ManyMedia

The National Broadband Plan hasn’t been completed as a draft or even bullet points, but the ax is already coming down. The Plan is likely to disappoint us, says Business Week in their article National Broadband Plan: Why Consumers May Be Let Down:

Defining broadband is an important effort (so is mapping out where broadband is), but consumers are likely to be disappointed by the National Broadband Plan, because the divide between what the American people want and how the government works means a lot of consumers’ desires will fall into the chasm between.

There’s no “likely” about it. American citizens who are hoping for better access to the Internet–or any access at all–will most certainly be disappointed to find out that nothing will change except for the increasing cost. I’m not surprised, but wish it wasn’t costing taxpayers so much.

Telecom lobbyists are paying less and getting more for their campaign contributions these days. I don’t see a reason to believe that things will change, given the current perspective and dialog. More importantly in this article, the notion of “broadband” (the means of getting access to the Internet) is being framed as the end game. Broadband is not the end game.

Make no mistake: Broadband is NOT the same as the Internet. Broadband is a poorly defined speed, a pipe, the means by which we access the Internet. It’s a marketing term used by the telephone and cable companies to describe their paltry offerings, which have resulted in the United States being ranked 17th in the world (and falling). A significant problem with using “broadband” as our national goal is that the FCC has not defined or measured it, or assessed its distribution (PDF). Of course the telephone and cable companies know, but they aren’t telling. And they’re effectively in charge for now.

If I could pull the plug on this well-financed debacle, I would in a heartbeat. Instead of focusing on the means (the pipe used to get there), let’s focus on the real goal: access to the Internet.

I propose that instead of pursuing this losing battle, we start talking about a Global Internet Plan for America. Why?

• We’re really trying to get access to the global Internet resources: everything that is available now and being created in the future. We want access to the global Internet. The Internet offers advanced information services and benefits to everyone, in many languages and many forms.
• The United States of America has unique political and technological resources, so this Plan is uniquely designed for Americans. Americans care about each other. We want our nation recover to economically. We want the best for our kids. We want all benefits to be widely available, in rural as well as urban settings. We don’t want our families, friends, or ourselves to be denied or limited access to the benefits of the Internet for any reason.

How do we get there? The current “debate” needs to be reframed to show priority for citizen-customer concerns and experiences. As the debate is framed now, it allows incumbent service providers to divide and conquer the conversation, the possibilities for change, and our future. Here are a few new ways to talk about this global Internet plan for America.

Decoupling access from delivery: The global Internet represents significant economic development benefits in the form of more competitive choices, lower prices, and faster performance. However, our service providers are increasingly serving as gatekeepers, choosing what information and how (devices, speed, etc.) we can or can not access it. Americans will realize the greatest benefit only if we decouple the Internet goods and services from the delivery pipe (broadband). This is called structural separation. For the greatest amount of benefit, we should be allowed to choose for ourselves what information to access, on our schedules and according to our needs, using our choice of hardware devices and software.

Monopoly rents as private taxation: Since the telephone and cable companies are the only game in town (where there is Internet access), they have considerable persuasive abilities when it comes to raising rates.  Citing Kushnick’s Law: “A regulated company will always renege on promises to provide public benefits tomorrow in exchange for regulatory and financial benefits today.” For instance, we’ve already paid $300 billion dollars in approved phone rate increases for telephone company promises that have never been fulfilled. One way of looking at this is as a private tax that takes in ever-increasing amount of our income. How often have you heard of local Public Utilities Commissions denying rate hikes? That doesn’t happen very often!

Coverage is not competition: Broadband service over telephone lines (DSL) has physical distance limitations, so is not available to all homes or businesses. Broadband over cable lines (cable modem service) passes a majority of homes in the nation, and is sometimes the only choice for access. In these areas, the price of access is high. What this means is that there are parts of the nation which either do not have access to the Internet at all, or have effectively one choice for providers. A Brookings Working Paper from 2002, The United States Broadband Problem: Analysis and Policy Recommendations (PDF), states the problem accurately:

Thus the effect of current industry structure is to generate a stable duopoly in residential Internet services, with continued monopoly control in most other markets – by the ILECs in voice and business data services, and by the CATV industry in residential video. Neither industry would logically be interested in provoking highly dynamic competition in open-architecture, high speed, and/or symmetric broadband services to either businesses or homes. Hence the slow pace of improvement in broadband services is not surprising. Unfortunately, however, it damages the economic growth, social welfare, and national security of the United States, and indeed of the world.

