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two articles about networking in Canada
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Date: Sun, 12 Jun 1994 00:00:57 -0500
From: Automatic digest processor
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Date: Sat, 11 Jun 1994 17:05:47 GMT
From: Garth Graham
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CANADIAN COMMUNITY NETWORKS CONFERENCE and founding meeting of TELECOMMUNITIES CANADA
August 15-17, 1994 Carleton University, Ottawa, Ontario
Sponsored by: Industry Canada Morino Institute Ontario, Culture, Tourism and Recreation; Libraries and Community Information Branch
Hosted by: National Capital FreeNet
Conference contacts: Program coordination Garth Graham, aa127@freenet.carleton.ca
Site administration: Miranda Gray, ak717@freenet.carleton.ca
Registration: Tom Riley, 76470.336@compuserve.com
National Capital FreeNet,Ottawa, hosted the first international conference on community networking, Carleton University, August 17 to 19, 1993. That conference brought people interested in community networking face-to-face for the first time. This second conference builds on the previous experience, but more closely focuses on the purposes, potentials, and needs for developing community networks within Canada.
The 1993 conference participants recommended the establishment of a national organization; to support the growth of electronic community networks in Canada, and to share the experience of bringing communities on-line. They wanted the new organization to be true to the spirit of the Internet as a sociological experiment, and to mirror the grassroots spirit of the freenets it supports. Following from their recommendations, articles of incorporation for an association of community network associations, called "Telecommunities Canada," are proceeding to registration.
Organizing freenets as a means of community development has become a social movement in Canada. The members of that movement are characterized by high levels of energy and commitment to civic responsibility. If you want to find out what Canadians who have the choice actually do on the Information Highway, come to this conference and join in the discussions:
The conference will:
1. Share the experience, learning and excitement of people active in the development of Canadian community networks.
2. Increase awareness about the purpose and possibilities of community networks.
3. Provide for participation by Canadian community networks and freenets in the founding meeting of Telecommunities Canada.
4. Prepare an issues agenda about the significance and development needs of community networks in Canada as guidance to Telecommunities Canada and as a message for the Information Highway Advisory Council.
WHO SHOULD ATTEND?...ARE YOU:
Active or interested in organizing freenets? Operating a freenet or other electronic community network?* Interested in the social, economic, physical, and philosophical impacts of community networking? Already a computer network user or planning to be? Involved in community, government or public interest groups that want access to computer mediated communications and networks? A content provider or service agent? A private industry executive or professional from the Information Sector with an interest in broadening the base of information technology use?
PROGRAM
How to start a freenet? How to use a freenet? What does it mean?
The event covers 3 days:
August 15-16 The conference itself August 17 Founding board meeting of Telecommunities Canada, including official community network representatives, plus conference registrants as observers; + election of board of directors+ discussion and approval of an action agenda
This is a chance to learn about and discuss:
* Strategies and tactics for community networks on purposes, organization, content, administration, volunteers, and technology platforms* Beyond accessibility: new avenues for public participation in community life and electronic public space Provincial models for development of community networks. New directions in softwares that support community building Info highway carriers: on-ramps and street maps Freenet staff and Freenets as employers* Money and finances: funding alternatives for sustaining the economic independence of community nets. Community cable TV experience in social activism Understanding the medium of virtual community as the message
The agenda of the conference is action oriented. In addition to panel presentations by experts, conference participants will have the opportunity to participate in working group discussions to develop "action agendas" addressing key issues in the development of freenets. The action agendas will directly affect the priorities of Telecommunities Canada concerning issues of national support. A conference summary will be posted on National Capital FreeNet.
An existing listserve, set up after last year's conference, discusses freenets and community nets issues in Canada. We will also be using this to initiate discussion of conference topics. This listserve can be reached without subscribing via National Capital FreeNet on the Newsgroup: culist.can-freenet.
