Localism

Symantec CEO Warns of Drop in Internet Use

Here's a warning about security concerns undermining users' trust in the Internet from someone who should know, the guy who runs visur killer Symantec. It supports one of the concerns I and others have expressed about our ability to maximize the Internet's potentials.

BBC NEWS | Technology | Smart phones fox frustrated users

If I was to relist my fears/likely stumbling blocks regarding globalized wireless Internet utilization, no doubt I'd include over-complexity: the challenge of keeping it easy to use.

Wireless incompatibilities alleged

Lack of broadly agreed to standards and other technical issues like those alleged in this article are, I believe, only the tip of an iceberg in the sea of global wireless transformation...

For me, this week's reading "Blogging and the new citizenship" drove home the point that my blog is woefully deficient because it does not allow others to comment on my postings. From the beginning of this first adventure into blogging I knew I wanted this functionality, but was puzzled how to enable it. Surely Blogger would make it possible, even simple. But no. I am facing the choice of living without, changing to another blog tool (but first I need to know I will not lose what I already have) or tackling one of several scripting options all of which are foreign to me as of this writing. Stay tuned.

I'd welcome your comments if I had a way to allow them in...

In "Digitization of Printed, Published or Written Materials", Cynthia opens our eyes to a future of libraries without walls – or books. In her list of fears, "resource territoriality" strikes me as another facet of the problems created by often conflicting copyright issues that plague the Internet. Like her second fear, "legal issues", both revolve around the matter of fair compensation for intellectual property, in this case requiring a payment to access a document. (I found Minjeong’s EOTO on "Copyright, Digital Technology, and the Internet" to be a good source of information on this particular area.)

Regarding her fourth fear, works being damaged in the digitization process, I see no reason to fear this. Before scanners we had photographic copy stands. Book pages were simply photographed with the book’s binding left intact. This is still a very viable option for capturing delicate materials. While today most such work would be done with digital cameras, film can easily be scanning to produce graphic images or to convert the contents to text documents.

Around the time Cynthia published her EOTO, Amazon.com launched a new service: text searches of whole books. Limited to a relatively small percentage of the titles in circulation today, the number will grow rapidly, opening an entirely new highway for mining information. This opens up a new, exciting and fruitful avenue for digital discovery and sharing of text-based works. Knowledge seekers rejoice!

_________________________


In "Terrorism and the Internet", Wolfgang cites several of the potent threats that either manifest through or that could be aided and abetted by the Internet. I believe these are real threats that pose a more immediate and larger scale threat than most individuals or governments either realize or are willing to publicly admit. Certainly, some cyberthreats will never amount to more than "mass annoyance", as Wolfgang’s post describes them, but to dismiss the entire genre as much ado about nothing is a stance fraught with peril.

I share many of Wolfgangs concerns, not the least of which is the risk to personal freedoms and privacy. A few years back, the FBI was chided by the courts because of its "Carnivore" software which was to be turned loose in ISPs across the nation where it would sniff out "suspected terrorists" in shades of George Orwell’s 1984.

_________________________


JoMC223’s EOTO discussing peer-to-peer file sharing and technology reminds me of my experience in another class three years ago. It was an online grad-level class in telecommunications technology and Napster was in it’s heyday. I was shocked that so many seemingly well-educated twenty-somethings couldn’t – or wouldn’t – grasp the fundamental illegality of "sharing" music rather than buying it.

As I see it, if we are unwilling to recognize and respect "ownership" and "fair compensation" as the cornerstone of artistic endeavors (among others), then we will never succeed in leveraging the potential of a tool like the Internet. Just imagine the chilling effect it will have on the creative arts when individuals who earn their keep by creating things which other people are willing to pay for (like books, paintings, music, software) can no longer trust they will be fairly and fully compensated for their work.

_________________________


Vance’s "Bridging the Digital Divide" explores what might be the most vexing but most important Internet-related issue – how to ensure that the civilized world won’t become permanently and dysfunctionally divided by the haves and have nots of access to the world’s knowledge and communications network. I believe you can roll all of the other issues we examine in this class and in our EOTO exercise into this one, for unless we overcome the barriers to access, our technological advances will create a chasm that will surely have severe negative social, economic and political repercussions.

_________________________

Techies Worry Spam Will Halt Sale Of Always-On Devices

Pondering what obstacles stand in the way of our getting to a world interconnected by a wireless Internet (shades of Marshall McLuhan's Global Village?), I may have been remiss to discount the negative effects of spam. This very brioef news story broaches the matter of device sales being hurt by spam. It's easy to take the matter further and see the spam problem dampening the spirit – and Internet habit or dependence – of even the most ardent emailers and Internet surfers.

I remember discovering in a chemistry class years ago that unexpected things can happen when you mix things together. Such it is in the amalgamation of a blog on localosm with an overview of wireless Internet. I'm moved to consider if there exists a relation of one to the other and, if so, what, where, why, how and with what effect. (J-schoolers will recognize these five questions.)

As I consider this possibility more deliberately I am moved to believe there are some commonalities; some cause and effect, some unintended consequences. I begin this thinking through the lens of the unique ability of wireless Internet communications to deliver content to quite specifically targeted geographic – and increasingly, demographic – audiences. This is one half of localism. The other half, local ownership and influence in programming and community service, poses both more challenges and more opportunities to increase localism.

