Users: Who will be using it? And what for?

[richard adler]

There's a topic we've touched on in a couple of these threads but haven't addressed directly: who do we expect to be using this distributed internet?

Some points to make up front about starting from the user side:

1) I realize this question is, by definition, speculative. But I offer it *in context* with the other discussions (and as a more focused sub-discussion of 'defining the problem', which has strayed from Colin's original question). Considered on its own, this question might have us building an internet for a constituency that doesn't exist. But alongside the other discussions, it may help us clarify what options make sense and which do not.

2) I realize there will not be a single constituency with a single purpose in mind. Obviously many groups may/will take up whatever internet we might build, and they may have different purposes for it. What they choose to do with it may not be our immediate concern as such ('content neutral', etc), but speculation as to what they most *likely* will want to do with it may also help us clarify what this next net will need.

3) This question must necessarily influence the technical discussions already happening. If we expect many users to have limited resources (including limits on money and access to tech) and limited knowledge of technology, then solutions relying on 'the best off the shelf tech available today' will be less useful than solutions relying on 'the most affordable, most easily understood, AND most widely distributed off-the-shelf tech available today.'

4) This is *not* an issue that can just be solved on the application layer as an after-thought. It's not *just* an issue of usability or of being user friendly (though it's partly that). It's a question of what resources we are going to demand that someone must have in order to access this distributed internet, in terms of hardware, software, and technical proficiency (because whatever internet we build, we *will* be demanding that of all users, even if we wish that didn't have to be the case).

Having said all that, here is one possible way to frame the question:

"In its initial stages, should the next internet be architected with the expectation that it will be adopted primarily (perhaps even exclusively) by technically adept enthusiasts? Or, instead, on the expectation that it will be adopted by enthusiasts (who will always come) but ALSO a wider, less technically adept base (including activists with limited resources in hostile sociopolitical environments)?"

Obviously, they way I've framed the question favors the latter option. But the former IS an option. A next net for enthusiasts would probably be much easier to make a concrete reality, and--if architected right--could be made a step toward an internet that could be used by a far greater number of people (as indeed was the case with the first internet).

But I think at some point we will need to make it clear to ourselves which way we're leaning if we hope to build something truly accessible to the people we hope to make it available to.

[Aaron Huslage]

This is key. Thanks Richard for bringing it up in such a nice way.

On Sun, Feb 27, 2011 at 1:06 PM, richard adler <richar...@gmail.com> wrote:

"In its initial stages, should the next internet be architected with the expectation that it will be adopted primarily (perhaps even exclusively) by technically adept enthusiasts? Or, instead, on the expectation that it will be adopted by enthusiasts (who will always come) but ALSO a wider, less technically adept base (including activists with limited resources in hostile sociopolitical environments)?"

In my history working on stuff like this, I've seen projects that have been "too geeky" (see my thread of that name) be marginalized and fail to engender populace broad enough to catalyze their growth. This is true of projects that were never intended to go outside of the realm of geekery. If it's too hard to use, implement, understand or procure then people won't use it. No one will. Not geeks, not grandma. True, there will always be early adopter enthusiasts, but they only stay for as long as their desire is met...you can't count on them necessarily (I've been a part of this problem in the past myself). Truly great projects sit on a good technical footing, but an even better user development footing.

Linux succeeded not because it was technically the best out there, it certainly wasn't. But it had a charismatic (if reluctant) leader, an interface that most UNIX people could grok, and a mission that became clear rather quickly once the movement caught fire. The usefulness was there before the tech was even finished enough to support it, but the support system around it was flexible enough to adapt to the needs of early adopters and business people alike. I worked for Red Hat early on and saw this for myself.

This is a hard nut to crack and successes like this happen as much by accident as by design. This brings me to what I propose is our user statement:

Our user is anyone, anywhere who wants to be connected to the rest of the world any time.

You'll notice that this encompasses the Internet as it is now. This is fine. We haven't yet created a suitable replacement, but I have faith that this group can make a reasonable start.

