CYBERBIA: STRUCTURAL ALTERNATIVES FOR A CANADIAN NETWORK OF NETWORKED COMMUNITIES GARTH GRAHAM, August 19, 1993 "The Internet is a wonderful sociological experiment. The question is, can it be scaled up to an industrial-strength network and still retain its flavor?" Gary Stix. DOMESTICATING CYBERSPACE. Scientific American, 269:2 (August 1993), 106. WHEN WE DESIGNED THIS CONFERENCE, WE HOPED IT WOULD CAUSE THE EMERGENCE OF A NATIONAL ORGANIZATION THAT SUPPORTS COMMUNITY NETWORKS. "Domesticating cyberspace"...this catches the flavour of the milieu in which we find ourselves. This recent article, on telecommunications and public policy issues, is also a symptom of how "public' the issues of the global net are becoming. I like the reference to sociology. I am not that comfortable with the reference to industrial strength. We're really only starting the transition to a Knowledge Society, and parts of our perceptions are still mired in superceded metaphors. In the next few minutes I want to influence you to use your last working group discussions to spell out the shape and purpose of a new national organization...an organization that is true to the spirit of the Internet as a sociological experiment...an organization that mirrors the spirit of the Free-Nets it supports. Let me tell a vignette as example of what I mean by that. I began my career in Yukon Territory, a mountainous country, looking a lot like Tibet. One spring, I visited the mining town of Elsa. In its 4 room school there was a principal who'd had a hard winter. His experience of a small single industry town had resulted in culture shock, and he was giving up and going home. As we stood on the front steps of the school, looking at the Ogilvie Mountains, He said, "Look at that magnificent landscape! If you took away those mountains, it would look just like Saskatchewan..." In order to become comfortable he was trying to make something quite frightening resemble the places that he knew. This is my first principle for a new national organization. Don't make it look like Saskatchewan. Don't make it look like the old organizations you already know. FreeNets are grassroots, bottom up, and they piggyback on the Internet. Free-Nets don't separate producers of information and consumers of information. Free-Nets are models for post-industrial institutions. As a prelude to the Knowledge Society, a Free-Net provides a way to experience how it will feel. Make this organization true to its nature. HERE ARE SOME SPECIFIC TASKS SUCH AN ORGANIZATION NEEDS TO ADDRESS: AN ACTION PLANNING FORUM FOR COMMUNITY NETS ACTIVISTS Where does community networking go from here? What are the necessary local, national and global links among Community networks? Who is active in the development of a network of community telecomputing networks? LEARNING HOW TO START AND RUN COMMUNITY NETWORKS Ensuring that existing community networks include adequate learning spaces for people interested in starting and running other community computing networks. The response to this conference is evidence of the need for the cookbook on starting and running Free-Nets. ENCOURAGING EXPERIMENTS WITH METHODS Encouraging alternative models and technology platforms for community networks and bulletin boards HARMONIZING INTERESTS WITH PROVINCIAL NETWORKS, CA*NET, CANARIE, AND COMMUNICATIONS CARRIERS Representing the national concerns of community networks in relations with provincial networks, CA*net and CANARIE and the telephone and cable companies REPRESENTING THE PUBLIC INTEREST AS TELECOMMUNICATIONS POLICY EVOLVES Representing the significance of community networks in support of the public interest in access to high-speed networks and changing telecommunications policy A CLEARINGHOUSE FOR RESEARCH AND EVALUATION Acting as a clearinghouse for impact research and evaluation in understanding the role of community networks in social change HERE ARE SOME OBJECTIVES: INCREASE NETWORKS FOR COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT To support network connections that make Canadian communities work better LINK ORGANIZATIONS To support network contact and dialogue among national organizations that provide services, especially the educational networks CREATE NETWORK CULTURE To assist Canadians in learning about the utility of telecomputing services so that those services become a part of Canadian culture EDUCATE FOR INTERACTIVE COMPUTER MEDIATED COMMUNICATION To educate children, not just about computer skills but about access and interaction skills CREATE GLOBAL ECONOMIC OPPORTUNITIES FOR ALL CANADIANS To ensure that Canada doesn't fall behind in attaining universal computer literacy SUPPORT THE RIGHT TO LEARN AND TO KNOW To assist in the creation of a national information infrastructure, with a vibrant and healthy community and public sector that supports all citizens' right to learn and to know as a key to full participation in the Knowledge Society... In my personal