[DDN] Maybe that Emperor is naked?

[Michael Maranda]

An excellent blog entry by Josh Breitbart, a great warning to all
fighting for appropriate use of technology and deployment of networks
in their communities...

http://breitbart.wordpress.com/2007/08/20/no-invisible-thread/

Full blog entry follows (without links)....




Horizontal vs. Hub-and-Spoke Relations, or The Emperor has no Invisible Thread

August 20, 2007

Michael Maranda posted a comment recently to my testimony before the
New York City Broadband Advisory Committee. He asked me to expand on
one of my recommendations:

    * Promote horizontal relationships among stakeholders rather than
hub-and-spoke relationships that all connect to this committee or to
any one person or organization.

The original promise in Philadelphia was to tie the city together with
"invisible thread." That's what Dianah Neff told National Geographic.
It hasn't happened.

In planning the network and passing it through City Council, Wireless
Philadelphia solicited input and testimony from a variety of nonprofit
organizations. All of those organizations care about the issue of
Internet usage and all work with overlapping constituencies. Yet
Wireless Philadelphia did not take any steps to foster relationships
among them that would encourage synergistic collaborations.

Instead, WP is forming "Wireless Internet Partnerships" or WIPs, a
series of one-one-one relationships between Wireless Philadelphia and
individual organizations. I am not aware of any plans to connect these
WIPs to each other so the groups can form their own partnerships. At
best, maybe we'll see a WIP cocktail hour.

Ideally, the horizontal relationships would extend beyond the
organizational level. I'd like to see local conventions where all of
the users of the network could gather, and the people who make up
these nonprofits' constituencies could get to know each other. I think
these municipal wireless projects will benefit by emphasizing their
local-ness and I think the users/local residents will benefit from
having stronger social bonds.

Unfortunately, I don't think Wireless Philadelphia or Earthlink want
their customers to have the capacity for collective action or
self-management. Not surprising for a for-profit company with meager
customer service. But the nonprofit should be trying to build
community, not disempower users.

The problem for Wireless Philadelphia is that the only reason for them
to exist is to mediate the relationships between the City and
Earthlink, Earthlink and the poor residents of Philadelphia, and the
WIPs and Earthlink. If all of those entities could relate directly to
each other, they'd quickly realize there is no reason for WP to exist.

I think the system in Minneapolis, where the Minneapolis Digital
Inclusion Fund Advisory Committee has just released it's RFP, is
better, but not perfect. There, the people that pushed for digital
inclusion funding organized themselves, though the efforts were soon
co-opted into an official "Task Force." The result is a
community-advised fund at the Minneapolis Foundation, funded primarily
through a revenue-sharing agreement with US Internet, the local
network operator.

The participants in that Advisory Committee have horizontal
relationships with each other instead of all having separate
relationships with a new nonprofit, as in Philadelphia. However, I
can't find any list of the members of the committee online (though I
know Peter Fleck is one because he's blogged about it). That makes me
concerned that those relationships won't grow beyond the Committee's
boundaries.

If they want to push that network further, they are going to be
swimming upstream. The process of soliciting grant applications from
501(c)3 organizations is notorious for pitting groups against one
another and creating secretive one-to-one relationships between
applicants and funders.

Minneapolis Digital Inclusion Advisory Committee should consider
setting up something like GiveMeaning.com – not to let people vote for
recipients of the Committee's funds, but to promote awareness of the
broad variety of initiatives people in the city are doing and to give
those initiatives an avenue to raise additional funds.