--
Aaron Huslage -  +1-919-600-1712
http://blog.hact.net
IM: AIM - ahuslage; Yahoo - ahuslage; MSN - hus...@gmail.com; GTalk - hus...@gmail.com

[Patrick Anderson]

richard adler wrote:
> who do we expect to be using this distributed internet?

Since the Price of connectivity will be the real Costs of connectivity,
most everyone will be attracted to using this system because it will
be vastly cheaper - since we no longer have to pay profit to others.

We can use this to our advantage by attracting users to pre-pay for
these services, and use those pre-payments as funding to begin this
adventure.

[Michel Bauwens]

I would like to add a somewhat different perspective to the debate,

In my opinion, it would not be realistic to build a fully alternative internet, at least not immediately and in the short term, but rather the aim should be to maximise the autonomy and possiblities of peer to peer communication

And this is the context in which it will have to occur:

1) human peer to peer communications do not need to have a fully technical p2p infrastructure in order to be feasible and possible. As we have seen in the Middle East, it is entirely possible to achieve peer to peer socialization (long term) and short term mobilization using very imperfect (but very easy to use) corporate platforms to conduct a powerful social revolution that abolishes very entrenched authoritarian regimes. However, in times of stress, social forces need to be able to access alternative infrastructures, as also shown recently

2) it is very difficult to compete with corporate platforms with have huge means at their disposal, focus on usability, and can count on important network effects; pragmatically, we have seen that open projects that are allies with a business ecology can perform very well and find it much more easier to be adapted than pure play technology projects which do not have such an ecology at their disposal; hybrid open/corporate platforms are more likely to be adapted than pure play corporates or pure play open; even as we may wish the latter to be dominant


For me, this means the following:

- how can we insure that the already existing infrastructures remain usable for transformative work; this requires maximizing user freedoms, open standards, and p2p aspects of said infrastructure; and this is the combined result of hacker efforts, user base mobilizations against netarchical control, and the general democratic and social strengths of civil society; this is not a technological job, but a techno-social-political process; however, the existence of pure play alternatives is very important as a threat and a replacement tool, including to keep proprietary and governmental players 'in check'

- how can we insure that, when corporate and governmental pressures come to bear on user freedoms and p2p capabilities, alternatives can be quickly used and developed; this requires that the hacker commuinities continue to build sound alternatives; both to be used by active minorities, and to be used as replacement mechanisms in times of crisis; and who may scale when the balance of forces in society changes

- at the same time, we continue to imagine, strive for, and slowly construct, the elements of a true autonomous internet, but without illusions of its quick adoption by any mass of users

- never forget that in times of crisis, and real shifts in balance of power, the most likely event will not be a the magical appearance of an alternative infrastructure, but rather the taking over of existing infrastructures by their user base and their workers, from the current corporate and monopolistic owners

All of the above means that we need an integrative approach that combines both working with existing infrastructures to make them better, and the building of new pieces of the puzzle

And this is why 'partial p2p projects' are a vital part of the transformative process, as vital as the imagining and construction of a pure alternative internet

Michel

[Aaron Huslage]

--
Aaron Huslage
+1.919.600.1712
hus...@gmail.com
Via mobile device

[Aaron Huslage]

I agree with you. I also think we need to come up with a scenario that includes a greenfield. It's an exercise. If we don't get out of the box we fail to innovate and think of new ideas. My goal isn't to replace what exists overnight as.if.it has no value. My goal is to get us thinking about what.might be possible in some ideal alternative reality such that we can bring that free thinking back to our real ideas.

--
Aaron Huslage
+1.919.600.1712
hus...@gmail.com
Via mobile device

On Feb 27, 2011 11:33 PM, "Michel Bauwens" <michel...@gmail.com> wrote:

[sures...@gmail.com]

The question 'Who will be using it?' would seem to be the first question that needs to be answered in order to develop a project path with a clearly definable result that can actually be financed.

Theoretical possibility needs to be balanced by pragmatism.

Is there a clearly defined problem statement somewhere? Forgive me if I have missed it.

