wrythings

Free and Open Source Software Rules, and so do Free and Open Networks.

(Let’s not neglect open-hardware nor open-standards!)

With commodity tech running Free & Open Source Operating Systems and Software, priced at $300 $200, new (do I hear $100 per new system yet?) and with plenty or older hardware available for re-purposing, not to mention a proliferation of new networking and communication devices … we might take a moment to think of the potential ready to be unleashed, and to view how far we have come an achievement worthy of note.

What is next? Take our cheap hardware running software we’re free to modify and improve and interconnect, and let’s start interconnecting on our own terms.

We can and must move civil society communications infrastructure to the next level.

The International Summit for Community Wireless Networks is on the horizon… these are the folks who have been leading the way. We have the power to create the networks we want and need. If you were outraged at efforts to sink Net Neutrality or by the lack of a National Broadband Policy worthy of the name, if you are shocked by aspirations to filter, block and spy on content and services over the ‘Net, now is the time for us to (re)build our own.

A year ago, I had just returned from Memphis where the National Conference for Media Reform had convened. The timing and location of the NCMR gatherings has always been well considered. I rushed back in the wee small hours of the morning to be among friends at the annual i. c. stars gathering, marking the day we honor the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (Memphis the location of the “Mountaintop” speech and where assassins bullets made a great man a martyr the following day.)

Dr. King shall always hold a place of honor in the American Pantheon. Democracy Now has done great service today in honoring his memory by playing parts of several speeches.

I was especially struck by the importance of history, and the idea that the thugs that enforce order do not know history and while they might know physics, they do not know trans-physics. Human History is more than an unfolding of physics. Physics (here) is force, and those who govern with only guns, batons, and dogs, and water-cannons and fear and threat and not with understanding of history and appreciation of social progress (and the potential to slip) are but shallow “leaders”.

Dr. King’s lessons are important for us today, not just as record of where the nation has come from, but how far we still have to go.

The “Beyond Vietnam” speech, offered a year to the day before his murder forces a reflection on our nation’s presence on the world stage. Dr. King’s message was evolving. Social and economic justice are deeply entwined.

Having grown up post-Dr. King, after the many victories of the civil rights movement, I often reflected upon the meaning of injustice in the present day. Surely racism and other categories of injustice still exist, and we live with the effects of prior unjust policies, but when injustice no longer has sanction of government the strategy for addressing it must change. The injustice of person over person along categorical lines sanctioned by the state seems fairly distant from our (my) day-to-day life. It doesn’t mean it isn’t occurring. Indeed, on the world stage we are deeply enmeshed in this sort of thing, we’re just fairly insulated from most of it.

Here we are in 2008. What is injustice today?

How we choose to live together, how we conduct ourselves in our homes and neighborhoods, and our nation’s conduct upon the world stage, these demand reflection.

Are we on the right side of history? How can we know unless we know history? Our methods demonstrate we are not on the right side of history. We accept the necessity of force, the exigency of torture; we suspend due process.

If we justify these methods out of fear of failure, we have failed. We as a people will be so much stronger if we stand by our principles.

Dr. King concluded his “Letter from Birmingham Jail” with an indictment of the lovers of order over justice. The stumbling block and frustrating impediment to human social progress is the

moderate, more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is an absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice…

Dr. King’s wisdom is grounded in the ecology of community. There is an ecology to the history of peoples and nations, an ecology of human knowledge and right conduct, and a general ecology of human practices on this Earth. Our economic and social bonds, the practices by which we perpetuate an unsavory and unhealthy order must give way. We can choose health, but it must be an active choice.

The Prisoner - a British series circa 1968 - described as Kafkaesque. I saw a few episodes in reruns on PBS (I believe) when I was a teenager. The socio-psychological political parable appealed greatly to me (as it continues to) and I’ve wanted to have the opportunity to run through the full 17 episodes some time.

The lead character, Number 6 (played by Patrick McGoohan - who was born where I grew up!), a former agent of high rank in the field of intelligence/espionage resigned his post with no explanation who has found himself prisoner in a resort town known as “the village”. The village is an orderly place where people once entrusted with secrets of state or otherwise engaged in intelligence work are kept.

