from flowtv.org

Shortening digital divides may imply also widening white spaces for open access and use of radio electric spectrum as well as allowing and using the already existing fiber optics networks that lies beneath our feet without having ever noticed them.

Anyway, what are white spaces and dark fibers and why do they matter?

“The switchover from analog to digital terrestrial TV has the potential to dramatically increase the amount of spectrum available for innovative technologies. Currently the European and International organizations are studying the implementation of new spectrum management techniques. The opening up of the spectrum at least for secondary use will greatly increase the overall economic and social benefit to the general public. The US regulatory agency, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has set the precedent and has passed an order to allow secondary use of spectrum on the bands between broadcast TV frequencies. The Open Spectrum Alliance strives to make similar forms of spectrum management available in all countries and additional allocation bands.” from here.

“It’s a totally different paradigm for wireless networking,”"Until now, in wireless networks, you were given a spectrum, and you would share it with everyone else. Everyone was an equal stakeholder. Now, you have this spectrum where there are certain people who are primary users.” (Chandra, 2009) from here.

from ninux.org

Some people interested in free WiFi networks will gather around Rome on November the 27-30th. Why? Well, quoting the organisers from ninux.org:

“A weekend, surreal time slot on topics about wireless communities. Under the same roof for the first time you’ll find hackers, geeks, nerds, engineers, artists, curious and academics.”

It will be an excellent opportunity to pulse the energies of ongoing WiFi communities (we prefer the term network or project) and see if we can share some insights on different issues regarding free wifi networks. With the help of some people at guifi.net we are preparing a short interview to put in common some of the main concerns we (as hackers, geeks, nerds, engineers, artists, curious and academics) experiment while doing free wifing. Hopefully enough, these  will either echo or difract existing concerns form other networks from which we can learn or think about. Will see…

See you in Rome.

RAX!

Fall is coming closer, and, as it does, the demand for accountable work during elapsed time since my stay at CSI increases. As my Ph.D program entered into the Bologna process, recent changes have started to apply. One of them consisting in an increased demand of results regarding my thesis. These are to be write down in a report and then receive comments from an academic board in which two in-house and one foreign professor give their advises in what is known as “panels”.

At the beginning I was sort of careless about this “trial”, but, after having passed through two of them, now I think it is indeed a very good idea. As, finally, it is not that easy to find readers for your work (not at all). And, plus, it helps you go back and forth in your text again and again according to different suggestions that, quite often, you did not have the time to realize or consider. So these “trials” do increase the possibility of facing a reduced form of a tribunal many times before facing THE tribunal. And thus, gives you the possibility of committing more errors and solve them.

Back in ‘83:

” ‘Accumulated knowledge’ people say with admiration, but this acceleration is made possible by a change of scale, which in turn makes possible the multiplication of trials and errors. Certainty does not increase in a laboratory because people in it are more honest, more rigorous, or more ‘falsificationist’. It is simply that they can make as many mistakes as they wish or simply more mistakes than the others ‘outside’ who cannot master the changes scale. Each of mistake is in turn archived, saved,recorded, and made easily readable again,whatever the specific field or topic may be.” (Latour, 1983)

One is to believe that our department is lab-like becoming day by day (Still, it remains doubtful the extent to which it could raise the world…).

I do not know the date yet, but arguably at the end of September I should be doing this accountable exercise called “panel”. On previous panels I received great feedback from prof. Luz Ma. Martínez (UAB), Jenny Cubells (UAB) and Pep Vivas (UOC).  And also, belonging to FIC research group, I also got feedback from them. It is great to have them as readers ! ¿How do yo u sign in readers for your work? M?

RAX!

After having presented a piece of work of my ongoing thesis at CSI, I have received many comments. Nevertheless, not agreeing completely with all of them, I think it is worth making some considerations on uses and misuses of STS concepts or, else, ways of thinking about STS.

As Deleuze said, concepts do have an origin and a need to be but also do have an expiring date. That is to say, you use one or another concept if it makes sense in a particular “agencement” in which you are trying to live or, in this case, research. And, likewise, you abandon a concept if it suddenly does not make sense or it does not bring forward new connections or affinities with what you are interested in. It is all about finding the “agencements qui nous conviennent” and stopping our “interpretation” about if that meant A or B. You can further elaborate this very idea if you take into consideration Alice in Wonderland quote about the meaning of words (Which Deleuze does also refer to; and Did I in a previous post).

“- When I use a word, Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, – it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’

- The question is,said Alice, – whether you can make words mean so many different things.

