After messing with wifi it is now time to mess with Fiber Optics. It seems that, once you have declared yourself as an Internet Operator you can access what is called a “neutral point” from where all others operators and ISP connect to the Internet. Guifi.net has finally reached the status of “operator” and is able to connect to one of such “neutral points”, CATNIX, in Barcelona. From there, it is just a mater of time to keep extending the network with FO. People in Australia are already digging for their FO with tractors (see video). Let’s see how guifi.net diggs into the earth to ground it’s airwaves

Meanwhile, here it is a nice modeling and newspaper press release from http://www.publico.es/ciencias/234036/duenos/propia/red via Josep Vives.

from www.publico.es

Still, one wonders why if a group of citizens like guifi.net can DO that, why it has not been done before and what other technologically driven infrastructures could benefit from a shift from Closed Proprietary projects to Open Free projects. Clearly local governments, insofar they are meant to “represent” citizens as citizens and not citizens as market (as was the case for the 70’s NPM school), could benefit from positive incomes due to such projects.

RAX!

from www.blackouteurope.eu:

“Think about how you use the Internet! What would it mean to you if free access to the Internet was taken away?
These days, the Internet is about life and freedom. It’s about shopping, booking theatre tickets … holidays, learning, job-seeking, banking, and trade. It’s also about the fun things – dating, chatting, invitations, music, entertainment, joking and even a Second Life. It is a tool to express ourselves, to collaborate, innovate, share, stimulate new business ideas, reach new markets – thrive without middlemen..

Just think – what’s your web address? Unless people have that address in their “package” of regular websites – they won’t be able to find you. That means they can’t buy, or book, or register, or even view you online. Your business won’t be able to find niche suppliers of goods – and compare prices. If you get any money at all from advertising on your site, it will diminish. Yes, Amazon and a select few will be OK, they will be the included in the package. But your advertising on Google or any other website, will be increasingly worthless. Skype could be blocked. (As it is in Germany in the use from iPhone, already). Small businesses could literally disappear, especially specialist, niche or artisan businesses.

If we don’t do something now – we could lose free and open use of the internet.” (Blackout Europe, 2009)

For residents in the Spanish State you can e-mail your MPE here; xmailer.hacktivistas.net

Seems that citizen initiatives such as WiFi networks are becoming increasingly relevant in order to secure a second chance or a true alternative as they constitute huge linkages of computers and data and people in a Open philosophy. Hopefully enough, MPEs on May 6th will attend to the already 345.000 mails sent supporting the Open Letter to the European Parliament.

RAX!

Here is an announcement of an event to be held at La Invisible (where the Spanish Hackmeeting took place on 2008)

Jornadas: Gestión Ciudadana y Derecho a la Ciudad. Construyendo democracia en la metrópolis. 24 y 25 de Abril – La Casa Invisible.

PROGRAMA Y PRESENTACION

PROGRAMA

Viernes 24 de Abril

19.00hs  – Conferencia

Crisis de lo público y formas innovadoras de gestión de lo común
Jordi Borja (Geógrafo y Urbanista)

Presenta: Rafael Reinoso (Urbanista y profesor de la Escuela de Arquitectura de Granada)

20.30hs – Presentación de Proyectos

Defendiendo, construyendo y cuidando lo común. Experiencias de Gestión Ciudadana.

Centro Vecinal Pumarejo (Sevilla)

Huerto del Rey Moro (Sevilla)

La Casa Invisible (Málaga)

Sábado 25 de Abril

11.00hs – Taller colectivo

Rehabilitación de La Casa Invisible: construyendo una institución del común.

RAX!

“Human beings are bioelectrical systems. Our hearts and brains are regulated by internal bioelectrical signals. Environmental exposures to artificial EMFs can interact with fundamental biological processes in the human body. In some cases, this can cause discomfort and disease. Since World War II, the background level of EMF from electrical sources has risen exponentially, most recently by the soaring popularity of wireless technologies such as cell phones (two billion and counting in 2006), cordless phones, WI-FI and WI-MAX networks.”(bioinitiative report, 2007)

The truth is, that our households are increasingly being penetrated (aka exposed) by a larger number of devices transmitting microwaves at different frequencies. You can run a quick scan of wifi networks each year and state the difference by yourself. Now, as an exposure to something (as was being exposed to charbon-based heat or smoke filled discotheques), I guess medical evidence will highlight what the dangers (or benefits) are.

