Exploring the impact of broadband and technology on our lives, our businesses, and our communities.
Is space important?
I keep hearing a lot of scepticism over my reporting on the emerging Space Economy. This article on the accomplishment of SpaceShipOne and future plans helps illuminate the growing potential.
- Virgin Galactic, a division of Virgin Airlines, has already contracted with Scaled Composites, the company that built SpaceShipOne, to build five more five-seat versions for commercial use.
- Initial flights will continue from Mojave, California, a rural community that used to be in the middle of rural nowhere, but is now the first commercial spaceport in the world. However, Virgin Galactic has already indicated spaceports will be added as needed in other parts of the world.
- An annual X Prize competition has already been announced that will create incentives for additional companies to get into the spaceship business. New Mexico, which used to be in the middle of rural nowhere, has had its eye on space for years, and X Prize competitions will be held at the New Mexico spaceport--that translates directly into increased cash flow into the state.
- Oklahoma has formed a Space Industry Development Authority and is building a spaceport.
If you are inclined to think there are more pressing problems on earth than getting tourists into space, you are both right and wrong. This is not some pie in the sky program for rich tourists--this is the beginning of the greatest economic boom in human history.
Remember the personal computer and the Internet? Those two little innovations touched off the second biggest economic boom in human history, but what enabled those two developments was the integrated circuit.
Guess where the IC (integrated circuit) came from? The sixties era space program. Anyone involved in economic development who thinks going to the moon was a waste of money needs to go back to the history books--not to study science, but economics. The moon was a bargain, because the money spent by the government to get reliable IC circuitry for the Apollo spacecraft was paid back many times over by the resulting IT boom that started in the late seventies and ended around 2001.
No one predicted that back in 1970, and there's the rub--the future is hard to see. Economic developers who are not willing to take modest, calculated risks are actually putting their communities are greater risk--doing nothing is making a choice. It may look like risk avoidance, but it is not--doing nothing or doing the same old thing is also risky.
Here is the money quote from the article:
"The Ansari X Prize is the beginning, it's not the end," Diamandis said. "Over the course of the last two weeks we have had companies approaching us, we have had wealthy individuals approaching us, about investing in this marketplace. The same thing happened when Lindbergh flew, the same thing happened when Netscape went public, the same thing's going to happen here."
Technology News:
Earthlink adds VoIP services
Earthlink faces the same problem AOL is already struggling with--a shrinking market for dial access to the Internet. Earthlink has been staying in the black by slashing customer support and by providing barebones access, as opposed to AOL's tedious, ad-laden interface.
Earthlink has a lot of customers like me, who need occasional dial access from the road, and don't want the dreck AOL ladles out along with it. But I find I need to dial through Earthlink less and less as hotspots, especially in hotels, become more common. As I've written previously, I and many other travelers now pick hotels based on the availability of broadband, not on the kind of shampoo you find in the bathroom.
AOL has tried to keep its customers by extortion--for example, you can't forward your AOL email to another account, which makes it much more difficult to quit AOL if you have used your AOL email address for a long time. AOL is basically saying to customers, "Leave us and your life will be miserable while all your email goes missing for a while." Most other email account providers let you forward your mail.
But back to Earthlink, which is now providing limited VoIP services if you have an Earthlink broadband account. It's a clever move, because the appeal of free calling (at least to some of your friends and family) will help sell the access part.
We're going to see more bundling of services--the phone companies are trying to win back some broadband customers by bundling local, long distance, and broadband, and the appeal, aside from saving a little money, is that you potentially go to one bill from three. In theory, you should also be able to get better service and customer support (in theory).
Technology News:
Does WiFi work?
In the Telecomm Cities mailing list, Barry Drogin wrote:
The ugly thing here is that in the short term, these [WiFi] deployments will work,
just like shared-media Ethernet networks worked well in the 1980's. But at
some point, user density gets so high that the protocols break down. They
spend more time recovering from errors than they do transmitting good data.
For Ethernet, switches saved the day. But for wireless, that won't work.
I call cheap WiFi the "pizza lady" model. In the grocery store, a little old lady hands out little pieces of pizza, saying, "Try this, it's good!"
