Why Local and Informal is Often Better

From Cory Doctorow, a story about why small, local and informal often succeeds when big and expensive fails:

Volunteers in Afghanistan -- both locals and foreigners from the MIT Bits and Atoms lab -- have been building out a wireless network made largely from locally scrounged junk. They call it "FabFi" and it's kicking ass, especially when compared with the World Bank-funded alternative, which has spent seven years and hundreds of millions of dollars and only managed its first international link last summer.

Locals and volunteers are doing what big foreign aid cannot. This is what Ivan Illich talked about for more than four decades.