From Crowd to Network: The .NYC Opportunity

My hometown, New York City, is commonly called “the communications capital of the world.” In many respects it is. And fifteen years ago, when I was first appointed to the local community planning board, I’d presumed the plethora of media would provide for effective local communication. But after a few months on the board, I painfully discovered reality to be the exact opposite.

Most people begin to understand the paradox when I compare the communication resources of Terre Haute, Indiana, where I attended university, with Queens Community District 3, over which my planning board has governance responsibilities. The following Media Resource Comparison Chart shows mass communication resources dedicated for use by the residents, businesses, and institutions within these two entities.

Yes, NYC is the "world's communications capital," and if something out of the ordinary happens in District 3, it will be flooded with cameras and reporters of almost unimaginable scope. But the mundane daily needs of my community are of little interest to the "capital" media. The New York Times doesn’t report on a downed tree, tardy garbage pickup, the opening of a new pizza parlor, or our soccer club’s need for a coach. The source of the paradox becomes clearer when you realize that our "local" media isn’t quite local. For example, New York City's "local" TV stations serve an audience of 17,000,000. And with an average community district comprising less than 1% of its audience, “local” TV coverage of community issues is abysmal.

Without effective local media most residents remain unaware of such civic fundamentals as the community district they live in, the community board's role, or the board that serves them. Equally problematic, the boards aren’t able to effectively communicate with those they serve. Since the community boards provide the first step in the governance process, many of the city’s problems remain unrecognized until they become severe. And perhaps more significant are the lost opportunities from unrealized network effects. Bottom line: an audit of local communication resources finds NYC to be a media ghetto.

“Wait.” you say, “What about the Internet?”

Oh yes, the Internet.

Well, we created a website for our district (see www.cb3qn.nyc.gov), and while we’ve not yet received the requisite support from city hall to make it state-of-the-art, there’s an expectation that eventually, using the vast resources city government controls, most residents will get to know about their board’s slam-dunk website. But even then we’ll lack good local communication.

OK, you ask, “What’s good local communication?” What we lack is the ability to locate one another by name, address, interest, problem, concern, and opportunity. This applies to individuals, businesses, and institutions. For example, we don’t know how many residents have email accounts, how many businesses have or want websites, or if there are blogs focused on our district. Has someone a need for space - real or virtual? Does someone have an invention or solution to a local problem? Which businesses are looking for partnerships, have excess capacity, or job openings?

And because we lack the ability to make local connections, we loose the benefits of network effects. Where eBay and Amazon are able to transform millions of connections to thriving businesses, the internet resources of our community district and city are scattered like a few grains of black sand on a white beach.

The sad truth is, today’s Internet offers no more local communication than the old. In fact, it’s worse. We’re not just a community district that’s 1% of a region, today we’re invisible in a dotcom world, with a fraction of the presence one might reasonably expect. Take a look at the Invisible City chart. While some might argue that my search could be improved by using Board or New York City or some other terms, a search within a designed and managed .nyc would not require such consideration. Intuition would play a significant role.

(1) ICANNwiki January 2006
(2) November 13, 2005 Google search of “Queens Community District 3” and includes all TLDs.

Some might react to Invisible City by stating that the community boards play an insignificant role, don't do much, and therefore didn't show up in the search. No argument there. But their inability to effectivly function as prescribed by the city charter, is in part a result of the previous transformative information delivery system - the 90 mile TV and radio broadcasts - that crushed local media. Refusing the city its own TLD would be another lost opportunity and crushing blow to local independence, initiative, and community.

“But what about Google?”

Now I love Google as much as the next guy. It’s absolutely amazing sometimes how it finds just the right piece of info. Once I watched my wife, an occasional Internet user, enter a search with what seemed the most illogical terms, and Google delivered. Amazing. I’ll bet if I spent 10 minutes I could find out what the Prime Minister of Japan had for lunch today. Simply amazing.

And perhaps we could just wait around for Google, AOL, or Yahoo “local” to come to our rescue. But as we all know, it’s a fast changing, competitive world and waiting might be the death of our community. And are we prepared to surrender our future to the business plans of global company? What if their business priorities conclude that their local is not our local?

But with the Internet roaring ahead, it’s become apparent that we must seek a more fertile and friendly place for our community (and city) on the Internet. We must create an Internet space that will facilitate community awareness and solutions, propel local businesses development, and enable the global connections essential to marketing our products and ideas.

As a step toward achieving this, my community board passed an Internet Empowerment Resolution in April 2001. The Resolution envisioned our city working within the borders of its own top level domain .NYC. And it saw three advantages: marketing, taxonomy, and revenue.

At the time we saw the marketing being mostly outward – making our resources available to the world through services like hotels.nyc and visit.nyc. And the ease of locating local resources through a well managed naming structure, e.g., schools.nyc and libraries.nyc, struck everyone as quite beneficial. And of course there was the hope of raising revenue through the sale of mariospizza.nyc and theaccountant.nyc. Since then other social and busines networking advantages have made themselves apparent.

However, since our Resolution, the 9/11 tragedy, the recovery effort, and then the bid for the 2012 Olympics dominated city hall’s focus. Now, with the recovery proceeding, Mayor Bloomberg.com’s re-election, and the Olympics behind us, it’s expected that the city will present the ICANN community with a convincing application as to the need and our ability to manage our own .NYC domain.

.NYC will provide a starting point for reimagining our city: its governance, the role of community, and its presentation to the world. We welcome ideas from the Internet community on ways a global communication system can improve our families, friendships, neighborhoods, and city.

by Thomas Lowenhaupt