[Advisors] TC -- moving ahead in 2015

[James Van Leeuwen]

Garth,

We don't need more leadership, just better leadership... more courageous, and more intelligent.

Leadership that smacks people up the sides of their heads... figuratively speaking.


What if TC were to focus on researching, defining, measuring and communicating the economic, social and environmental benefits of digital inclusion and community broadband?

Almost every analytic or metric I've seen has focused on "internal" cost/benefit of broadband development for facility owners and/or operators. 

I haven't seen anyone taking a systematic and comprehensive approach to assessing external economic, social and environmental costs and benefits, which is the real bone marrow of community broadband.

TC's advocacy will be far more effective when it's backed up by hard numbers...

James





> On Jan 25, 2015, at 4:18 PM, Garth Graham <garth.graham at telus.net> wrote:
> 
> 
>> On Jan 20, 2015, at 5:16 PM, Marita Moll <mmoll at ca.inter.net> wrote:> Once we resolve the communication issue, we need to set up a meeting to address some issues relating to the executive, review our mandate and set some goals and objectives for 2015.> > Looking forward to hearing from you.
> 
> A quiet Sunday has given me an opportunity to muse on TC’s mandate.  This evening will be the annual Robby Burns dinner, where I’m giving the toast to the lassies.  I will be nerving myself with single malt.
> GG---------------------------------------
> Telecommunities Canada has three purposes.  First, it serves to share the experience of those who practice using ICTs for community development (stewardship).  Second, it serves to channel and transcribe the significance of those practises to those who still don’t get it (learning).  Third, it serves to frighten those who do get it but choose to act in opposition to the social change it represents (adversarial political action).
> I think we stopped serving the first purpose after we lost the capacity to hold national conferences in 1997 (after  By my count, there are only five urban community networks serving as community based ISPs left in Canada (if anybody can expand the list please do?):  - Halifax Chebucto Community Net Society (CCN)  - National Capital Freenet (NCF)  - Toronto Free-Net (TFN)  - Vancouver Community Network VCN)  - Victoria Free-Net Association (VIFA)
> While Tracey Axelsson and I have compared notes re VCN and VIFA operations recently, it is my opinion that neither the will nor the capacity exists for all of us to share experience of common problems on an ongoing basis. I don’t know whether or not there’s need.  I do know that, in terms of “rural and remote” community ISPs in BC, the BCC list is inactive.
> Both the defense of CAP and all those many interventions into national “digital economy” strategies and telecommunications policies have served the second purpose.  But currently, looking at those organizations dominating the national strategy discussions, the window of opportunity for TC to play that role is even less obvious than ever.
> I suspect the only time TC ever served the third purpose was when we forced Michael Binder to come to the table at the last national community networking conference in Halifax in 1997 and sign the, “Framework for Co-Operation between Telecommunities Canada (TC) and Industry Canada to enhance the ability of Canadian communities to utilize electronic public space.” (http://tc.ca/framework.html  ). Too bad we never gained the capacity to implement it.
> Here is a personal summary of my two remaining pre-occupations (Other than re-connecting VIFA to the community it serves):  - Internet governance as a concrete universal that illustrates the changing nature of governance  - Community ownership of broadband as a public utility
> I am, however, currently uncertain that TC remains a vehicle for advancing the causes that occupy me in the way I have come to understand them.   Almost all my writings on those two subjects have been framing by a particular assumption.  Technologies are social constructs that reveal a great deal of the nature of the cultures that brought them to hand.  The Digital Age that now shapes the way we do things (i.e. our technologies) has a different capacity to create tools.  It shapes tools and practices that are appropriate to the Darwinian nature of self-organizing systems.  As a way of doing things, the Internet therefore is a consequence, not a cause, of a shift in philosophy and epistemology of governance towards those Darwinian self-organizing systems.  Therefore the way to look for the nature of change is ethnographic.  It’s in the behaviour and practices of individuals.
> In that light, the current tensions between the left and the right of the political spectrum that characterize all the international Internet Governance debates are merely Industrial Age holdovers.  The “stakeholders” are defending their power in terms of the past.  They are ignoring how a shift in the framing of governance shapes the experience and intentions of the “ordinary Internet user.” 
> ICANN itself (where I am TC’s NARALO/ALAC representative) is an example of that backward glance.  ICANN primarily serves to protect the prerogatives of domain name registrars.  The terms that define effective organizational participation in ALAC (what they actually call “the metrics”) are completely oriented towards internal discussions of arcane rules of domain name registration and use.  They are not oriented to supporting the members of ALAC in their efforts to assist the communities they serve realize the degree to which Internet Governance is a critical local responsibility.  In other words, they are ignoring the degree to which the self-organizing system of representing the individual Internet user’s needs must become interdependent and interactive to be of any real use. So far, my own efforts to make this point have been useless.  <https://community.icann.org/display/NARALO/Telecommunities+Canada>
> The issue of community ownership of broadband as a public utility is a special case of the problem of recognizing a shift in governance as the primary driving factor in social change.  How do you tell an elected municipal politician that they should own the local loop in broadband networking because then, and only then, will they come to understand why the electorate is ignoring them?
> I have never found a satisfactory answer to my question – if leadership is the problem, why is more leadership the answer? I’ve found leadership to be primarily a matter of organizational accommodation of dysfunctional and egomaniacal psychopaths (i.e. the communities of practice in an organization self organize a route around them).   In the times that I’ve served in the role, I do not excuse myself from that judgement.
> I differ from Marita and James on this issue.  Both of them assert that a positive definition of leadership’s role in the structure of organization is both possible and necessary.  For example, in a recent conversation with Marita about the many pubic forums on the future of the Internet and community that we’ve both participated in, the enthusiasm of the conversation was never followed up by implementation of the resultant plan. Marita calls that a failure of leadership.  I call it a failure to recognize that, in the digital culture terms of governance as self-organization, “the only top-level domain is the individual.”
> I am well aware that the audience I once had for these sorts of “ethnographic” musings on the interaction between Internet and society is almost completely gone.   I still believe that Canada (or any country for that matter) would be better off with a focal point for understanding the uses of ICTs for community development. As far as I know, Telecommunities Canada remains the closest approximation to that function.  Imperfect vessel though it may be, at least it has survived far longer than any other ship that headed into the storm.
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