For the latest doomsday dispatches from the front, catch the September issue of Wired--the lustrous eye-blasting pink one with the Chris Anderson-Michael Wolff grafitti declaring "The Web is Dead."
Though Wired is the belwether of the nerd-herd, ("whither thou wire us, we will wierd out"), for the real futurist bonanza you should start with Andy Kessler's arachnoid Grumby, pouncing on the web-weary wanderer with an injection of his pharmic toxin of uproarious wit and invention.
 The thrust of the mind-bending but brain-bent Anderson-Wolff pieces is the eclipse of the web by walled content. As conceived by Tim Berners-Lee, the World Wide Web specified the HTML mark-up language for the creation of standard web pages that could be read on a browser on any computer attached to the net. Transmission across the net was accomplished by HTTP (hypertext transport protocol). Berners-Lee was concerned less with the network at layer 3 than with the desktop experience and linkage to other pages.
Coming later was TCP-IP (transport control protocol-Internet protocol) from Bob Kahn and Vin Cerf. These organized the network-addressing URLs and the try, try, again until you get an acknowledgement method of layer 4 TCP.
Continue reading "WIRED Weirds Out" »
The New York Times has an interesting piece by Charlie Savage about the use of GPS tracking by police departments.
It notes that last week, an ideologically diverse panel on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia overturned a drug trafficking conviction because the evidence against the defendant included tracking data from a GPS receiver that the police hid under his sport utility vehicle without a warrant. "The device essentially recorded his whereabouts 24 hours a day for four weeks."
The real issue is not whether the police should be able to use this fantastic technology to catch bad guys. Of course they should.
The issue is whether police should be able to hide these devices without a warrant.
If police don't have to obtain a warrant supported by probable cause, they could secretly affix these devices to everyone's car. But if they have to obtain a warrant, they would have to show that they have a reasonable basis for suspecting that the target committed an actual crime.
That's what the Fourth Amendment is all about. It allows surveillance of criminal suspects, but not innocent parties.
This is America, the Land of the Free. In America, you are supposed to be innocent until proven guilty. You don't have to prove your guilt (see the Fifth Amendment), that's the prosecutor's job.
Innocence is usually its own shield, but not always.
What we really have here is police departments struggling to do their job with declining resources. Obtaining warrants is time-consuming and costly. If the police don't have to convince judges to issue warrants, politicians can transfer resources elsewhere. It's really a non-monetary tax on the innocent. It's a tax on freedom.
That's a very bad thing.
Fourth Amendment protection is warranted, if for no other reason, because this technology is novel and most people would not suspect that driving their car would expose their intimate activities to the police.
What if the police are allowed to deploy this technology according to their discretion? What if they deploy it widely and their files are lost or stolen, to God knows who else?
We don't want to go down this path. The answer is to give police departments the resources they need and not to cut corners with our Constitutional liberties.
(Note: Andy Kessler, hedge fund billionaire, meteoric success in Silicon Valley and at AT&T Bell Labs and author of four non-fiction books, has a novel out now: Grumby, a tale of the future of robotic intelligence. Gilder just read it.)
by George Gilder
Steve Jobs recoils in panic, pushing madly forth
his inferior pods and paddles, ipups and ap-kits, Quicktunes and
iTimes, before giving in to his disgrumbyment.
Mark Zuckerburg wanders forlorn and friendless on Facebook, before finally
matriculating at Harvard's new Grumby school of transgendered robotics.
Meg Whitman lifts weights and flees to the muscle bound beaches and
bureaucracies of California politics, now entirely virtualized by Grumby.
Bob Metcalfe propounds an ethereal power law of Grumbynets.
Eric Schmidt gives in to Grumby's inevitable "hollowing out" of Google and
retreats to a solar paneled virtual world without CO2.
Bill Gates zunes out and merges his x-boxes and OSes with his other
non-profits.
Ray Kurzweil revs up all his curves and hails the new Kesslerian
Singularity.