WiFi is way of getting dial up users to move at low cost to broadband. What I tell communities is that WiFi will sell fiber. As more and more users crowd on to WiFi, the bandwidth degrades, but by then, people are hooked on broadband, and can't live without the pizza, er, bandwidth.
So they are more willing to support community fiber projects.
WiFi is not THE solution. It is A solution. Fiber is also a solution. There is no one transport mechanism that will satisfy everything we want to do.
Technology News:
Are you a digital immigrant?
CNet has a must read article on the digital divide. The divide the online news site discusses is the one between "digital natives" and "digital immigrants."
Digital natives are those 25 and younger, who have grown up immersed in the Internet, computers, and technology. Digital immigrants are the older group, especially 40 and above, who have had to "cross over" to the new digital world from the old, paper-based world.
As organizations retire more of the immigrants and are replacing them with more natives, the organizations are being changed. The old central command and central authority structures are being undermined and replaced by distributed command and control. Technology and the Internet are the catalysts for often informal lines of communication and collaboration that cut across top-down org charts and limit the ability of managers to "control" the work.
The challenge for communities is to help leaders recognize that this shift is taking place--that the old, authoritarian ways of making decisions in the community don't work anymore--the Internet lets citizens and businesspeople route around the old, top down procedures. If your community is worried that too many young people are leaving, could it be in part because they view community-decisionmaking as out of step with their needs and interests? Conversely, what is the community losing in jobs and opportunities because of outmoded control structures that are not able to lead the community successfully in the fast-paced, highly interlinked Knowledge Economy?
Technology News:
Kitty Hawk and Mojave, California: SpaceShipOne wins the X Prize
Bert Rutan's SpaceShipOne won the $10 million X Prize by sending a ship into suborbital space twice in two weeks. The second of two successful flights took place today, and Mojave, California will likely become a historical milestone alongside Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.
Technology News:
Outsourcing and economic development
An op-ed piece in the NY Times (registration required) provides another data point to show that outsourcing jobs to other countries is not the national crisis the mainstream media has tried to make it.
The author provides data that shows the U.S., as other studies have suggested, is actually showing net gains from outsourcing. That is, outsourcing low pay, low skills jobs creates other business opportunities that more than offset the direct job loss.
As the author notes, this data is not a great comfort to a region that has lost those jobs. Factory floor workers who have had their jobs outsourced need training and help to be able to compete for the higher wage, higher skill jobs that are being created.
For rural communities, it's another indicator that business as usual just won't work. The Old Economy jobs being lost cannot be replaced by more aggressive industrial recruitment, better brochures, or a new logo--all things I've seen promoted as "proof" of a revitalized local economic development program.
What does work? Here are some things that are important in the Knowledge Economy:
- Recognition and acceptance that most new jobs are likely to be created by businesses already in your community. Action step: Diversify your economic development program into three parts: continue industrial recruitment (30% of resources), but add education, training, and support of existing local businesses (40% of resources), and create an entrepreneurship development program to create new, local businesses (30% of resources).
- Tightly couple technology council, chamber of commerce, and economic development efforts. In some communities, all three entities are working in stovepipe efforts with little or no cooperation and are often competing with each other for the same community support and resources. Local leaders should withold funds if these groups do not work together on substantive projects.
- Make your community Web portal, your economic development Web portal, and your local government portals as good as they can be. Companies and entrepreneurs looking for a place to relocate use the Web heavily to make early relocation decisions. Without a strong, well-funded, and well-staffed Web effort, you are crippling your recruitment program.
- Make sure you have a regional technology master plan. This is a vital tool for recruiting companies and entrepreneurs into the area. Even if you don't have affordable broadband in some places in your region, having a plan to get it there puts you well ahead of communities that are not doing the planning. Master planning also can save tax dollars and lower the cost of doing business in your region--another recruitment tool.
Technology News:
AT&T slashes residential VoIP prices
In an indication that the company intends to provide still competition to the regional telephone companies, AT&T has cut their CallVantage VoIP service price by 25%, from $40/month to $30/month.
CallVantage, which works only if you have broadband service, provides local and long distance service nationwide for a flat $30 a month--the lowest call plan we've ever seen, including those offered by some of the cellphone providers.
