[wsfii-discuss] <nettime> Community WiFi in UK and Germany, a round-up

Wed Oct 17 13:48:13 UTC 2007

hi mr morlock elloi

I like that, good level of aggro and contestational spirit. finally
someone speaks up against the myth of self-made infrastructures, they
are never a good idea, unless they cover the whole globe, innit? and it
was long overdue to bash up those community wifi-ers and their
municipial siblings. it will all end up in google's hands and data
vaults anyway, yes? 

actually, there is a point to be made about long distance
infrastructures, I think it is true that this is an issue. but that
no-one has yet found the magic to make this happen, this does not mean
it is not being thought about it. there are a lot pof people and groups
thinking about 'generic infrastructures' or free infrastructures and
possibilities to do it on all levels and layers, from using packet radio
to satellites. 

secondly, to describe citywide wireless mesh infratsructures such as
freifunk in berlin and various other cities as well as similar projects
all over the world where they really do have networks which cover
cities, maybe not completely but like a wide mesh, as not really
noteworthy (or masturbation in your own words), then that sounds a bit
hollow, because to achieve this is not trivial and something very real.

Besides the existence of real city networks with hundreds and thousands
of nodes in even smaller cities such as Halle or Graz the free network
scene as part of the larger free software communites have developed lots
of other ideas which are already in the process of being coopted or have
been coopted fully, by the industry with things such as meraki and fon.

however, there are related areas where the world has still the catching
up to do with things taht were talked about in the wireless community
some years ago, such as to hijack leftover bands in the spectrum for gsm
to make community cells happen and spread telephony over urban areas as
well.Not to speak of all the new projects such as hive networks or
netsufuku and grassroots cartography and so on and so forth. older
people may remember still the drama about domain names with namespace.  

In principle having independent infratsructures has always been a hot
topic and people once passionately discussed this on tis very list.
regarding your post, I can only conclude that you are not very well
informed and that in turn maybe means I and others should write more
about this stuff as nobody else does it or only in negative terms. 

so, as a short further elaboration, community fibre exists in
copenhagen, for instance and yes, infrastructural projects on a certain
level become boring and projects trend to bear the hallmarks of the
orgsanisational modus operandi of a certain period in time -- you cant
be big without being a child of your time -- or is that what you meant
with corporate? just look at xs4all or other successful internet
companies like silverserver. to continue what they are doing they had to
become more like any 'normal' company but I am still glad they are
around and in times of real need I think they would sling me a
lifeline. 

to sum it up, I dont know where really your strong anti-ness comes from
but I thank you for the motivation this has given me to write this
posting and hopefully more articles about free infrastructures in the
near future as a lot has happened recently especially in the area of
mesh routing protocols. 

tata
armin

On Tue, 2007-10-16 at 11:33 -0700, Morlock Elloi wrote:
> I don't see anything particularly surprising in industry coopting
> alternative (let's call them the real name: anti-capitalist) models
> and movements. These days even bottled water is "green" so it's only
> natural for the paid last mile wireless to be "free".
> 
> There is a deeper problem in non-commercial connectivity in the
> sense that there is no viable technology for competitive do-your-own
> backbone, and without that free wireless is like giving free water
> to passers-by and bitching about the water utility company wanted to
> charge you for that. You see, no one cares about local water. What the
> fuck do I have to communicate about with my neighbours? Even within
> the same city. The real and only value of Internet is universal global
> access. Think about it: suppose that someone offers you completely
> free access that switches packets only within UK. How many people
> would go for it?
> 
> Up to day no one came up with a reliable "community" (whatever that
> means) based long haul solution. Or do you see "community" fiber and
> "community" high performance exchanges any time soon? I don't - I just
> don't see how such entities would be any different from the commercial
> model.
> 
> Don't forget that Internet started as non-commercial. One had to sign
> proper agreements to get uucp link from NSF (who ran the backbone),
> for free. It didn't work in the long run, because evil capitalists
> hijacked it.
> 
> Until a technology is developed where I can have reliable
> point-to-point link between Amsterdam and Buenos Aires for the
> investment of few hundred euros and no mediators, a free last mile
> is just another masturbatory domain for activists, frankly hijacking
> energy better used elsewhere.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> end
> (of original message)
> 
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> 
> <...>
> 
> 
> 
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