Nebulous Flowchart

     This is my low-tech Net map.

     I layered ~15 sheets of trace paper and kept a record for a couple of hours of the way I followed links. One page to the next = flip a sheet, use red link spot to orient new window box; back button = flip down a sheet and branch out from same site again; close a tab = end that series and start a new box. Pretty direct and kind of fun. 

     Yeah, I'd say it's equivalent to mapping the paths that various twigs and leaves take as they float by me, down the stream in my backyard; it's really just a record of movement, from memory, and neat looking but not very helpful if I want to retrace my steps--to make that kind of map I would have to differentiate between the links I follow.  It would also be useful to account for how often I access sites, etc. If it becomes more relevant to the topic at hand maybe I'll do an Internet map up proper.

Just a Tidbit

I present: a prediction by Ivan Seidenberg, Verizon’s CEO, more for humor than anything. This is a statement made in regards to net neutrality at the CES (Consumer Electronics Show) five years ago, in 2006:

“‘Two years from now, no one will remember this because we’ll get this solved and move on,” he said. “The issue really comes down to the law is the law. We could take the position, because we’re using new technology, that we don’t need a franchise. My view of that is that it’s highly risky. We could end up getting down a path and finding ourselves with a problem. So we chose to deal with it face up and we decided to do it two ways: No. 1 is go in and comply, and then complain like crazy.’

However, he added that the debate may be moot in a few years.

‘Our view is that as people will come to their senses, we still will be regulated, we will still pay franchise fees we will still have to get permits, but we don’t need the extra added complication of municipalities trying to turn this into a big delay tactic,” Seidenberg said. “They’ll work hard at it, they’ll try and they’ll lose because the public won’t stand for this. To me, in two years or less than that, this is something that’s come and gone.’”¹

What was that bit about some trouble with long-term thinking? To be fair, I suppose they have been complaining like crazy.

¹Mike Farrell, “Seidenberg: It’s About Cost, Not Blocking”  Multichannel News, 2/9/2006 

< http://www.multichannel.com/article/122093-Seidenberg_It_s_About_Cost_Not_Blocking.php >

Common Vs. Contract Carriers, Does it Matter?

"Why do we have regulation of telecommunications?" writes Eli Noam, a finance and economics expert, a Columbia professor, smack in the middle of addressing the future of those very regulatory policies. Ok, I thought, here we go. Give me a nice concise summation of why we need them: "To some it is merely an exercise in capture and rent-seeking by powerful interest groups. To others, it is based on underlying public policy goals, including restriction of market power, free flow of information across the economy and society, and technological innovation." Oh, rent-seeking. I've already given my thoughts on the anti-regulation libertarians.  "There is truth in both views, and they are not mutually exclusive."¹ I am surprised. I find at this moment that I have been absorbing the Tim Wu school of thought, wherein nation-state government is an imperfect but necessary backbone upon which the Net is built. I realize that perhaps I have become overly dismissive of standpoints which decry government regulation as unfair/uncalled for. I decide to listen:

Slice of History, Maps

     I found a two part article, from PennState's Academic Computing Newsletter back in '98, which is a sprint through telecommunications history from the telegraph to the Internet. The concept of laying a single giant cable across the Atlantic is still somewhat beyond me. 

  A Slice of History,Part I  and  A Slice of Hisory, Part II

 

    At first, it was simple. There was point A, this side of the atlantic, and point B, over the water. There were no offshoots and there was a tight limit on how many communications could be carried across it. It is interesting to look through the kind of telecommunications mapping that follows. The middle two maps are of the National Science Foundation Network's (NSFNet) major routers, supercomputing centers, and network backbones of the internet in the US in 1987. The last two images are screen shots from "chat circles," a project out of MIT's Sociable Media Group which is a chat room that visualizes the dynamics of a conversation: who is talking most frequently with whom, who is carrying or dominating the conversation, or idling in the background.  With our ability to transmit and track more data, we have zoomed in on a smaller range of communication: the center maps are still grounded somewhat in hardware and geography, but the last delve into the very substance of a single conversation, now devoid of even abstracted geography.