opinion - this society will not be a representational democracy. It will be direct democracy. On the Internet, if you decide to speak for someone else, you'll very soon get some highly specific feedback. SHIFT TO AN INFORMATION BASED ECONOMY To encourage dialogue as to what division of private and public information services and computer mediated communications will best serve the national interest and the effectiveness of both sectors. IF I HAD TO SUMMARIZE THESE TASKS AND OBJECTIVES IN A PHRASE, IT WOULD LOOK SOMETHING LIKE THIS.... "TO SUPPORT THE GROWTH OF COMMUNITY TELECOMPUTING NETWORKS IN CANADA BY SHARING THE EXPERIENCE OF BRINGING COMMUNITIES ON-LINE." STRUCTURAL MODELS EACH ONE TEACH ONE. * National Capital FreeNet could decide simply to respond to requests as they occur. But NCF does NOT now have the complete capacity to help another community to come online. We could specify and obtain the resources, tools and methods by which we would do this. In effect, Free- Nets could be designed as self-replicating. Fairly soon other communities should reach a level where they could share the load. Then the method of spread becomes the buddy system, or "EACH ONE TEACH ONE." When somebody calls for a formal national organization, all community networks resist the pressure to structure something that is representative. But the increased resources required to design a community network for an EACH ONE TEACH ONE mode might also increase competition among communities for start-up funds. CENTRAL NATIONAL ORGANIZATION * We could support the establishment of an autonomous CENTRAL NATIONAL ORGANIZATION on the model of the US National Public Telecomputing Network, including defining the resources, tools and methods by which it would do this. This would be an association of participating organizations. New FreeNets would "join" the national organization as a condition of obtaining start-up help. COUNCIL OF REGIONS * We could aim for something BASED ON PROVINCES (or regions), since the national telecommunications networks are set up that way. Also, when the number of FreeNets grows and there is increased competition for national grant funds, local community support is more likely to be obtained within the province. Many Canadian national organizations are now utilizing electronic networks, and adopting this structure without examining its assumptions. However, this hierarchy of federal, provincial and local levels is more the product of the Industrial Society's idea of a governing structure. I suspect it is not a comfortable structure for a Knowledge Society. A COMMUNITY OF NETWORKED COMMUNITIES * We could support a decentralized and informal association of member organizations, a network of networks (a community of networked communities?). This would have an organizational structure characterized by equality of partners, informal horizontal linkages, and oriented to particular tasks. This is the INTERNET MODEL, where we use FreeNets to re-define the Internet as a community resource. The Internet is not an "organization." It has no centre and thus no membership hierarchies, and its regional organizations are loose and varied. Nobody owns it. This model is my personal preference. THE NAMING OF THE NAME One day when I was on my Mac, revising my CV for a client, My son saw that I'd given the file the title "BLURB." He asked, "Why that file title?" "The client asked for a blurb on me to accompany the proposal." He said, "Be careful there, Dad. A thing becomes what you name it. Do you want to be known as a blurb?" A NET BY ANY OTHER NAME WOULD MAIL AS SWEET NACN NATIONAL ASSOCIATION for COMMUNITY NETWORKING CPTN CANADIAN PUBLIC TELECOMPUTING NETWORK CCCP CANADIAN COUNCIL for COMMUNET PRACTICES CACNA CANADIAN ALLIANCE for COMMUNITY NETWORK ACCESS CYBERBIA CCCP - this one is favoured by certain academics who will remain nameless. The acronym happens to have been freed up by the dissolution of the USSR and it conveys an "of the people" tone. On the other hand, there are certain fiscally conservative government economists who already gag on the word "FREE" in Free-Net. They just do not see themselves carrying this name upwards to the politicians. My favourite is CYBERBIA. It captures that flavour of domesticating cyberspace from the quote I started with. When my wife heard this one she said, "I like that, it would make great T-shirts." IF WE CAN DESIGN SOMETHING THAT IS TRUE TO THE GRASSROOTS NATURE OF FREENETS.... ...SOMETHING THAT CAN ADDRESS SPECIFIC TASKS AND OBJECTIVES, WHETHER SIMILAR OR DIFFERENT TO THE ONES I'VE SUGGESTED.... THE QUESTION OF WHERE TO GO FROM HERE WILL HAVE A SOLID ANSWER. (These are notes for a presentation in a panel on INTRODUCING COHERENCE INTO THE COMMUNITY NETWORK MOVEMENT, delivered at Community Networking: the International Free-Net Conference, August 17-19, 1993, Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada. Permission to copy with citation is granted.)