Now it somehow feels more official.
]]>
Now it somehow feels more official.
]]>Twitter Shuns Venture-Capital Money as Startup Values Plunge
Well I had to read that article. And it seems to hint at the piercing of the Silicon Valley Bubble -- not a floating bubble leading to a crash, but rather the isolation bubble, like Bubble Boy. What? Silicon Valley is Bubble Boy?
Evan Williams raised $22 million in funding for Twitter Inc., a Web site used by everyone from Britney Spears to Starbucks Corp. to Barack Obama. Sales? Those could come later -- that was, until the economy tanked.
Twitter may charge companies for access to its users so it doesn't have to ask venture capitalists for more cash, said Williams, the company's chief executive officer. As the value of Internet companies plunges this year, investors are asking for a bigger chunk of the startups they invest in.
"The VCs have the money, but they'll just negotiate harder," said Williams, who sold his previous venture, Blogger, to Google Inc. in 2003. "I want to manage things so I don't have to raise money in 2009."
In the rest of the tech world, and in the business world in general, making money is the first goal. No matter what else you are trying to achieve with your business, you need to make money so you can do the other things you want to do.
Which brings me to the Bubble. Silicon Valley has been this odd duck in the business world: An entire metropolitan region driven largely by R&D. In the Silicon Valley Bubble, the demands upon most businesses regarding sales revenues are largely removed from the environment. The dominant business model? Raise capital, then burn that capital in development of the FooBar Widget (as an imaginary example), hoping you get bought by Google or Microsoft before you run out of money. The real product is not the FooBar Widget, it's the company itself, and the targeted buyer is a new media or tech corporation with deep pockets and a hunger for new ideas.
It's a wonderful sub-economy, this Bubble, if you think about it. And necessary to cultivate many kinds of innovation.
Last time, circa 2001, the entire VC industry got a “get-out-jail-free card” after the Internet bubble burst. That’s because the scores of new firms created in the late 1990s argued they should be forgiven for any poor performance — it was the bubble’s fault, and everyone was affected. Their investors — chief among them, the elite university endowments –agreed, and gave the VC firms more money to invest again. With most VC funds lasting for ten years, this ensured the VCs a very long life indeed.
He predicts that half the VCs will go under in the current economic turndown.
Barak Rabinowitz has an interesting post on how this paradigm shift is happening in the face of an un-tapped market.
There’s an elephant in the room of online advertising. An elephant in the shape of 400 million social networkers creating and consuming content, clustering around shared interests and activities — all who have yet to be tapped in any major way by web marketers.
Determining how to best reach these people is an ongoing struggle, one complicated by the soaring rate of user-generated content. For the first time, advertisers accustomed to the leading edge are now running to catch up. The conversation is no longer about display ads vs. text ads. Rather, the burning question has become: Who is going to profit from the opportunity presented by social networks, and how are they going to do it?
Some people will perhaps disagree, but my sense is that there hasn't been nearly enough thought put into this aspect as there might of been had the venture-backed Valley economy not been so comfortable in its Bubble. (Call it my reality-based bias as an entrepreneur whose company and clients always need to look to the bottom line.)
The challenge now, Barak points out, is that the end-users of these social network ventures aren't likely to take kindly to big changes to their user experiences, especially when those changes are motivated by revenue generation strategies. What's more:
The bad news for all social networking sites — video portals especially — is that users generally don’t have the mentality to view and click on ads when they are on these platforms. This is why search continues to be the most lucrative advertising strategy. Users are specifically seeking information in that arena. On social networks, people are primarily concerned with communicating with their friends, not looking to buy items or services.
Now with the Bubble deflating under the pressure of the bursting of that bubble of another kind, the investment banking bubble, maybe we'll start to see more innovation in ways to monetize social networks.
The case of Twitter is a good example of that challenge. Whither Twitter now?
]]>Twitter Shuns Venture-Capital Money as Startup Values Plunge
Well I had to read that article. And it seems to hint at the piercing of the Silicon Valley Bubble -- not a floating bubble leading to a crash, but rather the isolation bubble, like Bubble Boy. What? Silicon Valley is Bubble Boy?
Evan Williams raised $22 million in funding for Twitter Inc., a Web site used by everyone from Britney Spears to Starbucks Corp. to Barack Obama. Sales? Those could come later -- that was, until the economy tanked.
Twitter may charge companies for access to its users so it doesn't have to ask venture capitalists for more cash, said Williams, the company's chief executive officer. As the value of Internet companies plunges this year, investors are asking for a bigger chunk of the startups they invest in.
"The VCs have the money, but they'll just negotiate harder," said Williams, who sold his previous venture, Blogger, to Google Inc. in 2003. "I want to manage things so I don't have to raise money in 2009."
In the rest of the tech world, and in the business world in general, making money is the first goal. No matter what else you are trying to achieve with your business, you need to make money so you can do the other things you want to do.
Which brings me to the Bubble. Silicon Valley has been this odd duck in the business world: An entire metropolitan region driven largely by R&D. In the Silicon Valley Bubble, the demands upon most businesses regarding sales revenues are largely removed from the environment. The dominant business model? Raise capital, then burn that capital in development of the FooBar Widget (as an imaginary example), hoping you get bought by Google or Microsoft before you run out of money. The real product is not the FooBar Widget, it's the company itself, and the targeted buyer is a new media or tech corporation with deep pockets and a hunger for new ideas.
It's a wonderful sub-economy, this Bubble, if you think about it. And necessary to cultivate many kinds of innovation.
