Just last night I watched him on PBS (my alma mater) on a Dublin pub crawl.

He was my English teacher at Stuyvesant. It’s probably the proudest thing I mention about H.S. I’ve been so pleased with his successful second act career and the honor he received as a result. But I have greater honor for his role as a teacher. We were so lucky to have him as our teacher – and we knew it. I was in his creative writing class, and was so glad I got in the class. I don’t know how I heard or how I lucked out.

I do know that my deeper awakening to writing can in part be credited to him and his teaching manner.

From the pain come the dream
From the dream come the vision
From the vision come the people
From the people come the power
From this power come the change

Peter Gabriel (Fourteen Black Paintings)

One may fail to see the humor of the situation for want of experience, another may fail to appreciate the experience (in a joke) for lack of humor.

It’s funny, this occurred to me on today’s road trip… and all these variations are playing off of each other. Some stress the situation experienced, others a statement on the situation. I’ll leave it to the reader to play with the permutations. Drop the parenthetic remark above, and some aspect of the sense changes, but both carry meaning, multiple meanings for me. The abundance and joy of polysemy.

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.

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?

Here’s the description of the session, join us if you can!

Networks of Collaboration and Service: Redesigning Work and Partnership

Tools and Networks abound. Our challenge is in working together effectively. What is missing from the tools and practices of the social benefit sector? What are the opportunities for coordination among and across networks afforded by a shift in perspective towards building for the commons? Catalytic Communities, a pioneer in the solutions ecology will be the starting point for a collaborative design session — building the tools and culture we need to grow a plurality of commons.

That’s the idea. This could be the theme of a conference all it’s own. We’ll see how it goes. We’ve only got one hour, but this is one of the questions that drives me in my work., Even if we just foster a little seriousness on the opportunities this frame evokes, we’ll be taking a step.

Much work is ahead of us, and it feels good to feel again a pride in our institutions, our values, the progress of our history, and in this our public and collective recommitting to hope and virtue.

The values and principles our 44th President has eloquently pronounced are ideals I have long espoused – and yet felt at times like a voice crying out in the wilderness.

How many of us have felt alone in our ideals and now are strengthened by this higher kinship, a fellowship of spirit common to the species?

The highlight of this ceremony is that we can laugh with joy together through the wit and wisdom of Rev. Lowery’s benediction.

I’ve cleaned up the rough notes of my 3 minutes and I share them here as an “open note” to the transition team led by Susan Crawford and Kevin Werbach. Much thanks to Nathaniel James for coordinating the call!

When Chicago was exploring options for vendor driven citywide wifi networks there was a prolonged public debate and discussion (some through hearings coordinated by Aldermen, others through hearings specific to the digital divide committee, and more still in public meetings convened by the Chicago Digital Access Alliance).

Grassroots groups looked closely at what had become a contemporary re-framing of the digital divide – namely, Digital Inclusion.

In Chicago, grassroots and civic leaders determined that Digital Inclusion did not offer a big enough vision and was potentially constraining and divisive. At the most benign level we saw the Digital Inclusion language as a means of obtaining the endorsement of disparate groups by favors rather than involving community in true holistic planning processes or giving community a mechanism for effective oversight of communication infrastructure initiatives. The FCC (and really, all institutions of Govt.) should support a policy agenda that encourages inclusive local planning processes and oversight.

In Chicago, we evolved a conceptual framework around Digital Excellence as a new model for transcending the digital divide.

I will not go into great depth on this, given time, and given the current limited scope of the FCC (and the purpose of this call) but I do wish to underscore our view that Media Literacy and Digital Literacy are deeply connected, and that the FCC should be connected to (and support interagency) efforts addressing this.

In a new model of participatory governance there should be outreach efforts of governance bodies such as the FCC to educate the public on it’s powers and the channels for citizens and communities to avail themselves of the resources and protections of the particular agency. This would go beyond public hearings convened in recent years by the FCC and would be a mandate for public education on the science and policy guiding the FCC. This would institute a sunshine palliative to past practices and reduce the perception of privileged access to decision makers.

