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I had not planned to go out of town last November. However, an emergency arose and I left right before Thanksgiving for two months. On my way out the door, the property manager at my home promised to drop my mail into a pre-paid Priority Mail envelope every 10-15 days for me. I sent an Overnight Express Mail envelope to her on Nov. 28. It arrived three (3) days later, on Dec. 1.

The first Priority Mail envelope was dropped into the local post box on Dec. 12. Priority Mail envelopes and packages, the post office advises, will reach their destination in 2-3 days. It arrived on Jan. 2, 2010, some 3 weeks later. The second Priority Mail envelope was dropped into a post office box on Dec. 20 with mail from unknown sources. It never arrived. It was never returned. It’s now over three months later.

I was informed by a postal employee that mail that “goes astray” gets sent to a central processing facility where it’s opened, inspected for checks that are photocopied, then destroyed. How mail goes astray is a mystery since it was stamped and addressed to me, at the same time/manner as the other envelopes (yes, double checked), and it’s the post office’s duty to deliver mail (pdf) to the person addressed. I have no idea what was in that Priority Mail envelope, nor will I ever know. So much for priority!

More recently I received the final word on the Post Office’s handling of a different Priority Mail box. This box contained some cloth on the bottom, a cast iron pot surrounded by paperback books and a couple of t-shirts. The top was secured with rubber pads (as was originally shipped to the store), then more clothes on top. Padded and secure. Here’s what happened in transit:

I went to the local post office to ask how to file a claim. They told me the only way to file a claim is as if the box were insured. It happened that I did not insure the box–who would reasonably guess that a cast iron pot, packed well, would be destroyed in transit? I didn’t. So they advised me to file the claim as if it were insured, and they would note that no insurance was purchased.

The claim was denied locally.

I forwarded my claim, as instructed by post office managers (two of them) to the regional customer service center in St. Louis MO. There agent Autria Finley returned my claim for lack of insurance information (despite the fact that it was clearly marked “no insurance purchased”). In fact she returned my claim, ignoring my letter of explanation and all previously requested documentation, twice. This was a pretty hefty stack of paper being sent back and forth. It was clear that Ms. Finley had no interest in resolving this claim other than to return it to me.

My final plea was to the Consumer Advocate in Washington DC. I don’t feel like there was an advocate in this office any more than elsewhere in the postal system. I have no idea why they even call it an “advocacy” office, since clearly there is no “consumer” interest involved or heard. Here’s what the Post Office said when I asked them to reimburse me for the cost of the pot (only):

You should have known better. (pdf)

There are common reasons why so many people dislike the post office. A few individual agents were kind, helpful, and understanding, but their voice does not mean much in an organization so large and problematic. Many agents are often rude, and there are a lot more of them. I wish problems like this happened to the Post Office high management more often. I also wish courts knew that this problem was common enough to warrant a special clearing house for the “millions of pieces of mail that go astray each day.” Instead I count myself as one who is willing to help develop replacement technologies that will eventually put the post office out of business.

Life, Network distruction, governement taking, lost mail, postal

I am very proud to read at broadband.gov that my friend

Dr. David S. Isenberg has joined the broadband team as an Expert Advisor, and will be working on how physical infrastructure choices facilitate or impede policy options.  David is best known to the telecom policy world as the author of the 1997 essay, The Rise of the Stupid Network.  When Dale Hatfield was Chief of the FCC’s Office of Engineering and Technology, he called The Rise of the Stupid Network “one of three works that changed my perception of the telecommunications industry.”

I have been warned to “lower my expectations,” as the wheels of government do not move at top speed or toward full enlightenment. That said, I remain optimistic!

Life, Policy, Scenarios FCC, infrastructure, isen.com, Policy, stupid network

Defining the term “broadband” is hard enough, given the various competing interests working to have the FCC see things their way. But defining the term by identifying exclusionary uses is, well, AT&T. Ars Technica was on top of this filing, and wrote up their concerns in AT&T to FCC: gaming is not “broadband,” but an added service. Specifically, AT&T is instructing the FCC to disallow certain uses of your Internet access, specifically online gaming, as part of the defining what “broadband” is.