To subscribe send the message: subscribe can-freenet FIRSTNAME LASTNAME
To: listserv@cunews.carleton.ca
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REGISTRATION FORM
THE CANADIAN COMMUNITY NETWORKS CONFERENCE and founding meeting of TELECOMMUNITIES CANADA
August 15 - 17,1994 Carleton University
CONFERENCE REGISTRATION FEE (AUGUST 15 AND 16) $170 (plus 7% GST) Student rate $85 (plus 7% GST)
Name _______________________________________________________
Title or main area of interest______________________________
Organization________________________________________________
Address_____________________________________________________
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email _____________________________________________________
Telephone___________________ Fax _____________________
Registration can be sent to:email 76470.336@compuserve.com or fax to: (416)593-0249 or phone: (416)593-7352
Make cheque or money order payable to: Riley Information Services Inc. 633 Bay Street, Suite no. 2207 Toronto, Canada M5G 2G4
GST No. R117997965
ACCOMMODATIONS
Carleton University is offering a special accommodations rate (including breakfasts) for the conference of: single $ 46.00 (plus 7% GST) double (share with another person ) $ 28.00 (plus 7% GST) per person
If accommodations are needed, please indicate:
single_________ or double__________
If double, please list: name accompanying _________________________________
or check here if willing to share _________________
Please indicate: Date of arrival__________ Date of departure _____________
No. of nights accommodations needed___________
Special needs: ______________________________________
Please enclose cheque or money order for accommodations with registration payment. Thank you.
Attending Telecommunities Canada meeting August 17th?
Yes _____________ No __________________
If you are an official delegate to the Telecommunities Canada meeting (each community network may appoint up to three people as voting members), please check here: ____________________
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Garth Graham aa127@freenet.carleton.ca Coordinator, Canadian Community Networks Conference, and founding meeting, Telecommunities Canada, Aug. 15-17, 1994 Box 86, Ashton, Ont., K0A 1B0, 613-253-3497
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Date: Sat, 11 Jun 1994 15:19:16 -0700
From: "Arthur R. McGee"
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Fri, 10 Jun 1994 18:39:31 GMT
From: Rich Winkel
/ media.issues: 81.0 / Topic: Article on Info Superhighway Written 9:06 am Jun 7, 1994 by web:robrien in cdp:media.issues
This article appeared in the June 1994 edition of This Magazine. Permission to redistribute electronically has been given by the author.
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DRIVE THROUGH DEMOCRACY The Info Superhighway could be a virtual democracy, or a shopping mall in box. Vote now.
by Mark Surman
I was sitting on the edge of my seat. Right there in front of our televisions, we were about to vote on NAFTA. With my trusty remote-control voting device in hand, I watched the experts wrap up their arguments. Then the Democracy Channel's smiling host came on the screen: "The NAFTA debate has been brought to you with the generous support of General Motors, General Electric and General Dynamics. We'll be back with the vote after these brief commercial messages."
Though it wasn't up and running in time for the North American free-trade agreement, there really is a Democracy Channel in the works, and it will have commercials. Dreamed up by former Viacom executive Jeffrey Reiss, the Channel will allow couch potatoes to participate in "electronic town meetings," express opinions on issues, and talk back to the pundits. And citizens need not worry that democracy will take a big bite out of their pocket books - financial backing is coming from Telecommunications, Inc. (TCI), the world's largest cable operator.
Interested in this unlikely marriage of commerce and democracy, I phoned Reiss at TCI headquarters in Englewood, Colorado. There, Reiss' sidekick and Democracy Channel co- architect Michael Lennon politely informed me that he and Jeffrey were not talking to the press until the details of the channel were firm (they still didn't know how much money TCI would give them). "Until all the ducks are lined up," Lennon said, "we don't want the spin doctors to get hold of this thing."
But based on the Info Superhighway plans that have flooded Report on Business and The Financial Post over the past few months, I suspect that we are the ducks and TCI already owns all the spin doctors. Because the plans for the Superhighway look more like a shopping centre than a town hall.
The vaunted information highway promises to deliver interactive communication to every home, office and public park on the planet. It will be built on the foundations of our current cable and telephone systems, with the addition of miles of fibre-optic cable. The surrounding hype seems to have sparked a cyber-democracy gold rush. Politicians like U.S. Vice-President Al Gore and New Brunswick Premier Frank McKenna, have opined that the Superhighway will mean the rebirth of democracy and citizen empowerment.
There may be some truth to these claims. Replacing our one-way media with two-way systems could create a more democratic communications culture, permitting ordinary people to produce and widely distribute media from their basements. Unfortunately, the people who are building the Superhighway don't seem to have this kind of democracy in mind.
The architects of the Superhighway are the same people who have spent the past 20 years buying up media production and distribution systems all over the world. In Canada, this includes high-minded corporate leaders like Ted Rogers of Rogers Communications, who recently announced that his contribution to paving Canada's information landscape would be to take over rival media giant Maclean Hunter. Pending CRTC approval, this $3.5-billion deal would make Rogers one of two head traffic cops on the Trans-Canada Infobahn, controling the market for of a third of Canada's cable subscribers, and large chunks of the Canadian publishing, paging, cellular and long- distance industries.
