Periodic Reporting for period 2 - netCommons (network infrastructure as commons)
Reporting period: 2017-07-01 to 2018-12-31
Communications and information distribution are key components of a modern society, and their control is the key to societal development.
The advent of the Internet has been often invoked as a remedy for their democratization and the diffusion of fundamental human rights.
The light of truth shows today a different picture: the digital divide is widening the gap between those who can access and take advantage of the new systems, and those who remain “disconnected” (with respect to physical access to technology, economic advantages, cultural uses and skills, and democratic impacts).
A problem is emerging about the Internet’s sustainability, both socioeconomic (large Internet corporations eluding taxes and aggressively commercializing most services) and political-democratic (the global Internet surveillance and the lack of transparency).
This, coupled with the complexity of the Internet’s organisation and the diffused lack of awareness about its actual implementation makes the users easy targets of manipulation, and unaware of the possibility to have a bottom-up, democratic, communal organisation of “the Internet”.
netCommons aspires to study, support and further promote an emerging trend, community based networking and communication services that can offer a complement, or even a sustainable alternative, to the global Internet’s current dominant model.
Community Networks (CNs) not only provide citizens with access to a neutral, bottom-up network infrastructure, which naturally increases the transparency of data flow, but they also represent an archetype of networked collective cooperation and action, mixing common or communal ownership and management of an infrastructure with a
balanced set of services supported by the local stakeholders.
CNs, however, are complex systems that require multiple skills to thrive: technical, legal, socio-economic, and political.
They face many challenges and they also need abstractions, models and practical tools to grow and produce a higher beneficial impact on our society.
netCommons follows a dual approach to achieve the maximum possible impact.
On the one hand, the project works at the local level, mingling with the communities that implement and manage community networks to gather relevant information, elaborate it, and then return to communities advanced conceptual and technical tools helping them to grow and thrive.
On the other hand, starting from such hands-on experience and work, netCommons contributes to Internet Science by abstracting concepts and opening the perspective to the world of global communications.
It studies solutions and interpretations of how to build global awareness about the importance of sustainability, participation, co-operation, on-line information, freedom, democracy, peer production, the public and common good, and the role of community networks to help such process.
The advent of the Internet has been often invoked as a remedy for their democratization and the diffusion of fundamental human rights.
The light of truth shows today a different picture: the digital divide is widening the gap between those who can access and take advantage of the new systems, and those who remain “disconnected” (with respect to physical access to technology, economic advantages, cultural uses and skills, and democratic impacts).
A problem is emerging about the Internet’s sustainability, both socioeconomic (large Internet corporations eluding taxes and aggressively commercializing most services) and political-democratic (the global Internet surveillance and the lack of transparency).
This, coupled with the complexity of the Internet’s organisation and the diffused lack of awareness about its actual implementation makes the users easy targets of manipulation, and unaware of the possibility to have a bottom-up, democratic, communal organisation of “the Internet”.
netCommons aspires to study, support and further promote an emerging trend, community based networking and communication services that can offer a complement, or even a sustainable alternative, to the global Internet’s current dominant model.
Community Networks (CNs) not only provide citizens with access to a neutral, bottom-up network infrastructure, which naturally increases the transparency of data flow, but they also represent an archetype of networked collective cooperation and action, mixing common or communal ownership and management of an infrastructure with a
balanced set of services supported by the local stakeholders.
CNs, however, are complex systems that require multiple skills to thrive: technical, legal, socio-economic, and political.
They face many challenges and they also need abstractions, models and practical tools to grow and produce a higher beneficial impact on our society.
netCommons follows a dual approach to achieve the maximum possible impact.
On the one hand, the project works at the local level, mingling with the communities that implement and manage community networks to gather relevant information, elaborate it, and then return to communities advanced conceptual and technical tools helping them to grow and thrive.
On the other hand, starting from such hands-on experience and work, netCommons contributes to Internet Science by abstracting concepts and opening the perspective to the world of global communications.
It studies solutions and interpretations of how to build global awareness about the importance of sustainability, participation, co-operation, on-line information, freedom, democracy, peer production, the public and common good, and the role of community networks to help such process.
netCommons research started with a thorough analysis of the existing Community Networks in Europe and beyond, classifying them by organizational models, scope, services provided and several other dimensions and features. This initial, but very substantial work, represents now a widely recognized reference to understand what CNs really are and how diverse they can be.
This analysis has been the base for many other socio-political-economic activities and research. On the one hand, work performed at UoW, informed the project and all the stakeholders on the global perspective of the Internet evolution, but most of all on its socio-economic un-sustainability. The reasons for this un-sustainability, albeit may look surprising to the general public, who still see the Internet as the bright, evolving, endless future, to insiders and researchers, following the reasoning and deduction of netCommons work, appears evident that novel regulations and novel organizational methods are necessary if fundamental rights of people, like privacy, freedom of speech and independence of thought, are to be guaranteed.
Based on this analytical part netCommons moved on to propose (and have accepted) several changes to the EECC that favor an nurture the growth of Community Networks, it informed Community Networks and their communities on how to organize themselves and how to advocate for their rights, it interacted with UNESCO to include CNs and the legal framework to protect them into their Internet Universality Indicators.
