[governance] Re: Russia plans to create independent web / internet

David Allen David_Allen_AB63 at post.harvard.edu
Sat Oct 13 14:10:54 EDT 2007


At 10:49 AM -0700 10/13/07, michael gurstein wrote:
>This reminds me of an experience I had in Russia a few years ago.
>
>I met with a research group in a smallish town outside of Moscow. They had been involved in theoretical physics but their research funding had disappeared and in its place they had begun to to do applied research in various areas including the Internet.
>
>They were using their local town (about 30,000 citizens) as a bit of test bed and what they had established was a coax based Local Area Network with a television feed which carried off the satellite television signals, (I presume pirated) games, local messaging/"email" (in cyrillics) and very limited access to the Internet on a pay per message basis... From what I could gather they were paying for one external Internet account for the entire town and then providing some sort of distributed access to this through their password protected local network...(before someone asks, let me say that I don't know how all of this was managed technically and I apologise in advance for any technical howlers I may have committed in my brief description here...
>
>All of this at very low cost (locally affordable) to the local citizens and evidently quite significant satisfaction since they reportedly had a significant proportion of the town attached to their network.
>
>I have no idea where this initiative has gone since I ran across it... (my understanding was that the group responsible were establishing similar such LAN electronic islands in various similarly sized communities throughout Russia...
>
>The example is interesting for me as a form of "community network" of course, but also I think in the context here as a way for creating thinly inter-connected nodes in the larger Internet including with the localized capacity to operate in whatever language script one wished with a "managed" interconnection between these localized islands and the larger Internet...(does this sound familiar to anyone...

In fact the history of the telephone, originally, follows just this pattern.

Local 'pools' of connectivity were, in time, aggregated into wider interconnection.  Starting with individual town telcos (still in Finland!)  In fact, a number of the world's telcos - what we know today as some of the largest corporations - started this way ...  Those familiar with the US know that there was a time when, to reach everyone, several, competing phone sets were required on each desk.  Aggregation comes only with time (though see third para).

Municipal broadband nets, today, are a modern outcropping.  When the rest of the society moves too slowly.  Seen widely around the world.  Or, local provision for wireless in some countries that you might tell us, Michael.

Fortunately, we learn.  The IDN now underpinning China and Russia, for instance, was designed from the beginning to interconnect with the rest of the world.

>
>MG
>
>Michael Gurstein, Ph.D.
>Centre for Community Informatics Research, Training and Development
>Ste. 2101-989 Nelson St.
>Vancouver BC CANADA v6z 2s1
>http://www.communityinformatics.net
>tel./fax +1-604-602-0624

David
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