MIT and City Collaborate To Provide Free Wireless

By Marie Y. Thibault
ASSOCIATE NEWS EDITOR

A collaboration with MIT researchers may provide Cambridge with a free, city-wide, wireless internet service as early as late summer. The project will rely on a mesh networking technology that allows individual computers to become new access points, projecting the reach of the network beyond its original antennas.

The main goal of the project is to provide internet access to Cantabrigians who live in public housing, said Cambridge Chief Information Officer Mary P. Hart, though the resulting infrastructure will have a far wider benefit for city residents.

Jerrold M. Grochow ’68, vice president for Information Services and Technology, said he expects the maximum speed of the network to be 54 megabits per second. The speed users experience will decline as more people access the network.

Hart said that although the level of internet service will not be known until the antennas are tested, users should be able to pull up a browser and send e-mail, though they might not be able to send large pictures or view streaming video.

The initial testing phase and service will be provided by MIT free of charge to Cambridge, Kurt L. Keville ’90, a research specialist at the Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies at MIT, said in an e-mail. But if MIT has underestimated the traffic on the network, the service will have a charge rather than being free; however, Keville said he does not anticipate any problems because MIT’s bandwidth is “ridiculously high.” Cambridge has over 100,000 residents.

The city began considering how to provide wireless internet access at no charge last fall when the city council convened the Wireless Technology Committee, said City Councillor Henrietta Davis.

Keville said that MIT is the only university participating during the testing period. Harvard is expected to join in later, he said. Harvard representatives were not present at a Jan. 25 committee meeting.

Grochow said Cambridge is the first city to partner with its universities toward the goal of becoming wireless.

MIT applies research to help city

Cambridge’s partnership is a “golden opportunity” to rapidly set up a wireless network, Hart said, and has some benefits compared to possibilities the city had previously discussed with vendors such as Cisco Systems, Inc.

Davis, who introduced a council policy order for the formation of the committee, said she had originally been motivated to make Cambridge wireless because Comcast, which provides high-speed cable internet to Cambridge, was not responsive to any requests for discounts for lower-income citizens. “Comcast has been unproductive and uncompetitive for citizens,” Davis said. While Comcast has no local competitors in the cable internet business, Verizon Online provides DSL access to Cambridge at a range of speeds and prices generally lower than that available through Comcast.

Grochow said that the difference between MIT and Cisco is that MIT’s technology is the result of research and experimentation, while Cisco is looking to make a profit. “At MIT we’d like to do something good for the city,” Grochow said, because it “brings good publicity to the city and eventually to us, and it makes good sense.” Grochow said that Cambridge should use MIT’s technology because it is something that works right now. At the Jan. 25 meeting, committee members agreed that future partnerships with vendors such as Cisco are possible.

Two other American cities, Philadelphia and San Francisco, have gained attention for their plans to become wireless. Philadelphia is creating its own utility, Hart said, while San Francisco has partnered with Google to become a wireless city.

Traditionally, a wireless network is centralized around one wireless access point, which communicates with a wireless card in any laptop or desktop computer, Hart said. Mesh technology allows individual computers to propagate the network and act as new access points, making it unnecessary for a user to be within range of the original wireless signal, she said. Cambridge’s base wireless network will consist of a number of antennas that will be installed on the roofs of selected buildings in Cambridge, she said.

Keville said that there will be a wired MIT connection to the antenna to create a wireless access point, and at least one of the other antennas must not be blocked from the MIT antenna by any buildings. Then, the signal from MIT’s access point will jump from the MIT antenna to any other antenna within a clear line of sight and so forth, he said.

Keville, who is also a member of the committee, is building the wireless access points that will be installed. They are constructed from $15 commercial access points purchased from the software manufacturer NETGEAR, he said. The 40 milliwatt chip inside the commercial product is replaced with a 400 milliwatt chip and “hacked” to include computer code that enables the mesh technology, he said.

The first round of testing will probably take place in mid-March, Keville said. An antenna will be attached to the top of MIT building NE47, where Keville works, and another antenna will be installed on the top of 831 Massachusetts Avenue in Cambridge, a city-owned building adjacent to Cambridge City Hall. The strength of the signal between the two sites will be tested and the direction of the antennas will be adjusted accordingly, Keville said.

