Dear Fans and Clients,

An end of an era is drawing near. The Teledynamics Communique has enjoyed a 20-year-long run in advocacy of a three-pronged new-economy business strategy of small-is-beautiful, of rural economic development and in free software, but the current business climate has not been kind to us. While thousands enjoy the Communique every day and thousands more subscribe to our mailing lists and RSS feeds, Teledynamics Communications finds itself in dire straights and facing an impending collapse.

In a nutshell, we must raise $35,000 to cover our operating debts for 2003, and if we can't hit at least half of this goal by the end of November, TCI must close its doors forever. We bet the farm on our strategies, and while we still believe the nanocorp model and community software are the future of the digital economy, we were unable to foster enough change in time to meet our obligations.

no excuses

The fault, I am certain, is ours. We are not marketing gurus, we are not great networkers, and apparently, we are not great pursuaders. We still believe in the distinct and significant advantages in our message, and those who have listened do endorse us, but for the greater majority of internet projects, the combined status quo of granting contract tenders to the large name-brand consultancies and the attendant expensive proprietary licensing, the tacit expense assumptions conditioned by decades of one-of custom ICT systems financing, and a general fear of the community trust required to step into the free software future, all these have set a hurdle before us we simply did not have the skill or capacity to scale.

because there's more to life

And we're tired of bucking the trends fighting the legions of ICT dragons. We're weary of lecturing brick walls, and we're exhausted from watching our countrymen time after time driving off full speed and crashing in the same car. As much as we'll miss the struggle and those rare instances of success where all the lights go on and a client will throw back their head and laugh out loud because they finally get it, as much as all that has been our driving passion, in many ways, we are also secretly a little euphoric at the thought that it may soon be over.

We couldn't push the stone up the hill, but maybe we weren't meant to do it. Thanks to these creditors who won't barter, that stone can be left for some other, younger, better financed Sysiphus to shoulder.

born too soon

Looking back, we're proud of our track record. We faced near collapse in 1983 when we couldn't pay people to talk to us about desktop computing. Our colleagues said the PC was "a toy" not worth serious consideration, and our bank manager, refusing our offer to return the equipment to them with full installation and training, told us, "What use would a bank have for office computers?"

In 1993, we couldn't pay people to talk to us about Internet and even in 1995 while I was in Ottawa at the landmark ITAC Roadwork conference on "People Issues on the Information Highway" (the same conference where Peter Jennings called the CBC the "roadkill on the superhighway") the everyday businessmen I chatted with invariably said, "What use would a business have for sending electronic messages when we can just phone people?"

And now, in 2003, we're telling them to free their software or suffocate in a sea of legal wranglings and licensing fees, and again we're told no 'sane' business could ever do such a thing. We're telling people to fracture the shareholder-directed megacorps and reclaim their birthright to be their own shareholder, to regain their livelihood and take ownership of their economic participation through small business nanocorp philosophies placing family and community ahead of stock prices and dividends, but we're told in hard currency that business cannot trust a man beholding only to his own life, and like the Cathar Crusades there is nothing more threatening to centralized powers than the thought of peasants owning their own lives.

And, for the small, simple and inexpensive paths to changing the world, we tell web site owners they must talk to their visitors and follow with the audacity and gaul to suggest they also allow their visitors to talk to them and to talk to each other, and we're greeted with the same incredulity we'd get if we'd recommended they butter their toast with their thumb -- and when we recommend they use their own precious webspace to track and trade with their entire industrial sector the deafening silence really drives home our boorish faux pas.

But we're right. All of you know that even if none of you are in any position to pay us to implement any of it.

In 1992, while working on telepresence experiments with Paul Milgram and Bill Buxton, I had the great good fortune to work with Hiroshi Ishii of NTT on a 3D-video 'augmented reality' experimental variation of Hiroshi's Clearboard and over one of our many late-night brainstormings, Hiroshi said something of our failures to excite any significant interest that has been a motto worthy of our coat of arms. Hiroshi said "we were born too soon"

afterword

May and I have no idea where we're going next or what we will do. There is, I suppose, a slim chance some 11th hour contract offer will step up to stay the executioner and satisfy these wolves at the door enough to enable Teledynamics to carry on as before, but given a deadline of just 10 days to be signed and sealed, our thoughts are on contingencies, on seeking a makeshift landing strip to set this ship down and get out with our skins.

We do appreciate the support we've received, especially over the nearly 10-year run of our website presence. We appreciate all the kind citations, emails, comments and even the odd PayPal donation graciously plunked into our sidebar; it tells us that while we may not be much good at reaching the real decision makers, at least our peers agree with us and it is comforting to know that we're not preaching a quackery or selling scam-wares.

Where we are understood, we find universal support and agreement.

It means a lot to us to be able to look back over a 20-year project knowing what we did was a Good Thing, that our work was valid and important, even if our particular method wasn't particularly profitable.

So to all of you who read and enjoy the Communique, our thanks for your support. To our clients and friends whom we've served over these past two decades, our thanks as well for giving us this chance to put our ideas into practice to show the world what we mean through the vehicle of your message. It's been a trip worth making if only because of the friends we've made.