Category: Dreams

LUS Franchise Goes to Council Vote

LUS’ cable franchise agreement is on the agenda to be approved this evening during the 4:30 LPUA meeting before the regular council meeting.

Now this little story doesn’t rate so much as a mention in local media since various tempest in a teapot issues are distracting us from this more fundamentally important issue. (The Redflex and the Settlers Trace Boulevard controversies will have been forgotten when the money rolling into consolidated government from this contract are a central portion of every year’s budget.) I’ve earlier gone on at some length about why this is a big deal, and how state and federal shenanigens play into the unhappy need to write this franchise contract in a way that helps Cox and AT&T avoid full price competition. You can get the sad story in my November 3rd post.

If you poke around a bit and use Google you can actually find the text of the agreement on the council website. (The links in the agenda document do not work…a common problem, I have found. Someone needs to show the folks uploading them how to redirect the links.)

It makes for interesting reading. Well, ok, maybe not really interesting reading. But it makes interesting points. For instance here’s my top ten (in no particular order):

1) No Censorship. LCG denies itself the right to censor any content that flows over the LUS system:

8.12 Selection of Programming.
During the term of this Franchise, and consistent with 47 U.S.C. § 533(e)(2)[Link], LCG shall neither prohibit LUS Communications from providing nor require LUS Communications to provide any program or otherwise censor communications over the Cable and Telecommunications System; except that, nothing in this section shall be read to authorize LUS Communications to engage in communications which are prohibited by law.

This writes into the local ordinance a reassuring portion of the Federal Code that forbids a local franchising authority from exercising any editorial control over programming. Good. This firmly eliminates any stupid attempt to tamper with programming that has a paying audience in order to satisfy the self-righteousness of those who would like to control the tastes of others. With the passage of this ordinance it would be against Federal law, local ordinance, and LUS’ franchise contract with the city-parish to mess with programming. Endless pointless and silly debates in our city-parish council are thereby avoided. Kudos to the drafters of this ordinance.

2) Yearly Surveys. Consolidated government reserves the right to do yearly surveys of LUS’ telecommunications.

B. LCG at its sole option and expense may undertake an annual survey of community views of cable operations in the City, including but not limited to technical quality, response to community needs, and customer service. LCG shall provide thirty (30) days advance written notice to LUS Communications of such a survey and shall, upon thirty (30) days written request, report the results of the survey to LUS Communications.

That’s a good thing as well—and has ramifications well beyond asking the obvious question “Is LUS doing a good job.” Lafayette is going to be way ahead of the curve with its fiber-optic network and some elements of the project will be unique, like the 100 meg intranet. We really should be tracking the sorts of changes that grow up in our community. It would be invaluable to other communities, essential to our finding grant funding for all sorts of nifty experiments, and crucial in justifying the expense when the project is inevitably challenged down the road. (If you think Cox and AT&T will quit badmouthing the project and trying to convince people it is worthless after it starts cutting into their market share you really ought to rethink.) We need a series of good broadband surveys. This has been suggested before…André Comeaux had made a project of this. The idea should be incorporated into a yearly survey. Done right we could get national groups that would like to get their hands on such unique data to help us pay for it. But with or without help we should get on the stick about this. A baseline survey done before LUS offers its first services is absolutely essential to being able to prove that the project has helped Lafayette.

3) In the Public Interest

1.9 Public Interest Promoted.
The provisions of this Franchise shall be liberally construed in favor of the promotion of the public interest.

Perfect. ‘Nuff said.

4) Updating the Agreement

SECTION 6. AMENDMENTS TO FRANCHISE
LCG may amend this Franchise upon the application of LUS Communications to provide services in addition to those authorized by Section 8, subject to appropriate additional conditions to protect the public interest. LCG may also amend the Franchise upon the application of LUS Communications when necessary to enable LUS Communications to take advantage of technological advancements in Cable Services and/or Telecommunications Services that, in the opinion of LCG, will afford LUS Communications an opportunity to serve its customers more efficiently, effectively, and economically. Such amendments shall be subject to such conditions as LCG determines are appropriate to protect the public interest.

It’s nice that someone is being proactive about anticipating technological changes that will drive new services. A clause like this will make it easier to work such changes into the services lineup.

5) Privacy

7.2 Privacy.
B. LUS Communications shall not use the two-way communications capability of the Cable and Telecommunications System for unauthorized or illegal subscriber surveillance of any kind. For purposes of this subsection, tenants who occupy premises where LUS Communications provides Cable Service and/or Telecommunications Service shall be deemed to be subscribers, regardless of who actually pays for the service.

That’s probably should be obvious. But given the loosey-goosey way that phone providers, including our dear AT&T have played loose with the wiretapping laws during this administration this clause clearly directs LUS to make sure that surveillance is legal. That is, to wait for a court to order it. Good.

6) Universal Service

1. Within Franchise Area. For requests from persons within 300 feet of an existing distribution line, LUS Communications shall provide service within seven (7) business days for no charge other than the then-prevailing normal installation charge, unless LUS Communications demonstrates to LCG’s satisfaction that extraordinary circumstances justify a waiver of this requirement or the customer requests that service commence at a later time.

The clauses for those outside the 300 feet area will apply to very few if any folks –since the current franchise area is the well-built-up city of Lafayette. But even there LUS is obligated to offer service at a reasonable cost. Universal service is assured.

7) Public Service

E. Requested School and Public Building Service Drops. LUS Communications shall provide upon request and without charge one cable television service outlet activated for Basic Cable Service to each police station, fire station, School, public library and LCG office building…

That’s only basic, and there are some conditions on service more than 300 feet from a line, but its still pretty sweet. A public utility should provide public services.

8) PEG Channels (aka AOC)

8.9 Public Educational and Governmental Use.
A. PEG Access Channel Capacity. Within six (6) months of the date service begins under this Franchise, LUS CommunicatioLCG two (2) downstream channels solely for PEG access use.

Another 3 channels can be earned by the community if they an fill up the first two.

9) AOC support

G. Equipment and Facilities. Each year during the term of this Franchise, LUS Communications shall provide an annual grant for the PEG access equipment and facilities to LCG or, as directed by LCG, to the Access Corporation(s) designated by LCG, in an amount equal to $50,000. Beginning on the Effective Date, the payment shall be made monthly in an amount of $4,167. LUS Communications shall be permitted to recover all such payments in its monthly Basic Cable Service charges or as otherwise permitted by LCG.

This is support for AOC. I’d be happier if it went directly to the designee rather than passing through the fingers of the council but it cements support for the valuable local institution even in the face of looming federal rules that would put its existance in danger.

10) 21st Century Public Access

L. On-Demand PEG Access Programming. In addition to therequirements of this Section 8.9, LUS Communications may make PEG Access programming available to Subscribers on-demand, or may permit any designated Access Corporation(s) to make programming available on-demand. On-Demand PEG Access programming shall not be required to be carried on a Basic Cable Service tier.

