serendipityoucity

Another Project Completed! 

I got to work with the following group of co-authors on a research paper that was just submitted!  The summary and TOC are below.  The full paper will eventualy be published on the Knowledge Media Design Institute (KMDI) in their publications section.

Toward an Online Interactive Broadband Atlas for Ontarians
A research paper submitted to:
The Ministry of Government and Consumer Services of Ontario
program on:
Toward a Broadband Research Agenda for Ontario
by:
Amelia Bryne Potter
Tracey P. Lauriault
Neal McIntyre
Andrew Clement
as part of:
Community Wireless Infrastructure Research Project (CWIRP), Faculty of Information Studies (FIS), University of Toronto July 7, 2008

Executive Summary

Access to advanced information and communications technology (ICT) infrastructure, such as broadband internet and wireless networks, is vital to the socio-economic well-being of cities, regions and nations in the global knowledge-based economy/society. Access to this infrastructure is as important in the new economy as is access to other public infrastructures and utilities such as highways, power grids, water and sewage facilities.  Understanding broadband infrastructure - including what infrastructure exists, its capacities, where there are gaps, and who is involved in providing it - is essential for effective socio-economic and infrastructural planning in the Province.

Provincial governments, as providers, partners, and regulators of public infrastructure can help ensure that Canadians have access to affordable, high quality broadband infrastructure. Local, regional, and national governments have played a variety of active roles in the development of broadband, ranging from coordinating infrastructure build-outs, to assessing user needs, and negotiating rights of way (Ethos 2007). To assist in evidence-based broadband policy decisions such as where to deploy new infrastructure in underserved areas, to assess spatial clustering of heavy broadband usage, to analyze the market, or simply for public education purposes, policy makers and developers integrate, visualize, analyze and disseminate broadband data through the creation of broadband atlases, maps and finder/locator services.

Communications infrastructure, like all other infrastructures, is inherently spatial.  Where elements of the infrastructure are located is related to factors such as population density, urbanization, business districts, educational institutions, physical topography and pre-existing infrastructures such as rail lines, electrical wires, or telephone lines.  The infrastructure is often absent where incomes are low, in remote areas, where the terrain is difficult, and where the private sector deems it is not profitable for them to deliver such a service.  The presence or absence of communications infrastructure and the quality of communications services influences, to some extent, the social and economic viability and livability of a community, its integration with the rest of the nation, and access to potential global markets.  Cartographically represented broadband data can help governments, the private sector, NGOs and the public see the distribution of this infrastructure by providing access to a wide range of information relevant to broadband development – rendering it more tangible via maps, graphics and accompanying text. These include: the location of already existing infrastructure; the types and locations of various local broadband providers; the availability, quality and capacity of broadband service by region; and the types of technology used.  In addition, integrating these data into themes such as ‘digital inclusion’ or ‘economic development’ can help users to think through larger broadband policy questions and economic issues in a way that leads to concrete decisions on, for example, where to build fibre infrastructure, or where to locate a business.   On a larger level, by showing spatial data about broadband facilities and services, a broadband atlas can help governments better understand the status of broadband infrastructure, and to determine how best to facilitate further development within their jurisdictions. A comprehensive online Broadband Atlas in Ontario – a first in Canada - could inspire other provinces and territories toward creating regionally managed, but nationally integrated, broadband atlas initiatives.

This paper reviews existing paper-based and online broadband atlases, maps, indicators, data visualization projects and finder/locator services in Canada and internationally. Of the dozens of broadband mapping initiatives we found, we provide an in-depth analysis of 11 that exemplify the wide range of possible approaches. These include highly systematic international mapping efforts, local user-generated Google mashups, and academic analyses. We identify the types of data represented in these broadband maps, and ways of visualizing them. We do not provide a design for a Broadband Atlas itself, but rather a framework for understanding what a Broadband Atlas can be useful for and what it might include. To inform the development of a Broadband Atlas we offer such guiding principles as usability, usefulness, authority, aesthetics, engagement and preservation. We also highlight nine prospective themes or topic areas for an atlas relevant for developing a broadband strategy in Ontario. These include:

1. Technical Infrastructure
2. Service Availability, Quality & Affordability
3. Digital Inclusion
4. Economic Development
5. Ownership
6. Competition
7. Traffic Inspection & Management Practices
8. Public Sector Involvement
9. Decision-making by sector

We further provide over a hundred indicators, drawn from the policy and mapping initiatives analyzed earlier. These indicators can be used, in various combinations, to support and develop the themes described in the paper, or other relevant themes. Finally, we review selected atlas framework technologies that provide promising ways to implement an Ontario-led online broadband atlas. Together, these findings may inform the Ontario government on key ingredients for the creation of its own online interactive Broadband Atlas.

