infrastructure
-
What’s Neutral about the Net
I posted this to a list I’m on, where a long thread on Net Neutrality was running out of steam: Since we seem to have reached a pause in this discussion, I would like to suggest that there are emergent properties of the Internet that are not reducible to its mechanisms, and it is respect for Continue reading
-
Fun with distance
I’m listening to WGBH on 93.7 from Boston on my kitchen radio, on the low floor of an apartment building in Manhattan, thanks to an atmospheric condition called tropospheric bending, or “tropo” for short. Here’s my section of the current map of tropo at work right now: The same map shows bigger “ducts” running Continue reading
-
Radio and the Web, 2001
Since my old blog (still running, amazingly, on an old server somewhere within Verisign) will some day be Snow on the Water, and conversation about radio has commenced below that post, I decided to re-post March 21, 2001. Here goes… Blast from the past Tune in here right now to catch Larry Lujack on KNEW, Continue reading
-
The cliff personal clouds need to climb
This speed test was done in London, but it’s typical of everywhere: It shows a Net biased for downstream, and minimized for upstream. If we’re going to do any serious personal work in clouds, we need better upstream than this. I wrote about the problem, and the reason for it, in France, four years ago. Continue reading
-
Urban originals
It would have been great to visit the Egyptian Spice Market in Istanbul with my old friend Stephen Lewis, whose knowledge that city runs deep and long. But I was just passing through the Old City by chance, waylaid en route from Sydney to Tel Aviv, and Stephen was still in Sofia, which he also Continue reading
-
Thinking outside the pipes
For several years now I’ve been participating with Pew Internet in research on the Internet and its future — mostly by providing my thinking on various matters. The latest round is the Future of the Internet Survey VI, for which I answered many questions. The latest of those to make print is in The Gurus Continue reading
-
Aereo made the wrong case
Aereo‘s main appeal in the first place was helping viewers get over-the-air TV. If they had restricted their business and legal cases to that, instead of this… Record & Stream Live TV Online with Aereo Cloud DVR Coming soon to 19 more cities! … they might still be in business. But nothing in that pitch — Continue reading
-
A New Data Deal, starting today
There was a time when personal computer was an oxymoron: a contradiction in terms. That ended when personal computing got real in the ’80s. There was a time when personal networking, where every person has status, reach and power equal to that of corporations and governments, was unthinkable. That ended when the Internet got real Continue reading
-
Why to avoid advertising as a business model
I just ran across this item below, which ran almost fourteen years ago in my original blog, and think it’s worth re-running today. The characters have all changed, but the issues have not. In fact they are more present and worth debating than ever. — Doc An Open Letter to Meg Whitman Meg Whitman President Continue reading
-
Weather vs. Flying
Here in the temperate zones, summer is beaches and picnics and biking and dinner on the deck outside. It is also thunderstorms and airport delays. Right now a line of thunderheads is sliding northeastward across New Jersey. Here is how it looks to FlightAware‘s map of aviation and weather activity for Newark Liberty Airport: Notice Continue reading
-
Why EULAs suck for the Internet of Things
I’ve been asked how EULAs — End User License Agreements — might affect the Internet of Things, now becoming better known as the IoT. Good question. The topic is hot: Development, however, is another story. There we are headed straight into a log-jam that Phil Windley calls the Compuserve of Things. In the 80’s and early ’90s, Compuserve was Continue reading
-
Let’s pull news out of its hole
Most of what we call news is filler. The practice of filling space and time — stuffing “content” into a “news hole” — is a relic of an era when printing and broadcast space and time were limited, privately held, and paid for mostly by advertising, which requires ears and eyeballs showing up predictably and Continue reading
-
The long run
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, Creeps in this petty pace from day to day, To the last syllable of recorded time; And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle! Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage And Continue reading
-
It’s Indie Time
Aral Balkan is doing a bang-up job getting Indie rolling as an adjectival meme. He’s doing it with his Indie Phone, Indie Tech Manifesto and a talk titled Free is a Lie. To put the Indie movement in context, it helps to realize that it’s been on the tech road at least since 1964, when Paul Baran, one of the Internet’s Continue reading
-
Earth to Mozilla: Come back home
In her blog post explaining the Brendan Eich resignation, Mitchell Baker, Chair of the Mozilla Foundation, writes, “We know why people are hurt and angry, and they are right: it’s because we haven’t stayed true to ourselves.” In Mozilla is Human, Mark Surman, Executive Director of the Foundation, adds, “What we also need to do is start a process Continue reading
-
Cars as crucibles for personal autonomy
From Merriam-Webster: cru·ci·ble noun\ˈkrü-sə-bəl\ : a pot in which metals or other substances are heated to a very high temperature or melted : a difficult test or challenge : a place or situation that forces people to change or make difficult decisions This is what cars will become. The difficult decision is where to draw Continue reading
-
Escaping the Black Holes of Centralization
Turkey shut down Twitter today. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan announced, “We now have a court order. We’ll eradicate Twitter. I don’t care what the international community says. Everyone will witness the power of the Turkish Republic.” (Hurriyet Daily News) He also said Turkey will “rip out the roots” of Twitter. (Washington Post) Those roots are Continue reading