This means that any claims of nationwide coverage are suspect. As mentioned above, actual coverage and subscriber/customer data is not shared with the government, so the FCC doesn’t know how bad this problem is. However, there is no reason that access to the benefits of the Internet should be denied to any of our nation’s citizens. Keeping the data secret does not serve in the nation’s best interest. I want an Internet plan that works for all Americans.

There are more issues that can be properly described: problems inherent in the current state of the industry, and solutions that support ubiquitous access to the global Internet by all Americans. This is a plan I want to see come to life. This is the plan that will bring benefits to the entire nation. I am not alone in calling for this plan.

I welcome your additions in the comments below. Thanks go to George Lakoff for perspective on reframing this issue.

Content, Devices, Network, Policy choice, incumbents, Internet, self-determination, service providers

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

Yesterday afternoon was a fascinating introduction to digital identity management. Today: discussions on creating “newbie” documentation to the field, interests of data silos, and shortly: videos, use cases, sandbox development, and more!

I’m going to take things a bit out of order here. First speaker: Ryan Jenssen, who has a very informative blog that’s been tracking this space for the last 6 months. He provided a very nice overview of digital ID management, pointing out that our digital ID is “the stuff you assert about yourself.”

There are site-centered and user-driven identities that you use to establish an “account” with entities that you want a relationship with. The biggest problems include 1) the need to repeat information each time, 2) managing our multiple identities and personas, and 3) each entity you connect to may not have any need or desire to protect your information. More of me in more places, shared with more entities.

In the case of a user-driven ID, sites can vouch for their users to other sites (relevant terms: identity providers, relying parties–good def needed). Your identity has several aspects: you connect with your friends, you have specific preferences, you develop a reputation, and you have assets associated with who you are. Taking this one step further, your assets are related to you by a personal broadcast service, and your reputation becomes a reputation engine for recommendations.

Here’s an overview of some of the players in the ID Commons space:

The challenges at this point come from people who use software, need to develop compelling business models or funding sources, and the need to respect the people who have been working in this field for a long time (foundations, early adopters and developers, etc.)

Ok, give me some time to digest this.

Identity choice, IDmanagement, privacy, self-determination

O’Reilly recently convened the Web 2.0 Conference and Expo in San Francisco. I registered for the expo (a few pictures), attended a couple of sponsored sessions, and came away with two significant things: 1) I’m not missing much yet, and 2) a laser etching on my laptop (thanks Instructables!).

First off, the expo floor wasn’t all that crowded so it was easy to make my way around. Secondly, I wasn’t attending as an “enterprise” representative, which made my journey more strategic. Many of the booths on the expo floor were touting ways to “mash up” legacy systems to create new forms of data (e.g., reports previously unavailable) or to be the next “social” apps hosting platforms (e.g., hosting the corporate wiki). [Related post]

Here are my notes from crawling the expo floor. Note that I’m only commenting on a few of the companies that struck me. I missed a few, and avoided others. Such was my timeframe for this event.

• Springnote: online wiki-like notebook, uses OpenID.
• Rackspace: enterprise hosting provider. I was already familiar with them. Thanks for the pen.
• Blist: (pronounced BList, not B-list) I checked them out a while ago following their launch at DEMO. Intriguing database service, but s. l. o. w. I asked about this, and was assured that they’ve addressed their performance issues, and have added international characters and sharing capabilities. I need to check them out again.
• Camwii: Interesting screen-sharing app. Best described in their video. Good: lets me share the part of the screen that I want (via a “looking glass” frame), lets me see what my shared partners see (feedback loop), and can be “private labeled” for customized use (1:1 or 1:many). Questionable: is 100% flash, which means it works on most computers but is tied to Adobe proprietary format. Also uses your phone number as ID. Now that becomes a database with a good key value.
• Truvico: one of several companies that provided continuous data analysis (words, statistics, what’s happening on your site).
• Amusing side note: someone cut the lights on the expo floor for a few minutes (1:40pm). Something eerie about the whole space going dark. This happened on top of what many booths were reporting (and I was witnessing): s-l-o-w network access. Holy cow.
• Magnify360: a “behavioral targeting platform,” which was explained as real-time behavioral programming. This is about “targeting” and “personalizing” to “increase conversion rates.” I feel better already knowing that my every need is anticipated and provided for.
• Kapow: two things: buzz phrase kings (see photos above), and really, really expensive.
• ConfIdent: Weirdly, I didn’t learn what ConfIdent was about, and couldn’t really tell from their website either. What I did see was Vidoop: a system of gaining access to a site by using picture passwords. This was interesting. Passwords were determined by a set of images. The images are random-ish, but they fall into categories like food, travel, space, etc. I somehow would choose or have, let’s say, 3 categories so I would choose the 3 pics out of 9 shown that correspond to my categories. Vidoop is also an OpenID platform/service.
• Nokia: Nokia was one of the big sites on the floor. I went to the table/area designated as “Advertising” to find out what that meant. Nokia has partnerships with various vendors (no surprise) like Sprint. Nokia claims to be carrier and handset agnostic. They act as advertising middlemen, gathering all of the demographic data from Sprint that helps them target your desired audience. Let’s say you want to reach all of the moms, ages 24-35, living in a particular area and having a specific income. No problem, Nokia can serve that group. This was one conversation that made me want to wash my hands and face afterwards. No sign of a cluetrain at this station. Better not be on the tracks when Nokia comes through.
• Etelos: a platform for application deployment. They had several partners and clients represented in their booth.
• Spinscape: a hosted mind mapping tool (similar to The Brain?) that’s web driven, collaborative, extensible with Google Apps and Gadgets. This thing can “auto-discover” everything on your hard drive. In collaborative mode, you can have nodes and assign roles and responsibilities for various levels of collaboration.

