This may be the wrong time for this idea (4.00 / 1)

but I think net neutrality should be enshrined in the Bill of Rights. Whether it would ever be possible to pass such a constitutional amendment is another matter, of course.  

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by: urizon @ Wed Dec 30, 2009 at 16:15:38 PM UTC

Net neutrality _is_ enshrined in the Bill of Rights (4.00 / 3)

Its called freedom of speech and the press, freedom of association, the right to privacy and the right to assemble. We need to make sure that we have a court that understands what democracy is, and democracy is NOTHING with these freedoms, but any court worthy of being called American would find this obvious.

Making sure this happens quickly, funding the EFF for example will help. I urge people to join eff.org, to give them a tiny stipend, even 10 dollars a year, if we could get 10,000 openleftists to do it, would be a big help.

Lets be clear. The internet is a room. You have free speech is a room.

--

The government has a defect: it's potentially democratic. Corporations have no defect: they're pure tyrannies. -Chomsky

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by: HousesofProgress @ Wed Dec 30, 2009 at 18:39:04 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Agree (4.00 / 1)

As shitty as this decade was, The Google almost counterbalances all that. The Internet, combined with a powerful way to search it, is one of the greatest achievements in human history. If there is any doubt, one only need look at the revolutionary change caused by the printing press and realize that the Internet is even more radical.

Conduct your own interview of Sarah Palin!

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by: fwiffo @ Wed Dec 30, 2009 at 16:28:15 PM UTC

isn't it kind of sad, though? (0.00 / 0)

that the best development of the decade is the relatively predictable elaboration of something that was more or less built out 20 years ago? and the best political moment is the not-crippling of same?

we have not so far completely stunted our growth nor yet quite shot ourselves directly in the head. yay us.

not everything worth doing is profitable. not everything profitable is worth doing.

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by: tatere @ Wed Dec 30, 2009 at 17:02:39 PM UTC

Engineering the Tower of Babel (4.00 / 3)

I'd agree with all of this, Chris, but two things concern me, and neither is trivial.

The first is energy consumption. It doesn't take much snooping to discover that the modern data centers which bring all this wonderfullness to us are now being built with their own generating facilities, some of which could power medium-sized cities. (The fact that not only Google and Akamai are building them, but the NSA as well, is also of concern, but not one that needs to be discussed in this context.) True, as the technology develops, its energy needs per byte stored and delivered shrink, but the demand for more of everything is also accelerating. Which curve will define the future? I don't think anyone knows, but I'd bet on the demand curve.

Secondly, we need to consider the history of knowledge. Well-made paper can last more than 300 years; digital data storage is inherently volatile. Also, the cost incentives are such that keeping what we did yesterday around will almost certainly be considered less important by almost everybody than coming up with new stuff. The cost of the New York Public, Harvard University, or British Museum libraries was relatively small compared to the cost of creating the books which went into them; the same is not true of keeping the last two years, say, of the content generated by the Internet.

It may be that a technological solution will be found for the problem of storing digital information in a relatively permanent and inexpensive form, but we ain't there yet. (How many years of data were stored on two-inch magnetic tape, or eight-inch floppy disks, which now can't be read by any existing machine? How many business records were composed in earlier versions of MS Word which the current version of Word itself can no longer read, except as ASCII characters?)

I know that a lot of smart people are working on green energy, and digital storage which is standard, permanent and cheap, but their success (or, God forbid, failure) is something which should concern us nevertheless -- after network neutrality if you like, but please don't let your enthusiasm for the new era blind you to the price we'll have to pay, whether or not it's worth it in the short run.

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by: William Timberman @ Wed Dec 30, 2009 at 17:34:08 PM UTC

?????? (0.00 / 0)

There is no comparison on scale for the objections you raise. Its like saying mammals have achieved consciousness and tool use, but they are going to need a hat, what with their tendency to walk around a lot.

_All_ energy needs to be replace by carbon neutral, and nonpolluting sources. We must go solar, we must go smarter, we must use wind, we must tap into geothermal energy.

Server farms use energy, and smart people use more blood in their brain cases, I would not slow down blood flow to the head because of it however.

The funny wonderful thing about digital data is its ability to be copied. Volatile data needs copying. a thousand copies of didgiotal date reduces the potential for data lose to near zero.

--

The government has a defect: it's potentially democratic. Corporations have no defect: they're pure tyrannies. -Chomsky

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by: HousesofProgress @ Wed Dec 30, 2009 at 18:48:32 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

That funny wonderful thing (4.00 / 1)

Yes, a thousand copies, or a billion, helps prevent loss -- if someone is willing to pay for the redundancy, or take care that the copies are accurate. In practice -- at least so far -- relatively few are. Then, too, coherence is a problem. Search algorithms are orders of magnitude better than they were, and will get better, but they're still not perfect ways of structuring data for appropriate use.

It may be that my 30+ years as a librarian have blinded me to the wonders of the modern, and that my concerns are similar to those of a wheelwright who wondered how we'd ever manage to make all the iron rims that those new-fangled horseless carriages would require, but in all honesty, I don't think so. The virtues of old-fashioned libraries are easily overstated, but they're real nevertheless, and I'd like to preserve some of them in the present avalanche of data, however silly the desire might seem to you.

