Boston is among a handful of American cities (and some foreign burgs as So it was with considerable interest and some excitement that we pointed As we parked and headed inside we selected an appropriate last tune for Appropriately enough, the session was scheduled for a large conference The diversity and heterogeneity of the crowd jumped out at us immediately. Of the approximately 300 people in the hall, about 60% were men, and about Next, Ioannis Miaoulis, president of the Museum, gave a particularly Every time we hear the Mayor speak in person we are amazed that he has It was a lesson in political boilerplate 101: "It is an honor to Mayor Mumbles gave way to the political instigator of the summit (although He defended Boston’s rightful place in the vanguard of the wireless revolution We had been impressed by Tobin since he first came to address the Thursday As soon as Tobin finished speaking, before he even had a chance to sit By the time the first panel hit the stage, it was after 10 and so far Unfortunately, these guys continued in the same vein, giving 10-minute It was becoming obvious that we had arrived with somewhat unrealistic We They weren’t even taking live questions. Instead, inside the stylish On our yellow card we carefully wrote "We feel like we are watching When we returned, however, it was obvious that someone had read the yellow It was a pretty vision, and more entertaining than the infomercials which Finally, a few minutes before noon, the interactive part of the event Always willing to speak up on subjects he knows little or nothing about, All six of the panelists and<\/em> the moderator jumped to answer that one – 1) The incumbants are already gone – or going. We invited them to participate 2) This is the way business and technological innovation works; old-line 3) Nobody said for sure the service is going to be free. Free access 4) China and India have huge, growing ISP’s who offer service comparable 5) Declining Dinosaurs always exit the scene kicking and screaming, but 6) Wireless technology is not really wireless – only the final few hundred 7) Someone will have to install and maintain the nodes, as well as offer Clearly, none of them was worried about the potentially viscous, underhanded, Sure, in an ideal world and a true open market, non-adaptive older companies Which is why the Dowbrigade would NEVER cross these upstanding It is clear that all of this maneuvering and establishing of positions Nevertheless, we remain deeply pessimistic that we will see an effective First of all, because this is Boston, and in Boston nothing gets done We talk a good game here in Beantown, but when it comes to actually getting What we see emerging in the mid-term, and perhaps as the permanent model 1) Level of service. Basically, the cable TV model – a certain packet 2) Time control. This is the cell phone model. Each user could 3) Speed controlled. Free service could chug along at 56k while 4) Advertising funded model. The free service would be full of ads, Which model gets adopted? Who gets to own the infrastructure and cash On the way out of the museum we happened to wander by the new Butterfly Inside, it was over 90° and humid as a sauna. The glass walls We saw yellow and white Giant Swallowtails, large and distinctive Paper We sat down on one of the slatted wooden benches and made ourselves very We tried to clear our mind of all thoughts, to stop the internal dialog, We wondered if these captive butterflies, which a museum curator told <\/p>\n Note: Incredibly, the alacritous <\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Yesterday was the long awaited Wi-Fi Summit at the Museum of Science, an informational half-day conference organized by City Councilor John Tobin, the Boston Wireless Access Group, and local consulting company BTS Partners. Boston is among a handful of American … Continue reading ![](\"http:\/\/cyber.law.harvard.edu\/blogs\/static\/dowbrigade\/summit1.jpg\")
Yesterday
\n was the long awaited Wi-Fi
\n Summit<\/a> at the Museum of Science<\/a>,
\n an informational half-day conference organized by City
\n Councilor John Tobin<\/a>, the Boston Wireless
\n Access Group<\/a>, and local consulting company BTS
\n Partners<\/a>.<\/p>\n
\n well) considering initiatives to offer some form of city-wide wi-fi access.
