Call me Al: Alison Powell on Community and Technology

Work - the community side

Although it doesn't always look like it, I have a long professional relationship with Ile Sans Fil. Here are the results of an intervention I conducted with the people who use their hotspots. Thank you to everyone who participated in the research project.

I. Executive Summary

Interviews with Île Sans Fil users and analyses of their everyday practices reveals that most users are still ISF’s systems are relatively easy to use, but still require interpretation for most users. Users see different advantages to ISF services, but primarily the fact that they are free and available in locations that are convenient. Many reported that they changed their everyday behavior to use wireless, and saw public wireless as a very important service. Surprisingly, many used ISF signals in places other than where they were provided, as long as the location was convenient to them. Even though they didn’t necessarily believe in the power of ISF to create virtual communities in hyper-local spaces, they all felt that they were connected with the ISF project. They wanted to know more about the group and its mandate

Work - The theory side

Community Wireless Networks and Open-Source Software Development as forms of Civic Engagement?

Thank you to
Steph and Mike for their assistance in producing this. My apologies for not updating this post sooner

Technology development as civic engagement?
Faced with Putnam’s (2000) chilling evocation of a society where mediated relationships have us bowling alone, philosophers of technology and community informatics researchers have explored the potential for online communities and virtual engagement to fill the gap (see Feenberg and Barney, 2004). Yet the ability of ICTs to promote participation in one’s community may come from building, not using them. Community wireless networks use wireless internet technology to create alternative communications infrastructure. In Montreal, the community wireless network Île Sans Fil (ISF) demonstrates how building this infrastructure also acts as a way to engage groups of people who might otherwise not participate in the civic life of their community. It also provides an opportunity to rethink the parameters of democratic participation.

Alt Telecom Policy: citizens, consumers, and producers

I am at the Alternative Telecom Policy Forum in Ottawa, blogging away next to CuWin's Sascha Meinrath, and Michael Lenczner.

Early in the morning: Sheila Copps. Wow. Sheila Copps, the former minister of Heritage, calling up our little CRACIN communitiy networking organization for not being bilingual enough (Stéphane Couture pointed this out earlier this week -- it's a fair comment).

Sheila Copps, arguing that the public is defined by their status as consumers, not by their status as citizens, arguing that politicians respond to interest groups, who respond just as much to hockey moms as they do to telecom interest groups.

We make decisions based on ideology, not on theories. So the theoretical concept of the citizen does not resonate with politicians, nor with the think tanks who are lobbying for the bees in their bonnets - for example, the Western-based right-wing think tank the Fraser Institute does research to prove that the West - and private industry - is "getting screwed" -in Copps' words.

So if we are to climb down from our ivory towers and try and get these "citizens" to engage, try to get our governments to make policy that IS based in public goods, how can we frame this? How can we move the perception of both regular people and government officials away from the sense that all issues come down to "how much it costs me"? Important food for thought.

Preaching and progress: Day 1 of Media Reform Conference

Friday morning, Bill Moyers and Jesse Jackson. Bill, a great investigative journalist, gave the best speech I have ever heard. Perfectly constructed, and using the metaphor of the plantation (bosses in a big house with control of the land, and enslaved workers who know something is wrong but don't know what to do . . .) to talk about media consolidation and the need for reform so that people can understand what is at stake. Like all good speeches, it took us gently somewhere troubling that we were not expecting to visit, and then returned us, shocked and galvanized, to a place of action.

Next Jesse Jackson, the preacher. We should be rising up, extending coalitions, building out and integrating. We should tell our stories, write our stories. We have a movement, a movement for democracy, against the war, for free and open media.

It was like being in church. Thousands of people sitting listening, then standing and yelling and clapping. It made me think about how preaching -- in the American tradition anyway -- is not just a form of engagement but a form of media, a way for people to get information contextualized and made relevant to them in their own communities, and in keeping with their own values.

Then I spent the afternoon at the Civil Rights museum, and the discourse of movements was drawn into sharp focus. Black people in the South experienced segregation, lack of employment, disenfranchisement, and real limits on education and life. Cities like Memphis still bear the physical scars: downtowns emptied by "white flight" full of eloquent panhandlers and gorgeous abandoned buildings. It has not yet been forty years since Martin Luther King was assassinated in a building I visited today. The South is still segregated, and people are poorer than ever and deeper in dept. The country is bankrupting itself in war, and depriving its citizens of jobs and health care.

