Senator Chimp

In "Life After Network Neutrality: Replaced by a Chimp?" Jeffrey Chester writes:

The broadband content most likely to benefit from the new "pay us the most to get the best service" Internet will be online programming from our biggest advertisers and media conglomerates. Take, for example, the recent announcement about the new online entertainment channel network called Bud.TV, in which Anheuser-Busch plans to use high-speed and interactive video to attract a new generation of steady beer drinkers. One Bud.TV show already in production--which will likely be able to enjoy the fruits of non-network-neutrality US Internet--is called "Replaced by a Chimp." According to an Anheuser-Busch executive, for each show they will "grab a profession, such as a waiter, or a bartender or a trial attorney and replace those people with a chimp, and film the reaction of the consumers who happen to be in the same environment as the chimp...at the end of the show, the consumer will vote on whether the chimp should stay and continue on the job."

He then goes on to suggest that perhaps bud.tv could redeem itself by replacing the senior Senator from Alaska with a chimp.

Couldn't agree more!

One Web Day Wish

Torture is not acceptable. There is no way to justify it, or to wash our hands of it by exporting it to another country. All the arguments can be read here, so I wont repeat them.

But we must speak out against this. My One-Web Day wish is to use our voice on the net to put an end to the use of torture at Guantanamo Bay and the practice of "rendition". Call on those around you to join in the condemnation of this abhorrent practice.

Van the Man (Jacobson) does the Copernican Turn

great talk by the man who did not invent the internet, but probably saved it from collapse by tuning the congestion control. If you've ever used traceroute, you can thank Van.

In this talk, Van asserts that we are in need of a Copernican turn because our view of the net is based on the telco mindset. He also goes on to say that even TCP/IP is not sacred and that we should rethink the way we architect network communication to enable a more intelligent "BitTorrent" model (that's my sloppy shorthand for what is a much more elegant concept, but you will have to listen to his talk to get the details).

My only nit with his concept is that it tends to treat the whole communication model as something which can be turned into objects. I'm not sure that's entirely possible or desirable. I'm becoming more and more convinced that one of the problems we are facing is a lack of a conversation commons. I'm not pining for the old-world tea salon replicated by the Well and others; I'm thinking along the lines of what some researchers at HP referred to as the "scent-trail" but that's the subject of another post.