They WHAT? That’s right, their testimony advises the FCC that AT&T knows best what we should do with our Internet access.

In testimony submitted to the FCC, AT&T advises that they (by way of the government) need to define what we can (and shouldn’t) do with our Internet access:

Specifically, the Commission must first define the discrete set of applications and online capabilities that must be made available to all Americans to achieve the Recovery Act’s goals.  As discussed below, for residential customers those services should include basic web-browsing capability, email, and online services ….  Thus, the task at hand really is not about “defining broadband” in the abstract.

The testimony continues (with my emphasis):

There are a host of aspirational broadband services that are beginning to emerge in this country, as well as myriad sophisticated applications involving streaming video, real-time voice, and the like.  All are no doubt “broadband” services.  But for Americans who today have no terrestrial broadband service at all, the pressing concern is not the ability to engage in real-time, two-way gaming, but obtaining meaningful access to the Internet’s resources and to reliable email communications and other basic tools that most of the country has come to expect as a given.

So AT&T wants to be free to deliver itty-bitty “broadband” to the rural folks.  AT&T is redefining “access” to meet a more traditional incumbent monetizing strategy: set sites low by defining a bare minimum, then find “aspirational” uses that they can bill extra for. The Ars article is worth a read. However, lessons can be learned from gamers that benefit corporate boardrooms as well. John Hagel and John Seely Brown wrote an article in last January’s BusinessWeek: How World of Warcraft Promotes Innovation. The article describes how various elements of online gaming can benefit the business mindset.

Companies seeking to thrive in a world of increasing uncertainty and accelerating change will need to foster this disposition among their own executive team and employees. They would be well advised to take a closer look at World of Warcraft, both in terms of the approach taken to foster this disposition and as a potential recruiting ground for employees who can bring this attitude and approach into the company.

AT&T isn’t looking broadly at providing access to the Internet. This is an example of Not Neutrality. AT&T has a plan, and your dreams may not be part of it.

Content, Life, Network, Policy access, ATT, broadband, definitions, FCC, Internet, Net Neutrality, online gaming, Policy

This is a serious moment, if delivered for comedic value. I’m shocked, shocked to learn that our cell phone records are not being protected by our carriers. The Washington Post’s article Online Data Gets Personal: Cell Phone Records for Sale describes the nature of the problem:

“This is a person’s associations,” said Daniel J. Solove, a George Washington University Law School professor who specializes in privacy issues. “Who their physicians are, are they seeing a psychiatrist, companies they do business with . . . it’s a real wealth of data to find out the people that a person interacts with.”

Such records could be used by criminals, such as stalkers or abusive spouses trying to find victims.

Unlike Social Security numbers, which are on many public documents that have been scooped up for years by data brokers, the only repository of telephone call records is the phone companies.

Outraged and in response, the video (above) reflects John Hargrave’s approach. “I’m here on behalf of Verizon customers. PLEASE DO A BETTER JOB PROTECTING YOUR CUSTOMERS’ CELL PHONE RECORDS!” said Hargrave through his bullhorn.

The common response by cell phone service providers is to point out that obtaining and selling cell phone records is illegal, and their Terms of Service changes in response to these kinds of things. Of course, we know how many people read the tiny, tiny legaleze that comes in our billing envelopes (provided we get one in the mail). More importantly, we know that people engaged in criminal activity pay great attention to compliance with these TOS docs. Right. “Can you hear me now?”

Devices, Identity, Life, Policy crime, phone records, records, terms of service, TOS, Verizon

Civil emergency management is taking on a whole new life with social media networks. Various stories have cropped up about how news of the plane landing on the Hudson River, a Turkish Airlines crash, and other breaking news, were first spread on Twitter. Increasingly, state and local governmental departments are turning to Twitter, Facebook, and other social media tools to share news and service updates. A lot of people are using social media tools, and can easily be reached there. The Government Technology website reported in Emergency Managers and First Responders Use Twitter and Facebook to Update Communities that:

According to the research organization Compete.com, more than 300 million people visited Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, YouTube, Flickr, Digg and Del.ici.ous in April 2009. The company only counted each visitor once in spite of repeat visits to the same site within the month.

