John Lawrence <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Perry, thanks for expressing the crucial message underlying this thread...
> i.e. how can we be smart and experienced enough to avoid the pitfalls of
> past `revolutionary' innovations...I think why I have so much faith in the
> Internet is its fundamental democratic promise.... admittedly not anywhere
> near realized yet since so few are using it... but I couldn't drive my own
> little train along the railroads, nor can I shout, cry or laugh to my
> friends/colleagues or anyone else on TV except under circumstances that
> are entirely controlled by the moguls..but the Internet (potentially) allows
> individual expression a creative freedom, reciprocity, reach and scope that
> seems unparalleled in human history...my idealistic reading of these
> tealeaves leads me (personally) towards fostering/supporting wherever
> possible the extension of that (new?) human capacity.... and empirical study
> of its dissemination and impacts is certainly a factor...
There's a lot to these issues. Here's my "take" for what it's worth:
THE major issue involved in the evolution of the Internet over the next
few decades is as ancient as civilisation itself - centralisation vs
decentralisation, or economic and political monopoly vs the alternatives
The communications theorist of the 1950s -Harold Innes ("Empire and
Communication")- who was McLuhan's mentor, said a lot that was relevant.
Innes attributed the destruction of the knowledge monopoly of the church
to the invention of movable type - all of a sudden lots of people could
reproduce knowledge -not just institutions with people who could use a
quill- and they could do it faster.
Innes also draws significant attention to the inherent conflict between
decentralising and centralising tendencies in comms technologies. Clearly,
some technologies are inherently centralised (e.g. despite the 1950s
popular mechanics mags - you were NEVER going to have a nuclear reactor for
a home furnace). Some are highly decentralised- e.g. the original internet
based on UUCP protocol and dial up, store and forward propagation. Indeed
the original ARPANET was actually designed to be decentralised to
withstand a nuclear attack.
I guess it's just a flavour of technological determinism to say that lots
of technologies have the capacity to be either centralised or
decentralised - depending on the contexts and influences that shape them.
In the case of the current internet/web, that is certainly true. In one
corner we have the Larry Ellison (Oracle) CENTRALISED approach to using
the web as the medium and the message - the web stores your data and
serves your applications as you need them.
In the other corner we have Uncle Bill Gates' original DECENTRALISED
"Shrink Wrapped Individualism" in the form of MS operating systems and
applications. Both of these are heavyweight contenders, however it is
important to note that Bill's strategic position has significantly shifted
toward Ellison's model in recent times. A third contender is the flashy,
smart mouthed, but skinny pugilist- Linux/Open Source/Free Software- with
its array of towel bearers including civil liberties/civil society groups,
social advocates, international aid people etc.
The big question is how will this all pan out? To understand that, we have
to understand some motives and gains. And of course, I'm just guessing as
much as anyone else.
If we take the issues of consumer demand and technology push, I speculate
that a number of things will become true for the western industrialised
world:
1. The Death of "The Home Mechanic".
Those with the incomes to afford communications services will become
increasingly harried, stressed and pushed in their daily life. The
prospect of maintaining increasingly sophisticated hardware and software
in home computational/Comms devices will eventually become too tedious,
difficult and specialised. Like a new car, you will eventually become too
busy and too unskilled to maintain it to even the most basic level needed.
Besides, systems of the future will be designed NOT to be touched by you.
A model T Ford can be maintained by you. A chip controlled fuel injected
car of now can't. As for IT devices of the future- you won't have the
hardware or proprietary software tools and you'd void the warranty anyway.
OK, so you work fulltime as a "knowledge worker" and "could" do it. So
what? If you have neither the time, or would prefer to be doing other
things with your leisure - you won't. If you want to have fun tinkering,
then buy an old VW. Otherwise get a new computerised Toyota, get it
serviced and put the spanners away.
2. The Rise of "Home Delivered Pizza"
People like defaults. They like decisions being taken away from them -
especially if they are busy and the decisions are about issues they think
are unimportant and/or need intellectual investment. About 60% of a
complex user interface is never used by most users. They accept the
defaults, use what they need and forget about the rest.
Sooo...one day the telco/software giant/chip assembler grand-consortium
delivers a "do everything" box that you've leased. High end entertainment,
netphone, web, videoconferencing, hi-fi...whatever. Device integration is
forcing this already. The main condition is that you don't fiddle with it.
Your data will be stored on the net (e.g. I-Drive, Yahoo etc and you might
have a lot of it - like hundreds of family videoconferences) and your apps
are served over the net (e.g.www.CMeRun.com). Voice interaction works now.
The system is preconfigured just like you wanted.
Everything is maintained remotely. Patches and new releases happen
withoutyou even knowing. Gotta problem or request? Just send a voice mail.
If we can't fix it remotely, the courier will drop off a new box and
collect the old one. But the point is that you tick the boxes, we plug it
together and you pay the bill. This can happen when such a consortium is
formed and the bandwidth for the box they develop is widely available and
cheap.
3. VoyeurCorp.
Such products and services might even become free depending on how much
privacy you want. Give the fridge and microwave an IP address on your LAN
and somebody will pay to log what you keep in it and when you eat it. Why?
Maybe most people eat pizzas within 2 days of buying them so maybe they
need less preservatives. Maybe real storage/eating data can help product
design and market segmentation. "If you listen to this 10 sec ad, this
phone call is free. We really don't care about the contents of your email
(honest, we'll even PGP them for you) but if you would allow us strip the
to: field for mailing lists, we'll give you discount X." The availability
of sensors and a network will allow all sorts of real behaviours to be
logged in the home and that will always be of market value, so some of us
will opt to sell it (for better or worse). Indeed, in homes of the far
future, such data collection will be required anyway in order to optimise
energy usage and other household management parameters.
