h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

One of the more interesting speculative uses of the airship is to provide increased bandwidth to mobile communications for temporary but large gatherings of people.
Such an airship could travel to (for instance) the Olympics, Grand Prixs, major race meetings etc., and the combined revenue or advertising and bandwith leasing would easily cover the operating and leasing costs....darn, is it too late to give up this programming lark?

It's certainly more feasible than constructing giant towers. Maybe they should do this for humanitarian-relief efforts in refugee camps: just have a blimp hovering over the poverty and desolation (but at least the people will have mobile phones)

Not quite as stupid as it sounds.One of the major problems for people who survive natural disasters is finding out whether their friends and families are also still alive and where they are

Oy! Two against one! Those Howth folks have got me cornered!
I didn't think I was being stupid, actually. It's just that the juxtaposition of high-tech communications and human misery is always something that makes me wonder. Of course, the juxtaposition of high-tech fabrics and human misery is long established, as you can learn from photographs of castaways and refugees wearing old and donated company-softball t-shirts. And New York just had a nice little program going on where they collected old cell phones and gave them out to victims of domestic violence with the police emergency (911, I think 999 in British Isles is comparable) number programmed in.

The only connection I have with Howth is having spent a very pleasant Sunday there a week ago
The conjunction of high tech and misery that really appals me is when (eg) the Ethiopian govt spends most of its annual budget on arms. Many other egs too depressing to list,but it is technically possible to feed everyoneand second hand phones provide some communication hope. I've worked in places where a land line connection took 24 hours or a whole week for an overseas call. I'm currently pinning my education hopes in wind-up radios

I'm fairly sure that I didn't mean for refugee camps to be supplied with mobile telephones - although as pointed out, it's not a 100% silly idea.

However, airships use very little fuel just for the act of staying airbourne therefore a lot of what is currently done using helicopters (such as police surveillance, aerial camera platforms, heavy lifting to innaccessible areas etc.) would be better done by airship...and having seen the mobile phone masts over Donegal mts. this weekend, I would much prefer them replaced with a couple of airships - maybe even doing tourist runs as well...oh, for a local patent office

Your connection with Howth is far more tangible than mine.
On the subject of wind-up radios, I read in this wonderful book called Design in the Real World, by Victor Papanek about radio technology that was built with thermocouples and fit into a tin can. This way, you could power it by burning, anything: candles, animal dung, wood, etc. The device didn't have a tuner, though, so it was best for rural areas with only one radio station. Best thing was that it cost all of five cents to make, much less than the higher-tech wind-up. So when I read first about the windup radios, I felt that people were stressing the benefits of having a battery-free information source for the low price of US$10 when there was already radio technology available for 1/100th of that cost.

Yup. But there are some places where women walk miles every day to gather sticks or dung to make cooking fires where $10 for the whole village might be better spent.

Ummm. Interesting point you make there. Assuming, of course, that someone can get these radios at no cost to the villagers.