Last time, circa 2001, the entire VC industry got a “get-out-jail-free card” after the Internet bubble burst. That’s because the scores of new firms created in the late 1990s argued they should be forgiven for any poor performance — it was the bubble’s fault, and everyone was affected. Their investors — chief among them, the elite university endowments –agreed, and gave the VC firms more money to invest again. With most VC funds lasting for ten years, this ensured the VCs a very long life indeed.
He predicts that half the VCs will go under in the current economic turndown.
Barak Rabinowitz has an interesting post on how this paradigm shift is happening in the face of an un-tapped market.
There’s an elephant in the room of online advertising. An elephant in the shape of 400 million social networkers creating and consuming content, clustering around shared interests and activities — all who have yet to be tapped in any major way by web marketers.
Determining how to best reach these people is an ongoing struggle, one complicated by the soaring rate of user-generated content. For the first time, advertisers accustomed to the leading edge are now running to catch up. The conversation is no longer about display ads vs. text ads. Rather, the burning question has become: Who is going to profit from the opportunity presented by social networks, and how are they going to do it?
Some people will perhaps disagree, but my sense is that there hasn't been nearly enough thought put into this aspect as there might of been had the venture-backed Valley economy not been so comfortable in its Bubble. (Call it my reality-based bias as an entrepreneur whose company and clients always need to look to the bottom line.)
The challenge now, Barak points out, is that the end-users of these social network ventures aren't likely to take kindly to big changes to their user experiences, especially when those changes are motivated by revenue generation strategies. What's more:
The bad news for all social networking sites — video portals especially — is that users generally don’t have the mentality to view and click on ads when they are on these platforms. This is why search continues to be the most lucrative advertising strategy. Users are specifically seeking information in that arena. On social networks, people are primarily concerned with communicating with their friends, not looking to buy items or services.
Now with the Bubble deflating under the pressure of the bursting of that bubble of another kind, the investment banking bubble, maybe we'll start to see more innovation in ways to monetize social networks.
The case of Twitter is a good example of that challenge. Whither Twitter now?
]]>No. The Internet is changing too fast too fast.
The phrase "Net Neutrality" itself is unfortunate because, alliteration aside, it doesn't really have punch, but it's very important. Liza Sabater describes it as "digital civil rights." It's a clear concept when you talk about governmental control of the Internet. China, with the collaboration of its state-run ISPs and American search engine companies, has already demonstrated that control and censorship of the Internet is already possible.
Alistair Croll points out that ISPs have increasing capability to control what users can access:
There are a lot of bad things on the Internet: spam, child porn, malware, phishing and so on. Until recently, it’s been up to people to protect themselves, using security software or web site blocking. Lately, however, governments and legislators have been calling for service providers to limit where users can go, both to stop criminal activity and to protect naïve surfers from straying onto malicious sites. Recent advances in DNS may soon let carriers comply with such regulations.
In June, three major carriers agreed to purge child pornography hosted on servers their customers operate in their data centers. Having signed New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo’s Internet code of conduct, every major U.S. ISP has also agreed to eliminate access to certain newsgroups. It’s not just in the U.S., either: Australia’s hotly debated Plan for Cyber Safety blocks content that isn’t child-friendly. Subscribers can opt out, but they’ll still be blocked from content the government deems illegal.
What about in cases of control and censorship of Internet content by corporations for non-government-manded reasons?
Claire, of the Hawaii LRB Library, gives a thumbnail:
Network neutrality is generally the concept of ensuring "unfettered access to the Internet" by regulating owners of Internet networks. CRS notes that the two most common discriminatory actions against net neutrality are "the network providers’ ability to control access to and the pricing of broadband facilities, and the incentive to favor network-owned content, thereby placing unaffiliated content providers at a competitive disadvantage."
It's this latter part -- "incentive to favor network-owned content, thereby placing unaffiliated content providers at a competitive disadvantage" -- that explains the concern of every website owner who does not control a piece of the Internet backbone.
Alice Marshall puts it in the context of the tech economy:
I am very concerned that the whole Web 2.0 crowd and the entire tech community are way too complacent about net neutrality. It is true that articles about net neutrality are regularly featured on Slashdot's front page and tech publications have done some great reporting on this, but I think too many people take the point-to-point architecture of the Web for granted and don't realize the entire basis of their business model could be destroyed.
Just what would be left if in fact corporations were left to create the content we see every day? They may edit and put their own spin on items in order to create a more favorable view for certain topics. When *we* create the Internet, we are able to put our own opinion on things, yes but people are also allowed to create their own opinions after reading multiple ideas from multiple people.
This isn't just about being able to hear political statements by Pearl Jam.
In a post about how "Verizon Wireless plans to tack on an extra 3-cent charge for every SMS message sent by Web information services to any of its mobile subscribers," Erick Shonfeld points out that Net Neutrality is not just about politics' effect on business, but also business' effect on politics:
The other way this could backfire for Verizon is that it could raise some serious Net neutrality issues. If it does not apply this charge evenly across the board, or starts carving out exceptions to do biz dev deals (and Verizon made some indications to Silicon Valley startups it was moving in this direction prior to the rate hike announcement), then it will be giving preferential treatment to one source of information over the other.
What if Verizon were charging the Obama campaign 3 cents per SMS message right now, but cut a deal with the McCain campaign to charge one cent per SMS? That is just a stark example, but you see where this can go. What if it charges the New York Times one rate, and the Wall Street Journal another? It becomes a freedom of speech issue.