4. LayerNet or Are Some URLs More Equal than Others?
Once you've signed up for the box and the NETWORK that drives it, you may
have to make a conscious effort to escape its constraints. Some may be
real, physical constraints like network throttling to keep you at the end
of the network where you'll spend money. Would most users ever know that
their searches are being intelligently constrained to sites with better
NETWORK affiliation? (As an aside, legend has it that in some countries
where primary telcos sell infrastructure access to competitors -usually
under legal compulsion- such access often has poor interconnects, poor fix
times and slow forwarding of billing data). More importantly, since you
now have no control over the setup, config or any other details of this
box (pickup a screwdriver and a cruise missile is dispatched) then how can
you even know what it is doing and why?
Basically, when some "thing" has a lot of control over which packets go
where, at what rate and at what cost, they also have control over who
knows about who, or what and whether they can communicate easily or
cheaply. And controlling packets starts with consumers buying a box with
some strings attached- some as part of the consumer contract and maybe
some that aren't so explicit. But once they've bought your box, are locked
into your network and contracted to your services, you can effectively
shepherd and manipulate consumer behaviour, opinions and understanding.
Especially if you are very big and especially if the services are very
extensive and sophisticated.
In a sense, this "islandisation" of communications is already apparent. As
an Australian I know probably as much about US history, current affairs
and events as most US citizens. But I know for a fact that the reverse is
not true. Of course, broadcast media is one-way whereas the net
potentially offers equality of all information. In practice that may not
ultimately remain true depending on who controls these networks and their
routing, what real competition exists and whether they believe that
optimising communications amongst certain slabs of society or geography-
at the cost of others- is in the commercial interest of these consortia.
In other words, centralisation and monopolies erodes the power and
flexibility of the individual even in apparently democratic media like the
Internet.
Yes, it is possible for individuals to construct alternative networks a la
pirate radio of the last century, now gnutella and other initiatives, but
the herd will generally not change direction because of them. In addition,
setting up these alternatives requires some scarce commodities- extreme
motivation, high technical expertise and some resources. That's why such
"dissident" movements are few and far between.
This viewpoint applies as much to the minor pugilist Linux/Open
Source/Freeware as much as any other. Although it is a fact that the bulk
of web pages served today are being done by Apache Web servers under Unix,
this example does not generalise well. The stability of Unix and the power
of Apache make it a sensible and free choice for people who have the
technical expertise to install and maintain these systems. Unix/Linux will
need significant "dumbing down" and "colour coded" setup and admin before
it ever penetrates below guru level. Fine for corporate intranets but not
for the consumer.
So, my rather dim view of the future in the West is that the
centralisation of comms CONTROL will continue, even though there are small
abberations at the moment like gnutella and other peer-to-peer networks.
This centralisation could proceed thru the amalgamation of technology
segments- Telcos, owners of hugely familiar user interfaces like Windows
and its enormous application and support base, as well as other
corporations that have established expertise in videoconferencing gear,
voice recognition and multimedia hardware and software. It would take
collaboration of that order to build the box and network described above.
But such a corporation would be fearsome in its dominance.
So in a nutshell, market dominance-less decisions-less hassle-where do I
tick? This is increasingly true of markets and products that change
monthly for people who are flat out getting through a work day and aren't
really that interested in a lot of decisions that require technical
choices. How many people really did program their VCR anyway?
I believe that even Harold Innes made similar conclusions about
centralisation of technologies of his time and got depressed about it
toward the end.
What does this mean for the developing world? Well, although some of those
markets are enormous, they are filled with poor individual consumers and
they have poor infrastructure. So I don't think the above consumer
perspective is relevant - except that the centralisation or
"homogenisation" of choice in the developed world may create greater
relative isolation of it from the developing world. Just as world media
today portrays the developing world as a homogeneous hell hole,
information islands in the developed world may continue to focus on
themselves to the exclusion of others. I believe someone once described
the West as "a glass house in a rainforest- even though the surroundings
were beautiful, in the glass house all you could see were your own
reflections".
In addition, for the developing world I would expect simply more of the
same: Some Linux/Open source systems amongst those who can't afford a
proprietary OS and who have the skills to install it, plus lots of piracy.
But inevitably, increasing net participation should ensue as costs fall
over time. Hence, in absolute terms I would expect that net literacy,
access and usage will increase - how quickly and what strategies should be
used to accelerate it- that may be too heterogeneous to pick.
But these absolute gains are important. Just as absolute gains in levels
of immunisation are essential regardless of Western comparisons- so is the
ability to send email to anyone in the World is important to the
developing world regardless of how much further ahead the West may already
be.
It is these absolute gains that I think we can achieve without focusing on
relative gaps and lags- unless this is accelerating away. Both within and
across societies I thinkthat technology benefits will always be
maldistributed. But to use a different metaphor, if someone needs to eat,
they need to eat, even if there is a banquet down the road and the gate is
locked. The question of whether the Internet and comms technology
generally is universally beneficial (even if maldistributed) in the way
that food is, remains an open question.
I hope this has proved entertaining -if dogmatic- no doubt with the
immortal storage of the web I will be forced to eat these words in 5 years
time (or less!).
Perry Morrison
_____________________________
Dr. Perry Morrison
Director
Morrison Associates Pty Ltd
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ACN 075 442 714
ABN 81 075 442 714
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PO Box 1483 Humpty Doo, NT 0836
Ph: +61 08 89 884 617
Fax: +61 07 331 96192
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