I won’t give a full background of the series, but I think episode 4 (entitled Free for All) topical in this primary season.

This episode opens for us questions around our fears, doubts, suspicion and paranoia regarding elections and the governance system. I’ll touch lightly on a few points, and perhaps return to the topic at a later date.

Our protagonist (Number 6) perpetually contends with the Order and conformity of the Village, his attention reasonably centered upon the incumbent of Number 2, a position with high turn-over. the visible and active figure-head.

Number 2 implies a Number One. Hierarchy is important to the image of order promulgated by the Village and the powers behind it. It’s more than hierarchy… it’s the idea of a class that is out of reach (whether single or a class of many). Number One is buffered, inaccessible, never seen. Only Number Two is seen to interact with Number One.

Number 2 is “democratically elected”, or so he asserts. But the people are so much in favor of the incumbency and the order, no one stands against him in election. That is an unsatisfactory situation. We need the ritual of the election. Dare we say, we need the distraction? The myth of election and democratic process. I’m putting forward these ideas as an expression of the ideology of hierarchic power imposed in the village as made evident by Number 2

Number 6 is recruited to stand for election… and there are many aspects of the episode we could delve into: why Number 6 goes along with the charade, why he proceeds in demogogic manner, the ambivalence of the order, it’s hierarchic concentration of power and the complacency of the many.

What is real power? What is power in our society? Are we more wed to the symbolic aspects of the democratic process than to the substance? What percent voter turn-out do the “free” nations have? Do we have faith in the mechanisms we have in place: voting machines, election certification, electoral college, campaign finance? Are we concerned with a true and wide (fair) enfranchisement of the populace? (Of all peoples?) What do we think of the rights, judgment and behavior of our fellows? Will we make the changes that make sense? Will we (and the media) be attentive to what merits attention? What aspects of social control do we enforce, actively and passively, to the detriment of our interests or values?

Be seeing you.

There’s a confessional book out on the New Hampshire “phone jamming” effort to impact the elections back in 2002. The author was interviewed on Democracy Now (Tuesday, Jan 8 2008). His work in New Hampshire and New Jersey under the direction of leadership is a emblematic of the most impoverished war mentality: winning at all costs.

Witness the two examples offered: first, the “phone jamming” … the overloading of the phone system at the NH democratic campaign offices embodies a straight-forward tactic in warfare, it amounts to taking out communications of your opponent. (Do you hear an echo of Sun Tzu?)

A second example, fits the category of psychological operations … creating pre-recorded messages simulating an automated phone message campaign of the democrats, republican operatives played upon racial fears and labor force insecurity by using minority voices/accents in NJ. Ugly rumors, manipulation of media messages, cultural stereotypes in the general school of low-rhetoric has become accepted. Impersonation of the opponent’s communications, and selective targeting of their likely supporters with divisive messages is significantly more calculated and abhorent.

(Other infamous moments in electoral history reek of the war mentality and speak poorly of our national politics: watergate - irangate.)

Party leadership (of any party) should not conduct itself in a manner beneath the dignity of our republic. Playing hard and playing to win - i.e. with determination - are not the same as winning at any costs. (We can debate this, but I think that even in war, we should not seek to “win at any cost”.) If in our politics we aim for a simple majority of the votes that are counted… partisan electioneers will tend to lose interest in a whole and healthy polity in the scramble for what amounts to a cheapened “victory”.

There’s a lot of room for criticism of our political system… winner take all appears much less attractive than proportional representation (beyond the two-party system), alternative run-off and consensus building paradigms.

Winning at all costs has a deleterious effect… it debases all involved. (But, as debasing as phone jamming and domestic psy-ops may be - challenging voter eligibility and undermining the integrity of the ballot system seem more nefarious. The former being a mean spirited and perhaps racially charged invoking of the letter of the law, the latter demoralizing those who might otherwise argue that our system works despite it’s flaws.)

I’m once again brought back to Kant’s maxim: never fight (a war) in such a manner that would preclude a future peace. I try to apply this at many layers of my life… personal relationships, issue advocacy, political rhetoric. It places one in a very different mind than the war profiteers and war mongers who are vested in perpetual domination and conflict.

