Hedgehog in the Blog

Secretary Clinton speech on how information networks are forming a nervous system for our planet. Finally, a DC speech I could actually sit through. Video here.

Historically, asymmetrical access to information is one of the leading causes of interstate conflict. When we face serious disputes or dangerous incidents, it’s critical that people on both sides of the problem have access to the same set of facts and opinions.

The Future of Libraries (PDF)

Date: December 16, 2009
To: Dr. James Billington, Librarian of Congress
From: Elena Reitman, Avid Library Patron
Subject: The Future of Libraries

Dear Dr. Billington,

Following a personal impetus to learn leads to empowerment and important discoveries for humanity. Growth and innovation depend on human capital to improve current processes, technologies, and policies. Increasing human capital depends on tools of free and reliable access to information. In today’s rapidly changing information economy, regions of the world where scarce human capacity is in relative abundance will flourish. As a leader of an institution dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge, the Library of Congress should stand against rent-seeking practices that hinder information sharing and access.

We are experiencing a unique time when technological changes are stirring policy debates that can potentially reshape what it means to access and produce knowledge. The internet has enabled a collaborative, consumer-producer of information that will continue to push the boundaries of social networks, peer production, and information access. The Library of Congress, a trusted institution of the Federal government has a unique opportunity to enter the debate by addressing how libraries of the future can play a role in the technology practices to come.

The Library of Congress and the network of American public libraries have a unique and formidable ability to usher in the future by bridging the digital divide, influencing digital copyright policies, and promoting the future of libraries by:

• Ensuring today’s stimulus funds are administered prudently to advance equal access to technologies in communities in most need
• Increasing library public relations efforts and remind policymakers keen on cutting state funding to local public libraries of the skills and services these institutions provide, and their positive externalities to the community
• Promoting an ebook open standard so libraries and industry focus their energy on improving information services
• Advocating that Digital Rights Management (DRM) not hinder open access and libraries’ ability to meet patron’s future information seeking and creating practices
• Investing in future-oriented technologies that save costs today and set libraries up for patron’s future information practices (i.e. RFID) Read the rest of this entry »

This weeks reading brought to light how many of the regulatory battles we’ve discussed in class including VoIP and ICANN resemble the network they run on- where pressure mounts from all directions and from competing interests. Several of our discussions suggest such a regulatory climate may require a less centralized regulatory approach, since more players representing ever more forms and elements of data transmission enter the debate. All of them want to protect their futures.

Reading about Japan fostering a market for VoIP and other technology and communication advances, put into question what I had heard in the past about the stagnation of Japanese business resulting from corruption and the “old boy” network of Japanese business relations. The ICT regulation toolkit article discussion of local loop unbundling and co-location to stimulate DSL deployment in Japan, and the market driven VoIP interrelated with broadband penetration, transforms the image of a rigid, hierarchical Keiretsu.

On the other hand, the strategic capitalism Japan is known for, where business and public purpose are more closely guided through government and industry cooperation would suggest Japan would require electronic surveillance requirements and emergency number requirements for VoIP. It seems the Asian tigers are willing to relent a bit when it comes to communication technology and industries that require rapid innovation and strong knowledge economy. In many technology races Japan and other East Asian countries also benefit from less challenge from opposition that may thwart or delay implementation once a policy/strategy has been announced. Ikujiro Nonaka and Hirotaka Takeuchi in The Knowledge-Creating Company attribute Japanese innovation to skills in organizational knowledge creation: “the capability of a company as a whole to create a new knowledge, disseminate it throughout the organization and embody it in products, services and systems.”

Some of the readings on VoIP also mentioned broadband penetration, and how perhaps as developed nations approach the final phase of the S shaped adoption curve, demographics and education will matter more than infrastructure itself. Some factors mentioned include the size of a younger population, education level, and consumer credit policies critical for investment. (I’ll try to add to my discussion of the U.S. national broadband plan).

The discussion on VoIP E911 requirements also brought to the forefront the debate between a centralized national leadership versus market driven innovation. While the main discussion points center around VoIP providers and customers, it’s really important to also consider the call centers on the other end receiving data, and the potential costs they will incur upgrading equipment, particularly in less urban areas.

