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Thursday, October 21, 2004
A message to Michael 
| | Just got off the phone with a friend who's also a friend of Michael Powell, who I insulted in today's first post (below). Our mutual friend would like us to talk. |
| | I've met Michael, and still have his business card here. We had a nice conversation at the time (a few years back, at a PC Forum), and he's clearly a good guy. So, with those grounds for conversation established, let's proceed. |
| | Michael, it's about language. The vocabularies we use to describe a subject are essentially metaphorical: borrowed from other subjects. This is unavoidable, and actually a Good Thing (as cognitive linguists will tell you). But, just as everything looks like a nail when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a transport system when all you use is a transport vocabulary: when you have "media" for the "transport" and "delivery" of "content" to "consumers" who need "access" to it; and when we're used to regulating systems with "carriers"; and "transmitters" and "receivers" and "coverage areas" and so on. |
| | As I said here, the way we've always (and rightly) conceptualized "communications" doesn't fit the Net, because the Net was not conceived by its makers as a delivery system for "content." |
| | The Net's architecture is end-to-end, on purpose. It has been described as a World of Ends. In ways as deep and essential as the core of the Earth, it's something nobody can own and everybody can use. Plus one more thing: it's a place everybody can improve as well. Which is why it keeps improving. |
| | The people improving it aren't just the big companies you're used to wrestling with at the FCC. They're independent developers. Look at blogging, now with 4 million producers of free speech. Or podcasting, which just got started and is already exploding at a nuclear rate. |
| | The way we describe the Net (and the Web) is primarily in place terms. We have "sites" that we also call "locations" with "addresses." We often talk about the Net as an "environment" or a "habitat." For regulatory purposes, the best description we use is "commons." All of those terms derive from conceiving the Net as a place, rather than as a transport system. |
| | In this place we're writing, speaking, talking, inventing, innovating and doing business. We're not just "consumers" looking for "access" to "content" from "producers" or "providers," though many of us do only that. The Net is so broadly supportive that any of us can as easily supply as demand. And we're doing exactly that. This may be scary to established media and other businesses, but it's the way things work in free markets (which I know you appreciate), and nothing supports those better than the Net. In fact, the Net may be the most supportive environment for markets since the harbor and the crossroads. |
| | Yes, I know it's actually both an environment — a place — and a transport system. We describe the Net as a system of "pipes." If it weren't for "carriers" and other "transport" companies we wouldn't have a Net at all, I suppose. And, of course, our protocols have a "transport" layer. |
| | That said, the way the Net manifests in the world, and the way it supports all kinds of activities, and especially the way it allows markets to grow — where everybody is in a position to supply as well as demand, to produce as well as consume — demands appropriate conceptualization. We won't find that in the basket of words provided by transportation. |
| | Our biggest challenge — yours and mine — right now is to keep the Net free of the regulatory assumptions that applied to the undeniably transportational nature of few-to-many communications that have been around since the FCC was the Federal Radio Commission. To do that, we need an appropriate vocabulary. |
| | It's not hard. We have citizens rather than consumers. We have essays and posts instead of content. If you think for a moment before using just those two terms — "consumer" and "content" — and substitute words that make sense in terms of place, you'll be right on track, without changing the real subjects of your conversation one bit. |
| | Thanks for listening. Obviously, I'd love to talk more to you about it. |
Will's way
| | Somebody just told me that Jimmy Carter, in an interview on Terry Gross' Fresh Air show today, disclosed that he was at an unusual disadvantage in his presidential debate with Ronald Reagan — the one where Reagan famously said, "There you go again." I just listened to that section of the show (nice of them to provide the audio). Here's Carter... |
| | We found out later that one of Ronald Reagan's supporters, inside the White House, had stolen my briefing book — my top secret briefing book — that prepared me for the debate. And a very prominent news reporter was the one who took the briefing book to Ronald Reagan, and helped drill him on the things that I might say... |
| | Terry Gross asked, "What prominent reporter was that?" Carter's reply: |
| | It was George Will. And it was later known that he did that. |
| | I'm surprised I'd never heard that before. But it's been kicking around, apparently, for some time. |
| | All these years later, it's still appalling. |
Ahead of a time that's now come
Anals of spam, cont'd
| | What's with the Rolex spam? Is Rolex the new Vi#gr@? Haven't creeps been selling phony watches on street corners since forever? Here's an excerpt from just one of these things... |
| | Thank you for expressing interest in Genuine Replicas watches. We would like to take this opportunity to offer you our fine selection of Italian crafted Rolex Timepieces. You can view our large selection of Rolex (including Breitling, Tag Heuer, Cartier etc) : View Catalog |
| | Genuine replicas. Sheezus. |
Sew age
| | Just got pointed to this memo from Mark Halprin, Political Director of ABC News, form October 9. Not easy being in his shoes, fersure. |
| | Of course, now we're so deep in slime sewn by both sides that any balance ABC News can to weigh one against the other is long since submerged. |
Lowblogging
Federal Plumbing Commission
| | On the one hand, he says, |
