Why flying 'Internet drones' over Africa is a dumb, libertarian fantasy
theglobeandmail.com
theglobeandmail.com
A great article otherwise though.
A profound understatement.
I didn't know someone had to be in government before their ideology could be considered silly.
Libertarian bashing seems to be fashionable lately.
Of course it is. Many of the libertarian voices I hear these days are off the rails. Some, but not all, of my politics are libertarian but in the last few years I stopped saying as much because I don't want to get lumped in with the loons. There is a lot of untenable wishful utopian thinking seen as axiomatic going around these days.
Why the focus on corporations? I think it's just another generalization- when we talk about libertarian innovation, it's often about Objectivist-looking titans of industry singlehandedly shaping the market and keeping the big bad taxman away, as opposed to autonomous small-scale hacker collectives, or the little guy in a private workshop.
I'd just prefer to call it "cyberpunk."
See how ineffective these titles are? Isn't it much more effective to assume the identity of fiscal conservatives and deflate the funding out of a potential market before it's even born by appealing to those who make most of the economic decisions?
I think it helps to consider HN not as a public forum, but as a capitalist/democratic wind vane or a PR game sandbox. Remember, you can say whatever you want here but only up-voted and approved comments will be seen by others.
Well, other than the libertarians who thought of it, and those that support it.
Learn the difference, then understand that there's nothing "libertarian" about making money from avoiding a sovereign power's taxes while sabotaging their communications infrastructure.
The "no true libertarian" defense?
Who seriously thinks Google and Facebook bringing the Internet to the whole of Africa isn't a good thing for Africans? The only things I'd be worried about in this case is
1) Google/Facebook enabling mass surveillance of Africans, against Africans' will, but there would be nothing they can do about it except "stop using the Internet", in their case, since they wouldn't be able to control them (at least that's what the author is insinuating, too)
2) They serve a very restricted version of the 'Internet', where they heavily promote their own services
But in case 1) the majority of the African countries already decided to implement deep packet inspection at the ISP level at that last ITU meeting, and other such technologies to enable mass surveillance of Africas, and in case 2), I can't imagine they would do that, because their services would become a lot less useful, too.
As for stuff like providing competition to their local carriers - come on. Most ISP's and carriers can't cover the whole Africa and they won't do it anytime soon anyway in the traditional way. Either they do this sort of stuff themselves in the future, or others do it before them. One way or the other, it's much easier to bring Internet to the whole of Africa this way, from the sky.
And where is AOL now?
http://www.techspot.com/news/51589-aol-dial-up-users-account...
But the first paragraph mentions the ubiquity in Africa of California-born Whatsapp, which isn't even that popular in Silicon Valley and California?
Oh, and Android.
I have to admire the trajectory of the word's decline. It joins the ranks of "conservative", "liberal", and even "neoliberal".
and anyway, libertarians do believe in charity, just not government-coerced charity.
Yes, there are corrupt governments in some African countries, and yes, there is a history of corruption in many of these countries. But to group all of Africa's governments together and judge them with such prejudice is hardly just.
Interested to know.
The African governments effective and non-corrupt enough to provide basic 21st century amenities like internet access are, practically by definition, not the African governments that we are talking about. What need do those countries have with drone-internet if they already have widespread uncensored internet access?
When we talk about drone internet for Africa, we are talking about drone internet for African countries that have at best benevolent but ineffective or resourceless governments.
As far as I can tell from wikipedia, there are only three African countries where significant internet access is present: Morocco, South Africa, and Egypt. Egypt however has a recent history of internet censorship/blackout and an uncertain future for internet censorship.
You know, you can have a government that's not corruct and still don't have "basic 21st century amenities like internet access". Actually your own people might not even care about such "basic amenities".
Sometimes the corruption comes from people outside pushing such amenities down your throat.
Really though, what is the point of routing your humanitarian efforts through an ineffective government? Unless the resourceless government is the target of your humanitarian aid (as opposed to the people that the government claims as their own, but is unable to care for), why bring a loser on to the team?
African governments are either corrupt, ineffective, resourceless, or have provided uncensored internet access to their population. If it is the later, then this sort of aid is not necessary. If it is any of the former, there is little reason to involve those governments unless absolutely necessary.
Just consider, wireless tech is inherently more efficient over time than wired tech for a huge variety of applications. Wireless phones are replacing wired phones in the Western world and given sufficient advances, it seems logical wireless will replace the Internet duopolies and monopolies in the Western world.