The Story of Stuff with Annie Leonard

Excellent framing of consumption.

The notion of “astroturf” groups as contrasted with the “grassroots” is now somewhat familiar, but let’s further consider the phenomenon of industry funded institutes or “think tanks”.

These “institutions” are established to give the credibility of scholarly or scientific form to interest driven publications and statements, or to create enough noise so as to distract from or obscure the issues in play in that field. (Much as astroturf groups attempt to lend authentic public voice to particular positions, and keeping in mind that astroturf and industry funded policy think-tanks often operate in coordinated strategy.)

(NB: the science I am invoking here is human knowledge as related to practical activity… it may range from analysis of financial documents to questions of engineering potential, to environmental impact.)

If it were merely the production of ideas, studies, or reports where the content would stand on scientific or discursive merit, it would not be that bad. However, the capacity for publication and promotion of these ideas, along with resources to staff an idea (as opposed to staffing a line of inquiry or research) is the real danger.

One unfortunate result is junk science as basis for policy.

Another is loss of faith in the potential for rational (or even scientific) resolution of particular questions, especially governance and business matters with an increased likelihood that we allow mis-direction of our attention to the “freedom” of market actors.

We subjugate public policy to business interest.

Displacing civic matters with questions of business, finance, and consumption we short-change the equation we need to bring to balance. We exclude key variables.

For questions of communications policy and investment in public infrastructure, can we be objective?

Can we establish a framework for policy makers at local, regional and national levels?

In the wireless and broadband debates, can we leave open the fundamental questions surrounding ownership models, technology choice and range of network/technology/social purpose or utility?

These three questions are central to the effective planning of any infrastructure or technology project, whether in public context, or within an organization.

Among these questions we can outline a appropriate and necessary hierarchy: purpose, possibility, and plan.

Why do we have such propensity to take the plan as given, foreclosing possibilities inherent in technology and topology and tacking on purposes only to achieve sufficient buy-in from select groups? In part it’s the politics of contest, but along with a fairly uncritical acceptance of business assertions and a lack of faith in the rational potential of human discourse, we get the policy we settle for, and we settle for the policy we get.

Josh Breitbart blogs a warning to all who seek digital inclusion or more (perhaps excellence) for their community, here: Horizontal vs. Hub-and-Spoke Relations, or The Emperor has no Invisible Thread. The bottom line: unless your city has character and backbone, and cares for the people, the people will be ill-served by the network they get.

There are no tangents in holistic approaches to technology and community, so please bear with me as I tug that thread metaphor in another important direction.

Robust networks/redundancy; generosity/capacity.

Consider this image (evoked by Breitbart’s commentary on the as-yet missing (but promised) invisible thread): Sidney J. Mussberger (the character in the Hudsucker Proxy played by Paul Newman) dangling upside down at the ledge of a skyscraper reflecting on the need for the robust redundancy of a double stitch as the seam at his waist begins to give.

Mussberger (Newman) reflects on his (stingy/cynical) scoffing at his tailor’s suggestion of the double-stitch for his hand-tailored trousers. When a single-stitch will do, why spend more? He regards the tailor’s suggestion as an unnecessary expense and worse, an attempt to rip him off.

(Warning: Minor spoiler!) Mussberger’s pants don’t give way at the moment he needs them to hold together most. The Tailor generously gave him the double-stitch anyway.

What lessons to draw?

Along with tying our communities together in many horizontal relations (Neff and Philadephia’s “invisible thread”), and assurances of digital inclusion and economic development benefits there are public safety needs related to these networks. (We should explore how horizontality in planning and design would strengthen those purposes.) Robust, redundant networks are critical to public safety. Or, consider the demonstrated value of a small cadre of community wireless networkers post Katrina. (The lesson there being, volunteer knowledge and technical capacity, and the freedom to act in the deployment of networks is just as critical.)

We are being promised a lot of things in the selling of broadband and wireless networks. We had best make sure we are getting what we pay for and that we are prepared to pay enough. I wouldn’t bank my hopes on the generosity of the network vendors. Get what you need and get it in writing, then get it verified. You don’t want to be left in regret or wonder when hanging by a thread.