This hints at the beginings of a 21st century vision for what AOC could become. Even niftier would be access to net bandwidth and support for high bandwidth, on-network storage. Maybe we can negotiate for that at a later date.


Parting Thoughts:
All in all not a bad document. Not the document of my dreams however. That one would have had glorious clauses pushing a real digital divide program, extended public obligations, funding for a commons portal and a 21st century version of AOC. Sigh. Still, I have to say not a bad document. Just not worthy of the full vision I think most of Lafayette shares.

Coming Soon: aL, La and the Magical Municipal Tour

As we head to the end of this year, the pace of progress on the LUS fiber project is increasing. The electronics vendor has been selected; property for the head-end has been purchased; a building for that is not far off.

Some of the specifics of the network offerings have become public, the most notable of which is the fact that every LUS fiber customer will have 100 megabits per second of in-system connectivity. What that means is that Lafayette will have an intranet that will rival any corporate or academic campus in the world.

This will create the opportunity fundamentally change life in Lafayette. With that much in-system bandwidth available, it will be possible for a new, asynchronous Lafayette to emerge — asynchronous Lafayette, Louisiana (aL, La).

Lafayette and The Network

The power of networks to drive change is well documented. There is Metcalfe’s Law. There is the fabulous, thought-provoking 2002 book by Albert-Laszlo Barabasi, Linked: The New Science of Networks, which explores the power of networks and what new, more powerful networks mean for science, business and everyday life. I’m sure you can find other examples and references.

Because of the design of the LUS network and the commitment to create an intranet for customers of that network, Lafayette is going to be a community where the impact of this meeting of network power and the various aspects of network connected life will be explored first. We will be pioneers on the great adventure that will not come to other communities in our country and the world for years — if not decades — to come.

All that bandwidth will mean that access to aspects of life Lafayette will no longer be tied to time. That is, large swaths of public life in Lafayette will migrate to a point where access to events will no longer depend on your ability to physically show up. Any public event in Lafayette will have the potential to be preserved for posterity.

The path to opportunity in Lafayette will run along the ability of government, companies, institutions, associations, clubs and individuals to push the transition from ‘Lafayette in the now’ to ‘asynchronous Lafayette.’

The LUS fiber system and the intranet capability it will provide its customers will make it difficult to leave Lafayette. Life will be different from other places here. We will miss the amenities that the fat connection that the LUS network will afford us. But, if we work this right, we will not have to miss Lafayette in the sense that more of our civic and social life can and will be made available to us via the network in ways that will not require our physical presence at the event in order to observe it or, in some cases, participate in it.

We won’t stop attending these events, but the LUS network will enable citizens here to experience more of Lafayette life because those events will be available to us at times that our hectic lives — family, work, and play — don’t currently allow. For instance, I like good music, but I can’t always find the time to say, go to a Louisiana Crossroads performance. Or, maybe I have to be out of town on the night that there’s a PASA show that I’d otherwise like to catch.

In asynchronous Lafayette, those events could be captured, stored and be made accessible to folks who can’t attend the live event — or who might want to experience the event from a different perspective.

This is one way that the network will set public life in Lafayette apart from life in other communities.

I think it’s important that we focus on this opportunity in order to ensure that the changes resulting from our new distinctiveness enable Lafayette to capture and leverage those aspects of our community that make us unique; that we use our infrastructure to knock down the barriers between us, not to widen existing gaps.

Here are some ideas of how the LUS network might enable asynchronous Lafayette to emerge.

Government

This new infrastructure has the potential to improve the ability of citizens to participate in governmental processes with the result being that government becomes more responsive to them and their needs. In asynchronous Lafayette, public meetings will be recorded, stored and be able to be accessed by citizens who were not able to attend the meeting. Documents presented, discussed or distributed in the meeting will be available for viewing and downloading via the webcast (live and stored) of the session.

Those web-accessed meetings could also have links to allow citizen input on the process. It will mean a number of structural changes will need to take place. First, local government and agencies will need to put cameras and microphones in any room used for public meetings so that the sessions can be recorded. Second, they’ll need to invest in the storage capacity to allow these meetings to be tagged and archived for later access. Third, they’ll need to provided wider windows of opportunity for citizens to submit formal comment on proposals, issues and ordinances.

I’m not talking about the kind of Blog of the Banshees that the comment sections of The Daily Advertiser and other papers have become; but a formal channel for citizen comment and involvement that will become part of the permanent public record of the proceedings, even though the citizens might not have been present at the event when it actually occurred. Asynchronous access to government might actually lend itself to richer, more thoughtful citizen involvement by affording interested parties the opportunity to review the materials and sessions away from the heat of the moment.

Lafayette may need to come up with its own version of public meeting laws to ensure that our rich digital infrastructure is used to enhance citizen access to government and its decision-making processes.

Education

In asynchronous Lafayette, students will never miss another day of class. That is, classrooms could be equipped with cameras and microphones which would enable teachers to deliver their course content in a real-time session that could be available to students too ill to attend class that day. The course could be accessed from home either via a video stream or accessed later when the student was feeling better. When I made this case to my daughter a couple of years ago prior to the fiber election, I have to admit that she was not wild about this idea.

The network will also facilitate more collaborative learning, as students, teachers, even researchers will be able to interact in real time with voice, data and video on projects ranging from homework to science projects to specialized research projects.

Entertainment/Culture

We can use this infrastructure to improve and enrich Lafayette’s cultural life and, in the process, bolster and sustain artists and the institutions that support them.

Asynchronous Lafayette will be a boon to businesses built around entertainment and culture. More specifically those places offering ‘live’ music are going to have a real opportunity to emerge as global purveyors of our musical culture. There’s a hint of what is possible by what’s transpired in Austin, Texas. Austin City Limits helped transform that city into a multi-media entertainment center, drawing musicians from around to world to a place that has no obvious other reason to attract them. The show now has its own music festival.

Big whoop.

Imagine asynchronous Lafayette, where we are capturing on video live performances at Grant Street Dancehall, the Blue Moon Saloon, Louisiana Crossroads, Festival International, Festival Acadiens, Downtown Alive, the Heymann Center, and other venues. We could establish our city as THE live music capital of the world by letting the world access all the great live music that we grow and bring here.

Put cameras in the venues, run a feed out of the sound boards and — voila! — shows could be streamed over the web and stored on servers here in Lafayette for later access. The webcast versions could be free or very inexpensive, serving to feed demand for the higher quality recordings of the sessions that could be produced from the archived digital files and sold at a premium.

I happened to catch T. Bone Burnett on The Charlie Rose show on LPB the other night. In that segment (he was on as the producer of the new Robert Plant and Allison Krause album Raising Sand), Burnett said that he believed the future of the music business would revolve around live performance. He added that he wanted to be involved with producing live shows and the recordings that resulted from them.

