Re: [Make-wifi-fast] [bufferbloat-fcc-discuss] on savewifi.org and establishing the value to the world of wifi

[Lauren Weinstein <lauren4321@gmail.com>]

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I say again, if you want to win this war, it's going to take pressure from
ordinary non-techies in large numbers, and "*The government wants to
control your Wi-Fi" *is the approach most likely to succeed.

I'll tell you a little story. Years ago, I held a pair of conferences here
in L.A. on "save the Internet" issues. One of the attendees was this quite
quiet -- very thoughtful when he spoke -- man I didn't know, who sat in the
back taking notes. All dressed in black. My registration data showed him as
being from the D.C. area.

After one of the sessions he pulled me aside and said (pretty much in these
words), "Lauren, I want to give you some free advice. You're all
approaching these topics from logical, technical standpoints, and the
politicians are going to steamroll over you and squash you like bugs.
Either learn to play the game their way or you're wasting your time, or
even worse."

After the conference, I did some research on this fellow, and learned he
was an uber-powerful senior D.C. lobbyist who worked for (among other
companies) one of the most powerful and intrinsically evil industries in
the U.S. I felt like I had gotten advice from Darth Vader.

But he was absolutely right.

L






On Sat, Dec 5, 2015 at 3:59 AM, Dave Taht <dave.taht@gmail.com> wrote:

> I had a couple meta-thoughts this morning about how to make the real
> importance of wifi more apparent.
>
> A thought would be to ask various folk (or do a contest, or ask the
> world at large) - to write an essay or story where they
>
> A) imagine a world where wifi never happened
>
> or
>
> B) Or one where it was made more illegal than it is today (or less -
> what would wifi be like if wep and wpa not been adopted, favoring e2e
> encryption, and responsibility for running open APs didn't fall on the
> owner)?
>
> or
>
> C) imagine one where wifi fails completely (As it already does in
> large cities and at distance, and in crowded areas)
>
> or
>
> D) talked about what they used wifi for originally and what they use
> it for today.
>
> or
>
> E) What it could be used for tomorrow?
>
> I've done a lot of story-telling about what wifi means and meant to
> *me* over the years... (and can easily do more)
>
> but I'll argue that discussion on everything from serious stuff
> analysing the economic impact, the change in people's habits, the rise
> of entirely new markets, to trival stuff like "how wifi save my
> poodle's life", to stories like Stross/Doctorow's "the unwirer"......
> (which I remember reading online, it's well worth buying) [1]
>
> in order to preserve this wonderful freedom-full wireless technology
> we are so in danger of losing.... as it's unclear, sometimes, what,
> exactly, we're fighting for, here.
>
> [1] I would have loved to have seen doctorow's talk earlier this week:
>
> "No Matter who's Winning the War on General Purpose Computing, You're
> Losing"
>
>  http://www.online-educa.com/programme/agenda/sessions/com11
>
> hope it was filmed.?
>
> Dave Täht
> Let's go make home routers and wifi faster! With better software!
> https://www.gofundme.com/savewifi
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