The other big player is Stentor, a cartel of Canada's regional Bell companies. On April 5, Stentor announced that it would plug $8.5-billion into a fibre-optic network that would be able to handle video-on-demand, two-way video conferencing, and so on, in order to compete with the big cable companies like Rogers. Such competition may sound positive, but as the newspaper, movie and network TV industries have demonstrated in the past, rivalry between a few massive media corporations hardly guarantees information democracy. In fact, these electronic fantasies are directly inspired by media-merger mania south of the border: Rogers himself has proclaimed that Canada needs to build a "Time-Warner of the North."
Not only are we are keeping up with the Americans, we should feel proud that a Canadian company will be the first to build a fully functional Superhighway. On January 24, Canada's third-largest cable company, Groupe Videotron, announced that a $750-million system called UBI (you-bee) would be up and running in the Saguenay region of Quebec by spring, 1995. Videotron's partners in UBI (Universal, Bi-directional and Interactive) include Hearst Corporation, Hydro-Quebec, Loto- Quebec, the National Bank of Canada, and Canada Post Corporation. According to Videotron's glossy press kit, UBI will provide its users with pay-per-view movies (all programing may eventually be pay-per-view, or pay-per-minute, on the Infobahn), interactive sports coverage (you choose the camera angles), lotteries, home automation, home shopping and home banking.
There wasn't any mention of democracy in the brochure, so I asked Jean-Paul Galarneau, Videotron's director of communications, whether he saw any connection between his company and the hype about virtual democracy. He sees the link: "Every year there is a world-wide competition of the best French language advertising. Last year it was held in Montreal. We thought that the public should decide which commercial would get the Grand Prize. So we showed all of the commercials on TV, and each commercial had a phone number attached to it so the public could phone in to an electronic system and vote. Within only a few hours of the voting, we were able to present the Grand Prize."
Aside from this empowering tale, Galarneau didn't want to spend too much time chatting about virtual democracy. He seemed more comfortable talking about exciting and liberating initiatives like this: "Canada Post has... lists that can pinpoint certain types of consumers. With this marketing division in place, Canada Post will be the first one on the bandwagon with direct-mail flyers on The Highway."
This indicates the kind of democracy that really excites Superhighway visionaries - the right to choose between a large selection of products. This consumerist bias is evident even in the technology that you will "interact" with at home, like the UBI interface: It includes a remote control, a credit card slot, a credit card PIN keypad and a printer to spit out receipts. It looks like a mix between a cable converter and a twenty-first century cash register.
As with most new technologies, the consumer info highway is being designed and built with almost no public consultation. In early February, the Information Technology Association of Canada - which includes Stentor, Rogers, IBM, Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard and others - held a conference in Toronto called, "Powering Up North America: Realizing The Information Infrastructure For A Knowledge-Based Continent." Though the public was welcome to participate in the brainstorm, they had to pay $900-a-head if they wanted to get past the front door.
ITAC didn't really think that average folks would be interested in the conference anyway. In a January 26 Globe and Mail advertising supplement promoting their conference, ITAC took the time to list "the diversity of interests who will be affected by the Information Highway... enterprise leaders; corporate alliance and change planners; competition catalyzers; information managers; policy makers; senior managers; telecommunications executives; and marketers." It seems ITAC believes this is the public that ought to design the virtual terrain across which all information will flow.
And it looks like the Canadian government agrees. On March 17, Industry Minister John Manley announced the creation of a federal Information Highway Advisory Council. Telephone and cable companies like the Stentor group, Rogers and Videotron make up the bulk of participants. Until public pressure forced a change of mind, government officials even proposed that most of the council's meetings be held in private -
Luckily, there are a few people who disagree with the position taken by ITAC and the feds. They include millions of computer network users and thousands of computer network organizers. These people argue that there is more to virtual democracy than living-room cash registers - and they have proof, because they are already using an information system that allows people to create their own communications and send it out to the world. This system is the Internet.
The Consumer Superhighway and the Internet represent two opposing models of interactive communication. The Superhighway most likely will be organized on what Electronic Frontier Foundation chair Mitchell Kapor calls "the broadcast model." In this paradigm, a small group of people own the system and decide what gets air time. According to Kapor, this model "breeds consumerism, passivity, crassness and mediocrity." In contrast, the Internet is a network of computers and data lines that are owned by thousands of different companies and public institutions. If one of these lines or computers disappears, information can simply be rerouted. Also, the content of the Internet is programed by the people who use it, rather than the people who own it. Kapor argues that a system like this "breeds critical thinking, activism, democracy and quality."