Sent from my BlackBerry® smartphone powered by Mobilicity

---

From: Aaron Huslage <hus...@gmail.com>

Sender: building-a-distributed...@googlegroups.com

Date: Sun, 27 Feb 2011 23:42:09 -0500

To: <building-a-distributed...@googlegroups.com>

ReplyTo: building-a-distributed...@googlegroups.com

Subject: Re: Users: Who will be using it? And what for?

[Samuel Rose]

On Sun, Feb 27, 2011 at 11:42 PM, Aaron Huslage <hus...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I agree with you. I also think we need to come up with a scenario that
> includes a greenfield. It's an exercise. If we don't get out of the box we
> fail to innovate and think of new ideas. My goal isn't to replace what
> exists overnight as.if.it has no value. My goal is to get us thinking about
> what.might be possible in some ideal alternative reality such that we can
> bring that free thinking back to our real ideas.
>

I think futures visioning exercises like this are valuable for the
reasons you state. It's tough to do by email. I'd like to invite
people to add their "Greenfield Vision of Autonomous Internet" to this
page http://p2pfoundation.net/Greenfield_Vision_of_Autonomous_Internet

--
--
Sam Rose
Future Forward Institute and Forward Foundation
Tel:+1(517) 639-1552
Cel: +1-(517)-974-6451
skype: samuelrose
email: samue...@gmail.com
http://forwardfound.org
http://futureforwardinstitute.org
http://hollymeadcapital.com
http://p2pfoundation.net
http://socialmediaclassroom.com

"The universe is not required to be in perfect harmony with human
ambition." - Carl Sagan

[Samuel Rose]

I think we stand to be surprised about things like adoption etc. If
there is utility and payoff, people will adopt (usually).

> - never forget that in times of crisis, and real shifts in balance of power,
> the most likely event will not be a the magical appearance of an alternative
> infrastructure, but rather the taking over of existing infrastructures by
> their user base and their workers, from the current corporate and
> monopolistic owners
>
> All of the above means that we need an integrative approach that combines
> both working with existing infrastructures to make them better, and the
> building of new pieces of the puzzle
>

Agree. The first places to start are *both* the underlying technology
layer, *and* the user-interface/application layers. Both need to be
developed in parallel. Some of us getting to a picture of who will be
using the early versions of what we are talking about. At least from
my perspective, I can see that there are uses in urban neighborhoods,
and smaller farms/rural settings.

The other vision articulated here so far is "Subverting the Internet
Kill Switch".

There is really a "Long Tail" of "who will be using this", and this is
why it is fundamentally important to think about an approach that can
support a plurality of end uses.

> And this is why 'partial p2p projects' are a vital part of the
> transformative process, as vital as the imagining and construction of a pure
> alternative internet
>
> Michel
>
>

--

[dimitz...@gmail.com]

On Wed, Mar 2, 2011 at 3:16 PM, Samuel Rose <samue...@gmail.com> wrote:

I think futures visioning exercises like this are valuable for the
reasons you state. It's tough to do by email. I'd like to invite
people to add their "Greenfield Vision of Autonomous Internet" to this
page  http://p2pfoundation.net/Greenfield_Vision_of_Autonomous_Internet

 

Hello everyone,
I'm new to the mailing list (I joined yesterday). My name is Dimitris, I am a student of electrical engineering in the university of Patras and since very recently I've become very interested in the concepts you discuss here about a new open internet and everything P2P.
I tried to add some thoughts on the "Greenfield vision" but I'm not sure this page can be edited.
Thanks for any help!

 

--
Dimitris

[Samuel Rose]

Dimitris, I am copying Michel and James to help make sure you have
access to edit that page

[Michel Bauwens]

hi Dimitris,

access to the wiki is by self-registration, but let us know if there are problems,

Michel

--
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[Sara Farmer]

Actually, we (the UN) may have a use or two for an autonomous
distributed internet...

Pulse team and crisismappers, meet the autonomous internet team.

The autonomous internet team is looking at how and whether to build a
distributed decentralised internet, and is currently discussing this and
mapping work across this field.