Recently Slashdot pointed up the issue:
"For all their incessant bickering in the first two presidential debates over conflicts of interest and government regulation, PopMech columnist Glenn Derene is puzzled that the candidates have yet to be challenged on a vital issue directly related to both those topics: Net neutrality. John McCain and Barack Obama have stated elsewhere their opposing views on the issue, with McCain being opposed to Net neutrality and favoring light regulation of the Internet, while Obama is in favor of neutrality and seeks Government involvement. In any case, since there is no standard accepted definition of 'network neutrality,' until the candidates elaborate on their positions (which they both declined to do for this piece, nor anywhere else so far, for that matter), 'both sides can make a credible case that they're the ones defending freedom of innovation and open communication.'"
Here's Barack Obama speaking on Net Neutrality:
I think it's fair to say that John McCain unequivocably opposes Net Neutrality. John McCain has a tech plan, for which Susan Crawford offers up some perspective:
First, here’s the fact: We don’t have a functioning “free market” in online access. John McCain thinks we do. That kind of magical thinking takes real practice.
Instead, we’ve got four or so enormous companies that control most of the country’s access, and they’re probably delighted that McCain is promising not to regulate them.
The “net neutrality” movement is not about “regulating the internet.” That’s twisted.
You can think of the internet as a conversation being had by more than a billion people walking along a sidewalk. Big sidewalk. Net neutrality would require that the sidewalk keep out of the conversation - not limit it, shape it, charge it based on how interesting it is, or butt in. Right now, our sidewalks are in the business of deciding what kinds of conversations can happen, and they’re no longer required by law to just lie down and act like sidewalks. That’s a problem. We’d like the sidewalks, those basic transport elements, to be separate from the conversation.
Just as the power companies can’t dictate what kinds of purposes people use electricity for, the providers of basic general-purpose communications transport shouldn’t be able to dictate how we communicate.
McCain’s record in promoting innovation on the Internet and in the large information and communications marketplace is terrible. Mostly, he can claim credit for supporting incumbents over innovators and for failing, in his time as Chair of the Senate Commerce Committee to do anything at all to support the innovative and socially beneficial aspects of the Internet.
What about the running mates? leahpeah says:
Biden’s support is ambiguous and I’ll be watching to see how that plays out.
In Wired, Sarah Lai Stirland writes of Biden:
Biden's most-recent reputation in D.C. on telecom issues is more ambiguous, particularly when it comes to net neutrality. Though he ostensibly supported the concept as a presidential candidate during this election cycle, in hearings on Capitol Hill he's been a hesitant supporter for pro net-neutrality legislation.
I don't know if Sarah Palin has said anything about Net Neutrality.
You might ask why protecting freedom of speech on the Internet has become a partisan issue. Says Techory:
I don’t like to get political on here, but I don’t really see that this is really a political issue, or at least it shouldn’t be one. It really shouldn’t matter what political party you follow, it’s more about getting the most out of the Internet, and not being beholden to your service provider for a certain type of content. This image is an obvious exaggeration, but shows what I mean. This might not matter if there were true competition for internet services, but in many instances there are maybe one or two high speed options in an area (usually phone or cable). If they both happen to do what they please with your traffic, you’re out of luck.
And it's not just about Republicans' opposing Net Neutrality. Democratic New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo has been pushing through an aggressive government program that threatens Net Neutrality:
Obviously, stopping child porn is a good goal, but Cuomo's approach actually makes the problem worse and sets a dangerous precedent....
...[A] recent look at the details of Cuomo's highly publicized campaign found that Cuomo clearly exaggerated the extent of the problem for political benefit, forcing ISPs to block all of Usenet, despite 99.9997% of the 3.7 billion available Usenet articles being perfectly legitimate content. But that's not stopping Cuomo. In fact, he's going even further.
He's been sending ISPs a presentation from a company called Brilliant Digital that's offering a "deep packet inspection" system that could scan every file sent across an ISP's network and try to determine if it was child porn. Yes, Cuomo is suggesting that ISPs spy on every single file sent over their network now, 4th Amendment be damned....
...Last week, we wrote about Paul Ohm's suggestion that we should create a stronger privacy law that outlawed deep packet inspection, as that would pretty much stop any attempt to break net neutrality without requiring special net neutrality laws. It's worth noting that such a law would also have the added benefit of making it doubly clear to Cuomo that such a program is quite illegal.
I don't know about you, but all of this sounds a bit scary to me.
Do we want corporations, or our governments, restricting what we can get to on the Internet? That seems rather Orwellian ... or perhaps more like cable tv. I certainly do not want my access to the Internet be controlled like the cable companies control what shows are available on tv.
But that's me. Maybe most people really want the net to be more like tv?
Stacey Higgnbotham encourages dialogue:
I am curious to hear what the Pew survey says consumers think of the cloud. I would have guessed they don’t think much about it all, unless it’s bringing rain. I’m also curious as to what Google thinks regulators should focus on when it comes to running pools of virtualized servers. Bandwidth improvements and ensuring Network Neutrality are one obvious issue for cloud purveyors, other regulation that should be talked about is how laws and regulations govern the physical location of certain data. Indeed, one interesting side note to Google’s patent for running data centers on the high seas is the lack of jurisdiction in international waters.
On the consumer side, a fair issue to consider is how consumer content stored in such clouds can be used. Witness the kerfuffle over Google’s terms of service regarding Chrome, which tried to claim the right to use any content uploaded or displayed via the browser. But when storing files and data in a cloud, ownership and usage rights are essential, as are clear policies that lay out how such content might be accessed, tracked and monitored. Another issue is whether or not such data could ever truly be deleted from clouds, as former Facebook users had discovered. Not all of these issues require regulation, but it’s worth educating lawmakers about them in advance of more services being offered via the cloud.
