[-empyre-] Re: "hooded children of the revolution"

[Ryan Griffis <ryan.griffis@gmail.com>]

Today is the last (official) day of a low power FM barnraising project 
at the local Indy Media Center in the town i'm currently located 
(Champaign-Urbana, or Chambana) being directed by the Prometheus Radio 
Project. There's more to it, of course, than the actual construction of 
a radio tower and production room. There have been workshops on the 
tech, production and organizational aspects of a community radio 
project as well as a general gathering of neo-hippies, anarcho-punk 
kids, media reform activists, community media activists, wireless 
nerds, and other gross generalizations of "types" one might find at 
most indy media centers across the world.
i marginally participated: went to a few workshops, mulled around, 
tried to meet a few people, looked around at the amazing facility (the 
local US Post Office rents space from the IMC here. they have an art 
space with exhibition and studio facilities, a community computer lab, 
audio video production labs, a books for prisoners library and more).
it's a pretty amazing thing actually.
The workshops i attended were about the potential for community and 
localized interests of wireless networks (mostly mesh-based).
There certainly is a lot of strong belief in the ability of these 
particular technologies to really reform the way communities are able 
to communicate and collaborate in ways that move away from a 
commodity-dependent system (to the extent that you still need at least 
a radio shack and a best buy to get the basic gear, not to mention the 
backbone infrastructure of a major telcom). there were some people with 
pretty strong opinions that mesh networks (that operate via nodes that 
connect from house to house, basically decentralizing communication 
among themselves - as opposed to a hub and spoke system) are inherently 
more democratic.
mostly, i share this optimism and desire to make something of this 
technology beyond a way to play games and buy more stuff.
but it's interesting to think about this in relation to the larger 
history that Cara brings up (language and commerce).
we're looking to high tech to return us to a more localized form of 
commerce, basically.
and the interesting thing to me (and where this dovetails oddly into 
the peak oil comments made earlier), is that this may end up becoming 
salient, not because of politics, but because of necessity. in which 
case, the political reality (inequalities) of the body aren't any more 
likely to be up for discussion. it could actually close down any 
discussion pretty quickly.
but perhaps that's why it's important that the people driving the 
localization of networks at this point are working from a "political" 
subject position as much as anything.
i realize that this may be getting away from the commodification topic 
a bit, but maybe it's not so far off. how do notions of a "gift 
economy" follow or deviate from the rules of classical commerce? and 
does the form necessitate politics? is a mesh network (which is also 
the military's design for the internet btw) de facto more democratic 
and less oppressive?
of course, i think we can extrapolate from the networking narrative i'm 
using here to get at something more closely related to our discussions.
best,
ryan