Municipal Wireless, The World and Obama
The future doesn't happen in America any more. I can confirm it. I'm sitting on a sidewalk browsing the internet via a free municipal wireless network. There was also an extensive free network in Istanbul. Denmark, Korea, New Zealand, Singapore and several other countries exceed America in wireless and internet availability on a per bandwidth per person basis. Other than, maybe San Francisco and the Bay Area, are there any places where one can sit and browse the net, communicate, send email and engage in all sorts of innovative pursuits for free? A guy sitting next to me is videoconferencing with a colleague in Malaysia right now. Another woman is doing something on a handheld wireless device. Some kids are playing video games and here I sit doing my thing. The service can be unreliable. And it's certainly not a good idea to download anything from iTunes. Not from a legal standpoint just from a bandwidth point of view.
Of course, it isn't free. Local taxes pay for it. But isn't that what taxes are for? To improve the quality of a nation's human capital? The standard of living here in Singapore is that of America, as I have mentioned elsewhere. But the infrastructure is better. America is falling behind because we're drowning in a solipsistic consumer culture, borrowing against the future to maintain an excessive and opulent standard of living without actually manufacturing anything of value. And believe me, Singaporeans love to shop, consume, the whole gamut. The whole city is a shopping mall. But they also save, much more as a percentage of wages than we do. They pay taxes and don't grumble about it. They have a top shelf military relative to the size of the city-state. Every able bodied young man (and frequently women) do national service of some sort. It isn't perfect, don't get me wrong. But it's better than pouring billions into two pointless wars when money should be spent on our crumbling schools, our collapsing bridges and our disastrous electricity grid.
These used to be American values. They used to be why the world looked up to us. But the people here in Singapore don't understand. They ask me, even now, why American's have gone so crazy, lost the center, changed so drastically. They like us here. I am treated very, very well. Better than in almost any country I've traveled in. But they're losing patience with us. Will electing Obama change our image? Having an African-American president will help, I've heard that a lot. And I don't deny the attractiveness of the idea from a purely geopolitical point of view, a way of regaining some of the high ground and mystique of "America" squandered these last few years. It's a palpable feeling here and in other places. But there is much, much more work to be done than just one election. This isn't an encomium for Obama, no hagiography here. But, there is a real hope outside of America on this issue--and a hope like that is not to be denied, or discounted.
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Great read. So you know, the first wireless cities in North America are all not in the US, but Mexico. Matamoros I believe to be the first. Drinking a tequila while browsing the internet is surreal, especially when it is difficult to accomplish in the US of A. McAllen, on the Texas side, should have a system up soon. Earlier systems like Corpus Christi were poorly planned and didn't begin to accomplish what was promised the taxpayers.
Too much good internet is provided already in this country. Therefore, it has been hard to deploy wireless internet effectively. In the third world in many areas, wireless is the only internet you can get...
www.onesol
www.citywi
"Isn't that what taxes are for?" Indeed, is it too socialistic to believe that taxes should be used to make everyone's life better, to build sustainable infrastructures that will support our continued thriving?
We need to get past this way of thinking that the only options on the table are to use tax money or to let the private sector solve the problems. Too often, this is portrayed in an us v. them mentality, the conservatives against the liberals. It doesn't have to be that way - the private sector isn't all bad, nor is government. But everything is portrayed as such a dichotomy, when more often it's just two sides of a sphere. As to muni wireless, there are a number of different business models out there, to varying degrees of success, involving tax dollars, subscriptions, or ad generated revenue. Public-private partnerships can be successful. There's still a lot of experimenting here that needs to be done. But it just seems that too often the arguments are either how to get government out of the discussion or how government should be running the show.
That's great that your generation is all linked together by youtube, facebook, etc. How are you going to stay linked if the government continues on the path we're on?
Corporations and technology have lulled all of us into a false sense of access and freedom that could disappear in a moment. Think about how quickly it could all be taken away by just a few steps:
restricting or shutting down or even just slowing down internet access and sites.
filtering or intercepting internet communications, say like they do now as part of their FISA related listening
the government even has a weapon that has been tested in simulation against military personnel dressed up like protesters. It is a heat generating weapon that can work from over 1/2 mile away as I recall.