Table of Contents:

Executive Summary 

1. What is an Online Interactive Broadband Atlas (BBA)?

2. Why a Broadband Atlas (BBA)?

Making infrastructure visible
Broadband atlas users
Broadband atlas uses

3. Current Broadband Mapping and Atlas Initiative

Research process and findings
Review of select mapping initiatives

4. Key Principles for Developing an Online Interactive BBA for Ontarians

Usable
Useful over time
Authoritative
Data-aware
Aesthetically pleasing
Engaging
Secure
Preservable

5. Key Themes of a Online Interactive BBA for Ontarians

Themes, indicators and datasets
Emergent themes for a bba for ontarians
Theme 1. technical infrastructure
Theme 2. service availability, quality & affordability
Theme 3. digital Inclusion
Theme 4. economic development
Theme 5. ownership
Theme 6. competition
Theme 7. traffic inspection & management practices
Theme 8. public sector Involvement
Theme 9. decision-making by sector

6. Atlas Framework and Mapping Technologies

Technology Overview of Selected Atlases, Maps, Finder/Locator Services/Portals
Review of select ongoing atlas framework projects in Canada

7. Conclusions and Next steps

References
About the Authors
Appendices

        appendix 1. list of atlases, maps, finder/locator services and tools
        appendix 2. list of indicators
        appendix 3. sample indicator description chart

Why do i put myself through such pain and agony!  The thing is on its way!  Long winded as usual, overabitious, could be tighter, the material could more integrated and there are most probably some wonky sentences!  But alas!  This part is done and next week I defend!

Here is the abstract! 

Discuss and Critically Assess Community Built Communication Infrastructures as Possible Solutions for Contested Territories: With Nagaland and its Environs as a Case Study.

By: Tracey P. Lauriault June 25, 2008

Abstract

Infrastructures have traditionally been built by experts, politicians, technocrats and entrepreneurs with little or no input by citizens or understanding of the values embedded within them nor the context within which they are constructed. Communication infrastructures like transportation, water, and power infrastructure are complex social, cultural and technological systems found in all human habitats. Humans communicate and have developed communications, media and infrastructures to transmit information, knowledge and stories. The infrastructure and the stories it technologically mediates is an agent in the creation of a community’s collective consciousness, archive, and imagination. These communications can assist with maintaining community cohesiveness, a shared identity and forming a social space. Community communication networks / infrastructures (CCN/Is) are emerging as significant grassroots technosocial movements worldwide. These can be a Wireless Local Area Network, a sneaker net, or a fully connected Internet mesh network. Irrespective of the infrastructure’s architecture, CCIs are community created and maintained. CCIs often consciously and sub-consciously embed local, social, cultural and political values in the technological and social infrastructures being constructed. The expertise, commitment of members, the spirit of open source coding, hacker/tinkerer ethic and free culture associated with these and the unique mix of citizens involved, combined with the propagation of knowledge, support, and inexpensive technology is quite unique and characteristic of the Web 2.0 ethos. Infrastructures are complex social, technical and culturally specific artifacts that are shaped by and in turn shape societies. It is suggested that citizens can be active agents in the creation and maintenance of as opposed to passive recipients of infrastructures. It is argued that the social and technological innovations of CCIs, relatively easy access to ad hoc yet very powerful networks of experts and literature combined with the ability to build low cost solutions for a variety of contexts may provide people living in contested territories with the means to construct their own communication infrastructures as part of pre-existing information ecologies, social spaces, local knowledge and physical geographies. The research approach is for this paper is analogous to Activist scholarship, positioned objectivity and experiential learning. Nagaland is the contested territory investigated.

This is a really interesting book that explores and critically discusses open source coding and community based wireless, open source and technology groups in Quebec.  If you can read french it is well worth it!  The book was published by researchers from Laboratoire de communication médiatisée par ordinateur (LabCMO) at the Université du Québec a Montréal (UQAM). Imagine such a book for Canada or Ontario!

Table of Contents

L’action communautaire québécoise à l’ère du numérique (Nouveauté)

Excellent News!  A new updated release funded by the Canadian International Development Research Centre!

You can download and/or purchase a hard copy of the book from Wireless Networking in the Developing World site.

Via: Arun Mehtah at India-gii

Check out the new ogWiFi Hotspot at the Elmdale House Tavern at 1084 Wellington West!

Elmdale House Tavern
Originally uploaded by tlauriau.

This is crazyness!

Americans threw out just shy of three million tons of household electronics in 2006.

Some of these phones are mined for precious metals, many go to landfil, tons go to companies who resell them used in the developing world who do not have the waste infrastructure to dispose of them properly when the phone’s life is finally over.

cellphones are the most valuable form of e-waste. Each one contains about a dollar’s worth of precious metals, mostly gold. And while single phones house far less hazardous material than a computer — an old, clunky monitor can incorporate seven pounds of lead — their cumulative presence is staggering.