Jeff Bezos gasps at a new kindled amazon of litry laughs and lambencies.
All bow humbly before the coming of Grumby.
Microcosm and telecosm converge in a vivacious and incandescent vamp of
literature and futurism.
ORDER YOUR COPY OF ANDY KESSLER'S HILARIOUS NOVEL, GRUMBY, TODAY
Tom Alberg, who helped found Discovery Institute in 1990 and was president of its Board for many years (and still serves as a Director), is one of the most innovative entrepreneurs around. He knows the importance of pro-growth economic policies and is keenly aware of the dangers of the present moment. So it is with delight that I note that he has been appointed by President Obama to the prestigious new National Advisory Council on Innovation and Entrepreneurship. The Council will operate under Commerce Secretary Gary Locke, former governor of Washington State.
Alberg is a lawyer by background, who served as Sr. Vice President at McCaw Cellular when it was sold to AT&T. He was an early investor in Amazon and a founding principal in Madrona Venture Group, the Seattle-based high tech investment house. He also is responsible for Novelty Hill winery and several other original-ideas-taken-concrete-shape. Many of his business projects, such as Oxbow, a model farm in the Snoqualmie Valley east of Seattle, combine philanthropic vision with business purposes-- as for example, a teaching program for schoolchildren visiting Oxbow Farm.
Tom has a talent for innovation, appreciates talent and promotes talent. He's an unusually enlightened and resourceful businessman. Good for President Obama for recognizing this, and here's hoping the President listens to his appointee's advice on his Advisory Council.
Among the other members of the Council announced yesterday are Steve Case, co-founder of AOL, Jerry Yang, co-founder of Yahoo! and Carl Shramm, CEO of the Kauffman Foundation.
Julius Genachowski is in a hurry.
The chairman of the Federal Communications Commission is arguing that the commission must act quickly to "restore the longstanding deregulatory--as opposed to 'no-regulatory' or 'over-regulatory'--compact" that governed broadband Internet access services prior to a recent court decision. Such an approach is urgently needed to "restore the status quo," he claims.
If the FCC cannot regulate the Internet, it may die. The telephone and television industries are declining, whereas communications industries which the FCC monitors to some extent but does not regulate, e.g., the Internet backbone, broadband Internet access and wireless, are thriving.
Genacowski's plan would reclassify broadband as a "telecommunications" service subject to blunt, onerous, industrial-era regulation under Title II of the Communications Act of 1934 -- which governs common carriers -- and then forbear from enforcing most of Title II's heavy-handed provisions.
Broadband services haven't been subject to Title II regulation for several years, so reclassification would not restore the status quo. It would harken back to a bygone era.
Continue reading "Title II for broadband is desperate and ill-conceived" »
Late last week the Federal Communications Commission voted along party lines to open a proceeding to "seek the best legal framework for broadband Internet access," a process that could culminate in the imposition of stifling, telephone utility style regulations on America's privately financed broadband networks pursuant to Title II of the 1934 Communications Act.
A statement by Commissioner Michael J. Copps explains in more detail than the rest why he thinks regulation is necessary for achieving this country's "broadband hopes and dreams."
The FCC has been deregulating communications services in response to increasing competition for years. Copps and others believe it is necessary to reverse course, although in his statement Copps doesn't question the policy of deregulating a competitive market. He questions the facts, arguing that broadband is less competitive than it used to be. This is a misleading argument.
Continue reading "Is regulation better than competition?" »
This week Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn signed Senate Bill 107, which modernizes the Illinois Telecommuncations Act. According to a press release, Investment in broadband and wireless technology is a key to creating better jobs and providing unique educational opportunities across Illinois," said Governor Quinn. "I am proud to sign this law to encourage private investment in these critical technologies, which will put more people to work and protect consumers. Also, Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland signed Senate Bill 162, which updates Ohio's seriously outmoded telephone regulations. According to a statement by the governor, This bill is common sense regulatory reform. It modernizes Ohio's telecommunications laws, even removing more than 50 references to the 'telegraph' in the Ohio Revised Code. By reducing archaic red tape, we are making the state more competitive and sending a clear message to telecommunication businesses that we welcome your investments in Ohio. Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue signed House Bill 168 on June 4.
