Xeni Jardin spent weeks off in northern India looking into how technology and media have affected the Tibetans living here: She talks in one of her four reports for NPR radio show Day to Day about a mesh wireless network that uses Tibetan Buddhist temples--typically the highest point in towns--and abandoned radio towers. This isn't a public Wi-Fi network. Rather, it's a tool for communicating about Tibetan culture among their own society and with the outside world. Nodes are solar-powered; batteries are heavily used where electricity is relied on. About 2,000 computers hook into this network, and a summit will be held in October.
This was part three of four. Part I deals with a nomadic Hindu tribe that lives near the Himalayas; the second, about Tibet's exile community's connections via the Web; and the final about "Lhasa Vegas," in which prostrating pilgrims are juxtaposed against "garish sights and sounds."