[OSGeo-Discuss] What do we do now?

[Miles Fidelman]

My Fellow Internet Engineers,

*WTF do we do now, as Donald Trump's America looms, threatening 
Democracy as we know it at home & abroad?*

In 1992, the Internet opened to the public, which immediately started 
calling for /Electronic Democracy/, /Electronic Town Meetings/, and 
/Electronic Town Halls./

Dave Clark told us what that might look like, proclaiming:
/*We reject: kings, presidents, and voting. We believe in: rough 
consensus and running code.*/

And, I launched the /Center for Civic Networking/ to bring electronic 
town meeting to the world.

Since then, I've been building community networks, and organizing civic 
forums, focused mostly on planning & developing municipal 
infrastructure:  growth planning, master planning, managing 
rights-of-way, launching municipal broadband infrastructure.  More 
recently, I've focused on redeveloping aging condominium complexes - 
motivated by serving on a board & long-range planning committee of the 
oldest condo complex in Massachusetts, worrying about how to avoid the 
fate of Miami's Champlain Towers, crumbling into the Atlantic while its 
board rearranged deckchairs by the pool, its owners ignoring the 
situation until way too late...  a challenge we share with many 
condominium complexes built in the post-WWII era.

And now, as the 250th Birthday of America approaches, I find myself 
living in Acton MA, birthplace of the first Minuteman Company to cross 
the Old North Bridge in Concord, the first to die turning back the 
British, convening a Town Meeting on *How Do We Redevelop Our Aging 
Neighborhoods & How Do We PAY For It? *Three days later, I attended the 
250th Anniversary reenactment of the /Massachusetts Provincial Congress, 
/at First Parish Church & Wright Tavern in Concord - the assembly that 
became the de facto government of Massachusetts, subsequently sending 
delegates to the /Continental Congress/ in Philadelphia, that went on to 
declare independence, raise an army, write a constitution, and declare 
/E Pluribus Unum./

I did not expect to find myself, a month later, contemplating the demise 
of American Democracy as we know it, and perhaps the fall of Western 
Civilization.  But here I am, 70 years old, 63 years after attending 
JFK's inauguration, contemplating his words:

*/Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall 
pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, 
oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty,/*

and his challenge: */And so, My Fellow Americans:  Ask not what your 
country can do for you--ask what you can do for your country.  My fellow 
citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what 
together we can do for the freedom of man.

/*My Fellow Internet Engineers, it's 55 years since the first packets 
traversed the ARPANET.  We've Networked the Planet, linked 6 of the 8 
billion people on Planet Earth into a Network of Minds.  Each of us, and 
all of us carry in our pockets the power to be anywhere, and everywhere, 
all at once.  We've learned to organize ourselves in large numbers - to 
go the moon, to wage global war, to build global supply chains, to 
exchange cat pictures & shout political vitriol at great volume. *Now 
it's time to use this network we've built, to **/Call Town Meeting to 
Order/**,**//**to address the Clear and Present Danger that confronts 
all of us.*

Yesterday, on Election Day, I posted a think piece, on
*/Rebuilding Democracy: Town Meeting Government for the Internet Age/ 
<https://milesfidelman.substack.com/p/rebuilding-democracy-town-meeting>*
Inviting people to join me in pulling together a /Civic Engineering Task 
Force /... to launch a /Campaign to Redevelop Suburbia/, Develop a 
Platform, Form Working Groups, and Solicit Presentations Exhibitors & 
Sponsors for an initial Plenary Meeting.

*This morning, I awake to a far greater threat, a far more pressing need 
to organize ourselves*,
and so I ask you, My Fellow Internet Engineers, to
*Join me at **/Civic.Net/ <civic.net>**to* *Help Integrate a Civic 
Internet, organize Working Groups, and convene Town Meetings in your 
communities - so  that */*government of the people, by the people, for 
the people, shall not perish from the earth.* /

Right now, we're a blog & a chat group on Substack - a step up from 
Licklider's paper /MEMORANDUM FOR: Members and Affiliates of the 
Intergalactic Computer Network /listing /Topics for Discussion at the 
Forthcoming Meeting/ - but I hope to clone the IETF/Meetecho & 
Datatracker/ environment to support serious electronic town meeting - 
and could use some serious help from folks experienced with both the 
technology, and the process that has brought us our global nervous 
system, and perhaps our /last best hope of earth.

/*Join me at **/Civic.Net/, <civic.net>***subscribe, pipe up/, /pitch 
in, contribute a few bucks to the cause - it's /Lives, Fortunes and 
Sacred Honor/ time, I'm all in, and this is not a one-person job.

Miles Fidelman

-- 
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, there is.  .... Yogi Berra

Theory is when you know everything but nothing works.
Practice is when everything works but no one knows why.
In our lab, theory and practice are combined:
nothing works and no one knows why.  ... unknown

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