It’s worth restating the basic point made by many: A big vision for dealing with the digital divide under a a new banner of digital excellence would require interagency collaboration and strong integration with citizen led efforts.

Programs like DOC-NTIA TOP (Technology Opportunities Program) – quietly killed several years back – must be revived, along with funding for a new generation of hybrid Community Technology Center/Community Media Center/Community Network (given the new era of convergence on Internet Protocol as media/communications platform). TOP’s successor should be redesigned to leverage the knowledge and experience gained in these social/technology experiments and there should be parallel institutional support for the replication of any powerful community innovations that emerge as opposed to the unfortunate past model of funding limited efforts at innovation then leaving that experience in a database or shelved in reports.

Digital media infuse all aspects of life but historically most investments in digital literacy and access have had very limited goals (and moreover limited success) and tended to segment digital from other dimensions of social and public life. Efforts to redress the digital divide should not be limited to remedial kindergarten concepts of the divide, they should start with a big vision … our vision is a world where the majority of the public are confident in the use of collaborative tools, are able to express themselves in media formats of their choice and that communities are creating new tools that suit their purposes.

That’s close to what I said … there were other points I would have liked to address, but my watch was focused on digital-divide/access sector. I tend to take a very broad view on the scope of “digital” as touching many aspects of our experience as members of the community. It’s something that penetrates every sphere of life and any public program or service needs to consider the digital dimension and social divides that intersect. The digital transformation of our culture and economy is still in process – businesses have more capacity to adapt, as they can pass costs on to their customers, but government and community groups have less freedom in that regard.

Though the US has been cited as being close to 20th in global broadband penetration, I don’t want to see a narrowly conceived national broadband policy emerge without a deeper community oriented, community driven commitment to the higher aspirations of Digital Excellence encapsulated above.

The public at large, communities and municipalities need space for experimentation with new models of dealing with the connectivity issues and the tools that will ride upon the new media infrastructure. We need means of getting to the Internet through channels not owned by major corporations. We need to eliminate the stranglehold on the last mile (better described as the first mile – since they’re our communities). We need to open up the spectrum – we should have seen an equivalent to Moore’s Law in efficient (and expanding) use of Spectrum were it not for a regulatory status quo based on narrow interests and outdated or junk science where spectrum is regarded and held as property rather than as an arbitrarily divisible medium (subject to technical advance). The Internet and the Airwaves should always belong to the public. They must be administered with a long term view informed by science and the public interest. To restate: we need room for experiment in civic technologies and processes – at all layers of the stack.

Information Infrastructure resources for communities, the public and government bodies at all levels of jurisdiction should be supported in a Civic Garden model where anyone anywhere may freely access and interact with resources in the .GOV, .EDU and .ORG top level domains.

The Internet is the new medium for local, national and global civic discourse and such interactions should be privileged under the same principles of civic necessity that justified support of print journalism and the postal service.

Community capacity in the deployment of networks, services, tools is essential to a free and democratic society. I join with Lauren Glenn-Davitian in a call for a rewrite of the 1934 Act that established what is now the FCC in light of the ongoing evolution of technology and our society, and in light of the vision we have for ourselves.

While thinking about poverty two points come immediately to mind. First, we live in a world of great abundance. Second, and not unrelated to the first – the impoverishment of our repertoire of ideas and options is something we must take seriously – our symbolic or cultural impoverishment.

We live in a world of great abundance. In the context of recent global financial news we’re prone to forget this. In the context of the many effects of poverty we are drawn in to the immensity of the gap we must surmount. I return again and again to the work of Amartya Sen – in questioning the distribution of resources. Hunger and want more often than not is about a breakdown in the distribution and exchange of needed resources and rarely a result of insufficient resources for populations. Greed gets in the way. People are unwilling to let their wealth flow. We have the wrong idea of what wealth is.

