[LINK] The PLAN, and broadband speeds?

[Stewart Fist]

Karl writes
> 
> Someone on "Planet Earth" had better get up to speed on the fact that
> the future is about to happen. We can do our best to catch the wave, or
> we can bob about in the wakes of those who thought bigger and faster
> than we did.

This sounds like a clarion call for more technology.  You seem to want more
of the national economy to be poured into what is essentially (or mainly, at
least) a non-productive form of infrastructure, just on the grounds that it
is futuristic.

> 
> It starts with the realisation that "cost and benefit" need to be looked
> at from a different perspective. Not from perspective of the
> small-minded, bean-counter perspective, but from the perspective of our
> society as a whole.

I would have thought that this was a good reason for less dependence on
technology, not more.   You appear to be saying that we should 'measure by
the benefits accruing to the society, not by monetary value to the
economy/GDP"  If so, I agree.

But I don't think gigabit broadband rates are the way to do it.

There are very few obvious social benefits from broadband. We can all name a
few, but on your social "cost and benefit" analysis, we'd be better to wait
a while and let the other countries make the mistakes, and for their mass
manufacturers to reduce the implementation costs.


We need to shift our focus away from ever-expanding, higher-and-higher tech
cities, and look at the alternatives to this city-bound, street-clogged
lifestyle.  Which does not mean just 'opting-out' and going to live in a
commune in Nimbin.


For instance, Australia has never developed the small-town life that
proliferated in America, which is why we all pack into a half-dozen large
and totally inefficient cities.

We know that the ideal size for a capital city (with all the social and
sport facilities; cultural instrumentalities are available) is somewhere in
the region of a population of 1 million.

Two million is getting too large -- especially for the second million now
living in the outer regions of the city.  They don't get to use many of the
central facilities.  And when cities reach 4 million, then those on the
outer limits rarely travel to the city, or see the ocean -- or make regular
use of cities major cultural facilities.

So we'd be better off with a mesh network of smaller cities and satellite
towns. Then we could all walk to the local video-store as Tony does (but I
can't), or visit the museum, and use accessible public transport because it
is within walking distance.

Instead, we focus all our attention on the super-sizing of Sydney and
Melbourne -- building new highways, ring-roads and bridges. And like zealots
who have lost the plot, we continue doing this even when we've already run
out of water.  And we know that large residential tracts in these cities
needs to be gutted and rebuilt every few decades, and there is no way this
is cost-efficient from a national viewpoint.

 And since these cities are designed around a corporate and business core,
with radiating roads and public transport systems (which are automatically
less accessible as the size of the city grows) we have an automatic
extension of this peripheral alienation.  This is absolutely crazy -- but
there is absolutely no media or political discussion of decentralisation in
Australia, and there hasn't been since November 1975.

Whacking in gigabit broadband superhighways is not a solution to problems
like these. Broadband should be allowed to evolve at its own pace, and not
forced. 

Technological fixes like broadband -- with its supposed ability to zap X-ray
transmission to specialists, do business via video-conferencing, make
teaching efficient via electronic education, etc. -- are merely extensions
of the old way of thinking about technology (that it can fix every problem)
that contributed to the social problems in the first place.

We need a change in our economic thinking to encourage decentralisation.
This would allow future Australians to greatly reduce our dependence on all
forms of transport and on communications technology.  At the same time
decentralisation will make the country less dependent on fossil-fuel energy,
and distribute the pressure on distributed resources like water.

We need to stop and think, rather than automatically trying to keep up with
the technology-driven Jones families in Japan, Korea, Europe and the USA.

Curbing Australia's population growth would be the first step.  At least it
would give us time to do some sensible planning and reduce the cost of
housing.  

And, given the way the world is shaping up, Australia's greatest asset is
its low population density.

(Jumps off hobby-horse)

-- 
Stewart Fist, writer, journalist, film-maker
70 Middle Harbour Road, LINDFIELD, 2070, NSW, Australia
Ph +61 (2) 9416 7458