copernican turn

Larry Lessig comments on Barack Obama

2008-02-05T14:18:00.000-08:00

While the text on this video is as annoying as the MTV "hand-held camera" effect, the points that Larry Lessig makes here are spot-on!

Integrity matters.

Lessig endorses Obama

Fiddling (with numbers) On the Titanic

2007-05-22T11:40:00.000-07:00

In recent testimony before Congress, CWA President Larry Cohen made the case that the average broadband download speed in the US is only 1.9 megabits per second, compared to 61 Mbps in Japan, 45 Mbps in South Korea, 18 Mbps in Sweden, and 17 Mpbs in France.

Another report came out recently stating that when combining so-called broadband penetration (lovely term!) with subscribers and price per household, the US is 12th in the world rather than 15th.

While I admire the desire to drill down into the details, no matter how you count the lifeboats, the fact is the Titanic is still going down. Unless we wake up and realize how critical the Net has become to every facet of society, including our economy, we will wake up in icy waters instead.

Life as Conversation

2007-04-18T17:49:00.000-07:00

Too often interactions with politicians are framed by the conventions of battle: one interest group versus another, campaigns waged, etc. In a refreshing departure from that approach, the Swedish Urban Network Association sent an open letter to the Swedish government to start a dialog on the future of open networks. I think this is a great example of how Doc's "Markets are conversations" can be extended to Life is a conversation!

Open letter to the politicians and decision makers of Sweden from the Swedish Urban Network Association (The Swedish Urban Network Association, SSNf, is the Swedish
trade association for urban net owners with open and neutral communication nets)

Open urban net – a prerequisite for Sweden of the future

Approximately 170 local authorities today have an open urban net solution.
The issue now is: How to guarantee a broadband development in Sweden advantageous to all of us.
Do we want a country where you can lead a life both in the cities and on the countryside, still accessing the same offer of electronic services?
Do we want to grant the opportunities for local and creative small entrepreneurs?
Do we want one IT infrastructure supplier being responsible for both cities and countryside?
Do we want a truly open digital society?
If so it is a simple choice: We should continue the open urban net venture
In order to make Sweden successful in granting access for everyone to broadband, a broadband strategy has to have the support of all the main participants of the business.
Openness and durability are the critical issues in parallel with topics as local and regional development. The future of open nets, based on a reliable infrastructure, will offer entirely new opportunities to a variety of entrepreneurs and business owners to share the NEW and UP TO DATE electronic world of broadband as we see ahead.

Sweden an example in the EU
The extension of the new IT infrastructure of Sweden in most Swedish local districts has so far been driven by local council initiatives. The openness has been obvious in these nets, since they have been built in order to develop the local and regional trade and industry as well as the society.
The model used by a majority of the Swedish urban nets, is the one recommended by the EU as the model to be employed by the EU to achieve an open and sustainable IT infrastructure for everyone. These open urban nets have paved the way and secured a lead position for Sweden among the broadband nations of the world.
The main obstacle for Sweden and the Nordic countries is that we cover a large part of the European surface, however, with few inhabitants. In spite of this, a vast number of the Swedish local councils and urban net enterprises have shouldered – as is the situation in the rest of the Nordic countries – the responsibility to build an open and sustainable IT infrastructure adapted to local conditions in each local district or region. The urban nets have taken on a social responsibility, which the market often neither has wanted, nor been able to accomplish.
Together with our members and the majority of the main participants of the broadband market, we are now working on an open IT infrastructure on all levels in the whole of Sweden. If we are to achieve the broadband-for-everyone objective, joint action is a must – not laws, regulations and directive from the Swedish government or the EU.

Ulf Borbos, chairman, The Swedish Urban Network Association
Mats Berggren, deputy chairman
Lars Hedberg, secretary-general

Perhaps we could use this as an example for a much needed discussion in this country. Bonus Link

Step Right Up

2007-03-30T11:20:00.000-07:00

This post requires a little background music: Tom Waits doing "Step Right Up". I cant help but hear him rasping out that song when I read these words from chairman Martin:

broadband-wireless services need to be 'on the same footing' as wired high-speed-Internet services from cable and telephone companies.