Material Impoverishment persists largely through a nefarious “Symbolic Impoverishment”. This does not mean that social justice (or injustice) is not an active factor. So much more is possible for us as individuals and collectively as a species than we generally recognize. We accept limited options in the face of difficult circumstances. We reinforce the imagery of limited options for others. We find ourselves goaded by urgency and compelled on tight time-frames. Sometimes we accept external limiting definitions of ourselves, our station, what we deserve. We are distracted from our connectedness and what we ow to each other. (Georg Simmel’s notion of the relative decline Subjective vs. Objective Culture is relevant to this question – and reframes the challenge as acutely modern.)

We must set the highest goals and pursue them diligently, steadily. So much human potential is squandered. Life is squandered. We’re more caught up in maintaining a status quo, or keeping up with the current than growing together.

We must ask what human dignity demands of us when we bear witness to poverty and human suffering.

My call to the world of social and civic entrepreneurs with whom I find myself in common cause: let us each pursuing the social good work ourselves one by one out of a job. That’s my vision for the not-for-profit and social entrepreneurs – successfully closing the books on as many causes as we can so we may turn to higher challenges with the full complement of human creative potential.

This is the great urgency I see. These are two compass points on the map I follow.

THE TIME, it is to be hoped, is gone by, when any defence would be necessary of the “liberty of the press” as one of the securities against corrupt or tyrannical government. No argument, we may suppose, can now be needed, against permitting a legislature or an executive, not identified in interest with the people, to prescribe opinions to them, and determine what doctrines or what arguments they shall be allowed to hear.

John Stuart Mill (1806–1873). On Liberty. 1869.

The State is neither the sole nor the principle threat to the Liberty of Thought and Discussion.

Is it unlikely that corporate media, focused on profit, often owned by or in ownership of conflicting economic interests will serve this function? What must change? The media must serve a public duty untainted by impulse to self-censor when truth must be spoken. Report. Let the people judge.

The people must show some spine if we are to be free.

I’m really struck by the notion of immersion in a cultural setting – in the subcultures of our own society. The 30 Days series is great from that perspective and is doing us a “positive media” service.

This week has been odd for me. We still have so much polarization in our politics. Members of my extended family have views on the current election that are in stark contrast to my own and we haven’t been able to forge a sustained political dialogue that would be a basis for deliberation. That’s my higher ideal – dialogue that leads to deliberation. We need that first safe civil space however … a precondition to emergent deliberation where we really are working together to understand an issue… not debating in a winner take all modality where the end justifies the means.

Animal Rights is not the issue that wakes me up each day, but the questions of the cruelty of our factory farming system and vivisection are a burden to my soul. I’m just as concerned about our inhumanity to each other, but one thing is certain: this is not part of a beautiful society, this is beneath our human dignity, it debases all who are involved.

My bigger issue is how to be a better human being. I’ve got a long way to go. I’m ok with that, as long as I make progress, and others are with me.

I just caught this episode on Hulu. I don’t know how long Hulu keeps episodes available for those of us who will embed their video in a blog, but if it’s not here by the time you read this, blame them.

Susan Crawford, founder of One Web Day made a strong pitch to those assembled in Minneapolis last weekend for the National Conference for Media Reform… June 14th marks the beginning of a 100 day countdown to One Web Day 2008. One Web Day is a celebration of the Web – conceived as an analogue of Earth Day – and held annually on September 22. The web has changed our lives and continues to do so as more and more get connected. It’s worth celebrating.

Susan’s mission is to make visible something we may tend to take for granted, so that we can be clear about it’s value and more likely to defend what makes it special. I’m proud to be an Ambassador of One Web Day, here in Chicago.

Chicagoans are familiar with One Web Day and are getting geared up for September 22. At this week’s recent Chicago NetTuesday gathering at the Illinois Information Technology Association we began discussion of things we might do. Video interviews, cross-blogging, community wireless deployments, who knows what else?

The Chicago NetTuesday crowd mixes technologists, non-profit people and others interested in the social good that can be promoted with the web. We’re eager to mashup technologies, organizations and people for the greater good.