Asynchronous Lafayette will be ideally positioned to lead this transition by using our wired infrastructure to enable the capture of high-definition, high-quality recordings of all that great music that is some what wasted when it is only captured by the ears that are in the room.

It’ll take some server capacity (hey, Google and Sun both offer ‘Data Centers in a Box‘ that bring huge storage capacity in a modular unit that looks like a shipping container), but opportunities like this are going to abound in the arts in the new, wired, asynchronous Lafayette.

Business

The strictly business crowd (you know, the folks who buy Dell and HP computers) won’t be shut out either. In fact, businesses in Lafayette are going to have a strategic advantage due to the bandwidth that the LUS intranet affords them. For starters, it will be possible for businesses in Lafayette to work in a more distributed way. That is, people here will really be able to telecommute (i.e., work from home) in ways that are just not possible now. Massive bandwidth will make information sharing easier so things like white board sharing over multiple locations will be able to take place seamlessly. This could be a key to our traffic problems since no one seems to want to pay for roads.

WebEx and similar services should be recruited to conduct pilots here because the kind of network capacity we have here is going to be a while in reaching the rest of the country. Imagine the possibilities that engineering firms located here will have to look at problems via a network, fashion solutions and get them to the fabrication floor in a much shorter cycle.

Healthcare and Public Health

Healthcare in Lafayette can be fundamentally different than it is in any other place in the country. Home monitoring of patients will be able to rival that currently available only in ICUs. Any kind of telemetry that can be captured from a patient in a hospital will soon be able to be captured from home via the network. This could reduce hospital stays and with that the cost of care — without adversely affecting the quality of care.

A few months ago, the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals conducted a series of drills across the state to test preparedness for a potential flu pandemic. I happened to attend a meeting in a community where the results of one such drill were discussed. One aspect of the outbreak that the providers did not mention was the impact of an outbreak on the telecommunications system. In the event of an outbreak, there will likely be a good bit of what people near chemical plants know as “evacuation in place.” That is, people will be advised to stay home in order to avoid exposure to the virus that would be causing the flu outbreak.

With the robust telecommunications infrastructure that will be in place in Lafayette, we can diminish the extent of the outbreak by ordering children to stay home from school (with a wired community, teachers could teach from home to students at home). Some companies could have their workers stay home, using the network to conduct their work from there. All of this could have the effect of limiting the extent of the outbreak and, perhaps equally important, limiting the disruption on community life that such an outbreak would otherwise inflict.

Sports

People in Lafayette love sports and they particularly love watching their kids play sports. In asynchronous Lafayette, soccer, baseball, basketball and football games could be recorded, as well as swim meets, track meets, and other events could be recorded and shared. Sports leagues could use the network to produce highlights of games/tournaments, post stats, show standings, schedules and other key information.

Again, what will be needed are cameras, servers and the people to operate them.

Religious, Social & Civic Organizations

Churches, community organizations, civic groups will be able to record their meetings and make the content available to those unable to attend the live event.

Scratching At The Surface

Beginning sometime in late 2008 or so, LUS will begin offering services. At that point, the transformation of Lafayette and the potential it offers will move from the dream state to reality. The possibilities mentioned above are a wholly inadequate and incomplete list that doesn’t really even scratch the surface of the potential that awaits us.

Think about your current life in Lafayette. Think of how big bandwidth, affordable network technology can be used to enable you to to connect (or re-connect) to those aspects of life here that interest or intrigue you, but that your schedule will just not allow you to get to.

Thinking this way is how citizens are going to be able to transform life here. It will be a bottom-up process that will be built on the foundation of the Lafayette intranet afforded to us by the LUS fiber network. Digital technology has unleashed revolutions in video, audio, and communications in general. With the bandwidth available to each of us and the institutions we align ourselves with, we can — and will — define new ways of joining, belonging to and participating in these institutions and, through this process, change Lafayette.

This will be an opportunity unique to Lafayette in North America because we will be the largest, most diverse community with access to the fattest network pipes. We can pioneer new and unique approaches to civic, social, cultural and community life using the network, just as our geography shaped those aspects of our life here in the centuries leading up to this point.

As the network builds out and as we begin to capture the potential that our fiber infrastructure will offer us, asynchronous Lafayette can come to embody the notion that you never really have to miss Lafayette at all — at least, not any public event.

The time to think about how to turn that potential into reality is now, just as the LUS network itself is moving from the engineering tables to the streets.

This great adventure of asynchronous Lafayette is coming sooner than you think right down your street. The time has come to start preparing to take advantage of the opportunities that will abound. You’re only limit will be your imagination.

Step right this way!

$200 PC Available in Lafayette

A Wired blog sez that a $200 Ubuntu Linux PC, sans monitor is now available in Lafayette.

Cool. And it’s especially great for Lafayette.

Why great for Lafayette?

This computer and its software packages come very close to being exactly the computer that the Lafayette Digital Divide Committee recommended in the “Bridging the Digital Divide” document.

That study, which became official policy when it was made an ordinance by the city-parish council, recommended a mix of low cost computers, free open source software, and a local portal/server that leveraged the intranet bandwidth the committee recommended LUS make available to its customers. Let’s take a look at how that has played out:

The key, and hardest, part of that equation was securing the use of full intranet bandwidth—when the committee first recommended Lafayette adopt that policy there was real doubt that it was technically feasible. In short order such doubt was dispelled. Since that time LUS and the city-parish has fully committed to providing at least 100 megs of intranet bandwidth to every user regardless of how much they spend for internet connectivity. Huval and LUS call this “peer to peer bandwidth.” With 100 megs locally available to all users a rich local portal and aggressive use of server-based applications becomes possible. Since much of the computing and handling of large quantities of data can be handled on the network rather than in the users personal computer much less powerful—and hence less expensive—computers can be used.

That brings us back to the subject of todays post: Everex’s TC2502 gPC computer. This ‘puter is available through WalMart for $200 dollars and Wired’s blog carries of list of locations that will stock it that include Lafayette. It is also available over the net from WalMart’s online store. It is sold without a monitor but includes mouse, keyboard and a set of speakers. The desktop computer runs a variant of the free Ubuntu Linux operating system called gOS. Also free is a list of installed open source software including OpenOffice, Firefox web browser, Meebo IM, and Skype, GIMP photo software, the Xing DVD and video player, and Rhythmbox music management software. Even more interesting for local digital divide promoters is that it includes icons linking to Google applications like Mail, Documents, Spreadsheets, Calendar, News, and Maps.

Between LUS’ solid commitment to lower prices for connectivity (which is now more important than computer cost as a barrier to adoption) Google’s online apps, and the emergence of commercially available, low-cost, open source computers like this Everex, the pieces are falling in place for Lafayette to have a digital divide program that will be as unique as the system itself.

