Another stop this morning on the Michael McCarthy Mystery Tour (TM) of San Francisco, this time up above the City on the Twin Peaks radio tower (the South one). Andris and Brian from inveneo were up there with Mike setting up long-range wireless relays that, far as I’ve gathered, are going to be used for multiple purposes – testing wireless protocols for deployments overseas in rural/underserved areas; providing Internet access to a housing project somewhere near Precita Park (by my amateurish eyeball reckoning); and maybe a couple of other reasons I don’t quite get. Anyway, we (that’s a pretty loose use of the first person there) set up two ubiquiti rocket dishes on the tower, connecting both to city fiber in the extremely powerful-feeling command centre at the tower’s base. From what the guys were saying each dish/radio combination cost about $200, so pretty cheap. Each dish narrowcasts to a partner set up on a rooftop down below, so effectively providing access to that city fiber from a pretty substantial distance (I’d say 3-5 kilometers, though I might be wrong about that). The speeds can be pretty high, 100MBit/s or so if I’m remembering right.
Anyway, cool things about this included:
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getting to climb up into the radio tower on Twin Peaks! Who gets to do that? How much cooler does it get, really?
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brief suspension of critical faculties while fantasizing about the life of the techno-hero, climbing com towers in rural Africa, brining Internet to the masses;
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seeing how straightforward all this work is – not trivial for someone like me to do, but still not really hard. I could totally learn to do this stuff. And you get to climb towers and everything.
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watching this constellation of actors – municipal employees, NGO Techs, also the Internet Archive folks (Ralf? Rolf? Ralph? Ein Deutsche, anyway) work together to make a pretty cool project happen, all very quickly. With Mike at the centre of it. It all seemed very practical, and doable, but also sort of visionary.
So: inspiring, again.
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Had a really fantastic meeting with the increasingly-inspiring Michael McCarthy this afternoon. Mike has been the Community Broadband Manager for SF for about two years now, but until now I wasn’t entirely sure what he did. Today we went down to a wireless Internet deployment Mike has been working on at Eddy and Scott. There’s a City housing development there, about 300 units, kind of spread out over maybe two blocks, all low-rises maybe 3 stories high if I’m remembering right. If you look closely at the rooftops you can see these little white radios, very small and much harder to spot than the ubiquitous police cameras (more on that in a sec). Then on a telephone pole in the middle there’s another device – pretty much identical-looking, but actually it’s a hub to which the other radios are spokes – that is, those other radios talk to the central one.
Here’s how the system works: the City has a network of optical fiber running beneath the streets. It’s in lots of places, and – this is sort of wild – in particular it’s pretty much everywhere there’s a police camera, because the cameras themselves run on fiber. For a couple of thousand dollars in materials, Mike and a few salaried City employees from the IT Dept can install 18 or so ’spoke’ radios, the hub, and a fancy switch that translates the Ethernet signals into optical signals for the fiber. But the genius part is that the fiber then connects via a data centre to the Internet Archive, where they get all of their bandwidth for free. So these public housing sites have free Internet access – free fat Internet access – for free, forever. There are basically no monthly costs (except when something breaks, which I guess must happen with some regularity), only the fixed capital investment & the labour costs, neither of which is very high.
However, this is all possible only as a result of a few factors:
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A City government willing to invest in infrastructure. SF has the very cool and progressive position that (1) its fiber is a kind of public resource that (2) can play an important part in realizing the dream of an Internet which offers all of us the possibility to create as well as consume media, because it can provide symmetrical upload and download speeds.
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A couple of visionary City employees (read: Michael) who, even in the absence of funding, are willing to find ways to make things happen. Up to now Michael tells me he’s had literally no budget at all. I’m reminded strongly of the St. Clare’s way: if there’s no money, and no one willing to help, just do it yourself and find the help later.
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A network of people willing to give their time and expertise to make everything work right – for instance, Michael relies on networking experts who are willing to just drop by and fix stuff for him when he runs into issues (especially optimization) that are over his head.
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Community and non-profit partners who trust Michael and are willing to invest time and resources in his projects; and of course the most obvious partner here is the Internet Archive, who provide the massive fat bandwidth pipe that Michael relies on.
What would it take to replicate this setup in Toronto? It wouldn’t be easy, but I bet we could do it. We’d need a couple of really driven people, some community partners, and a receptive municipal government. And someone to take the place of the Internet Archive (that’d be tough).