Telecom regulatory reform is urgently needed to protect and promote investment, innovation and consumer choice. George Gilder and I have authored several reports (see this, this, this and this) documenting the problem and making several recommendations. The Illinois, Ohio and Georgia legislation include many of the ideas which are needed to spur critical private sector investment in broadband infrastructure which will lead to job creation and retention.
A report by Connected Nation projects a reasonably-achievable 7 percent increase in broadband adoption would produce over 105,000 jobs in Illinois, 96,000 jobs in Ohio and 71,000 jobs in Georgia annually.. These jobs would not only in be communications equipment and services, but also in manufacturing and service industries (especially finance, education and health care).
Continue reading "States update telecom statutes" »
Rep. John D. Dingell, Jr. (D-MI), Dean of the U.S. House of Representatives, Chairman Emeritus of the Energy & Commerce Committee (1981-95 and 2007-09) in a letter last week to young FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski regarding Genachowski's proposal to apply telephone-style regulation to the Internet: I fear your "third way" risks reversal by the courts, especially given the scope of its efforts to expand the Commission's authority. It also puts at risk significant past and future investments, perhaps to the detriment of the Nation's economic recovery and continued technological leadership. More importantly, it may paralyze more holistic regulatory efforts to keep the Internet open to consumers, advance cybersecurity, protect consumer data privacy, and ensure universal access to and deployment of broadband. Dingell advised Genachowski to abandon an administrative proceeding and work instead with Congress to secure the necessary statutory authorities to permit the "appropriate and effective regulation of broadband."
Although I may be a conservative blogger, personally I consider Dingell -- whom I have met and have observed for many years -- as a national treasure. Few if any in Congress can confront a witness like he can, for one thing. Though I don't always agree with him, he strikes me as like Obi-Wan Kenobi and Yoda or Dumbledore in the wisdom, ability and integrity departments.
We'll see what Genachowski thinks.
National Journal notes ($) that while Free Press frequently taps the media to slam its opponents as fronts for special interests who won't reveal their funding, much of Free Press's own funding is concealed. Free Press staff members "want to call everyone else a front group ... [but] they don't subject themselves to the same scrutiny," [Phil] Kerpen [of Americans for Prosperity] contended. The charges of Astroturfing that Free Press aims at other groups, [Mike] McCurry [a former White House spokesman, who now runs Public Strategies Washington, a government-relations firm whose Arts+Labs coalition supports the telecoms in the net-neutrality debate] said, carry "a little whiff of hypocrisy." Always better to debate the arguments, isn't it? Shooting the messenger is usually an act of desperation that tends to reveal the weaknesses in one's case. As this revelation shows, it can also make one look foolish.
The article points out that Free Press -- which is urging Democratic policy makers to regulate the Internet and enact subsidies for media professionals -- is "firmly allied with media professionals who provide content to niche markets." It's former press chief, Jen Howard, is now the press secretary for FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, and its talking points and arguments match the statements of administration officials.
According to McCurry, the group and its allies "hate everything about capitalism, corporations and profit-making."
Congress will revisit the Communications Act of 1934 (see this and this) in the aftermath of an appellate court decision limiting the Federal Communications Commission's ability to regulate the Internet.
"Stakeholders" will be invited to participate in a series of bipartisan, issue-focused "meetings" beginning in June, according to the congressional statements.
Hopefully congressional leaders are contemplating a transparent process consisting of public hearings. If they are planning closed-door listening sessions with special interest representatives, that could encourage self-serving agendas and obscure horse-trading which can wind up costing consumers a bundle.
