Digital Redwoods Ecosystem

ZFellow Sean McLaughlin, executive director of Access Humboldt, was recently featured in an article in App-Rising.com.

Described as a community media pioneer who is working to bring broadband to and foster local community media in Humboldt County, CA, he's an incredibly thoughtful guy who's able to look at the world through the eyes of a poet, the mind of an engineer, and the heart of a long-time community activist.

App-Rising.com covers the intersection of broadband networks, applications, and policy. It focuses on how America can maintain its leadership position at the dawning of the next generation of the Internet.

To help people understand the basics of broadband, including policymakers, they are collecting and sharing favorite broadband analogies in order to equip broadband advocates with better ways of talking about broadband.

Among the many things Access Humboldt does is a project called Digital Redwoods, which is their primary effort to organize local leaders around the goal of bringing better broadband to Humboldt County.

In talking with Sean he shared that the "Digital Redwoods" was more than just a nice name, it described a specific analogy that they're using to help describe the intent of the project.

The core of this analogy is that we need to think about broadband as an ecosystem that, just like a redwood forest, requires all of its components working together to survive and thrive.

In this analogy, the roots of the redwood trees are like fiber optic cables forming the bedrock of modern communications systems, linking everyone together with reliable, robust connectivity. The leaves then form a canopy akin to wireless access that covers every inch of ground and creates an ecosystem of its own of high-flying critters (or apps). The trees then represent the community anchor institutions around which communities establish themselves and grow.

Without their roots, trees will be less steady and are more likely to fall over. Without their leaves, coverage can't reach everywhere plus there will be less energy (bandwidth) running through the roots. And without the trees you miss out on the ability to foster strong communities and to help tie together wireless and wireline broadband.

More than anything else, the reason the author, Geoff Daily, likes this analogy so much is because of how it embodies the importance of thinking about broadband as an interconnected ecosystem and how it establishes the dynamic between wireless, wireline, and communities.

To read the article