One Web Day is an exercise in positive media… there’s much to celebrate on the web, even if there will always be necessity for caution and prudence.

One Web Day is what we make of it … we everywhere… we using any device or application… we creating and sharing content and responsibility.

We’re just at the beginning of deciding the thing’s we’ll be doing here in Chicago for OWD.

I’ll be presenting the idea to several groups over the coming months, inviting discussion and creative action, and at our NetTuesday meetings we hope to generate more content and ideas for OWD 2008.

First let’s highlight the quote he’s reacting to:

Digital is a word that often gets in the way: Strive first and always for human excellence and towards our higher individual and collective purposes. Excellence is a matter of character.

Miguel responds:

I fundamentally disagree with this approach. We need to strive towards digitally-enhanced human excellence from the beginning, not strive first and always for human excellence THEN consider something else. Although sometimes it’s helpful to start with traditional tools–like Emily’s approach to bookmarking in the video below, moving us from traditional bookmarks to “social bookmarking” online–when designing things from scratch, you have to start with technology first. Otherwise, it never happens.

My inner pragmatist senses that there is a confusion as to what constitutes excellence, and the nature of the hierarchy between technology and human purposes. I am confident that an extended dialogue on these questions would be instructive and I invite Miguel (and others) to explore the matter with me.

There appears to be a temporal division in Miguel’s interpretation of my view… as a sequential ordering he objects to striving first and always for human excellence then considering something else (in this case technology). he argues that we have to start with technology or it never happens… the “it” being “digitally-enhanced human excellence” I take it.

At the surface, it looks like we’re in disagreement. I’d like to dig deeper.

I’ve written extensively on digital excellence, but from a moral point of view, we must always put technology in service to human purposes – individual and collective. This is a moral and conceptual ordering. In planning and undertaking our journey towards excellence it is a matter of intention and commitment to higher purpose. We embody excellence in the striving for excellence, and that is the only way to get there (which is an unending journey, anyway).

Starting certainly implies a sequence will follow, but we always have to start where we are, and it’s good to gain clarity on what that means. From that view, starting has many aspects: intention, situation, vision.

Miguel asserts that “when designing things from scratch, you have to start with technology first.” However, design implies an intention, a purpose. We have to get clarity on our purpose. I argue elsewhere (on numerous occasions) for dropping the digital. Digital stands in for new technology generally. I’m not anti-technology by any means. But in standing in for technology, it largely implies “new and better” … and obscures critical reflection on the term it sets out to modify. Whether the second term is “divide” or “literacy” or “inclusion” or “excellence” (or any other term) we would do well to pay more attention to the second term. When speaking of the digital divide, it’s merely the latest iteration and manifestation of longstanding social inequalities. We speak of digital literacy, we cannot ignore the higher faculties of reasoning implied in literacy. When we speak of digital inclusion – do we make as strenuous an effort as require to promote a generally inclusive society? Shall we address digital excellence any differently?

(The same argument applies to novel formulations of “e” (and i) …. eGovernment, eChicago.)

Don’t get me wrong. I am not anti-technology. (Nor am I an uncritical booster of technology for it’s own sake.) I am not against deep technological design and deliberation or potentially substantial investments in technology when it makes sense. But what guides a technical decision if not purpose?

The character of our pursuit is essential to excellence. The distinction between human excellence and digitally-enhanced human excellence is lost on me. It’s not a matter of first the one, and then (maybe) the other. It’s not a hierarchy of needs. It’s a hierarchy of purpose and values. If our aims determine technical means we will not delay. We havent delayed. We’re embedded already in the technosphere. Our society and identity is infused with technology and has been since time immemorial. The digital epoch merely takes it to new levels or extremes. The sense of an extreme is a sign of the tension of our adjustment, but the question is how we (continually) humanize our institutions and our technological capacities. We won’t ignore technology, we’ll affirm our proper relation to technology. Technology is but a means. We must take care in choice of means, surely, but we must be more deliberate in determining our purposes.

Are we still in fundamental disagreement?