No matter where you stand on this, the question seems to be not only where the candidates stand on Net Neutrality, but how the policies and laws enacted over the coming months and years might end up affecting, or even controlling, our conversations on politics.
Who controls the information pipelines? Will you be able to get to this website a year from now?
This post is cross-posted on BlogHer.
]]>No. The Internet is changing too fast too fast.
The phrase "Net Neutrality" itself is unfortunate because, alliteration aside, it doesn't really have punch, but it's very important. Liza Sabater describes it as "digital civil rights." It's a clear concept when you talk about governmental control of the Internet. China, with the collaboration of its state-run ISPs and American search engine companies, has already demonstrated that control and censorship of the Internet is already possible.
Alistair Croll points out that ISPs have increasing capability to control what users can access:
There are a lot of bad things on the Internet: spam, child porn, malware, phishing and so on. Until recently, it’s been up to people to protect themselves, using security software or web site blocking. Lately, however, governments and legislators have been calling for service providers to limit where users can go, both to stop criminal activity and to protect naïve surfers from straying onto malicious sites. Recent advances in DNS may soon let carriers comply with such regulations.
In June, three major carriers agreed to purge child pornography hosted on servers their customers operate in their data centers. Having signed New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo’s Internet code of conduct, every major U.S. ISP has also agreed to eliminate access to certain newsgroups. It’s not just in the U.S., either: Australia’s hotly debated Plan for Cyber Safety blocks content that isn’t child-friendly. Subscribers can opt out, but they’ll still be blocked from content the government deems illegal.
What about in cases of control and censorship of Internet content by corporations for non-government-manded reasons?
Claire, of the Hawaii LRB Library, gives a thumbnail:
Network neutrality is generally the concept of ensuring "unfettered access to the Internet" by regulating owners of Internet networks. CRS notes that the two most common discriminatory actions against net neutrality are "the network providers’ ability to control access to and the pricing of broadband facilities, and the incentive to favor network-owned content, thereby placing unaffiliated content providers at a competitive disadvantage."
It's this latter part -- "incentive to favor network-owned content, thereby placing unaffiliated content providers at a competitive disadvantage" -- that explains the concern of every website owner who does not control a piece of the Internet backbone.
Alice Marshall puts it in the context of the tech economy:
I am very concerned that the whole Web 2.0 crowd and the entire tech community are way too complacent about net neutrality. It is true that articles about net neutrality are regularly featured on Slashdot's front page and tech publications have done some great reporting on this, but I think too many people take the point-to-point architecture of the Web for granted and don't realize the entire basis of their business model could be destroyed.
Just what would be left if in fact corporations were left to create the content we see every day? They may edit and put their own spin on items in order to create a more favorable view for certain topics. When *we* create the Internet, we are able to put our own opinion on things, yes but people are also allowed to create their own opinions after reading multiple ideas from multiple people.
This isn't just about being able to hear political statements by Pearl Jam.
In a post about how "Verizon Wireless plans to tack on an extra 3-cent charge for every SMS message sent by Web information services to any of its mobile subscribers," Erick Shonfeld points out that Net Neutrality is not just about politics' effect on business, but also business' effect on politics:
The other way this could backfire for Verizon is that it could raise some serious Net neutrality issues. If it does not apply this charge evenly across the board, or starts carving out exceptions to do biz dev deals (and Verizon made some indications to Silicon Valley startups it was moving in this direction prior to the rate hike announcement), then it will be giving preferential treatment to one source of information over the other.
What if Verizon were charging the Obama campaign 3 cents per SMS message right now, but cut a deal with the McCain campaign to charge one cent per SMS? That is just a stark example, but you see where this can go. What if it charges the New York Times one rate, and the Wall Street Journal another? It becomes a freedom of speech issue.
Recently Slashdot pointed up the issue:
"For all their incessant bickering in the first two presidential debates over conflicts of interest and government regulation, PopMech columnist Glenn Derene is puzzled that the candidates have yet to be challenged on a vital issue directly related to both those topics: Net neutrality. John McCain and Barack Obama have stated elsewhere their opposing views on the issue, with McCain being opposed to Net neutrality and favoring light regulation of the Internet, while Obama is in favor of neutrality and seeks Government involvement. In any case, since there is no standard accepted definition of 'network neutrality,' until the candidates elaborate on their positions (which they both declined to do for this piece, nor anywhere else so far, for that matter), 'both sides can make a credible case that they're the ones defending freedom of innovation and open communication.'"
Here's Barack Obama speaking on Net Neutrality:
I think it's fair to say that John McCain unequivocably opposes Net Neutrality. John McCain has a tech plan, for which Susan Crawford offers up some perspective:
First, here’s the fact: We don’t have a functioning “free market” in online access. John McCain thinks we do. That kind of magical thinking takes real practice.
Instead, we’ve got four or so enormous companies that control most of the country’s access, and they’re probably delighted that McCain is promising not to regulate them.
The “net neutrality” movement is not about “regulating the internet.” That’s twisted.
You can think of the internet as a conversation being had by more than a billion people walking along a sidewalk. Big sidewalk. Net neutrality would require that the sidewalk keep out of the conversation - not limit it, shape it, charge it based on how interesting it is, or butt in. Right now, our sidewalks are in the business of deciding what kinds of conversations can happen, and they’re no longer required by law to just lie down and act like sidewalks. That’s a problem. We’d like the sidewalks, those basic transport elements, to be separate from the conversation.
