Turtlemail

I have this idea for an internet-smartphone-based anarchist postal system. This is my intellectual property, but I give permission for you to use this provided the system you make is open source and free to use. If you use this for profit I WILL SUE YOU. If you do make it, please tell me so that I can join in.

I live in the UK so when I say "post" that means letters and parcels.

The elevator pitch

You want to post a letter or parcel to someone. You go to the website and print off a label with the recipient address, a tracking code in plain text and the same tracking code as a QR code. Then you drop your post off at a local node, and volunteers pick up your post and take it some of the way when they happen to be travelling in that direction, using the app. The letter hitchhikes from node to node until it reaches its destination. Smartphones and QR codes make your post trackable.

It takes an unknown amount of time and it might get lost - but it's free and personal and adorable.

It's in the department of the internet with Bookcrossing and Geocaching.

Some aspects of it make it kind of like a social network and a way to meet people in real life. It's something to get you out of the house.

Name ideas

• The Mycelial Network (mycelial.net??)
• Turtlemail
• The Anarchist Postal Service (TAPS)

The system

Nodes

Members can register a "node" and be custodians. A node is a location where someone can leave post for collection and onward delivery. Each node has a unique assigned code and QR code.

A node can be a volunteer's home or place of work, or a safe weatherproof storage box in an accessible location, etc. The volunteer(s) maintaining it can decide how secure it needs to be based on experience. E.g.:

• Trusted delivery people could be given a key to a safe box.
• A cupboard outside someone's front door in a safe neighbourhood could probably be left unlocked.

Popular locations would be somewhere that lots of people pass through when travelling long-distance, like service stations, train stations, bus stations, etc.

All nodes would be visible on a map, and when you select a node you can see a list of things in the node, how long they have been waiting to move on, and their final destinations.

A delivery

1. Jennifer downloads the app and signs up and get a username.
2. Jennifer clicks/taps "print new label". The app prompts her to type in her name and address, the recipient's name and address, and the dimensions and weight of the letter.
3. The system generates a label with the recipient's name and address, the tracking number and the QR code on it. Jennifer sticks it on her letter.
4. Jennifer searches the map to find the nearest node and drop it off. This could be someone's home, or a safe box, or a local shop. Let's call this node "Node #1". Jennifer takes her letter to Node #1 next to the train station, scans the QR code of the node, scans the QR code of her letter, and registers the letter as dropped off at Node #1.
5. A local volunteer, André, is travelling to the next town over for a dentist appointment. Before they leave, they scan the QR code on Node #1. The app registers their presence at Node #1 and asks where they're going, whether they will be able to stop at nodes en route, and if so, which ones. André is travelling by train, and they can stop at a node near the dentist, let's call it Node #2.
6. The app processes the travel information and concludes that there are two letters at Node #1 that would get closer to their destinations if André took them to Node #2 on their way to the dentist. It gives the names and destinations of the letters to André, who finds them and takes them from the node and scans their QR codes. The app asks André to confirm that they're taking the letters with them to the next town over. The app registers those letters as "on the move" and departed from Node #1.
7. André takes the letters with them, and goes to the dentist. Then after their appointment on the way back to the train station their phone notifies them that they're approaching Node #2. They stop at Node #2, scan its QR code with the app, and the app tells them to drop off the two letters at Node #2. André scans the QR codes on the letters and confirms in the app that they have delivered them to Node #2.
8. The senders (and recipients, if they are members of the app) of those two letters get notified that their letters have reached Node #2, they have travelled x miles/kilometres and they have y miles/kilometres to go. André gets some new stats for their profile.
9. The app asks André where they're going next, and André tells it that they're going back home (which is close to Node #1). The app notifies André that Node #2 contains a parcel that would get closer to its destination if they could take it to Node #1. André agrees, finds the parcel in Node #2, logs it out of the node with its QR code, and hops on the train home.
10. A different volunteer, Amal, is on holiday near Node #2. She walks close to Node #2 and her phone detects her location and suggests she checks in with Node #2.
11. Amal scans Node #2's QR code. The app knows that Amal is away from home, because her current location at Node #2 is 100km away from the location Amal has saved as her "home" location. The node asks where Amal is going in the near future, and she gives the location of her holiday accommodation and another town that she is visiting tomorrow. The app suggests that she takes one letter to a node near her accommodation, Node #3. It also suggests that Amal takes Jennifer's letter to an address 0.5km from her home.
12. Amal checks out Jennifer's letter and the other letter using their QR codes. Later that day she drops off the other letter at Node #3 near her hotel, which is the home of a node volunteer, Sam. Amal scans the QR code Sam stuck to his letterbox, then scans the QR code on the letter. She accidentally scanned the wrong letter, so the app says "this letter could be posted to the destination 0.5km from your home address. Are you sure you want to drop it off here at Node #3?" Amal taps "no" and scans the other letter's QR code. The app registers it as delivered at Node #3 and she puts the letter through Sam's letterbox.
13. 4 days later, Amal goes home. She unpacks her bag and finds Jennifer's letter. She scans the QR code on the letter, and the app gives her directions to follow to the address 0.5km away. She follows the directions, takes the letter to the destination, and posts it through the letterbox. Then she takes a photo of the door, and taps the "delivered" button. Jennifer gets notified that the letter has been delivered.

