Jalisco Cómo Vamos, a new citizen observatory was presented this Monday 11th at the Cámara de Comercio de Guadalajara, México.

Following the steps of previous experiences such as Bogotá cómo vamos (Colombia), it aims to provide and analyse huge amounts of data concerning the Quality of Live (QoL) of people living in what is known as the Metropolitan area of Guadalajara. A 60.000$ survey was carried out to find out some good indicators. This include, but are not restricted, to:

- Education
- Urbanism
- Public Institutions
- Personal relations
- Public Services
- Environment

The survey compromised 426 questions and, as results are being seed, it is the Obs will to affect political decisions based on their data. Positioning themselves as a neutral (meaning not supportive of any political party) agent they will release their raw data after it has been analysed.

Anyway, what I think it is interesting about this survey, is that it takes into consideration people’s perceptions, actions and believes. Therefore, it is not only a desperate search for the datum, but rather a search for “cross social validity” (if we may…). Nevertheless, as any quantitative survey, results bear an enormous rhetorical (not to be meant in a bad sense) ambiguity depending on who is to be the spokesperson of the data. But the presentation went really well and it was, indeed, enjoyable. Which is something you rarely see on a quantitative results briefing these days

However, the survey is just a first milestone. The Observatory aims also to generate some public debate on hot issues that will be identified from further analysis. This debate, they argue, will also lead to an increased public participation.

Now, what does this has to do with internet or citizen management of technology whatsoever? Well, it turns out that under the public service desk of the observatory some questions regarding Internet services and uses will be addressed. As some expert teams have been set to address and discuss these data, we expect to explain and highlight the guifi.net model of a free and neutral network as a success story of how ICT’s citizen initiatives can (and actually do) improve the quality of live of citizens. It will be interesting to show some of the difficulties and some of the good practices that dealing with public administrations guifi.net has been put through.

For those interested, you can download the computer presentation of the first results here.

RAX!

#spanishrevolution has been a trending topic on twitter. And, to present day, many camping squares and protests have risen in Athens, London, Paris, Berlin and Mexico (Mexico city AND Guadalajara). As I could start a never-ending discussion on many aspects of the #spanishrevolution, I will here only mention the successful wifi coverage of plaça catalunya by guifi.net.

Plaça Catalunya is the most representative square of Barcelona and, as such, it has been the target for a camping site during the #spanishrevolution. Many campers could connect to wireless networks and many people could watch what campers were doing via online webcams. However, many of these wireless networks were shutdown or left unavailable (even weather forecast webcams pointing towards plaça catalunya). Here is when an open and free network as guifi (an it’s users) become handy. They succeed in providing a wirless internet connection to plaça catalunya but with some technical master skills (aka . it was not easy). As one of the guifi.net members posted on their mailing list, they had to achieve a rebound of the signal as there were no guifi antenas on a near location. (I will avoid giving technical details). But I think that this capacity of turning a hole (no connection) into a node (connected) displacing antennas, making “rebounds”, managing urban infrastructure it is something to celebrate. Here are some pic’s guifi.net emailed:

RAX!

I have recently  moved to Mexico, Guadalajara, for a mid term stay. Yesterday I noticed some helicopters and some extra traffic jams so I figured something big was going on…and yes. There is a meeting of the ONU’s International Telecommunication Union with some 60 telecommunication ministers from around the globe coming to disrupt everyday life (and paths) of Guadalajara citizens. No big issue. Disrupting everyday life might be enjoyable (to some extent). But then, I just learned I won’t be able to reach my house without proper authorization as I am living in a potentially attractive site to commit silly acts regarding the inaugural events of the ITU… whoa….

from en.wikipedia.org

I will be gifted with some sort of security card to let security guys know I do, in fact, live here so they can let me pass. This, of course, raises the question about who manages public space. But, to a more profound analysis, it does resonate with some ideas about Issue-Networks and Dewey / Lippman pragmatists approaches such as those present in Noortje Marres Ph.D.

“A democratic deficit must then be said to arise when bad issue displacements occur: when issues that depend on public involvement for their settlement are transported to locations that are inaccessible to publics, making their involvement in issue formation, and thus settlement of affairs, impossible.” (Marres, 2005)

On the next page of her Ph.D;

“Issues challenge existing modes of democratic political organization: if these issues are to be addressed, forms for organizing subjects and articulating problems must be reinvented” (Marres, 2005)

¿Is it not strange enough that, not only to enter an event such as ITU meeting, but even to access their homes, citizens do face inaccessibilities?

It is as if all sort of events as ITU meetings or NATO, G8, G20 ones were taking place at the constant risk of “not taking place”. I mean, there is a large believe and concern from security corps. that someones do not want these events to take place. And literally, they DO TAKE places. City under sieges, citizens under scrutiny. And, yes, quite often the public wants to be involved and, in absence of any other fora, they do public demonstrations or press conferences.

Paradoxically enough, these type of world wide meetings parallel Michel Callon confined research notion so as to think of a confined politics. (either case, Michel Callon notion of confined research parallels confined politics, in a similar way that technical representation comes exemplified jointly with political representation). But further explaining these would need another post…

That said, and to give some sense of place, I am writing via a conventional ISP located in Mexico, Megacable – Megared. Which works with cable Internet technology. Not bad, you could say. Well, yes, not bad. Cable bandwidth is not Fiber Optics, but it is not bad. However, They offer 2 and 3 mb (download speeds) connections…According to some net forums, they do share IP connections amongst different customers, jamming the bandwidth dedicated to one single-user with other ones…Oh…and they also block ftp ports so you are kind of obliged to contract their services if you want to run a ftp server…hummm…¿net neutrality? What was that again aiming at? good to remember.

RAX!

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!