by Jo Walsh

The World Summit on Free Information Infrastructures is a gathering of practitioners, who are also thinkers, in open source GIS, software and hardware, community FM radio and WiFi networking, open information/knowledge, open education,open money ...

by Mike Lenczner

Why Build A Community Owned and Run Wireless Network?
There are two ways to interpret this question. The question asks for reasons why creating and sustaining a free network (often a Community Wireless Networks or CWN) is important. The question could also be what are our motivations. The answers to the second have a lot to do with sharing a beer, with the joy of having friends who understand your jokes and the typical hacker response of “because it’s there”. The first question is what I'll try to address here.

1) Free as in speech.
This is a biggie. Access to information has always been important and in an “Information Age” it is becoming essential. The concept of network-neutrality is that network operators should provide non-discriminatory transport on their networks between the endpoints of the Internet. Community Networks are important because there is much less of a chance that there will be interference in what content or type of content is sent over them.

by Karel Kulhavy

Intent
The intent of User Controlled Technology is to provide the end-user unrestricted access to intellectual property (IP) including the tools used to create it, in perpetuity.

Detailed meaning
UCT intends to give the user control over the technology and providing opportunity to learn, create and profit. For example:
* The user may study and learn from UCT.
* The user may manufacture a product based upon UCT.
* The user may participate in development of UCT.
* The user may enhance or correct UCT.
* The user may integrate UCT into any system.

by Armin Medosch

[Note: Words or acronyms marked with an * are explained in a glossary appended to this text.]

1.Introduction
One day in spring 2005 I popped over to my friend Adam’s. In his tiny living room, which also serves as the headquarters for free2air http://www.free2air.org, I found another friend, Alexei, hunched over a small technical device. Its case had been removed and the circuitry of the board and the chips could be seen. It had a small hard drive strapped to the back of the main board. Alexei and Adam were trying to make the thing boot from the hard drive. They were so focused that I barely managed to get noticed when I said hello. Slightly daunting technical buzzwords such as ‘cross compilation’, and ‘zeroconf’ were flying through the room. Not all of this meant something to me at the time but what I could figure out was that they were on to something special. This little thing on the table represented the seed of an idea much larger than its petite techno-crab like self.

by Palle Torsson and Rasmus Fleischer

Speech transcript to 22C3. Berlin. December 2005

[Palle Torsson]

Introduction: We are the many shades of the Grey commons
When DJ Danger Mouse took the vocals from Jay-Z’s The Black Album and remixed it with the Beatles’ White Album to create The Grey Album, he was breaking the copyright law – he was climbing up on the shoulders of giants.

by Jo Walsh

What is a Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI), and why would you want one that you can contribute to and, as a user of it, control?
An SDI is made up of geographic information (geodata). Geodata can be potentially any information that describes the location of something in physical space. Geodata can be literal images of spatial things – aerial photographs taken from specially rigged aeroplanes, or satellite imagery taken from 'earth observation' satellites. Geodata can be cartographic images that are designed to look like things in physical space, emphasising certain 'features' that are most useful to the intended user of the map – streetmaps for cities, or contour maps for exploring the countryside. Geodata can be your location as measured by the Global Positioning System (GPS); geodata can be your address; geodata can be any kind of information that has a “spatial component”.

by Julian Todd

A Government is a system for gathering and focusing power to certain ends. Watch carefully how this happens. In the UK the central authority is Parliament which everyone, even the Queen, agrees is supreme. What it says goes. If a long or short document is laid before it, and voted upon, and there are more “Ayes” than “Nos” cast by the members of the House according to procedure, then that is what Parliament says. Literally.

by Greenman and Mary Fee

A Local Exchange Trading System (LETS) is a community-owned and run currency system based on a zero-sum model, as opposed to monetary systems in which the money-suppliers continuously add interest, thereby increasing the money supply. Each member's account is usually set to start at zero; in order to trade on average half the accounts will be "in commitment” but with no interest being charged or earned at either end.

by Kate Rich

Kate Rich and Sneha Solanki (hostexe.org) are developing a protocol for a distributed hotel – Houses of Benefit – in London. While guest services (concierge, breakfast, lobby) are centralised, we will be outsourcing bedroom locations around the central London area. The system is designed as a coordinated lodgings service, with local hosts sourced via social networks, providing comfortable, glamorous &/or interesting sleeping accommodation to culturally-funded visitors, in exchange for cash.