From dyoung@pobox.com Wed Dec 3 03:59:28 2003 Date: Wed, 3 Dec 2003 03:59:28 -0600 From: David Young To: Christian Sandvig Cc: Sascha Meinrath Subject: letter of inquiry Message-ID: <20031203095928.GB5217@che.ojctech.com> References: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: User-Agent: Mutt/1.4.1i Status: RO Content-Length: 2907 Lines: 54 Here is a rough draft for a letter of inquiry. You said @ coffee that we should emphasize *not* a prototype but open-source and standardization, so I have tried to do that. *** The Champaign-Urbana Community Wireless Project aims to change the "cultural economy" of the Internet by producing standards and open-source software for people to democratize media distribution in their hometown by building community rooftop networks. As "political economy" is the term for the distribution of political power, "cultural economy" is the Wireless Project's term for who has the power to produce and distribute cultural products. The Internet has great potential for dmocratizing the cultural economy of the world, however, its current structure vavors highly-capitalized publishers of popular content (nytimes.com, cnn.com) over popular publishers with low capital (indymedia.org, "Slashdotted" websites), and it especially favors Internet broadcats by high-capital operations, since the Internet equivalent to a "broadcast channel" is neither widely implemented nor affordable. "Localism" is virtually non-existent on the Internet. Default "start pages" for major ISPs divert a user immediately to national portals. Internet services are not structured so that the low-cost broadband connections between subscribers in the same neighborhood or town---i.e., the telco's "local loop" or the cable TV plant) can be exploited for Internet broadcats, let alone for serving web pages. The structure of Internet services instead favors non-local media. C-U Wireless will produce the standards, free software tools, and the specifications for off-the-shelf equipment that will let people build a community wireless network with properties that allow low-capital, at-home broadcast of locally-produced media. Community wireless networks will provide the independent musician or journalist as well as local churches, schools, and businesses with a medium that puts them on an equal playing field with national websites and broadcasters. The networks will be built one home at a time without greater technical expertise than it takes to install a television aerial. The least equipment necessary to build a useful broadband network will be two "rooftop routers," appliances that connect buildings to make a network, but any single wireless network can grow to cover thousands of subscribers' homes, provided that each is within radio range (aobut 100 meters) of another. The Wireless Project seeks grants to employ three programmers full-time for one year on developing open-source software for community wireless networks and also for building a testbed network. The wireless project will produce Internet standards for the network, easy-to-use software, designs and instructions for building "rooftop routers." Dave -- David Young OJC Technologies dyoung@ojctech.com Urbana, IL * (217) 278-3933