General Discussion - Bridging the Digital Divide

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Bridging the Digital Divide

DaDnDe

2004-03-20, 11:13 am

here is an interesting view point on internet access for all. it is from the New York Times

The Free Lane on the Information Highway
By DALTON CONLEY

Published: March 19, 2004

The WiFi revolution is here. With the technology known as wireless fidelity, laptop users can get onto the Internet and download e-mail, photos and other electronic files from places once well off the information superhighway — parks, truck stops and cafes, to name a few.

That's a wonderful thing, but what's better is that WiFi holds the promise of bridging America's much discussed digital divide — if we make it ubiquitous and free to use, like the public library system. After all, just as roads and bridges were among the most important public investments in the industrial period, wireless access to the Internet is arguably the most crucial public investment of the information age.

For now, though, wireless Internet access is a hodgepodge. In most cases, a home computer user buys a wireless router (which costs less than $100) that links to an Internet connection (which can cost several hundred dollars a year). The router then broadcasts a signal, which typically covers 300 feet to 1,600 feet, that allows all computers within that range to tap into the Internet. Some businesses, like coffee shops, have WiFi on their premises to lure customers. Some institutions also provide WiFi to the public. In Bryant Park, next to the New York Public Library on 42nd Street, laptop users can sit at one of the public tables on a glorious afternoon and read their e-mail while sipping a latte, thanks to the Bryant Park Restoration Corporation. Similarly, Columbia University offers free wireless access on its campus.

But these are the exceptions; most of the wireless access points, or nodes, in Manhattan are provided, perhaps inadvertently, by individuals. I, for instance, don't "lock" my signal with a secret access code; I have an "open node," and thus anyone within range is free to go on the Net through me. Since I pay for Internet service, I don't feel particularly guilty when I'm away from home and make use of someone else's portal to the Web. What's more, with WiFi technology, allowing other users to look at their e-mail through my hub isn't going to slow me down.

Not surprisingly, this type of thinking alarms Internet service providers, which maintain that users can't share their service. And there is certainly opportunity for abuse, as when apartment buildings charge residents a fee to log onto the Net using the building's WiFi hubs. Clearly, reselling a service under false pretenses, when the costs are borne by a different company that reaps no commission, is — and should remain — illegal.

But what about when individual users choose to make their WiFi available to the public at no charge? Are they merely exercising their right to use their service as they see fit — analogous to inviting a few friends over to watch a video you rented? That's the argument being made by participants in a relatively unheralded movement among America's techies promoting free wireless access.

This movement has gained momentum in the past year, so I recently took a walk with my laptop around residential neighborhoods in Manhattan with the hope of seeing how WiFi access has changed since Public Internet Project.org conducted a census of the island in 2002. Back then, it found that about 30 percent of some 13,000 access nodes were locked. On my walk, I found that the proportion of locked nodes had increased, to just under half. I also found what the 2002 census did: as much as I wanted to stereotype neighborhoods as "selfish" or "open," it seemed to be pretty random which areas had a higher proportion of open nodes. The best predictor of node density appears to be — surprise, surprise — the neighborhood's income level. For example, Harlem is about the only area left in Manhattan with significant dead space — an obvious example of the digital divide.

But nodes are continuing to spread throughout the city and the country. On Nodeb.com, people list their open nodes, essentially inviting strangers to join a worldwide community of users. This site has more than 11,000 registered access points in the United States. Even if service providers can make it more difficult for users to share Internet access, techies will eventually find a way around them.

----------------end of article---------------

azimuth40

2004-03-20, 11:58 am

I wonder if this guy considered that leaving his router open is the same thing as letting someone plug a cat 5 cable into his hub. A home user with one cheap access point router is not the same as a public split lan probably with dual firewalls. After he has had a serious hack attack I'm sure that he will have a different understanding. You need another category, bad idea because of currently bad security. How do we trace evil do'ers

DaDnDe

2004-03-20, 12:37 pm

well i dont know but that is why i posted this article. it sounds like a good idea to me, but i dont know everything about Wi-Fi, networking, or the security measures that are needed to make this idea fly.

so i post it here to get people who do know to respond. as far as security goes, it seems like we have the same security issues now. and will most likely have similiar security issues forever. fact is, when you have a certain type of people in this world, you will always have issues when dealing with them. i dont see that ever being resolved.

