“An important step, introduced by William James, is to abandon epistemological questions in favour of the care and concern demanded by that which is ‘‘coming into existence’’, and by its milieu, which may nurture or poison it. Poisoning is easy but nurturing is a craft, the neglect of which may be understood in relation to our vulnerability to capitalism.” (Stengers, 2008)

mcneiltrackxc.com

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.

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!

“The engineer substitutes for the signs he writes the things that he has mobilized; he attaches them to each so they’ll hold up; then he withdraws a little, delegating to another self, in the form of a chip, a sensor, or an automatic device, the task of watching over the connection. And this delegating allows him to withdraw even further – as if there were an object.” (Latour, 1996: 81) -as seen in MacKenzie, A.(2003) SSS, 2003, 33.

schematic from free hardware project ronja.twibright.com

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.

“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!

Now that Obama is searching for a Chief Technology  Officer (CTO), it is worth remembering what other CTO’s have asked from some creative industries / labs. For instance, in Apps for Democracy (via istrategylabs), when asked (I am quoting them now); “how we could make their revolutionary open Data Catalog useful for the citizens, visitors, businesses and government agencies of DC” (/end quote). we can read the following statement as a response;

“You can do one of two things. You can spend years and millions of dollars contracting this out to big consultancies – and you’ll end up spending twice what you thought you would and get half the quality you hoped for…which is what governments do now. Or, the other way is to have an innovation contest where we put the data in the hands of the people, and give them cash prizes and recognition for their efforts.”(Corbett, 2008)

which, IMHO, is revelatory of the ways and trends creativity is being fashioned form and for government driven proposals. What value has to be attributed to collective intelligences working together for a final result (be it an app, be it a urban planning project)? How do we dignify the effort of collaborative work such as we saw in Free / Libre Open-Source Software ? With a single price to some of the participants? If what governments did was getting half the quality for paying double (then it would be trouble – The Clash dixit), what do they  do now (again, this is a rather huge “they” to account for the many differences between governments, but we can not forget or refuse to see that many governments do mirror themselves and tend to adopt similar strategies for mastering the “one to the multiple” type of relations)? rewarding half price and doubling the quality?

Five blocks away from “Apps for Democracy” we can rescue an excerpt form an event held on November 2006 @ Institute of Network Cultures named MyCreativity. (thx to Ptqk for letting me know). As the introduction goes we read;

“Despite the proliferation of the creative industries model, it remains hard to point to stories of actual “creative innovation”, or to be even sure what this might mean. What is clear – if largely unacknowledged – is that investment in “creative clusters” effectively functions to encourage a corresponding boom in adjacent real estate markets. Here lies perhaps the core truth of the creative industries: the creative industries are a service industry, one in which state investment in “high culture” shifts to a form of welfarism for property developers. This smoke and mirrors trick is cleverly performed through a language of populist democracy that appeals to a range of political and business agents. What is more surprising is the extent to which this hype is seemingly embraced by those most vulnerable: namely, the content producers (designers, software inventors, artists, filmmakers, etc.) of creative information (brands, patents, copyrights).” MyCreativity.

Two particular ways of understanding and accounting for creative demands are appearing here. Aren’t they? Haunted shores for a creative river

guifi.net is seemingly taking advantage of the open-innovation trend to start getting grants and funding for keeping and extending it’s network. Aware or unaware of these debates, focusing on the results, innovation and creativity are increasingly becoming a vocabulary to account about the projects one develops or participates in (specially in ICT’s). I am being creative or not? IMHO, asking this sort of question might be just as silly  as looking into a mirror and wonder if  “I am normal or not?”. the annoying thing here is the existing and overwhelming demand to prove it.  A virus-like effect is expected to arrive into theaters next to you; at the work-place (Be Creative), at the coffee shop (Be creative), at the supermarket (Be Creative), at the office (Of course), when drawing dazzling lines while hearing a telephone conversation (Be Creative), when posting in a blog (Be Creative), and so on. Shall we expect a reward?

RAX!

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.

fallen trees due to strong winds in catalonia - from vilaweb.cat

Spain is a rather strange country where, when it rains (not a big shower, but just some apparently innocent raindrops…);

1) Trains do not work properly (Mostly those run by RENFE).

2) Blackouts (FECSA / ENDESA) are common and, therefore, tend to threaten all your power devices with a high voltage returning power supply which, if you are not aware of, will literaly burn some of your fridge, radio, tv, pc pluged devices.

3) Everyone takes the car to drive by any loctaion. So, traffic jams are expected everywhere.

The same, but worse, occurs when we have; snow, strong winds, fog or any combination of them.

WiFi is known to be altered by water, resulting in a loss of signal penetration. Humidity / fog being it’s principal enemies. That is why some people at the Czech Republic do link their WiFi devices with optic antennas, which is just great!

Optical link antena form free tech. project RONJA used by free wireless community CZFree in České Republic

Nevertheless, while waiting for the promise of generalized WiMAX, strong winds have put in the forefront one of the many advices Susan Leigh Star wrote about infrastructure in her 1999 article entitled; “the ethnography of Infrastructure” which bluntly is;

- “Infrastructure becomes visible upon breakdown”

Illustrators such as David Macaulay had previously done a great job showing the ring of the beast or, else, the invisible infrastructure. See; “underground” for instance.

Again, some happy hurricanated winds come to remind us how dependent we are of already existing infrastructures (hello from the missing masses front!)

RAX!

Following the European white paper on governance, we can read;

“The term ‘governance’ is a very versatile one. It is used in connection with several contemporary social sciences, especially economics and political science.

