[sudo-discuss] Telephone history & mesh; was Re: Power grid: the internet of electricity
Anon195714
anon195714 at sbcglobal.net
Wed Mar 27 18:35:45 PDT 2013
Hi Romy-
Yeah, I'd be willing to do it under whatever formalities were
appropriate, and in whatever form was appropriate, as long as the
schedule was reasonable (evenings/nights any day of the week work for
me, subject to my work schedule). The simplest format for me would be
talk + Q&A, with slides to project, and with some physical hardware to
demonstrate a few things.
I already have contact with the folks who are working on 510 because I'm
working on a community mesh network project called CTel, for Cooperative
Telephone & Telegraph (data communication is telegraphy).
CTel will be a combined worker- & subscriber-owned cooperative,
providing voice & data service in direct competition to major carriers,
and creating right-livelihood jobs from the get-go. We'll be seeking a
starting base of 2,000 subscribers to get going, but the network could
grow to tens of thousands. The project will be self-funding rather than
relying on outside capital with strings attached. It will be
structurally immune to being sold out to a large corporation or other
external ownership, thus it will always remain a community-owned network.
CTel is being designed to be user-friendly for people without technical
backgrounds, a drop-in replacement for existing landline, mobile, and
broadband. For example the young single mother trying to work and go to
college, the 80-year-old retiree, the working family on a tight budget,
the military veteran newly returned to civilian life, and Main Street
local businesses that serve the community. If we can serve those folks
successfully, we're on the right track.
CTel's worker-owners will provide regular and reliable customer support
and network maintenance, so the network keeps on working rather than
slowly pooping out after the initial excitement wears off.
The primary value of volunteer mesh projects such as 510pen is to enable
hackers/makers to experiment and develop new applications, push the
cutting edge, and try things that would be risky in a fully deployed
public network. This is the aspect that I've found most of the local
mesh activists are interested in, and they should be free to do it
without getting stuck with unpaid jobs having to operate and maintain a
network, and provide customer support to average users who don't have
technical skills.
By analogy, people enthusiastically participate in yearly "spruce up
your block" projects, but nobody wants to sweep the streets on a
volunteer basis every day of every week of the year. At first it's fun,
then it becomes "good exercise," then it becomes boring, and pretty
quickly it's a pain in the butt and people start drifting off. That's
why we have union workers to operate sweeping machines: it's a job that
needs to be done reliably every day.
And realistically, speaking from almost 30 years' experience in
installing, programming, and maintaining telephone systems for hundreds
of clients in the Bay Area, it really does get like street-sweeping
pretty quickly. It's work, un-glamorous and mostly dull, even for
someone who loves working with the technology.
What's likely to happen, as the best way forward, is for folks to do
what inspires them and motivates them, and not get stuck exploiting
themselves via some kind of "sense of obligation." (How many hackers
really want to answer customer service calls?;-) There's more than
enough open ground for lots of community gardens to bloom and bear fruit.
This also opens up the potential for collaboration between CTel and
510pen and other groups and individuals. What a lot of hackers/makers
want, is not only to create cool stuff, but to see their stuff released
to the public and put into general use by people. We can do that, and
people can get paid for the stuff they've developed. The inherent
financial openness of the cooperative business model means that those
arrangements will occur within the broader community consensus, to
ensure everyone has a fair and satisfactory outcome.
At present we have an initial test-case and demo system that interfaces
with telephones and laptops, and we're working on a routing protocol
that will provide for truly integrated voice and data addressing in the
network. I've been wanting to bring the stuff in and show it off; this
is just a matter of finding a time when the Wednesday evening meeting
agenda isn't already full with important items such as organizational
structure (and when I'm not busy with work for my clients, such as tonight).
The next step will be to set up mesh voice communication between local
hackerspaces/makerspaces. For example a "red phone" hotline between
SudoRoom and Ace Monster Toys, and another link to Techliminal, and then
(more ambitiously, this may or may not work depending on topography) to
Noisebridge in SF. Along the way we can pick up a few other SudoRoom
members' households if they're in the transmission path.
