Thoughts on Attending the Alliance for Community Media Conference – Pittsburgh, 7 – 9 July 2010

Same murmurs all over – " We've all got to re-invent ourselves.", "Everything is changing.", "It's never going to be like it was". And of course, plenty of "We don't do things like that.", "That's never been how we've done it.



Founded in 1976 as the National Federation of Local Cable Programmers, the Alliance (http://www.alliancecm.org/) represents the hundreds of Community Media Centers and Public Access facilities around the USA. 


Recently they gathered in Pittsburgh, PA. to network, share knowledge and shape the burgeoning telecommunication territory of the USA.

A new geography has unfolded in the public commons with the development of each new bit of the spectrum and layers of man-made MediaSpace in once un-inhabited Cyberspace.  Just as humans spread cross the planet as more earth was discovered, so we have now occupied Media Space in parts of Cyberspace.  


In each instance - 
radio, 
      telegraph, 
               telephone, 
                     telecommunications, 
                                      cable, 
                                             fiber, 
                                                  microwave, 
                                                        satellite and terrestrial distribution of data - 
.
In each case our cultures and their technologies have extended the nature of space, redefined geography and connectedness.


And each new medium has provided access to new space to be in, collaborate in, make a life in.  


How much of your life have you spent on the phone?  On-line?  Wirelessly connected to folk elsewhere?  At the boob tube? 


What continents does your data inhabit?    How much of it got there by satellite?


Where have you been seen?


These multi-media messages are distributed in our various public rights-of-way. 


Airwaves
             Spectrum, 
                        telephone poles in street-beds, 
                                                Cables in earth's sea beds, 
                                                                cable-television and fiber optic networks under our streets, 


That wire from a pole to the building you inhabit.        The box on your wall.


Each of these new geographies has enlarged that commons, unfolding space once un-known,
 once none of ours,
        Thereby once all of ours.


In the USA, this virtual estate development has been funded just as the British East India Company did parts of Asia - by means of public franchises, licences and grants awarded to private corporate entities, allowing these franchisees to control and sell the rest of us access to MediaSpace.

In most generations of MediaSpace 's development, reservations of public commons have been set aside – Public Radio, 
    Telephone Universal Service Funds, 
            Public Access TV,
                          Community Arts & Performing Centers. 
                                     

 Just now, a new cyberspace land rush is happening quietly all around us – looking to develop the vast segments of wireless spectrum that MIGHT be vacated by analog television companies. At the same time, new fiber-optic nervous systems are being developed in our communities. New Intelligent, often invisible Public Rights-of-way are being developed on our behalf - more or less.

Those gathered at the ACM Conference are largely those who manage the public access television territory in the digital public commons.


Challenge is, cable-tv per se is soon to be superceded by fiber-optic and wireless networks. And the emerging generation of MediaSpace Development Franchises may or may not be designed to provide a vital, effective and productive  digital commons.

And besides, in this era of convergence, of the unified digital multi-media platform in a smart phone, what is television anymore? Just one of the multi-media elements aggregated into the vast stream of knowledge, community, discussion and commerce now inhabiting our MediaSpace here in Cyberspace.

So, yeah, it's all changing, and it's all the same. The medium is changing, the messages much the same.



And you, in your town where the Intelligent, often invisible digital public right-of-way is being developed RIGHT NOW – do you know what is being built on your behalf(ish)? 
        Does your community have a telecommunications and community media element in your comprehensive plan? 
                              Do you know where your Public Access Agency is located? 
                Is the economy/eco-system you inhabit evolving to keep pace with the global development of this new geography that so many of us spend so much time in,         meet friends in,          do business in,        find a life in? 


Where is your gateway to the digital commons??

Are your community's interests being well served in this realm?

Where would you go to ask?

http://www.alliancecm.org/