Low Tech Gutenberg?

Peace Corps Guy asks: "I have a friend who recently left for a two year Peace Corps stint in Mozambique. While there she has limited access to electricity, no technology, and not a lot to do with her 'off' time. She's a big literature fan, and many of us here at home would like to send a care package - but how best to ship pieces of free online text like Project Gutenberg to a developing nation? We can print it (high shipping and printing costs), print it very small and ship her a high quality fresnel lens (awkward), or put it all on a cheap PDA, which would be a high theft risk en route and in situ. High shipping costs on weight and volume are another major limiting factor. What alternative solutions can Slashdot readers suggest for shipping a freely available byte-stream to someone without a computer?"

A (compartively) new way of encoding byte-streams

[Macphisto]

You've got the right idea, but let me build on it. A relatively new development you may not have heard of has been created by some industrious Germans several centuries ago. This new method of presenting byte-streams is highly affordable, portable, and contains an embedded reader which does not require an external source of energy. While the initial selection of material was limited, I understand that the idea of the Gutenburg press has taken off to some extent in the following centuries, meaning that you should be able to ship any number of Dungeons and Dragons paperbacks to your friend.

Low tech data transport?

[ratboy666]

The Internet rises to the challenge!

RFC 1149 'IP Over Avian Carriers'

http://klubkev.org/~ksulliva/rfc-april1/rfc1149.tx t [klubkev.org]

This will take some preparation

[hoggoth]

Explain her part in detail in a letter you send beforehand.

At a mutually agreed upon time have a powerful laser flash against a satellite that will be passing overhead (for her) during the early evening. The flashes will encode the text in morse-code going slowly enough for her to read.

There are some practical details to work out, but this will work.

Or, of course, you could just send her a 10 cent paperback book from a used bookstore, but if that were practical you would have already thought of it and not asked Slashdot.

Similar problem here...

[hoggoth]

I have a friend with a similar problem.
He is going to Namibia for a year trek into the deep jungle. He will have a lot of down time. He is an avid musician, primarily playing the Harmonica. He currently creates music using GarageBand on his Mac, sticky solely to his sampled harmonica sounds. He is wondering how to bring his Macintosh, multiple CinemaDisplay LCD screens, and surround-sounds speaker setup into the jungle since he has to carry everything in his backpack and there will be no electricity.
He can't bear the thought of not making or hearing any Harmonica music for an entire year. I was thinking I could ship him a PDA and he could write down the sheet music, ship it to me, then I would enter it into GarageBand for him, create a Harmonica song, cut it to MP3, download it to his PDA, and ship it back to him. But this would be difficult and expensive.

Can anyone think of anything else that might work?