Archive for the ‘Observations’ Category

Freeing the net in Vancouver

Friday, October 5th, 2007

The other night I went to a Free the Net meeting at Bryght in Gastown. I hadn’t been there since two BarCamps ago, when they’d barely moved in and everything was primer white. They’ve pimped their space fo’ sho’…. Flourescent apple green walls, obnoxious red chairs and sticky notes offering moustache rides, $1. It’s a cool space, despite its efforts; across the plexiglass divide is another Drupal shop, Raincity Studios. I’m guessing it’s a fun place to work.

Anyhoo. About 15 peeps, including usual suspects (and hosts) kk+, Boris and Roland, plus a variety of geeks about town. SFU was in tha house, with Richard Smith, Jéan Hébert (see his post about the event here) and yours truly representin’. I did my usual gender check: 12 nerdy boys to 3 geeky girls. The more things change the more they stay the same etc. etc…

So what is this business about freeing the net? Isn’t it free already, sorta? Well there’s this idea of mesh that’s going to blow things apart, sorta. It evolved out of MIT’s roofnet project, which developed the protocols for mesh networking on PCs. According to Wikipedia, mesh networking “is a way to route data, voice and instructions between nodes. It allows for continuous connections and reconfiguration around broken or blocked paths by ‘hopping’ from node to node until the destination is reached.” There is no longer a need for base stations; instead an arrangement of short p2p connections evolves as more users join the network.

Basically mesh routing technology increases range and network capacity, enabling one internet connection to go a long way, perhaps unwiring an entire neighbourhood. The more nodes that connect up, the broader the reach. The coolest part is that people hopping on to the mesh network don’t need to have an Internet connex; they basically share the host’s bandwidth.

At this meeting, I bought a Meraki Mini, a small wireless mesh repeater. I’m just like that. It has plug ‘n play setup and configuration (thank goddess) so when I eventually take it out of the box I’ll become the host node for my ‘hood’s meshwork – no fuss no muss. The idea is to hook up to other nearby nodes to extend and strengthen Vancouver’s emergent wifi system. According to Meraki, its hosted back-end system automatically configures every router as part of each individual network; the company’s web-based centralized management shows how things are working through an allegedly simple, intuitive interface (I’ll let you know) that can be securely used from anywhere in the world.

Boris wrote about community wireless a year ago. He wasn’t sure about Meraki then but the other day he was the guy handing out the nifty gadgets for $60 a pop. The big deal is this: Meraki’s mesh networks supposedly cover significantly more geographic area and users than earlier wireless networks.

This is how the company explains it: “Instead of relying on a single large antenna to cover every user, each radio in a Meraki network cooperates to find the best path to carry a user’s traffic to the Internet. As they operate, every network re-evaluates thousands of routing paths every minute, resulting in amazing reliability and network capacity. Meraki’s intelligent mesh routing means every repeater you add extends the reach of the network and makes the mesh more reliable by adding additional links.” So intelligent traffic queuing and packet prioritization plus the capacity to add unlimited network gateways enables demand-based growth of the network.

This works well for unwiring a low-income housing project, or an entire city. Again, supposedly, hundreds of neighbours can share a robust and reliable network supplied by only a few broadband connections. One Mini has a range of between 30-50 metres. Because it’s relatively cheap and apparently idiot-proof, networks can be built with a high density of repeaters; obviously this leads to better coverage and a more robust mesh.

According to MIT’s Technology Review, Meraki “is using San Francisco as a testing ground to see if a user-driven mesh network can connect a large urban area.” Where Google and Earthlink have thus far failed to install a free city-wide wifi system in SanFran, Meraki has had some early success, with 6000 users able to access the Internet thanks to their “Free the Net” program. The company has plans to expand its initial giveaway of 200 routers by a few thousand. The system will be built from the rooftops, balconies, and windows of anyone who wants to participate.

Some important points about mesh networking that came out of the meeting:

1. It provides low cost access based on a business model.
2. It is user driven (no bureaucratic/political red tape etc.)
3. It enables a community to connect to itself
4. It can facilitate critical mass through mobile on demand wireless for events
5. It reduces the digital divide within “developed” nations

Some community wireless projects:
1. BC Wireless
2. Montreal’s Ile Sans Fil
3. Wireless Toronto

Some mesh projects:
4. Wireless Nomad
5. NetEquality

Richard Smith summed up the importance of mesh networking: “People who own and operate a mesh node contribute to the overall health and vitality of the network.” On the one hand, this seems an unlikely form of community activism; on the other hand, maybe that’s just what being in a community is about.

Posted in A bit geeky, Activism, Fieldnotes, Observations, Work in progress | 22 Comments »

Web of Change and me

Sunday, September 23rd, 2007

So here I am at Hollyhock, on Cortes Island, for Web of Change, for the second year running. I need to quickly put down some things or I’ll lose them. So this will be a fast and dirty post.

The main reason for this is that there is no time, despite this conference being organized largely on Open Space. The conference is bigger this year, for one thing. There are about 100 peeps here. And of these, there are so many fascinating, killer sharp folks that I want to chat with, in addition to attending the sessions, that it’s literally becoming a bit like work to track down and “pencil in” these moments. When in conversation with one, another will walk by and I interrupt myself to “bookmark” that person, to say hey, let’s talk later. Things like answering emails, mentally preparing for my return to normal life/work and facebooking (even though I’m over it) are taking up some precious “down time”…

Peeps I need to further bookmark:

Jon Stahl: I have linked to him on this blog for some time. He is a WoC alumnus but was not here last year. I am pleased to meet him f2f and he has lots of very interesting thoughts on the intersection of non-profits and open source, and he doesn’t mind getting political n shit… He posted this essay on his blog, which I skimmed but will treat more in depth when I return.