Regardless of how dangerous EMF are or might be, it is interesting to note how accurate the management of collective health and collective awareness of “threatening invisible signals” (such as microbes; not only microwaves) has become. One of the CSI students here at l’Ècole des Mines, Julien Gauthey, made my day by helping me discover two words;

“electrosensibles”; aimed at people who are more affected than others by EMF or RF. and:

“expologie” (with and “y” at the end instead of the “ie” for an english conversion): sort of science of those being exposed to threatening signals. Sort of epidemiologie carried by other means. Signals and alerts, for instance.

Now, it would really be a great paradox to start seeing “wifi free” areas instead of “free wifi” ones now that so many effort is being made to populate the EMF

Time will tell (everyone is willing to be connected to digital networks, no one is willing to get a cancer. No perfect drug (NIN dixit) for the time being)

Before ending this post, it is worth noticing that although the term wifi appears on the bio-initiative report webpage and in quoted text here also, it should not be equaled to GSM and other EMF radiations that are far more powerful than wifi. In deed, if one reads the report conclusions;

The lower limit for reported human health effects has dropped 100- fold below the safety standard (for mobile phones and PDAs); 1000- to 10,000-fold for other wireless (cell towers at distance; WI-FI and WLAN devices). The entire basis for safety standards is called into question, and it is not unreasonable to question the safety of RF at any level. -they further elaborate and propose a minimum threshold-; A cautionary target level for pulsed RF exposures for ambient wireless that could be applied to
RF sources from cell tower antennas, WI-FI, WI-MAX and other similar sources is proposed. The recommended cautionary target level is 0.1 microwatts per centimeter squared (μW/cm2)** (or 0.614 Volts per meter or V/m)** for pulsed RF where these exposures affect the general public.”

But a cell tower IS NOT a WiFi tower. I think we shoud be able to distinguish the intensity and power of those radiations so as to have a comparison scale. Because otherwise we might leave room for unnecessary alarmism concerning wifi (wich is NOT gsm).

RAX!

“The Catalan Journal of Communication & Cultural Studies (CJCS) is committed to publishing research and scholarship on the analysis of media and culture. The journal pays particular attention to original research related to the Catalan cultural and media systems or to any broader issue in this field of specific interest from a Catalan perspective.

Media, communication and cultural studies have experienced significant growth in Catalonia and the broader Catalan-speaking area. An increasing number of universities now offer courses at degree and Masters level in these fields. Academic activity is flourishing at research centres and departments dedicated to Journalism, Television, Radio, Film, Advertising, Public Relations, Popular Culture and Cultural Studies. CJCS aims to provide an international discussion forum for critical thought and study in these fields.” (extracted from upper link)

I started to wonder whether it is more fruitful for Catalan researchers as well as for Catalan research promoters to encourage people to publish in already existing English journals. [As the journal seems concerned with the reach of an international profile (assuming English as a lingua franca for international researchers).]. I don’t have the answer. But I know that the publish or perish dictate does allow for a lot of superfluous and duplicate communications and papers. Just by the need to publish something. Nevertheless, it is true that a lot of things are being done and little is told about them. But,IMHO, publishing in a Catalan Journal for Catalan readers may not be the best way to reach it’s aim and scope of internationalization. Plus, if something interesting is flourishing out of Catalan media and communication landscape it is certainly not only in Academic grounds. For instance, our resarch draws on guifi.net! who won the catalan 2007 telecommunications national award and was granted membership to the European Network of Living Labs (ENoLL) and, by the time, had little to do with academia (except most of his members are highly skilled people).

