Tag Archives: internet

The Giant Zero

The world of distance Fort Lee is the New Jersey town where my father grew up. It’s at the west end of the George Washington Bridge, which he also helped build. At the other end is Manhattan. Even though Fort … Continue reading

Posted in Books, Broadcasting, Ideas, infrastructure, Places, Politics, privacy, problems, Technology | Tagged , , , | 21 Comments

Speeding on the Subway

At the uptown end of the 59th Street/Columbus Circle subway platform there hangs from the ceiling a box with three disks on fat stalks, connected by thick black cables that run to something unseen in the downtown direction. Knowing a … Continue reading

Posted in Business, Geography, infrastructure, Internet, Personal, Photography, Places, Technology, Travel, VRM | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Thoughts on privacy

In Here Is New York, E.B. White opens with this sentence: “On any person who desires such queer prizes, New York will bestow the gift of loneliness and the gift of privacy.” Sixty-four years have passed since White wrote that, and … Continue reading

Posted in Books, Business, Cluetrain, Future, history, Internet, Links, News, Past, Personal, Personal clouds, problems, Technology, VRM | Tagged , , , , | 44 Comments

FiOS is in my street. Can I have some?

[4 December: I got a call from Verizon and an answer. For that, skip down to *here.] We have a new apartment in Manhattan. Washington Heights. Verizon FiOS is here. FiOS trucks roam the streets. They set up little tables … Continue reading

Posted in Business, Call center hell, Personal, Places, problems, Technology, VRM | Tagged , , , , , | 5 Comments

Hey Verizon, show us some upstream FiOS love

If you want to get the most out of your Verizon FiOS (fiber to the home) Internet connection, here are your top two tiers: I have the one on the left, and that’s what I’m paying for it. The service … Continue reading

Posted in Business, infrastructure, Places, Technology | Tagged , , , | 10 Comments

Purple Reign Ends

Prince, to the Mirror: “The internet’s completely over. I don’t see why I should give my new music to iTunes or anyone else. They won’t pay me an advance for it and then they get angry when they can’t get … Continue reading

Posted in Art, Fun, music, News | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

Reliable old blogging

So here I am on a street in Saverne, France, getting on the Net over a rare open wi-fi hot spot. I was going to tweet something about it, but Twitter is down. So here we are. There’s one Net, … Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , | 7 Comments

How the Internet becomes the Content-o-net

The Cinternet is Donnie Hao Dong’s name for the Chinese Internet. Donnie studies and teaches law in China and is also a fellow here at Harvard’s Berkman Center. As Donnie sees (and draws) it, the Cinternet is an increasingly restricted … Continue reading

Posted in Art, Business, Future, infrastructure, Journalism, music, News, Places, Politics, problems, Technology | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 18 Comments

The Net: Free infrastructure for speech, enterprise and assembly

I just posted this essay to IdeaScale at OpenInternet.gov, in advance of the Open Internet Workshop at MIT this afternoon. (You can vote it up or down there, along with other essays.)  I thought I’d put it here too. — … Continue reading

Posted in Berkman, Business, Events, Future, Ideas, infrastructure, music, Past, Politics, Technology | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 5 Comments

The Infrastructure Dynamic

I just posted Rupert Murdoch vs. The Web, over at Linux Journal. In it I suggest that the Murdoch story (played mostly as Bing vs Google) is a red herring, and that the real challenge is to free the Web … Continue reading

Posted in Business, infrastructure, Life, News, Politics, problems, Science, Technology | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 13 Comments