We see organization like National Emergency Number Association and legislative efforts like the New and Emerging Technologies 911 Improvement Act of 2008 direct the debate toward a more centralized control. The 911 Improvement Act tasks the National E9-1-1 Implementation Coordination Office to develop “a national plan for migrating to a national IP-enabled emergency network capable of receiving and responding to all citizen-activated emergency communications and improving information sharing among all emergency response entities.” (from: http://www.nena.org/node/9750)

In their recommendations there is a direct call for centralized coordination:

Without concerted national leadership and coordination, this disparity will only grow as consumers adopt new voice, text and video applications and local 9-1-1 Authorities cobble together solutions to access the antiquated 9-1-1 system one technology at a time.

There is little controversy around the importance of emergency call center connectivity and interoperability during emergencies, especially large-scale events that require coordination between multiple geographic locations and law enforcement agencies. E911 would allow call centers to transfer and share information with other call centers or response agencies quickly and accurately while accessing more information from more formats, data, video and voice. Post September 11, many jurisdictions have developed mutual aid agreements to achieve just that. The agreements are a good start but there is still a deficit in interoperability of devices among first responders let alone citizen callers and between neighboring call centers.

FEMA includes Mutual Aid Assistance as part of the National Incident Management System:

Mutual aid agreements and assistance agreements are agreements between agencies, organizations, and jurisdictions that provide a mechanism to quickly obtain emergency assistance in the form of personnel, equipment, materials, and other associated services. The primary objective is to facilitate rapid, short-term deployment of emergency support prior to, during, and after an incident.

While the language and intent is there, the technology requires standards across emergency responders of all sizes. Here the debate becomes whether market or centralized government methods are optimal for the delivery of the standardization necessary to achieve connectivity and interoperability.

The marketplace without concentrated national leadership would reward VoIP providers who can successfully deliver E911 services and those who don’t would fall behind. But, when public safety is involved this approach is perceived as untrustworthy. Public safety agencies will state that while commerce and non-emergency communications can be left to the market, communications related to public safety and homeland security require a national, centralized approach. The private sector often counters this argument by saying that regulation lowers investment, as investors are reluctant to invest in a technology or company that is at risk of being regulated or punished retroactively for business and technology decisions made to stay competitive. If this is the case the first responder community has to wait longer for worse products and/or workarounds. (I’ve sat in on a few of these conversations, although usually the language is not as straightforward).

And for a final note on central or decentralized control, the reading on ICANN’s accountability framework reminded me of our reading in the beginning of the semester on the origins of the internet, and how ARPANET developers did just enough to stay off the regulators’ radar while maintaining enough ties to ensure funding. Like the ARPANET team, I assume that ICANN will strive to maintain the spirit of Internet innovation and act as a representative body of a diverse community instead of a centralized force. I wonder whether a looser connection to the Department of Commerce and a more global governance model will help ICANN achieve the “starfish” Beckstrom advocates. Or, if ICANN becomes a global trustee, will this cause stall because many more differing interests will have to be served?

I had never thought that browser plug-ins were a controversial issue let alone exploitative. Reading about Googles Chrome’s attempt to boost IE’s performance made me realize how complex the technological frontier can get. New technologies have to be compatible yet also compete, consequently creating interesting technological arrangements. It seems Google’s move with Google Chrome Frame is one of appeasement and strategy because it recognizes the widespread use of IE and the need to integrate with it instead of going out there alone. While I’m waiting to get Chrome on my Mac, at work I’ve enjoyed using Chrome as my browser. I have found that when I use Chrome and IE at the same time, one of them usually stalls or crashes. Nonetheless, it all seems to be be moving toward an emphasis on user centered design, and that’s a positive for us.