 The Internet Mapping Project < http://www.kk.org/internet-mapping/ > is compiling a collection of individual's hand drawn, "own experience of the Internet" maps.


In fact, to follow: my own Internet map.






Images:
< http://www.computerhistory.org/internet_history/internet_history_80s.html >
< http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transatlantic_telegraph_cable >
< http://alumni.media.mit.edu/~fviegas/projects/chatcircles/ >

To Be Heard in a Democracy

Who has the ultimate authority here? I asked. Who gave you the authority? Verizon asks the FCC. And the bloggers cry, “no one has the authority to take away my free and open Internet that will facilitate my right to free speech!”

________________

My housemate Siri has been a part of counter-recruitment and demilitarization organizations in the Bay area for decades. She is familiar with the challenges of trying to change the status quo, particularly at the level of the US government. We were discussing the revolution in Egypt a few days ago and Siri said something that immediately resonated with me, in regards to the indignant attitude I have encountered and puzzled over repeatedly in blogs.

She said, “People talk about democracy as though it were a right handed down to them. As though every morning democracy will be served on your breakfast platter, and you can just put your feet up and enjoy it.”

As though it’s enough to be born in America. As though democracy doesn’t depend on our voices to function on our behalf. We might call it a God-given right, but no natural law keeps it; only human law keeps it. We will keep it so long as we continue to ensure that its protection is updated to fit the technology and ideology of the times.

________________

    To those who say: “let the markets decide,” or, “just keep the government out of it,” I say, I wonder who then is going to act on your behalf?

No ISP is designated as a common carrier in the US, and so are not yet bound to non-discriminatory service.  On the “self-regulating” side, Tim Wu states quite politely back in 2003:

“Basic economic theory suggests that operators have along-term interest coincident with the public: both should want a neutral platform that supports the emergence of the very best applications. However, the evidence suggests the operators may have paid less attention to their long-term interests than might be ideal... operators indeed had implemented significant contractual and architectural limits on certain classes of applications.”1  

To follow: common carrier and contract carrier designations, and a bit of the history of prickly relations between telecom cos and the government in regards to innovation







1 Tim Wu, “Network Neutrality, Broadband Discrimination,” Journal of Telecommunications and High Technology Law, Vol. 2, p. 141, 2003 < http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=388863 >

A More Artistic POV

I'd like to turn an eye to the present for a moment to consider a different sort of angle--artists! 

Cyber-Libertarianism, via "Who Controls the Internet?"

Is the FCC overregulating the Internet? Check out this introduction to an article by Larry Downes on Slate:

         “Our modern information frontier... ‘the Internet’ has likewise resisted efforts from governments to impose their provincial laws, local regulations, and moral disapproval disguised as legislaion... Digital life has its own norms and values, enforced by efficient and effective engineering... Internet communities tend to invent their own ‘systems of administration.’" 1

In regards to bandwidth tiering, for example, does a self-governing Internet mean one that is left to the businesses that own the hardware and software to shape, according to their will? Self-governing by users or providers--content providers or service providers? Is the FCC raising legitimate concerns on behalf of users, or overregulating? There are multiple “Internet communities” to consider.  Looking at the question I posted last time: Who has the authority to enact changes in this structure, or prevent them?

Larry Downes’ angle is not original. This is what I learned about the EFF in Who Controls The Internet?:

questions to go on

I am going to post a second approach of Who Controls the Internet? with the help of a debate between one of its authors, Tim Wu, and Christopher Yoo (also a professor of law) over Net Neutrality specifically.
[ The PDF of the 2003 debate is available here, and here it is posted on Entrepreneur 4 years later if you don't want a download ]


Until then, I thought I would help myself get another step beyond the surface meaning of a "neutral" internet by laying out a few questions:

How much of the structure and functionality of the Internet would be affected by proposed network changes? 

What kind of Internet structuring is good for which people?

Who has the authority to enact changes to its structure, or prevent them?

And somewhat incongruously but at least as important, how is this panning out internationally?