Jebba's (AP) — Hours after Hurricane Katrina slammed into the Gulf Coast and knocked out telecommunications across much of the region, Mac Dearman visited shelters in northern Louisiana to connect telephones.

Dearman doesn’t work for a phone company.

[..] Just as Katrina proved the vulnerability of traditional telephone and cellular networks, it also showed how Internet-based technologies could be used to speedily re-establish links with the outside world. [..] “It’s pretty clear that it was the folks out in the field who did some amazing heroics to get communications back up,”“We need to move toward a system where people are empowered to do what they can do.” said Carl Malamud, chief technology officer of the Center for American Progress think tank. [..] Read it on the Blag

¶ Wednesday, October 05, 2005