| | Just consider the rash of devices we all can buy today. MP3 players, like Ipod, let consumers be their own record producers. PVRs, like Tivo, let consumers be network programming executives. Cell phones are highly personalized and customized, with a personal number people take with them wherever they go. PDAs have WiFi chips in them and let Americans access the world¹s information from almost anywhere. These are powerful and important developments. |
| | In addition to individual empowerment, local communities are revived as well. Last week, I was in New York City and visited a wonderful studio called the Manhattan Neighborhood Networks. It provided facilities to allow average citizens to produce their own programs for airing on public access channels. It allowed members of the community to check out top quality video cameras, once only available to the most sophisticated news operations. It taught citizens to produce and edit programs on desktop computers, using off- the- shelf software. |
| | VoIP will do the same thing for voice service that technology is doing in other walks of life — bring greater value to individuals and communities. |
| | To realize the innovation dream that IP communications promises, however, we must ensure that a willing provider can reach a willing consumer over the broadband connection. |
| | Ensuring that consumers can obtain and use the content, applications, and devices they choose is critical to unlocking the vast potential of the Internet. |
| | Today, broadband consumers generally enjoy such freedom. Numerous benefits will follow if the industry continues to preserve choices, value, and personalization that broadband users continue to expect and demand. Internet Freedom will promote comparison shopping among the growing number of providers by making it easier for individuals to obtain access to meaningful information about the services and technical capabilities they rely on to access and use the Internet. |
| | Moreover, Internet Freedom promotes innovation by giving developers and service providers¹ confidence to develop applications that will reach consumers and run as designed, and also serving as an insurance policy against the potential rise of abusive market power by vertically integrated providers. |
| | Some in the industry are beginning to recognize the importance of consumer empowerment and the Internet Consumer Freedoms that I have outlined: |
| | (1) Freedom to Access Content: Consumers should have access to their choice of legal content; |
| | (2) Freedom to Use Applications: Consumers should be able to run applications of their choice; |
| | (3) Freedom to Attach Personal Devices: Consumers should be permitted to attach any devices they choose to the connection in their homes; and |
| | (4) Freedom to Obtain Service Plan Information: Consumers should receive meaningful information regarding their service plans. |
| | There are positive developments in this space: providers are beginning to offer "naked DSL" access to their broadband pipe without the requirement that customers also subscribe to their voice offering. Similarly, AOL and MSN recently announced an agreement to integrate their instant messaging services. |
| | The entire broadband industry should nevertheless take heed of how critical unfettered access to the Internet has been, and will continue to be, to the success of the Internet. Consumers have a high expectation that such access will continue, and the benefits to them and the nation are significant. |
| | Jeez, phone and cable companies have been offering unbundled DSL and cable internet service for years. But they still make it asymmetrical (fat down, thin up) and block port 80 (don't bother setting up a server) and port 25 (or your own email server, home or anywhere). And the "agreement" between AOL and MSN to "interoperate" only applied to enterprise customers. (Aside: That Microsoft, AOL, Yahoo and Apple continue to operate IM systems as closed as the email systems they operated in the 80s is livid proof that they remain, in one glaringly huge area, as clueless as ever about the Net.) |
| | But aside from those quibbles, note how Powell maintains the same lopsided, top-down asymmetrical producer-to-consumer perspective of the lame industries that have felt threatened by the Internet and missing its clues from the beginning. (For a rant on how insanely Sony is still missing them, dig this engadget podcast) Reading this shit just brings out the Jersey Guy in me... |
| | Excuse me, dude, but I'm not just a fucking "consumer" and I don't just want fucking "access." Me and my friends here want to want to blow up the whole fucking system you're protecting. You're a nice guy and all, and have some nice things to say, but you're fucking in the way. Please step aside. |
| | This revolution is about the demand side getting the power to supply. That's what the Net, free software, Linux, open source, blogging, podcasting, indy music, indy movies and every other movement growing out of connected independence is about. The Net is a whole new marketplace, a land of the free and the home of the smart, the talented and the enterprising. It doesn't matter how big and fat and old and well-connected your industrial system is. If it doesn't adapt to the Net's environment, it'll choke on its own exhaust. |
| | It would help to have an FCC that understands the nature of this new place. Michael Powell showed some positive signs a few years ago, but now he doesn't. Freedom of "access" is bullshit. Freedom to speak, produce, write, perform and do business is what it's about. Maintaining the old one2many plumbing mentality is a shame and a sham. And worse, delusional. |
| | Thanks to the FCC Daily Digest for the link to the .txt of Powell's speech, and lots of other goodies that don't appear on the FCC site, whose masters link to NOTHING in their daily headlines that isn't a Word (.doc) or Acrobat (.pdf) file. All of those files, I learned awhile ago, are also available as .txt files. All you have to do is swap .txt for .doc or .pdf in the URL suffix. The text is a bit strange (with extra spaces, for example), but at least it's in a Net-native non-proprietary format. |
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