City ownership isn’t “monopoly” – that’s just the distraction of the duopolists. City ownership would be a civic service aimed at the public interest, not at the narrow interest that tries to squeeze the most money out of the copper infrastructure or cripple the Internet and stifle creativity because they can’t adapt.

The first rule of any network from a business perspective – buy or build your own when you can – don’t rent. That’s the mistake cities have been making for years. If it’s good enough for the private sector to own their own networks – let the people benefit from the same economic logic.

This was a reaction to some of the ideas expressed on the Seattle Post Globe.

I’m interested in more public dialogue, so I only provide my reaction here, and leave the others in that email exchange to speak for themselves and to audiences of their choosing – but as I have something to get off my chest, here I go…

(Wow, well, glad interest has been sparked…) my read is that real (as opposed to who?) people are affected in so many cross-cutting ways by media policies that they can’t even see it (or if and to the extent they do they are seeing so many things at once, and potentially different things from each other, with different languages to interpret or speak about them).

We’re embedded in the results/effects of media policy. Another factor to consider is the manner in which policy obscures itself. To the extent that those shaping policy are often angling for particular perks, obscurity is a strategy and an advantage … to those passing legislation/policy and serving narrow interests. The contrast between narrow interest vs. general interest in any policy (media or other policy) is the big puzzle. We’ve tended to accept the exigency of acceding to the narrow interest to get things done, or to get the uncomfortable questions off the table. We tend to steer away from the real work that would build enduring, generative capacity.

None of this is terribly helpful, I am sure.

Thom Clark makes excellent points in that capacity is policy … i.e. local capacity is both a (variably effective) policy maker and the result of policy. If we are to collectively “grow ours” (in contrast with “get mine”) then we have to invest in meaningful capacity building that seeds the local and builds lateral connections over these localities (not necessarliy spatial/geographic nearness) – in multiple dimensions – capacity in fields of interest, of professions, of other “community” of various stripes.

That is, every sector of life is touched by this.

In our work on Digital Excellence this was perhaps our central point. (We blend the concepts of Digital Literacy and Media Literacy at this point, at a very deep level, so they maybe synonymous or united at a higher level.)

Every sector, every aspect of our individual and collective lives is touched by media/technology processes. It’s important to pair these terms – individual and collective – it’s not just individual lives here, it’s how we live together that is affected, and our own awareness of our role and freedom to shape this. So it’s groups and communities and families, and organizations that have to be part of the story, too. Each of these flavor and shape the quality of my individual life and I have to take time to care for these aspects of my/our selves.

My gut is to flip the question on it’s head… show me any story or any aspect of life not affected by media policy. I recognize that that’s probably not compelling for the audience.

FWIW, (and to state the banal) I’m an individual… I engage in media activism, and media policy, and I buy into the importance of “being the media”. I endeavored to get others to some state of awareness on several interrelated topics (and to build my own awareness and understanding thereby), not to mention awareness of their interrelatedness, and I employ multiple strategies to do so. I have perhaps a very different notion of “policy work” than what may be commonly understood, but there’s the rub — all sorts of work are being re-imagined and restructured. (That’s nothin’ new, but perhaps only more so now..)

“Be the media” as sentiment and strategy is an expression of this transformation of work and life, and a recognition that practice and policy are one. Policy may otherwise be regarded as something that happens above, or elsewhere, or happens to you … but in this model, policy is what we contest and what we make and how we practice. If you’ve the motivation and I haven’t worn out my welcome take a look at the entry for Grassroots Public Policy Development in the Public Sphere Pattern Language project spearheaded by Doug Schuler.

Getting to this practice of “being the media” and being with (and for) each other in community, talking about and reforming our practice and our communities at the same time gives us something fairly exciting to talk about. Trying to be clear: talking about or sharing any of the strategies we’ve employed feels like a success story to me in that we’ve been building community and community capacity.

I’m tempted to enumerate tools, devices, strategies – ranging from the pattern language process itself to open space and other civic focused gatherings to new models of philanthropic or educational/research engagement to positive media to open data commons models – but any list would be partial, and would not honor the plethora of ongoing efforts and approaches to living together in a new way. So many things tied together … we’re enmeshed in good and bad ways. And as the story goes – each interpretation of the moment is subject to revision. Perhaps.

Any of you are welcome to tell your story here – or anywhere. How does media policy affect you, personally, or the things you care about?

Together we can enumerate and provide links to an array of efforts that are disjointed, though worthy. They may have different levels of activity or may be at a relatively inactive state after prior peaks. Enumerating and evaluating these would be a useful task for us, too.