In fact, the Internet and the many networks attached to it have often been used to by-pass corporate and government information gatekeepers. During the Gulf War, the computer networks became a "people's news wire," providing a global source for information that was not "Cleared By The U.S. Military." According to Rory O'Brien of Web, Canada's social- change computer network, that included information about Patriot missiles causing damage to civilian areas and peace demonstrations that never made it on the six o'clock news.
The multitude of discussions that take place on-line are further proof that democracy is alive and well and living in cyberspace. Perhaps most exciting is that individuals talk on the Internet who are otherwise kept apart by social and physical barriers. On the Victoria FreeNet, for example, discussions about Clayoqout Sound resulted in a pro-logging SHARE group member coming over to the side of the environmentalists.
Incendiary talk like this, however, may not make it onto the Superhighway. With all of the lucrative home shopping and movie channels planned, who will make space for money-losers like a social change channel? Of course the Internet could co- exist with the Consumer Superhighway, but it would quickly be out-glitzed by its younger cousin. Democratic two-way communication would best be served by lanes on the Superhighway based on the Internet model of public control. These would provide free public access, two-way video programmed by the public, and global connectivity.
But this will only happen if the public stands up for its interests. The regulations and decisions that define Canada's electronic landscape will be made over the next few years, almost irreversibly. As Victoria information activist Clyde Bion Forrest says, "Right now we are at a really critical time in terms of what we do with this thing. It could become just like television." In fact, Canada experienced a similar "critical time" in the early 1970s, when the cable regulations were being written by the CRTC. Members of the public then made sure that they were included, demanding and winning space for community television on cable systems from Labrador to Vancouver Island.
Two efforts to secure some kind of public Superhighway access are already underway in Canada. One of them is the FreeNet movement, which is building free, Internet- connected computer networks on the public library model in 23 towns and cities across the country. FreeNets can familiarize the public with interactive technologies and provide a lobbying base for public access to future systems. The second group is the Coalition For Public Information (CPI), one of the few non- corporate voices on the federal advisory committee. The CPI has had some success in keeping the process open and getting public issues on the agenda.
In addition, it's important to keep global inequities and the Internet's own democratic shortcomings in mind. Forty per cent of the world's population are without access to electricity and 65 per cent have never used a telephone. Since the Superhighway corporations plan to install their systems solely in locales that can afford them, global information inequity is likely to increase rather than decrease. And the Internet, despite its openness, is rife with sexism and technocentrism.
The Web, along with its sister networks in the Association for Progressive Communication (APC), is taking steps toward addressing these concerns. For example, all of the staff at Nicaragua's APC network, Nicario, are women. APC networks in the U.K., Sweden and Ecuador have been headed by women. And APC members are working with people in the South to develop systems and software that will allow them to run autonomous networks in their own regions.
All these groups can provide a solid foundation, but as New York's public access collective, Paper Tiger Television, points out, there need to be more grassroots efforts at "staking a claim in cyberspace." If such a claim is not made, we'll be stuck with shopping malls in a box. Or, in the words of communications scholar Herb Schiller, "a corporate pipeline into our heads."
SIDEBAR Canadian Cyberspace Heroes
Several Canadian groups are working to ensure that democracy in cyberspace is more than virtual. Here's how to contact them:
The Coalition for Public Information, c/o Ontario Library Association, 100 Lombard St., Suite 303, Toronto, Ont., M5C 1M3; phone - 416-363-3366; e-mail - moorel@gov.on.ca
Freenet, c/o Telecommunities Canada/Victorial Free-Net Association, Vancouver Island Advanced Technology Centre, #203-1110 Government St., Victoria, B.C., V8W 1Y2; phone - 604-727-7057; e-mail - shearman@freenet.victoria.bc.ca
Web, c/o NirvCentre/Web, 401 Richmond St. W., Suite 104, Toronto, Ont., M5V 3A8; phone - 416-596-0212; e-mail - support@web.apc.org
End of text from cdp:media.issues
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This material came from PeaceNet, a non-profit progressive networking service. For more information, send a message to peacenet-info@igc.apc.org
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Art McGee [amcgee@netcom.com]
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End of COMMUNET Digest - 10 Jun 1994 to 11 Jun 1994
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