#ButterflyPark lights up the night!
Happy to see neighbors admiring the work aftr dark!
Butterfly Park at Night
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Lots of community wisdom in the house at the #ButterflyPark build. Together, these two have lived in the neighborhood more than 110 years!
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Padilla’s AT&T backed bill places Californians in jeopardy | California Broadband Policy Network
The wave of legislation upending U.S. communications protections fought for and reaffirmed since 1934, landed on the shores of California on April 17th. By voting to move Senate Bill 1161 forward, the Committee on Energy, Utilities and Communications placed our elderly, disabled and rural residents at risk in order to send a message about California’s commitment to innovation.
SB 1161, authored by Sen. Alex Padilla, prohibits the California Public Utilities Commission from regulating Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) and Internet Protocol (IP) enabled services. Many telephone calls are currently negotiated via IP services, and soon, all of them will be. The bill therefore nullifies any current or future CPUC remedies to ensure that basic telecommunication functions, including 911 services, are accessible to low-income residents, those with hearing disabilities, and communities that live in areas deemed unprofitable by companies like AT&T and Verizon who back the bill. In fact, the bill eliminates any local governance over access, quality and price of these services for all Californians.
During the hearing, some proponents of the bill pointed out facts that actually support the best arguments against SB 1161. A representative from the Congress of California Seniors testified about the usefulness of VoIP services in preventing elder abuse and isolation. With such critical benefits as these we should certainly have a California agency empowered to ensure equitable access to the technology. Other SB 1161 supporters asserted that the “bill does not change anything” — that it merely reinforces the current regulatory practice. If so, then AT&T, Verizon and Padilla can usher in an “app economy” gold rush without trampling over California’s most vulnerable populations.
The proponents are right in saying we should keep the status quo. Here’s what it is: telephone service must be affordable and accessible to everyone. When it’s not, the CPUC can force the telecommunications companies to provide it. If service falls below acceptable quality standards, the CPUC can enforce improvements. Because copper, cable and fiber-optic telephone systems already incorporate VoIP, SB 1161 strips that ability away from the State.
In the future, Internet Protocol (or its successor) will govern even more services that we’ll want to protect. With the growth of the “Internet of Things”, we’ll become evermore reliant on the ability of networked household objects to deliver timely information. Some of these objects will help manage our finances, our safety, even our health. When critical devices like these fail due to service quality issues and there’s no local governance to protect us, we all become members of the vulnerable communities jeopardized by SB 1161.
AT&T and Verizon have used the dollars they’ve earned from ratepayers to buy passage of similar bills in more than half of our country’s state legislatures. More than half of our country’s state legislatures have made a mistake. California lawmakers: you should follow the lead of the innovators who have positioned us at what Sen. Padilla called the “epicenter’ of the tech revolution– Think different. Stop SB 1161.
–My blogpost urging action against CA Senate Bill 1161, written for the California Broadband Policy Network
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Guide to experiencing [1] on your mobile device
Your device will need a mobile network connection or a WiFi connection to search for the Mayan lessons.
Make sure the Layar Reality Browser is installed on the device. Get it from wherever you go to install apps.
Use your device’s web browser to follow this link and register your email address to join the [1] network: www.XdotL.com/1_login. Your email address will be your “user name” for [1]. It will be used only to collect anonymized data about the growth of the network and to inform you of the release of new Mayan lessons. These messages will only be sent for a period of less than two months (exactly eight Mayan Calendar weeks). Once you register, you’ll be directed to a link that will allow you to launch [1].
You will launch into the “camera view” for the [1] content, which will be your main portal to the lessons. From your device menu, you can select ‘layer info” to read the introduction to [1] and share [1] with your friends. Please share via email! The camera view will show you the available lesson(s), indicated as a “point of interest”. You can attempt to a navigate to the lesson site using just this viewfinder, but the navigation will be challenging if you are more than a 1/4 mile from the site.
To make navigation easier, tap your device’s menu button choose the map view. You’ll then see an indication of your position and the position of the lesson, overlaid on a map of the city. This view is you second option for navigation as your position on the map will be updated as you move closer to the lesson.
If you click on the icon representing the lesson on the map, a pop-up menu will offer you a “take me there” option. Selecting this will lead to a list of step by step destination directions that you can follow to the lesson. You can also choose to be guided by voice navigation if your device has this capability.
Whichever navigation method you choose, the audio lesson from the Mayan elders will automatically begin to play when you are close enough to the site selected to enhance your experience of the lesson.
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[1]: App Launches Aug. 7, Performance Aug. 12
Facebook Event » Festival Site » Buy Tickets »
[1], my collaboration with filmmaker Cassidy Rast hits the streets of San Francisco next week, with the Augmented Reality app launch on August 7 and the Soundwave Festival performance on August 12. I’ll post more info on both later. For now, here are some details on the app:
8 audio messages from the Mayan elders explaining the meaning of 2012 and the Mayan calendar will be released sequentially on the Mayan calendar day most appropriate for that specific message. If you register, you will receive an email letting you know when a new message has been released. Each message will be found at a San Francisco location selected for it’s contemplative resonance with that message. The [1] app will guide you to the message sites using the “radar finder” of your phone’s Layar browser. The corresponding audio message will play automatically once you arrive at the site. For the best experience, plug earphones into your mobile device before you begin your journey to the message, and make sure the volume is up.
The source material for [1] comes from the audio, video, and traditional stories collected by Rast during the production of her documentary covering the life and teachings of Tz’utujil Mayan elder Tata Pedro Cruz. Tata Pedro is one of the last living Ajq’iij’s (calendar day keeper) from the highlands of Lake Atitlan, in Guate-Maya.
Topics: Events, nodelets | 2 Comments »