I've been funding the R&D out of pocket, which has made things go more
slowly than otherwise, but that's better than getting money with
external strings attached.
There's more to be said about all this, possibly at a meeting where
people can try out the demo system.
Meanwhile I've got a stack of tasks to do tonight...
-G.
======
On 13-03-27-Wed 9:07 AM, Romy Ilano wrote:
> G, a presentation on the "hidden history " of indie telco networks
> would be really cool to me!
>
> Would it interest one of the public school history teachers?
>
> Then the 510 network people could show how the history is relevant to
> what they're doing now.
>
> What do ya think of that?
> ---
>
> Romy Ilano
> http://www.snowyla.com
> romy at snowyla.com <mailto:romy at snowyla.com>
>
> On Mar 26, 2013, at 23:15, Anon195714 <anon195714 at sbcglobal.net
> <mailto:anon195714 at sbcglobal.net>> wrote:
>
>>
>> Yep, and I could give an all-day presentation on the topic, including
>> the UK and Australia as well as the USA.
>>
>> The Bell System operated according to engineering standards that
>> called for design and installation details that were too expensive to
>> provide in rural areas without raising the price of service to an
>> unacceptable level. So the Bell stayed out of those areas at first,
>> and smaller independent telcos sprang up to serve them.
>>
>> Farmers in some rural areas not served by Bell, set up "telephone
>> cooperatives" where they all bought in and paid for the equipment,
>> and chipped in labor or hired someone to go about setting up the
>> systems. The earliest implementations ran their wires along the tops
>> of the fences between farm properties.
>>
>> Another story that's fairly well known: how the dial phone was invented.
>>
>> Undertaker Almon Strowger noticed that he was losing business to a
>> competitor who had a relative working as an operator. When someone
>> said "operator, get me an undertaker," she'd put them through to her
>> relative. Strowger decided he'd had enough of that, and set about
>> inventing the Automatic Telephone. In a way, you could consider
>> Strowger to also be the inventor of the concept of "net neutrality."
>>
>> This was the origin of the Strowger or (in Bell System lingo)
>> "Step-by-Step" switching system. These machines are a beauty to
>> behold as they go through their clever mechanical motions to connect
>> calls. I spent my teenage years in an area served by a Strowger
>> switch, and I had the chance to work on Strowger PBXs a couple of
>> times, as well as building some nifty stuff from Strowger
>> components. Most noticeable is the definite sense of being in a
>> distinct "place" in cyberspace, a unique route through the machine,
>> with subtle acoustical characteristics that a trained tech (or a
>> teenage phone phreak) could recognize.
>>
>> Strowger switches served in the USA from about 1896 (the very first
>> one) to the late 1980s, and in the UK and Australia from the late
>> 1920s or so through the late 1980s. They were immune to the
>> electromagnetic pulse (EMP) created by atomic bombs. And overnight
>> when traffic was light, they used less power than today's digital
>> switches.
>>
>> There are oodles of stories to be told about Strowger.
>>
>> For one thing, "wiretaps" required physical connections to the lines
>> at the exchange. In the days when the GPO (General Post Office) ran
>> the telephones in the UK, GPO engineers were tasked with showing
>> military intelligence and law enforcement where to find the correct
>> places to make the connections. But if they (the GPO engs.) decided
>> that a particular wiretap was political or otherwise an abuse of
>> authority, they would wait until the coast was clear and then just
>> disconnect it.
>>
>> Today, with CALEA and Google Voice, we have no control over who gets
>> into the telephone switches via the back door, or who intercepts
>> calls from elsewhere in the network, and no way to stop them. Some
>> would call that "progress."
>>
>> Going back to WW2, resistance members in the telephone engineering
>> staffs in Nazi-occupied countries figured out a clever way to "route
>> around the damage" of Nazi eavesdropping. I'll save that story for
>> some possible future presentation.