The discussion in our readings on the history and current trends in web browsers made me think a lot about data visualization in general. I was really impressed my the ideas presented in the Mozilla Labs Design Challenge and Mozilla Ubiquity. While I think add-ons like Ubiquity are extremely helpful, they are geared for power users comfortable with writing commands. Effectively built visual design is quite universal and requires intuition and minimal learning; it “reduces the cognitive load.” Reading about HTML5, I got really excited about the possibilities to drag and drop and having more flexibility in creating mash-ups. (In fact pasting this post from Google Docs was much more cumbersome this week than the usual paste from Word.)

The effort by Google to blur the line between applications and web-experiences along with the expansion of cloud computing is ushering in a new mindset that is lighting a fire under major software companies rears. I learned about Google Wave from numerous Facebook status updates by a few friends who work for Microsoft. They wanted to get their hands on it! I like to see established companies feel the hot breath of market competition down their neck. I think consumers win in this situation. Maybe because our discussion of the EU Data Retention discussion is still fresh in my mind and it’s cyber security awareness month, Microsoft’s quote: “This is not a risk we would recommend our friends and families to take” sounded something Homeland Security would say.

Instead of being bound to proprietary software many vendors and open standards allow many more people to implement innovations. This might be the result of the trend toward object oriented programming: where the objects programmed tend to be convenient representation in computer code of counterparts in the real world more fitting for group based nature of the web. I thought the discussion how computer languages were moving toward more abstract coding could be linked to the need for flexibility and a more intelligent web, especially when the clouds roll in.

If browsers and applications become one in the cloud, are we getting closer to a Semantic web, where computers are able to recognize the meaning of information on the web using context providing users with more relevant information than today’s browsers that rely heavily on user input? If this is the future, we’ll need a lot more mathematicians to build out complex algorithms that can find, share and combine information on the web. Better get kids math scores up!

One thing maybe that could be clarified is the notion presented in our reading that using the Chrome plug in in IE “cedes control to the person surfing?” I’m not sufficiently tech savvy to understand why that is. What is a rendering engine?

The Telecom Act of 1996 has a lot of great lessons for FCC leadership in charge of drafting the Broadband Plan. The history of the Telecom Act shows the trends in economics and support or distrust of competition as a means of providing universal service. It seems regulators often find themselves walking a fine line between engineering socially optimal outcomes through rule-making or letting the market energy take care of it. The Telecom Act did recognize that future technology would not be limited to one kind of data type transfers even though it looks like the convergence aimed for didn’t occur due to technological constraints and costs. I wonder how relevant traditional telephony will be in the future. I know many people are opting to get rid of land lines and solely subscribe to wireless service.

Further Reading:

Good examples of Visualization:

http://newsmap.jp/ — consolidates news from around the world, color codes by subject and number of articles on the same topic.You can also see how what other parts of the world are reporting on.

And more examples of data visualization: http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2009/06/50-great-examples-of-data-visualization/

Human centered design:Open-Source Innovation: IDEO’s Human-Centered Design Toolkit. – good resource for good web design that focuses on user experience.

10 Web Apps To Build The Next Big Thing Without Writing Any Code- collection of tools for those of us not fluent in programming languages.

Favorite Mozilla plug-in for compiling bibliographies and data mining: Zotero

Semantic web example:http://www.wolframalpha.com/- very ambitious effort to make it possible to compute whatever can be computed about anything. From website: “Our goal is to build on the achievements of science and other systematizations of knowledge to provide a single source that can be relied on by everyone for definitive answers to factual queries.”

This week’s readings on the EU’s Data Retention Act and censorship in Singapore are a contrast to our discussions of net neutrality but many of the same issues arise, especially in regards to state control over technology. Many smart people are hoping the Internet will transform us into connected, global citizens, but it appears that national boundaries are being replicated in the name of national security. And with the global nature of Internet traffic, we could see an Internet Interpol force or practices that promote a self-censoring Panopticon.