It’s going to be important for consumers to develop that third broadband pipe as a competitor to DSL [digital subscriber line] and cable.

If only he meant that as it reads -- *consumers* developing the third broadband pipe -- we would have reason to cheer (and forgive the paternalistic use of the word "consumers"). Alas, that would be a mis-read of what is being said. Of course, the intent is to portray the FCC as looking out for the interests of consumers by ensuring that there is a third pipe in the broadband arena. One can only hope that it turns out to be the third rail and it knocks some sense into this carnival sideshow.

Martin went on to say that wireless-broadband Internet-access service will be treated as an information service under the Communications Act of 1934. What a great idea! Let's take a developing communications technology and subject it to legislation that was passed at a time when electricity was the new modern convenience. Martin goes on to say it is "critical" that broadband-wireless services receive "the same lighter regulatory treatment as other information services." The purpose of this anachronistic move becomes clear when put in the context of the upcoming wireless spectrum auction.

In case the subtlety is lost on anyone, Martin spells it out:

Martin said the biggest priority for the FCC in 2007 on the wireless front will be getting the procedures in place to auction off that spectrum in a timely and equitable manner. "Getting the government out of the way, in that sense, is the most important thing we can do."

Ring any Bells? Only one? Exactly.

But it gets worse.
Not only is he harkening back to the day when MaBell ruled like something out of the Matrix, but he is looking to avoid anything that might impose universal service.

Martin suggested that the FCC needs to examine universal-service policies "to make sure we’re not funding yesterday’s technologies.”

That's rich. Let's use 1939 communications policy, but at the same time, let's not get bogged down in anything as anachronistic as ensuring universal access.

Market Equilibrium

2007-02-27T11:27:00.000-08:00

Commons-based peer production according to Benkler, is not a victory of the left. It is rather an eqilibrium between market actors and non-market actors. He ended with the remark that leaving economic systems to the capitalist market alone is unforgivable.

That's from a synopsis by Trebor Scholz of a talk Yochai Benkler gave at Eyebeam last year.

Opposite of the Tragedy of the Commons

2007-02-10T23:06:00.000-08:00

In what is decidedly the opposite of a tragedy of the commons (euphoria of the commons?), the COMMONS project has published its official report. Congratulations Sascha and kc! What a tremendous and exciting effort!

Here is a snippet from the report that captures the essence of the COMMONS project:

Through discussion, debate, and compromise, COMMONS Strategy Workshop participants consented unanimously on the following shared Statement of Purpose:

COMMONS is...

... a community of interest comprised of local networks, broadly defined, who seek to:

utilize a AUP (Acceptable Use Policy) neutral communications infrastructure,
mitigate geographic disparities in the cost of Internet access and wide-area network connectivity,
enable competitive environment in the connectivity market,
benefit from economies of scale, and
realize a vision for ownership in an open, universal and scalable backbone infrastructure.

... a community of network operators who:

recognize that the future usefulness and security of the Internet depends upon the availability of empirical network data,
support the availability of that empirical data to the academic research community, and
insist that the data collected and utilized be handled in a manner respectful of personal privacy.

....a community of interest of people who seek to exchange ideas on, and devote resources to, a wide variety of common interests in furtherance of the objectives stated above, including:

approaches to social problems that leverage innovative technology and business strategies,
political, legal, and regulatory strategies, and
community networking.

I'll be writing more on the COMMONS project soon, but for more details, read the whole report, or visit the project page at Caida.

Net Devolution

2007-01-21T01:13:00.000-08:00

It's sad to consider how much creativity is wasted re-creating the past. For example, radio was "theatre" brought into your living room, and television was "radio with pictures". Now we have netTV. Wired has a piece on the latest hot topic, the "Venice Project". Brought to you by the same folks who brought you Skype, the Venice Project (or "Joost" as it will become named), delivers all the content you could wish for, at the price everyone wants: free.