The UN Global Pulse team is building a series of interconnected
platforms to monitor changes in human wellbeing across the world, based
on a combination of social media, government and commercial data
sources. One of our big issues is security: we want to use an Internet
bearer to connect analysis teams, but we have to protect all our data
sources from each other (we're handling people's and companies' data
that we do not want exposed, even to the analysts and between teams: we
have ideas for embedded processing on source sites to handle much of
this, but we still need to keep a lot of the raw data separated).

Where the autonomous internet really comes in is in a secondary use of
these platforms: crises. We are also designing in the ability of the
platforms to function in low-bandwidth and intermittent-bandwidth
environments: thinking about things like how to keep copies of tools,
data and analysis local to each platform so users can still be connected
to the global ideas pool, but aren't hampered by bad connections to the
outside world. We're currently thinking about, and including in our
design, how a system like this (people, processes, tech) can also be
used before, during and after a crisis.

Crisismappers are the people (mainly volunteers) who use technology
(e.g. social media) and crowds to augment the 'official' information
available during a crisis. The most famous recent example of this is the
information response to Haiti, but we've done an awful lot of work both
before and after that. Since crisismapping relies on available data
that's often generated by people in the crisis area, it helps to erm
actually have that data available to them. There are some secondary
information systems that are currently being used (and never
underestimate sneakernet), but it's always good to explore another one.

I suspect there may be other groups here with more than a passing
interest. And now I'll just sit back and see what develops :-).

Links:
* UN Global Pulse design area: https://sites.google.com/site/unglobalpulse/
* UN Global Pulse background: http://www.unglobalpulse.org/
* Autonomous internet idea:
http://emergentbydesign.com/2011/02/22/towards-a-distributed-internet/
* Autonomous internet wiki:
http://p2pfoundation.net/Greenfield_Vision_of_Autonomous_Internet
* Crisismappers Network: http://crisismappers.net/

Sara.

[Samuel Rose]

On Wed, Mar 2, 2011 at 9:34 AM, Michel Bauwens <michel...@gmail.com> wrote:
> hi Dimitris,
>
> access to the wiki is by self-registration, but let us know if there are
> problems,
>
> Michel
>

Dimitris, please make sure to check your email after you register,
too. The wiki will not give you access to edit pages until you have
confirmed the email sent to you.

Before you can edit pages on the wiki you will need to confirm your
email address.
Check your email for a message from webm...@p2pfoundation.net
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You can come back to this page any time by typing "Welcome" into the
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Welcome!
The P2P Foundation Maintainers

[Sara Farmer]

(*message resent because I can't spell 'googlegroups'*)

[RichardCAdler]

"Is there a clearly defined problem statement somewhere?"

Yes, it has. That would be in the very first email of this thread,
which you may have noticed is called, "Users: Who will be using it?
And what for?"

Richard

On Mar 2, 2:00 am, suresh2...@gmail.com wrote:
> The question 'Who will be using it?' would seem to be the first question that needs to be answered in order to develop a project path with a clearly definable result that can actually be financed.
>
> Theoretical possibility needs to be balanced by pragmatism.
>
> Is there a clearly defined problem statement somewhere? Forgive me if I have missed it.
> Sent from my BlackBerry® smartphone powered by Mobilicity
>

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Aaron Huslage <husl...@gmail.com>
>
> Sender: building-a-distributed...@googlegroups.com
> Date: Sun, 27 Feb 2011 23:42:09

> To: <building-a-distributed...@googlegroups.com>
> Reply-To: building-a-distributed...@googlegroups.com

> Subject: Re: Users: Who will be using it? And what for?
>
> I agree with you. I also think we need to come up with a scenario that
> includes a greenfield. It's an exercise. If we don't get out of the box we
> fail to innovate and think of new ideas. My goal isn't to replace what
> exists overnight as.if.it has no value. My goal is to get us thinking about
> what.might be possible in some ideal alternative reality such that we can
> bring that free thinking back to our real ideas.
>
> --
> Aaron Huslage
> +1.919.600.1712

> husl...@gmail.com
> Via mobile device

[Robert Steele]

For me, this is the single most exciting connection to be made thus far.  I am just back from DEMO Sping 2011 where I had the privilege of seeing all the new social media launches, and most of them are fantastic in their niche, but totally isolated from any "big picture" network of networks concept.