Before it wrote the Telecommunications Act of 1996, the Senate Commerce Committee alone compiled an 817-page hearing record (S. Hrg. 103-599) on the basis of hearings on Feb. 23, Mar. 2 and 17, and May 4, 11, 12, 18, 24 and 25, 1994. The House Energy & Commerce Committee conducted a separate set of extensive hearings.
A letter signed by 74 House Democrats warns FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski that imposing telephone-style regulation on the Internet could undermine a bipartisan consensus that has resulted in broadband industry infrastructure investment of approximately $60 billion per year. In the last decade, multiple providers and the hundreds of thousands of workers they employ have brought high speed connections to 95 percent of U.S. households where two-thirds of Americans now access the Internet through broadband at home. The lawmakers claim Genachowski's proposal to regulate broadband services will create uncertainty that will "jeopardize jobs and deter needed investment for years to come," and requests that the FCC refrain from taking further steps to regulate broadband services without additional direction from Congress.
A separate letter from 37 Republican senators cautions Genachowski that he is seeking a "major shift in FCC policy that is highly controversial and has been previously rejected by Congress and both Democratic and Republican administrations." The senators advise Genachowski to leave the Internet "free from common carrier regulations."
Municipal broadband networks sound like a great idea, and they were a hot trend a few years ago. For one thing, promoters claimed they weren't going to cost taxpayers a dime.
Many attempts were made to blanket towns and cities with ubiquitous, free, public-spirited broadband service, but most of these projects resulted in cost-overruns, construction delays and ultimately poor service. Many were abandoned. That is, supporters walked away from a bad investment rather than build upon it.
In Tennessee, the legislature is considering a "technical" amendment that would allow municipalities to use "public money" and "public debt" to deploy broadband on an "open access" basis "within or without" that municipality's, and (with permission) any other municipality's, boundaries.
This is not a good idea.
Look no further than the National Broadband Plan (at p. 153), which was recently issued by the Federal Communications Commission (the FCC is currently composed of three Democrats and two Republicans). The plan cautions and recommends that Municipal broadband has risks. Municipally financed services may discourage investment by private companies. Before embarking on any type of broadband buildout, whether wired or wireless, towns and cities should try to attract private sector broadband investment. The National Broadband Plan advises that towns and cities should have the right to move forward and build networks only in the absence of private sector investment.
This important caveat is missing in the Tennessee amendment. The "technical" amendment would allow Tennessee municipalities to use public resources to compete with the private sector without limitation.
Setting aside the question of whether there actually are sufficient tax revenues and borrowing capability for Tennessee municipalities to become broadband providers in these difficult economic times -- broadband networks are very capital-intensive -- there is also the question whether public investment will promote or discourage private investment. In other words, how will aggregate investment be affected?
The private sector may choose not to compete at all against a publicly-funded and publicly-favored competitor. The private sector might just funnel its investment into other states who are more welcoming of private enterprise.
From Portland to Philadelphia, many municipal broadband networks have failed to meet most initial expectations. There is now a fairly extensive record to prove that municipal broadband networks are a bad bet.
There is also indirect evidence that most of Tennessee's municipal broadband networks are failures, otherwise why would they be asking the legislature for access to public money and public debt? And for authority to expand? Sounds like a party.
The popular Instanpundit correctly cites George Gilder for his early prediction of the Internet (what he called the Teleputer):
"LIFE AFTER LIFE AFTER TELEVISION: With nearly 20 years of hindsight, the blurb for George Gilder's book Life After Television, published in 1992, shortly before the first browser was available for consumers to access the still-nascent World Wide Web, sounds remarkably prescient:
"Gilder's thesis, written in layman's terms, is that the United States will soon lose its rightful preeminence in the telecommunications field to foreign competitors, particularly the Japanese. Unless, that is, American business executives, legislators, judges, and consumers look beyond separate, limited, and hierarchical forms of communication such as television, telephones, and online databases to a multifunctional, interactive, and democratic "telecomputer." Instead of envisioning a brave new telecomputerized world, the powers that be in American business, government, and law are wasting time protecting obsolete existing systems, he posits. Gilder also warns that expensive, user-unfriendly online databases such as Dialog and NEXIS are, at best, transitional technologies. Though much of Gilder's argument is based on his own opinions and peculiar personal preferences (Gilder doesn't seem to like to leave the house*) rather than real evidence, his thoughts make interesting reading."
