(2012-03-06) Dash Public Vs Private Space Online Vs Real World

Anil Dash notes the failure of the "POPS" model in NYC to create truly Public Space-s. He then makes the analogy to online spaces, e.g. Social Networking (FaceBook) and MicroBlogging (Twitter) services. But his conclusion is that we should challenge the big networks to actually change their policies to make some of our shared online spaces truly public. I Commented: isn't that the equivalent of challenging private building owners/developers to make their POPS spaces truly public, ergo a likely-to-fail approach?

See previous 2009-07-13-HeathcoteUrbanRetail

Also, I think it's worth noting that even City Park-s may fail his test, considering how the NYPD has been treating Occupy Wall Street folks no matter where they are/go.

What are some approaches we could take?

• Anil's model: social and/or legal pressure for private actors to provide more-public spaces. I think this will always end up as pseudo-public, and actually make it harder for truly-public approaches to garner usage (StarBucks has good coffee, Tompkins Square Park does not).
• Encourage a distributed Open Social Networking Model where the Internet is the Public Space, and each person has her own personally controlled space (e.g. Personal Server) which provides connections with the outside rules according to her rules... see WikiWeb Dialogue.
  • note this still has risks if you used a commercially Hosted Server (e.g. look at WikiLeaks).
• NGO-s create Public Space-s and we hope they stay truly public - e.g. Wikipedia.
• Government creates online Public Space - color me skeptical.

Aug31 update: MetaFilter thread on physical POPS.