Faster Future: Possibilities now and beyond: Broadband Internet access

Showing posts with label Broadband Internet access. Show all posts

Tuesday, March 16, 2010

The internet simply shows us the way the world actually is

I had lunch with Gregory Lent today. We have known each other digitally for some time. He is the artist responsible for the work on the cover of my book. This was the first time we had met in person.

Greg is a truly fascinating, very warm and very wise man. His twitter profile tells us: 'Emptiness consultant, transformation ecologist, artist, economist ... pro-intelligence'. Not average.

Our conversation, our interaction, resulted in a phrase which Greg seized upon. And on reflection it is one you may also feel is worthy of further consideration.

"The internet simply shows us the way the world actually is,"

...is what I came out with. Or at least something very similar to that.

That could be a very interesting stub. The internet reveals to us how connected we are, how connected we could be, how connected we should be.

It reveals to us our interdependency. It demands we collaborate. You can't participate without others, you can't distribute without others. You can't publish to yourself. You can't be a disconnected individual node when you are part of the web.

On the internet you can't achieve without others, without one another.

Think how an idea is distributed and evolves online: If it is not passed on from one human to another it goes nowhere. You can't blast it out, it has to be handed one to another. It may go global. It may reach us all. But it has done so at a very human, hand-to-hand scale. From one person who cared enough about it to pass it on to another human they cared about.

The internet makes those connected to it part of a whole. And it makes it a real, tangible thing, in a way we could only believe in or conceive of in the past (the Buddha, as Greg points out, tells us nothing exists in isolation, more recent philosophies introduce ideas such as 'without context there is no meaning').

In so doing, the internet (perhaps more specifically the web of humanity woven upon it) makes real what was once the realm of the transcendental philopsopher.

It makes this truth of our collective self accessible to anyone who chooses to connect. It can be accessed not only through philosophy, but also through action - by learning from connecting.

It makes real what we instinctively know. It provides the evidence.

Imagine the next generation: in which almost everyone understands humanity as a collective, not a series of national, political, language, religious or other silos.

How will that change politics, the law, education, the structure of business... us?

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Citizen journalism - and whose facts are they anyway?

Had a lot of fun on Jon Hansen's BlogTalk Radio Show on November 10, 2009.
His subject was, How will journalism survive the internet age?

Joining me on the international panel were Cenk Uygur, the HufPo writer (who gets 13m views for his Youtube channel), Baby Boomer agitator Ellen Brandt and, author and publisher Sherrie Wilkolaski.

We covered citizen journalism, news vs relevance, friends as filters, fact checking (crowd vs pros) among much else

Listen for yourself here:

Monday, June 29, 2009

The cocaine of discovery - everyone should get a hit...

You may or may not be aware that I'm a Trustee for Citizen's Online - part of which is EverybodyOnline.
EverybodyOnline helps communities and individuals in disadvantaged areas across the UK to engage with digital technology.
It aims to help communities overcome any barriers they may have to computers and the internet so they can take advantage of the wealth of opportunities digital technology and the internet has to offer.
'Simple' things that so many of us take for granted. Like this:

Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Digital access is about discovering value - not Mbs

The big idea at the heart of the Digital Britain interim report is 2mb broadband access for every home in the UK.

I've been thinking about the issues of access a lot recently - mostly prompted by my work as a Trustee at CitizensOnline.org (which I, of course, recommend to you :-). (I should make clear before I go on, the following are my views - not necessarily those of Citizens Online.)

For a start 2mb isn't very much these days. If it was a real (rather than 'as advertised') 2mb that would be a start. My 8mb home connection rarely actually delivers half its claim. (thanks BT).

But that is very much only half of the story. (image courtesy)

Speed of access to the internet is not the same as speed at which something can be broadcast at you via broadband.

Speed of access is - just like all the best things about the internet - about a two-way flow.

The internet is created by us, with us. You are a participant and contributor to it. To access it is therefore to have an equal ability to contribute to it as it is to draw down from it: So 2mb download and upload speed, please.

But the story of access is about more even than this. It is one thing to have connection to the pipe - and a nice fat two-way one at that - it is quite another to get your share of the value.

It's a little like Victorian Government sending a free set of encylopaedias to every home, only to discover only the rich kids benefit - because they know how to read.

It's time to think about the equivalent of teaching people how to read and write. on the web - making their ability to participate and share a core foundation of how the UK as a whole benefits from the digital revolution.

Let me give you a real and personal example. If the very nice people at the Government decide in their wisdom to provide free wifi in the road my dear old mum lives in it she'll get precisely zero value from it. Zip, nada, until such time as someone either gives her an interface to access participatory sites with such ease it's like popping the kettle on. Or until such time as someone invests the time and trouble to show through demonstration the value she could join in.

Access to the value creating power of the network is little to do with access to a particular terminal at a particular speed.

How many people got real value from the early internet; from the dial-up modem internet; from the not-always-available internet - from the bloody-hard-to-use internet? Lots.

Those pioneers didn't need 2mb downloads to join in the value.

We wouldn't have today's internet if they had. They found value inspite of the limitations.

And they told their friends. Their friends joined in and made it bigger and better.

Their friends got value, told their friends etc etc ad infinitum.

Helping others discover the value available through the tools on offer is the crucial and critical thing here.

It's the part the Government should be focusing on with its reports and big ideas.

But it's also the part ALL of us can commit to doing something about.

Sure, you can lobby your MP to put pressure on for the Government to spend more cash on ever fatter pipes.

Or you can just coach one more person in the value you get from being online.

The more of us who make it to the edges - the less those in the centre have control over the big decisions anyway...