Indigenous Tech

Just a note before I jump into this post: I am not Indigenous. However, I believe that it is important that native peoples in the United States have the same access to the internet that most of the rest of us currently have.

In her brilliant book Network Sovereignty: Building the Internet across Indian Country, Marisa Elena Duarte postulates that as Indigenous people bring broadband to their native lands, they are going to change how technology is built, used and understood:

“… network backbones inspire compelling visions about the potential of digital technologies in Indian Country. It is while we are imagining those visions — talking about them, investing in them, designing pilot projects and start-ups, creating new aesthetic practices, wiring our government buildings and hosting web pages — that we must pay attention to what we are experiencing and thinking as we weave digital practices as Native peoples into our lives. Digital technology projects function in some sense like a mirror, reflecting back at us what we expect them to help us overcome, with the systems we design revealing our own methods for classifying, categorizing, and making sense of data and information. Through our uses of digital systems as Indigenous peoples, they become embedded with what we believe to be our Indigenous values.”

Essentially, as people become connected through digital means, those structures start to reflect the cultural knowledge and values of those participants. It starts to change how technology is used by us. As many native cultures have a deep understanding of long-term systemic change, they can see and adapt to change, sometimes, better than the Western culture surrounding them. A case in point is the Tribal Vulnerability Assessment Resources program, created by the University of Washington and 50 Native tribes. It espouses not only Western approaches to adapt to climate change but Indigenous ones as well.

This program helps tribes, whether they participated in its creation or not, access coordinated big data about climate change in their areas. It cuts nearly three years of research off of the planning time it takes to formulate an approach and a plan to deal with the changes that, we now know, are coming. This, along with the early understanding of climate change most tribes experience as they’ve watched changes on their land, may put them at the forefront of adapting to a changing world. (You can read more about this program in Hakai Magazine.)

Climate change may also drive greater adoption of broadband and mobile technologies throughout rural places, as people become more aware of needed instant information when disasters happen. The Camp Fire last summer showed this in sharp relief, when it was found that Verizon was, by default, throttling the data access of heavy users. Those users were the firefighters trying to save lives. Needless to say, the government of California was not happy about this. They are already bringing new systems online to counteract this possibility in the future.

As cultures, ancient or otherwise, start communicating through digital devices, it’s changing how all of our technological systems are being used. Another example of this is the explosion of genealogical research being done by lay people all over the world. I’ve seen this first hand, connecting with a history that I didn’t realize I was part of. I’ve found cousins I didn’t realize I had and, this next year, I plan to visit the site where my earliest ancestor was buried back in the 1400s. Without broadband, and the resources available to me because of it, I never would have learned any of this. It’s changed how I view my place in the world and, even, who I am.

This connectivity is giving people new ways to understand themselves, their own histories, and how they integrate with others. It’s also allowing them to influence the online world with different ideas. It’s crucial that we bring broadband to our rural places – all of them – especially Indian Country. Not only is it economically imperative, but could give us a fighting chance in a quickly changing world.

Farmer’s Tan and Washington Broadband

It’s been a lovely Easter weekend, our first to hit 70 degrees this year. I managed to plant some flowers, but that is all I’ve done to prepare for spring. I do, however, have a great start on my farmer’s tan.

In the “Who Knew?” department is this tidbit of information: The Washington State Department of Commerce has a five year program, the Washington State Broadband Office. (Yes, it was news to me, and I keep track of these things.) If you click on Mapping, you can view their interactive map which will tell you if you have broadband in your area and who the providers are. There are also tools for communities who want inital or better access to broadband for their areas, including grants for training.  They even have a Twitter feed!

If you aren’t in Washington, try looking up a “broadband office” for your state. It most likely will be part of the Commerce department.

Broadband, at Last!

As of noon today, all three houses on the farm were hooked up to high-speed DSL. We’ve been waiting for a decade for this and today it finally happened. It’s almost unbelievable.

Frontier, a smaller telco company, recently bought all the rural telephone lines across the nation from Verizon, with the ideal of providing fiber broadband to every one of their customers. Then they started rewiring every area that was still without a connection. They installed new equipment, hired new, locally-based customer service representatives, and started contacting customers, letting them know that broadband was coming.

Frontier has discovered that rural broadband can be profitable. Once the capital cost of the initial equipment and wiring is covered, the return on investment can be quite good, providing management maintains a handle on costs. Distance will diminish profits somewhat but does not eliminate them. In a down market, Frontier is growing and hiring, simply by providing services to rural areas.

The adoption rate around here, I’m sure, is going to be high. A number of neighbors called me, asking if it was really true that we were going to get a high-speed connection. They wanted to sign up right away. Then, the techs who came to install my system said they already had 200 requests for new connections that weekend.

Today, I dropped some of the last squash to be harvested at The Neighbor’s house. She, in the few days she’s had broadband, has discovered online gaming. She took the pumpkin and carnival squash from my hands and, without even setting them down, went back to slaying the enemy’s cavalry before they overran her castle. Apparently, she said, there is no pause. I have an indelible image in my mind of her hacking at the enemy troops while cradling squash in her left arm. Truly, she’s a bonafide rural geek.