but i think the article is suggesting that Wi-Fi be provided free by the government. then anyone could access it free. it is a short range solution so we wouldnt have the situation of providing most of the infrastructure of the internet for the entire world to use like we do now.

obviously, this wouldnt be free, but public services are never cheap. and anyone who decides to get on a public network in any medium unprotected deserves anything that might happen to them.

the article is just an editorial, so it leaves out vital issues. such as how to pay for this. who will manage it, what restrictions would be in place to keep individuals from monopolizing the bandwidth, etc.

also, to provide true equal access, would people who didnt have a laptop be issued one? after all we already have public libraries if all you want is free access to the internet. but libraries eliminate all the advantages of wireless access. so without the laptop, you are no better off than you would be now.

the analogy the author uses in comparing free Wi-Fi access to public rightaways like bridges and freeways brings up the question of federally funded projects, lobby concerns and states that have less population and therefore pay less taxes and receive less government services overall than other states like New York, Florida, and California.

i guess the real question is that would this benefit us overall?

who would be hurt by this plan? small ISP's who provide wireless access for a fee.

or would it create more jobs than there are now by providing much wider coverage. also standarizing the technology and bringing on more users. in general, anything the government does, they may do well or poorly, but they always do it with a lot of people.

so we need comments from people who know enough about Wi-Fi and the related technologies to give their ideas...

azimuth40

2004-03-20, 1:34 pm

In my opinion only, someone forgot a history lesson. The government used to own what is now the internet. Al Gore spearheaded giving most of it away (kept milnet and other secret pieces) during the great aerospace downsizing. That gave us ISP's and dot COM's which both privatized and brought public control to what is now the internet along with a world wide uptake in the last ten years.

CompUserve, bitnet, Bytenet, AOL, Fidonet, RBBS and the likes were the medium of the people before that. Using veronica, archie, telnet, ftp were all black arts learned in college if you were lucky. Along came the Web and win95 and we had a sea change.

Now that all the work is done having a government come back in and take it over is something that normally only happens in third world dictatorships. ISP's share bandwidth at the backbone with the smaller ones paying for it.

ISP prices are based on the fact that the majority of users are not moving data continously. Open WiFi ports could drastically change that equation. It is also doubtful that you can un-ring a bell and have it become a public utility again.

Countries were the government builds out the infastructure is a different story. China for example brings internet access to the rual villages via satellite and solar panels for electricity.

prezbedard

2004-03-20, 3:54 pm

Well Bridging the Digital Divide is the ideal/concept the organization I work was built on. So I am for anything that will work towards that goal. You can read the whitepaper that the director(now my boss) wrote when
Salem CyberSpace opened almost 2 years ago now.

Read it here

prezbedard

2004-03-20, 3:59 pm

On another note I have been to Bryant park several times and it is very nice place indeed. I recommend giving it a visit if you are ever in NYC.

DaDnDe

2004-03-20, 5:13 pm

very interesting article...

i cant believe that anyone honestly thinks the digital divide has been bridged or i cant believe anyone would think us foolish enough to believe such drivel.

what she wants to do as far as making internet access more available to lower income people is what i was hoping for in a connected Wi-Fi society.

sure free access will make it more crowded, but will it be too crowded? i think we have the technology to handle the traffic. sure there will be problems with bandwidth here and there just like there is now.

but the stats on income and computer usage i think is the key to where we need to concentrate our efforts on.

i constantly deal with very inteligent people who have no idea what a computer can do and i sit and wonder how they got to where they are. granted most have obtained a position through the non technical fields like manufacturing, construction and so on but even those fields are going to computers more and more.

i recently tried to explain the benefits of word processing to a owner of a small contracting business. i tried to explain to him the time he would save by using simple tools like mail merge to cut down on letters he needs typed all the time.

he was so messed up in his finances that im afraid the IRS is gonna rail him because he didnt use nothing but paper and pencil to track everything.

now that his business is busier, he has had to hire office help to in addition to his wife just to pay bills on time.

but its people like this that will get left behind unless we can make computers much more mainstream than they are now. unfortunately, every person left behind will eventually become a drag on the economic system and hurt all of us.

i envy the kids in school who are introduced to computers at such an early age. i cant even imagine where i would have been if i would of had that opprotunity when i was in school.

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