another press thing
This is the message I was trying to put forward in this interview. The journalist dug it.
“Community-led, not-for-profit providers are sparking a debate over whether this new form of internet should be a public utility or a commodity. ”
We tried to get Ben Crulli in this article because he is our only volunteer at McGill, but for length reasons his interview got cut. Bummer.
also, apparently, there’s an article on ISF in the Metro journal today. check it out if you take the subway.
I don’t do most of the press these days. And I haven’t for over a year. But every once in a while someone ask to talk to one of the founders, or Richard Lussier (current press contact) sometimes sends some of the anglophone media requests to me.
March 28th, 2007 at 11:53 pm
yeah its funny, i’ve been thinking more and more about the role of utilities etc as not good-in-themselves, but enabling other things. so if you look at free wifi, & ISF, you get the ability for many young entreprenneurial people to work in places like Laika in, as patrick says, SWATs - Solos Working Alone Together. This makes for a space of innovation and interaction, which is increasingly imporatnt if a city wants to be on the vanguard of digital stuff. this is partly good for all sorts of social reasons, but it’s *also* good (if you zoom up high enough) from a business/economy stand-point. ideally a city/province/country should want as many entreprenneurial people as possible, because entreprenneurs are those who create *new* weath, *new* jobs, *new* tax bases.
so giving us all free wifi - either through groups like ISF, or even better, a collab between ISF & the city - makes for a more healthy & innovative business environment.
which is what everyone, supposedly, wants.
still the *other* side of the coin is people like bell & videotron, whose interest is just rent-extraction - they want to get max $ for wifi service. and they are probably not at all interested in a wider programme of innovation, and see ISF etc as getting int he way of their business model (cf. the new anti-muni-wifi laws in Pennsylvania etc).