Wild, Wild West – Part 2

Today, a link to a Missoula news story flipped across my twitter feed. It announces a new fiber cable broadband system covering 300 miles across both the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribal areas. In combining this new system with existing networks, most of the state from the Rockies to Idaho will be wired. This means that by 2013, Western Montana is going to have quite an extensive broadband capability across an huge area that also provides beautiful scenary, lots of land, and a motivated workforce. Now that’s a recipe for a robust economy!

So, how does Washington State compare? Not well. We may have the fastest speed in the U.S. (Ephrata, at 27Mbps download), but very little of the state has any coverage at all. Many areas within an hour’s drive of the big Microsoft campus are shockingly underserved.

Tsk,tsk,tsk…

The Wild, Wild West

Sometimes, in the middle of nowhere, you find something like this: Wyoming Town Creates Broadband Bonanza. It’s a good thing, too, because the latest report shows that rural areas without broadband could be in a sorry state, economically: 

“While broadband will not bring immediate economic transformation to rural America, regions that lack broadband will be crippled.” – Sharon Strover, Researcher, University of Texas

Eureka!

Here I am in Eureka Montana, enjoying amazing broadband connectivity from my little cabin in the woods. I’m absolutely floored by this. This corner of the West has broadband and excellent speed to go with it. Who knew?

Cell phone coverage, on the other hand, is completely non-existant. The only provider out here is Verizon. AT&T, apparently, pulled their towers from this region and left their customers without coverage. When you say T-mobile, everyone here says, “Who?” So, my phone is useless.

But I can Skype! I think I’ll go download a movie now. Hee hee…

If Vermont can do it…

…why can’t we? Gov. Peter Shumlin of Vermont has said Internet access is a necessity, and he has pledged to bring broadband to every last mile of the state by 2013. How can fiber optic companies reach the remotest areas of the state without breaking the bank? They are using draft horses.

Yes, and being successful at it. See Draft horses bring fiber optics to remote locations. They are laying lines in the most remote places and by 2013, everyone in Vermont will have access.

<rant alert> I live less than an hour’s drive from the main Microsoft campus, 52 minutes from downtown Seattle, yet have no broadband available – no cable, no DSL, no cellular wifi. There are no plans for at least the next several years in this state to bring broadband to rural spaces. We’ve been cherry-picked as less-than-desirable by access providers. I almost feel as though farming is a pre-existing condition to them. <end of rant>

The Open Internet and Rural Broadband

On April 8th, (yes, that was just this last Friday during the big budget debate) the House passed   H. J. RES. 37 concerning the openess of the internet. This is what the bill says, in its entirelty: 

    Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That Congress disapproves the rule submitted by the Federal Communications Commission relating to the matter of preserving the open Internet and broadband industry practices (Report and Order FCC 10-201, adopted by the Commission on December 21, 2010), and such rule shall have no force or effect.

So, what does that mean? Here is the text of Report and Order FCC 10-201. It is concerned with the limitiations that internet service providers are allowed to place on users and content. It significantly curtails “the ability of broadband providers to favor or disfavor Internet traffic to the detriment of innovation, investment, competition, public discourse, and end users.” In other words, it keeps the internet open and accessible. H. J. RES. 37 would kill the FCC’s ability to keep the internet neutral.

The Senate version is S.J.RES.6. and has not been passed yet. Need I mention that this may indeed be the perfect time to contact your Senator to ensure that this resolution not be passed?

In other congressional news, a new bill, HR 1083 – Rural Broadband Initiative Act, introduced March 15th, amends the Rural Electrification Act of 1936 to establish in the Department of Agriculture (USDA) the Office of Rural Broadband Initiatives. Is the USDA the right department to handle rural broadband? Truly, I don’t know, but somebody needs to ensure that broadband reaches us. Frankly, rural broadband is not going to happen if we merely encourage private enterprise to provide it. It’s going to take another act like the ones that brought electricity and telephones to every house in the country.

The bill I really like is Maria Cantwell’s S.74: Internet Freedom, Broadband Promotion, and Consumer Protection Act of 2011. It ensures net neutrality by amending the Communications Act of 1934 which regulates common carriers. Someone has to because corporations won’t.

What Really Works

Tabasco, apparently, doesn’t. The horses decided that they didn’t mind some chile marinade and started in on the fencing again. We tried some commercial products and they didn’t fare much better. The Neighbor, then, had a brilliant idea of using deer repellent. Hey, an herbivore is an herbivore, right?

It worked perfectly. It has to be reapplied after it rains, but it sure keeps the horses away from the fencing. Lovely!

Today, I had a nice chat with a delightful representative at Frontier, which is the small company that bought all the rural telephone land lines from Verizon. Their idea has been to bring broadband into the areas that were underserved by Verizon. So far, they’ve added close to 200,000 new DSL customers just by updating the wiring. They are within a mile and a half and I have all my fingers crossed, hoping they get here soon.

I know that there are more rural geeks out there, those who believe in the benefits of high tech and yet love the country life. I’d like to hear from you. What are your rural aspirations? Do you believe online gaming and agriculture can exist together? (Farmville, anyone?) I’d really like to know what you think.