So the freedom and communication network you brag about could all disappear in an instant. What is the backup plan IF the government continues in the current direction toward a radical right regime?
So, Sean-Paul, how do I get YOUR job? Or one similar? I'd love to get paid while checking out the internet from Singapore or Auckland..
See Sean-Paul Kelley's Profile
Hell if I know. Believe me, I am absolutely bewildered and excited and confused as to how I ended up here. But when they asked me to come I jumped on the chance. My only advice would be to make traveling in life and living overseas a very high priority in your life and be willing to go where ever they ask. If you do that serendipity should take care of the rest.
Hey I'm all for free WiFi, but I'm not sure you should be holding up Singapore as a model for progress. Sure you've got free internet, but the gov't. there has strict laws against criticism of government policy, so the internet content you're accessing for free is filtered/w
http://en.
Furthermore, although the citizens of Singapore do save, the government takes this money and invests it in shoddy planned-economy schemes:
http://www
There is no serious political opposition to the eugenicist Lee Kuan Yew:
http://www
It is, as they say, Disneyland with the death penalty. Singapore is a great place to visit, it's such a wonderfully clean and well-run place. Not sure how well their model of government would work on a continent-sized nation of 300 million-people.
Still, free WiFi is cool. And those buildings in Dubai are really cool too. So yeah we're not inventing absolutely everything anymore. And Japan has robots. With laser beams.
See Sean-Paul Kelley's Profile
Oh, make no mistake, I am not holding up the Sing. gov as a model for the globe. Not by a long shot. Just pointing out that there are weaknesses in America that can be and should be fixed. And free wireless is down the list, well below healthcare, etc. . . But still, it serves to make a useful point.
WiFi and cell service throughout Asia is superior to anything we have here. We pay $60-70 for 10 mbps in the USA. It's $40 in Japan for 200 mbps.
America is backward. And Singapore is a great city. Dont hold up the USA as any paragon of freedom and virtue, N8Ma. The Patriot Act and looting of our treasury took care of that. I'd live in Singapore in a heartbeat.
So much has been written about the present devouring, colonizing system in the U.S. which has fashioned and impelled us down a fascist path led by a superficial, sociopathic overclass and our historical enemies in Europe. The system is Corporatism, i.e., everything politicized and then dominated and defined by power and money. No common culture or purpose except an irrational, devouring pursuit of private profit and politicized institutional power. Our self-same oligarchs own the media-propaganda which enthralls us towards their pathological ends. Historically, this has been easier to accomplish in the U.S. because so many of our citizenry are unsophisticated and the lineage of faithful, revolutionary families which held us together was systematically destroyed. We are supposed to be a secular, communal nation following a set of living, revolutionary protocols informed by the natural world, our common sense, our life experience together, and guided by the genius of our peers. However, under the present devouring, centralizing, Orwellian nowhere-land that is Corporatism, those living precepts and successful habits-of mind are now all but gone. We need a virulent, peaceful revolution but we've lost much of our intellectual, spiritual, and institutional capacity. In a real sense, the American people are "gone". It only takes one generation to ruin a people under this kind of authoritarian system. This is why our forefathers had a revolution against (it). If we don't attack Iran, possibly rational political factions in Canada and Europe will save us.
Julianne, well said and also oh so true. The America that was is now dead, replaced by a corporate oligarchy and few care or even know.
I had a relative named Luke Day who started a rebellion shortly after our revolution, that is the spirit needed again in this country. Never be satisfied with what they give you as a hand out, we lost that with the me generation and I blame them. The boomers did drugs and marched for a few years only to sell out in a big way, hardly a revolution. They all bought the Reagan lie it was morning in America whan it was half past ten in the evening, well it's now a quarter 'til midnight and I am moving out of the country for good in a month, back to the empire that spawned my revolutionary relatives. Maybe people will believe I'm Canadian.
If Barack keeps lying about FISA, I may join you. This country is going downhill fast.
What a pessimistic rendering of our national situation. If it only takes one generation to distract a nation, couldn't it take equally little time to restore that nation? People of my age (twenties) have begun to discern that the jewel in the crown of democratic life is freedom, and that we have been denied it. People in my peer group and the networks of which I am a part are also hip to concepts of sustainability, even if we don't put that term to it. Simply, the failures of previous generations are so prominent that it would be impossible for us NOT to point them out.
