The Invisible College
That's the accurate name for ubiquitous WiFi. It's an
invisible college because it hosts teachers and learners in a forum
that enriches the best learners without impoverishing the best
teachers. It is no mistake to conflate ubiquitous WiFi with the
Internet itself,
and with the futures of the cities that are reinventing themselves, wirelessly.
Like any college or any city, you can learn good and bad
things there, and develop good and bad habits. But ubiquitous WiFi is
the single best educational and economic resource a city can provide to
its citizens.
When Louis Kahn spoke of cities, he was also describing a kind
of place that had not yet been invented, the Invisible College:
"The city is the place of
availabilities. It is the place where a small boy, as he walks through
it, may see something that will tell him what he wants to do his whole
life."*
We are just now furnishing the great halls and seminar rooms
and student union at the Invisible College, but that's no reason to not
build the roads that lead to it.
By what argument can the telcos and cable monopolies tell a
city that it has no right to build a community college?
12:10:04 PM 
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