Follow Up: The 100 meg Intranet & Innovation

Thursday’s press event announcing the hiring of Alcatel to provide electronics for the Lafayette Fiber To The Home network touched of some thoughts that didn’t fit into yesterday’s media review post… Here are a few on the 100 meg Intranet & Innovation

The Advocate quotes Durel as saying:

Having such a unique capability in Lafayette could help drive innovation, Durel said.

Durel is right; it is hard to adequately imagine what could be done with 100 megs of intranet bandwidth.

A first stab at thinking about it suggests that

  • transferring HD video of soccer games and birthday parties to grandma’s TV screen would be trivial. Given the plummeting cost of hard disk storage there’s no reason that items of general interest couldn’t be stored in an online archive.
  • A Second Life (a simulated world—described) outpost on the LUS intranet could be photo-realistic and stunningly intricate. A version could be drawn on top of the geography of Lafayette. A version for high school students might start in 1821 and student could draw lots to be founder Mouton…and slaves. A ULL design and planning class might want to launch a version that starts with the present real world as the starting state and games out the effects of various smart growth plans.
  • Suppose communication were easier, richer, and cheaper? What could you do that is hard, or expensive now? How ’bout interactive online boutiques? Not today’s virtual warehouses—basically only catalogs, more or less attractively presented, of goods. Instead we could have stores where an actual, knowledgeable person could show off products, talk about the choices intelligently and interactively, helping people find solutions to the problems they have. This needn’t be about high-end goods. The value of local hardware stores lies in the expertise of the floor staff. (Think Guidry’s Hardware.) A lot of today’s buying decisions are made without adequate help–from car stereos, to home networking to which flat screen to buy for which purpose, to finding a tailored suit for a family member’s wedding. Full screen video and virtual displays coupled with competent help that is cognizant of the local context could make a big difference–and pretty cheaply once the network infrastructure is in place.
  • AOC‘s homegrown TV could take on an entirely new cast and develop in amazingly rich directons: imagine news shows where the “anchor” tosses icons of articles, online resources, interviews, additional, detailed video footage, links to older shows, and relevant speeches by public figures onto the screen as they present the 40 second version of the news story. Since the show is an IP data stream (like YouTube’s) it can be paused by users interested in the more detailed story and those additional resources viewed or saved for later use. The technology to do that is available today and is little more complicated than the spinning logos you see between every TV news story to execute. What doesn’t exist is the bandwidth to make them useful and a critical mass of IP-based viewers. Lafayette, as the largest fiber build will have the size and it will have that bandwidth in-system. The potential for innovative use is endless–what is out of reach in other place will be available here.
  • Your idea here: _______________. Or in the comments.

If we sell this right creatives in many fields will flock to Lafayette. There are things right now that can’t be done without both big broadband and a large, varied population. Lafayette will be just about the only place in the US to try those things out. The temptation will be to go for the easy—and easily quantifiable—”big business” targets. Bringing one of those in validates an economic developer’s job. But the real future lies in 400 small business and 500 artists of various strips along with their supporting web design and network support cadres. For that we need articles in Time magazine and articles on slashdot…..I hope someone is pursuing those.

And, while we are suggesting: LUS and LCG need to develop home-grown talent. They need to recognize that they are not only competing in an established market. More importantly, if they are to realize their own dreams of making the network a unifying tool for economic devlopment and hopes of vaulting Lafayette into the the tech forefront they need to understand that they build a new market. There is no existing market built on a 100 megs of bandwidth available to a whole community. We will have to invent it here. What the market or old, established habits and skills do in a stable economy won’t be adequate here. LUS needs to be generous with and supportive of every Linux club, kids’ webmaster group, home networking business, and AOC (especially AOC) that even threatens to build new, socially sustainable expertise. It’s a bootstraping operation and in our situation the only institution with the “pull” to get those feet up off the ground is the network owner.

LUS-Alcatel Deal in the News


Both the Advertiser and the Advocate cover yesterday’s announcement that Alcatel will provide the electronics for Lafayette’s FTTH network. (I attended the press event and wrote up a piece yesterday.)

From the Advertiser:

Alcatel-Lucent was chosen from among six companies to provide the equipment – from the box on your house to the box atop your television set – that will bring Lafayette Utilities System’s fiber technology into area homes.

From the Advocate:

The system that the Paris-based company will install will be able to provide all the bells and whistles just coming onto the market — and be flexible enough to provide new applications in the future, LUS Director Terry Huval said.

“We will have the ability and capacity to do things in Lafayette that most of America won’t have for years,” City-Parish President Joey Durel said.

and

For customers, the system Alcatel-Lucent will provide will be able to provide both the most basic of services — such as traditional phone or cable services — as well as services “previously unimaginable in Lafayette,” according to a LUS news release.

Those services include Internet Protocol Television, or IPTV, which sends television signals in the same general manner Internet signals are sent.

IPTV allows for a number of customizable services for end users, Alcatel-Lucent’s Jennifer McCain said.

Users can create their own “home page,” on their television, customizing lists of their favorite channels, doing some limited Internet surfing, gaming, sharing photos or even, someday, shopping — all over their television, McCain said…

Because the box at a customer’s home that delivers IPTV is like a small computer, when new applications become available the computer can be reprogrammed, McCain said.

The potential of the set top box is all but unlimited–it is, as has been remarked on in these pages before (more), a media-ready computer that has been locked down to serve limited, revenue-generating purposes. The boxes are all much more powerful than they are allowed to be. The more we can unlock their potenial as a computer the better it will be for the people of Lafayette.

Finally, what I think will eventually prove the most “feature” part of the system—and a feature we are proud to have first promoted on Lafayette Pro Fiber: 100 megs of intranet bandwidth. The digital divide committee also made a strong pitch for this concept in their “Bridging the
Digital Divide” document. The appearance of this on the feature among the RFP proposals that Alcatel and others had to respond to is evidence that LUS does listen. Terry Huval is calling this peer-to-peer bandwidth and that points to the crucial feature that it is only available between members of the network.

The system will also be able to provide a special twist on Internet service that LUS has promised — nearly unlimited bandwidth inside the LUS network.

Internet customers, no matter which speed they sign up for to browse the Internet as a whole, will be given a full 100 Mbps when contacting another computer inside the LUS network.

Having such a unique capability in Lafayette could help drive innovation, Durel said.

Durel is right; it is hard to imagine what could be done with that sort of intranet bandwidth. But I’ll try in a subsequent post. 😉

The point here is that the train is leaving the station. Alcatel’s techologies will shape the first iteration of the system and, at first glance, they and LUS’ choices appear to be forward looking and leave a lot of room for growth in whatever direction the larger technological ecology takes. The inclusion of IPTV technology in the video category coupled with large internal bandwidth, and LUS’ long-stated commitment to an open system ecology in the internet part of its offerings insure that Lafayette will have the tools, and more importantly, the open running room in which to create something truly different, ground-breaking, and valuable to the community.