We’ve got an abundance of toolsets and tool providers as well … and so the special challenge to a sustainable effort and a thriving commons becomes more and more probable (it’s not just probable, it’s the situation we have tended towards, and the situation we’re in).

Consider each of these tools and possible community spaces as an attractor. People like us, are seeking community around the practice of community ICT, and if they don’t find it they rightly constitute it for themselves.

A somewhat active space functions as an attractor in these circumstances and from a certain perspective it makes a lot of sense to go with the tool that is present and functioning at some level versus duplicating efforts and dividing the field further.

The issue, as I see it is that the field has multiple attractors none of which are established quite with the field in mind. Someone who finally finds one of these attractors may be quite relieved and may embed themselves in the community (which may or may not satisfy them, or may have fallen into a trough of activity – and there is something valiant in seeking to fulfill the promise of our potential as a wider community in any of these contexts).

But we here, knowing of the many and disparate efforts are a bit weary at maintaining a presence in any number of such sites and communities. Here, even with this conversation we’re making choices where to post, and we have doubts about which is the most effective channel.

We also recognize that as new tools emerge, new community attractors will be constructed by those who either haven’t found the other attractors, or for whom the degree of community there was lacking.

As we make choices based on our history and preferences we’re going to keep fragmenting this field, and reacting to the fragmentation.

Since there are existing sites of community or potential community, which should serve as assets to our movement, we ought to reflect on the perspective of “Movement as Network” (a paper by Gideon Rosenblatt of ONE/NW) – a thought piece for the environmental movement that I read with our field of Community ICT in mind.

What do we do with these assets, these many sites of aggregation, these attractors? Should we establish higher expectations? Should we push them towards collaboration and coordination? Should we disrupt models that don’t align with our own vision of Community ICT? I’ve got my own answer to these, you may all guess.

I’m inviting you to a new mode of practice where we consciously reshape this network of communities and resources. We can take initial steps to get data and information flowing and where it should
not matter which of these sites you come to, you can get the full swath of information you need.

Think for a moment of the WISEREarth Index – could their organizational directory serve as an equivalent of an OpenSocial for the NGO/NPO sector? (Thinking more broadly here than Community ICT – any non-profit monitoring the online world and maintaining any sort of presence there – soon sees a multiple presence effect and has some very partial representation of themselves in many many places, some of their own initiative, and some a result of scraping and some as a result of friends propagating their presence. None of this is sustainable under the current regime of information flow.)

All of this sounds a bit extreme and ambitious … plenty of big ideas litter our sector and have diverted us from more humble work (and some have inspired us to achieve great things, no doubt).

Yet, we can start humbly in this, and we have. Enumerating these spaces, evaluating them and engaging them… starting this conversation is perhaps our own way of moving towards the movement as network attitude. It is for me.

MM

This is one of Emily Barney’s many excellent tutorials. Diigo is an interesting tool, worth checking out!

If Chicago is a world-class city in a leading region of the nation, what are we waiting for? If we are ready to embrace the information age I don’t know what could make us more globally competitive than to remove the artificial barriers to information exchange in city and county. I hear tell there is a committee on data sharing among departments of Chicago city government. I look forward to hearing what progress they have made thus far and how aggressive they intend to be with regard to unfolding a new era in accountability and transparency. Someone, ping Hardik.

Good data is about feedback. Feedback regulates an organism or process. Here it would inform individual choice and guide regional planning. We all know the Mayor loves to have city services on the ball when it comes to potholes and attention to the visible amenities. These eight principles would allow Chicago to set new benchmarks for service delivery and quality of life. You don’t have to be an XML geek to grok this.

Open Government Data Principles

Government data shall be considered open if it is made public in a way that complies with the principles below:

1. Complete
All public data is made available. Public data is data that is not subject to valid privacy, security or privilege limitations.

2. Primary
Data is as collected at the source, with the highest possible level of granularity, not in aggregate or modified forms.

3. Timely
Data is made available as quickly as necessary to preserve the value of the data.

4. Accessible
Data is available to the widest range of users for the widest range of purposes.

5. Machine processable
Data is reasonably structured to allow automated processing.

6. Non-discriminatory
Data is available to anyone, with no requirement of registration.

7. Non-proprietary
Data is available in a format over which no entity has exclusive control.

8. License-free
Data is not subject to any copyright, patent, trademark or trade secret regulation. Reasonable privacy, security and privilege restrictions may be allowed.

Compliance must be reviewable.