- The question is, said Humpty Dumpty, – which is to be master – - that’s all.” (Carroll, 1865)

Having said so, I think that, unless we want to act as some sort of “thought police (thinkpol for Orwell fans…)”, we should celebrate (which does not mean to accept everything) the proliferation of a multiplicity of uses of some notions that, originally embedded in STS, have been used in other fields. Some of these translations have been fruitful such as to seriously take into consideration post/de-colonial and feminists approaches; for instance. That said, if we think about the notion of Cyborg as elaborated by Donna Haraway, we can acknowledge for many “misuses” of the term. But were not that misuses relevant to someones, weren’t they aimed at a purpose? I think that the relevance of “cyborg” was precisely due to a quick and widely acceptance into many academic fields which, more or less accurately (that is the point), did respect the very idea from which the cyborg arose. In deed, Donna Haraway, in a conference held at Barcelona and cosponsored by the UAB’s Department of Social Psychology, sustained that, although many STS scholars referred to the notion of cyborg (amongst which she explicitly mentioned Bruno Latour), they (her words) never realized that it was about gender.

So, after all, it should not be that strange to found pertinent uses of STS concepts “across the borders”. Though, and here is the crucial point (IMHO), battles for naming and labeling may arise. Given that, if what you are doing with “my” concept is not what “I” do, then call it another thing which is great in order to avoid confusion. But it is also naïf in the sense that, somehow, one is to believe that there is only one proper way of “using” things and neglects, indeed, the possibility of “translation” of this very concepts that, although retaining something, do also leave something aside. For the notion of cyborg (which btw I am not quite sure we could include it into STS vocabulary, but still) when re-used by some STS scholars, and according to Haraway, it was “gender” which was left aside when translated. So, ¿what is really “unacceptable” and what is “suitable” for different translations of STS concepts such as Obligatory Point of Passage, Translation, Actor, Network, Script, etc. Which, ironically, they are themselves translations from other sources or “origins”?; to put it shortly.

from saltpublishing.com

This is not to argue against a concern about how concepts are abused (insofar as you do not need to talk about an Action-Net if the only thing you state in a paper is that some elements are interconnected or, else, if claims of authority are made as you assume to rightfully use a term or concept). Instead I am willing to interrogate what it is that we found so disrupting in misusing a term, concept or notion.

Another point, very different from concept uses or misuses, is about “choices” and “pertinence”. Here I am grateful to the suggestion of considering how the idea of space can be conceptualized. As, for the time being, I was looking at the idea of production of space by Henri Lefebvre so as to argue that wifi was not just an instrumental effect of a technology but rather a production of space that allowed (and was produced) by a series of practices that were not possible before. But did not pay attention to other theories or ways of conceiving space such as those appearing on Marianne de Laet and Annemarie Mol “The Zimbabwe Bush Pump” known paper. Well, for days to come, I will have to think about crossings between urban sociology, political sociology and STS [given that it is not that “evident” that they could work together or at least, the way I intended to do it

Ok, quick posting for the aftermath of the seminar 

RAX!

On July , 8th some people (Including myself…) at the CSI  are presenting their work at the monthly seminar.  After giving some thought, I chose to present a fragment of a chapter of my thesis which I am currently working on (In French…). It will draw on some recent findings here in Paris concerning WiFi and deepen into the history of routers. This is, how a huge armchair-like machine ended up in our homes as a cute closed-box with an antenna.

Behold the Inteface Message Processor! from: aleph.llull.net

Hopefully enough it won’t be that boring (given that the chapter could qualify for an honorific membership from the Society of People Interested in Boring Things.) Nevertheless, the goal is to provide a topological approach of the knots and tendencies to which routers have been attached and how these very attachments changed what they are / were since the late ’60’s.

That said, I am expecting great comments from people at the CSI seminar. It is not everyday that you can have your work commented by STS people

RAX!

FO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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 e-weekvic.cat

e-Week : E-weEk : eWEEk : eweeK : e-wEeK … is there a correct way to display information? is there a correct way to make mistakes? is there a choice to be made when selecting how information is presented? if so, under what criteria? even if we present a blured text, a blured image, a blured map, still, to a certain degree, we can orient ourselves, we still can atribute a meaning, an ordering, to letters, sounds, images, signals…can we really get lost in an information era?

