Meshtastic is interesting because it's basically "LoRa-first networking" instead of "internet with some radios attached." Most consumer radios are still stuck in the mental model of walkie-talkies, while Meshtastic treats RF as an IP-like transport layer you can script, automate, and extend. That flips the stack: your primary network can be intermittent, off-grid, and low bandwidth, and the internet becomes an optional upgrade instead of a dependency.

The bigger story is that this is what "local-first" looks like in the physical world. Phones are powerful computers that are useless as soon as the tower or backhaul goes down; a $20 LoRa board suddenly becomes the only reliable "infrastructure" in range. Once enough people carry something Meshtastic-compatible, you get the weird inversion where the cheapest, dumbest devices are the ones that keep working when the expensive, smart ones don't.