Just as the power companies can’t dictate what kinds of purposes people use electricity for, the providers of basic general-purpose communications transport shouldn’t be able to dictate how we communicate.
McCain’s record in promoting innovation on the Internet and in the large information and communications marketplace is terrible. Mostly, he can claim credit for supporting incumbents over innovators and for failing, in his time as Chair of the Senate Commerce Committee to do anything at all to support the innovative and socially beneficial aspects of the Internet.
What about the running mates? leahpeah says:
Biden’s support is ambiguous and I’ll be watching to see how that plays out.
In Wired, Sarah Lai Stirland writes of Biden:
Biden's most-recent reputation in D.C. on telecom issues is more ambiguous, particularly when it comes to net neutrality. Though he ostensibly supported the concept as a presidential candidate during this election cycle, in hearings on Capitol Hill he's been a hesitant supporter for pro net-neutrality legislation.
I don't know if Sarah Palin has said anything about Net Neutrality.
You might ask why protecting freedom of speech on the Internet has become a partisan issue. Says Techory:
I don’t like to get political on here, but I don’t really see that this is really a political issue, or at least it shouldn’t be one. It really shouldn’t matter what political party you follow, it’s more about getting the most out of the Internet, and not being beholden to your service provider for a certain type of content. This image is an obvious exaggeration, but shows what I mean. This might not matter if there were true competition for internet services, but in many instances there are maybe one or two high speed options in an area (usually phone or cable). If they both happen to do what they please with your traffic, you’re out of luck.
And it's not just about Republicans' opposing Net Neutrality. Democratic New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo has been pushing through an aggressive government program that threatens Net Neutrality:
Obviously, stopping child porn is a good goal, but Cuomo's approach actually makes the problem worse and sets a dangerous precedent....
...[A] recent look at the details of Cuomo's highly publicized campaign found that Cuomo clearly exaggerated the extent of the problem for political benefit, forcing ISPs to block all of Usenet, despite 99.9997% of the 3.7 billion available Usenet articles being perfectly legitimate content. But that's not stopping Cuomo. In fact, he's going even further.
He's been sending ISPs a presentation from a company called Brilliant Digital that's offering a "deep packet inspection" system that could scan every file sent across an ISP's network and try to determine if it was child porn. Yes, Cuomo is suggesting that ISPs spy on every single file sent over their network now, 4th Amendment be damned....
...Last week, we wrote about Paul Ohm's suggestion that we should create a stronger privacy law that outlawed deep packet inspection, as that would pretty much stop any attempt to break net neutrality without requiring special net neutrality laws. It's worth noting that such a law would also have the added benefit of making it doubly clear to Cuomo that such a program is quite illegal.
I don't know about you, but all of this sounds a bit scary to me.
Do we want corporations, or our governments, restricting what we can get to on the Internet? That seems rather Orwellian ... or perhaps more like cable tv. I certainly do not want my access to the Internet be controlled like the cable companies control what shows are available on tv.
But that's me. Maybe most people really want the net to be more like tv?
Stacey Higgnbotham encourages dialogue:
I am curious to hear what the Pew survey says consumers think of the cloud. I would have guessed they don’t think much about it all, unless it’s bringing rain. I’m also curious as to what Google thinks regulators should focus on when it comes to running pools of virtualized servers. Bandwidth improvements and ensuring Network Neutrality are one obvious issue for cloud purveyors, other regulation that should be talked about is how laws and regulations govern the physical location of certain data. Indeed, one interesting side note to Google’s patent for running data centers on the high seas is the lack of jurisdiction in international waters.
On the consumer side, a fair issue to consider is how consumer content stored in such clouds can be used. Witness the kerfuffle over Google’s terms of service regarding Chrome, which tried to claim the right to use any content uploaded or displayed via the browser. But when storing files and data in a cloud, ownership and usage rights are essential, as are clear policies that lay out how such content might be accessed, tracked and monitored. Another issue is whether or not such data could ever truly be deleted from clouds, as former Facebook users had discovered. Not all of these issues require regulation, but it’s worth educating lawmakers about them in advance of more services being offered via the cloud.
No matter where you stand on this, the question seems to be not only where the candidates stand on Net Neutrality, but how the policies and laws enacted over the coming months and years might end up affecting, or even controlling, our conversations on politics.
Who controls the information pipelines? Will you be able to get to this website a year from now?
This post is cross-posted on BlogHer.
]]>
Now it somehow feels more official.
]]>
Now it somehow feels more official.
]]>A couple of months ago, prompted by Mary Hodder, I blogged about the NY Times and its odd placement of a technology story about girl geeks in the Fashion & Style section.
Well, they're at it again. And this time it is even more egregious. Check the article Diversity Isn’t Rocket Science, Is It? In the Fashion & Style section.
The article itself is quite provocative....
Based on data from 2,493 workers (1,493 women and 1,000 men) polled from March 2006 through October 2007 and hundreds more interviewed in focus groups, the report paints a portrait of a macho culture where women are very much outsiders, and where those who do enter are likely to eventually leave....
The problem isn’t that women aren’t making strides in education in the hard sciences....
And, women enter science engineering and technology (known as the SET professions) in sizable numbers....
An exodus occurs around age 35 to 40. Fifty-two percent drop out, the report warned, with some leaving for “softer” jobs in the sciences human resources rather than lab bench work, for instance, and others for different work entirely. That is twice the rate of men in the SET industries, and higher than the attrition rate of women in law or investment banking....