Now all we have to do is our part: get down to work and invent the future. Have fun!

(As I wrote up this review I had to restrain myself from expanding too much on several points. Follow-up posts exploring some of the issues suggested by yesterday’s press event and this morning’s stories are slated to follow..)

The Other YouTube

ToDo & Sunday Thought Departments
Small Print Warning: some curriculum theory from a previous life—cleverly obscured—lies ahead. Please ignore. 🙂

Ok, we all know about YouTube–it is that silly-fascinating site where dogs ride skateboards and people spend a lot of time crying for a fascinated public.

Pure entertainment–in the bad sense of fascinatingly mindless distracting pablum.

But there is the other YouTube.

That YouTube that has created a brand new bottom-up educational format: the short video instruction. It’s fun, it’s popular, it works and it’s what entertainment can be in its best sense: a fascinatingly engaging way to learn. Most educational video shorts—let’s call them “instructables” so we have a less akward handle—are somewhere between two and six minutes long. They focus on some small bit of “doing” like making a nifty techno-toy, or showing a dance move, or throwing a pot on the wheel. The producers are most often advanced users and the consumers anyone who wants to learn “how.”

You might have watched some of these but didn’t have a category to put them in. Here is a nice little example for someone for whom the description doesn’t strike a cord:

That “instructable” is an example of “throwing off the hump.” Potters do that when they want to make a series of similar small items. It’s not an easy thing to describe–books, blackboards, and lecture-halls are not good mediums to convey that variety of learning. It’s the sort of thing that is more usefully “shown.” There is a whole class of things that we’d like to teach which are better shown than described; things that are better experienced than conventionally taught. Video isn’t perfect but these extremely short pieces of “conveyed experience” are very, very useful to the learner. The learner can see multiple examples (e.g.: another throwing off the hump). They are repeatable and they are deep. —Repeatable: if you didn’t see how he finished off the rim, watch it again. They are deep in the sense that by watching it a learner who has had his or her hands in clay can “feel” how thin those walls must be and get a sense for how much “wobble” is tolerated and how many times to “pull” up walls and what to do toward the final curve with each pull. All these things are (inadequately) discussed (at interminable length) in conventional classroom settings as preparation. But advisory rules about wall thickness and pulls are rather direct abstractions from experience whose utility lies in allowing the student to move more quickly and effectively to new experience. They are much better taught after as student has learned to throw a few forms as a way to move toward independent explorations.

(If you can’t get into potting, try the Zydeco demo, or the instructions for making cool LED “throwies” and re-read the above paragraph with your example in mind. You could find similar instructables for welding, making lures, cooking creole, or applying makeup. There is a whole DIY section for you to browse. Let your passions rule)

We don’t teach by example in schools because we don’t have the time. There are too many students in our classes for many of the most effective kinds of instruction to be possible. Instructables approach the one-on-one experience of tutorials. You watch at your own pace, you notice what is meaningful to you, and you can get repeated examples until you “get” the right approach. A real tutorial with the added dimensions of individualized feedback and things like force feedback (holding the students hands against the clay to give the “feel” of the appropriate pressure) would be even more valuable. Even so, instructables are new and valuable form.

This is one of the reasons you should want big bandwidth. To really see some of the details on the potting example you’d want HD-quality videos. I can imagine getting more personalized instruction from afar–if we had the bandwidth. A skilled potter (or master welder) in Lafayette could set up a nice shop and market personalized instruction over the net—if both ends had really big bandwith.

Just for the record: the usefulness of this technique is not, in my judgment, limited to vocational topics or hobbies. Showing and having the student find ways of solving a problem is central to good mathematics instruction. Learning to read is something that has to be shown; letter sounds can pretty much only be “labled” correctly after a student has learned sound out letters by example… Much conventional instruction could be replaced or aided by providing multiple, repeatable, deep examples.

So…something ToDo on this Sunday when you really ought to be at Festivals Acadiens if you are an Acadiana denizen. And something to think about.

PS: Yes, yes…we just got a wheel. What of it? 🙂

Update: 7:28: ooops. I just looked at Boing Boing for the first time in weeks and down the list I spoted a nifty link to how to make clear ice cubes. So naturally I followed it (well, naturally for me). The link goes to a site called “instructables!” I thought I had made up that term–but now it seems more likely that I’ve seen a reference to this site. Which is pretty neat place to visit. (The ice cube link? Right here.)

Boosting Lafayette’s WiFi

Worth Thinking About Dept.

Executive Summary: Wireless provider FON’s recent successes provide an intriguing example for those interested in LUS’ still-unformed wi-fi network.

Recently BT (Britain’s dominant broadband provider) and Time-Warner cut deals with the Spanish wireless outfit FON. FON’s goal is to foster wi-fi bandwidth sharing among its membership, “foneros.” These recent deals are considered breakthroughs because they explicitly encourage users to share their bandwidth, something that network companies have previously forbidden.

The FON Idea:
Any foneros that freely shares their access can get on to any FON access point in the world for free. The company’s ground-up, user-built approach to building a hotspot network contrasts pretty dramatically with the top-down methods by major wireless and phone service providers who build, maintain and charge a healthy fee to access their hotspot network.

Credibility:
While the FON plan sounded impractical to some it gained a prestigous group of backers even before the major partnership announcements in Europe, Britian, and the US; investors include: Google, Skype, Index Ventures, and Sequoia Capital. The latest round of investment brought in major Japanese players and BT invested in the company as part of its deal.

The deals cut with network providers BT (#1 in Britain), Neuf (#2 in France) and Time-Warner (#2 cable internet provider in the US) provide instant credibility for FON’s idea. All those networks’ members (Time-Warner has 6.6 million users) are now “foneros” and wi-fi routers supplied by the company have been flashed with Fon’s software. Future broadband subscribers will be encouraged to buy FON routers and share their connections. In Britain, as a result of BT’s dominant position and high adoption rates, speculation holds that dense urban areas will be nearly completely covered by the FON/BT network.

How it Works:
The new FON member attaches the FON-enabled wi-fi access point to the wired network connection they’ve paid for. FON wi-fi access points are cheap (occasionally free) and are software-configured to provide a public channel and a private, seperately encrypted, channel. The owner of the access point uses the private channel for their own, interior, at-home wi-fi network. The public channel’s bandwidth is controlled by the owner; who limits the bandwidth that is shared with fellow foneros to a portion that doesn’t degrade his or her experience. (Note: there is an alternative make some money off your access if a non-fonero member decides to pay for access through your node.)

Win-Win-Win:
The users get free wi-fi access across the world in exchange for giving up a little bandwidth that they feel they don’t need. FON makes deals with the big providers. The big network providers get instant, user paid-for and user-maintained wi-fi networks to brag on and sell to consumers.