That was a first pass at the expo floor. Next I ran to catch the OpenID sponsored session.

OpenID is promoted as a bridge to sharing. It’s being engineered for adoption at an ID layer. Question about open sourcing, noted that it works well with Novell and others. Why relevant, why only authenticating? OpenID has been around for three years, OpenAuth is brand new and needs to focus on what it can enable: integrating contacts. Concerns expressed about it being hard to grasp. Challenge: user experience not optimal.

I asked about how this is taking back control of our IDs when each silo has its data and can gather additional intelligence about us by partnering with other data silos. The answer was largely about the inability to get any hosted service site to delete info on request (once you register, it’s their data). Yeah, we know. Then how is it that openID will help me “manage” my identity?

The question remains. Back to the expo floor.

• Photobucket: claims they are the world’s largest repository of photos, video and more. (Somewhat similar to Flickr, which is limited to photos.) Photobucket has facility for doing minor photo editing. They do not have a search capability to find CC-licensed resources. Bummer. The best thing about Flickr is an unrelated site, compfight.
• Topix: a “top 20 news site.” (huh?) Shows news that’s local to you, as they determine where you are. You can also change locations of course. Extensive news forums, and users can edit stuff. They also offer commercial feeds.
• Yugma: collaborative desktop sharing with chat, conference calls. Java, subscription basis.
• Sprout: a web-based authoring platform for creating widgets: layers of stuff with links and functions. Can do limited mash-ups. Interesting: no sign-up necessary to create. This actually looked like it could be fun, but my old computer didn’t want to work at any reasonable speed with sprout’s programming.

At this point, the expo hall closed. We were all shuffled out. Many of us went to see O’Reilly’s keynote and the talks that followed. I have notes, but on re-read, they’re pretty boring.

Clay Shirkey was the reason I stayed. My notes fail in light of his post of that talk.

That was a great way to end Day One.

As for day two, nothing really struck me. The sponsored session on “Creating a Social Network, It’s Easy” seemed to be more about hiring the group than learning how. Afterwards I went to the women’s networking event. I wasn’t already part of the small leaning-together cliques and didn’t find a conversational way in. So much for networking.

Content, Events conference, IDmanagement, mashups, networking, relationships, self-determination, social web, web 2.0

Leap day is my alternative birthday. I use it for web sites that demand my birthday without offering any compelling need or reason. So for them, I wish myself a happy day today!

Identity, Life IDmanagement, privacy, self-determination

There are few cases where there is broad social acceptance for the government to cast judgments on one’s life in a way that directly affects that person’s livelihood. Practicing as an attorney is one such example. Attorneys must pass through the pearly gates of judgment in order to get a license to practice law.

In California, this amounts to three things:

1. taking and passing the Multi-state Professional Responsibility Exam (MPRE),
2. taking and passing the California Bar Exam (current cost: $529 + $119 laptop fee), and
3. applying for and receiving a positive determination of your moral character.

The latter involves filling out an application (currently 37 pages), paying the $431 fee (plus an additional amount for a live scan fingerprint), then waiting about 6 months for the Bar to determine if you’re hiding anything and thus not determined to be of acceptable moral character.

For anyone following it, my moral character (applied for on May 10, 2005 and determined on Sept. 29, 2005) has now expired. I guess that in the eyes of the California Bar examiners, and despite many, many years of being who I am, I can’t stay a good person for long.