The code, which is publicly available, was written by an MIT research group called Roofnet. Daniel E. Aguayo G, a Roofnet researcher, said that though they were not the first to write a code for mesh technology, they were the first to conduct a large-scale test of their software.

Other likely choices for antenna locations are the Mount Auburn Hospital, Cambridge Health Alliance Buildings, and Cambridge Housing Authority Building.

Another issue that the committee must still address is the revenue Cambridge hotels and businesses make from providing wireless access to customers. Hart said that the plan to become wireless must be discussed with city businesses.

The city’s partnership with MIT will affect town-gown relations positively, said Davis. She said that it is useful to act together because these partnerships will help “when it comes to hard things like zoning and PILOT,” referring to the Payment in Lieu of Taxes plan through which MIT and Harvard compensate Cambridge for taxes the city does not collect because the universities are non-profit.

Behind the Numbers

Northeast Ohio has certainly had its share of job loss. And even in the Kent city government we’re operating with a workforce that is 10% smaller than it was years ago. This is hard on business and hard on people.

When businesses announce that they are reducing their workforces by hundreds of people, it can seem as though they are sweeping the equivalent of a group of marathoners – individuals notable only as part of a mass, with numbers instead of names on their chests – off a bridge.

That is a disturbing image, but one that has some truth behind it. In many ways the twentieth century was the Organization Century, an age in which much of a worker’s identity came from the company he or she worked for. Individuals in those organizations were plugged into predetermined slots or roles. The individual was the human resource that made the role operational – and in many cases, he or she was an easily replaceable resource. It was not an attractive image of business. People don’t relish being mere tools of management, known more by their job titles than their names.

I think our new century will be different. Organizations are already shorter and flatter. IBM once had 27 layers from top to bottom; at last count it had a maximum of 7. Such restructuring can save a lot of time and money, but it requires more discretion be given to each employee. In the future, individuals will matter more than roles.

The photo of the marathon reflects this change. Those 30,000 runners are all there by choice; no one ordered their participation. They are competitors but also associates in a communal endeavor. Yes, a few of them are striving to reach the top, to win their division. Most however are competing only against themselves. This is not a horse race in which only the first three across the line count and the rest are also-rans. In a marathon, everyone who finishes wins. And since one is competing with and not against the others, there is a camaraderie and an atmosphere of shared pursuit that is obvious to anyone watching. Some of the runners are also using the race to make a contribution to a charity or a cause. So participating in the marathon is not a purely selfish activity for them but one that in some way benefits society.

The best organizations are marathons in that sense. Their workers are there more by choice than necessity. The employees enjoy being part of something significant and value the opportunity to improve their performance and develop their skills. They are not expecting, most of them, to reach the top but rather to finish the project and beat the target. They appreciate the opportunity that a good business gives them to contribute in some way to society and they gain from a camaraderie with fellow workers.

There is for each individual, pride and joy in having been a part of something bigger than themselves, something worthwhile, something worth a celebration.

Freedom of Music

Music has always been a sanctuary for me; it keeps me sane in a distinctly irrational sort of way. Music grants me shelter from my logically addicted mind. It’s pure right brain delight and it remains one of the few pristine areas that analysis has not yet polluted – and I hope to keep it that way. I intentionally never learned to read music or studied an instrument for fear that it would subject music to the tyranny of left brain dominance that has spoiled just about everything else in our ‘rationally’ exuberant world.

I read that leading psychologists have concluded that mankind has a “story telling” problem – which basically means we are so intellectually nimble that whether we know something or not we are very capable of rationalizing a theory about it regardless of reality. Once again we have our left brain and its exaggerated sense of self-importance to credit for this “problem” of which Mark Twain observed many years ago serves salesman, attorneys and politicians very well. This point is raised only to begin to dent the armor of reason and suggest that when reason falls into the wrong hands it can be a dangerous thing.

In that spirit, I found a way to validate my musical self-indulgence when I learned that humans have evolved a unique audio-visual sensory bias. Apparently, over the course of hundreds of thousands of years, sight and sound tag-teamed their way to the top of our sensory heap, out-wrestling smell, taste and touch in man’s natural selection grudge match. The theory hypothesizes that sound is a significant contributor to our reproductive success, adaptation and survival as a species – the body of evidence for which can be found every night in Honky Tonks all across this country. Certainly the way in which we use sound differs greatly from our cave dwelling ancestors, yet perhaps it is no less important to our survival today.