Some television broadcasters who have begun transmitting digital signals are taking advantage of the technology's ability to deliver Internet and other mesage traffic wirelessly in their local market. This is just one way the conversion to digital can foster additional "public service" opportunities.

While this does nothing about the front end issue of ownership and control, it presents new opportunities which decision makers can leverage for the good of their communities, for the betterment of their business' bottom line, or both.

BBC NEWS | Technology | Making rural broadband a reality

Wireless Internet access is being championed as a workable alternative to the many challenges, financial as well as technical, of wiring vast areas of remote countryside. This article talks about one such push in rural England.

FCC Expands Frequencies for Wireless Net

Ask a technologist what one of the chief constraints to providing sufficient wireless bandwidth for rich content or simply to provide basic sevice when and where it's needed to keep up with peak usage -- like in crises similar to 9/11, and it's likely they will point to a serious shortage of spectrum -- radio freqencies. Well, the FCC just made a large amount of spectrum available for wireless communications...

Web-access tax ban sparks debate

Will the taxman do more harm to the Internet -- and in turn, wireless -- than hackers will? Could be. It just depends if or how deeply governments try to sink their hooks into e-commerce, sevices and infrastructure.

heraldsun.com: Sprint Adding TV Service for Cell Phones

More evidence of media convergence into wireless communications.

A touch of gray in Bluetooth's silver lining


Don't let the MacCentral masthead chase you off. This article about the maturing of Bluetooth wireless technology hits on more than a few issues central to new communication technologies coming to market and serving global communities. Well worth reading.

1. Standards will prove elusive, meaning my thing won't work where you live.
2. Policy makers will crush emerging technologies under protectionist measures.
3. Governments and authorities will smother the life out of it with taxes and tariffs.
4. Security will be too complicated and expensive to protect most users, bandits will prosper.
5. Information overload will create both network and cranial gridlock.

— A teaching opportunity

Over the past several years, I have become increasingly certain that the future of communication on this planet will be wireless. I became immersed in the subject in a graduate class as part of a Telecommunications Technology program at Southern Illinois University. A research for a paper I wrote in the fall of 2000 on this topic will provide a base of knowledge which I hope to draw upon.


It is expected that there will not be one common platform or system, but rather a patchwork of different systems based on different and often incompatible technologies. They are likely to operating on different freqencies, with different methods of transmission, including but not limited to WiFi, Bluetooth, cellular, LEO (low earth orbit) satellites, DBS (direct broadcast satellite, DTV (digital television), as well as various legacy AM, FM, SSB and other analog carriers too lengthy to list.

As is always the case with emerging technologies, as it and the marketplace and the technology matures, many of the technologies available of anticipated today will not survive. Those that remain will likely do so because of their technological dexterity. It is the years during which new wireless technologies come to market and are deployed that I will be thinking about as I develop and enrich this overview.

Users will want — and need — a single, probably handheld, device that is able to communicate over the various technologies active in their vicinity that are carrying wanted or needed message traffic, whether voice, data or video. But as challenged as users, manufacturers and technologists will be in sorting through the options for what works best and at the best price, the real burden will fall on the decision makers who will have to decide which technologies to approve or deploy, and also on the policy makers who will make the rules governing how, when, where and at what cost. It is these two groups who will influence and ultimately determine whether wireless communications can develop into the ubiquitous and universally usable tool it has the capacity to become. And while each group may be making decisions affecting their own universe, the interoperability of systems using differing technologies will have global implications both politically, socially and economically.


The information age is already taking root around the globe and seeding the expansion of wireless communications to areas previously too remote, too expensive or too unstable for wired infrastructure. It is coming to fruition through new systems and new technologies. The pace and complexity and long-term implications puts governments, institutions, businesses and individuals in the difficult but critical position of having to make decisions and effect policies that will make or break their ability to capitalize on the potential of instant, seamless communication.

The advent of wireless Internet creates as many challenges as it does benefits. This exercise will attempt to introduce and provide information about some of them, including:
- Standards
- Integration
- Convergence
- Syetem Ownership
- Access
- Security
- Privacy
- Censorship
- Content Ownership
- Tariffs
- Taxes

These readings off the Web will serve as our starting point:

How Wireless Internet Works, http://www.howstuffworks.com/wireless-internet.htm

Has WiFi’s day finally arrived?, http://www.msnbc.com/news/970749.asp

Wireless security a daunting challenge, http://www.globetechnology.com/servlet/ArticleNews/TPStory/LAC/20031106/TWWIFWireless Interner Forum, 06/TPTechInvestor/

Wireless Data and Terrorism, http://www.wirelessinternet.com/Intro_Wireless_Data_and_Terrorism.htm

Wireless Internet Institute, http://www.w2i.org/

Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association, http://www.wow-com.com/
Wireless Internet Forum, http://www.bwif.org/

Wireless Internet Magazine, http://www.wirelessinternetmag.com/
Broadband Wireless Internet Access Weblog, http://www.strohpub.com/weblog.htm