Communities

Individuals deserve a clearer understanding of the data that companies are collecting from the new generation of digital, connected devices, said Vinton G. Cerf, Internet pioneer and Web evangelist for Google.

Mr. Cerf’s comments highlighted an ongoing debate that is gaining momentum as a growing number of connected devices, machines and objects, known as the Internet of Things, takes shape. As more devices connect to the Internet and collect data about users, who ultimately is in charge of it, and how are the data collection practices communicated to the public?

“It should be required that the users control this information that we accumulate,” he said Wednesday during a cybersecurity lecture at New York University’s Tandon School of Engineering. “They should have the ability to say no, I don’t want this device because I don’t want to be forced into providing that information.”

“That probably means the fine print needs to be a lot clearer than it is today,” he added.

A potential challenge is figuring out how to limit data access to certain parties, in certain circumstances. A person may want a doctor to have access to his or her medical records during an emergency, but may not want that doctor to have continuous access to electronic health information. “You need to have this ability to grant ephemeral access to information,” Mr. Cerf said.

In a panel discussion following Mr. Cerf’s keynote, a group of Internet of Things researchers touted the public and commercial benefits of being able to access reams of user-generated data. But some on the panel, which included Mr. Cerf, Cornell Tech computer science professor Deborah Estrin and Tandon School professor Beth Simone Noveck, cautioned against making data available solely to private interests, an outcome that could restrict consumer privacy and hamper public research efforts.

“Ultimately and finally this is an issue about control,” said Ms. Noveck, who directs The Governance Lab at NYU. “This is about getting our own data back about ourselves.” She also stressed the importance of finding ways to share societal information collected by private companies – such as weather and temperature data – with government and researchers to more effectively address policy issues.…

Tobias Jones is a co-founder of Windsor Hill Wood community in Somerset. His book about his community, Buy “A Place of Refuge” from Amazon UK, is published by Quercus.

In this extract he talks about why off-grid living is better in a community.

BY TOBIAS JONES

We set up our community, Windsor Hill Wood, six years ago in a ten-acre woodland in Somerset, UK. The sole purpose was to offer sanctuary to those in a period of crisis in their lives: those struggling with addiction, depression, bereavement, homelessness, eating disorders, PTSD, and so on. In that time we’ve had well over a hundred people living in our family home, and the benefits – both to ourselves and to our guests – have far outweighed the drawbacks. It’s just a natural, healthy, wholesome way to live.

Yet in all functioning communities, collective choices are made and have to be adhered to. One of the most fascinating communal experiments that emerged from the hippie movement in the US was The Farm, in Tennessee. Inspired by the late Stephen Gaskin, it began in 1971, as you might expect, as a mirror-image of that age’s free-for-all attitude, but slowly began to incorporate “agreements”, which, over the years, made it a very stable and yet very creative space. Communal choices were made to respect the sanctity of marriage and monogamy, to avoid the use of hard drugs, and so on.

But the greatest obstacle to sharing the lessons of communalism is our warped notion of freedom. The essayist Wendell Berry arrived at the heart of the problem in his 2002 book, The Art of the Commonplace:

. . . there are two kinds of freedom: the freedom of the community and the freedom of the individual. The freedom of the community is the more fundamental and the more complex. A community confers on its members the freedoms implicit in familiarity, mutual respect, mutual affection, and mutual help; it gives freedom its proper aims . . . The freedom of the individual, by contrast, has been construed customarily as a license to pursue any legal self-interest . . .”

It is here that, most clearly, a contemporary observer will glimpse the scary needle that administers the medicine we need: to create any sort of community, we need to pool individual freedoms to gain community freedoms. The latter emerge only through submission and obedience, not through exuberance and incessant self-expression. It is, obviously, a hard sell.

It is hard to find a word held so low in the public esteem as “communalism”. For most people it carries a toxic whiff of both “communism” and “commune”, implying dropouts, flakes, fanatics and cultish leaders. If you’re in any doubt about how frightening the word is to the average citizen, try telling your next-door neighbour you’re going to live communally: they will veer away from you (believe me, I’ve …

An obscure American Anarchist inspires a new way of government in Syria…

Working almost non-stop as young professionals, they knew something was missing.

“We were both working a lot of hours – 80 hours per week — eating out three meals a day, coming home to a dark house,” says Cody, one of the stars of the Wranglerstar You Tube channel. “Everyone you meet says, ‘Oh, you guys have it made. You’re making so much money. You’re building these careers.’ But we didn’t really like it. We didn’t get to spend any time together.”

That’s when his wife, Jessica, learned through a Bible study about a couple who had moved to Montana, dropped off the electrical grid and created a new life.

“It was just happen-chance they were speaking in town,” Cody says. “We met them and they invited us to spend a weekend with them in Montana. On the drive home, we decided to do this. We put our house up for sale when we got home.”

What has followed is the creation of the You Tube channel where the couple and their son, Jack, share their story about modern homesteading. Despite putting a part of their lives out on the Internet, the couple prefers to maintain their privacy and asked that their last name not be used in this story.

Jessica also has written a book. They’ll hold a book signing from 4-6 p.m. Friday at Yankee Peddler West in downtown Fremont.

The You Tube channel started out as a hobby. But it’s grown into much more. It now has nearly 271,000 subscribers and the videos have been several million times.

And it has become a way to help support their lives.

“When we made that decision, no one was making money on You Tube. It was done as a hobby,” Cody says. “I remember when we got our first check from You Tube. It was $100 or something. I thought, ‘This isn’t real. This is never going to cash.’ … That really changed my way to thinking.

“I think she was really annoyed from my You Tube videos. I think probably she thought it was taking away from a real job. But I really started to realize we could do this, we could make a living at this.”

It is more than they anticipated, Jessica says.

“The subscribers want to watch daily,” she says. “It’s definitely more work than we anticipated.”

Still, they are able to keep some privacy.

“When we do apple pressing (the subject of recent video), that’s half an hour of our life,” says Jessica, who grew up in Fremont – a fact not mentioned in the videos. “The rest of our life is not shown on camera.”

All those videos – and the connection to their subscribers – led to the new book.

“There’s this publishers and his wife is a viewer of ours,” Jessica says. “She went to him and said, ‘I think you …