But, hey, it is just a quick thought

meanwhile, I have enjoyed the way these people (DonesTech) have “internationalized” their research about gender inqualities and technology uses (and practices, and plays, and angers, and…) which is great;  see  http://subvideo.tv/player.php?id=88&sv=70 (subtitles available in Catalan, Spansih, English and French) and http://www.donestech.net/ca/doculela_in_words

Enjoy!

RAX!

I have been formally accepted for a stage at Centre de Sociologie de l’Innovation (CSI) à  l’École des Mines de Paris – ParisTech. The stage begins on Mars and, as Mars is just at a glance, I have been reviewing some Parisian links concerning WiFi. In deed, some folks at CSI are already working-researching with “les réseaux wifi” so it will be a great opportunity to share experiences and information. CSI is one of the main researching nodes in the STS field (Mostly known for being home  of Michel Callon, Bruno Latour and Madeleine Akrich works) and it should be interesting to know what are the main interests, turns, and issues that are shaping their research agenda. Meanwhile, I have to thank Antoine Hennion for letting me know and guiding me through the procedures of CSI. Thx!

It seems that the same security arguments that lead to unjustified and threatening law proposals to civil rights since 9/11 is now used to approve more laws that, in the name of “our security” (not homeland security necessarily), will widen the already open door to our privacy.

As one can read;

“the Internet Safety Act applies not just to AT&T, Comcast, Verizon, and so on–but also to the tens of millions of homes with Wi-Fi access points or wired routers that use the standard method of dynamically assigning temporary addresses. (That method is called Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol, or DHCP.” meaning that; ”A provider of an electronic communication service or remote computing service shall retain for a period of at least two years all records or other information pertaining to the identity of a user of a temporarily assigned network address the service assigns to that user.”

Well, it is far from Catalonia but trends are trends and, while we did avoid (thanks to public demonstrations) the state of emergency and law enforcement one could expect after the 11-march attacks in Madrid, it is not clear if cities and ISP’s will mirror themselves in what is going on in the States. As usual, we would prefer to mirror ourselves with seattlewireless or NYwireless, but still, it is worth giving it a thought.

You can see the full news about this law proposal in http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-10168114-38.html.

RAX! (recerca, amor i xarxa)

Yann Bona.

here it is; http://www.laquadrature.net/en

I found this link thx to Roger Baig and therefore it is now permanently added to this blog-link neighborhood. La Quadrature du Net describe themselves as a “citizen group informing about legislative projects menacing civil liberties as well as economic and social development in the digital age. La Quadrature du Net informs citizens, public authorities, organizations, corporations. It works with everyone to elaborate balanced alternative solutions. La Quadrature du Net is supported by French, European and international NGOs including the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Open Society Institute and Privacy International.” (LQDN)

It is an interesting perspective on Collective Action guided trough the Net. Enjoy!

RAX!

In deed, the article is splited in two parts so it covers up how people engage into open telecommunications networks such as guifi.net (1st part) as well as some entangled practices of art, locative media and control & surveillance technologies (2nd part) – drawing from Audible Distance and Transborder Immigrant Tool projects.

Another one to add to my bibliography

RAX!

The mail coming form the CCCB argues that, although they have interest in an initiative such as guifi.net, they have been told from the Catalan administration (they do not specify more than that so we do not know exactly from where the decision came from) that the antenna had to be removed. CCCB is still a public institution and has to follow this type of directives. Although, precisely as a public institution, it should look for the public interest, IMHO. And guifi.net, so far, does no harm to the public interest. Or does it? (Big quotation mark here). Even if it did, an explanation of the reasons that lead to this decision as well as knowing from where the decision came from are minimums one could expect from their institutions. Because otherwise, the decision seems totally arbitrary; to say the least.

Contacts have already started in order to know exactly what the reasons are, who the decisions came from (Not to point an accusative finger but to know who to argue with).

Should not the “public institutions” at large be more “kind”? More generous in the type of accounts they give to their citizens? Specially when dealing with people who have proved to accomplish many agreements with them before? As in many other cases, one wonders when and why certain agreements with catalan administration are successful whereas other don’t.

Here is a picture of the graph status activity for CCCB supernode on a year basis (though it has not been fully operative);