[1st-mile-nm] Bandwidth, Digital Divides and the Goals of Networked Societies

[Richard Lowenberg]

Subscriber John Goekler sent me the following posting yesterday.
I wasn't going to forward it to this list, but having just received Tom
Johnson's SJM article posting, and reading too many articles that focus on
tech. and bandwidth, I changed my mind.  My response follows John's posting.
Richard

----- Forwarded message from jgoekler at rockisland.com -----
      Date: Fri, 23 May 2008 18:11:24 -0600

Thought the first milers might like to see this.

New from the Economist today -
http://www.economist.com/daily/columns/techview/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11434920&fsrc=nwl

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) regularly
releases a ranking of broadband penetration, speeds and prices across its 30
countries.

. . .the excellent report, written by Taylor Reynolds and Sacha Wunsch-Vincent,
goes beyond the numbers and examines why broadband is actually useful. And here
the authors face a problem: there simply is not good data to show that broadband
matters. Like Banquo at Macbeth's banquet, the ghost of Dr Solow's "productivity
paradox" disrupts the OECD's pleasant narrative.
Of course, every web-surfer knows that one can do things with amazing efficiency
online. But there is little evidence to support the notion that faster is
inherently better. Can the Japanese and Koreans (who finish at the top of
OECD's charts) do something at 100MB that the Americans, British and Germans
(in the middle tier) can't at 20MB? The idea that "bigger is better broadband"
is orthodoxy, not economics. So is its corollary, the neo-Cartesian logic that
goes: "Broadband ergo innovation."

----- End forwarded message -----

John,
      Thanks.  The Economist, Business Week and others have already come out
with articles commenting on the latest OECD report findings and recommendations.
  I hesitate to add to the 'churn', but ...
      Hardly anyone in the press is writing intelligently about this stuff, in
my humble estimation.   Of course it is not about bandwidth.   More bandwidth
does not assure improved knowledge exchange, intelligence generation or quality
of life enhancement.   What matters are content and applications; and user
responsibility.   At the core of the 1st-Mile approach, is the understanding
that, like renewable energy and conservation, community agriculture and other
aspects of localism, our networked society ought to be, at least in part, local
partnership owned and operated (structural separation).   This is the only way
to better assure that the networks are open to competitive service providers,
as well as to local content creation, and equally accessible to all.   It also
can thereby serve as a means of local income generation and economic
vitalization.    Fiber (big pipe) has a long life, can handle future convergent
media needs, and if properly accounted for, pays its own way over a number of
years, after which it can generate local income.   The commercial providers and
advertisers, as long as they own the means of access and the provision of
content, within our existing for-profit corporate system, have little incentive
to offer educational, healthcare, civic, cultural or other socially benefitting
content and services; or to consider each of us as providers, rather than just
consumers of knowledge-building exchanges.   These are the things that
broadband or narrowband can bring, but require a very different eco-social
model.   Utopian?   No.    Simply necessary.
Richard

-- 
Richard Lowenberg
1st-Mile Institute
P.O. Box 8001, Santa Fe, NM 87504
505-989-9110;   505-603-5200 cell
rl at 1st-mile.com  www.1st-mile.com

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