Hybrids are the future, and information sharing is the means by which hybrid combinations of academia, civil society, commerce, government (local to national), law enforcement, media, military, and non-governmental (local to global) voluntarily harmonize both their perception of ground truth, and what they do about it.

I will be in NY for a meeting on the 8th and could come up a day or two early if there is any interest in an informal round-table.  My latest book is for sale in the UN bookstore (and free to any UN group by the box of 20), INTELLIGENCE for EARTH: Clarity, Diversity, Integrity, & Sustainability (EIN 2010).  I am driving up and can bring the box of books with me.

I am a strong believer in Medard Gabel (co-creator with Buckminster Fuller Fuller of the analog World Game, and more recently architect of the digital EarthGame, a prototype for a UN Earth Dashboard, and editor of Designing a World that Works for all.  Where social media falls short today is with respect to both a strategic analytic model such as we created based on the UN identification of the ten high-level threats to humanity, an accomplishment not yet appreciated by all for its enormous importance as a starting point, and a data-oriented machine processing and human sense-making concept of operations and standard operating procedures, with the below three references perhaps being helpful.



KUDOS to Sara Farmer for making this connection.

[Sara Farmer]

Would it help if we put together a use case for some of the crisis
stuff I've been talking about? I'm assuming that the appropriate
place for this would be the wiki.

Sara.

[sures...@gmail.com]

That seems to be call for the problem statement not the problem statement itself.

In a financing context the problem statement requires that you identify some group (hopefully a subset of the planet) for whom you are solving a problem.

This is the basis for rolling out your alpha stage solution... You need to know whom to roll out with.

I think this issue might have been resolved by sara in any case.

Suresh

[richard adler]

Sara,

I think more details about the crisismappers and the other initiatives you mentioned would be very interesting for the group, and would make a valuable contribution. So, please do.

Richard

[Venessa Miemis]

Sara,

welcome!

so glad you found this forum and are joining the discussion. i see you
referenced the "Towards a Distributed Internet" post - that's my blog.
(just so you know who you're talking to!)

the idea here is to bring together the communities and stakeholders in
these next net initiatives and start to form a better view of the big
picture of how all these things can evolve together in parallel
processing, so we can generate better roadmaps together and next
steps.

it would be great if you or someone from your team would join the
gathering we're putting together in NYC in october called Contact.
(i'm co-organizing it.) the website is still under development, but
the placeholder can be found at contactcon.com for more info.

is your UN Global Pulse going to be part of the UN Earth Dashboard?

Robert,

the world keeps getting smaller..... i was just asked to serve on the
advisory board for the UN Earth Dashboard project. haven't had the
opportunity to speak with Medard yet, but have been exchanging ideas
with some of the other team members. super exciting!

- venessa

[Venessa Miemis]

> That seems to be call for the problem statement not the problem statement itself.

hey suresh,

we're still talking about 'the next net' in the broader scope... of
both hardware and software....

i'm not a technical person, but when they're having the hardware
conversation, i'd think the target group is "anyone"

when talking about software, i'd think it depends on who the group is
and what kind of information they want to exchange and collaborate
around.

i don't think we're quite there yet... it's still a matter of
assembling the pieces that are already out there and seeing where the
gaps and opportunities are.

- venessa

[Robert Steele]

My eyes were opened by a number of others, but the "aha" moment came when I stumbled on ContactCon and then Venessa put some thoughts on the table.  I have spent the past 30 years focused on improving human access to data and human collective sense-making, and it was not until recently that I realized I had the cart before the horse, and that connecting everyone was Priority One.

Having said that, a great deal of homework has been done in this area, and here I offer just a few thoughts and some thinks.