>>
>> I also have a working English uniselector dial system that uses
>> Strowger components, that I could bring in and demonstrate at some
>> point if anyone's interested.
>>
>> -G.
>>
>>
>> =====
>>
>>
>> On 13-03-26-Tue 10:24 PM, Romy Ilano wrote:
>>> side note:
>>> did you know the history of telephone companies in the usa? i was
>>> reading about it. (someone smart left a book for me to read) =D
>>>
>>> it's so fascinating. before the depression, it wasn't profitable
>>> for major telecoms to go to rural communities, especially in the
>>> midwest. they disrespected the farmers and thought they were yokels...
>>>
>>> so the midwest used to be pretty left wing too (and the source of a
>>> lot of unrest with the farmers etc), so there was this big tradition
>>> of DIY telephone and telegraphs. someone gave me this history to
>>> read, it was so neat! it's weird that nobody talks about this
>>> history now. it's like it was forgotten!
>>>
>>> it's so weird how all these rabblerousers and farmers from the
>>> midwest are totally buried. nobody learns about it in us history,
>>> especially kids in Kansas.
>>>
>>> it reminds me of the indie network you are constructing at 510
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Tue, Mar 26, 2013 at 6:14 PM, Anon195714
>>> <anon195714 at sbcglobal.net <mailto:anon195714 at sbcglobal.net>> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Anthony, I know you didn't mean "no grids," but I was concerned
>>> that a quick skim of this discussion by anyone who didn't know
>>> the material in depth, might lead to the wrong conclusions.
>>>
>>> For an example of the danger of over-centralization:
>>>
>>> Consider the conversion of the public switched telephone network
>>> to VOIP, in light of the desire on the part of telcos to reap a
>>> huge honking windfall by selling off their vast real estate
>>> holdings. AT&T owns about 5,000 central offices, at least one
>>> in just about every medium or larger city in the USA. Comcast
>>> has FIVE nationwide, and AT&T would love to do likewise, and
>>> conversion to VOIP will accomplish just that.
>>>
>>> I'm sure you know what it's called when you centralize something
>>> by a factor of 1,000 to 1:
>>>
>>> "A high-value target."
>>>
>>> Something that's just begging to be hit hard and taken out, by a
>>> crazed dictator or an international terrorist group, or perhaps
>>> by a few sociopaths of the same kind who run ID theft rings and
>>> bank-card skimmer rings, or perhaps by someone out for the sheer
>>> thrill of smashing and wrecking.
>>>
>>> The plans for the "smart power grid" will produce more
>>> high-value targets: regional power control systems, centrally
>>> managed, all internet-connected and just daring the assholes of
>>> the world to hit them.
>>>
>>> Already, smart meters provide a tasty treat for predators. I'm
>>> aware of a couple of vulnerabilities that haven't been
>>> published, that would enable a single person with a grudge to
>>> black out a neighborhood for a couple of days. This situation
>>> will compound as smart meters, smart grids, and stupid
>>> regulatory officials converge.
>>>
>>> All of this over-centralization, and over-reliance on "smart"
>>> things, is causing our entire society to crawl further and
>>> further out on a limb that becomes more and more fragile every
>>> day. Sooner than later, something will break, bigtime.
>>>
>>> In a very practical sense, we have to be concerned with
>>> resilience.
>>>
>>> About which more in my next post.
>>>
>>> -G.
>>>
>>>
>>> =====
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On 13-03-26-Tue 5:28 PM, Anthony Di Franco wrote:
>>>> To be clear, I don't mean to say "no grids!1!!1!!!" but just
>>>> "use large-scale grids only for what they're best for in the
>>>> context of a broader heterogeneous system, not for almost
>>>> everything as they are now, and take into account in a rigorous
>>>> way overall system efficiency and other concerns like
>>>> vulnerability to failures both routine and rare and
>>>> corruptibility of the social systems that grow up around the
>>>> technical systems."