There’s something unsettling about law enforcement and intelligence agencies getting access to our internet records: the Big Brother factor. I think if governments could provide explicit examples of how retaining data helps prevent crime, this might justify or at least ameliorate Big Brother worries. The breakdown of the individual EU states’ retention laws shows nations with higher perceived threat of terrorism (UK and France) wanting more data retention and fuzzier definitions on how the data will be used. The debate over the Directive also speaks to a bigger challenge of harmonizing legislation across a diverse group of nations. Couldn’t the energy and resources being spent on data retention be used on effective e-government projects that leverage community cohesion and built trust? This might be much more effective in deterring ill will especially since savvy techies will find was to go around blocks and data retention efforts.

Why are governments so hesitant to be more transparent about how they plan on using the data? The courts found that the Directive was essentially limited to the activities of service providers and did not govern access to data or its use by the police or judicial authorities. (computerweekly.com) I understand that providing this information might empower bad guys, but there are still ways to articulate intended use without undermining security objectives.

There are many instances of surveillance in our lives like airport security checks and job background checks- all of which occur outside our private spaces. In the case of data retention by the ISP, there’s a disconnect between how the data is acquired and the eyes privy to it. Singing up for Internet service is not generally associated with surveillance. Most of the data comes directly from the ISP, a commercial transaction between user and provider. Internet surveillance enters our private spaces and may affect private expression, which is detrimental to active participation and unprejudiced involvement as a free citizen. This is even more hazardous for the EU’s new Eastern members coming out of repressive regimes, whose citizens need extra assurances that they will not face reprisal for voicing concern or dissent.

Such preemptive legislation and auto-regulatory strategies protect the ‘innocent,’ most of whom are responsible and have nothing to hide, and should therefore have nothing to fear. (Terence Lee)

Often it doesn’t take a repressive regime to institute tight controls over information access, nor does it stir up aggressive resistance. It was really interesting to learn that Singapore’s Internet censorship has little to do with technological blocks and much more with invocations of “Singaporean traditions,” “Confusion values,” and “national unity.” More so than these ideological rationales, economic success has contributed to Singaporeans’ lack of desire to engage in politics, which I believe might change as the region gets accustomed to its success and realizes it doesn’t hinge on the People’s Action Party. It’s easy for us in the U.S. to forget about the rapid but relatively recent growth of Asian economies and the novelty of EU governing bodies. There’s still a lot of political and institutional experimentation taking place. Hopefully, the right mix of technology and internet policy can create useful tools both for states and citizens in the process.

Further Reading:

Internet Censorship Around the World (Margarita Valdes Cortes) – Paper from Internet Society’s iNet 2000 proceedings in Japan.

Thesis: In this paper, we first establish a relationship between the kinds of government models in different countries around the world and the current situation regarding Internet censorship. As a basic characteristic, we will establish differences between democratic and totalitarian states. In the first case, the constitution must ensure the rights of the citizens, especially the freedom of expression. In the second case, the government defines the rules and decides what content may be shown or published.

The Practice and Policy of Global Internet Filtering

Thesis: Many countries around the world block or filter Internet content, denying access to information–often about politics, but also relating to sexuality, culture, or religion–that they deem too sensitive for ordinary citizens. Access Denied documents and analyzes Internet filtering practices in over three dozen countries, offering the first rigorously conducted study of this accelerating trend.

In my short time in DC, like most of us I’ve learned (just as Professor Nelson pointed out) that rhetoric is the Holy Grail. If you can master the right angle at the right time, to the right mix of people, your agenda gains better odds of success. This week’s reading showed how people on either side of the net neutrality debate are using the same words to prescribe very different courses of action because their conceptualization of the debate is not only on different sides, but is also coming from different spheres, technical logistics and policy. Many of the terms surrounding the debate are technical and this would suggest that such terms have a more stable meaning than lets say, “nationalism” or “epistemology.” Deep packet inspection and tiered pricing seem technical and clear. Intuitively on a scale of subjectivity and objectivity such technical terms fall closer toward the latter. Our reading this week and from a few weeks back are proving this assumption does not apply within net neutrality debate.

