That old memester, Nicholas “Mr. Bits” Negroponte, is at it again. In an interview in today’s Boston Globe (here today, gone the day after tomorrow), he says that at an FCC technical advisory committee meeting he responded to the charge that there’s no economic model for wifi as follows:

…I raised my hand and I said, “There’s not only a precedent, there’s a very strong economic model…flower boxes”

Think about it. If you put a flower box outside your house, you’re first of all using your own money to buy the flowers. You’re hanging it out there. You’re doing it for your self-esteem, for the beauty of looking out the window and seeing he flowers, of decorating your house and making it look well. But it also, if everyone on the street puts nice flower boxes out, makes the street look nicer. [Caution: Snobbery ahead] It happens a little bit on Beacon Hill, it happens a lot in European cities.

Now the theory of flower boxes…could be taken to wifi. I put in a wifi system in my home for my own use, but it radiates out into the street. There’s no incremental cost for me to let other people use it…If everybody does that, then the entire street has broadband.

Cool analogy.

He also predicts a rebirth of the tech sector in the field of “silicon biology.”

Categories: Uncategorized dw