At the Freedom To Connect Conference, several speakers gave short talks on elements of the internet in which they were expert.

by Alex Goldman ISP-Planet Managing Editor [May 16, 2005]

There was a large variety of voices at the Freedom To Connect Conference. Had he wished to do so, Isenberg could have filled a third day with longer talks, but in the interest of convenience and keeping the cost of attendance low, several famous people were able to present only short speeches. Speakers included:

• Episcopalian Seminarian AKM Adam
• Scott Heiferman of Meetup.com
• Brian Condon, internet access activist in the UK
• Farooq Hussain of Network Conceptions
• Rahul Tongia, researcher at Carnegie Mellon

Episcopalian Seminarian AKM Adam

AKM Adam (a.k.a AKMA) noted that the internet is important because people use it, an argument that some atheists and agnostics use to argue in favor of the importance of religion.

"The Freedom to Connect engages three main points relative to religion: 1) government must not be part of religion, 2) there must be a non coercive practice of religion, and 3) the internet is part of that human flourishing for which so many of us view religion as a precondition."

We talked with AKMA about the travails of the Episcopal Church in the U.S. and he said, if we understood correctly, that he feels both sides should be able to talk to each other and that his opinion angers friends on both sides of the debate.

He has argued indirectly (see, for example, this .pdf on hermeneutics) that religious scholarship should celebrate diversity instead of trying to crush it, writing that biblical scholars should be able "to envision the practice of biblical interpretation less as a contest of experts and more as the shared effort of Christian communities, and at the same time to provide clearer, more specific, and more modest criteria for correctness and legitimacy in interpretation."

It's clear the internet is great for connecting people in a global shared effort, whether it's writing code or discussing the meaning of sacred text.

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Scott Heiferman of Meetup.com

Heiferman said that the original goal of Meetup.com was not political, "it was to provide geek fans of things like Lord of the Rings the tool they needed."

He said that in the past century citizen groups such as the Boy Scouts and the American Cancer Society grew in a form that imitated the corporation. Today, groups are being built by the technology of the internet.

For example, a group of tech writers met in Bangalore and started talking. They realized they were upset that they were not being paid as much as the programmers. Now the Bangalore Technical Writers Meeting Group (TWI Initiative) has 188 members and is a forum for advice, listings, and community (including dinner meetings).

The internet is for the people who constitute it. "The network is not about propaganda. As a result, people may begin to read more."

But that's not all they'll do. "Now we have the power to buy and sell anything, to publish (that's huge), and to find others (for a date, a job, a common interest)."

One person pointed out that David Weinberger had anticipated this line of argument in his book, Small Pieces Loosely Joined, but the perversely humble Weinberger spoke up immediately, saying, "I deny everything."

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Brian Condon, internet access activist in the UK

Once again, Condon traveled across the Atlantic to speak at Isenberg's conference. Back home, Condon works on the Access to Broadband Campaign (ABC). He is motivated by action more than words, and chose to showcase a single instance of innovation, by pre-teen children.

They wanted to show a rabbit over a video conference to friends some distance away. They used Skype for voice, IM clients, "sending buzzes and smilies", and neopets. Oh, and they used a video app too, but the sound was unreliable.

"We didn't tell them to do this," Condon said. "We just set up the link and they went for it."

And that's exactly the sort of initiative that the freedom to connect allows.

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Farooq Hussain of Network Conceptions

Hussain advises governments and backbones on strategy. He briefly repeated his assertion that the business model of the core is doomed (a problem Gordon Cook wrote about, see his website or the article he contributed to ISP-Planet, Journey to the Center of the Internet).

He said that as the internet becomes more global, the U.S. infrastructure is diminishing in importance relative to the infrastructure outside the U.S.

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Rahul Tongia, researcher at Carnegie Mellon

Tongia is as bright in person as his picture on the website. But it will take many motivated, intelligent people like him to solve the problem he has dedicated his life to: bridging the digital divide between rich nations and poor nations.

Earlier, Tongia had raised a question to which there was no answer except assent, "if we accept the premise that asymmetric access to information is the source of power in the modern world, what about the developing world? Isn't it at a disadvantage?"

He said that different solutions make sense in different markets, and that market forces pay for connectivity only in about eight nations.

In the third world, for example, where labor is cheap but equipment is expensive, fiber to the district with wireless for the local loop is the cheapest option.

For further reading, he pointed to a Carnegie Mellon research paper, "Sustainable ICT for Emerging Economies Mythology and Reality of the Digital Divide Problem" [.doc] ("ICT" means "information and communication technologies"). The paper includes a plan to wire Africa with 100,000 km of fiber reaching 400 population centers.

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