1)  Simplified, the Information Commons is inhabited by eight major tribes that do not talk to each other and do not share analytic paradigms or sources and methods:  academic, civil society, commercial, government, media, military, non-government.  A priority is to enable those tribes to connect, and individual within those tribes to connect *while validated the data they share as trusted.*  The tribal "iron curtains" are compounded by wood curtains between disciplines and domains and plastic curtains between individuals.  Few are serious about history and foresight, and no one is serious about integrating the varies kinds of human expertise, with UN emphasis necessarily being the 11 slices that are not secret in any way.

Graphic: Information Commons & Eight Tribes

Graphic: Information Operations (IO) Cube

Graphic: Full Spectrum Human Intelligence (HUMINT)

2)  Wisdom of the crowds is also ubiquitousness of the crowds, and the highest value for crisis operations is both early warning and constant 360 monitoring.  I've worked a little on Twitter as both a real-time trending source, and Twitter as a means of identifying someone standing at a specific place at a time of interest, and asking them what they are seeing.  This all has collection, not just analytics, implications.

Graphics: Twitter as an Intelligence Tool

Journal: Twitter Breaks the News

3)  In 1985-1989 a number of us identified the analytic sources and methods and general functionalities needed, and we still do not have that because governments and corporations have been inherently corrupt, and striven to perpetuate silos and proprietary single point of sale technology relations.

1989 HBK Diane Webb (US) CATALYST: Computer-Aided Tools for the Analysis of Science & Technology

1988 DOC Generic Intelligence Center Production Requirements

4)  The "end game" is the eradication of corruption through complete transparency.  There is PLENTY of money and other forms of wealth for ALL to be happy, healthy, and productive, the problem is that the Industrial Era fostered "rule by secrecy" and massive inefficiencies that favor the few over the many, with the result that fully 50% of the taxpayer dollar in the US is fraud, waste, or abuse, with defense, health, intelligence, and "justice" being the top four spend-thrift categories.  The ALTERNATIVE to institutionalized corruption is a Global to Local Range of Gifts Table that connects the one billion rich (80% of whom do not give to charities that spend 75% on overhead and rarely deliver full value) to the five billion poor at the mico-need per household.  Free cells phones is for me a priority.  OpenBTS from Range Networks, the Freedom Box, and SolarOne are for me all important parts of the connectivity, but on top of that we need two more layers:

Graphic: Global Range of Nano-Needs

Graphic: Holistic Analysis

++  Global network of volunteers and professionals who have access to desktop analytic power and global Internet access who can answer or educate or connect "one cell call at a time."

++  Regional multinational information sharing and sense-making centers that are focused on eradicating the ten high level threats to humanity by harmonizing all spending across the twelve core policies, and ultimately creating a model that is compellingly attractive to the eight big demographic powers that cannot afford to be as pathological as the US has been in consumption and waste.

This would all be a superb candidate for a round-table with diverse contributors, to be video-taped and YouTubed.

I might mention that the US spends over $70 billion a year for secret sources and methods that produce "at best" 4% of what a handful of individuals need, and nothing for the rest.  Eventually, when this model is implemented outside government and becomes compelling, an Open Source Agency promoting Open Source Spectrum, Open Source Software, and Open Source Intelligence, is inevitable.  That is what I have been focused on since 1988, but as I mention above, recently I have realized that I must first devote myself to helping achieve Priority One, an autonomous internet with free to very low cost access to three billion poor.

Three of my own better references:

2010 M4IS2 Briefing for South America — 2010 M4IS2 Presentacion por Sur America (ANEPE Chile)

2010: Human Intelligence (HUMINT) Trilogy Updated

Search: The Future of OSINT [is M4IS2-Multinational]

Very excited by this turn in the dialog.

Robert

On Wed, Mar 2, 2011 at 11:28 AM, Sara Farmer <sara....@btinternet.com> wrote:

[Devin Balkind]

Our problem statement is that we've got two hundreds acre in Pennsylvania that needs a wireless network and web access, and we'd like to broadcast network/web to as many of our neighbors as possible, nearby towns, and beyond.  If we can prove that we can provide connectivity for less, state governments could grant us spectrum and nullify the FCC.  This is very possible in New Hampshire with the help of the Free State Project, which is building the political infrastructure to challenge the scope of the federal government.