There are advantages besides the obvious laptop uses you see at any coffee house in the city. Having a widely-available wi-fi network means that users of wi-fi enabled phones and devices (think certain PDAs, Nokia phones, and the iPhone) could effectively make phone calls for free from FON hotspots in addition to surfing the web, using email, and working other data-based interactions over the net. There would be no additional connection cost over what they’d already paid for their home network for the connections made away from home.

Whoa! But there ARE problems:
But eager investors and growing user-base based on huge, established ISPs does not mean that all is rosy in Fonero Land. FON is faced with a perverse inverted reflection of the problems of wi-fi based muni broadband efforts.

I’ve discussed the problems of muni wi-fi at some length on these pages. Some of it boils down to the fact that mesh-based muni networks find it hard to provide adequate backhaul unless they have a dense fiber network to hang it off. (We’ve got that one licked here in Lafayette.) But the second part of the problem is that the constraints placed on wi-fi restrict it to low power and its spectrum allocation is such that wi-fi signals find it hard to penetrate dense vegetation and, especially, houses. Most people compute indoors. A public wi-fi network that has a hard time reliably getting inside homes and that makes for a very hard sell as a primary network. (LUS has tentatively solved this by selling fiber as the primary interior connection and making city-wide wi-fi an appropriately cheap add-on that will not be sold as suitable for in-home use.)

If muni wi-fi’s acess-point-on-a-street-pole can’t get in to homes, by the same token FON’s bottom-up in-home network is going to find it hard to get out to the public areas of the neighborhood.

What’s needed is a wireless system with the strengths of both and the weaknesses of neither…

You see it coming, right?
LUS should either partner up with FON or do something similar themselves. (FON’s software is not unique; other, open source software could emulate the basic capacities of the FON wi-fi router.)

LUS will be in a nearly unique position: it will have a FTTH network and a wireless one. The question, as always, is: How to best make use of the unique resources we are building in Lafayette. So far, in my humble opinion, LUS has mostly been making the smart moves. Fiber First is smart–the smartest basic move possible. That makes a strong wireless network possible. Given that starting point, it is smart to go ahead and build wireless mobile capacity as LUS is planning to do. It’s smart to not pretend that wi-fi can be an adequate substitute for a reliable, wired network. LUS isn’t doing that; instead LUS’ wi-fi will be positioned, as it should be, as a low-cost mobility addition. What is ironic is that Lafayette’s wireless network, while relegated to secondary status locally, will be faster and more reliable than any public wi-fi network in the nation; its dense fiber connectivity and the design decision to avoid more than rudimentary use of mesh re-routing assures that.

But, as smart as all that is, LUS’ muscular wi-fi network will still have trouble getting into the home. Coverage will still be spotty and shifting–like cell phone coverage is, only more so. All that is a matter of physics and federal regulation — no amount of smart network design can completely eliminate the issue.

The smart way to minimize coverage problems is to provide both the muni solution for outside, public space and a FON-style solution for interiors. And because LUS will control both sides we can do what nobody else can: integrate the two. LUS would provide coverage on the streets and in public spaces. Subscribers, using FON equipment or similar router software cover their own interiors and their yard away from the street to exactly the degree they find useful for their own private, locked-down wi-fi channel. Piggybacked onto that would be a second, public, channel that would be available to all LUS subscribers. It’d be used by meter readers, police, friends, and folks visiting town who’ve bought the the three-day pass—and Foneros if we go that route. (If we join FON local subscribers could roam on FON points anywhere.) As long as you were visiting locales that used LUS fiber you’d never have to log into a private network. As a mobile user moved down streets, into offices, and visited friends they could, potentially, remain on the public network the entire time and never have to log into anyone’s private network or use any resources that weren’t public.

Near-ubiquity of coverage would allow VOIP phones could become truly useful in the city, making truly mobile wi-fi telephony a reality. WiFi-enabled handhelds, from iPhones, to Blackberries, to Nokia phones, to Skype phones, to various “smart” PDA hybrids would become reliably useful without having to buy into expensive packages from cellular providers, enabling a whole new class of network devices to become cheaply available to everyday Lafayette users.

The Bottom Line:
LUS could sweeten the pot for its subscribers by providing each broadband customers that agrees to share using the LUS-approved equipment and software with an extra meg of “langiappe” bandwidth so that sharing actually provides a small boost in capacity for the subscriber who bought their own router and occasionally shared their extra capacity. Recall also that LUS will (again almost uniquely) be providing every user unthrottled in-system bandwidth. Wi-fi routed packets that stayed inside our system would be under that local use umbrella. The relatively small bandwidth diverted to wifi sharing will be a mere drop in the bucket for the LUS user in that instance.

Lafayette’s resulting wi-fi service would be as nearly flawless as is humanly possible both inside and outside. Segregating public and private networks would increase the security of the subscribers’ personal networks; making wifi networks more secure for regular users than they are today. Subscribers would understand that coverage inside their homes was their responsibility while at the same time gaining access to the public network everywhere. As users found holes in coverage in places where they needed it they could simply move their wi-fi point or add a cheap repeater.

The net effect for LUS would be that the users would plug many of the holes in the city’s cloud themselves–at their own expense–when they felt they needed coverage and only when they did. The resulting network with public channels available both inside and outside participants’ buildings would be more dynamic and more nearly ubiquitous than any in the country. And ubiquity is the major selling point of any wireless mobility network.

The net effect for users would be a robust public network that was available both inside and outside wherever the people that lived or worked there thought it would be useful. That’s simply unavailable anywhere else. A user’s laptop would be more useful than ever. And mobile devices of all kinds would bloom in Lafayette as the price premium for service vanished.

It would be a very profitable collaboration between the community’s telecom utility and its citizen-owners; a collaboration available to almost no one else.

Worth thinking about, don’t you think?

(And a thanks to reader Jon who first pointed me at the BT story….)

Sun’s McNealy Returns

Well Scot McNealy of Sun Microsystems was back in town…and closeted with a lot of the cities tech big wigs (LUS, LCG, the University, and local business—tech enthusiasts) for a couple of hours before a press conference at LITE. Sorry I didn’t get to this earlier, but I was mired in a recalcitrant web site that was too close to launch to neglect. But luckily the regional media covered it in force. What happened in that meeting—why McNealy made a return trip—was not immediately made public though hints could be gleaned from the reporter’s coverage.

The Advertiser lead with and focused on the announcement of Lafayette’s ranking on a jobs growth ranking and didn’t mention the McNealy press conference, at which the ranking was mentioned, until paragraph five. KATC and The Advocate lead with the McNealy visit itself and didn’t mention the job growth ranking which was apparently a reference point in the presentation. The two stories do dovetail, of course, but the focus of interest on this site is the technology issues implicated in the visit.

