[wsfii-discuss] Economic Sustainability ofCommunity Wireless(sorry had to resend due to incorrect hyperlink)

Fri Apr 6 10:26:47 UTC 2007

Just a slip of the keyboard - but both of you are
confusing between Ashish from India and Asham from
Canada. It is somewhere below these fine lines that
modern corporations place their objectives of profit -
defined narrowly in quarterly cash terms and market
'valuations' that ignore the realities of a changing
world.

--- jeff buderer <jeff at onevillagefoundation.org>
wrote:

> We need that caution, I just don't want to jump into
> bed with the
> corporations until I really know about who I am
> jumping into bed with.

Who? We all suffer from the failure to recognise that
an artificial entity created within its own ecosphere
is hardly likely to share the same sense of
satisfaction of success in the real world. 

> 
> For me the issue is about changing our mindsets
> about money and about
> how we communicate and network. The resources are
> there. 

I can hardly believe you mean that. Just a week or so
back, Daniel pointed out the shortage in meeting
travel expenses for Prepcon Winneba. I don't think
that has been sorted out yet, never mind resources to
meet the challenges posed by the corporate world in
commandeering the possibilities of community
interconnectivity. 

> 
> Lets not delude ourselves though. The large
> corporations who control the
> global media space are already looking to
> incorporate the spirit of
> community wireless into their system so that they
> can coopt the change
> towards a more grassroots approach to communications
> into something more
> status quo friendly. 
> 

Plus ca change.

> We need to be clear that this is not how it is going
> to happen. 
> 

My two bits: an urgent need to include such
discussions into the 'formal' wsfii process. I wholly
endorse Jeff on this.

> In seriously considering any work with corporations,
> a process of due
> diligence is needed to filter out the chaff from the
> gems.
> 

When does paranoia become ordinary or garden caution?
'We' have let 'them' set the rules, now we have to
think much harder to get back into the game. You have
to sit across the table with perfectly 'ordinary',
'decent' people to discover from their glazed look
that you might as well be in a zoo for all the sense
of partnering or sharing of objectives that remains.

Vickram

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