Radical/Networks

Rachel O'Dwyer

I'm a postdoctoral researcher in the Centre for Telecommunications Research and lecturer in Trinity College Dublin, where I teach courses in physical computing and media theory. My research areas include the Political Economy of Communications; Open Spectrum; Blockchains and P2P Infrastructures for Money.

I'm the leader of the Dublin Art and Technology Association, a group that showcases individuals working across art, hacktivism and technology www.data.ie. I organise the openhere festival on the social, political and technical issues surrounding the digital commons. 2012 focused on disruptive telecommunications; 2014 on open source hardware, open source ecology and open source value www.openhere.data.ie. I am also a core member of the P2P Foundation where I contribute to research in alternative currencies and coordinate the P2P academic research network.

I speak, write and organise workshops around topics such as the political economy of communications, the digital commons, disruptive telecommunications, open spectrum and more recently money, distributed infrastructures and the blockchain. Here’s a project I coordinated to make a fully open mobile network in Dublin City http://openhere.data.ie/?p=500. As well as academic publications, I am a regular contributor to Neural a magazine of media art, hacktivism and critical internet cultures http://neural.it and the Commons Transition blog http://commonstransition.org/the-revolution-will-not-be-decentralised-blockchains/ Some of my recent talks and publications are here https://tcd.academia.edu/RachelODwyer.

Presenting

This band is your band, this band is my band...

This talk is about understanding spectrum as a commons and exploring what recent proposals for shared spectrum really mean for the future of open networks. The talk will be structured around the following questions:

1. What exactly is Electromagnetic Spectrum and how is currently managed? How, historically, did electromagnetic wavelengths something that could be owned, controlled and commodified? Who owns the spectrum and what privileges does ownership give in terms of controlling communications and extracting value? I’ll look at examples here i.e. how ownership of spectrum underpins a mobile advertising revenue model in the Global North, while in developing markets we’re seeing a whole range of new business models around control of the spectrum such as airtime trading and mobile money.
2. How can we think of spectrum as a commons? (And why should we?)
   What is a commons? How have innovations in Wi-Fi, VoIP, mesh networking and open GSM networks illustrated the possibility for governing the spectrum as a commons? What kinds of technologies in cognitive radio and dynamic spectrum access facilitate this approach?
3. How is the management of spectrum changing?
   Today an exaflood of mobile data is threatening the current economic consolidation of spectrum. These are leading to proposals for dynamic spectrum access techniques and greater spectrum sharing not only from open spectrum advocates but from digital policy.
4. What are the implications of these changes for the spectrum commons? For open spectrum advocates this can look very promising, Where Wi-Fi afforded community networks, an increase in unlicensed spectrum and DySpan suggests possibilities for new kinds of networks and commons spectrum. However, just as the sharing economy is proving problematic in areas such as real estate and precarious work, we need to look closely at the implications of these sharing proposals, particularly at the new kinds of algorithmic control that accompany shared spectrum.