Life choice, relationships, self-determination

In an article called “What Can Be Done About Listening” (.doc, html), author Ralph G. Nichols outlines Ten Bad Listening Habits. These habits include pre-judging (the subject, the speaker, the facts) and being distracted (outlining, disturbances, challenging subject matter, emotions). The amusing point here is the last: “Wasting the differential between speech and thought speed.”

Americans speak at an average rate of 125 words per minute in ordinary conversation. A speaker before an audience slows down to about 100 words per minute. How fast do listeners listen? Or, to put the question in a better form, how many words a minute do people normally think as they listen? If all their thoughts were measurable in words per minute, the answer would seem to be that an audience of any size will average 400 to 500 words per minute as they listen.

Here is a problem. The differential between the speaker at 100 words per minute and the easy thought speed of the listener at 400 or 500 words per minute is a snare and a pitfall. It lures the listener into a false sense of security and breeds mental tangents.

However, with training in listening, the difference between thought speed and speech speed can be made a source of tremendous power. Listeners can hear everything the speaker says and not what s/he omits saying; they can listen between the lines and do some evaluating as the speech progresses. To do this, to exploit this power, good listeners must automatically practice three skills in concentration:

• Anticipating the next point
• Identifying supporting material.
• Recapitulating.

Content choice, habits, self-determination

A good deal of the paper crowding my life is interesting articles and thinking I would like to have been influenced by.

For example, on my wall I used to have a quote from “Made to Stick,” on Simplicity. The part I will borrow for this post, and which I will learn to use as a guiding light, is this:

To strip an idea down to its core, we must be masters of exclusion. We must relentlessly prioritize.”

Life choice, self-determination

One thing about being horizontally organized and not entirely digital in my “interesting resources” is that I occupy a lot of surface area. Since my currently available surface area is at a premium and much of my interesting resources are unavailable to me anyway (most is in boxes, mixed with other stuff), I’m motivated to go through a lot of it, evaluate and summarize, then dispose of the physical part.

This is all in support of my new plan: be more consistent about blogging, get rid of boxes, and ultimately move to Hawaii.

This is an ambitious plan. Much of my life has been in storage for more than a year. Boxes and more boxes of paper (files, books), office hardware (filing cabinets, old computers & gear), kitchenware (including packaged food that has, I’m certain, passed the expiration date), clothing, sheets and towels, and a lot of shelves. Oh, and a really big desk. You can bet that I’ll be sorting, shredding, recycling, freecycling, and selling this stuff as soon as I can get myself properly motivated. Right now, I’ll confess: it’s overwhelming.

The remedy, of course: one box at a time.

Life choice, self-determination

There is something rather primal about having hundreds of pounds of rumbling metal under your seat and between your legs. This primal feeling was aided by the fogbanks rolling into our reservoir rainforest. It was another cold, gusty day with air thick enough to keep us in our place.

Our RiderInstructors for the day were Michael (again) and Ty, two very amenable characters. The first exercise of the day was the toughest for me. We rode into a smallish box, then turned most of a figure eight, zipped out of the box, then swerved to miss a “flaming catastrophe” (marked off by little orange cones). A RiderInstructor was behind the cones. At the last minute, he would indicate whether we were to swerve right, left, or stop. The zooming, swerving and stopping was much less of a problem than the tight figure eights. They called the box “U turns.” Another RiderInstructor later called those turns a “convenience” maneuvering exercise. I called it a continuing challenge. Much more practice will be required before I feel like I know this one.

Other exercises involved turning within a specified radius, stopping quickly, veering from side to side, and lots of sitting in line breathing the exhaust fumes from the bikes nearby. For all the blustery weather, the fumes hung around or were blown into our faces all day. What a headache.

Finally, we got to the “Celebration of Learning.” It was a set-up: this was the exam. We did the figure eight maneuvers, the swerving to miss certain death, a faster braking than we had practiced, and a faster set of corners than we had practiced. I certainly got up to speed on the fast breaking, but they didn’t think I was quite up to speed on the final cornering.

Now as a matter of perspective, I’d rather have come out of the course being good at stopping in an emergency than being able to race around corners. I don’t plan to race. I’m about touring, seeing the sights. There will be no hurrying on my first few tours. There will certainly be more practice, maybe in the reservoir, doing more cornering and braking before the tours begin.

The last activity of the day finally came. We gathered around the storage boxes and debriefed: evaluation forms for the course and for the police department. An individual evaluation of your performance during the “celebration.” Finally they told me: I passed the course!

Here’s Meredith

Meredith and Gabriel

Our RiderInstructor Michael

Now on to the DMV for the written test, then I am licensed to ride.

Life self-determination