Re: <nettime> "Dark Fibre" review

[Steve Cisler <cisler@pobox.com>]

As someone who lives in Silicon Valley I thought Cox's review was quite
good (since I have not read Lovink's book) and I intend to get our library
to purchase if they have not.  However, they do tend to buy a lot of books
about the industry that still generates a lot of money for the library
users, the towns, and the libraries benefit from this.

I'd question the phrase 'bits' of fiber. I don't have stats, but with the
telecom depression a lot of the fiber is dark, though it was not planned
that way.

I certainly agree with the positive aspects of the computer and net
culture here in this part of California. My own study (and later
participation in) the community networking activities leads me to
recommend "Fire in the Valley" by Freiburger and Swaine as well as Bernard
Aboba's Online User's Encyclopedia.  There are two personalities that need
mentioning;

Bob Albrecht of the Peoples Computer Company which was more a publication
and services and activities that included one of the first free access
sites for youth, and there were gatherings that led to the Homebrew
Computer Club meetings. Albrecht was and is involved in the way computers
can be used in education.

More info here:  http://sumeru.stanford.edu/pcc/

Lee Felsentein who helped build Berkeley's Community Memory.  He's still
very active and is working on Linux PC's designed for use in rural Laos.  
<www.jhai.org>




Steve Cisler 
4415 Tilbury Drive 
San Jose, California 95130 
http://home.inreach.com/cisler home page 
http://glocal.crimsonblog.com web log





#  distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission
#  <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
#  collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
#  more info: majordomo@bbs.thing.net and "info nettime-l" in the msg body
#  archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net