The differences in approach toward similar technical terms by Richard Bennett and Al Franken (from his speech on net neutrality delivered at Future of Music Coalition Policy Summit ) bring to light how technical terms like deep packet inspection can inspire very different agendas. According to Bennett, deep packet inspection is not a taboo practice but a logistical reality. Bennet’s objective is “to disentangle free speech concerns from network engineering necessities.” Bennett uses logistical reasoning to state that net neutrality is not a realistic goal and internet congestion will require more choices in customer agreements and prioritization by modes of communication (person-to-person, machine-to-person, machine-to-machine- and network maintenance). On the other side, Al Franken compares deep packet inspection and prioritization to the Amazons and Microsofts of the world “relegating a blogger or a mom-and-pop business to the slow lane.”

That’s a business motive, but it has the effect of limiting speech, and as far as I’m concerned, free speech limited — or free speech delayed – is the same as free speech denied. Because the truth is that the Internet is the town hall of the 21st century.

Franken’s strength is his ability to do the opposite of Bennett, to entangle free speech and democracy into the debate. Deep packet investigation holds very different rhetorical power for a technician and a politician. Franken’s and Bennett’s approaches are influenced by the priorities of their professional spheres. I think the debate may be richer with an intermediate approach, or an interpreter that can bridge the two spheres.

This week’s reading framed the debate over net neutrality between two lords, ISPs and government regulators, when it should be between costs and benefits. The tradeoffs are numerous and were well outlined by Professor Schwartz. People express unease about broadband operators charging application providers, but this would reduce prices to consumers and make the Internet more accessible for whom the current prices are a deterrent. Should ISPs choose to discriminate beyond users’ comfort, unsatisfied customer would switch to technologies that would step in to meet consumer preference. This fear should keep ISPs in check. I also took away from Dr. Schwartz’s article that while the government is claiming a stake in defining an open Internet, regulation that worked well for telecoms might not anticipate all the complexities and linkages of today’s technological frontier. Many net neutrality proponents are happy with the FCC taking a lead on the debate, but the FCC separates wireline, telephony, cable television, broadcasting and mobile wireless into separate bureaus while de facto technology practices suggest these distinctions are less applicable since the same device can give a user access to two or all of the mediums of communication/broadcasting.

Going back to the Holy Grail and Medieval Europe, I do think it’s fascinating how technology is creating economic and social interactions more similar to the scattered network of city-states of Flanders and Italy than the industrial complexes of the modern, industrial age. This argument was first introduced by Manuel Castells, a Spanish sociologist who foresaw power shifting from states to networks of non-government actors. As these insurgent network forces play out, old structures face a decline because of the new modes of behavior and social organization introduced by new technologies. In Fraser & Dutta’s Throwing Sheep in the Boardroom: How Online Social Networking will Transform Your Life, Work and World, the social and commercial networks enabled by Internet technology are compared to the medieval social order, which unlike a nation-state based world exhibited “the absence of centralized power; the presence of overlapping authority, uncertain political boundaries, multilayered identities, social relations based on fealty, spiritual and horizontally structured loyalties.” So maybe this argument on net neutrality is a last ditch effort by dominant centralized actors like large companies and the government to keep themselves relevant in our neo-medieval world.

Further reading:

Al Franken: The Internet: It’s Not a Truck, It’s a Town Square, Delivered at Georgetown at the Future of Music Coalition Policy Summit

Fraser & Dutta, Throwing Sheep in the Boardroom: How Online Social Networking will Transform Your Life, Work and World

Alain Minc, The New Middle Ages – French neo-medievalist

It is so easy to get extremely optimistic about the potential of broadband access as a way to unleash entrepreneurship and a civic dialogue in a region of the world that needs it most. But, it will take more than just a very powerful fiber optic cable. David Easterly, a development economist points to the West’s urges to find panaceas for growth, or targeted solutions that aim to solve the developing world’s woes. These have ranged from delivering condoms, free laptops, free books and lots of free money. So, as usual, I am on the side of caution. A major part of Africa’s woes are its unstable governments and klepto-politicians that make it a risky investment- to the detriment of the people. It is also worrisome that while the backbone to ISP connection in Africa is strong, the ISP to the user, or the last mile is lagging, especially if the goal is to unleash the average African’s potential.

