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

Wed Jan 12 02:53:20 CET 2011

Dear R oberto,

Thanks for the info on the community radio, which seems quite powerful for
local communities.

The issue of distance is quite important, but for me it is a civil right and
social justice issue.

I..e alll citizens need to communicate, not just with local resources, but
with global ones, especially in terms of education etc.... The internet is
like the roads, health and education, something which creates a baseline for
all to participate. If it becomes distance-dependent and metered, then it is
not really an issue of the richer ones sponsoring the poor ones, but rather
of only the rich ones using quality global resources, and the effect would
be very similar to the abolition of net neutrality (differential pricing for
who can afford it, and discriminating against content who can't afford
higher pricing). Strategically, it would solidify two-tier societies, and
would make the advantages of capital impregnable, since it would make it
impossible to create global open design communities. In other words, it
would make globa-local peer production impossible. Furthermore, metering has
very strong psychological effects on usage, and like mobile, would refocus
the internet as a entertainment and business medium, rather than as a civic
medium.

I'm not a technician, but I think that the issues of connectivity is a
failure of public services; once in place, connectivity can be used locally
or globally at only a slightly higher marginal costs. I heard from telecom
people that 98% of optical fibre is currently unused, they say
intentionally, to maintain communication scarcity and hence market pricing.
Richer people can participate through taxation, instead of by the market
mechanism you propose. Businesses would still pay for all the extra services
they are using.

In Thailand, I think the situation is a little different; I've been to many
villages both in the North and the Northeast, and have not seen any yet
without points of internet access (of course not personal access, but
collective access). Of course, if you live with very low income, you can't
access even the collective access point, and that is a serious problem.

Apart from the issue of differential pricing, I think your solutions would
go a long way in solving access for the poorest citizens.

On Wed, Jan 12, 2011 at 5:28 AM, Roberto Verzola <rverzola at gn.apc.org>wrote:

> 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
>
>
>

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