Who’s in?
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Finally a wonderful gorgeous day in SF today. Paddle on the Bay in the morning with Hilary — thank you Hilary! — there is I swear no place lovelier than San Francisco Bay in the springtime, hills all lush and green, Sausalito harbour nestled cozily in their crevices, Angel Island and Alcatraz beckoning enticingly from their perches in the depths. Wind strong from the NNW, choppy little waves all around. Perfect. Then lunch in Oakland w/ Dave and Ged, their new house a meticulously executed Satanic Goth complete w/ basement bike rack and gear room (drool) set in a bombed-out neighborhood that is nonetheless 5 min bike ride from scrumptious New Soul Food resto w/ veggie options. And last a really excellent hour or so w/ Mike @ his uebercool free wireless deployment by Scott & Eddy, lots of ideas there, more about that when I get a chance. Tomorrow meeting him @ the Twin Peaks tower to check out a perhaps even cooler wireless project.
more soon.
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My friend Michael just pointed out to me that Mozilla is launching their new Drumbeat project in Toronto just under two weeks from now. I had completely missed Drumbeat, which seems like a potentially crucial initiative aimed squarely at the multifarious forces that threaten the future of a Free Internet. The promotional materials are still a little vague, but promising, and of course having Mozilla’s weight behind any project as a big deal. Can anyone say more about Drumbeat, and is anyone from Social Tech TO planning on heading over?
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Followed Andrea down to the rink this morning at 6:45; a crescent moon was visible through the mist in the South, and its light shone down on an inch of fresh snow. When we stepped onto the ice our skates made fresh, dark lines in the new powder, and we skated in the cold wind for 20 minutes or so. Sometimes I really do love living in Toronto.
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So, went to see Avatar last night with Wayne and adio; three word summary:
Miyazaki on steroids.
So much of the film, visually and thematically, derives from Miyazaki’s work — the flying machines, the floating mountains, the nature goddess, etc. etc. — Castles in the Sky, Princess mononoke, Nausicaa — all of them are present. But this is Miyazaki high on testosterone — instead of actually stopping a war, these peaceful warriors bring it the fuck on; and they do so in the best nativist tradition, a white man’s final fantasy of redemption by bloodshed and assimilation. so there is everything wrong with the film that you might imagine there to be — how is it possible, in 2009, to make a film in which the alien natives are a cross between the Maasai and the Sioux? — but at the same time it is an incredible spectacle. Best fantasy film of all time? (because honestly, this isn’t sci-fi — there’re dragonriders, ferchrissakes!) Lord of the Rings is the only other contender, I guess.
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so, I admit it, I had fun on christmas. and also we had an awesome gingerbread house party. so fine, go ahead and gloat, amanda…
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Does anyone actually enjoy Christmas? Not, do you want to enjoy Christmas, or do you feel obligated to enjoy Christmas, or do you wistfully believe that there was a time when you enjoyed Christmas; but does anyone actually just love the season in a happy-go-lucky kind of way that makes your heart go pitter-patter & fill with good will toward men? Because (a) I don’t feel like I know anyone for whom that’s the case, and (b) this year, quite honestly, I hate Christmas with a violent passion and would rather spend the whole season barefoot in the snow breaking rocks. Seriously — what the fuck is the point of an obligatory festival of consumption that also entails a revisitation of every familial trauma, past and present?
Next year I’m going to find a way to just induce a coma till after new year’s.
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Hedia took this picture yesterday on our dawn paddle around Toronto
Island:
The weather was glorious — warmer than most days in July, it felt! — and there was a kind of splendrous beauty to the colours of the sunlight across the island and against the Toronto skyline. I often complain about how unbeautiful Toronto is but it was gorgeous from the water! I wish I could get out at dawn more often; it’s the loneliest, calmest, and most spectacular time of day on the Lake. Glad to be getting good enough in the small boats that we’re not likely to huli
in the relative safety of Lake Ontario.
Oh, and that’s me in the corner of the photo.
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Finally got my invite on Saturday, as did a a whole slew of people, I
guess. But now I have all these invites, and hardly anyone to play
with on Wave itself; so if you don’t have access yet, and are
interested, drop me a line and I’ll "nominate" you, as the terminology
seems to be.
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