#IMA08: Joaquin Alvarado and National Public Lightpath

These are notes… so sorry for gaps or pieces that don’t make perfect sense. I’ve attached another presentation by Joaquin Alvarado below so you can get a more complete explanation of National Public Lightpath.

IMA General Session
Joaquin Alvarado
Founding Director of the Institute for Next Generation Internet at San Francisco State University

Technology doesn’t create communities; communities create technologies to stay connected.

National Public Lightpath
There is a solution to the problems of expanding broadband to more Americans
Universities are connected to next-generation networks – Regional Optical Networks
- so many of our stations are on university campuses, connected or potentially connected to these networks

People are searching for information from YouTube – it’s now the second largest search engine on the Internet.

We need to use the word “networked” rather than “digital.” We’ve had digital for 50 years, but are we ready for the network?

Is everything your doing right now ready to be modularized? Your job is not to figure out how people will use it but to make it possible for people to use it.

Stations: Start talking about 10GBps – and start talking about it right now. You want uncompressed video and a superfast network to collaborate with other stations and producers
Schools must have this kind of connectivity – we don’t have the network effect with schools

National Public Lightpath would connect public media, schools, universities
Stations should work with NPL to write an NTIA grant that connects the station, the local schools, adds vital non-profits, and then work with the city or with private contractors to build the network.

We need to get into the networked environment because others are moving very quickly in this space