Music is processed through the temporal lobe of the brain which explains why it remains just out of the reach of the big Gorilla of cognition that lives in the adjoining cerebral cortex. So biologically and figuratively, music exists outside of rational judgment – it ‘is what it is’ irrespective of what the brain ‘thinks’ about it. It’s a right-now foot-tapping hand-clapping body sort of thing, not a data-driven analyze-this and study it some more tomorrow kind of thing. It’s the great equalizer that soothes the beast and quiets the “ghost in the machine” long enough to allow instinct and intuition a chance to breathe some fresh air.

TS Eliott referred to “music heard so deeply that it is not heard at all, but you are the music while it lasts.” And maybe that is the source of the power of music: its ability to transform us; to move our minds as well as our feet, thumping and bumping us out of our intellectual ruts. In demonstration of the complexity of our physiology and its creative cross-wiring, music helps us see through our ears. Where intellect would accuse music of being an accessory to the conspiracy of the senses to bypass reason, my heart defends music as an affirmation of humanity that is as much art as it is science.

Music is the sage that speaks an ancient tongue with primal roots. It’s reminiscent of Zen and its Koan riddles that were intentionally inaccessible to the intellect. Zen Masters offered these nonsensical riddles to push students to drop their intellectual attachments and find peace in a stream of consciousness. Yet thousands of years later and half a globe away, we still bang our heads against the walls of logic trying to make sense of a room full of irrationality.

In the absence of a personal Zen Master on our HR staff, maybe we just need to turn up the music and rock-out a little more often. Music might not solve the problem but it might just make solving the problem possible – or at least tolerable. Perhaps the Sufi whirling dervishes were on to something when they would grip a floor nail between their toes and spin around in order to empty their minds of their troubles. Of course its escapism – but as the song says: “you don’t know what you got till it’s gone” – and sometimes getting away from yourself is the best medicine for finally understanding what ails you in the first place.

Yet in our dog-eat-dog, fasterbettercheaper, needed-it-yesterday culture we are afflicted with a terminal case of seriousness that snubs its nose at time-outs for anything other than molding progeny into smarter-brighter higher-achievers of behaviorally obsessed parents. This is a generation raised on a diet of no-pain, no-gain – and the exercise mantra has become so ubiquitous in our cultural ethos that we rationalize sacrificing parts of ourselves every day in the spirit of building a better mousetrap. Yet in the end we’re the rat caged by the very traps we built; offering prima facie evidence that even if you win the rat race, you’re still a rat.

With deadlines looming, emails flying and cell phones ringing we’ve become catecholamine-aholics. In our perpetual, self-induced state of fight or flight we get our daily fix of these primal chemicals as they fill our bloodstream with enough adrenaline to keep us operating at “defcon-5” for hours – triggering basal metabolic rate increases to break down glycogen in the liver and glucose in skeletal muscles for a quick energy feed. And with our heart racing, bronchioles in the lungs dilate to admit more air while digestion slows and the bladder and colon prepare to unencumber us for action. This is prime time baby go, go, go.

So away we go, rushing from stop to stop, plodding our way through problems the best we can. The trouble is when you’re clawing, scratching and digging for every inch, it doesn’t take long before you’ve dug yourself into a serious rut. And despite Einstein’s warning that we can’t solve our problems in the same manner that we created them, we usually go right back to digging and clawing in a state of panic trying to get out of our hole anyways. With nubs for fingernails it’s easy to lose hope.

But be still grasshopper, there is another way. Be one with the Lotus flower that thrives in polluted waters, for so too can be your destiny. When faced with fight or flight choose to float instead. Pop in a cd, go for a run, sit by the river or practice what the Chinese call (in true onomatopoetic form) Wu-Wei – “doing by not doing.” Don’t always be so busy, sometimes just be. Recharge yourself – if not for yourself then for the greater purpose you serve.

What is true for the people within the organization seems to hold true for the organization itself. The organization needs time to not be so busy, but to just be, to catch its breath and unplug. By dedicating this time the organization can recharge and return to the real world with fresh eyes, a rested mind and eager hands.