Now what? Gilder, Discovery Senior Fellow who helped found the Institute in 1990 privately is predicting a replacement for the Internet. Stay tuned.
The FCC's newest plan for seizing control of the last-mile broadband connections we all use to access the Internet would classify broadband as a 'telecommunications service,' which will put the FCC under constant pressure to resurrect the "unbundling" regulations that precipitated the telecom crash of 2000 by requiring owners of last-mile links to homes and offices to share their lines with rivals.
Remember the CLECs? They were essentially a hothouse product of regulation, and they not only failed to deliver bandwidth but they brought down the whole high tech economy. As a result of that carnage the FCC drew back, last-mile bandwidth was declared to be an 'information service,' and thus not subject to the labyrinthine rules that were applied before as if they were voice telephone lines.
With business investment flooding into this arena ever since, the U.S. has accomplished a broadband miracle, with residential bandwidth up 54 fold, wireless bandwidth to consumers up 542 fold.
With sufficient investment in bandwidth, carriers will have no economic incentive to discriminate. If bandwidth is scarce, carriers will be forced to set priorities or else slow everything down to the lowest common denominator.
Investment is what determines whether there is abundance or scarcity and whether network neutrality in practice is just a carnival for lawyers to litigate telecom and Internet companies.
Nothing can so wither broadband investment as murky mandates from Washington.
FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski outlined his game plan for asserting FCC control over broadband services this week in a speech entitled: "The Third Way: A Narrowly Tailored Broadband Framework."
This is the FCC's third major attempt to regulate broadband services, as my colleague Jim Harper pointed out in conversation today. I think it will also be the FCC's third strike.
Genachowski is engaging in a futile attempt to slice and dice the Internet as a definitional matter for the purpose of expanding his agency's regulatory grasp while hopefully containing many of the harmful consequences of regulatory overreach.
Regulating an essential component of the Internet as a "telecommunications service" would still amount to a form of Internet regulation in violation of a long-standing bipartisan consensus favoring competition and private investment over regulation and public subsidies. It is a quixotic quest.
For one thing, FCC jurisdiction isn't necessary to protect consumers, because the Federal Trade Commission guards against deceptive business practices and applies the antitrust laws to protect competition.
Network neutrality regulation could also negatively impact jobs and investment. A study by the Brattle Group, for example, just concluded that more than 65,000 jobs could be put in jeopardy throughout the economy in 2011 as a result of net neutrality regulation, with the total impact growing to almost 1.5 million jobs affected by 2020.
The good news is broadband providers invested almost $60 billion in 2009 alone in broadband networks, according to one estimate. The bad news is regulation cannot compel private investment, but it can discourage it by creating uncertainty and risk for investors.
Even if confined to a limited portion of the Internet, there is no way to limit the potentially heavy-handed and costly consequences of regulation. The reality is regulation usually results in unintended consequences, which regulators subsequently try to fix with more and more regulation. No one can predict where it will lead.
Antitrust,
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Censorship and surveillance,
Competition,
Data retention,
Decency,
Digital Television,
E-commerce,
E-learning,
EU Telecom Review,
EU v. Microsoft,
Economic Policy,
Energy,
Entrepreneurship,
European Union,
Exaflood,
Globalization,
Health IT,
Innovation,
Intellectual Property,
Internet,
Money,
Municipal Wi-Fi Networks,
Net Neutrality,
Online commerce,
Politics,
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Security,
Spectrum Policy,
Taxation,
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