If you’re reading this article, you’re probably using a Wi-Fi, 3G, or 4G Internet connection, and you may wonder why anyone would want to use the costly, old SMS technology to browse the Internet.
The answer to that: Not everyone has Internet access. Outside of your country, there are people living in highly oppressive regimes with limited Internet access. Cosmos Browser provides a way around that.
How Do You Bring Such Regimes Out Of The Dark Ages? Connectivity!
The Internet is the only medium on which all people can express themselves to millions without knowing the right people or paying a great deal of money to get their voices heard. This freedom of expression is paramount to organizing protests which change the world.
The creation of the Cosmos Browser by Stefan Aleksić and his team of developers (listed at the bottom) opens a window of opportunity for Internet connectivity, even where it is disabled outright, as long as SMS is available.
Apart from protesting, i’m sure that everyone living in such oppressive regimes would like to get Internet access so they can see what else is happening in the world, meet people online, and simply enjoy the Internet however they wish.
Speaking of seeing what else is happening in the world — This helps people living in oppressive regimes see the freedom and quality of life that they could have if it wasn’t for their oppression, motivating them to work towards a better future (however they see fit).
How Does The Cosmos Browser Work?
According to the Cosmos Browser Github project page:
‘After a person inputs a url, our app texts our Twilio number which forwards the URL as a POST request to our Node.JS backend. The backend takes the url, gets the HTML source of the website, minifies it, gets rid of the css, JavaScript, and images, GZIP compresses it, encodes it in Base64, and sends the data as a series of SMS’s. The phone receives this stream at a rate of 3 messages per second, orders them, decompresses them, and displays the content.’
Currently, this app runs on Android only.
The following developers created this software at MHacks IV.
App Developers
- Stefan Aleksić.
- Shreyas Raman.
- Rohith Varanasi.
- Justice Suh.
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