people, whom he is empowering with low-cost, build-it-yourself
neighbourhood networks that bypass the telcos and deliver Internet and
telephone services at a fraction of the cost of doing so conventionally.
Almost all his writings – he has authored 40 books – are available from his
web site free of charge. He travels around schools and universities, showing
students how, with a little study and effort, they can get 24-hour Internet
access at a cost of 50 US cents a month! He shows anyone who cares to
inquire how they can “borrow” the telco’s telephone number to make free
calls over with VoIP).
Now 41, married and with 5 children, Purbo has been a technophile from an
early age. An electrical engineer and ham (amateur) radio operator, he
became a professor at Bandung University. An early believer in the Internet
he spent seven years trying to convince the government of the validity of
his radical vision.
“I
helped to draft a policy document. The government passed on to the World
Bank. They looked at it, dismissed our recommendations out of hand and told
the government they should rather spend millions of dollars on conventional
systems. So I gave up on them.”
He
resigned from the university three years ago and - jobless and with no
assets but his knowledge and his friends - proceeded to give away this
knowledge to anyone who cared to receive the gift. Most of the 40 books he
has written, as well as much other material, is available free of charge on
his website: www.apjii.or.id/~voipmerdeka/. He shows people how much can be
done with obsolete equipment – use a $10 dollar 486 PC as an Internet
terminal, build an antenna out of a discarded tin can for a dollar; run
low-cost cabling shielded by plastic pipe across roads under speed bumps
placed there by community volunteers.
(Anyone doing this in South Africa would certainly be arrested and most
probably fined heavily, if not jailed.)
So
has he actually broken the law? He giggles, as he often does, it is an
endearing habit. “We did steal some spectrum,” he admits.
Was he arrested? “No, but the police questioned me.”
What did he say to them? “I explained that I am a professor – I’m still a
professor even though I’m jobless – and that I am conducting an experiment.
A professor in Indonesia has status, so they let me go.”
Was anyone harmed by his activities? “Maybe the telco and the government -
not very much.”
Why has the government not cracked down on him? “The government doesn’t like
to confront the people. If you build a constituency among the people, they
hesitate to confront you.”
If
he’s jobless, how does he feed his family? “ When you give things away,
other things come back to you. I receive sponsorships from manufacturers who
benefit from the fact that I am helping to create a market for them.” And he
adds with another giggle: “although I’m jobless and people keep offering me
jobs, I’m not looking for job.” Nevertheless, he will be doing some work of
IRDC during a sabbatical from being jobless.
Why does he do all this? “I hope to go to heaven when I die.”
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