Well, wifi has that strange ability of turning a non-connected area into a node. To turn a closing device like a rooftop into a broadcast open space. To turn a device designed for indoor use into an outdoor device. And, by so doing, it produces a wifi space (zone). You take one artifact, you modify it’s default script, you place it where it is not supossed to, you connect it with similar artifacts and you already have a netwok of linked artifacts. Once you have a network, you can trace back the connections. In this sense, there are a lot of networks. But not all of them have, for some reason, a map or carthography. A lot of choices are to be made when displaying information. Designers and cartographers are not here by accident

We will be participating in a round table organized by Efraín Foglia (THX!!!)(UVic) and Lucia Lijtmaer (UVic).

The event will take place at the e-week or Vic digital week (la setmana digital de Vic) on May, 7th at 11-13;30H (Aula Magna – Universitat de Vic)

As seen here (copy-pasted):

JORNADA RECORREGUTS, CARTOGRAFIES I PARAULA: TRAÇATS DIGITALS

- 11.00h, Aula Magna – Universitat de Vic
Presentació del projecte “Recorreguts, cartografies i paraula: traçats digitals”, a càrrec de Lucia Lijtmaer (UVic) i Efraín Foglia (UVic).

- 12.00h, Aula Magna – Universitat de Vic
Taula rodona: “Creació transversal / Educació oberta” – Mercé Rodrigo (Goldsmiths University of London), Yann Bona Beauvois (UAB), Ana S. Pareja (editora – projecte “Matar en Barcelona”), Jordi Corominas (periodista cultural – projecte “Matar en Barcelona”), Lucia Lijtmaer (UVic) i Efraín Foglia (UVic).
guifi.net will also be at e-week organizing a workshop on wifi which will surely be of great interest (Vic is largely under guifi.net coverage)
RAX!

form getprice.com.au

A couple of weeks before we had the chance to ask some questions to Gwen Shaffer and lucky enough to get some answers (Thx Gwen!). Gwen is a researcher from Temple University at the Mass Media & Communications Program in Philadelphia. She has recently made a research trip to Europe to interview some key people related to WiFi community networks. Amongst others, she did interview people form guifi.net too. In her own words;

“We’re preparing an in-depth report that examines successful community wireless networks and highlights innovative projects that are helping to revitalize efforts to address the digital divide and promote ubiquitous and affordable broadband. The report we are preparing will be shared with major media outlets, federal government officials and commissioners, congressional staff, and leaders from major metropolitan areas.” (quoted form here)

So here are some of her answers:

(…)

YB: Why did you start researching on wifi? what was your motivation?

GS: I took a graduate school course called “Global telecommunications,” which
piqued my interest in policy issues. I started reading about alternatives to
incumbent Internet Service Providers and their potential to expand broadband
deployment. I appreciated the “disruptive” aspect of these networks and
their potential to close the digital divide.

YB: How would you define what a “successful” wifi initiative is?

GS: Success depends entirely on the goals of the WiFi network. It could mean
fostering community among members, creating technological innovation or
strictly providing Internet connectivity. I think it is impossible to
generalize.

YB: So far, why did you felt the need to reach European wifi initiatives?

GS: Because there is so much innovation happening in these networks. As I’m
sure you know, Freifunk developed a routing protocol that is now used all
over the world. If it were not for Djurslands.net, thousands of people may
have been forced to leave rural Denmark. These are just two examples. By
contrast, the U.S. initiatives are quite small and many use “out-of-the-box”
technology, such as Meraki routers–which are less powerful and don’t
require any technical knowledge. So the European models provide a completely
different perspective. Some of the European networks also have partnerships
with local governments, which interests me as a potential model for U.S.
cities.

YB: What would you say are the main demands of these initiatives to public
institutions (if any)?

GS: Not sure they place “demands” on institutions. I would say they present
opportunities for these institutions to close the digital divide in their
communities.

YB: Many of EU wifi initiatives have encountered some legal  concerns or
prohibitions that inhibited them to foster their projects. For guifi it was
the insecurity of being able to share the Internet broadband connection
amongst their peers connected to guifi.net. They notified the CMT (sort of
FCC) and as a result and to their surprise, under the current legislation,
nothing was done illegally. But Still, there is always the feeling that law
is something to be careful about in order to maintain the achievements
already made. Plus,  no one at guifi is a lawyer. For people at Freifunk, as
far as I know, there was only one ISP in Berlin who allowed the
sharing of broadband. Given this fact, this ISP reached a  sales peak and,
therefore, other ISP modified their initial restrictions to allow users to share their
broadband DSL. The irruption of an actor, freifunk, modified the contract
and licensing models of ISPs in Gremany. These are just two examples of how
the influence of legal / illegal practices are shaping telecom policies.
How would you define the current policies you have had the chance to
review?

