[Advisors] FW: you tube

[Garth Graham]

On 2012-04-19, at 7:30 AM, michael gurstein wrote:
> CAP was seriously underfunded and really couldn't do much of a job of =
anything given how modest were the resources that had been made =
available in recent times.

All the more reason not to offend the incredible community-based loyalty =
and effort that emerged from a modest investment of my tax dollars.  =
And, I suppose, we made that mistaken decision, not him.  Incredible? - =
maybe not!

Right from the beginning, the feds, both liberals and conservatives, =
have never understood the nature of the frankenstein child they thought =
they had parented, but was actually a cuckoo nestling that communities =
had already cobbled together themselves.

I'm going to explain that observation with an example from a different =
sector, industrial development.  In the very early days of Ottawa =
Freenet, I meet with a team of Industry Canada officials and outlined a =
way that freenets across Canada could be used to allow small and medium =
enterprises to collaborate in their own and community development at the =
same time.  Since the model implied community level self-organization, =
the costs involved were "modest." I sensed a certain tension in the room =
which I interpreted as interest. I later learned that this team of =
officials had just negotiated a $50 million budget for the development =
of Strategis.  And there I was, telling them you could do the same thing =
for almost nothing using freenets.  They didn't want to hear this.  I =
think they felt I was nuts enough so that nobody would pay any attention =
 to me, and they were, of course, correct.

I believe the significant Canadian failure here, is not the underfunding =
of CAP.  It's the belief that nation state control of public order and =
good government demands the articulation of "national" strategies for =
socio-economic transformation.  That's not how a digital society scales =
or transforms itself.  So, in a way Clement is right, the mistaken =
decision has been ours all along.  The lesson from this, in re-writing =
strategy for community-based use of ICTs for development (our own =
strategy, NOT theirs), must start from a single premise:

All adaptation to digital society is local.

GG