Seasoned readers will recall that McNealy made a supportive stop here right before the fiber referendum. He appeared on one of Joey’s morning radio shows and was generally encouraging about our building a fiber system. Back then I laid out an enthusiastic, but I think still pretty accurate assessment of the potential of a Sun-Lafayette partnership. The gist is that LUS’ big bandwidth, Sun’s open source source software, and the immense potential of on-system storage and distributed computing in Lafayette’s intranet has got to have smart companies like Sun thinking hard about using Lafayette as a test bed for new technologies. There really will be little to match the size and diversity of our user population, or the intranet-speed in-system bandwidth supplied between customers. That is a match made in heaven for those that have hankered after the bandwidth to make real changes in the (computer, video, cloud computing, name-your-techish-dream) area.

Sun’s bread and butter has been building top-notch servers, and more recently, integrated server farms. That’s a business built on the need for fast networks. Sun has in recent years pursued some pretty interesting ideas pretty relentlessly. Sun signed onto the open-source movement early. Free and more importantly open, readily fixable and extendable software is the result. Sun has also swum against the tide in insisting on a pushing a “network-centric” computing model. This involves big central computing facilities and distributed dumb terminals — though some Sun models can run as traditional independent stand-alone computers. Sun also has relentlesly pursued its vision for JAVA. The hope was for a platform for writing software that was independent of the underlying hardware and could run and interconnect processes on everything from toasters to big iron server hardware. JAVA has yet to becom the platform for realizing the more blue-sky versions of those dreams but much of the intuition is being realized in web-centric AJAX apps.

The potential of having a whole community with fast, cheap, universally available broadband capable of ripping the roof off the network limitations that have kept many of Sun’s ideas barely viable has got to be tempting to the company. And the digital divide and development potential for Lafayette are obvious. There is surely partnership potential here.

But what is on the table now? I’d guess both LUS’ fiber program and the city’s computing needs.

Keith Thibodaux regularly complains about the need to update a creaky computer system. The dark lining on the silver cloud of having had an early strong computer department at ULL is that Lafayette’s networks were developed back in the days of COBOL and significant portions of the city’s core network runs in that crusty framework. Slipping in a modern Sun-based but still centrally organized, terminal-heavy system would allow that sort of mainframe-oriented system to move into the modern day relatively painlessly. As the tenders of that system reach retirement age (yes we are that far into the computer age) such a move might become critical.

The Advocate did a stellar job of focusing on the potential interaction of Sun and LUS’ fiber to the home project. I recommend you go take a look. It is exciting stuff and doesn’t bear much cutting here is a stream the good bits:

Durel said Wednesday that the project’s highest-profile cheerleader reinforced and supplemented the LUS team’s “vision” to not just provide “me too” products with the state-of-the-art network.

“It’s not just about saving customers 20 percent,” Durel said. “It’s much, much bigger than that.”

Durel said McNealy is a big fan of “open source” products, software allows tech-savvy users to upgrade and add their own innovations.

In an open environment, coupled with the vast bandwidth promised by LUS — which has said that traffic inside its network will be unlimited — there’s a great potential for people working out of their garages to develop innovative products in Lafayette, McNealy said.

LUS Director Terry Huval said McNealy talked about the potential for Lafayette schools to utilize curriki.org, which provides free, open source educational materials.

McNealy said Sun Microsystems offers a product called Sun Ray that could also be of great use with LUS’ system to help get more people using technology in their everyday lives.

Sun Ray is a simple, low-cost computer that serves as a conduit between the user and a massive server, where all information, software and processing power is stored.

The interactive display of Sun Ray is merely a way for the user to tap into the network, meaning that any user — with a pass code or swipe card — could use any Sun Ray to access their information, be it at home, work, the library or wirelessly, Huval said.

It’s a grand dream and could get most of the city on the network in an extremely exciting and potentially sophisticated way. Serving (free) programs off a server to inexpensive computers is clearly the next step a city could take after offering cheap, universal, big bandwidth. Open source is the way to go and Sun is a leader. Partnering with someone who not ony cares about these ideas is a natural–especially when that partner has already bet the company on the ideas.

As always there are caveats, especially in the context of the digital divide: Sun’s terminals are inexpensive–but no longer notably inexpensive in comparison to arguably more capable standalone computers. (And their standalones are more expensive.) The most price-attractive hardware is proprietary and not all open source material is ported to run there. It is a pretty closed ecology without the diversity found in the larger computer market. And it isn’t clear what direction will be open to Sun as the mobile market continues to expand.

Without a doubt, it’s all exciting and the relationship with Sun will bear watching.

Inventing the Future in Korea (and Lafayette)

Korean broadband is regularly cited as some of the best in the world ranking number 4 in the percentage of connected users and first in the percent of users working from a fast fiber optic connection.

Lafayette is set on the path toward having an even higher percentage of its population on fast fiber than the Korean average. Some folks (well the incumbent providers Cox and AT&T) suggest in ways subtle and not so subtle that people just can’t use all that bandwidth.

The Korean stats tell a different story. If you build it, the Koreans at least, will come. I suspect that Americans too would find their own field of dreams.

Korea
So what do all those Koreans do with all that bandwidth? Invent the future. An article in the Korean Times suggests the shape of that future:

The Samsung Economic Research Institute said that the so-called Web 2.0 movement is the main reason behind the surge of online traffic. For example, the number of blog users has increased 16 fold in the past two years, and the number of monthly blog postings by 10 fold, it said.

The most dramatic growth was seen in the circulation of short video clips, often referred to as UCC (user-created content) in Korea. Visitors to video sharing services at major portal sites more than quadrupled between March 2006 and March 2007.

The volume of information flow on the Internet will continue to expand at an ever-increasing speed, the report said.

“The amount of two-way data traffic has soared as the role of Netizens has changed from that of spectator to active participant…” (emphasis mine)

Koreans are becoming producers of content and in the process are eating up bandwidth an ever-accelerating rate. Their patterns of use are changing and they are becoming the worlds first natives of a new communications regime. In that new regime they are becoming the writers and the video producers and easy uploading of their product has become one of the drivers pushing up bandwidth usage.

Lafayette
This bodes well for Lafayette. Our system will provide symmetrical bandwidth to all subscribers. The “intranet” feature—meaning we will be able to communicate with each other locally at the full speed of the local net, probably upwards of 100 megs—will facilitate just the shift that is taking place in Korea. It also bodes well for LUS—LUS’ bandwidth potential will be unmatchable by the competition. It is in LUS’ interest to push this transition and help push bandwidth consumption since a shift to higher consumption broadband habits would play to their advantage.

The most significant difference between Lafayette and Korea is the size of the local population. Korea’s population was large enough to provide for local lift-off without much aid. They were in a position to exchange information between people spread out over a larger region. (Korea is about 75% of the size of Louisiana so Southern Louisiana to above Alex would be a rough equivalent.) Friends in adjacent Korean cities could participate in the net-based exchange. Most of my friends live in the city but some do not–they are in Boussard, Sunset, Baton Rouge or Lake Charles. It would be helpful if all of them could particpate as well.