>>>>
>>>> I remember discussing these points a few times in the past with
>>>> you, George, and Hol, and others around sudo room; might we
>>>> like to get some documentation together on interesting
>>>> specifics? A section of the wiki maybe, where we can throw
>>>> ideas up about the details and see what sticks?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Tue, Mar 26, 2013 at 5:06 PM, Anon195714
>>>> <anon195714 at sbcglobal.net <mailto:anon195714 at sbcglobal.net>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> A lot of the arguement against power grids is ultimately
>>>> rooted in opposition to having our energy supply controlled
>>>> by distant corporations whose decisions are not sustainable
>>>> and not in our interests.
>>>>
>>>> I agree that over-dependence on greedy corporations for
>>>> vital infrastructure, merely for the sake of convenience,
>>>> is a shortcut to servitude. Google is the worst offender,
>>>> with its seductive Gmail and Google Voice offering
>>>> "convenience" in exchange for intensive and intrusive
>>>> surveillance, not only of those who use the services, but
>>>> of everyone they communicate with. (Worst of all, Google
>>>> Glass: "become a volunteer surveillance drone!")
>>>>
>>>> The model we should be looking toward, to manage the power
>>>> grid, is one of municipally-owned transmission
>>>> infrastructure (the wires along the streets), and
>>>> diversification of power producers (from individual
>>>> households to the existing power utilities). Everyone
>>>> would be paid the same rate for power they "upload" to the
>>>> grid, and everyone would pay the same rate for power they
>>>> "download." This would immediately level the playing field
>>>> and provide an enormous incentive for all manner of
>>>> renewable and new-tech power generation.
>>>>
>>>> Further, the municipal ownership model should also apply to
>>>> the wired telecoms grid: telephone and internet. (Even
>>>> your mobile device is only "wireless" for the last half
>>>> mile at most; the rest of the way it's as wired as my
>>>> antique dial phones.) All of these things are using the
>>>> public rights-of-way along the streets; they are arguably
>>>> public rights-of-way in themselves, and as such, should be
>>>> owned by the public.
>>>>
>>>> The municipal internet of electricity would entail each
>>>> local power producer (household or larger) having small
>>>> storage capacity on-site, and a switching synchronized
>>>> inverter to connect to the grid. An onboard microprocessor
>>>> with an analog voltage sensors would monitor line power to
>>>> determine when power should be uploaded to the grid or
>>>> downloaded from the grid. Simple "net metering" would keep
>>>> track of the billing.
>>>>
>>>> The small decentralized battery packs would act primarily
>>>> as buffers, to level out power production and consumption
>>>> among users. Overnight and over multiple cloudy days, and
>>>> during peak demand hours, the decentralized solar would be
>>>> supplemented by other power sources such as micro-reactors
>>>> and natural gas turbines.
>>>>
>>>> The uniform pricing mechanism would prevent predatory
>>>> "arbitrage" of electricity, and provide the incentive to
>>>> install solar panels on every solar-accessible flat
>>>> surface, even on bus shelters and other street kiosks.
>>>>
>>>> The point-of-production microprocessors would be isolated
>>>> from the internet to prevent cyber-attacks against the
>>>> grid: the best kind of "smart grid" is one that
>>>> self-regulates locally without being vulnerable globally.
>>>>
>>>> I should also mention: Yes, electric automobiles can
>>>> provide household power storage in the absence of having a
>>>> grid, but a) not everyone owns or even wants an automobile,
>>>> b) if you've drained your car battery pack overnight to
>>>> power your house, it's not available the next morning to
>>>> get you to work, and c) even if everyone could afford a new
>>>> electric car, there are good reasons to reduce car
>>>> ownership and usage in favor of bicycles, scooters,
>>>> motorcycles, buses, and trains.
>>>>
>>>> Beyond that, we should not be destroying our civic
>>>> infrastructure in favor of requiring everyone to have their
>>>> own i-Things or do without. Public phones, public
>>>> bathrooms (do you really want to carry an i-Pee around?),
>>>> public drinking fountains, public benches for sitting,
>>>> public transport, etc.: are all civic goods that make the
>>>> public sphere more user-friendly and accessible. A public
>>>> power grid is another example, as with public water supply,
>>>> public sewage treatment, and refuse disposal: life without
>>>> those things would be worse than miserable.