But there’s even more to it than regeneration. I believe it’s actually how the work of leadership gets done. Leadership function takes us above the tree line into the realm of values, strategies, and organizational culture where our sharp tools of reason, analysis and logic have limited value – and often do more harm than good. At these higher altitudes trying to force the round peg of reason through the square hole of leadership exhausts resources with little gain.

In the eyes of the analytic hammer everything looks like a nail. But in reality not everything is solved by pounding; some things must be lifted-up and that takes an entirely different set of tools and a whole new approach to the work. That’s the paradigm gap that separates the twin peaks of management and leadership. Yet in the densely wooded forests of organizations the topography can be deceiving and depending on where you are standing it’s not always easy to see this gap and discern where the leadership trail begins and where the management trail ends.

As a result, we slip down the slope assuming that the same set of hiking skills and tools that carried us through the lower elevations will be equally effective at the top. Hanging by an ice pick and toe crampons the seasoned mountain climber knows better but from the comfort of our offices we don’t seem to share the same sense of urgency that should motivate us to pay attention to the change in terrain and change the way we climb.

Instead we pick away at the hard ice on the leadership slope like it’s the soft dirt of the management base camp, ignoring the consequences of our misjudgment. Analysis and insight may ride in the same tracks but they take us to two very different places and relying on analysis to resolve leadership issues is like using an X-Ray machine to read blood pressure. X-Ray’s do a wonderful job at figuring out what bones are broken but they’re not built to gauge arterial squeeze. It seems obvious in the medical example yet that’s essentially the context error we repeat time and time again when we allow the shadow of analysis to keep us from seeing insights that are standing right beside us. It’s like being snow blind but still trying to ascend the summit.

The symptoms of this chronic “analytic-itus” are all too common: frustrated with the elusiveness of logical answers amidst reams of research and analysis, we pile on more data and dig ever deeper through it, convinced that if we just drill down the logic a little more, study a little harder and debate longer we can take the analysis to a depth it’s never been – and we will emerge victorious from the rubble with a solution in hand. We circle the wagons and let no detail escape our study. Yet in reality the further we go down this path, the further we travel away from our destination. With standing room only our analytic left brain crowds out all possible creative, instinctive and insightful right brain contributions. That’s a great way to solve fine-grain management problems but it prevents us from doing the course-grain work of leadership.

In this respect the peaks of leadership and management may look the same but they are in fact more like mirrored images of each other. Where management honors science, leadership aspires to the humanities. Management reduces work into its components in the name of economy, control and efficiency while leadership seeks to understand holistically and synthesize elements to inspire, liberate and magnify. Management depends on linear logic and abundant data while leadership eludes mathematical calculation and solves problems sideways favoring frugality of data to maintain a focus on fundamentals. Leadership avoids the trap of wanting to know everything and seeks to distill patterns from events, parse information, and infer direction that is more visceral than cerebral.

Malcolm Gladwell in his latest best-selling book Blink notes that the human capacity for insight is physiologically rooted in our limbic system. It’s the vestiges of primal instinct and intuition. It’s the hair on your neck rising as predators approach before you even realize it. It’s knowing something without knowing why you know it – you just know. It’s the power of a glance that extracts clues from the world around us in less time than it takes to blink – and speed dials that information directly to the hidden control towers of our brain that are hot-linked into our physical and emotional architecture and power our choices and behavior without our conscious consent.

The author describes what he calls the selective bias of our culture for applying the tool of methodical deliberation – or thick description – to every type of problem whether it’s appropriate or not. Instead he argues that we need to take our capacity for “thin slicing” meaning from our world and use that ancient skill to solve problems that have no inherent right or wrong – value choices, strategies, preferences – which I would argue is exactly what leadership in building community is all about.

Building community is more art than science and if we accept the value of both reason and intuition in performing their respective roles, a significant part of what we do as a leadership team should be figuring out how to be less deliberate and more insightful. We have not yet evolved an intuition/logic switch so until we do it is imperative for us to cultivate space that quiets the incessant whine of reason and invites insight to join us at our leadership table. Tap into the reservoir of Bays Mountain and morning music to unlock the door to our intuitive selves.