\n The technology to do this is available today, and much of the infrastructure
\n is already in place. However, there are a number of important issues to
\n be resolved before one of these plans becomes operational: opposition from
\n current ISP’s and wireless phone providers, differing business models for
\n paying for and possibly charging for the service, which of several competing
\n technologies to support, and the proper role of municipal and state government
\n in regulating access and content.<\/p>\n
\n the White Whale towards the Museum, which lies astride a bridge connecting
\n the cities of Boston and Cambridge. We were a little worried about
\n paying for five hours of parking in the museum garage. which we remembered
\n as being quite dear. We we worried about our laptop, which only
\n had a 54% charge, and our digital camera, which was useless indoors since
\n the
\n flash died last month. Most
\n of all, we were worried about our appointment at three that afternoon at
\n the Boston University Goldman School of Dentistry for a double extraction,
\n but one of our hopes for the summit was that it would keep our mind off
\n the looming oral surgery.<\/p>\n
\n our iPod, and cranked up the volume for the walk into the museum: Van Morrison’s
\n "Wavelength". Inside, beneath the glossamer wings of the man-powered flight
\n exhibit, was a table with nametags for the pre-registered. For some reason,
\n our name was not there, but the ubiquitous and efficient Sooz<\/a> was – and
\n she made us feel like a VIP as she ushered us upstairs to the pre-conference
\n breakfast
\n buffet.<\/p>\n
\n room right next to one of our favorite exhibitions at he Museum – Optical
\n Illusions. As we drank coffee and ate a bagel, we perused the crowd
\n and amused ourself with optical disoreintation.<\/p>\n
\n There was a smattering of suits, ranging from off the rack polyester
\n to the tailored European models favored by jet setting entrepreneurs. A
\n good number of academics were in evidence, with elbow patched tweeds and
\n herringbones, as well as obvious community activists, bearded and pony-tailed
\n and comfortably chic. Also, politicians, members of the media, ambitious
\n young
\n aides and organizers, high school students and a row of housing project
\n residents. Luckily, we didn’t see any obvious anarchists.<\/p>\n
\n half were wearing suits. In the front were the organizers and bigwigs;
\n the Mayor, City Councilor, Director of the Museum and the rest of the organizing
\n committee. In the back were five separate camera crews, including
\n ace video-blogger Steve
\n Garfield<\/a>.<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/cyber.law.harvard.edu\/blogs\/static\/dowbrigade\/freqsmall.jpg\")
<\/a>The
\n session was called to order at 9:20
\n with a slide show from Adam Weiss, the museums’s point man for the wi-fi
\n project, giving an overview of what wireless technology is all about, and
\n how the electromagnetic
\n spectrum
\n is divided
\n up into hundreds
\n of regulated and unregulated segments. Despite
\n the
\n well-known axiom that Powerpoint-type presentations have the highest noise
\n to signal ratio
\n known to man, this was a surprisingly useful overview, especially as it
\n resonated in later references to open spectrum technologies. (click on
\n the frequency chart for a larger
\n view<\/a>)<\/p>\n
\n insipid welcome featuring an extended but completely off-topic anecdote
\n about middle school students designing small animal habitats.
\n Yet even this shone as a brilliant discourse in comparison to the next
\n speaker – Mayor
\n Tom Menino<\/a>.<\/p>\n
\n survived in a profession in which public speaking is part and parcel of
\n his daily job performance. His
\n speaking style<\/a> is stilted, hurried, faulty
\n in timing, timbre and stress patterns and borderline incomprehensible.
\n Frankly, he makes Mayor Quimby of the Simpson’s cartoon Springfield
\n sound like Demosthenes<\/a> in
\n comparison.<\/p>\n
\n be here today to kick off this very important conference on …Important
\n initiative….digital divide….blabla bla." Most of his mercifully
\n short intervention was a self-congratulatory rundown of anything and everything
\n his administration
\n has done related to technology.<\/p>\n
\n not the originator of the idea), City
\n Councilor John Tobin<\/a>. Young, sharp
\n and ambitious, Tobin has a speaking style orders of magnitude superior
\n to that of the mayor. The sincerity, intensity and relevance of his
\n remarks put the Mayors blatherings to shame, and brought the audience back
\n to attention.<\/p>\n
\n by putting it in historical context. Within a mile of where we were sitting,
\n he said, a lantern hung in the belfry of the Old North Church communicated
\n the intentions of the British troops to an anxious community; Alexander
\n Graham Bell uttered his historic words, "Come here, Watson, I want
\n you";
\n and Robert Metcalfe invented Ethernet in a grungy lab at MIT.<\/p>\n
