Sharing Networking Resources to Create a Pervasive Infrastructure

We propose a range of techniques to motivate people to share a small fraction of their available resources in designing a new networking technology to provide near-ubiquitous connectivity to others. Such technology can be used whenever the infrastructure is unavailable to provide general connectivity between individuals, and to to the Internet at large, and particularly in cases of emergency. People’s motivations for action range from selfish to altruistic, including mixed motivations that might be hard to classify as either one or the other. We would like to support individual choices to use our technology using any such motivations. Gaining credit within an online community and providing resources when abundant for the individual so that others will provide when the individual’s resources are scarce are often considered selfish motivations, but they support the communication and online community as well. More directly altruistic motivations include participating in and supporting emergency communications, providing a service to others, and contributing in building a new online community. Generally, we hope to cater to a range of motivations with the benefits that the new technology can provide to the individual, as well as the benefits the technology can provide to society and large numbers of individuals.