The 147-page report (which was sponsored by Alcoa, Johnson & Johnson, Microsoft, Pfizer and Cisco) is filled with tales of sexual harassment (63 percent of women say they experienced harassment on the job); and dismissive attitudes of male colleagues (53 percent said in order to succeed in their careers they had to “act like a man”); and a lack of mentors (51 percent of engineers say they lack one); and hours that suit men with wives at home but not working mothers (41 percent of technology workers says they need to be available “24/7”).
...which makes one wonder why the New York Times editors felt they had to stick the article in the fashion section and not in the news section or technology or even business section.
Maybe they thought only women would -- or should -- be interested.
]]>A couple of months ago, prompted by Mary Hodder, I blogged about the NY Times and its odd placement of a technology story about girl geeks in the Fashion & Style section.
Well, they're at it again. And this time it is even more egregious. Check the article Diversity Isn’t Rocket Science, Is It? In the Fashion & Style section.
The article itself is quite provocative....
Based on data from 2,493 workers (1,493 women and 1,000 men) polled from March 2006 through October 2007 and hundreds more interviewed in focus groups, the report paints a portrait of a macho culture where women are very much outsiders, and where those who do enter are likely to eventually leave....
The problem isn’t that women aren’t making strides in education in the hard sciences....
And, women enter science engineering and technology (known as the SET professions) in sizable numbers....
An exodus occurs around age 35 to 40. Fifty-two percent drop out, the report warned, with some leaving for “softer” jobs in the sciences human resources rather than lab bench work, for instance, and others for different work entirely. That is twice the rate of men in the SET industries, and higher than the attrition rate of women in law or investment banking....
The 147-page report (which was sponsored by Alcoa, Johnson & Johnson, Microsoft, Pfizer and Cisco) is filled with tales of sexual harassment (63 percent of women say they experienced harassment on the job); and dismissive attitudes of male colleagues (53 percent said in order to succeed in their careers they had to “act like a man”); and a lack of mentors (51 percent of engineers say they lack one); and hours that suit men with wives at home but not working mothers (41 percent of technology workers says they need to be available “24/7”).
...which makes one wonder why the New York Times editors felt they had to stick the article in the fashion section and not in the news section or technology or even business section.
Maybe they thought only women would -- or should -- be interested.
]]>Debate is raging today over the news that Steve Jobs has made good on his summertime promise and is now sending Apple's browser Safari along for the ride when Windows users are prompted to update iTunes or Quicktime.
Users can deselect the additional software download, but let's be realistic - there's got to be millions of people unwittingly downloading Safari onto their computers right now. Downloading software has to be opt-in, not opt-out.
As a web developer, however, I am quietly thrilled that there's a real possibility that a significant number of people will stop using the crapware Internet Explorer -- especially IE6, which cannot die a soon enough death, in my book. Microsoft's browser has been a huge sap on productivity in web development, thanks to its continued refusal to adopt CSS standards.
So "boo" to Apple, but a bigger and pre-existing "BOO" to Microsoft. Here I prefer the lesser of two boos.
]]>Debate is raging today over the news that Steve Jobs has made good on his summertime promise and is now sending Apple's browser Safari along for the ride when Windows users are prompted to update iTunes or Quicktime.
Users can deselect the additional software download, but let's be realistic - there's got to be millions of people unwittingly downloading Safari onto their computers right now. Downloading software has to be opt-in, not opt-out.
As a web developer, however, I am quietly thrilled that there's a real possibility that a significant number of people will stop using the crapware Internet Explorer -- especially IE6, which cannot die a soon enough death, in my book. Microsoft's browser has been a huge sap on productivity in web development, thanks to its continued refusal to adopt CSS standards.
So "boo" to Apple, but a bigger and pre-existing "BOO" to Microsoft. Here I prefer the lesser of two boos.
]]>If I had to pick one word to describe what's new, what's different and what's important about now vs. then, it would be "choice."
The choice of more products.
The choice of more retailers. Many a click away.
The choice of more consumers to ask for an opinion.
The choice by marketers over who to market to (precision increases).
The choice of workers to be virtual or flexible or change careers.
He goes on with some for-instances.
The thing is, I don't see choice as being some "new" 21st-century phenomenon. In fact, in many ways, there's less choice today than there was 25 years ago. There may seem to be more banks around, but what I've been seeing is massive bank consolidations. The local banks in my area are being absorbed by -- or absorbing -- other banks. I can buy insurance for my company from any number of brokers, but they're all selling the same thing, often the same underwriters, especially when it comes to health insurance. There may appear to be more credit card offers out there, but these companies have been consolidating so rapidly, I think I have one single card in my purse that has not merged and changed names in the past 2-3 years.
The web moves in punctuated equilibrium. Most of the time, choice is illusory. It consists of thousands of minor variations on what are just a few common themes. Most people crave consistency, because they can’t handle too many real choices. And yet thousands of minor variations are strangely unsatisfying. We can invest all the time, seek all the answers, work hard to get to depth, and we’re left wanting more, or at least wondering if this is it. Delivering something deeply different to break us out of the drone of all that mundane choice is valuable.
Seth does hit on one thing, though: "More choice in who to listen to (and who to ignore)."
That's true. However, I feel that is only a symptom of the real paradigm shift in our economy and culture today:
Voice.
Every day, in the "old media" of traditional broadcasting and newspapers, we see closed-minded -- and I'd say willfully ignorant -- attitudes expressed about how unimportant blogging and social media are. But they are speaking from platforms that are feeling a bit disempowered by the new media.