Further breakdown indicates that:

104.1 million visited Facebook;
77.8 million visited YouTube;
55.6 million visited MySpace;
37.8 million visited Digg;
25.9 million visited Flickr;
19.4 million visited Twitter; and
520,000 visited Del.icio.us

Goverment departments take different approaches to public communications. The Los Angeles Fire Department, for example:

The LAFD doesn’t restrict its forays into social media to Twitter. The department has distributed video on YouTube, a video sharing site; posts updates on networking site Facebook, allowing users to share photos, videos, instant messages and other information with others over personalized networks; has a page on MySpace, another social networking site; uploads images of firefighters in action to image and video hosting site Flickr; bookmarks press releases, announcements and other communications on Del.icio.us, a site where people organize and categorize links; and belongs to Digg, a site for members to submit content that other members can rate in importance and comment upon.

The article continues:

Federal heavyweights like the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have Twitter accounts, but not specifically for emergency alerts. FEMA tweets news items like disaster recovery center relocations and closings, and the CDC tweets about press releases as well as breaking updates like the latest number of reported swine flu cases.

As for interacting with the public in an emergency, there’s nothing as efficient as crowd sourcing a problem. For example, following the 2007 shooting at Virginia Polytech,

“[People on Facebook] were able to identify the names of all the people who were killed before the officials released the names…”

The researchers followed discussion threads on the walls of various Facebook groups, and reprinted some of the posts from the “I’m ok at VT” group. On the day of the shooting, group members posted messages disclosing the names of victims, which posters discovered via their own knowledge or from other Facebook sites. The researchers used victims’ initials instead of their real names and gave pseudonyms to discussion participants. The report concluded that social media participants operated out of respect for the dead and traumatized, and produced accurate finding, not rumor-mongering.

Local, State and Federal governmental agencies are learning that it’s not only possible to work effectively with the public using social media, in some cases it can be very helpful. After all, it’s about the people.

Content, Life airlines crash, CDC, communications, emergency management, facebook, FEMA, first responders, government, Hudson River, social media, social web, twitter

Chris Anderson of Wired has a new book (Free: The Future of a Radical Price) and interesting article, Tech Is Too Cheap to Meter: It’s Time to Manage for Abundance, Not Scarcity. Anderson points out that the price of computer processing, bandwidth, and hard-drive storage have dropped, and continue downward, such that the effective cost of providing those services are near zero. (Indeed, the billing components are more costly than the actual services.)

When your phone company tells you that your voicemail inbox is full, that’s artificial scarcity—it costs less than a nickel to store 100 voice messages, and the average iPod could store more than 100,000 of them (voice messages are recorded at lower quality than music, so they take up less space). By forcing subscribers to spend time deleting voicemails, the phone companies were saving a little on storage costs by spending a lot of consumer time. They managed the scarcity they could measure (storage) but neglected to manage a much more critical scarcity (customer goodwill). No wonder phone companies are second only to cable TV companies in “most hated” rankings.

What does this mean? Tech is really about opportunity and access, not the pipe we are limited to use. Our current national debate about broadband is about the screwdriver, not what that tool will allow us to create. That’s a significant difference. This is a debate about existing telecom and cable providers managing scarcity, as opposed to giving us access to manage our own abundance.

Life, Network, Policy abundance, broadband, Internet, Policy, scarcity, SOHO nets

This morning at 6:30am Hawaii Pacific time, we have the option to gather in a central conference area to watch the inauguration of our next President.

Amusingly, it’s not officially conference-sponsored, even though it’s an International organizaton. Seems that, even at a conference themed “collaboration for change,” there are certain parties who object to sponsorship of this event.

C’mon guys, he’s your President too. Just like all the Presidents before him.

