Join us this Sunday for Chicago COUNTs – a NetSquared Camp! Great for non-profit and social benefit sector and for socially-minded technologists and media mavens.
In the afternoon I’ll be co-facilitating an Open Stewardship Session.
Archive for the ‘Internet’ Category
The Wrong Fight
Tuesday, August 24th, 2010Brough Turner says Network Neutrality is the wrong fight – I strongly agree – we should have been fighting for Common Carriage all along! This is a point I’ve been making for some time now.
However, the best way to fight is for communities to deploy their own networks and to interconnect them.
Somewhere out there, in infinite play
Friday, January 29th, 2010We don’t have to go very far (if at all) to connect Inquiry and Play.
Here’s something fun I invite you all to explore and join in with if you are so moved: http://ow.ly/11y6A
These short URLs tell you next to nothing so I’ll offer a little context.
There’s a group of people I know convened together in open space in the cause of the “metacurrency project (MCP)” … their cause is heavily shaped by the question of play. There are technical dimensions to their work, but their work is aimed at making new things possible for humanity. If I could, I’d be with them now. I’m with them in spirit.
One quick point of entry to their world view (and my own) is in the contrast between Scarcity and Abundance as dominant meme. This is about the attitude in which we engage each other more than about how many resources their are in the world at any given moment. (It’s also a question of not being dominated by this contrast of scarcity and abundance.)
Even accepting some finitude, or relative finitude: as human’s in the application of intelligence we are meant to conduct ourselves in a stewardly manner towards life… that is to say, our behavior should be generative.
So, even though this group is in part engaged in a technical question – building software and protocol under the MCP effort – the larger challenges are social and ideational: how we might live together… opening the space not to offer a final answer, but to situate us in generative spaces of inquiry and infinite play… where the burdensome quality of tasks slip away and joy comes to the fore and where we collectively and selectively form responses and rules with a freedom to mutually adapt ourselves and the rules.
On the voicethreads platform you can add your own voice and your own vision.
teach them to yearn
Thursday, August 6th, 2009If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the people to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery
In this, a lesson for the Digital Excellence movement, not unlike Daniel Burnham’s call to make no small plans.
Impoverished understanding of competitive markets
Friday, July 3rd, 2009Isn’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.
Bad at Math
Wednesday, May 6th, 2009I’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.