Freedom to Connect

Held March 5-6 in Washington, DC:

F2C is a meeting of people engaged with Internet connectivity and all that it enables, including vendors, customers, regulators, legislators, analysts, financiers, citizens and co-creators. This year, the theme of F2C is how universal connectivity and the plunging capital requirements of information production are changing our fundamental economic and social assumptions. (F2C is produced by David S. Isenberg of isen.com, LLC.)

Comments

[Gerry]

A good conference. I was a bit disappointed at the lack of progress since WTF2004. Some blocking actions have been successful (on net-neutrality, for example), and without them we could be a lot worse off, but on the whole the forces of consolidation and monopoly power have proceeded apace.

The big draw for me was that the author of The Wealth of Networks, Yochai Benkler. His presentation was largely things we already know from his book and where we have been recently, and it was very interesting to see him responding to critiques and questions. He is very accessible, and a very interesting speaker.

As you know, his book has a wiki, and I promised him that I would work on making it a better tool for discussion and advancing the dialogs around the book and connected concerns. He said he has been keeping back in that space so as not to drive the conversation and such. I'm thinking of two initiatives, one to populate About Us pages for the book, F2C and related topics, and to start to build more community around the book wiki so the conversation continues to expand.

I think he would benefit very much from the example of your approach to blogging which demonstrates how to draw people further into the conversation when they show up in the space, and I hope I can engage you also in this task.

It seems as if many of us are trying to figure out the same things in this space, how to describe the economic models of non-market exchange. My bent is towards the conversation about alternative and targeted currencies that are designed to encourage the kind of flows we want and discourage the kind of flows we do not want. Getting past the magic of market fundamentalism to create something new and robust. I hope that we can eventually convene a much larger multi-disciplinary conversation about all of this. All important and necessary work for our emerging future to support us, and to overcome the forces of stagnation and control.

[Phil]

Excellent update, Gerry. Thank you for sharing it here.

[Gerry]

Also wanted to give a link to the Sunlight Foundation. Blogger Micah Sifry presented about them and other efforts towards transparency and such.

[Phil]

Thanks, Gerry, blogged it.