David Eaves: This guy is tack sharp. He presented a session called “Online collaboration: Quantifying the problem, designing a solution”. The main problem he identified stopped me in my mental tracks. It was just this: What we consider to be collaborative work online isn’t true collaboration. That is, offline, it would be considered something entirely different. This reminded me of the cyberutopian claim that the internet was a virtual agora that would revitalize democracy etc. etc. We saw this uncritical approach in a lot of early academic writing on the Internet. Now that I’m thinking about online practices and values, and their potential for contributing to offline social change, I’ve been hyping on “collaboration”, unconsciously and uncritically valorizing it as a practice that inheres within internet technology. My bad. This critical interpretation of online collaboration is one I need to flesh out and add to my growing collection of ideas around the prospects for 1. democratizing Internet technology and 2. translating this process offline (democratizing society). Thank you Dave.

Rolf Kleef: Another WoC alumn whom I became aware of through the WoC mailing list, but just met. His tagline on his card is: Online communication and collaboration. Rolf is from the Netherlands; I wonder if this accounts for his political orientation to Internet technology. For a little light reading he brought a book I’ve used (and now will reread): Cyberprotest: New media, citizens and social movements. He is an acquaintance of one of the editors, Wim van de Donk, whose work I totally dig. What are the chances? What interested me about Rolf was his insight that often,within organizations (he’s a consultant) problems that are identified as technical are, in fact social. This reminds (me) of the tendency to abstract technology from its social grounding and treat it as a panacea.

Posted in A bit geeky, Fieldnotes, Observations, Shop talk, Travels | Comments Closed

Looking for geeks at Wired Woman

Tuesday, July 3rd, 2007

I forgot to write about Wired Woman. This is a social networking group for women working in various aspects of technology; there are two chapters – one in Toronto and one here in Van. They had their “summer splash” event at Subeez last week and I signed up. So far, my research into free software/open source development, as well as tech activism, has found a largely male dominated arena. Although this has been explicitly identified as problematic within Indymedia (the techs have all the power b/c they have the code, Sherri Herndon, co-founder of Seattle IMC, once told me), no formal critique has been forwarded (that I’ve seen, anyhow). I thought a look at the local scene might be a helpful, and interesting, counterpart to my feminist readings on technology (for example, today’s reading, Judy Wajcman’s Feminism Confronts Technology)

I wasn’t certain what to expect – I’m not a professional and I’m not used to hobnobbing, eating canapés and passing about my business card (possibly because I don’t have one). On the Facebook group, a number of men well known in the local tech scene had rsvp’d so I wasn’t sure how woman-focused this would be. A friend told me about a similar event in Montreal, and about half of the people who showed up were dudes; apparently it was a topic of discussion at the event itself.

But there were hardly any guys – except this totally cheesy politician, BC’s Minister of Small Business and Revenue, who was all red in the face and smarmy. He presented Wired Woman w/one of those oversized cheques – for 10K. Not too shabby. I was at the back of the group during the speechifying with another friend, who wondered aloud if we were allowed to heckle. While the politician was blathering on about how he and Premier Campbell were such supporters of women in technology, how important this was, we were snickering, wondering if their “support” extended into the realm of daycare and mental health care access for women. A bit more fundamental to women’s day-to-day existence, I’d venture.

Anyway, while I did appreciate the spread (including wine bar), I didn’t meet too many women actually working in the tech sector. There was a life coach, a real estate developer and some sort of recruiter. But very few (of those I met) were programmers or IT peeps or what-have-you. But I bought a membership and I’ll check out their next event. It was fun, and I am, typically, a glass-half-full kind of person. Hope springs eternal etc. etc. And of course, there were the usual antics concerning Air, KA and a parking metre.

Posted in A bit geeky, Corporate Rule, Fieldnotes, Observations | Comments Closed

Rococo a-go-go and the wiki world

Sunday, May 20th, 2007

Finally, as Recent Changes Camp wraps up (I’m in the “closing circle” right now as I type), I’m blogging it. It’s been pretty fun, I have to say. I was remarking to one fellow camper that I never attend all the sessions at regular conferences. I’m quite a delinquent when it comes to enduring beyond my own panel (selfish, I know). But there’s something so dynamic and organic about these “unconferences” that almost impels one to participate.

What is really the best, I think, is how smart these wiki cats are. That’s the difference b/w Recent Changes and BarCamp – the VanBarCamp I found to be largely industry-centred. Here it’s all about wiki ohana and spreading the wiki love.

Did I say smart? I mean *really* smart. Smart in a way that you don’t typically get in the academy (no offence). So smart. I’m humbled. And humbled into silence (for once). It’s important and refreshing to have your intellectual identity challenged every once in awhile…

I presented my little speil on tech activism and discovered a number of social justice activists. But the cool and inspiring thing about the wiki community is that changing the world for the better is one of the underlying goals of wiki-types, especially the developers. It’s just part of their language, of the way they frame their work. There’s no grand narrative, no plan for reorganizing society, just identifying human problems and figuring out how to fix them, in creative and effective ways. This necessarily shifts how I conceive of social change agents. Self-conscious vs. naturalized. I’ll need to think on that.

More on some sessions later but now, there are more pressing issues, like the closing party…

Posted in Fieldnotes, Observations, Rococo | Comments Closed

Ruckus Society and me

Wednesday, October 4th, 2006

Cruising the web, I found this link to my Web of Change blog, and my post about Adrienne Maree Brown’s (director of Ruckus Society) entertaining keynote. Check it out here. It was good times.

Posted in Observations | Comments Closed