Technology Futures

Here is an article that alleges that Boulder, Colorado's SmartGridCity project is in deep trouble. The article has a long laundry list of problems, but what jumped out at me is the list of so-called "partners." If you look at the SmartGridCity Partners page, you can see the root problem of this project is too many cooks. Just the administrative overhead of supporting this list of high priced consulting firms would sink any project. And the descriptions that accompany each partner reads like one of those buzz-phrase generators you find online. Here are a sampling of the buzz phrases:

• ...intelligent distribution assets
• ...fully integrated...solution
• ...intelligent network
• ...drive innovation
• ...fully integrated
• ...best of breed
• ...connecting customers to...investment decisions

So you have at least seven companies with seven proprietary and very likely incompatible technology "solutions" that are going to use taxpayer dollars to try to do a mash up of their stuff that will somehow save money. These kinds of efforts never work, in part because if you start with seven complex technologies, it is impossible to make them less complex by combining them. Fifty years of software development studies have shown this over and over again. It's not that different than Fred Brooks' mythical man month treatise, in which he showed that adding more workers to a software project already late just makes it later--in large part because adding more workers makes the development process more complex. The same principle is likely at work here. Adding more complex power management software to an already complex design makes it even more complex and, as study after study has shown, more error prone.

Here at Design Nine, we call ourselves "broadband architects" or "information architects." We work the way the traditional architect works--we do a clean, coherent high level design for our clients first, develop the financing and funding strategies needed to show the client how it will pay for itself, and then and only then do we go out to vendors.

My guess is that Smart Grid City ended up with seven or more "design" firms all trying to gain an advantage for their own stuff, and Boulder ended up with a mess. It's as if you wanted a house built, and instead of having an architect produce the design and supervise the construction, you told the plumber, the carpenters, the electrician, and the drywall guys to get together and come up with something. It's called "design by committee," and it is never pretty.

A common theme, when discussing the financing of broadband, is to claim that the open access business model "has not been proven." True open access has only been around in the U.S. for about three years, and the opponents of open access are creating a double standard. Apparently, to "prove" open access works, communities that take that route have to be in the black within a year or two, and really, it would be better, apparently, if they were in the black on day one.

What's the double standard? The double standard is that private sector telecom companies take years to get into the black, and routinely run up billions in debt that won't be paid back for a long period of time. That's apparently okay--communities will be held to a higher standard, though.

There is a second, very sly argument running alongside the "prove it works" argument. It is this: "Open access is bad because it has not been proven." Okay...let's accept that premise for a moment and now let us ask the question that no one asks..."What business model should be used instead?" The business model that open access opponents want to use is the tired old monopoly triple play, which has, over the past fifteen years, failed utterly to get "big" broadband to U.S. residents and businesses.

So the open access opponents want everyone to use a "proven" approach: triple play, which has been proven not to work. Sly, no?

Open access projects like Utopia, nDanville, The Wired Road, and Palm Coast FiberNET are thriving--in those communities, increased competition has brought lower prices for telecom services, and the efforts are generating enough funds that all those communities continue to expand their networks to more customers.

The InterTubes are a a-flutter with articles about Wal-Mart's plans to use RFID smart tags on clothing. The little tags are readable via wireless handheld devices, and the new system will allow Wal-Mart to manage inventory better. Every article I have read, including this reasonably well-balanced one from USA Today, talks about "privacy concerns." But USA Today, near the end of the article, provides the necessary information to understand just how big the privacy threat is: not very big. The RFID tags will be removable, and will probably just be embedded in or attached to existing price/product tags. So when you take the item home, you cut off the product tags as you usually would, and Wal-Mart can no longer 'track' your item. And they could only track it if you went back in the store, and so on.

I have a lot of issues with privacy, especially with "free" Internet services that track what I do online. I'm planning a camping trip and have been using several search engines to find some camping items. And lo--almost every Web page I look at now seems to have ads from camping supply stores, meaning that the search engines have a dossier that is actively updated with the results of my searches. That I don't like at all, and no, I don't find it "convenient" that the search engines helpfully pepper me with targeted ads.

But the Wal-Mart tags? That I'm not at all worried about.

India has announced a $35 computer for students. The Linux-based machine is intended to give Indian students at all levels, starting in grade school, access to an affordable computer. I proposed a $100 computer twelve years ago--at that time, no one took it seriously, but I'm glad India thinks it's a good idea.