[-empyre-] march discussion - the prototype perspective

[Rob van Kranenburg]

Could you give some examples of possible "user arguments" with (or
against) infrastructure, protocol, spectrum and grid?

This is a key question. Throughout the world a battle is being fought, in
the EU, in China, within Homeland Security, in the ministeries of the
governments of the nation states that have undressed themselves but still
collect taxes (no more own law, money, instruments - all privatized, no
more ethnic homogeinety) between the people who go for more control and
more 'security/safety' and the people who understand the future is in open
and social innovation. In this later actualization of the political (the
successor to representative democracy) 'we' will own the data as we should
as 'we' generate the data. The Internet of Things should be a public
infrastructure providing free wireless and clear (a few strong frequencies
not cluttering up the spectrum) signals, good rfid tags and open readers
with open access to the hits being generated in open community based
databases linked all over the world. Data are free and open to all. We can
also make data and then put personal prices on that, so we get paid for
providing input (sometimes only made by simply walking and being
surveilled by gait recognition software). This will generate a lot of
business for artisanal coders and small and medium enterprises. They can
for example offer us realtime threat analyses on our mobile phone. This
will alert you to the bike coming from your left as you step out of the
baker, no today is not a good time to change the lightbulb on that creaky
chair!, or better take an aspirin now if you want to be sharp on friday.
You will not be warned of being blown to pieces, as that threat in Europe
is 0.00000000001. The terror threat is a scripted threat by states that
feel so uneasy and so naked that their only option, or so it seems to
them- is to keep this growing amorphous mass of networked individuals
scared and more scared. But if we take statistics to our phones and to the
streets we will realize, this kind of threat is not to us. We die in our
beds from cancer, in the streets from cars and in our homes because we
fall of ladders. It just makes us feel bad, and powerless. So we need
police... etc, an historical organization from the UK from the 1840s. Most
of our history we could do without. Now too, we can.

We all should play an active role. We need to say hello to our neighbours.
We need to get involved. That is where we can start to build community
dashboards that can do collective shopping and taking kids to school on
bikes by neighbours who have time to do that (and by doing that take a lot
of CO2 out of the air from all these short stressfull trips). Yes, the
Internet of Things does not need to be a prison, it can be a fairy tale
too. We need rules and laws for a transition period. That is another
reason for Council; to weigh on EU and national decision makers. In the
network there is only informed collaboration, no need for rules or law. If
you don't work good there, you will simply be cut off. If you feel down
for a while we will support you, for a while. How can I forget that I got
my education and my years of unemployement allowance, but through the
goodwill of all to pay for that? I happily pay my taxes now if I get
direct feedback on what happens with it, and participatory budgets so I
can influence my local environment.

In my dreams I see a EU device that has as a core Melanie Riebacks RFID
Guardian, runs dyne:bolic OS and a bricophone style meshnetworking system
over a public infrastructure. This device will 'be' the new democracy as
every generation hardcodes its social and financial values into the
algorithms that inform the applications that run on it. In this kind of
TomTom if you want to go from A to B, you also have to visit that old
aunt! Impossible you say? Who knows what is running now in the algoritms
of your TomTom? It might send you only past certain petrol stations, how
would you know?