Oh God, here I go on an open-source pro-Linux/Ubuntu rant again, but really. This entire project centers its ideals around the concept of Digital Inclusion, which is the following:
Digital Inclusion is the initiative that helps people who are not online gain access with affordable hardware, software, tech support/information, and broadband Internet service, so they can begin to use this technology to improve their lives. (http://wirelessphiladelphia.org/digital_inclusion.cfm)
I’m sorry, affordable software, tech support and information? WHAT DO YOU THINK UBUNTU IS? It’s really just becoming annoying how little people know about technology; people in big places who SHOULD know about technology before they go around trying to fix problems and not having the vaguest idea what, exactly, the problem is.
Can I introduce you to my paper from last term about Africa and Ubuntu? About free and open source software? About operating systems that are free, yes FREE, completely free, 100% no strings attached, and how they actually run BETTER than Windows and (ugh) Apple? I won’t go into my whole “Bill Gates has this country brainwashed into thinking that you have to pay to get a quality product” rant, but it is rather annoying when huge ($22 million) projects such as WiFi Philly fail because they are trying to reinvent the wheel.
It would be one thing if they were just trying to offer wireless Internet, which is what I originally thought was going on. But they’re not. Of course, EarthLink, worst ISP ever, is trying to profit off this mess and that’s why they offer these “cheap packages” for hardware, software, tech support, information, and, of course, Internet access. But Ubuntu, every version, already offers free software, and tons of it, tech support, and more information than you could shake a stick at. A very large stick. So why try and invent these things over again? It’s like no one even KNOWS what’s out there, but they’re trying to come up with these answers that are so short-sighted and ignorant, I wonder how these people can be in charge of the whole city! Maybe that’s what’s wrong with it. Everyone is so technology ignorant. Grr.
Let’s back up a step as I get off my soapbox. WiFi Philly offers these Digital Inclusion packages to low-income families as a way to bridge the “digital divide” (the same problem in Africa, hmm) in Philadelphia. I think that’s entirely the wrong way to go about it. Now, obviously EarthLink, being a greedy corporate America company, has to profit somewhere in this scheme; but why did EarthLink have to be involved at all? First off, that technology now is so out of date, there’s no way anyone who could afford to pay for Internet would chose to pay that ISP for Internet; it’s slow and it’s always jam-packed because it’s public. If the city of Philadelphia was going to take my tax money, and $22 million dollars to dump into this project, it sounds to me like EarthLink is profiting pretty well.
Now I applaud the effort to try and connect the entire city to the Internet; I think the Internet is one of the best learning tools out there, not to mention it just makes life easier, communication easier, information more freely available, etc; I don’t think I need to tout the brilliance of the Internet for a class project where we are using the Internet to enhance our learning. It’s pretty self-sufficient. So yes, Internet for lower-income families, I’m all for it.
But in the state it’s in, it’s such an awful bloody mess. The EarthLink guy who was in charge died apparently, and now EarthLink wants out. And Nutter thinks that this is Street’s mess and doesn’t want to touch it. But, as this article points out, wouldn’t it be great if Nutter fixed it? What a legacy. You picked up the ball that the previous mayor dropped. It would be great if the WiFi Philadelphia project weren’t just a huge waste of money.
If Philadelphia were connected the same way Drexel is – Internet is free, the wireless works about 90% of the places you need on campus, and you never have a problem with too many people on the network already – which is how I originally thought it would be, I would be very excited. It would be awesome if on the way to the airport on the R1, I could check the status of my flight, or be sending emails, or just browsing Facebook, which is probably what most people would do. But as it is, the technology is out of date, the networks is always overclogged, and I don’t know one person who’s ever successfully used the public wifi.
I think the project was a good idea, but when people start wanting to profit off the idea, that’s where it gets sidetracked. It should be offering only free, public Internet to residents of the Philadelphia area. If you want to have another project that offers laptops, hardware and software (Ubuntu or not), and tech support to people, then that’s great and I’m all in support of that, too. Everyone should have a computer, and as the FOSS (free and open source software) people believe, everyone has the right to software. But that idea and WiFi Philly are two entirely different projects, and they should never have been lumped together in the first place. Maybe they could even have succeeded separately, instead of failing miserably.
I will say this, though: that the idea was good; lower-income families could in no way afford to buy computers and pay for Internet every month if they’re worried about rent and utilities. And the idea to try and give those families computers and Internet access was a great one; I just don’t think that something that philanthropic should have been ruined by corporate greed or government short-sightedness and technology ignorance.
Tags: wifi
April 27, 2008 at 4:33 pm |
I think you totally miss the point. People who have been left out of the digital age do not need UBUNTU they need computers, they need Internet access…does UBUNTU offer this to people? No it is free software once you are already on the Internet and have a computer.