I’m not completely skeptical because, as some of the material this week pointed out, access to information for self-education is powerful. Farmers can gain valuable information about neighboring farms, young Africans wishing to learn web design tricks, or a mother wishing to find the best treatment for a sick child are all dependent on access to information to reach self-guided solutions. That is really empowering. Disclaimer: This is coming from someone who quit a lucrative consulting gig to go to library school (before discovering CCT of course), so I have my biases. Nonetheless, if I were sitting in a meeting between Zanzibar Telecom, Kenya Telecom, Rwanda Telecom, or Sudan Telecom I’d be interested in how much of the broadband capacity was going to libraries, and what those countries were doing to make it worthwhile for people to improve their situations by investing in education. While it’s admirable that politicians from Rwanda want to make it the next Hyderabad, but this strategy maybe leapfrogging in the wrong sense by jumping to goal that should be below providing prerequisite literacy and electricity to its people.

Broadband is a tool that Africans should use to meet their needs in ways they see fit. This might involve not only fiber optic cables but a mixture of technologies to ensure redundancy and reliability. Each region should evaluate which solutions fit it best. The West can step in to guide but should mostly watch and learn. Perhaps the use of mobile phones that are more readily available to users in developing nations provide a great source of data for scholars. Maybe we can learn from the data gathered by social scientists on how people use communication tools to better understand the best way to implement broadband solutions.

I thought Bill Thomson summed it up well:

We need to allow the network to be changed by the Africans who are starting to use it. We need to offer advice and support where it is asked for, because our experience of the impact of broadband is greater, and we may have useful things to offer, but this must be done in a spirit of co-operation and friendship, and we must never attempt to limit the creativity of those who are new to the network.

On the topic of spectrum, I really appreciated the explanations New America Foundation primer on spectrum policy. It would be great if all regulation explanations, let alone regulation itself was written so clearly. More people could actually understand it. I agree that the spectrum auctioning is a fabulous cash cow. Many other countries including, Mexico, who recently hired the same consulting firm that set up the FCC auction to build out a similar tool to auction off its spectrum.

I think it is important to realize the importance of interoperability for public safety when thinking about white spaces and the potential benefits of an interoperable, national network for first responders to use no matter what jurisdiction they serve. Many disasters cross borders. A major reason a large number of firefighters died during 9/11 was because their radios did not pick up the messages from fellow NYPD radios to evacuate the building. We assume that all first responders “hear” each other, when in fact the radios are not synced. If they could have hopped on one frequency shared by all on the scene the rescue effort may have been less tragic.

Further Reading:

David Easterly, The Elusive Quest for Growth

Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Libraries Initiative

Scientists use mobile phones to track human ‘migration’ patterns

The Central Asia + Information and Communication Technologies project

Why not financial market neutrality, or education in public schools neutrality, or broadcast news neutrality. Of all the industries and innovations churning in our society, the Net has done a great job staying neutral, at least relative to many other information mediums around us. It also has a nice bumper sticker expressiveness to it – “Net Neutrality.” Certainly other innovations have not had a comparably neutral history. Perhaps that is even more reason to formalize standards and rules to protect it for the future.

I find myself in the gray area of the issue although my gut reaction is skepticism. The skepticism initially arose as a concern that policymakers’ good intentions may introduce unintended barriers to experimentation and innovation. Many of the pro neutrality arguments suggest the government should step in to ensure competition is healthy and consumers are protected from the ills of ISP barons. But don’t the diverging interests of content providers and ISPs keep a check on this? Why can’t we just let them fight it out and let consumers listen in and make choices accordingly? Users are after all the nodes that give value to the network. One concern of course is if there is simply a lack of choice for the user, the bickering is just that, and not a healthy exercise in competition. Below are three concerns that make it difficult to take a side on the issue.

