Let’s imagine you’d have a file you want to share with a friend. A PDF document, an eBook, a picture, whatever. What would you do? Chances are high that you would attach this file to an e-mail or an instant message and send it to your friend. Maybe you would share it via Facebook, Dropbox, Twitter. One or two clicks or taps and several seconds later, the file would be in your friend’s inbox, thanks to the omnipresent and therefore convenient Internet.

The procedure described above has a requirement (1) and an implication (2):

1. Sender and receive should have rather fast Internet connectivity. Having fast Internet seems to be self-evident for people living in infrastructural developed regions. But for a farmer in Wyoming, a villager in Africa or a nomad in Mongolia, it’s not. And yes: African villagers and mongolian nomads have computers and/or mobile phones, too. Lots of them, if you believe it or not.
2. Every information transfer via Internet could (and will be) tracked in one way or another. No matter if advertising or media industries, police authorities, intelligence agencies or whatnot: There are countless instances who are interested in knowing what you do on the Internet, and with whom. Take Google or Facebook, for example. Their wealth and power are based on knowing what you search for on the Internet, and with whom you have a relationship. Google even takes this so far, as to scan your Gmail inbox… to serve suitable ads to you. Sure, you can use crypto tools like PGP¹ to encrypt things you’d like to transfer via Internet. In addition, you could use tools like Tor² to obfuscate with whom you’re communicating and which web sites you visit. But let’s be honest: Using such crypto tools is more or less a pain in the ass.

So let’s assume you don’t have fast Internet connectivity (or none at all) or you don’t want to be tracked. How would you transfer a file to your buddy under such circumstances?

You could copy it to a USB memory stick, bring it your friend, so she could copy it over to her computer. In the beginning of the 2000’s, on Cuba nearly nobody had Internet, but lots of people had PCs. So they used USB sticks as kind of a sharing network medium, or let’s say they created a USB-stick-based Cubanet.

For many people in developing countries, mobile phones are the primary or often the only computers (… interestingly like for many European or US teens). Lots of them even use their mobile phones as eBook readers³. When having a mobile phone only, using USB memory sticks as transfer medium seems a little awkward.

But there are two technologies which are included in nearly every more or less modern cellphone, even in cheap, so-called “feature phones”: Bluetooth and WiFi. Both technologies offer the possiblity to create wireless, short distance “ad-hoc” networks: Two or more devices connect to each other for as long as data transfer is needed. After that, they disconnect. Cheap, fast, without Internet connectivity (and therefore untrackable for the Internet’s Big Brothers). Such networks are called “ubiquitous networks” or “opportunistic networks”.

Now, let’s go back to the developed nations. There is a new trend on the gadgets market: Wearable computers, or “wearables”. Tiny computers, for example “smart watches”, which will serve as kind of an extension to smartphones. Or think of tiny computers sewn into your clothes with specialized tracking capabilities (maybe for your health data), tiny digital cameras (GoPro, anyone?), whatever. All these little computers need a way to transfer their data to a central hub. Especially for very small devices with small batteries, it seems unlikely to me that they will have a direct Internet connection for permanent data transfer. It seems more likely that they will connect to a central hub (think of your home PC) via Bluetooth and/or WiFi, which means that they will do their data transfer via opportunistic networks.

Apple already has included opportunistic network capabilities into iOS, the operating system for their iGadgets:

• With AirDrop, iOS users can share files wirelessly, via WiFi, without Internet connection.
• Multi-peer Networks offer a way for communicating without Internet, via WiFi. It’s even possible to use one peer of such a “mesh network” as Internet router if it has Internet connectivity.
• iBeacon is a new technology to serve for example as an information sprinkler if an iOS user approaches a respectively equipped device (maybe for product information in shops).

If you look at the first beta version of iOS 8 (coming in October 2014), these technologies will be extended and optimized, probably because Apple plans to introduce new gadgets which will need these opportunistic network capabilities to share data with your Mac, iPhone or iPad.

Sharing like nomads

Maybe you wonder what iOS’ opportunistic network capabilities and people in developing countries have in common. Maybe you think: “Hell, most of them couldn’t afford an iGadget in their whole life!” Yes, you’re right. Sit back and relax.

Let’s take a look at nomads. Tribes with flocks which cross the lands. There is one common characteristic about nomads: Wherever they come into contact with other people they do some kind of exchange. Maybe they sell animals, or meat, milk or cheese. Maybe they interchange their goods for goods of other people. And not only externally, but also inside their tribe. A nomad’s life is a constant “exchange life”.

Now let’s imagine some nomad (or African village) buddies have mobile phones, smartphones. Probably Android phones. Good Android smartphones are cheaper than you might think⁴. One of these buddies rides up a hill and (hurray!) gets a 3G signal. So he connects to the Internet and downloads some free eBooks. Maybe he and his buddies are SF fans and they like Cory Doctorow, who gives away his eBooks for free⁵.

And now let’s imagine that our buddy has a file-sharing app on his smartphone. I call this app Nomad. Whenever he passes another smartphone user who has the Nomad app, both smartphones will automatically connect to each other via an opportunistic network and share their files. Our friend rides back to his tribe, whenever he crosses one of his buddies, swoop!, his new eBook will be automatically shared. Maybe the tribe will come to a town. Whenever one of the tribes’ Nomad users will cross another Nomad user in town, swoop!, happy file-sharing!

Maybe we could refine this process. Imagine you could insert an interest profile in your Nomad app. You could say: “I’m interested in SF, Fantasy, and non-fiction books about animal breeding.” When you insert eBooks into your Nomad app, it would ask you to tag them: SF, Fantasy, etc. When you’d cross another Nomad user, your smartphone would ask the other smartphone: “Hey, do you have SF, Fantasy or non-fiction books about animal breeding?” If yes, then the respective eBooks would be transfered.

Or let’s imagine that you have files you’d like to share with real friends (or a specific person) only. For this case, your Nomad app could generate a public key pair, which you could share with friends. If your Nomad app knows the public keys of your friends, you could file digital documents in a special reserved zone, which is invisible for the public and accessible only to your friends. This way, political activists in repressive countries could share information without interacting directly with each other and without using the Internet. All they’d have to do would be to cross each other on the street.

The use cases of such an app are virtually endless. Publishers could use it to distribute book samples (…let’s imagine information sprinklers placed in book shops, which send respective ePub files to Nomad installations). Teachers could use it to distribute learning materials (…and students to distribute cheat sheets). Shops could use it to inform customers about special offers. Villagers in rural areas with sparse Internet connectivity could use it to spread important regional information. And all this without the Internet, without tracking, without broadband cables or 3G/4G cell towers.

Yes, I know, there are countless things which had to be rethought. Battery consumption, junk files, duplicates, maybe encryption and random MAC addresses to prevent user tracking, compatibility issues and whatnot. But I think, the world needs a digital nomad.

What I find very charming about this idea is its personal character: You have to meet people “in persona” to share with them. But on the other side, Nomad automates the actual sharing process. So, on one day you might think “Oh, this eBook could be interesting for Jane” and you would insert it into Nomad. Some days later, you would meet Jane on the street and both your Nomad apps would do the actual sharing, although you might have forgot about the eBook, yet. It’s one of these examples of the quote: “A perfect gadget is invisible to its user.”