Gordon Cook: Telecommunications Infrastructure as Commons Local Self-Determination

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Gordon Cook
Gordon Cook

PDF (154 Pages): PART I: Do-It-Ourselves Telecommunications: Guifi.net Commons Coming to US from Catalonia – In Spain & US We Are Now Building Network Infrastructure Held as Commons

Background on why the public must take back control of the communications infrastructure while providing universal free access to all. Background on guifi.net in Spain and Kansas City FreeNet. Discourse on Network Governance.  “It Must Be Done” summary and credo by Isaac Wilder. Conclusion includes “Not an End but a New Beginning by Jeff Michka and Comments from Dave Hughes.

PDF (185 Pages): PART II: The Global Free Network Movement The Right to Telecommunications Self-Determination with Examples from Spain, USA, Argentina and France

Importance for Self-Determination. Introduction onf “Do It Ourselves” as antidote to tyranny of the corporate state, enabling free and open networks. History of guifi.net growing to 4,000 nodes. How guifi.net runs at scale — challenges secular power. LocalRet as a learning experience. The ecology of guifi.net. The operation and governance of guifi.net. Promoting fiber optics. AlterMundi in Argentina. Kansas City Renaissance. Fedeation of French Data Networks (FFDN). Ecuador commits to an open commons-based knowledge society.

PDF (98 Pages): PART III: Citizen Involvement in Freenets Living Labs in Catalonia and Hackerspaces in Oakland California — Guifinet to Join i2Cat Foundation for Collaborative Use of Both Infrastructures

The Internet as an agent of local empowerment. i2cat and Living Labs. Entire cities as citizen laboratories. Emerging innovation ecosystems require a change in attitude on the part of city government. Appendix on i2cat projects in 2011. A guifinet – i2cat collaboration scenario. Seizing one's local economy from the bottom up in Oakland, California.

EXTRACTS (Pages 26-27):

We are working out with entire cities as living laboratories. Do you know Anthony Townsend from New York University [Wagner School, Institute for the Future]? He envisions a planet of civic laboratories There are now some cities like New York and San Francisco for example and others who are installing Chief Innovation Officer’s.

When they say they want New York City as a laboratory, we need to ask what does this mean? And I believe it means that they are saying they want the cities to be open laboratories for any kind of Internet innovation. You can do Wi-Fi experiments; you can do fab labs; you can do health-related software activity because the city’s are finding for the first time that they need innovation policies. In New York you have people like Jerry Hultin, ex officio President of NY Politechnic, who came in October 2012 to Barcelona and said “hey we are interested in what you’re doing.” Jerry’s institution is called New York Politechnic. Previously it was called Brooklyn Poly-technic University. Jerry helped merge the two institutions and the result – New York Poly-technic – now i is a school of NYU.

COOK Report: there’s a group called Smart Cities I believe is this similar to what you’re talking about?
Serra: Oh no. Smart cities is currently more top-down we are talking about bottom-up. We are talking about a research driven approach between universities, guifi.net, the city and the citizens of Barcelona.

COOK Report: The point is that, in the past, the users have had not much other choice than to be passive recipients of whatever service they can afford.
Serra: That’s true. But now in the cities we have these formations of innovative “tribes.” The Open Data People. The Fablabers. The Wikipedian’s. The Arduino people – to name a few. They do not belong to any University or to any big company. They are just people who organize amongst themselves. And with a Barcelona Living Laboratory we can offer a link to them and facilitate what they’ve already begun to do. Guifi.net is a good example of this.

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