[P2P-F] [Commoning] sharing, essence of things, technological determinism, economic determinism, and neoliberalism

Tue Jan 11 23:28:54 CET 2011

Michel Bauwens wrote:
> Hi Roberto,
>
> my question is the following: is low power FM compatible with the 
> internet, i.e. is it possible for local communities to use both 
> interchangeably and with compatibility? (on other lists, we are 
> working with sepp

LPFM basically refers to an FM radio station that  goes on the air (not
online), with a transmit power of at most 100w (perhaps 500w in some
contexts). Typical stations now roughly cost as low as a high-end
laptop. Reception is through standard FM radios. US$5 made-in-China FM
radios are available in the Philippines. The recurring cost of $1-2 for
batteries every few weeks or so is something that even poor farmers can
afford; $1/hr in an Internet cafe, they can't afford, and there's
usually no Internet cafe in the village. Listeners can respond the usual
way -- call-in by phone, text-in by SMS, or by going to the station
itself. FM is essentially line-of-sight, and with the low power, we are
talking of service to a cluster of villages, a small town, a valley,
etc. Community radio stations have a very active international
organization, AMARC. The limited coverage makes very logical even
necessary the use of local language and focus on local issues. I
explored these in the following pieces:

http://www.scu.edu/sts/nexus/summer2005/VerzolaArticle.cfm
http://rverzola.files.wordpress.com/2008/01/infoeconomy-verzola.pdf (p.169)

Nothing prevents the FM station from being on the Internet of course.
Then local listeners can phone/text in requests for info, and results
can be aired over the station. Internet listeners (presumably familiar
with the local language) can then join in too. Local listeners cannot
get online themselves through the station, if that's the compatibility
one is looking for.

> I would be totally opposed to charging per distance, which would again 
> favour the old forces and take away our right to global communication, 
> and free communication belongs to the great rights of humankind, along 
> with free education and free medicine (and hold your horses, we can 
> find ways to do this sustainably, free in this context means, 'as a 
> public service' available to all)

Ok, I'll hold ... :-)  ... But I'm curious about your objection: if the
cost structure of a technology is distance-dependent ("distance" could
mean network instead of physical distance), wouldn't it be fair to
charge per distance, reflecting the actual cost of the physical
infrastructure? If some cross-subsidy is unavoidable, then wouldn't it
be fairer for the richer users to subsidize the poorer ones -- or the
global players to subsidize the local ones (as the old telecomms
supposedly did) -- instead of the other way around?

I agree completely that health services and education should be provided
for free as a public service or through some form of commons. But
communications services are used by businesses and markets a lot. Should
they get that for free too? Perhaps they ought to, but I need to think
more about that one ...

In the Nexus piece above, I also suggested ways to keep costs low for
developing countries deploying modern ICT. In summary:

1.     Use an appropriate (i.e., intermediate) technology, which may not
be the latest or the most advanced, but still improves significantly on
the current ways of doing things and is much more affordable to those
who will use it;

2.     Use free/open software (e.g., Linux/GNU, OpenOffice, etc.), to
drastically reduce the cost of software and to invite deeper knowledge
about the technology through the availability of the source code;

3.     Where commercial software must be used, encourage the government
to apply genuine compulsory licensing;

4.     Deploy pay-per-use public access stations which do not require
users to pay fixed monthly charges (the public phone booth model); and

5.     Explore community/public ownership mechanisms to minimize private
rent-seeking.

We've actually included most of the above in the Philippine Greens
program of action for the information sector (we have separate action
programs for the agriculture and industrial sectors). The full text is
available here, p.21:

http://rverzola.files.wordpress.com/2008/03/set-2006-formatted.pdf

Greetings,

Roberto