Smart people use more blood in their brain cases? You're sure about that? Or are your metaphors as suspect as my own? :-)

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by: William Timberman @ Wed Dec 30, 2009 at 19:13:16 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

The problem now is not loss of data, but the unsanctioned distributions of copies. (0.00 / 0)

Yes, a thousand copies, or a billion, helps prevent loss -- if someone is willing to pay for the redundancy, or take care that the copies are accurate. In practice -- at least so far -- relatively few are. Then, too, coherence is a problem. Search algorithms are orders of magnitude better than they were, and will get better, but they're still not perfect ways of structuring data for appropriate use.

This is just not true, and not a problem. Modern file systems have error checking built in. A file cannot be copied without error checking. I do not know what you refer to when you say the search algorithms are not perfect. They are more perfect than index cards. But I am sure if you like, index cards can be printed.


--

The government has a defect: it's potentially democratic. Corporations have no defect: they're pure tyrannies. -Chomsky

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by: HousesofProgress @ Wed Dec 30, 2009 at 23:22:01 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

I take it you're in the business, (4.00 / 1)

meaning in the IT business. Modern file systems have error checking built in. True enough, but that's not the kind of accuracy I'm talking about.

It's also true that my experience isn't in IT -- not directly, anyway -- but in libraries. In fact, I was in charge of converting an academic library card catalog with over ten million cards in it into a computer database, then later, was part of a team which transferred it from one computer system to another as systems evolved from time-share mainframes to modern client-server systems accessible over the Internet. Needless to say, I come at this from a different angle.

Never mind for a moment the possible insecurity of energy-intensive data processing and storage systems; never mind the differences between metadata which depends on a structured thesaurus and algorithm-based data analysis -- these are far too complex  for a comments section on another subject altogether. Let me just say that the sources of entropy in large data systems aren't always where you expect to find them, and that as the volume of data increases, our management of it becomes more remote, and more dependent on systems which are themselves beyond the direct comprehension of all but a few people.

This is only a subset of the management problems which affect all of the large systems which we rely upon, of course, but fault tolerance and recovery in all of them is much more complex than you're making it out to be.

I don't expect you to trust me on that, but I don't think it's fair to assume that I'm an idiot either, and least not for purely rhetorical purposes.

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by: William Timberman @ Thu Dec 31, 2009 at 00:02:50 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

And (4.00 / 2)

The internet is built on a massively complex system, including the infrastructure of the networks itself, but also the energy infrastructure to keep it running, the resources needed to build computers, including rare metals and stuff, etc. Complex systems, though, have a tendency to be unstable, and to undergo unforeseen shocks and disruptions. I think the odds of some sort of disruption wiping out the internets of the world altogether is pretty low, but like nuclear war, the consequences would be devastating, since just about everything now depends on digitized information.  

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by: Chachy @ Wed Dec 30, 2009 at 19:47:48 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

I like the Iceland idea (4.00 / 1)

Iceland is trying to reinvent itself as a hub for cloud computing, since it has more geothermal energy than it can use and nothing resembling a functioning economy any more.

Whilst there are obviously issues with connectivity and the North Atlantic, that would deal with energy issues rather nicely.

As to legacy issues, on the other hand, I know of no obvious solution.

Forgotten Countries - a foreign policy-focused blog

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by: Englishlefty @ Thu Dec 31, 2009 at 15:04:37 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Things now largely obsolete due to the Internet (0.00 / 0)

Huff Post ran a photo essay a few days ago on things that became obsolete in this decade. These are striking -- newspaper classified ads, encyclopedias, compact discs, yellow pages, written/mailed letters -- longstanding institutions of our cultural life made largely irrelevant by the Internet.

Self-refuting Christine O'Donnell is proof monkeys are still evolving into humans

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by: Steve in Sacto @ Wed Dec 30, 2009 at 19:07:25 PM UTC

technoparanoia (0.00 / 0)

In 1979, Jean Francois Lyotard, in The Postmodern Condition, was very prescient in foreseeing the inevitable digitalization of everything. Newspapers, books, letters, music - it certainly seems to be coming to pass. You have to wonder if "everything" will include our minds before the end of the century.

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by: Chachy @ Wed Dec 30, 2009 at 19:53:03 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Certainly includes artificial limbs! (0.00 / 0)

Sunday's NYT published a review of Michael Belfiore's October, 2009 book, Department of Mad Scientists: How DARPA is Remaking Our World, From the Internet to Artificial Limbs. Examples in cars range from cruise control, one of the earliest circuitry applications, to the current self-parking autos.

Artificial limbs now respond to commands from the brain. One person so fitted mused that he ought to just plug his arm into the USB port and forego the cable: Belfiore recalls a recent conversation with an Iraq war amputee about whether his new hand could manipulate a mouse. "Why do I need a mouse?" he asked. "Why can't I plug my arm right into a USB port?"

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by: Books Alive @ Thu Dec 31, 2009 at 02:21:09 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

is net neutrality is a done deal? (0.00 / 0)

I see "moved to start a rule-making process on Net Neutrality"

not

'finished the rule-making process on Net Neutrality'

not even

'started the rule-making process on Net Neutrality'

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by: The Big Hurt @ Thu Dec 31, 2009 at 01:50:20 AM UTC