Master/Slave or Peer-to-Peer?

Sheeple Consumers or Citizen Activists?

Language matters. When Municipal wireless projects talk in terms of the "last mile in" to the "customer", it pretty clearly indicates that they have opted to maintain the old industrial era "Master/Slave" metaphor for their municipal wireless solution -- And probably for their politics and businesses as well.

The other option, of course, is to adopt a modern, peer-to-peer, mesh network architecture in which ALL nodes on the network are active participants in the mesh. This is the only way a municipality can create a truly Extra-Ordinary outcome for its citizens. This also creates a "first mile out" solution. In turn, a peer-to-peer mesh solution has the added benefit of giving all participants an incentive to improve their local infrastructure to improve their personal conditions. In the past, this has been called "leveraging end-user capital." It is what financed so much of the PC revolution that so benefited the US innovation economy. It is what creates a virtuous cycle of improvements.

The question is simply: Why do municipalities chose today to abandon this proven engine for economic innovation and growth?

Of course, the current EULAs from the "incumbents", such as Comcast, Verizon, AT&T etc., all specifically forbid sharing of connectivity by, at or for the end points. Intended or otherwise, this has the result of making a true peer-to-peer mesh a forbidden fruit. But is it really a municipality's function to pick business plan winners? Or is it to provide the very best solutions for its citizens?

From the above, it is clear that, until Peer-to-Peer business models are adopted by the incumbents, only municipalities are able to create and sustain modern, peer-to-peer, mesh network architecture in which ALL nodes on the network are active participants. Today, only municipalities can create networks that enable a virtuous cycle of improvements financed largely by end-user investments.

If a municipality fails to develop a municipal wireless solution that allows it to benefit from leveraging end-user capital, and the resulting cooperative gain created by this edge capital, I predict that such a system will have a substantially higher risk of failure. If we treat our fellow citizens like sheeple, as in the Master/Slave model imbedded in WiMax technology, they have no incentive to spend their own money to make local improvements. Thus they can never realize the innovation economy benefits of a system with inherent cooperative gain.

So what, my fellow citizens, do we expect from our government leaders? Master/Slave or Peer-to-Peer? The past or the future?

Posted by Jock Gill at April 11, 2006 4:21 PM | TrackBack