\n Berkman Blogger’s group<\/a>, and like all good instinctual politicians
\n he showed a talent for listening as much as talking, and made us bloggers
\n feel important
\n and appreciated. Just the other day, driving up to visit a friend in Nahant,
\n we had been thinking about how Tobin seemed to be a new breed of pol, coming
\n up from the grass roots and really representing his working class constituents
\n in Jamaica Plain, not more of the same old political scions that have
\n dominated
\n Boston politics for generations. Then we noticed that we were having these
\n thoughts about young John Tobin as we drove across the old Tobin Bridge,
\n and we had to wonder…<\/p>\n
\n down, the Mayor got up and left, without shaking Tobin’s hand or even saying
\n goodbye. He looked as though he’d seen the ghost of election days future.<\/p>\n
\n all we had heard was a series of self-congratulatory speeches. The first
\n panel
\n consisted of: Nyvia Col?n, a smart Latina with a voice reminiscent of Rosie
\n Perez, who is the Director of Technology Programs at the Madison Park development
\n and represented the minority community considered one of the core beneficiaries
\n of the initiative; Vinit Nijhawan, President of TIE-Boston<\/a>,
\n a non-profit organization with a mission to foster and support entrepreneurship;
\n and representing the public sector, Robert Tumposky, Deputy Director of
\n Management Information Services for the Boston
\n Redevelopment Authority.<\/a><\/p>\n
\n infomercials about what their respective organizations were doing to foster
\n technology initiatives in the city, and answering some softball questions
\n from the moderator, Doug Shremp.<\/p>\n
\n expectations as to the nature of the whole Summit concept. Perhaps we had
\n been spoiled by attending a number of events modeled along the lines of
\n Dave Winer’s<\/a> Un-Conferences<\/a>,
\n which
\n break down the barriers between the presenters and the audience. <\/p>\n
\n had been hoping for a little interactivity, or at least some creative
\n mud slinging between representatives of the Major Incumbents (Verison,
\n Comcast,
\n etc.)
\n and the champions of community access. Some give and take, some inspired,
\n improvisational oratory. Instead, we felt like we were at home in our pajamas,
\n watching C-SPAN.<\/p>\n
\n white glossy folders inscribed with the Boston Foundation logo we had been
\n given upon
\n entry, there were two 3 x 5 index cards, one yellow and one blue. As
\n we were dismissed for a short break between panels, we were instructed
\n to write our questions on these cards, together with our names, organizational
\n affiliation
\n and
\n contact
\n information,
\n and
\n our
\n questions
\n would be answered via email<\/em>!<\/p>\n
\n C-SPAN. Why are you afraid to face the opinions of the PEOPLE?" and
\n handed it to an efficient-looking aide and left to look up another cup
\n of coffee. If the
\n second panel was
\n anything like the first, we were going to need it.<\/p>\n
\n cards, because the MC announced that the second panel was going to be more
\n interactive than the first. The second panel consisted of dyed-in-the-wool
\n techies; three slef-proclaimed MIT graduates. There was Michael
\n Oh, President and Founder of Tech
\n Superpowers<\/a>,
\n the friendly folks behind NewberryOpen.net<\/a>,
\n the successful sponsor-funded wi-fi
\n net covering Boston’s chic boutique boulevard; Russell Newman, Campaign
\n Director of Free Press, and co-author of The
\n Future of Media<\/a>; (by the way, Russell, "Free Press" is a
\n terrible name as it is impossible to find within the bramble of homonyms
\n in Google, and
\n whose campaign are you directing anyway, and what are they running for?);
\n and Richard O’Bryant, a Professor and Research Fellow at Northeastern.<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/cyber.law.harvard.edu\/blogs\/static\/dowbrigade\/summit2.jpg\")
These guys
\n were, at least, a bit more juiced and visionary than the first bunch, and
\n the audience responded, applauding each of them at the conclusion
\n of his spiel. Jock Gill started things off with the most provocative statement
\n of the day. After two hours of verbal and virtual pussyfooting he
\n came out with a bold statement, or aim, or prediction, or challenge: "Ubiquitous
\n 10 Gigabit connectivity for everyone in New England by 2015". Spontaneous
\n applause,
\n the first sign of life from the audience.<\/p>\n
\n preceeded it, but seemed to be papering over a lot of potential pitfalls
\n between here and
\n there. Those visionary geeks, we thought, blinded by science again, overly
\n optimistic about the essential goodness of human nature as reflected in
\n technological innovation, and overly naive about the functioning of "free"
\n markets.<\/p>\n
\n was unveiled. Wireless microphones started circulating in the audience,
\n and a few live questions were addressed by the panel<\/p>\n
\n the Dowbrigade asked for, and received, one of the circulating microphones.