So if Korea is any indicator LUS will make Lafayette an interesting place to be as far as “web 2.0” usage is concerned. But LUS should try and do two things to help this along:

1) Expand in the region. Take in, as rapidly as possible the surrounding parish and try to move beyond. Not just because this would benefit more of our citizens but because a larger network would drive more of the high levels of broadband usage that will give the advantage to the locally-owned network.

2) Support citizen production of local content and, especially, the local trading of local content. The Korean experience suggests that “ The most dramatic growth was seen in the circulation of short video clips, often referred to as UCC (user-created content.)” Support AOC. Support clubs & classes. Provide an online locale where nice, big video clips can be stored and used for in-system display—let people store the local parent-filmed football and soccer games there. In HD. (No more postage-stamp video). Make it cheap. Make it easy. Supply some online editing and storage to users….LUS should do what it can to make using big broadband the norm.

It’s gonna be quite a ride.

Public-Private-University: The Reality & the Potential

A report from the Advertiser presents an overview of the speakers on “technology and knowledge economy” at a Chamber breakfast at the Petroleum Club (a location redolent of the old rather than the new economy). The Advertiser’s Bob Moser leads with the money qoute:

Lafayette has put itself in a great position to lead the future “technology and knowledge economy,” a Mississippi economic leader told a local business crowd on Thursday.

Randall Goldsmith, head of the Mississippi Technology Alliance, was the leadoff in a session that also featured Lafayette’s Ramesh Kolluru, Keith Thibodeaux, and Doug Menefee.

The Reality
I was pleased to see some positive discussion of the essential role of the University in any hope Lafayette business might have of riding the technology wave. Not mincing words: I am often appalled at the dismissive attitude that I find pervasive in the Lafayette business community regarding the role of ULL as the engine of tech growth. Put plainly, without ULL there would be not tech be a sector in Lafayette. There is no hope of staying ahead of the curve without the academics. They are the essential players. It really is that simple and a Chamber breakfast that seems to treat that as a given is a great relief.

LONI and LITE were apparently the focus of discussion and both, of course, are academic ventures. (Again: without ULL neither could exist—and more pointedly neither would have even been conceived.) LITE will need careful, tolerant, encouragement from the local community. It is a new concept and is a tool rather than a product to boot; as such it so will take time to develop its niche. (Impatient parties should review the rocky early history of Baton Rouge’s Pennington Biomedical Center and consider what the consequence would have been if Baton Rouge’s business leaders had demanded immediate, local payback in terms of focusing on fostering old-style local private medical practices and hospitals in Greater Baton Rouge. —It would have destroyed what has become an outstanding world-class asset.) In a similar vein LONI—and its connections to Internet2/LamdaRail, are all fundamentally academic interconnects. It is a creature which, will benefit a larger community but not something that would exist as an asset for Louisiana or Lafayette if it hadn’t been created by the Universities.

It goes without saying, or should, that without the private and governmental sectors actively and passionately involved the possibilities that ULL offers the community cannot be realized. They, too, are essential. But no one should mistake the reality: while a strong business community and a wise government are central to Lafayette’s growth they could not create the resource that is represented by ULL; they could, however, fail to take advantage of it.

Oddly in my view, the “technology and knowledge economy” event did not include a focus on the most significant (academic or non-academic) initiative in the city—and arguably the very one that will have the greatest immediate impact on the ability of Chamber members to compete from a position on the high ground with their national and international opposition: the LUS Fiber project. That project will provide a ground-breaking 100 or more megs of intranet connection to every citizen who signs on—and that could easily be 50 or more percent of the market. Young and old, poor and rich, white and black, Creole, Cajun, French, and Americain. It will be coupled with a state-of the art wireless network that will actually work. It will all be available in the least expensive parts of the city to large, small, tiny entrepreneurs and regular folks who, if they so chose to grasp it, will have bandwidth previously available only in to mega corps and university campuses. What will we do with all that? Who knows? But rest assured that the vacuum will be filled. Why no mention? What’s up with that sort of blind spot?…The really interesting discussion would have been of how to leverage this uniquely Lafayette convergence of the muscle of private initiative, municipal community-mindedness, and the restless exploratory energy of Academia to benefit the community.

The Potential
It would be pretty easy to imagine a research project that encourages ULL professors to develop an expertise in the popular use of really large bandwidth. It would involve both social and technical research and would draw in artists, playwrights, and mulitmedia folks of all strips in testing content. It’s the sort of research project with tentacles into every department that a first-rank research 1 University would salivate over. But none of them have the essential resource. Consider: Lafayette will shortly have more bandwidth in the hands of a larger number of people of all races, ethnic backgrounds, and incomes than any place in the country. It is going to be the richest feedbed of data imaginable for next generation theorizing and practice in disciplines ranging from networking to interface design; from multimedia art to interactive theater. Properly designed and funded such a program would attract top-notch, ground-breaking young scholars to ULL in numbers sufficient to make the university a national center in a field of interdisciplinary studies it, and Lafayette, could create.

An element in making such a push credible to an outside world that sees Louisiana through the lens of the White Citizens Council and the Jena 6 would be a real digital divide initiative and a strong, community-backed program to encourage every citizen to make the fullest possible use of the potential of the new network. With public, private, and university backing Lafayette could find itself among the Austins’ and Research Triangles’ of the US: places where people come and want to stay in order to build something special that they could build nowhere else. Dell Computer is an engine in Austin (and the US) becaue a student wanted to earn some extra cash and explore what he’d learned in school and for very little other substantial reason. That Hollywood is all but synonymous with riches worldwide is not due to any natural advantage but to an accident of history.

We could create such an accident here.

The real potential of such an open collaboration between the public, private, and university sectors would be in the spin-offs, the Dells, the Steve Jobs—the companies marketing the “inconsequential” by-products of new fields in the form of new services offered by drop-outs and folks who don’t want to leave but have gained new, almost unique skills and put them to productive use. Texas poured its oil revenues into academics and, along the way, into a “far-out” and esoteric “computer science” department back in the days when the internet was a gleam in a researchers eye. An orthodonist’s kid who showed up intending to become a doctor got hooked, got his hands dirty, and decided to drop out to really do this stuff. Dell Computer and a high-tech industry in dusty then-backwater Austin was the payback. That sector alone will return its investment many times long after the last oil is pumped from the sands beneath Texas.

If that strikes you as worthy thing to hope for there are few things you could do. You could support the university and especially its research arms in doing the “far out,” esoteric things they are supposed to do. Hang around and hire the dropouts. Be tolerant of the oddities of those you don’t fully understand. Feed ’em and share the music. Celebrate Mardi Gras. You could support a local survey of Lafayette’s needs to provide all those future researchers a baseline from which to work. You could support LUS fully, regardless of any previous leanings—and say so. You could work to close the digital divide and to bring everyone in our community into full use of the technology we will own.

You could decide the future is worth working for.