The new media are what have given people their voice. And it's not just that now we can hear what people used to just shout back at the television. We (the people) are changing. It's amazing what happens when you get a sense that maybe, this time, when you speak out you will be heard. That's profound. It's revolutionary.
People can talk back. Talk back to companies. Talk back to politicians. And, most important, talk to each other. We have more choices to listen to because we have more people saying things.
We have voice.
What do you say?
]]>If I had to pick one word to describe what's new, what's different and what's important about now vs. then, it would be "choice."
The choice of more products.
The choice of more retailers. Many a click away.
The choice of more consumers to ask for an opinion.
The choice by marketers over who to market to (precision increases).
The choice of workers to be virtual or flexible or change careers.
He goes on with some for-instances.
The thing is, I don't see choice as being some "new" 21st-century phenomenon. In fact, in many ways, there's less choice today than there was 25 years ago. There may seem to be more banks around, but what I've been seeing is massive bank consolidations. The local banks in my area are being absorbed by -- or absorbing -- other banks. I can buy insurance for my company from any number of brokers, but they're all selling the same thing, often the same underwriters, especially when it comes to health insurance. There may appear to be more credit card offers out there, but these companies have been consolidating so rapidly, I think I have one single card in my purse that has not merged and changed names in the past 2-3 years.
The web moves in punctuated equilibrium. Most of the time, choice is illusory. It consists of thousands of minor variations on what are just a few common themes. Most people crave consistency, because they can’t handle too many real choices. And yet thousands of minor variations are strangely unsatisfying. We can invest all the time, seek all the answers, work hard to get to depth, and we’re left wanting more, or at least wondering if this is it. Delivering something deeply different to break us out of the drone of all that mundane choice is valuable.
Seth does hit on one thing, though: "More choice in who to listen to (and who to ignore)."
That's true. However, I feel that is only a symptom of the real paradigm shift in our economy and culture today:
Voice.
Every day, in the "old media" of traditional broadcasting and newspapers, we see closed-minded -- and I'd say willfully ignorant -- attitudes expressed about how unimportant blogging and social media are. But they are speaking from platforms that are feeling a bit disempowered by the new media.
The new media are what have given people their voice. And it's not just that now we can hear what people used to just shout back at the television. We (the people) are changing. It's amazing what happens when you get a sense that maybe, this time, when you speak out you will be heard. That's profound. It's revolutionary.
People can talk back. Talk back to companies. Talk back to politicians. And, most important, talk to each other. We have more choices to listen to because we have more people saying things.
We have voice.
What do you say?
]]>He seems to have struck a nerve, judging by Joe's forums:
Yes let us hear the douchebag please!
I think Joe's got to have at least a little bit of masochist in him to be a consultant, especially an Internet consultant. Sir Geek and I did it for several years and listening to the clients blather on about what they think they want/need is enough to make your brain explode.
Freaking hysterical.
Okay, at first reading of Joe's rant, I confess I did laugh a little. It certainly was outrageous enough to inspire me to post a link.
But to publicly share such mean-spirited attitudes towards potential clients strikes me as rather sad, and what I would consider unprofessional. Now maybe the person on the other end of the line was a jerk. I certainly have encountered my share of jerks.
But Joe mocks this "potential client" for his (?) ignorance.
We in web and software development live in a world that is scarcely understood by most of the people who use what we produce. That's all the more true in the corner of that world where I spend my time: open source, which is a community-of-a-commons concept that seems to elude even the majority of folks in Silicon Valley (who are much more attached to that other source, "outsource"). Quite often we are in the business of educating and enlightening the client, sometimes seemingly as much as we are developing for the client. It comes with the territory. After all, clients come to us, in large part, because we are knowledgeable in things which they are not.
Hello?
Jerks have what's coming to them, imho. But calling someone a "dipshit" for simple ignorance? That's ignorance.
I suppose it's natural that such cynical attitudes will bleed into all areas of business, even this "new economy" we're all a part of that's supposed to, you know, change (read: "improve") the way business is conducted in the world. People are people, and cynical contempt is all-too-common a human attitude. Just don't count me among its willing practitioners.
Then again, Joe is a writer so maybe it's all just fiction. If so, never mind. I'll just walk slowly away from the computer and sit down for another viewing of Office Space.
]]>He seems to have struck a nerve, judging by Joe's forums:
Yes let us hear the douchebag please!
I think Joe's got to have at least a little bit of masochist in him to be a consultant, especially an Internet consultant. Sir Geek and I did it for several years and listening to the clients blather on about what they think they want/need is enough to make your brain explode.
Freaking hysterical.
Okay, at first reading of Joe's rant, I confess I did laugh a little. It certainly was outrageous enough to inspire me to post a link.
But to publicly share such mean-spirited attitudes towards potential clients strikes me as rather sad, and what I would consider unprofessional. Now maybe the person on the other end of the line was a jerk. I certainly have encountered my share of jerks.
But Joe mocks this "potential client" for his (?) ignorance.
We in web and software development live in a world that is scarcely understood by most of the people who use what we produce. That's all the more true in the corner of that world where I spend my time: open source, which is a community-of-a-commons concept that seems to elude even the majority of folks in Silicon Valley (who are much more attached to that other source, "outsource"). Quite often we are in the business of educating and enlightening the client, sometimes seemingly as much as we are developing for the client. It comes with the territory. After all, clients come to us, in large part, because we are knowledgeable in things which they are not.
Hello?
Jerks have what's coming to them, imho. But calling someone a "dipshit" for simple ignorance? That's ignorance.