\n Our question: "My name is Dowbrigade and I am a Blogger. I am not
\n a MIT graduate, and do not understand a lot of the technology you have
\n been discussing."
\n (We always like to start our with a self-depreciating comment, to engender
\n sympathy and lower expectations. We neglected to mention that we had graduated
\n from that other<\/em> Cambridge univeristy). "However,
\n I do understand a little bit about economics. You are talking about offering
\n free wireless
\n internet
\n access to a million people who live or work in the city of Boston, but
\n today powerful companies like Verison and ATT are making millions or billions
\n of dollars
\n selling
\n that
\n same service to the same market. Plus, if free wireless internet is available
\n in Boston people and businesses are going to start using it to make VoIP
\n phone calls,
\n and stop
\n paying the phone companies. Isn’t it unrealistic to think that these companies
\n are going to leave all of those millions of dollars on the table? Do you
\n really think that they are just going to go away?"<\/p>\n
\n and they each had a different answer:<\/p>\n
\n in this panel, but they are scared to death of us and didn’t show up.<\/p>\n
\n companies adapt or die.<\/p>\n
\n is one<\/em> of the business models being studied, but not the only one.<\/p>\n
\n to what we get from Verison or Comcast for a tenth of what the US companies
\n charge, and still make a healthy profit. Maybe one of them will buy Verison.<\/p>\n
\n when the climate changes they are doomed.<\/p>\n
\n meters are. The big telecom companies can still control the backbones
\n and fiber nets and switches right up to the wireless nodes.<\/p>\n
\n customer service, training and ancillary services, so there are many possible
\n niches for the incumbent companies.<\/p>\n
\n career-threatening counter-measures of the old-line companies in the current
\n climate of unbridled cutthroat capitalism. As recent developments in Pennsylvania
\n show, these
\n companies
\n have had a
\n lot of money for a long time, and money buys lobbyists, and lobbyists buy
\n votes.<\/p>\n
\n will wither and die, but in the real world they sink their tentacles deep
\n into the vital organs of politics and high society, and will squeeze the
\n life from those organs before they let go. They think nothing of destroying
\n careers and even private lives of people who stand in the way of their
\n reaping the rewards of decades of bribery, blackmail, sweetheart deals
\n and influence
\n acquisition.<\/p>\n
\n American corporations
\n or
\n disparage their
\n altruistic
\n dedications
\n to bringing
\n the
\n best of technology to American consumers.<\/p>\n
\n are the opening moves in a great game, perhaps the greatest of our generation,
\n the end result of which will be the creation of the inevitable, ubiquitous
\n Net.
\n What it
\n will
\n look
\n like,
\n who will control the content, and who the delivery, how much it will cost
\n and who will foot the bill, what should be the role of government in providing
\n or regulating service: all these key questions are up in the air right
\n now. Eventually,
\n they will be answered; for now, at least, the discussion has been opened.<\/p>\n
\n wireless city emerge first in Boston, or at all in the foreseeable future,
\n for two main reasons.<\/p>\n
\n fast, especially if there are politicians involved. Look at the Big Dig
\n – what choice do we have, it has been staring us in the face for over 10
\n years now, a yawning money pit which now appears to need exhumation to
\n fix myriad nasty leaks. Our baseball park is the oldest and smallest in
\n the country because nobody can agree on where to build another one. There
\n is a law still on the books from the 1680’s prohibiting Indians from entering
\n the city that is putting the kabosh on a conference at a local university
\n concerning indigenous peoples.<\/p>\n
\n stuff done, the halls of power are so labarynthine that sooner quickly
\n become later. It took us 86 years to win the world series, after all.<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/cyber.law.harvard.edu\/blogs\/static\/dowbrigade\/summit0.jpg\")
Second, we
\n don’t see a rapid and peaceful passing for the incumbent corporations.
