The titanic gave us that regulation. In the aftermath of her sinking, navy analyst argued that had the radio spectrum been better regulated, a ship less than twenty miles from the wreck could have saved hundreds of passengers. From the book "The Future Of Ideas" by Lawrence Lessig
Why not bring Creative Commons public domain & wiki content together and make it available for broadcast through a wireless network to a device with unlimited channels ?
Network:
Titanic Radio might start out at universities and gradually mesh into many places. Lecturers could broadcast through the system, provided they used the right license. Artists might set up networks that could integrate into the community.
Device:
Might be portable and would be used initially most likely by students to view and listen. (yet an old PC with wireless capabilities might work in developing places) The device might be better geared to receiving information rather than having to process, store and send. Content would most likely be remixed and set up in a physical space (home) yet 2 way communication would allow remix from the device. The device would allow broadcast of content and at the same time allow that device owner to pick up and broadcast a signal that they would receive. The device owner would make the decision as to what content she or he would broadcast. This kind of technology might be adapted to hardware already in place via the use of a software program. Or a card might be created that would allow broadcast through more channels simultaneously, or both.
Why did this idea happen ? It makes sense with the net revolution for everyone to broadcast themselves, the same way that a regular radio/tv does. It seems partly that copyright law is responsible for people not being able to broadcast things that they create within their community. With the growing amount of Creative Commons, Wiki and Public Domain content available for use it seems like a natural progression to adapt this content to best technology for broadcast. If the device or software to enable this to happen is not here, lets build it.
This idea was mostly inspired by reading "The Future Of Ideas" by Lawrence Lessig
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.
Based on a work at
www.icommons.org.