The Wireless Commons
The Wireless Commons Manifesto launched in 2003. It was inspired by Lawrence Lessig and his dreams of revitalising and reclaiming the commons (especially the digital commons) from the corporations. We took his ideas and applied them to the ideals of community wireless and came up with a manifesto and a definition to reframe the discussion surrounding community wireless.
The manifesto was signed by hundreds of people and was widely discussed and linked for a few days.
It never gained the traction that I had hoped for, however it remained a powerful exercise, and I'm still very proud of what we created. It was translated into several languages including German and Indian and republished in many different publications all over the world. Personal Telco still uses it as one of their promotional tri-folds. Originally it was hosted at wirelesscommons.org, but the domain has since lapsed and fallen into disuse.
In 2016 the manifesto was featured in a collection called Manifestos for the Internet Age. And in 2020 it was discussed in Another Net is Possible by Rachel O'Dwyer, which was part of a larger work titled The Eternal Network.