Better yet, in the spirit of wellness, go exercise – and believe it or not, as you push your heart rate above 145 bpm, you’ll be activating your biological sensors to signal the brain to shift gears from logic dominated thought to those instinctual patterns that are hard-wired into our neurology and seek to protect core functions under conditions of duress. Run even faster and as your heart rate reaches 175 bpm your cognitive function is nearly disabled and with no cognition left in the tank, you’re running on pure instinct. Right about then – BAM – out of nowhere, comes one of those sudden revelations, an insight into a problem that you’ve been chewing on for days. When you calm the surface noise of reason, insights have room to bubble up.

Cities Selling Naming Rights

From just about Day 1 on the job here in Kent, I’ve been trying to come up with a way to fix our budget deficit (try a $2 million shortfall on for size) that doesn’t get me run out of town by City Council, City residents, City employees or all of the above.  I’ve been in this business long enough to know that both “tax” and “cut” may look like three letters but in reality they are four letter words that often end with pitchforks, torches and a late night sprint to the border.   I like it too much here in Kent to go down that path so I’m constantly scanning the wire for news of roads less traveled taken by other cities to see if somebody found that elusive money tree.  Recently, I read a report that talked about how more and more cities are going commercial (some would call it selling out) — I can’t say for sure what we can name for who here in Kent but at this point I’m floating as many trial ballons as I can to see if anything sticks.

Sponsors of facilities at two public high schools in Sheboygen, Wisconsin and what they paid for the naming rights:

• Acuity Insurance field houses: $650,000
• Aurora Health Care cardiovascular (workout) rooms: $400,000
• Sheboygan Orthopaedic Associates locker rooms: $45,000
• Associated Bank school stores: $60,000
• Richard Bemis Foundation gyms: $300,000

Elsewhere:

• The Santa Cruz, Calif., parks and recreation department is trying to sell naming rights to a skate park to repay a $300,000 construction loan. “My goal is to keep our facilities up and running. This seems to be a natural,” says parks director Dannettee Shoemaker.

• In Newburyport, Mass., the high school offers naming rights to the principal’s office for $10,000, the auditorium for $100,000 and English classrooms for $5,000 each, according to its foundation’s website.

• The Clark, Texas, council voted in November to rename the town DISH in exchange for a decade of free satellite TV from the DISH Network. The deal was worth $4,500 to each of DISH’s 55 homeowners.

Kitchens at two high schools in Sheboygan will soon be called the Kohler Credit Union kitchens, thanks to a $45,000 donation. The cafeterias are up for grabs for $300,000.

Cities and schools can get one-time payments in excess of $500,000 for naming big facilities. Schools have been selling the rights for several years, and now an increasing number of cities are joining the trend, says Larry Foxman of the National League of Cities.

Chicago is accepting bids to name the freeway now called the Chicago Skyway. Washington, D.C., considered selling naming rights to its subway stations. Las Vegas sells naming rights for its monorail.

Dean Bonham, CEO of the Bonham Group, a sports marketing company that negotiates naming rights, says the deals work for schools and cities because “it costs them nothing to create this revenue.” For companies, it’s “the best marketing platform available.”

Other cities on bandwagon

Critics argue against commercializing civic buildings. The answer to budget woes isn’t for cities and schools “to put themselves up for sale,” says Gary Ruskin of Commercial Alert, a non-profit group. “It shows the decline in our values.”

The school board in Sheboygan voted unanimously last year to sell naming rights. The City Council did the same thing in May. The alternatives: cut programs or raise taxes.

Ben Salzmann, CEO of Acuity, eagerly paid $650,000 to put the name of his insurance company on two new high school field houses forever.

He’s not hoping for new customers; he’s looking for future employees. “We use naming rights to get our name out, to attract people, to keep people,” he says. “When people graduate, we want them to say, ‘I want to work at Acuity.’ ”

More than $1.5 million in naming rights to schools have been sold here. That success prompted the city to pursue the idea. Mayor Juan Perez says it’s a painless way to increase revenue, because the economic situation is “very bleak.”

“Like so many cities, we’re struggling with an ever-shrinking budget and with the fact that our taxpayers are just tapped out,” says Alderman Mark Hanna.

There has been little controversy in this city of 51,000 about the rush to sell naming rights. Perez says he has had maybe two e-mails from constituents objecting to the plan.

“If it’s something that’s going to allow us to improve the school system or the city, I don’t think it’s a bad thing,” says Bill Greinke, owner of The Sign Shop of Sheboygan.