Concern 1: Rulemaking requires policymakers to delineate rules based on categories of actors, and with path dependence and legal precedent at play, the categories assigned don’t always neatly fit new technologies. We are already seeing problems with this as VoIP and routing services like Google Voice because they are treated as Title I services, as applications that do not have to adhere to telephone carrier standards. This has allowed AT&T to flip net neutrality rules on Google by arguing that Google has an unfair advantage because of its Title I status and therefore not subject to the same rules, particularly when it is able to block calls to rural areas to save cost. If it were being treated as a phone company, it would not be allowed to drop calls. My concern is rule flipping and negotiations around classifications are going to require more expensive lawyers. This is not good for my monthly bills. Legal fees are more or less a sunk cost that will have little impact on my user experience.

Concern 2: One argument often sited against net neutrality is that it may prevent experimentation of network designs. I want the network to be the fastest and most reliable it can be. On the flip side, not implementing net neutrality could lead to fees based on usage that would stifle experimentation of new applications that may initially not run efficiently.

Concern 3: The debate “sides” are two industries types instead of industry versus users. If user experience effects were more at the forefront of the debate, I would probably have an easier time taking a stance. I’m too poor to have Google or Comcast stock, so I’m not particularly vested to either side of the debate. What I do have a strong attachment to is my internet user experience.

Sometimes the path to hell is paved with good intentions. While the intentions of net neutrality aim for the best, it is the outcomes that will ultimately matter. This week’s reading highlighted how content providers’ and carriers’ interests shape the debate. Whether the net neutrality
takes a strong hold or not, the threat of regulation alone could make ISPs think twice before doing something disadvantageous for consumers, and for a user this is a valuable externality.

Further Reading:

AT&T looks to flip net rules debate on Google, Reuters, Technology

FCC takes sides on net neutrality debate, Washington Post

Who’s Internet is it Anyway?, MIT News

Taking the time to sit down and familiarize myself with the communications technology I take for granted, allowed me to make connections and raise questions I would have not thought of by only dealing with the conceptual and social functions of the Internet. One major one is the concept of “success by design” mentioned in The Internet Coming of Age. Clay Shirky speaks about how the form and function of the Internet is causing closed groups and companies to give way to looser networks with small contributors taking on big roles in what he calls “fluid cooperation.” He sees this trend replacing hierarchical, command-control institutions. Looking into the details and specific protocols of the many network enabled technologies out there, brought out the salience of the structure of the Internet as a major part of the transformations to the culture and business models we address in the CCT program. The Internet’s hourglass architecture enables a separation between the network and the technology running it allowing innovators to focus on evolving applications. Instead of worrying about how to cut out access by shifting fundamental protocols, business and organizations compete on the layer most relevant to users.

Likewise, more abstract concepts of transparency and identity are directly tied to the technicalities of the Internet structure. At this month’s Internet Society meeting, Leslie Daigle, the Chief Internet Technology Office for the Internet Society emphasized the importance of accountability as a prerequisite for the further development of complex Internet products. Accountability and traceability to users may be necessary to accommodate the trends in more sophisticated financial instruments and converging services. Because users and providers want to expand the level of penetration of Internet technologies to accommodate more sophisticated transactions, security and traceability become more necessary to build in reassurances both for users and service providers. Looking through the diagrams of how the information packets and the seemingly loose and fluid structures of communications protocols flow between networks that make up the Internet, I realized how the ability to trace Internet actions back to individual actors is a formidable departure both conceptually and structurally.

Another aspect that holds significance for the future structural evolution of the Internet is ISP transparency. This point was brought up during the September 3rd National Broadband Plan workshop, which focused on the consumer experience in terms of e-commerce transactions, social networking, and other information gathering and exchange activities. Sascha Meinrath, the Director of the Open Technology Initiative at the New America Foundation urged the FCC to consider mandating ISPs to either give researches access to ISP operational data or mandate the collection of reports that specify root causes of outages and other network management metrics. It was interesting to see this point in the Internet Coming of Age recommendations. It is a bit disconcerting that eight years later this is still a stumbling block to Internet research. Meinrath argued that without this data telecommunications policy is being drafted under a “self-imposed veil of ignorance.”

I was quite surprised that will all the computation power enabled by the Internet and the constant stats, hits, and e-commerce marketing data being extracted from consumer behavior online, there is very limited access to the actual technology running the web. Stepehn Baker’s Numerati is an interesting account of how mathematically modeling is infiltrating many of our everyday activities, particularly on the web.