Over the next week we'll outline the parameters of the first stage of the project and post it to the wiki.  Hopefully the group will benefit from the specificity and physical/local nature of our challenge.

PS.  What do you folks think about running fiber along interstates?

--
Devin Balkind
Director, Sarapis Foundation

de...@sarapisfoundation.org
@devinbalkind

[Isaac Wilder]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1


I haven't been able to participate in this conversation as much as I'd
like, because we've been hard at work building a new network here in Iowa.
More on that to follow in the next few days, but I have been following
with a
sort of feverish intensity, and I think it might be time to raise my
voice.

As we move forward with the requirement and specification process, I
think it is critical that our shared vision be that of a modular,
extensible, and globally ubiquitous communication system. It is not
enough to build a system that is affordable to only those in the
developed world, nor is it sensible to build a system which is only
attractive to those in developing regions. If we are going to build
freedom on a global scale, then we cannot, and must not settle.

Market forces *do* motivate popular behavior, so it is essential that
we focus concertedly on both the capability and economy of this new
system. Moreover, a shift in the geopolitical calculus and
civilizational hierarchy of power will only be brought about if not
*millions*, but *billions* of individuals decide to participate in
this nascent network.

This means a couple of things:
Firstly, it means that in MDCs, we have to be able to offer a rich
media experience at a fraction of the cost of the ISP/Telco hegemony -
ideally, the cost of the hardware. Initially, there may still be a
price for connectivity, especially if the existing infrastructure is
used as a stopgap mechanism for backhaul, but this can *only* be
temporary. Philosophically and practically, we should be designing a
system whose cost to each individual is the price of the hardware and
the cost of supplying power to that hardware.
Secondly, it means that in LDCs, we have to be able to reach areas
with very little existing infrastructure (No fiber, no 3G) - the
implementation of the system cannot be dependent upon existing routes,
even if it is capable of taking advantage of them. Additionally, the
hardware needs to be affordable to all - this means that we need to be
thinking about embedded systems, or figuring out ways to drop the
price on wallwarts by *orders of magnitude.* I believe strongly that
this can be done - it is the focus of one of my ventures.

So, I don't mean to rehash what has been said, but I do mean to
reiterate this critical point: *For this enterprise to have any chance
of success, we must design a system with global reach. It is not
enough to serve some limited purposes or restricted geographies. This
is not a system for revolutionaries, it is not a system for Americans,
it is not a system for Africans - the next network is system of, for,
and by the whole of humanity.*


take care,
Isaac Wilder
Founder, Free Network Movement
CEO, Nodal Industries

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[Robert Steele]

I love this.  Am going to do a special post on it.  It needs to be in the wiki under the higher order social (wiki is organized to provide for people, things, and money).

[Patrick Anderson]

Isaac Wilder wrote:
> Philosophically and practically, we should be designing a
> system whose cost to each individual is the price of the
> hardware and the cost of supplying power to that hardware.

Isaac,

The customers *already* pay all the Costs of production.

We, the consumers, foot the entire bill.

And we *also* pay Profit because we choose to pay late.

But if we could organize to pay early - to collectively
purchase the Physical Sources of products and services
we need - then, we would still need to pay all costs.

But since we would own the objective as a side-effect
of our owning the Sources, we would no be 'buying'
from ourselves, and so COULD NOT pay Profit, for that
final transaction would not even occur!

Profit is UNDEFINED when the Customers are the Owners
of the Means of Production.

Why are we so disorganized and/or terrified of ownership
that we leave it up to those that intend to subjugate
and dominate us?

And instead of taking a stance through property ownership,
we beg and plead with the current owners to "please do
the right thing" - even though the current owners have
NO POSSIBLE CHANCE of "doing the right thing" for they
owe investors who expect Price be kept above Cost.

And Price can only be kept above Cost during Scarcity.

So we see the drive for Scarcity is caused by choosing
investors who expect Profit as a return.