What's the catch?

Not much really -- just a customer relationship the likes of which you've never seen before.
In fact, this is such a DEEP relationship that the Surgeon-General advises you bend over, grab your ankles and take a very deep breath!
From the Wired article:

"The key in the past was volume and frequency," says Clark. "Now it's going to be quality."

One of the Leiden crew's top priorities is a backend ad engine that can pinpoint viewers by location, time of day, viewing habits, and opt-in profile information to serve up a perfect ad. Developed by open source geeks in privacy-centric Europe, the central database doesn't store any identifying data. Personal information is stored only on the user's own PC. Clark, the ad sales chief, is happy to blue-sky the possibilities: "Buy all the Desperate Housewives viewers in a zip code. Or the first thing a given viewer watches on a given day."

In theory, that kind of control will make the network much more valuable to advertisers. "We offer targeting they've never dreamed about in the TV world," says Werdelin. "And a deeper relationship with customers. Not just deeper than TV, but deeper than most of what you get on the Net. I don't think anyone really knows what those things are worth."

I don't know about you, but I'm certainly relieved to know this double-deep relationship is being stored on my PC!

All cynicism aside, haven't these folks learned anything from the Net? Do they have to be run over by Cluetrain before they get that "perfect ad" brain cramp knocked out of them? Is this why we're fighting for Net Neutrality?

It's natural to want to roll the most powerful aspects of one medium forward into the new medium. But let's leave the unnecessary baggage behind.

Cell from Hell

2007-01-20T16:21:00.000-08:00

"Unfortunately the system cannot process your entry, please try again later -- goodbye!"

This is the msg I got while trying to leave Doc some voice mail on his cell. Not that his mailbox was full, or that there is a preference for higher ARPU calls (since Doc and I have the same service from VeryHighZone). Just the equivalent of a fast busy, or translated into human communication: "go away while we deal with people who are paying us more". This is what customer relations has devolved to. Most people don't think about what is going on in these circumstances, but essentially two customers are being denied service that was paid for (not exactly cheap either!). I can only assume that because calls from other carriers generate more revenue, they are given priority over "in-house" calls.

We would never accept this from other business relationships: imagine getting your monthly magazine delivered only every other month, but still getting the full bill for renewal. Something tells me most people would be on the phone to the billing dept. But we quietly accept missed calls, dropped calls (there is a spot on HWY101 that drops my calls without fail), and numerous other outages or failure to deliver services paid for. And yet we pay significantly more for our phone bill than most other communication services! What bothers me most is that this may be where we are headed with the Net, if the carriers have their way. The walled garden approach is not only about keeping paying customers captive, but essentially holding them captive to other walled gardens in order to extract more fees. In this case it's called peering.

Not Even in the Race

2007-01-09T20:21:00.000-08:00

On the Media had an interesting piece on wifi recently (transcripts and audio here). As with any radio show, much of the detail gets left on the cutting room floor, but what's noteworthy about this piece is how much they managed to squeeze in. In particular, Bob Garfield begins:

You can't run an efficient business on a bad connection, and it's increasingly clear you can't run an efficient city on one either, not to mention educate students or support economic growth.

That's why some 300 American municipalities are looking to offer wireless service, or Wi-Fi

I think 300 might be low, but it's a telling number nonetheless. Why are so many communities looking to do something that is bound to get them in hot water with their incumbent Net providers? Could it be that despite all the claims to the contrary, the network services being provided are too little for too much (and too late)? Could it also be that communities do not want to wait only to find they have been left out of their incumbents' upgrade plans?

Economic benefits of true broadband are so important that it cannot be left to decision-makers who have fiduciary responsibility to their stockholders (as it should be), not the community. And overall, we are falling so far behind, we may never be able to catch up:

The dozens of ISP options in European cities have led to much lower prices for much faster service than what's offered in the U.S. And after leading the world in Internet access and affordability, the U.S. is quickly falling behind.