It originates from the need of economics (as regards corporate governance) and political science (as regards State governance) for an all-embracing concept capable of conveying diverse meanings not covered by the traditional term “government”.

Referring to the exercise of power overall, the term “governance”, in both corporate and State contexts, embraces action by executive bodies, assemblies (e.g. national parliaments) and judicial bodies (e.g. national courts and tribunals).

The term ‘governance’ corresponds to the so-called post-modern form of economic and political organisations.

According to the political scientist Roderick Rhodes, the concept of governance is currently used in contemporary social sciences with at least six different meanings: the minimal State, corporate governance, new public management, good governance, social-cybernetic systems and self-organised networks.” (2001) [note: and many other distinctions based on the object to which governance is assumed to act upon; ie; urban governance, e-governance, and so on ]

Now, following other readings, we might be able to grasp what governance is about. Before entering into proper distinctions within government-governance, governance-governmentality, lets quote this classical statement written in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland;

“- 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)

With that warning in mind, we are now ready to discuss some of the meanings attributed to the word: governance.

this is the first image google bots are delivering these days for a governance search

Along with the EU white paper, a quick look to wikipedia raises an interesting distinction as to conceive governance as a process. This is, “the use of institutions, structures of authority and even collaboration to allocate resources and coordinate or control activity in society or the economy” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Governance)

So, governance (as a process) will be something different than The Government (as a substantive). Being, indeed, the need to leave aside bad prejudices and the lack of trust in government institutions one of the efects of talking about governance. In this sense, intended or not, governance is a useful trend to rethink and perform (again but differently) a non-successful participatory policy carried out years before by “The Government” [apologies for not specifying which Government - you can put yours as a default ]. We are not building crystal castles here. You can tell by the EU white paper;

“the proposals in this White Paper will:

• Structure the EU’s relationship with civil society. A code of conduct for
consultation will identify responsibilities and improve accountability of all
partners. It will enhance dialogue, and contribute to the openness of organised
civil society.

• Make greater use of the skills and practical experience of regional and local
actors. In the first place, this is an issue for national authorities according to their
national constitutional and administrative arrangements. At the same time the
Union should make fuller use of the existing potential for flexibility to improve
the ways European policies are applied on the ground.

• Build public confidence in the way policy makers use expert advice. The EU’s
multi-disciplinary expert system will be opened up to greater public scrutiny and
debate. This is needed to manage the challenges, risks and ethical questions
thrown up by science and technology.

• Support the clearer definition of EU policy objectives and improve the
effectiveness of EU policies by combining formal legislation with non-legislative
and self-regulatory solutions to better achieve those objectives.”

Meaning that the engagement with civil society was not -is not- (by many reasons) working in a “desirable” way. Governance and it’s many applied forms understood as processes of regulation, coordination and control (Rhodes, 1997) might open up some space for considering the government as an actor AMONGST others. Which it is not an easy road because it implies, it builds, on the ground of being able, willing to, let OTHER actors gain, partage, share, manage processes of regulation, coordination and control. If we consider wifi networks, then, it could imply letting people act as ISP as long as the telecomms infrastructures could be freely accessed by corporations AND citizens. Or, else, to have our local government answering the question; ¿where I can connect my computer directly to the Internet? ¿Where do corporations plug and redistribute their bandwidth to act as ISP? Where can the lay citizen connect it’s computer, where is the plug? We understand we have to pay for the last-mile (be it phone-line kilometers or fiberoptics), but, where can I have access if I am ready to come with my computer to the same place corporations are plugging theirs (and, say, put an access point, and from there another, and another, and do what guifi.net is doing (but having to go trough the conventional ISP’s if Internet is to be used (which is not their priority, anyway; being the already and increasing networked computers a proper “inter-net”)? Why I can not access there? Internet, as computerdata-linking, is free. You only need a port to establish a connection, is not that it? -I owe some of these questions to Ramon Roca (guifi.net member)

Now, we have seen how governance can be a useful concept to rethink, re-make, the social (and legal) bind between institutions and civil society (we will see…).

Before governance issues, Foucault term of governmentality, is defined as follows;

“1.The ensemble formed by the institutions, procedures, analyses and reflections, the calculations and tactics that allow the exercise of this very specific albeit complex form of power, which has as its target population, as its principal form of knowledge political economy, and as its essential technical means apparatuses of security. 2. The tendency which, over a long period and throughout the West, has steadily led towards the pre-eminence over all other forms (sovereignty, discipline, etc) of this type of power which may be termed government, resulting, on the one hand, in formation of a whole series of specific governmental apparatuses, and, on the other, in the development of a whole complex of savoirs. 3. The process, or rather the result of the process, through which the state of justice of the Middle Ages, transformed into the administrative state during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, gradually becomes ‘governmentalized’.”(as quoted in; Burchell. (1991). Foucault Effect on p.102)

Which can be similar to but different in the sense that in enables us to have a rather sui-generis approach to governance as long as it “invites us to study how various governmental practices
and techniques produces and constitutes certain types of identities as appropriate and
normal and certain action-orientations as legitimate and efficient.” (Sending and Neumann, 2004) – [I still working on the biblio-references html page; be patient and you will find all quotes there...]

Before ending abruptly , because reviewing literature never ends and this is just a post and It has to end somewhere; ananké stenai, I will then leave mentioning the idea of governance as the condition

“à constituer des cultures intermédiaries d’action collective. Ces conditions sont généralement manquées quand elles sont purement et simplement confondues avec les dispositifs supposés inciter la participation.” (Maesschalck, 2008:190)

RAX!