It seems just as logical for wireless transmission points to replace wired transmission points. Hence mobile, wireless drones seem a logical step. Africa is a logical place for this, not because of the great needs of the po' Africans but because the infrastructure is not fully developed, because transmission points are especially expensive there and because the market is fairly open.
We know that Google and Facebook are companies that make their money giving stuff to the consumer for free. So these companies offering drone-based Internet to Africa sounds like a logical business step - if/once the tech is ready and working well. And of course these companies us the litany of "we're hear to help the poor benighted Africans" but that's for the consumption of the Western public who can't imagine Africans as paying consumers.
Altogether, I'm by no means uncritical of the present unbridled advanced of every sort of tech but ordinary African cellphone providers are far, far back on my list of folks whose suffering I might cry over. Plus I'd expect that given an African demonstration, the drone tech would let a figurative Google drone army surround Comcast's Dark Tower and figuratively burn it to the ground using affordable rates.
Basically: the free market provided Internet access, but libertarians are stupid.
I mean, government regulation and oversight are presumably means to an end, rather than goals in themselves, so tell me: in this case, what advantage do they offer? If we were talking about, say, emissions regulations for a factory, or worker safety regulations, or something like that, then I could see the case for it. But for this? Man, I just want my packets to go from one place to another.
"NSA surveillance" is the sort of problem that comes from giving government too much power and money; doing an end-run around governments probably reduces the potential for invasion of privacy - it means you have one fewer actors trying to deliberately undermine reasonable security standards.
Any other candidates?
https://www.hiiraan.com/op4/2007/mar/2432/the_phones_keep_ri...
There are a lot of dense conurbations and they are fairly close to one another. That's obviously relevant for cell service.
Many parts of e.g. east and central Africa have lower-density settlement patterns that may be tougher to cover.
http://ffp.statesindex.org/rankings
On that list, Somalia is ranked 1, while Ghana and South Africa are 110 and 113 respectively. (For comparison, Finland is the champ at 178.) Certainly there are other ways to compare nations, and Ghana is not a perfect society. However, Ghana is exceptional among African nations, and it is a measure of the cluelessness of TFA that this fact isn't mentioned.
Everybody in Africa trusts us implicitly, and why shouldn't they?
Seriously though, there's no recognized boundary for sovereign airspace:
Nobody is really speaking out against it though. If google wants to throw some balloons in the air let them - its their risk.
This technology matters to people. The Internet matters to people, more than you think. Because it's not just a technology, it's a way to connect people. That's why it can be more important than safe drinking water or food to a lot of people. It's not just a matter of "gadget vs staying alive". There are other fundamental issues at stake here.
There is also research that shows that the more technologically advanced an area is, the richer it becomes - which means jobs, infrastructure, and food and clean water for people. So don't dismiss it so easily.
Technology through phones and Internet is also helping people have more democratic states, which is also a pretty critical issue in Africa. People can talk to each other and inform themselves better. They can organize and protest. They can chase away the dictators this way. So who are you to say that clean water is definitely more important to them than technology?
I wish. They buy the smartphone as a status symbol not because tech matters to them.
Certainly tech brings wide ranging benefits, but much like Maslow's hierarchy of needs you need to fulfill the basics first. Jumping straight to the top doesn't make the rest magically appear.
It might differ by country but here tech in general favours the middle class. The really poor are just too far behind to leverage it. What good is access to the internet if the guy can't read?
>They can chase away the dictators this way. So who are you to say that clean water is definitely more important to them than technology?
What good is chasing away dictators if you die from dehydration on day 3 of the protest? Unlike drinkable water, iphones are optional to survival.
* How exactly do you avoid paying taxes on something that's free?
On re-reading, that's precisely one of his complaints: providing a free service deprives governments of tax revenue.
"Carriers, some of them foreign but some of them local,
have been in many of these markets for years, providing
for a fee services that companies such as Google and
Facebook now want to provide for free. And they are big
local employers (in Ghana, I was told Vodafone was the
largest private employer), as well as taxpayers.
[...] Essentially, these companies are trying to reap
the reward of encouraging more people to use their
services, such as WhatsApp, without doing the messy
work that carriers and handset makers such as Nokia and
Samsung do; that is, actually setting up businesses on
the ground, paying taxes that help fund development and
social services, employing and training that nation’s
citizens, not to mention building real relationships."