Isn’t it time to wake up? Ask a respectable economist the definition of a competitive market and you may be surprised to learn that the telecommunications and “broadband” sector don’t fit the bill. In order for the consumer and the pubic to benefit from a competitive market we need to be sure we have one. A duopoly is no better than a monopoly – indeed this is the market that put the USA at the #20 ranking. The #20 spot doesn’t tell enough of the story either. You’ll need to look at relative cost/bit transit. We’re number 20 driving along in a 2-cylinder engine car, while other countries have an F15.
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’ve always liked the saying that the Lottery is a Tax on people who are bad at math.
I’ve got a new adage, based on reading Sascha’s brief note on what the Australians are investing in their broadband infrastructure, by comparison with our meager and near meaningless investment.
The new adage: Bad Government is a Tax on a People (Who are Bad at Math)
The adage may seem out of place given that our friends in the Southern Hemisphere are investing close to $1,400 per person, whereas in the USA it would be closer to $25 per person, but my point is that we just don’t understand the math, first of relative speeds provided by our infrastructure compared with those being deployed elsewhere, and second by the relative costs per bit/transit of any data we are passing over our networks (compared with relative cost/speeds elsewhere) and third, the real costs necessary for a meaningful investment as opposed to either lip-service investments or sweetheart deals for selected entrenched interests.
The heart of the adage is this: we really need to understand relative scale, scope and value when we make any collective judgment or investment. (And likewise when we foreclose any option.)
Personally, I’m a bit more cautious when it comes to the notion of national broadband strategy. I want more freedom for diverse range of actors ranging from community to local government to private sector.
Ted Ernst is a good friend – I missed this gem from last Friday 13th…
Friends,
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