Gadgetory

this was local 627 this was the black musicians union from 1917 to 1970 the thing about this place is that is actually considered to be the place where jam session got its name and were credited for the swing Ihram jazz the creation of the swing of jazz in America it's the oldest jazz house in the world it's where Charlie Parker started and it's a group that we've been working with for a long time trying to realize increased connectivity better connectivity for their neighborhood which is really the epicenter of historic black Kansas City Isaac told me about this project that he was working on with the be the black economic union and the mutual musicians foundation about this community owned Network sending a wireless signal from downtown over to here and then actually distributing that signal to the community the free network foundation was incorporated in May of 2011 we don't build and that works for people we we teach people how to build networks outside of going and asking a for-profit company to to come serve them and do it for them the free Network Foundation is seeking to build a more secure and private Internet infrastructure using mesh networking the network is the material network that that everybody cooperates to build and it's held as a Commons and within that network you can go wherever you like one of those places you might like to go is to a gateway to the Internet you know one of the misnomers is free as in no cost but really free and the free network foundation is about freedom so it's about access it's about agreeable Terms of Service those type of things finally the neutral musicians foundation recently has decided you know we're just gonna do this they have put in like fifteen hundred bucks to build a tower to bring in connectivity into their neighborhood and start to build the Internet within the community is perceived to be something well since we can't afford it we won't worry about it at home it's not available where it should be it is such a deep cut in the pocket of a single person a single headed household in an urban community that it is considered to be a luxury when everybody else sees it as a necessity finally this week after months of secrecy google has finally announced that it's big Google Fiber project will be launching in Kansas City good morning Kansas City Google Fiber starts with internet speeds up to a gigabit a second point here are three packages hopefully you're excited about at least one of them we're gonna deploy our network wherever there's enough interest and we're gonna build sooner in areas where there's most interest you know exactly where you stand and how many more households you need to go rally when you participate in the rally not only are you bringing fiber to your home you're bringing fiber to Kansas Citians that you care about so let's do this for Kansas City for Kansas City for Kansas City let's do this for kansas city when they came into the community there was a lot of excitement yay we're gonna but then when the criteria came down we know that this wasn't us we knew that whoever said on the table and said we're gonna put the little rabbit in front of your face and everything and everybody's gonna love it in the billboards gonna be all I know they did after we got the message we got the message this is not for you everybody I've ever met from Google has been of pure intention and pure heart and wants to do right and thinks they're doing right and in some ways is doing right the problem with with Google is that they are a monolith right they're gigantic I can relate to Google's lack of understanding of the issues that are faced with in our community here in Kansas City you know it's almost like two state line you know there's there's a state line between KCK and KC MO and then there's this economic line represented by Troost five blocks that way they're talking about a thousand up a thousand down in this community we're talking about just getting people online let's examine why we're prioritizing ultra ultra ultra fast access to servers that can't even respond at the speed that that are connected to them over getting the 25 percent of our city that has no access whatsoever online why is that our priority I don't think we knew the magnitude of you know how much we were gonna have to be out there in people's neighborhoods talking to them about it in order to get them to sign up there's not an early adapters all the time it's people who sometimes don't even understand the value of the web the technology needs to be presented in a cultural fashion and it needs to be understood that this is something that is going to perpetuate the community the thoughts and virtual opportunities for the community because that's how we still link would you rather rent your home and then the landlord has to do the maintenance the landlord has to pay the taxes the landlord has to do that but you don't own it you don't have any equity would you rather own your own home and and that's the basic decision is are we gonna do for ourselves or are we gonna let somebody else do and pay them for it for a community network to survive it needs to be sustainable so by the time we've built this first network they'll have the assets to do it again to grow this network further east further north further south and and crucially have the the job skills to support it and then potentially be paid to do it for other communities let's say the biggest message is empowering the community to support itself right before I moved back to Kansas City I went to speak to a class of graduate students at NYU's ITP program and describe the architecture they were fairly technical they caught on very quickly and then they asked a question that a lot of technician to ask okay well how are you gonna interconnect the cities right you have this architecture for cities but how you gonna connect them who said space balloons we're gonna launch balloons into the stratosphere and they're gonna have a microwave equipment on them we've investigated it we we know the law we know what we need to do it's just a matter of time and more or less we were last out of the room and then google announces it and Gizmodo goes nuts you know to give everyone the Internet but then it is to give some people I worry that people in general you know they don't want to imagine alternative possibilities alternative worlds they want to let the monoliths of this world do their imagining for them and that for me is very sad and very very challenging when I think about it so try not to think about it it feels like an experiment you know they're coming to town they're offering these services they're there they're understanding they need to educate the community as to what they're offering as well ultimately they're finding a very different culture here then maybe what they're supposed to out what you you