GS: I’m uncertain whether you are referring to policies enforced by government
or by the ISPs. In the U.S., there are actually no regulations that directly
address bandwidth sharing. The assumption is basically that only traditional
phone and cable companies will provide internet access. And the the ISP
policies–which are not law, but private “terms of service”–are very
restrictive, as you know. They explicitly bar subscribers from opening their
wireless signals for others to use the bandwidth.

YB: What do you think would be the next trend in telecom policies? This is, a
quick and new set of rules and laws to prevent citizen wifi initiatives
while searching for appropriate state driven wifi models (as could be the case with a review of the telecom packages in the UE), or a more permissive and encompassing policy that will adapt and establish equal opportunities (if not priorizing citizen initiatives by making corporations broadcast on the licensed part of the spectrum and leaving the unlicensed part of it to citizens) to both conventional ISPs and citizen wifi initiatives?

GS: In the U.S., I predict new opportunities for mesh networking because of the
unlicensed spectrum that will be available by the end of the year. There is
also a much greater acceptance of open source initiatives, and WiFi
communities fall into this category. So that could give them a boost.

In addition, telecommunications policies are driven by corporations, as much
as we would like to think they are driven by activists! My understanding is
that lots of companies are already developing products with embedded mesh
technology. So if everyone’s cell phone is a mesh repeater, the concept of
bandwidth sharing will go mainstream.

As for ISP policies–I’ve aso been reading about the trend toward offering
“value-added services.” I’ve been thinking about how ISPs can provide
bandwidth to customers at extremely low prices or even free, and then make
money off other services. (The model is like Nokia practically giving away
its phones, but making money off services you receive over the phone.) That
would enable growth of WiFi communities.

YB: Many times, people at wireless communities, feel that policy makers are
really not aware of what wireless communities are. Little knowledge, if any,
is grasped from all the activities these communities are doing. In deed, the
promotion and understanding of these activities is quite difficult as no, if
any, spaces of encounter between policy makers and ?people messing with
wifi? are planned. People at guifi, for instance, can talk with policy
makers benefiting from public conferences where X and Z will be invited. But
there are no formal spaces for debating policy issues*. Therefore, it is no
surprise to see how controversies emerge. How does one frame of
comprehension (if we may speak of ?frames? here) influence another one? Any
successful cases?

GS: I can only think of a couple examples in the U.S. In the city of Portland,
Oregon, a citywide municipal wireless network shut down because the private
company operating it could not figure out a business model that actually
generated a profit. The city then met with Personal Teleco, a community WiFi
initiative, to explore whether this group could somehow fill the niche. In
the end, the city decided against it. The other example is in San Francisco.
Meraki is giving away its mesh routers and creating a wireless community
known as “Free the Net.” The city is “guiding” this effort to ensure that
low-income communities get the routers and that people get computer training
and computers too. So they are looking at the WiFi community as one tool for
closing the digital divide. I did interview a couple people at the FCC who
say they attend community wireless conferences (like the big international
summit held each year). So some federal policymakers are definitely
interested in the movement.

(…)

That’s it

RAX!

* PS: For the last question, we must say that it is not acurrately true to say that there are no proper spaces of encounter between guifi.net and policy makers as recently some conversations and presentations have been made between several organisms in charge of some “level of policy-making”. Such as the Comisión del Mercado de Telecomunicacions (CMT), Loaclret and the Institut Municipal d’Informática (IMI) of Barcelona. But I am not sure about the content and scope of these meetings so I will need to come back and see if the asumption here holds the line.

Via P2P foundation’s blog I have found this initiative called DIYcity. Which is really interesting as it clearly points towards a more comprehensive way of dealing with city matters and, so far, they are trying to achieve that via open data / open systems. Taking benefit from all the apps and programs that have lead the so called web 2.0 phenomena. Here is the challenge:

” can we, working together, define and build a version 1.0 of the Do-It-Yourself City, a city that operates on open data flowing through decentralized, open source tools, that actively engages residents not only as users but as participants and owners of the system?” (DIYcity.org)

Is not that a great example of Citizen Management of Technology ?!

RAX!

The Bio-inititive report is a report on the potential effects Electromagnetic Fields and Radio Frequencies can have in our health. It addresses GSM microwaves as well as WiFi ones and, as far as I can tell, it is quite exhaustive; 610 pages.

“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!