It is encouraging that my generation is linked within itself by technology, where previous generations were isolated by it. Wireless mobility, the permeation of democratic social networks..
One generation? Please! I'm glad that you're engaged and all that, but really, activism wasn't invented by you and your generation. Oh, and all that linked within itself hasn't really led to a lot of REAL activism. Instead it's led to mostly a lot of keyboarding. Want proof? Go to the next MoveOn realtime event and count the number of people that are younger than 50.
It takes a whole lot less time to break most things than it does to fix them -- if they can be fixed at all. Your cheerful optimism is, well...che
Right. And one of the choices for President is a guy who is so intellectually uncurious that he refuses to learn how to use a computer, and he wants to lead this country?
Americans have dined out on their 20th C reputation for too long. It's behind the eight-ball in nearly every category of living.
I'm glad you are so optimistic. We thought we had the answers, too. As did the generation before us and the one before that. But we've been going backward since the era of the robber barrons, Seth.
Sustainability is a wonderful concept, but there's no way it can work unless the corporations are willing to do the sacrificing, and face it, they aren't set up that way. As long as the golden rule is he who has the most gold rules, the bottom line determines our collective destiny.
I hope the young can somehow figure out how to stop Bush and Israel from attacking Iran, because if they can't, we are headed for a fascist government which will make all we've seen before look like nothing. The mob of Americans are lazy, ignorant fools who've been so stupid that they voted for Bush twice because they'd rather drink beer with him. If Israel or their puppet Bush attacks Iran, the American mob will get its final reward for its stupidity: $10-$15 a gallon gas; the world's stock markets wiped out as a result of the price of oil, not to mention geo-political unrest; and a worldwide Depression as a result. This will create unexample rage among the American morons. They will (correctly) blame Israel for what's happened to them, for what's wiped them out the way the German mob was wiped out by inflation in 1923. And then a George Wallace will arise, with flag tattoos not just pins, and he will focus the rage of the mob on Israel, on AIPAC, on the wealthy Jewish donors who have bought candidates in both parties for decades to serve the interests of Israel first, and he will make it anathema for any politician to be connected to AIPAC, Jewish donors, or Israel in any way. This guy will run against the Republicans and the Democrats alike, and he will bring us a fascism which will makes that of Bush and Fox look like nothing.
Join the INTERNET FOR EVERYONE campaign.
One Nation, Online.
http://int
While I do support this, housing, health care, food are more important priorities. Get Real. We have at least a million in so much need.
"we're drowning in a solipsistic consumer culture, borrowing against the future to maintain an excessive and opulent standard of living without actually manufacturing anything of value." WELL SAID !!!!!!!!!!
"Squandered" is the word that best describes our nation's fall from grace. What caused it? Obviously, the manipulation of the minds of the public by the greedy and power-hungry through the use of the media. What can change it? Obviously the exposure to sanity in the minds of the public through the media. Get it?
What I'd like to get is an FCC that actually holds the media to the standard stated in all their licensing agreements. The airwaves are SUPPOSED to be held in trust for the common good. All the news channels should have their licenses revoked for selling us entertainment and product sponsors while duping us (collectively) into believing it's news.
But that won't happen, will it? Because megacorporations run them all, including the FCC.
Smart and friendly advice from abroad for all Americans:
Girden your loins and re-conquer your country from the corporations.
In any other country i nthe world, the people tell the corporations what to do - what to produce and what payment to expect for their products.
The USA are the only country in the world, where the CORPORATIONS have managed to tell THE PEOPLE, what to buy and, what to pay for it.
The corporations have not managed to tell the people what to buy, the people have LET them. I have not bought one NEW big ticket item in the last ten years, no cars, no big screen high def T.V. no cell phone, no i-pod, no furniture, nothing. Corporations hate that, that is why they love imigration so much, a bunch of people that need to buy new stuff and will take lower pay with a smile, can you blame them?
If you think you have any rights left try owning OUTRIGHT a property a corporation or township wants, try fighting them in court on limited means, try naming your own price. I got news for you, the corporations get to set the price now, and it's LOW!