>>>>
>>>> Don't destroy it: reclaim it, revision it, and rebuild it.
>>>>
>>>> -G.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> =====
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On 13-03-26-Tue 3:41 PM, Anthony Di Franco wrote:
>>>>> Production of alternative energy can be and for most
>>>>> reasons probably should be much less centralized,
>>>>> equivalently, smaller-scale, than production of energy
>>>>> mostly is now. (Off-grid, as you mention, but very literally.)
>>>>> Large-scale up front + large, complex distribution
>>>>> networks is revealed as an obsolete architecture; large
>>>>> scale distribution networks become relatively less
>>>>> important, so even if the answer to your question is no,
>>>>> which it probably isn't given crowdfunding and other
>>>>> disintermediated finance gaining momentum, it's moot, or
>>>>> at least of much less relative importance.
>>>>> Put another way, when the most important goal is maximum
>>>>> efficiency rather than maximum centralization, large
>>>>> upfront capital investment + large, complex distribution
>>>>> network is stupid; proper accounting
>>>>> <https://homebrewindustrialrevolution.wordpress.com/> of
>>>>> all costs and benefits in a global rather than piecewise
>>>>> local sense reveals this now for agriculture,
>>>>> manufacturing, energy, ...
>>>>> Even now, buffering between supply and demand is a
>>>>> constraint on grid architecture leading to great economic
>>>>> demand within the current paradigm for distributed storage
>>>>> / production of energy according to someone who came
>>>>> through sudo room whose name escapes me.
>>>>> This loosely-drafted email brought to you by the slogan
>>>>> <http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrillas/2010/11/eaas-non-rival-goods-vs-rival-goods.html>,
>>>>> "localize production, virtualize everything else"
>>>>> <http://www.miiu.org/wiki/Resilient_Things_by_Top-Level_Category> and
>>>>> the acronym STEMI
>>>>> <http://www.accelerationwatch.com/mest.html> compression
>>>>> <http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrillas/2008/11/stemi.html>.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> On Tue, Mar 26, 2013 at 3:17 PM, Romy Ilano
>>>>> <romy at snowyla.com <mailto:romy at snowyla.com>> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> Is it possible to create alternative energy
>>>>> distribution networks (biofuels/solar/ wind etc) that
>>>>> replace mainstream petrol and natural gas based energy
>>>>> without a large financial sector?
>>>>>
>>>>> the vc system that funds these alternative energy
>>>>> start-ups piggy backs off the investment banks, etc.
>>>>> and big private equity and institutional investment
>>>>> funds. vcs are like a fly on the @ss of a financial hippo.
>>>>>
>>>>> I haven't heard people discuss off-grid that much in
>>>>> the tech talks I've been to( which are excellent). Is
>>>>> there a conversation here that would show how off grid
>>>>> is a viable alternative, even if it's not a big money
>>>>> solution?
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> On Tue, Mar 26, 2013 at 1:56 PM, <hol at gaskill.com
>>>>> <mailto:hol at gaskill.com>> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> this talk about imports and exports always reminds
>>>>> me of energy flow
>>>>>
>>>>> compare 2011
>>>>> https://www.llnl.gov/news/newsreleases/2012/Oct/images/25306_LLNLUSEnergy2011650.jpg
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> with 2002
>>>>> http://www.hubbertpeak.com/us/images/us_energyflow2002.jpg
>>>>>
>>>>> fascinating
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> sudo-discuss mailing list
>>>>> sudo-discuss at lists.sudoroom.org
>>>>> <mailto:sudo-discuss at lists.sudoroom.org>
>>>>> http://lists.sudoroom.org/listinfo/sudo-discuss
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> sudo-discuss mailing list
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>>>>> http://lists.sudoroom.org/listinfo/sudo-discuss
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
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>
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