When you add up how much money the residents and businesses of a community are stuffing in envelopes every month for phone service, it turns out it is a lot of money. Broadband, despite the cost, can produce savings in other areas, like phone service. Anything that helps keep a community more of its money (i.e. broadband) is a very good thing.
Technology News:
RadioShark brings timeshifting to your desktop
Griffin's RadioShark is another piece of the convergence puzzle falling into place.
The RadioShark is an AM/FM tuner that plugs into your computer via a USB port. You can listen to broadcast radio in real time through your computer speakers, but of course, an old-fashioned analog radio would do that as well.
The RadioShark comes with software that allows you to record broadcasts and listen to them later. So if you can't listen to Al Franken or Rush Limbaugh at work, your computer can record those and play them back later.
For iPod fans (both Mac and Windows iPod owners), the software is fully integrated with iTunes, so you can transfer the recorded broadcasts to your iPod effortlessly and take them with you.
What I'd like to see is an integrated AM/FM/TV tuner that does all this. You can buy the TV tuner and record television programs on your hard drive, and the RadioShark does the same for radio. But I want fewer devices that do more. It's only a matter of time before someone combines these functions into one simple box.
Technology News:
Who do you know?
Following up on the new Book of the Month (The Hidden Power of Social Networks), here are some of the conclusions from the book, and they may surprise you.
- It costs an organization or business money to foster collaboration and to support it over the long term. Too many organizations pay lip service to the notion of collaboration but don't do what it takes to support it or make the changes needed to encourage it.
- Technology and personal expertise does not distinguish high performers. In other words, having a lot of technology stuff and being good at using it does not, in and of itself, make a person more effective. The authors caution that workers do need the appropriate technology to do their jobs, but a lot of toys do not make someone smarter or better.
- One of the best predictors of high performance workers is how diversified their personal network is--the more diversified it is, the more likely they are ranked above average. In other words, who you know is what is important, more so that what you know, because the authors indicate that "relationships are critical for obtaining information, solving problems, and learning how to do your work."
I've been collaborating with Rick Smyre of Communities of the Future on capacity-building needs for organizations and communities, and one of the key concepts we have identified is "learning webs."
A learning web is a small group of people who have a strong trust relationship and who are committed to helping each other learn about and stay current with new ideas, concepts, and information that may be important to individuals in the group.
Do you have a learning web? What about your personal relationship network? Do you have a small group of people with whom you are comfortable asking for help? What about your community? One of the things you can do to help your community get connected with the Knowledge Economy is to help form learning webs centered around economic development, civic affairs, and local governance.
Technology does have a role to play in learning webs. A new generation of inexpensive, powerful Web portal software makes it easy to create a community Web site portal that can be used easily to set up and help support local learning webs.
Technology News:
How work gets done: Social networks in practice
The Hidden Power of Social Networks (by Rob Cross and Andrew Parker) is the Book of the Month.
In the Manufacturing Economy (1850 to 1950), where you were located mattered because stuff was heavy. Being near an airport, a highway, or a river was a key part of an economic development strategy. In the Information Economy (1950 to 2000), what you had mattered. What kind of technology you had--computers, networking equipment--often created a competitive edge, especially in the last ten years of that era.
In the Knowledge Economy, many goods and services are weightless--software, music, and videos can be delivered over the Internet, among many other services and products. Location is less important, and if you don't already the computers and networking stuff, your business is dead or nearly so. So what counts in the Knowledge Economy?
In the Knowledge Economy, we are awash in an ocean of information. We can't possibly absorb all of it. It flows into our computers in an ever-increasing torrent. It is now impossible to master any field of study; there is simply too much to know. Collaboration is fast becoming not just a nice thing to do, but a business and organizational necessity. To survive and prosper, you have to have a trusted network of associates, peers, and colleagues to whom you can direct questions and get answers.
In the Knowledge Economy, who you know is what matters, not where you are or what kind of technology you have.
Having said that, developing and maintaining a network of reliable colleagues is hard work--but with a big payoff. This book delves into why these networks are effective, how to set them up, and how to maintain them. It is thoughtful and well-written, and mildly academic in style, but the chapters are short and to the point. Reading this book won't put you to sleep. I think it is well worth a read.
For past Books of the Month, visit this page.
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