WiFi, the Metaphor
Municipal
WiFi is not about technology or private sector protections
Was the American Revolution a vigorous defense of the right of
the states to build Post
Roads? Of course not.
Post Roads connecting the 13 colonies were a precondition of a
viable democracy, but no one confused our War for Independence with
that obvious precondition. Publicly funded Post Roads were built by the
same workmen who built private toll roads, but no one thought to
curtail independence in the hope that the Colonial Toll Road Owners'
Association might get it together some day to deliver the intercolonial
bandwidth that we so desperately needed. They carried the people and
goods and, most importantly for our independence, the written and
spoken conversations that aggregated colonists into a new
country.
Ubiquitous, fast-enough roads defined us as a people.
It's the Agora, Stupid!
Ubiquitous high speed wireless Internet is how a 21st
century city provides an Agora
for its citizens to convene, to discover their shared and conflicting
interests and to do more business, more quickly, than the world ever
thought possible. In the more enlightened republics, like Korea and
Japan, private enterprise is getting the job done quickly and
skillfully. Not so in the United States of FUD. Nope. Here in the
land of Yankee Ingenuity, we're passive victims of the inability of
managerial capitalism to get it right.
The growing debate about municipally-sponsored WiFi is a
conversation around the wrong wording. Take New York, where Verizon is
the phone provider and Time Warner is the cable guy. They savage any
attempt to route around their systems, but why would We the Customers
pay any attention to the objections of the utilities we love to
hate–or to the political toadies in their pockets?
Can you think of a single reason we should wait for the
small-minded telecom managers? The god of private enterprise?
Patience,
my ass! I'm ready to kill something!
(mid-50s VIP
cartoon, one vulture kvetching to another)
"I grew restless with
the quibbling over methods of financing. I wanted the job done."
— Dwight
D.Eisenhower, regarding the Interstate Highway System
Private enterprise was the foundation of the most massive
public works project in memory, the Eisenhower Interstate Highway
system, promoted by that well-known socialist, Dwight
Eisenhower.
"Our unity as a nation is
sustained by free communication of thought and by easy transportation
of people and goods. The ceaseless flow of information throughout the
Republic is matched by individual and commercial movement over a vast
system of interconnected highways crisscrossing the country and joining
at our national borders with friendly neighbors to the north and south.
Together, the united forces of our communication and transportation
systems are dynamic elements in the very name we bear - United States.
Without them, we would be a mere alliance of many separate parts."
. . . which seems to be the way most politicians want us,
acting as many separate parts.
The notable exception is Andrew Rasiej's campaign
for NYC Public Advocate. Is there a better place than New York to build
our first 21st
century Agora? If you believe this Internet thing might be big some
day, you've got no choice: vote for Andrew and get 2 of your friends
to. If you don't live in New York, then get 3 of your New York friends
to vote for Andrew Rasiej in the Democratic Primary on September 13th.
Are You an Agoronomist?
If you believe in public discourse, you are. Let's not fall
into the trap of defending technical and turf issues when the real
issue is whether a people united deserves an Agora. We can join
together to push harder on the politicians we elect than do the
lobbyists and consultants the politicians think they must
please.
I want to start with a conversation about whether New Yorkers
have an
inalienable right to equip themselves to participate in the global
conversation at a rate typical of a leading first-world nation, rather
than at the level of a trailing
first-world nation. (Actually, I want
more than a conversation, because there's too much
conversation on the
web and not enough action. I want a forum with real political power:
one where, after our solution becomes obvious, we have the specific
means to compel the
politicians to get off their expensive asses and do something
useful.)
Yeah, we're working on that last part.
11:24:48 AM 
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