If you’re interested in following the tiny voice on Twitter, hash tag is #inaug09. Of course this subject is trending at #1 (lots of activity). President Obama’s speech is here.

Events, Life, Network inauguration, president, PTC09, United States

Hoo-boy, have we been busy for the last couple of months working on Podcamp Hawaii. This is an un-conference of a sort. (Generally un-conferences have less structure ahead of the conference days.)

We have several tracks of presentations, including Business Uses for Podcasting, New Media, Podcasting 101, and the track I’ve organized, WordCamp.

The sponsor list is amazing, as are the speakers. Some of our speakers are coming from Boston, Portland, San Francisco, China, and elsewhere.

This is a FREE event. I hope to see you there!

Content, Events, Life conference, Hawaii, podcamp, wordcamp, wordpress

Ten years ago I was attending a meeting of a smallish group of futurists and thinkers. I asked if I could have an introductory moment, something to set the tone. My statement was from Chu, a person from the future.

Thank you for inviting me to speak with your gathering. My name is Chu, I’m 16 years old, and I was just awarded the Sing Low Prize for Creative Thinking in Mathematics. I learned just before I came here that my Sr. High School thesis was downloaded by over 200,000 sites, representing 37 different countries. I’ve gotten feedback from over 120 people, 17 of them rather famous mathemeticians and scientists!

I talked with a couple of my elders before coming here, so I hope I say things you’ll understand and find interesting.

My grandmother told me it used to be different in the old days, but the NetChit I received from the downloads of my paper, combined with the Sing Low prize money, will allow me to attend college for another two years. There’s a local extension on the west end of my town that connects me with the rest of my class. The extension’s computers have multiple big desk and wall screens that enable us to work cooperatively on our assignments and interesting problems. I just plug in my WalkAbout, all the authorship and authenticity is taken care of, and I’m in.

Of course, I’m always online through my WalkAbout, but its operating system and functionality are more geared toward my lifestyle. I have a lot of friends–some of them don’t like math as much as I do. But we all keep in touch a lot.

My great-grandfather told me stories about his parents and how they used to wear their clothes and shoes with big Nike and Disney names on them. I can’t believe that anyone used to be so attached to those big companies of the past. During my great-grandfather’s days, he watched what they used to call “brands” slowly become less popular until at one point he said some companies were almost giving their stuff away! We have seen many examples in the last several decades of how so many big companies struggled and failed to adapt to the new ways. These days, when people want to take on a new persona, they might start out with a Def–a default persona that my great-grandfather says was kinda like a brand name that could be customized.

A couple other things you may be interested in. My grandmother told me you used to have things like digital watermarks and trademarks and such. I never quite understood these things or why anyone would do that. These days, a document’s content is keyed to authorship and authentication factors. The nature of the content is important, sure, but it’s also weighed against bodies of work by those and other authors. When some information is treated as a fact, its origins and context can be traced. Anonymous documents are represented by one or more Surety bodies.

Also, we have a truly global flow of information. The PublicNet is a vast, interconnected bit-pipe with no switches and no editorial controls to slow things down. The artists and other content creators connect directly to interested people. Our terminals, like my WalkAbout, have transaction, crypt, translating, summary, and other editorial preferences set by each user.

I understand you are all meeting to explore these and related concepts in the next couple of days. You can rest assured that meetings like this are happening all over the world, in a furious fashion, and that you have some big battles yet to come. I wish you well in your work–your future is my present and if all goes well, it’s a compelling one.

Thank you again for inviting me.

by Judi Clark
15 September 1998

Thank you to Jerry and others in that group for the opportunity to dream.

Life, Scenarios brands, education, future, Scenarios, wireless

Big shout out and great appreciation to Eric (of I Can Has Cheezburger and soon: LOLcats book fame), who located the appropriate tools to import ALL of my prior Blogger posts into my new and improved WordPress blog.

Thanks also to Manoa Geeks (truly a friendly bunch!) for sharing their expertise all around.

Life choice, emergence, IDmanagement, ownership, relationships, self-determination