In the first "Terminator" movie, the future was threatened/ruled by big, shiny robotic machines with laser guns. The truth is the future will be threatened/ruled by giant corporations that own your ass and mine.
It's pretty easy to connect the dots when you consider the god delusion. In this fantasy world, there is no earthly future so there is no need to follow that trajectory. Think about all those things we don't care about but really should (environment, economic health, peace and human rights) and then think of all those things that are just SOOO more important, like abortion, gay rights, torture--as in no, hell no, and yes they deserve it because they're heathens. Then you've got these idiots out there telling you god wants us to be rich and live beyond our means because we're American's, the chosen people, and we are to "take dominion" over the world, which translates to "use it up while you can cause the rapture's a-comin".
It's like the whole country is that guy on the corner of 42nd Street and Broadway with the sign that says "Repent ! The End is Nigh" (You know the guy I'm talking about? He's the one that smells like pee and old cigarettes
Euro/US citizen here, also lived in Australia and New Zealand for a while. I can confirm that there are MUCH nicer and yes, FREEer places than the US to live. Better infrastructure, way better (and cheaper) healthcare and it is even easier to go into business in Australia than in the US. There are a lot of support programmes for younger people who want to do so. And get this--their businesses DON'T HAVE TO PAY FOR HEALTHCARE. So the companies have a better shot at making it without all that overhead.
The USA's reputation for being business friendly has been ebbing for quite some time, but don't ever try to tell that to one of these angry god-addicted freaks who are holding this entire nation back. They only believe in white males in long gowns staring down at them from the clouds, not in countries beyond their shores that do things differently (and in some cases, better).
And the abortion issue? It is non-existent in Australia. No terrorists spouting superstitious hatred for women blockading women seeking healthcare. Hatred of women is practically the national sport here in the US. As for Europe, there are still a few holdouts (Ireland and Poland) where the superstitious still must jam their heads between women's legs in thinking this will make them look 'pious'. It doesn't, it's just embarrassing--and I'm over it.
Now in my documents for future reference.
Thank you, thank you, thank you! I didn't have the experience of living in other countries to be able to say that, but I'm so glad you did. We are what the idiotic belief in "Manifest Destiny" created and still the majority of us feel no shame about it. We were responsible for our rise (brutally destructive as it was) to the top of the worlds food chain, and we are responsible for our fall from grace. The US needs to get over it, take a breath, ask for advice from the rest of the world, and reclaim its place among their masses. Only then can our bloated sense of pride have any real basis in fact.
Excellent post, Mr. Kelley. I was recently in Europe for seven weeks; no one with whom I spoke at any length mentioned taxes as a burden, or as an impediment to quality of life. On the contrary, the trade-off seems implicit, the equation elemental - higher rates equal enhanced public services. For example, I posted entries to my own blog from the city center of Bratislava, Slovakia via the free wireless internet offered to all. Oddly enough, I didn't notice any indignant locals clamoring to purchase T-Mobile day passes...
We need to "get over" our perception of American superiority. I't sobering when traveling to realize how far we're falling behind the rest of the industrial
But with the problems we're facing now, it appears our illusions may soon be shattered.
I wouldn't put to much faith in the African American meme, it was after all an African American SOS that put the final nail in the giant coffin that Iraq has become. He's already punked out on FISA and a woman's right to choose by November he and McBush will look like twins.
See Sean-Paul Kelley's Profile
As for the African-American 'meme' well, all I'm saying is, that's what the folks here in Singapore are saying. As for back home, I can't say. I'm not there right now. But that's how it sounds, and what people are telling me here. I guess that counts for something, as most Americans don't really make it out of the country, if only to drink tequila in Cancun.
to your implication that I'm an ignorant untraveled peckerwood, I'm on my fifth passport and that's from filling them not losing them kid.
Then you've spent your time traveling just hanging out in American hotel bars and not listening to anyone. The rest of the world is excited about Obama. And your remarks are veiled racism. Either that or you dont read much. If you're dissing Colin Powell as that "African American SOS that put the final nail in the giant coffin that Iraq has become," you fail to consider the neocons who destroyed this country and were closer to the levers of power than Powell in 2003. Feith, Wolfowitz, Perle, Rumsfeld, Cheney, Libby, Abrams, etc.
Actually, not even veiled. Blatant racism, I'd say.
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