\n This is America in the 21st century, and between PAC’s, soft money, informational
\n junkets, after-term employment, veiled stock options, interlocking directorships
\n and mutual social circles, the interconnections between the highest levels
\n of government and business insure that major corporations are protected,
\n to a certain extent, from the vicissitudes of market forces. The politicians
\n justify this by reasoning that these companies are solid corporate citizens,
\n major
\n taxpayers and essential employers. This may not save them in the long run,
\n but it is sure to prolong a vicious rear-guard action as they fight tooth
\n and
\n nail for the billion-dollar market they currently control for providing
\n access to the internet.<\/p>\n
\n for the ubiquitous, omnipresent internet of the future, is a multi-tiered
\n approach, along one of several possible axes. <\/p>\n
\n of access would be free, or completely subsidized for low-income areas,
\n consisting of on-line 911, access to municipal government services, employment
\n listings, public-service sites, sexually dangerous predators database,
\n poison control center, basic internet search, commercial sites of sponsors
\n and
\n city businesses,
\n weather
\n reports,
\n etc.
\n For more complete access, equivalent of what any user has now, a reasonable
\n few would apply, and gradient access levels, and commensurate fees, could
\n extend upwards to the point where for a million dollars you could read
\n the President’s morning security briefing.<\/p>\n
\n get 10 hours a month free, and if you use more, you pay. This would
\n probably create a secondary market for free minutes, where derelicts would
\n end up selling their password and monthly allotment of hours for a few
\n hits of crack.<\/p>\n
\n an Andrew Jackson could get you 1g of connectivity for a month.<\/p>\n
\n a la Net Zero, and for a slight monthly fee you could make them disappear.<\/p>\n
\n the checks? When is this going to happen? Stay tuned, folks, but don’t
\n hold your breath. It ain’t happening fast.<\/p>\n
\n House. Inside
\n a glass-enclosed hothouse are a variety of tropical plants and thousands
\n of multicolored butterflies. It is supposed to cost $4.00 extra on your
\n museum ticket, but since we didn’t have a ticket for the museum, just a
\n Wi-Fi summit name tag, and had already inadvertently passed the teenaged
\n ticket taker while staring at a fabulous, phosphorescent display of pinned
\n butterflies on the wall outside
\n the
\n hot house, we just walked right in.<\/p>\n
\n looked out over the Charles River, and a bright sun shone through, adding
\n to the heat. It was not a big space, perhaps the size of a normal living
\n room, but there were butterflies everywhere. A few were flying back and
\n forth across the room, but most were alit on leaves or branches, sunning
\n their wings, waving their antennae, testing the air. <\/p>\n
\n Kites, the black and white Zebra Longwing and the petite but colorful Eastern
\n Tiger Swallowtail.<\/p>\n
\n still. After a minute the butterflies came close, and an orange and yellow
\n fellow we couldn’t identify landed on our knee.<\/p>\n
\n but were unsuccessful. We thought about the dim prospects for free, city-wide
\n wi-fi in our lifetime. We were reminded of the only place we had
\n ever seen more butterflies than this room; a riverside in the Ceja de Selva,
\n the Jungle’s Eyebrow, in the upper Amazon, where the butterflies gathered
\n in thick orange, blue and silver clouds.<\/p>\n
\n us had come from Costa Rica and the Everglades, even knew they were thousands
\n of miles from their natural habitats. Could they smell the different pollen
\n in the air, different bird smells? Could they smell the shampoo, the deodorant,
\n the dried sweat, the greasy burgers and fries, on the constant stream of
\n people who tramped through their artificial ecosystem? Could they sense
\n the tension, the fear, the lust, the quiet desperation of their viewers?<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/cyber.law.harvard.edu\/blogs\/static\/dowbrigade\/diomon.gif\")
We sat there
\n transfixed, helpless before this impossible passel of questions without
\n answers. Unfortunately, we realized our oral surgery was only two hours
\n away. As we stared out the window, a dark red Juno butterfly dropped into
\n our range
\n of vision
\n and
\n hung there
\n as if
\n looking
\n us in the
\n eye, somehow
\n suspended
\n in
\n space.
\n Completely
\n wireless.<\/p>\n
\n videoblogger Steve Garfield<\/a> has already
\n posted 18 video clips<\/a> of
\n this morning’s sessions. Check them out
\n here.<\/a> He is also responsible
\n for the photos in this post. (Thanks, Steve)<\/p>\n