Some questions inspired by this week’s reading:

If dynamic IP addresses are being used by an ISP, is there a record of who the IP number is assigned to? Do ISPs track activity using the IP address and our sessions online?

It seems that the structure of the Internet is quite uniform across national borders including the high capacity backbone, so why is it that countries like Japan and South Korea have significantly faster and more accessible Internet. Are they using WiMax or simply have more efficient routing?

Clay Shirky: TED presentation
Broadband Consumer Context: Webcast of FCC workshop including Professor Nelson’s remarks

This week’s reading, particularly Friedman’s chapters and the World Summit on the Information Society Tunis objectives, got me thinking about what shapes human capital. I use the term human capital to refer to the stock of knowledge, skill, training, and experience necessary to engage in technological innovation. Global tech hubs like Silicon Valley, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Redmond, Austin, and others are the source of many of today’s technological breakthroughs. This suggests that human capital tends to congregate as apposed to spreading across populations. As we’ve learned in our reading on the history of APRAPNET, getting smart people together to collaborate unleashes powerful breakthroughs. While globalization and enhanced communications services allow more people from more places to be drawn to these hubs, there are nonetheless centralized hubs. I’m not sure this is truly a flat world, at least not yet.

The analogy between the rise of compatible systems versus walled networks (Friedman, 62) can be applied to human capital and the creation of new technology. There is more value in having programmers work together and share innovations instead of guarding it and preventing its integration with complementary products. Although Friedman’s argument that communications technologies have flattened the world to the point that location of individuals innovators is no longer a barrier to collaboration, the talent clustering we see today suggests value is created when programmers can work together in close proximity. If location still matters, what are the requisite environmental factors to attract talent? In The Economic Geography of Talent by Richard Florida, a professor at the Heinz School of Public Policy and Management at Carnegie Melon University, suggest high-tech talent is attracted to diversity, coolness, amenities, regional income, and high-tech industry concentration:

“Talent does not simply show up in a region; rather, certain regional factors appear to play a role in creating an environment or habitat that can attract and retain talent or human capital. Paramount among these factors, the findings suggest, is openness to diversity or low barriers to entry for talent. This, in turn, suggests that a more efficacious approach to regional development may be to emphasize policies and programs to attract human capital, as opposed to conventional approaches that focus on the attraction of firms and the formation of industrial clusters.” (Florida)

If attracting talent is an effective economic development strategy, what does this mean for development and the Tunis objectives? Looking through the Tunis Agenda, I saw many points referring to broad stakeholders: policy authorities, private sector, civil society, intergovernmental organizations and international organizations. Very little mention was made to the importance of localized conditions for attracting talent. Perhaps I am a little cynical, but I haven’t heard of a lot of information and communications technologies being developed by the broad groups mentioned above. In fact, most of the emphasis on in the agenda focuses on training and education of regulators and public sector employees. Agenda Item 23 and 26 are good examples. The idea of human capital seems to be the product less so of broad intentions by governments and international agencies and maybe more by localized decisions to make living and working conditions attractive to individual talent.

Next May 17th (World Information Society Day), I’ll make sure to be extra nice to my techie friends and co-workers, so they stick around.

Week 2 Additional Reading:

Hernando de Soto’s The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else –Globalization and the majority of the benefits of globalization in the form of economic development occur between 10 or so major economic hubs. The link between technological innovation and clustering is presented as a radio tower analogy. The globalization grid is restricted to a few tall radio towers, or developed clusters/major cities where the legal structures and property rights assurances are conducive to innovation.

The Economic Geography of Talent Richard Florida

Co-operation in the ether – from the Economist. The story describes cooperation between Palestinian and Israeli programmers. It shows that although high-tech talent can compute across geopolitical divides, physical barriers still stand in the way of cooperation. The teams have to meet in a gas station near a border crossing to work in person. Even though there is access to advanced teleconferencing capabilities, it is not yet a substitute for face-to-face interaction.