MICHAEL COPPS: We're 21st, right behind Estonia.

MICHAEL COPPS: And other countries are cleaning our clock and getting a lot of bandwidth out to their folks at a cheap price. We know that we're not in the competition.

Can we afford to not be in the competition?

iProvo Sets the Record Straight

2007-01-05T18:38:00.000-08:00

A recent "study" claimed to show that municipal broadband was a bad idea based on the example of iProvo (Provo, Utah). While good critical studies are welcome, bogus studies which are nothing more than a paid attack by vested interests need to be shelved along with the alien sighting reports. Fortunately, iProvo has put out its own response which deals with the inaccuracies and false conclusions drawn in the study:

http://www.provo.org/downloads/util/building_a_digital_community.pdf

It's All About Us

2006-12-29T18:04:00.000-08:00

Time magazine has declared "You" (ie. us) person of the year, which at first blush seems like a thinly disguised attempt to curry favor with their readership. But actually, the article points out all the ways in which individuals have come to the forefront in shaping the zeitgeist. From blogs to YouTube, to Wikipedia, the collective efforts of millions of individuals creates an unprecedented change:

It's about the many wresting power from the few and helping one another for nothing and how that will not only change the world, but also change the way the world changes.

Not surprisingly, there has already been some push-back. What is (somewhat) surprising, is that one source is Brian Williams. A blogger himself, he nonetheless asserts that democracy itself is threatened:

The problem is that there's a lot of information out there that citizens in an informed democracy need to know in our complicated world...

For the time being, let's leave alone the notion that MSNBC in general, or Brian Williams in particular, knows exactly what information we *need* to know. We can revisit that shortly. Let's go on to the main point of his essay which asks:

Does it endanger what passes for the national conversation if we're all talking at once? What if "talking" means typing on a laptop, but the audience is too distracted to pay attention? The whole notion of "media" is now much more democratic, but what will the effect be on democracy?

He answers this question by saying that the danger is that we might miss the next great book(?!), or the "next great idea, or that we fail to meet the next great challenge because we are too busy celebrating ourselves and listening to the same song we already know by heart."

"Enough About You"

Sorry Brian, but there are some very mistaken assumptions you are making here. The most dangerous is that the news media is the singular authority for information an informed citizenry needs to have. In fact, as Steven Colbert brilliantly pointed out in his biting address to the Washington Press Corps: "we didn't want to know and you were good enough not to tell us". The media has been particularly AWOL on the stories we as a democracy *needed* to know: why we invaded a country that had nothing to do with 9/11 and why we are still there.

More to the point of this Person of the Year award though, the problem with your assumption that it "endangers our national conversation if we are all talking at once" -- um, you really don't understand blogging, do you? This is not a broadcast. Perhaps the analogy of multicast will help. In a broadcast world there can only be one person being heard at a time; so we need to select a channel to avoid cacophony. In the multicast model, we can subscribe to multiple channels of interest and receive them simultaneously. Most importantly, it is not a one-way transmission, but an actual conversation. Note that this is not a symbolic "national conversation", but an actual one. In order to avoid a tower of babel, an informal meritocracy is employed. While not perfect, it is far more democratic than the old boys club that currently passes for a national conversation.

If the above sounds patronizing, it is not meant to be. I think we are all struggling with coming to terms with the Net as it currently stands, and how it will evolve when we get sufficient bandwidth in this country. As Doc says, "markets are conversations"; that can be readily extended to read: the Net is a conversation. It may be messy, but it's the reason why the audience has "made other plans".

2006-10-29T23:53:00.000-08:00

Where's the Broadband Beef Arnie?

So maybe the only tangible result of the net neutrality debate is that politicians now use broadband as part of their re-election strategy. Color me cynical, but the announcement on Friday that Gov Schwarzenegger wants to make "California a leader in the telecommunications revolution" sounds like, well, a politician looking for a sound-bite.

