When I’m craving a solid design read, BLDG Blog is my fix. It explores the built world and the human relationship to nature and sculptures. Since I began subscribing, I have wanted to attend a Studio-X event, where author Geoff Manaugh is the director.
Studio-X had a delicious tease for the July Venue, and I respondez-ed immediately: “Although the internet travels in pulses of light and its content increasingly exists in the ‘cloud,’ [journalist Andrew] Blum has traced its very real physical footprint.” Blum published a book that explores the synaptic growth of the internet and ways to experience this virtual good through your senses. What does it smell like (A: burnt toast and ozone)? What does it look like? Where is it? His point: People need to know where their internet comes from. And he shared his prediction for the future, where we move away from major internet service providers (ISPs) like Comcast, TimeWarner, etc. and buy from boutique ISPs, mirroring the “buy local” trend with food. It surprised him, Blum said, that in a borough that’s home to an artisanal pencil sharpener, there isn’t a single boutique ISP in Brooklyn!
This is a dramatic change to how we think about the internet. Opposite to this, Blum highlighted Open Technology Institute‘s project, Commotion. I listened with interest as I know the folks who work on it. It’s a project to prop up intranet communication quickly among those on the ground in crisis situations (popularly known and mislabeled as “Internet in a Suitcase”). During the Q&A session, Blum invoked Internet in a Suitcase, which most people understand to be a suitcase parachuted into a location, and wi-fi will suddenly spring forth. Akin to wireless mesh networks, it would still rely on at least one person having service by a major ISP. It doesn’t get at the root of the problem, Blum said, which is systemic.
I’ve been chewing on this since the event. A couple of years ago, I helped OTI facilitate a session on pirate boxes and crowdsourcing. I’ve attended their breakouts on onion routing, encrypted chats and other safe browsing topics, especially relevant to activists. As a former Peace Corps volunteer, I am biased toward OTI’s philosophy of appropriate technology; while we chip away at systemic change, let’s build resources that immediately empower people with the tools they carry. But either way, OTI and Blum share a crucial starting point: Whether it’s sprouting a new economy or protecting activists and journalists, we must be digitally literate before we can really wield the internet. This goes beyond access to a computer or how to use a browser.
Two years ago at the Allied Media Conference, New America Foundation’s Ben Lennett remarked that the name “Net Neutrality” couldn’t be less sexy for such a zero-sum issue. The same could be said about teaching digital literacy. Blum believes that digital literacy comes easier when people are invited to experience it physically, not just as GUIs or 1s and 0s. We know the internet is a force for popular change, and we know people absorb knowledge in countless ways. Civics out there: We’re tapped into lively communities and all manners of infectious communication. So what can we make or do to turn digital literacy into something sexy?