On a more local scale netCommons research has offered Community Networks and local authorities conceptual means for the organization of local networks as a commons, granting the local community a space for communications suitable to reduce the digital divide and not increasing it, and providing local authorities with a sound and informed conceptual base to support local regulations that empower Community Networks.
From a technological perspective, netcommons has evolved and made public (Open Source with Creative Commons licence) software instruments to improve monitoring of CNs at the physical, network and management level. Furthermore, novel applications or improved versions of existing applications are being released which are fully tailored for a local, community-based environment, for instance crowdsourcing tasks without the need of a cloud platform to share data, or providing a local cloud that works without internet connectivity or finally P2P real-time video distribution that (with a version for conferencing) that is tailored for the technological requirements of CNs.
This analysis has been the base for many other socio-political-economic activities and research. On the one hand, work performed at UoW, informed the project and all the stakeholders on the global perspective of the Internet evolution, but most of all on its socio-economic un-sustainability. The reasons for this un-sustainability, albeit may look surprising to the general public, who still see the Internet as the bright, evolving, endless future, to insiders and researchers, following the reasoning and deduction of netCommons work, appears evident that novel regulations and novel organizational methods are necessary if fundamental rights of people, like privacy, freedom of speech and independence of thought, are to be guaranteed.
Based on this analytical part netCommons moved on to propose (and have accepted) several changes to the EECC that favor an nurture the growth of Community Networks, it informed Community Networks and their communities on how to organize themselves and how to advocate for their rights, it interacted with UNESCO to include CNs and the legal framework to protect them into their Internet Universality Indicators.
On a more local scale netCommons research has offered Community Networks and local authorities conceptual means for the organization of local networks as a commons, granting the local community a space for communications suitable to reduce the digital divide and not increasing it, and providing local authorities with a sound and informed conceptual base to support local regulations that empower Community Networks.
From a technological perspective, netcommons has evolved and made public (Open Source with Creative Commons licence) software instruments to improve monitoring of CNs at the physical, network and management level. Furthermore, novel applications or improved versions of existing applications are being released which are fully tailored for a local, community-based environment, for instance crowdsourcing tasks without the need of a cloud platform to share data, or providing a local cloud that works without internet connectivity or finally P2P real-time video distribution that (with a version for conferencing) that is tailored for the technological requirements of CNs.
"netCommons progress beyond the state of the art must be separated in two areas: the technical dimension, and the political-socio-legal dimension.
The technical advances are subtle, as technology in this realm is mature, thus steps forward are necessarily incremental. The centrality-based routing that netCommons is studying, however, may represent a watershed in the automatic management of wireless mesh topologies. Applications that, after years --or even decades-- of cloudification and centralization return to the original distributed models of the Internet, with an additional flavour of locality that reduced the global control that Internet giants are imposing on people. Finally, bringing into the crowdsourcing paradigm the organizational model of commons and community sharing tasks is once more a small step that can have a huge impact on the adoption and use of technology. In this technical context and bridging toward social sciences, netCommons has also developed a novel methodology for the participatory design of local (in space, time, or topic) applications or the deployment of a Community Network (or in general a technological infrastructure).
The political-socio-legal impact of netCommons achievements is instead humongus. The idea that the Internet, interpreted as the global communication network, can be ""owned by the people for the people"" is very simple, and surely we do not claim that netCommons invented it or presented it for the first time to the world. However, netCommons helped changing the regulations (the EECC directive) in a direction that allows CNs to flourish and become ""alternets"", at least a staple of the Internet ecosystem. Moreover, netCommons developed a political-economy theory in the realm of digital commons that includes CNs and justify their social value from an ethical point of view.
CNs are now listed into UNESCO Internet Universality Indicators."
The technical advances are subtle, as technology in this realm is mature, thus steps forward are necessarily incremental. The centrality-based routing that netCommons is studying, however, may represent a watershed in the automatic management of wireless mesh topologies. Applications that, after years --or even decades-- of cloudification and centralization return to the original distributed models of the Internet, with an additional flavour of locality that reduced the global control that Internet giants are imposing on people. Finally, bringing into the crowdsourcing paradigm the organizational model of commons and community sharing tasks is once more a small step that can have a huge impact on the adoption and use of technology. In this technical context and bridging toward social sciences, netCommons has also developed a novel methodology for the participatory design of local (in space, time, or topic) applications or the deployment of a Community Network (or in general a technological infrastructure).
The political-socio-legal impact of netCommons achievements is instead humongus. The idea that the Internet, interpreted as the global communication network, can be ""owned by the people for the people"" is very simple, and surely we do not claim that netCommons invented it or presented it for the first time to the world. However, netCommons helped changing the regulations (the EECC directive) in a direction that allows CNs to flourish and become ""alternets"", at least a staple of the Internet ecosystem. Moreover, netCommons developed a political-economy theory in the realm of digital commons that includes CNs and justify their social value from an ethical point of view.
CNs are now listed into UNESCO Internet Universality Indicators."