I suppose it's natural that such cynical attitudes will bleed into all areas of business, even this "new economy" we're all a part of that's supposed to, you know, change (read: "improve") the way business is conducted in the world. People are people, and cynical contempt is all-too-common a human attitude. Just don't count me among its willing practitioners.
Then again, Joe is a writer so maybe it's all just fiction. If so, never mind. I'll just walk slowly away from the computer and sit down for another viewing of Office Space.
]]>[Update: I posted some more thoughts here.]
]]>[Update: I posted some more thoughts here.]
]]>
Some say it's a hoax. But look at item 19 on CNN Money's 2003 list of the "101 Dumbest Moments in Business":
19| To: Dean Kamen. Re: Vibrating Segway?
Shortly after Mattel releases its Nimbus 2000 broom as part of its line of Harry Potter toys, the vibrating device begins getting the wrong sort of customer raves. "I'm 32 and enjoy riding the broom as much as my 7-year-old," says one enthusiastic mother on Amazon. "My only complaint is, I wish the batteries didn't run out quite so quickly." Mattel stops making the toy, but denies that the unintended value-add is the reason. Says a spokesperson: "It's just not a continued product in our line."
Oh ... and it looks like it was marketed towards boys, too. Mattel thinking those good vibrations....
[Funny aside: Context-sensitive Google Adsense is placing Harry Potter display ads on the Dvorak site's Potter post linked above.]
]]>
Some say it's a hoax. But look at item 19 on CNN Money's 2003 list of the "101 Dumbest Moments in Business":
19| To: Dean Kamen. Re: Vibrating Segway?
Shortly after Mattel releases its Nimbus 2000 broom as part of its line of Harry Potter toys, the vibrating device begins getting the wrong sort of customer raves. "I'm 32 and enjoy riding the broom as much as my 7-year-old," says one enthusiastic mother on Amazon. "My only complaint is, I wish the batteries didn't run out quite so quickly." Mattel stops making the toy, but denies that the unintended value-add is the reason. Says a spokesperson: "It's just not a continued product in our line."
Oh ... and it looks like it was marketed towards boys, too. Mattel thinking those good vibrations....
[Funny aside: Context-sensitive Google Adsense is placing Harry Potter display ads on the Dvorak site's Potter post linked above.]
]]>The Justice Department said imposing a Net neutrality regulation could hamper development of the Internet and prevent service providers from upgrading or expanding their networks. It could also shift the "entire burden of implementing costly network expansions and improvements onto consumers," the agency said in its filing.
Such a result could diminish or delay network expansion and improvement, it added.
Are these the same network providers who already were paid huge government stipends and tax breaks to expand and improve broadband internet?
The agency said providing different levels of service is common, efficient and could satisfy consumers. As an example, it cited that the U.S. Postal Service charges customers different guarantees and speeds for package delivery, ranging from bulk mail to overnight delivery.
You gotta love that. Really, the USPS as a success story? Tell that to all the dead trees that are mailed every day straight through your mailbox into the garbage can (or, hopefully, recycling bin).
"Whether or not the same type of differentiated products and services will develop on the Internet should be determined by market forces, not regulatory intervention," the agency said in its filing.
This is a disingenuous argument, as people already are paying varying rates for varying levels of service. If you want a fast connection, you pay more. If you have a website that has a lot of media files to serve, you pay more.
What the DOJ seems to be arguing is -- to use their analogy -- much like having the USPS tell you that you cannot get mail from Chicago, but you can get similar mail from another sender in Atlanta. The telecoms who were paid by the taxpayer to build the backbone and make it stronger and faster now want to control the content on that backbone. This does not serve competition. In fact, undermining net neutrality would have the effect of undermining the free market. Not when individual access to information is choked off and controlled by middleman companies who are playing for the big contracts.
I'm very disturbed by this development, but I have to confess I'm not that surprised. We live in a political and business climate that is suspicious of individual expression and freedom of speech -- or at least places very little value on it.
]]>The Justice Department said imposing a Net neutrality regulation could hamper development of the Internet and prevent service providers from upgrading or expanding their networks. It could also shift the "entire burden of implementing costly network expansions and improvements onto consumers," the agency said in its filing.
Such a result could diminish or delay network expansion and improvement, it added.
Are these the same network providers who already were paid huge government stipends and tax breaks to expand and improve broadband internet?
The agency said providing different levels of service is common, efficient and could satisfy consumers. As an example, it cited that the U.S. Postal Service charges customers different guarantees and speeds for package delivery, ranging from bulk mail to overnight delivery.
You gotta love that. Really, the USPS as a success story? Tell that to all the dead trees that are mailed every day straight through your mailbox into the garbage can (or, hopefully, recycling bin).
"Whether or not the same type of differentiated products and services will develop on the Internet should be determined by market forces, not regulatory intervention," the agency said in its filing.
This is a disingenuous argument, as people already are paying varying rates for varying levels of service. If you want a fast connection, you pay more. If you have a website that has a lot of media files to serve, you pay more.
What the DOJ seems to be arguing is -- to use their analogy -- much like having the USPS tell you that you cannot get mail from Chicago, but you can get similar mail from another sender in Atlanta. The telecoms who were paid by the taxpayer to build the backbone and make it stronger and faster now want to control the content on that backbone. This does not serve competition. In fact, undermining net neutrality would have the effect of undermining the free market. Not when individual access to information is choked off and controlled by middleman companies who are playing for the big contracts.
I'm very disturbed by this development, but I have to confess I'm not that surprised. We live in a political and business climate that is suspicious of individual expression and freedom of speech -- or at least places very little value on it.
]]>