The drive for Scarcity can be eliminated by choosing
investors who expect Product as a return.

But only Customers can use Product as a return.

So the answer is to attract Customers to pre-pay for
Product - while using those pre-payments as actual
investments which are then property co-owned by those
Customers who benefit from the use-value of that
production, and never need strive for Scarcity, for
the product will usually never be sold.

In the case where a Customer-Owner has too much product:
the solution is to sell that product to non-owners, and
even to charge Price above Cost (Profit) against those
late comers *BUT* - here is the trick - the Profit
received must be treated as though that Customer had
just made an investment toward even more Physical Sources.

Treating Profit as that payer's investment will allow
the collective to include others while simultaneously
avoiding the typical problems of overaccumulation
and excessive concentration of control that cause
even the most well-intentioned organizations to finally
fail to meet the needs of those they were initially
formed to serve (the customers of course!).

[Samuel Rose]

Greetings, Sara.

On Wed, Mar 2, 2011 at 9:38 AM, Sara Farmer <sara....@btinternet.com> wrote:
> Actually, we (the UN) may have a use or two for an autonomous distributed
> internet...
>
> Pulse team and crisismappers, meet the autonomous internet team.
>
> The autonomous internet team is looking at how and whether to build a
> distributed decentralised internet, and is currently discussing this and
> mapping work across this field.
>
> The UN Global Pulse team is building a series of interconnected platforms to
> monitor changes in human wellbeing across the world, based on a combination
> of social media, government and commercial data sources.  One of our big
> issues is security: we want to use an Internet bearer to connect analysis
> teams, but we have to protect all our data sources from each other (we're
> handling people's and companies' data that we do not want exposed, even to
> the analysts and between teams: we have ideas for embedded processing on
> source sites to handle much of this, but we still need to keep a lot of the
> raw data separated).
>

There's definitely existing software that could accomplish this, even
if run in a distributed way. I am thinking here about many different
possibilities likesecure AMQP or HTTPS, distribut ed data stores like
Redis, Tokyo Cabinet/Tyrant, CouchDB, etc etc It all depends on the
specifics. Another option is federated data grids via iRODS This is an
application per-server, that affords the type of security you need,
and could conceivably run on an operating system like freedombox

> Where the autonomous internet really comes in is in a secondary use of these
> platforms: crises.  We are also designing in the ability of the platforms to
> function in low-bandwidth and intermittent-bandwidth environments: thinking
> about things like how to keep copies of tools, data and analysis local to
> each platform so users can still be connected to the global ideas pool, but
> aren't hampered by bad connections to the outside world.  We're currently
> thinking about, and including in our design, how a system like this (people,
> processes, tech) can also be used before, during and after a crisis.
>

I think it's worth doing some testing with both AMQP and Erlang in
general to see if either might be able to help with some of the
problems that I imagine can arise. Plus, of course the concepts behind
freedombox distribution appear to be addressing a way to help people
make autonomous internets that potentially need not be connected to
the greater outside world when not possible. Can also think of
potentials for creating phone menu answering systems for people in
disaster areas to call and report problems/SMS to dispatching systems
using Asterisk PBX http://www.asterisk.org/ , or a skype-like
voice-video system via http://ekiga.org/ (all open source software).
Diaspora and status net are ways to make a distributed "twitter" and
"facebook"-like systems on an Autonomous Net

> Crisismappers are the people (mainly volunteers) who use technology (e.g.
> social media) and crowds to augment the 'official' information available
> during a crisis. The most famous recent example of this is the information
> response to Haiti, but we've done an awful lot of work both before and after
> that.  Since crisismapping relies on available data that's often generated
> by people in the crisis area, it helps to erm actually have that data
> available to them.  There are some secondary information systems that are
> currently being used (and never underestimate sneakernet), but it's always
> good to explore another one.
>

I am really interested to continue this discussion here, or on
pulsechat or crisismappers lists. It's my opinion that crisis areas
are some of the first best areas to begin developing with Autonomous
Internets with hardware and FLOSSoftware that is now at hand (or
modifiable into something usable)

--