Libraries: the best form of government
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Libraries: the best form of government
https://www.jphilll.com/p/libraries-the-best-form-of-government
This is, in part, an unabashed love note to libraries.
https://www.jphilll.com/p/libraries-the-best-form-of-government
This is, in part, an unabashed love note to libraries.
Reading good books is like engaging in conversation with the most cultivated minds of past centuries who had composed them, or rather, taking part in a well-conducted dialogue in which such minds reveal to us only the best of their thoughts.
Hate to be a party pooper but the author is a bit off. From the article:
It’s a place I can get free wifi and where I don’t have to explain myself to anyone in any way.
This is precisely where libraries demonstrate poor governance.
First of all by offering Wi-Fi and not ethernet the library discriminates against people with old hardware, people who oppose the non-FOSS firmware that Wi-Fi cards depend on as well as those who don’t want to expose their traffic to all eavesdroppers in range and those who prefer to avoid spoofed APs and those who would rather be less wasteful with energy. I do not think I’ve encountered any library in the past decade that intentionally offer ethernet. The very few I’ve encountered with open ethernet ports apparently offer it by accident (ports that were likely meant for the libraries own assets but unused and left inadvertently connected).
Even if you are in the included group who are happy to see ethernet users marginalised, among Wi-Fi users are those who are discrimated against because they do not have a mobile phone, thus cannot get past the Wi-Fi captive portal that demands SMS verification. Which also inherently discriminates against people whose devices cannot handle captive portals as well. So libraries are less of a refuge from corporate bullshit than they were in the past.
And that we can do it without a profit motive, simply because we think that’s the way it ought to be.
It’s great that the library itself is non-profit. But that only mitigates part of the problem brought by corporate commercial greed. The library needs to evolve to:
Our governmental structures and agencies should not be in the service of business,
Indeed. But when a library excludes those without mobile phones, they are serving the telephony industry and undermining the human right to equal access to public services.
The author himself, J.Hill, deployed this blog from a website that is inside an exclusive walled garden that discriminates against some demographis of people. I agree with his push to defend libraries from right-wing assholes and in that sense we are united. But a fight is also needed within the library systems to stop libraries from discriminating against some classes of people. They are outsourcing their technology to tech giants who have made library access exclusive.