Setting aside for a moment that there is a distinct possibility California already is a leader (or was!), the question is what is he going to do to make this goal possible? Well, he's going to cut red tape! Yep, the plan is to streamline the process of getting rights-of-way (ROW) and at a standard rate. On the one hand, I dont think that ROW issues were holding up the 100Mbps link that is coming to my house "real soon". And on the other hand, the governor just signed the Digital Infrastructure and Cable Communications Act which allows the telcos to cherry-pick affluent neighborhoods while bypassing the less wealthy.

This Digital Infrastructure act serves to rob communities of the little control they had to provide evenly distributed services throughout their jurisdiction.

If there really is a desire to make California a broadband leader, then help community infrastructure initiatives that are springing up all over the country. Doc was asking for input for a follow-up to his seminal "Saving the Net" piece -- so here's mine: we can either hang together by supporting community networking, or hang separately by allowing our communities to be cherry-picked by the telcos. Certainly savingthenet implies more than cutting red tape for the telco incumbents.

2006-10-02T00:38:00.000-07:00

South Yorkshire has a plan to build the Digital Region which is a public-sector led initiative to transform South Yorkshire through open access broadband. They also have a cute visual indicator of relative bandwidth speeds.

Meanwhile over on this side of the pond, the folks at Media Alliance have sponsored this study of the SF Wireless project. Interesting that they come to the conclusion that WiFi is great, but fiber infrastructure is a whole lot better!

2006-09-25T21:33:00.000-07:00

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!

2006-09-21T23:00:00.000-07:00

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.

2006-09-07T23:43:00.000-07:00

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.

2006-04-16T01:57:00.000-07:00

Larry Lessig has called Yochai Benkler the leading intellectual of the information age, and I must say his new book is impressive. Of course, it helps when he says things like:

"Here and there throughout this book you will encounter instances where I suggest that the state could play constructive roles, if it stopped listening to incumbents for long enough to realize this. These include, for example, municipal funding of neutral broadband networks..."

I'm not making this up -- it's on p.23:

Wealth Of Networks

copernican who?

2005-11-29T22:29:00.000-08:00

Copernican Turn: a partial explanation

We have reached a turning point. Almost everyone feels this in one way or another. It goes beyond the effects of technology, cultural mid-life crisis, or consumerist burnout. We stand on the cusp of a new era not because of anything external, but because we have reached a point where change is as inevitable as puberty -- and every bit as uncertain. What is certain is that we have the ability to affect the outcome, but perhaps not the courage or foresight.

The Net is obviously a huge factor in this changing dynamic. But I dont see the Net as the catalyst of technological change -- I see it as an expression of our collective will to communicate. If you think back over the development of the Net, no one predicted email as the "killer app". Why not? Because it was not sexy enough. It did not have the George Jetson feel of being in that imaginary future (I'm still waiting for my picturephone!).
It's also worth asking why email *is* the killer app. My feeling is that it's simply what we know how to do. It fits our cognitive frame of writing letters. We know how to communicate in the written form more easily than any other at the moment. I believe this is already changing to a more multi-modal form but that's the subject of another post.

So the question is, if the technology is not the driver, but rather our will to communicate, are we capable of determining a rational course of action which will produce desirable outcomes? Or are we always forced to accept the seemingly random pitching and tossing of the communications marketplace? If we accept the idea that the Net is a commons, what does that imply in terms of making it thrive? If the Net is more than a series of tubes (or wires), how do we frame that notion so that it makes sense to foster stewardship rather than allowing the tragedy of the commons.

The Net is unique and provides an unusual opportunity to reach a previously unattainable space -- a transcendent state. It's transcendent in many ways: crossing national boundaries, ideologies, and almost time itself . And I dont think we've seen even a fraction of what is possible. We have to be willing to not only engage our imagination, but also be willing to wrestle with the hard issues of how to ensure this new era will be improving rather than devolving.