Features this system would need

• Nodes would need to have multiple custodians. People should be able to message all custodians at once in a little private group chat, in case there are questions, so that any custodian can reply. This would be a bit like on AirBnB, where travellers can message the hosts and any host can reply, but it doesn't include everyone who has ever stayed with them.
• Nodes would need to have a way for people to input opening hours or contact details, e.g.:
  • "Open 9-5 Monday to Friday, walk in and ask for Bob."
  • "Private residence, please don't knock before 9am or after 7pm."
  • "Lockbox. Letters can be dropped off here but parcels can't, and only local trusted volunteers with keys can access the contents. Please text [name and number] to arrange a collection from this box."
  • "Cupboard next to private residence. Accessible 24/7, but bring a torch at night."
• It needs a way for post to be transferred from person to person without a node, such as if you meet a friend who happens to be a delivery volunteer who can take a letter on its next journey leg.
• Delivery volunteers would need the ability to drop off a letter at any node, in case you were intending to drop it off at a particular node and forgot. Then a delivery volunteer could drop it off at a busy, central node and it'd still have a good chance of moving onwards quickly.
• Delivery volunteers have a trustworthiness score, which is added to each time an item reaches its destination. Delivery volunteers with a low trustworthiness score might lose their ability to deliver in particular ways, e.g. between nodes, to destinations, items over a particular weight (which may be more valuable), etc.
• Recipients would need to be able to say if an item has arrived damaged, already opened, parts missing, etc. This could negatively affect a delivery volunteer's score.
  • Perhaps when collecting and dropping off an item the app should ask for photos of the item from all sides, or ask the delivery volunteer to confirm that the item is in good condition and hasn't been opened? This could avoid delivery volunteers earlier in an item's journey from being negatively affected by damage from later in the journey.
• Delivery volunteers would need an inventory that tells them what items they have in their possession and where they're going.
  • From this inventory, they would be able to mark an item lost or completely destroyed, and include a photo.
  • If the contents were salvagable, they could also have the ability to contact the sender (everyone is anonymous), and/or reprint the label in case they want to repackage it.
• Delivery volunteers would need a way to report that something was a different size or weight than the app says. This would notify future delivery people (who might be unable to transport something heavier), and it might also indicate to the delivery volunteers and recipient that the post might have been tampered with.
• Delivery volunteers would need a way to say that they didn't try to deliver an item onwards because they thought it might be risky and provide details, e.g. the parcel was ticking, or a suspicious white powder was leaking from the envelope. (In that situation, the app may suggest that if the person is worried they should contact the police.)

Cool things, in no particular order

• Delivery volunteers could have stickers or stamps that they put on letters and parcels, and then when your letter arrives your envelope is covered with cool things like a well-travelled passport.
• Nodes could have details about how quickly things get picked up, how quickly they get to their destinations, and which directions things tend to go in.
  • Delivery volunteers could know that it's better to walk 5 more minutes to give your letter a journey one week shorter.
  • The app could calculate that, along a walking route, it would be better to drop off a letter at Node #40 instead of Node #27.
• Signing up your home to be a node would be a really fun nerdy way to meet local people.
• You could have a calendar in the app where you can say where you're going over the next several months. That way you could pick up a letter that you can take very far in a week, or to its destination in 2 weeks, and it would be faster and more reliable.
• Delivery volunteers who consent to have their location findable by others could become moving nodes, like this:

