Our National Knowledge Infrastructure at Work Producing a National Healthcare Day of Service at the digital behest of our President

Today, June 26 is National Health Care Day of Service. Throughout the
nation, in public places, both "tangible" and "virtual", folk have
been organizing for weeks at the behest of Organizing for America (www.my.barackobama.com) - and for the benefit of the public commons.

Me, I'm writing the first draft of this at Kinko's, while copying flyers for distribution at a Health Care Reform Teach-in in my home town, White Plains, NY. I write this on my iPhone, which will
wirelessly post this for you to see.

This event was produced largely in cyberspace, and likely wouldn't have happened if I did not have ubiquitous access to information technology and the world-wide-web.

That we could do so is quite remarkable.

Having initiated an initial mobilizatipn meeting of 15 persons at my house on June 16th, in response to an email recieved from OFA, I networked, largely online and discovered the Westchester Health Care Reform Task Force (westchesterhealthcarereform.org).

I've met once in person with a small fragment of the membership, and we subsequently collaborated using our nation's Infomation and Communications Technology (ITC) systems with dozens locally and around the nation to produce this event

Most of our time together organizing has been spent in the nation's newest Public Commons, what I call "The Intelligent Public Way" (dipw.merdiandesign.com). I obtained a permit to set up our booth ina public park at the heart of White Plains' commercial district - with two phone calls and 5 emails - the permit was sent to me by email. The organizers developed hand out documents in an exchange of emails.

We've set up a google sites web collaboration site, and purchased a more elegant URL from register.com, from which traffic is forwarded to google. Go visit -www.westchesterhealthcarereform.org.

Well, handouts are printed, debit card retrieved from the walk-in copy machine.

I'll send this off (over radio waves that comprise part of that Intelligent Public Way)

[Just got home and editted the typos too challenging to correct on my iphone. The day was a success - 25 volunteers handed out 175 fact sheets, sold 12 bumper stickers, and got 113 postcards written out which will delivered by hand to Senator Schumer. We engaged about 250 people in discussions on health care reform, including one gentleman who felt it a foolish undertaking.]

Teillard De Chardin suggested that our species would build the "noosphere", the global sense organ / nervous system / space in which the earth would know herself, allowing us to inhabit her more wisely. And so we have. That nervous system, the Intelligent Public Way, the Web Space Commons, made this event possible.

How cool is that?

People in Iran, China and other nations are seeing this commons being proscribed by authoritarian governments. Many of us take our access to these systems for granted. Still others among us have no access to this public space where most information flows and transactions are effected in our time.

We can do better.

These ICT resources are largely in private hands, and those private owners do not have the same interests as the commons do in terms of the shape of this new nervous system. It's not that the incumbent owners are venal - the public realm has also failed to devise the cultural and political means to tell them what is needed, and how these systems should be integrated into our cities as an infrastructure to enable Community, Cultural & Commercial development.

Can't blame the marketplace for not having sold us what we haven't, as a national culture, told them we want.

Here in the USA, we're just beginning to craft a national broadband strategy (www.bb4us.net). We're the only developed nation in the world without one.

How silly is that?

Enjoy,

Bice C. Wilson