[LINK] Affordable Internet in Australia for low-income families ? Never happen...

[Tom Koltai]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: link-bounces at mailman.anu.edu.au 
> [mailto:link-bounces at mailman.anu.edu.au] On Behalf Of David Boxall
> Sent: Wednesday, 10 August 2011 8:37 PM
> To: link at mailman.anu.edu.au
> Subject: Re: [LINK] Affordable Internet in Australia for 
> low-income families ? Never happen...
> 
> 
> On 10/08/2011 12:28 PM, jim birch wrote:
> > david.boxall wrote:
> >
> >
> >> So what do we need?
> >>
> >> Water, food, shelter, clothing. There are probably thousands of 
> >> basics more important than Internet access. Hell, I know 
> people who 
> >> can't afford transport or a 'phone and I'd put those ahead of the 
> >> Internet.
> >>
> >
> > Perhaps, but...  While you can survive with food, shelter and 
> > clothing, you can't really participate in the medium that for most 
> > young people dominates life.  The urge to communicate yourself is 
> > driven by extremely powerful biological forces; it is underlies 
> > sex/procreation and power for social animals like us.  Facebook was 
> > originally designed as a way of getting laid (and it continues so.) 
> > ...
> 
> So you reckon the children of families that can't afford a 'phone or 
> transport would prefer Internet access before either? Or maybe they'd 
> give up one of the others I mentioned? You might put sex before food, 
> but you wouldn't last long.
> 
> Bear in mind that I live in a rural area. Distances are 
> substantial and, 
> where there's any public transport at all, it commonly runs 
> four times 
> per day. It's kind of hard to "participate in the medium" if 
> you can't 
> get to it. Anyway, I've always found face-to-face far more satisfying 
> than the Internet. ;)
> 
> Given a lack of discretionary income, does the term "affordable" mean 
> anything? What does the price matter to one who has no money to spare?
> 
> Does the fact that x% of people don't have y mean that y isn't 
> affordable? Maybe a, b and c are just more important.
> 
> Do the assumptions behind the original statement:
> On 9/08/2011 6:37 AM, Tom Koltai wrote:
>  > 29% of  Australians are not connected to the Internet. ... 
> reveal more about the one making the statement, and the Link 
> community 
> in general, than any of us might like? Perhaps our perspective is 
> distorted by comparative privilege. Maybe we all need to get out into 
> the real world.

Hmm, where to start.

The chicken or the egg. There-in lies the answer to the affordable
education and survival loop conundrum you have presented us with. 

I have been quasi internet connected since 1983, from Darwin, therefore,
it is less of a privilege and more of a "I will achieve". Mainly because
the MHSNet/ACSNet (etc) Cartel refused to connect me as I was not an
educational institution.

The Real World Test
I think Outback Darwin NT in 1983 based on a rented acoustic coupler,
($5200 p.a. from Telecom), a borrowed 3B2 Computer, a quasi semi legal
copy of Unix system 3 (with no man pages) at the end of a 4,000
kilometre microwave connection (248 hops) to QLD was pretty real world.

Added to this, comparative privilege can be earned through education. 
I think most Linkers would agree that the Internet is an adjunct to the
education process, (in fact Bill Gates claims that, to some extent, the
Net is replacing aspects of the tertiary education role) and;
A successful education process assists in ;

Survival,
Earning capacity,
Procreative choice,
Disease prevention and remediation,
Longevity, 

In other words, Survival, Lifestyle, Health and Ethics/Morals.

And added to this, the various how-to's on the Internet inform farmers
of Almanac type content right through to the PDF file on how to
reassemble that gearbox off the 1936 Massey Fergusson - thereby saving
the man on the land a passel of money in not having to get one of those
fancy city slicker mechanics to come out and do the job.

So David, Could a Farmer exist without his Almanac ?

Parents, somewhat surprisingly, have been known to make sacrifices for
their offspring.
During Semester breaks, I used to sell encyclopaedia's door to door.
I saw many parents doing household budget calculations to justify the
purchase of a set of Grolier encyclopaedias for their children.

In fact, the organisations that carry the burden of the Western worlds
global conscience (the real world), organisations like the UN, Unesco
and the OECD, spend a great deal of their time justifying their
interference in individuals communication policy to insist that
communications become available on a wider base at ever more affordable
levels and consider it germane to sustainable development.

Therefore, my initial posting was to inform Linkers that through the
various machinations of Telstra, and the acceptance of those by the
ACCC, the ULL price increase to $16, although adding value to the
Telstra shareholder value and  
in part justifying the higher prices of the NBN rollout wholesale price,
certainly has not done anything to ensure that the man on the land,
err, that would be you, has the opportunity of achieving a cheaper
connection alternative.

Therefore logically, as per the FCC ruling in the USA vis Comcast - We
could call it the US, FCC Comcast USO for cheap Internet - the Cable
Connection that bypasses almost a quarter of Australian homes could be
in fact used for cheaper internet connectivity to those people that are
unable to afford a normal internet connection.

The problem of the 29% unconnected people will not be resolved by
altering our point of view.
The real world of tomorrow requires a net connection to be as ubiquitous
as potable water, 
It will be altered by providing a cheaper connection alternative.

N.B. In the nineties, I connected 648 Villages in an emerging country
via Nokia donated GSM phones.
Each phone became the hub for commerce and communications in the
villages.
The proceeds of the incoming and outgoing phone calls went towards a
second well for the village.

How's that for real world David ?

The poor need to communicate to expand their marketing capabilities so
they can sell their market produce so that they can pay for Massey
Fergusson tractor spares.

This stretches back to Mesopotamian times, we records show that persons
from the country traded the fruits of their labour by transporting goods
to market.
Ergo, internet/communications is not an option that we can consider
unnecessary and only available to the hoi polloi.

Communication between sentient beings has been an evolution enabler
since the first mud skipper communicated to another mudskipper and said
"How about it then, this could be the start of a Darwinian utopia. ???"

TomK - Someone who has lived more Real World than many.