insights from the digital future
I’m at ETech and have posted audio of a heated debate last night at the EFF Pioneer Awards between Fred von Lohmann and Mark Cuban here at LAist.
Cory Doctorow was draped in a cape and goggles to accept his Pioneer Award. Below is his intro and acceptance speech. More photos after jump.
above photo by Scott Beale / Laughing Squid via flickr.
Continue reading “EFF Pioneer Awards”
Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa today declared “the start of Los Angeles version 2.0,” announcing a plan to roll out what would be the largest municipal Wi-Fi network in the country.
Bidding for the project may begin as soon as this fall with a target of mid-late 2008 construction and early 2009 completion. It could cost up to $60 million to cover Los Angeles’ 470 square miles, city IT assistant general manager Mark Wolf told the Times, which, by my calculation, amounts to around $15 or so per capita (few, if any, tax dollars will likely be involved).
Municipal WiFi is a no-brainer for Los Angeles, with an economy bolstered by a tech and entertainment industry that will no doubt be gratefully attracted to such a system, while bridging the digital divide. “On a practical level, this means providing integral, high-speed solution for entertainment companies to juggle simultaneous projects in real-time at lower cost with reliable teleconferencing, for example,” said Villaraigosa.
Philadelphia’s mu-fi project appears to be going well after a slow start ($21.95/mo or $9.95 and Houston today became the largest city to sign on a carrier (Earthlink).
SF announced their wifi ambitions in 2004 and its still not certain when it will be fully operational — perhaps the way will have been paved for LA by ’09.
Read the full presser at MuniWireless. More at LAist.
Other LA metro wifi spots live and/or in development include:
* Culver City (the first in the LA metro)
* 17 wireless access points along the promenade, at city hall and by the end of May, Santa Monica Pier and the civic auditorium.
* 1 square mile +/- of wifi in Downtown Burbank (via Qwest DSL and access points aimed at a large hillside satellite)
* West Hollywood Public Wifi — along Santa Monica Blvd between Fairfax and La Brea.
* Anaheim (right now at $21.95/mo. – similar to PHilly except not sure if it has the lower-rate plans)
* Newport and Laguna Beach Harbors (up to a few miles out at sea)
Further reading:
* Ars Technica on the pros and cons of muni wifi.
* Worldchanging on the politics of municipal wireless.
* Muni Wifi notes and legislation.
* Free Press — Community Internet.
photo by Eric Richardson via flickr.
Obama’s statements on broadband and net neutrality are being picked up appreciatively among the digerati:
Let us be the generation that reshapes our economy to compete in the digital age. Let’s set high standards for our schools and give them the resources they need to succeed. Let’s recruit a new army of teachers, and give them better pay and more support in exchange for more accountability. Let’s make college more affordable, and let’s invest in scientific research, and let’s lay down broadband lines through the heart of inner cities and rural towns all across America. We can do that.
Full transcript of the speech. Streaming video.
* BoingBoing
* SlashDot
See also:
Obama’s Remarks at TEchNet 2005
Obama Podcast on Net Neutrality
Also noted, Obama’s social networking concept at My.BarackObama.com
More here.
To better understand the Web 2.0 world, one must be in touch with the specific feelings across online content-generating demographics at a particular point in time and place.
Enter WeFeelFine.org, the excellent real-time visualization of the above, created by Internet artist Jonathan Harris and Google personalization tech Sep Kamvar.
Basically, WeFeelFine aggregates and searches the blogosphere for phrases like ‘I feel…’ or ‘I am feeling…’ One of 5,000 predefined feelings is associated with each post and the demographic attributes are tagged on. Their mission statement describes an “artwork authored by everyone”:
The result is a database of several million human feelings, increasing by 15,000 – 20,000 new feelings per day. Using a series of playful interfaces, the feelings can be searched and sorted across a number of demographic slices, offering responses to specific questions like: do Europeans feel sad more often than Americans? Do women feel fat more often than men? Does rainy weather affect how we feel? What are the most representative feelings of female New Yorkers in their 20s? What do people feel right now in Baghdad? What were people feeling on Valentine’s Day? Which are the happiest cities in the world? The saddest? And so on.
We’d love to hear about any other new and up & coming online tools for understanding audience, culture, society or just having fun.