Naming rights for school facilities are handled by a non-profit foundation that came up with the idea to help pay for programs and facilities that the Sheboygan Area School District can’t afford, foundation President David Sachse says.

The money goes to the foundation, which then makes grants to school programs. So far, Sachse says, the funds have been used to refurbish musical instruments, to provide calculators to needy students, to buy supplies for a culinary class and for a marketing plan for school stores.

Recruiting future workers?

Without the money, schools Superintendent Joe Sheehan says, “we’d still be surviving, offering our kids a strong base, but nowhere near where we are with the help of this program.”

School districts in other Wisconsin cities, such as Plymouth and New Berlin, also sell naming rights. Sheboygan is among the first cities in the state to adopt the idea.

Many city-owned facilities — except the new police station and places such as parks that already are named to honor residents — will be available for naming. A committee will assign prices and screen prospective buyers, then the council will vote on each.

The mayor says naming rights aren’t just about bringing more cash into the city coffers. “It’s also a way of creating a sense of ownership in our community,” Perez says.

And it’s good business, Salzmann says. Acuity, which has 820 employees at its headquarters here, sponsors an art room for kids at the local museum, a spelling bee, math programs and a technology center at the University of Wisconsin-Sheboygan. Acuity paid $325,000 to put its name on a high school auditorium in Plymouth.

“We’re investing in the 5-year-olds who, two decades from now, may start working here,” Salzmann says. “We’re using naming rights to recruit employees over decades.”

So what have we, or can we, name here in Kent?

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The Art of Politics

Part of my interest in blogging was to offer an inside view of the great American experiment called democracy as it’s played out here in Kent.  Politics is hard work and setting aside your political differences for a minute you should thank your Mayor and Council members for what they do for there but by the grace of God could go you instead.  Winston Churchill was right when he declared: “American democracy is a horrible form of government, that also happens to be the best there is.”

I am pleased to report that democracy is alive and well in Kent.  Opinions abound and first amendment rights are exercised daily.  Kentians express themselves very well.  And believe it or not, that’s a good thing because I’ve worked in some places (particularly the south) where differences aren’t spoken of directly. Instead they tend to come at you from the backside and catch you when you least expect it.  So I am grateful to be working north of the mason dixie line where like it or not, you don’t have to guess how people feel about you and your ideas.

As City Manager, a lot of my job is about taking public input and framing differences in a way that helps us move forward as a city.  If I have to guess what you really mean I can be spinning my wheels for no good purpose and that’s why I’m so happy to be back up north.  If you need more insight into what I mean, read through the following speech from a southern gentleman politician debating the legality of libations.

“Whiskey Speech” by Noah S. “Soggy” Sweat Jr. delivered on April 4, 1952 in the great state of Mississippi.

“My friends,”

“I had not intended to discuss this controversial subject at this particular time. However, I want you to know that I do not shun controversy. On the contrary, I will take a stand on any issue at any time, regardless of how fraught with controversy it might be. You have asked me how I feel about whiskey. All right, here is how I feel about whiskey.”

“If when you say whiskey you mean the devil’s brew, the poison scourge, the bloody monster, that defiles innocence, dethrones reason, destroys the home, creates misery and poverty, yea, literally takes the bread from the mouths of little children; if you mean the evil drink that topples the Christian man and woman from the pinnacle of righteous, gracious living into the bottomless pit of degradation, and despair, and shame and helplessness, and hopelessness, then certainly I am against it.”

“But,”

“If when you say whiskey you mean the oil of conversation, the philosophic wine, the ale that is consumed when good fellows get together, that puts a song in their hearts and laughter on their lips, and the warm glow of contentment in their eyes; if you mean Christmas cheer; if you mean the stimulating drink that puts the spring in the old gentleman’s step on a frosty, crispy morning; if you mean the drink which enables a man to magnify his joy, and his happiness, and to forget, if only for a little while, life’s great tragedies, and heartaches, and sorrows; if you mean that drink, the sale of which pours into our treasuries untold millions of dollars, which are used to provide tender care for our little crippled children, our blind, our deaf, our dumb, our pitiful aged and infirm; to build highways and hospitals and schools, then certainly I am for it.”

“This is my stand. I will not retreat from it. I will not compromise.”

Now that’s the art of politics.