OMG

Last year, according to ABI Research, 1.2 billion phones were sold worldwide. Sixty percent of them probably replaced existing ones. In the United States, phones are cast aside after, on average, 12 months. And according to the industry trade group CTIA, four out of every five people in the country own cellphones.

Using data from the United States Geological Survey and mining companies’ own reports, Earthworks estimates that mining the gold needed for the circuit board of a single mobile phone generates 220 pounds of waste. The environmental nonprofit calls this “an extremely conservative” estimate.

meanwhile drawers turn

out to be the real purgatory for phones. Using predictions from Inform, the United States Geological Survey estimates that in 2005 there were already more than half a billion old phones sitting in American drawers. That added up to more than $300 million worth of gold, palladium, silver, copper and platinum

and 

recyclers say that from their vantage point it’s obvious that most phones are retired because of psychological, not technological, obsolescence. Right now, there are roughly 470 models of phone for sale in the United States. About 16 new ones come out every month. Many are only slightly altered versions of existing phones, suggesting how easily we get bored — how we’ll crave something that slides, say, instead of flips open.

Way cool ideas and book.

“Somewhere during the last 100 years, we learned to find refuge outside the species, in the silent embrace of manufactured objects,” Jonathan Chapman, a young product designer and theorist at the University of Brighton, writes in his book “Emotionally Durable Design.” But designers and consumers have snared themselves in an unsustainable trap, Chapman told me, since our affection for many high-tech objects is tied exclusively to their newness.

Duh! We are stupid! The above quotes are but a few snipets from an excellent 6 page article in the NYTimes on The Afterlife of Cellphones by By JON MOOALLEM, Jan. 13.

Well we have a new poster boy at ogWiFi!

Our very own VP, JP Fiset appears in the Ottawa Sun today - Wireless group works to expand horizons!  The article also discusses the Communty Wireless Infrastructure Research Project (CWIRP), wireless as infrastructure, and our favorite Ile Sans Fil.

And if that is not enough!  We also appear on the cover of 24 hours - Wireless Wish, which means all the bus commuters got to read about us today! 

I was at a workshop last week and saw a presentation on green broadband.  I have not deconstructed the models presented, but was a bit skeptical with the argument, particularly if the full production cycle and energy costs of the digital economy are not factored in. 

What of the energy consumption of server farms that give us 24-7 access to the Internet’s information? Hmm! I wonder if the models look at the energy costs of transporting waste to China or India, the health problems associated with the recovery and the environmental degration caused by this toxic soup! I desperately want to believe green broadband but …

The Globe has a great article about e-waste in China today.

The air smells acrid from the squat gas burners that sit outside homes, melting wires to recover copper and cooking computer motherboards to release gold. Migrant workers in filthy clothes smash picture tubes by hand to recover glass and electronic parts, releasing as much as 6.5 pounds of lead dust.

China now produces more than 1 million tons of e-waste each year, said Jamie Choi, a toxics campaigner with Greenpeace China in Beijing. That adds up to roughly 5 million television sets, 4 million fridges, 5 million washing machines, 10 million mobile phones and 5 million personal computers, according to Choi.

“Most e-waste in China comes from overseas, but the amount of domestic e-waste is on the rise,” he said.

This ugly business is driven by pure economics. For the West, where safety rules drive up the cost of disposal, it’s as much as 10 times cheaper to export the waste to developing countries.

Upwards of 90 per cent ends up in dumps that observe no environmental standards, where shredders, open fires, acid baths and broilers are used to recover gold, silver, copper and other valuable metals while spewing toxic fumes and runoff into the nation’s skies and rivers.

Accurate figures about the shady and unregulated trade are hard to come by. However, experts agree that it is overwhelmingly a problem of the developing world. They estimate about 70 per cent of the 20-50 million tons of electronic waste produced globally each year is dumped in China, with most of the rest going to India and poor African nations.

I do not see myself jumping on any green broadband bandwagon any time soon and worry about false rhetoric leading us to create worse problems or displacing the problems into someone else’s back yard. 

More Resources:

• GRID News Brief
  
• UN Seeks to Save Developing Countries from e-waste
• ‘E-Waste’ From Western Hand-Me-Downs Threatens Poor Countries: UN

to teach people to sodder, splice wires and make circuit boards to build a community radio station is

not the best way to build a radio station but it is the best way to build a mouvement

Dharma Dailey, Toronto Nov. 16 at the CWIRP workshops (well actually at the Imperial Tavern!)

I will be attending the Community Wireless Infrastructure Research Project workshop in Toronto this week. 

I am going as a member and as one of the founders of Ottawa-Gatineau WiFi . 

We are the small kids here and it will be wonderful to be with some of the best thinkers around on this topic and to see some friends.