November 29, 2005
WiFi in New Orleans?
MSNBC and WaPo report this morning that Mayor Nagin is pushing a plan to set up a city-sponsored wireless community network in New Orleans. I like Chief Technology Officer Greg Meffert's cut-through-the-crap attitude:
"My number-one job is to restimulate the economy," said Greg Meffert, a deputy mayor, the city's chief technology officer and a former tech company entrepreneur. The system, he said, "is going to be the backbone of a brand new, never fully tried set of technology visions" to help distinguish New Orleans from other large cities.The geek in me says w00t!
The political animal in me says, pass the popcorn, this is going to be a fun fight to watch.
The liberal in me is concerned.
I remember when one of the local bloggers who is a librarian, I think it was Jeffrey from Library Chronicles, once said that he always knew when a local supermarket was hiring because the kids would come into the library with their parents to help them do the on-line employment applications. We're talking about a city where a significant percentage of the population can't use a computer, much less afford one. The notion of a community network is exciting for me, for residents with computers that have WiFi capability, but it's still not going to get housing for folks from the 9th Ward. Nor is it going to get Entergy to run electric and gas hookups to Lakeview so those folks can at least get FEMA trailers.
My concerns aside, there are a couple of aspects of this story that intrigue me. The first is Nagin's willingness to simply tell the state legislature "fuck you." When Lafayette considered a community network earlier this year, the corporate interests stepped in immediately to ban any community efforts at a bandwith faster than 144-kilobit. Nagin and Meffert are using a "state of emergency" argument to work around the pols who have been heavily lobbied by the HellSouth, Cox, and AOL/Time-Warner.
The other aspect of this I find neat is the willingness of Intel and other companies to put up equipment to kick-start this project. This is an attitude that the city needs to expand and exploit. You can see the commercials now "Intel - Helping re-Build New Orleans..." If we're going to have to whore out the city to corporate interests, I'd much rather see us bend over for Intel than for Harrah's. That's the difference between the callgirl who works out of the Monteleone Hotel and the streetwalker who works out of the Texas Motel on Airline.
Still, we can't lose focus here. The mobile, wireless worker that this network will attract didn't live here before the storm. The more the city does to attract new residents, the more difficult it makes it for the old residents to return. That's a debate that goes beyond the technophiles, and needs to be on-going throughout the re-building process.
Comments
It sounds great though, for those who have returned and can't get phone or cable. Some friends of mine are living by the fairgrounds, and bellsouth has told them April for a phone line (CO flooded), and Cox isn't taking new customers. And for what it's worth, I know plenty of bartenders and the like that own laptops to use at coffeehouses and don't have internet access at home, this would be great for them too. They don't own cars, but they've scrounged up for a laptop at some point. (I think it helps that you don't have to pay insurance on a computer.)
Posted by candice at November 29, 2005 9:23 PM