wide area enterprise mesh

Doc: Nobody expects to pay nothing to operate in a free marketplace. But they don't want that marketplace conceived and run as a one-way piping system for pumping "content" from entertainment and publishing producers to the same consumers who have been soaking up "media" in the same manner for the past 50 years.

What smart cities and counties want is to create the conditions where enterprise can flourish.

I hadn't seen Doc's comment yesterday when I slapped together a bunch of links about wireless mesh, but surely he's got it right. And, "enterprise" need not be confined to media, i.e., to "content." Rather, in order for "content" to be truly enterprising, it must be freed from the constraints of the current model. I.e., instead of trying to tell Comcast or Fox how to run their business, we could be running our own. The best enterprise we little folk could aggressively pursue would be to produce, from the bottom up, a wireless mesh network, always on, durable and easily replaceable, of which we are shareholders and partners. As Clay Shirky sez:

There are two ways to build $10 billion in network infrastructure. The first is to get ten large firms to pony up a billion, and the second is to get 10 million users to spend a hundred dollars each. Wifi fits that second model, and has created an explosion of interest and experimentation that would be impossible to create in a world where the 2.4Ghz band was treated as property.

Then we'd begin to live on something other than a one-way street. There's a lot more to this, having to do with how we (mis)understand property, and how corporate media hegemony (mis)shapes our every waking thought.