The media is one part of the equation, but only one part. The ecology is complex, and the forces of the mighty well ingrained in so many spheres. I don't know if we need to call media reform a "movement" -- compared to getting women the vote, or ending slavery, it seems a small thing. But put together in the larger picture, it is part of what we need to think about when we think about how to do right with our time on earth: to do the best that we can, with as much energy as we have, for as long as we can.

Samosas, bags of mackerel, and the Blues

I had a busy weekend. My colleague M woke me up early on Saturday to "go to market" and have breakfast. We did both at once, dashing through the late morning crowds in Fredericton's market (it opens at 6 am Saturday and closes at 1pm) to find a prime eating spot in the café in the centre of the market hall. On our way we passed manufacturers of fur hats, handmade greeting cards, carrots, eggs, meat, and fish. Mackerel, it seems, sells by the bag (I deeply wanted to buy a clear plastic bag of shiny fish, but that would require eating mackerel morning, noon, and night). At the café, it seems we inadvertently occupied the habitual seats of the local politicians, who must also get up early to partake in the relatively crowded and vibrant market exchanges. "I see you're holding court" said one acquaintace, dapper in tam and tartan scarf. But our prime spot for our heart-attack-on-a-plate breakfast, which included a cinnamon roll on top of the usual excesses, gave us lots of opportunity to overhear local mutterings about the "samosa situation"

Last week the managers of the farmer's market told three vendors that they would have to set up shop outside, instead of inside the market hall. Why? The vendors all sold samosas, a product so successful that people queued up all over the hall, blocking other vendors. This Saturday morning, market visitors were rueful: "my family is gonna complain: no samosas!" "Well, there aren't many folks here, what with the kerfuffle about the samosas" "that was absolutely the worst decision ever! Why make people a victim of their own success?"

The tentacles of the CRACIN

After four years the CRACIN project, that multi-tentacled beast of a research project that has employed me, frustrated me, inspired me, guided me, and provided me with the framework for my research with Ile Sans Fil has wrapped up. I said goodbye to many colleagues and friends who I am sure I will see, but whose official connection with me will soon become more tenuous.

A few pieces of sushi, hugs all around, and I am home in my office realizing that this desk, this window, and this pile of files will be my world for the next year or so, as I finish the thesis. Four years ago, I remember the feeling of stepping out of my small world into a much larger one. Suitcase in hand, I travelled to Ottawa to meet a group of academics who have since shaped my approach to collaboration, research (and good food and drink).

The suitcase has travelled many kilometres since then, and so have my thoughts. As I begin to focus them to create a work that bears my own name, the tentacles of the "beast" that was this project remain. The people and practices I encountered over the past four years have shaped and will continue to shape my work. Thank you, to everyone. And now, to write.

Reunion Tour

Here I am in a basement conference room, sitting next to Sascha and Dharma. Mike is behind me, and Tracey is over there, sitting next to Gabe from Murmur. And of course, the CRACIN gang is spread around.

(International Community Wireless Networking Expert Mimi Gabor was also glimpsed, briefly. Photographs to follow . . .)

This is billed as the CWIRP workshop, but we think it should be the Reunion Tour. I feel privileged to be part of this great group of colleagues and friends. Sure, we are doing work that we feel is changing the way we think about communications, community, and democracy, but we are also building relationships that make arriving in a strange city feel like coming home.

Let's sing that song again, one more time . . . .

If I thought it didn't matter what I wrote

Every day, I get up and write. Some days, it is the best activity ever invented. Some days it is like pulling teeth. Most days I wonder why I bother.

Not last week. Last week I went to a public consultation for the Commission d'agglomeration de Montréal sur le développement économique. They were studying whether to fund an expansion of Ile Sans Fil. In the remarks period, I expressed my support for the plan, as a researcher studying municipal and community wireless.

Then the committee members asked their questions. The mayor of St-Anne-de-Bellevue, on the West Island, started his questions by saying, 'I don't know much about these issues. So I asked a friend to recommend me some reading. He sent me an article by Alison Powell and Leslie Regan Shade."

Then he read the words we wrote, the critical questions we had asked about the sustainability of community wireless networking projects. Sitting in a leather seat in a marble hall, I realized those words had made a difference.

The next day, the mayor of Ste-Anne followed up with me, and we had a long conversation about the role of technology projects in economic development strategies, the expansion of open-source organizational models, and the scalability of wireless networks. At the end of the conversation he thanked me and Leslie for writing the way that we did: clearly, informatively, elegantly.

If I thought it didn't matter what I wrote, how I wrote . . .I've changed my mind. Now, I'm off to bed, because tomorrow, I have to get up and start again.