1. A delivery volunteer, Joshua, is on the way to Node #7, 40km away. Joshua has set his location to be findable by other delivery volunteers on the move.
2. Another delivery volunteer, Jemima, is carrying some post to Node #6, but one of her letters would get closer to its destination if she gave it to Joshua to take to Node #7 instead.
3. When Joshua is less than 1km away from Jemima, their phones alert them. Joshua is told about the size and weight of the item. If Joshua confirms that he can deliver it, Jemima and Joshua are given each other's realtime locations and profile photos/descriptions (e.g. Jemima: tall black woman with long black hair, Joshua: average height stocky man with beard, often wearing a backpack) so that they can find each other and exchange post.
4. Joshua drops into a café where Jemima happened to be having coffee, and says hello, and shows his phone screen to Jemima. It shows the label of the parcel she has that he can take and deliver to Node #7.
5. Jemima hands over the letter, and Joshua scans the QR code to confirm he has received it and intends to deliver it to Node #7.
6. When the item is safely delivered, Jemima and Joshua both get extra points.

• When you scan the QR code on a letter, it could tell you how long it has been at its current location and how long ago it was posted. That way, if you are limited in how much you can carry, you can prioritise the items that have been travelling or stuck for longer.
• Delivery volunteers could have statistics about how many items they've transported, how many kilometres they've delivered things in total, etc.
  • The volunteer can choose whether this is private or public.
• Each item could have a tracking page that shows the various stops it has made along the way.
  • Senders and recipients could put gratitude emojis next to delivery volunteers' journey legs to say thank you.
  • Delivery volunteers could take photos of the item's condition (or of the item in exciting places), for the sender and recipient to appreciate.
• It would be impossible to predict how long an item might take to arrive, but when you're printing a label you could get a page that says "on average, items of this weight sent from your town to this destination town take [x days/weeks] to arrive."
• As soon as you print your label, you could choose to have your location visible to delivery volunteers. That way, if you aren't travelling to the nearest node for a couple of days, a delivery volunteer could come to your home to pick up your item on the way to a node if they're passing by. (You could also choose not to share this info, if you wanted your address to remain private.)
• One day someone will order takeaway from their local Indian restaurant and the delivery person will pick up a letter for them en route and deliver it with their takeaway and it will be SO COOL!!!!!!!
• Two people live on either side of a desert, and meet once a week in the middle of the desert to swap post and parcels. THEY FALL IN LOVE!!!!!!

Concerns

• "Home" coordinates and real-time locations of volunteers would need to be secure and not visible to anyone else.
• The network could be used maliciously, e.g. someone could post an envelope full of a toxic substance that could harm delivery volunteers or recipients.
  • Accounts would store location information for tracking, and so the tracking information could be obtained by police with a warrant. This would make it less anonymous than posting a toxic substance through the standard post system.
• Nodes may become inaccessible, e.g. someone who made their home a node gets fed up and deletes the app, and their home is functionally no longer a node. Delivery volunteers would need a way to report a node as defunct.
  • When that happens senders and recipients might need to receive the sad news that their item is trapped in a dead node.
  • Local active delivery volunteers could get notified that there is "stuck" post nearby, in case they feel like finding a way to get access to it and deliver it onwards.
• This cannot become a paid service like Uber or AirBnB! We've seen how that goes, and it sucks. I don't want it to get tied into the gig economy. It should have a free and open source license, and people must sign a code of conduct that says they will not charge or require trade for delivery.
  • There should be a way to report delivery volunteers for requiring payment. When reporting, it shouldn't be possible to report someone who asked for/invited something in exchange; it should say something like, "this delivery volunteer refused to deliver something when I didn't want to pay them/give them something in trade."

Adoption

My main concern is, especially at first and possibly for quite a long time, there wouldn't be many nodes or delivery volunteers.

I think if the label for the post has a logo and website address on it, and/or senders can include an explanatory label on the back, the network could spread organically (like mycelium).

In my experience people basically want to connect and be good neighbours and such. Most of us just want and benefit from community. I think if someone's friend said "hey can you download this app and deliver this letter to a node in your town?" they'd say yes. And people who work in libraries and community centres and doctor's offices would set up nodes just because they're nice people and it's fairly easy.

This hope is based on my experience of Bookcrossing and Geocaching, where there are so many bookcrossing zones and geocaches all over the world that are maintained and loved.

External links

• Feral Trade - "The Feral Trade Courier is a live shipping database for a freight network running outside commercial systems. The database offers dedicated tracking of feral trade products in circulation, archives every shipment and generates freight documents on the fly."
• Hackpost - informal delivery between hackspaces by members
• LARPer post - ditto, between live-action roleplayers travelling to LARP events
• Derby mail - ditto, between roller derby skaters travelling to games