Technology Futures

Doc Searls, one of the tech community's best commentators on technology and its impact on us, has done an outstanding job of explaining network neutrality--what it is, why it has made the Internet successful, and why it needs to be preserved.

By way of Slashdot, this article reports that CIOs at UK companies are up in arms about Google Desktop.

When someone uses the "search across computers" feature of Google Desktop, it copies files from the local computer to Google's servers--usually a breach of security for most companies, who don't want confidential files copied to servers outside the company. Google's popular desktop utility is being banned in many companies because of the security problem.

New Mexico has enacted a new voting law that requires all counties in the state to use a single, uniform balloting system. You might think it involves buying a lot of the new electronic touch panel voting machines.

Instead, the entire state will use.....paper.

Voters will mark their choices on a paper ballot that will then be fed into an electronic vote counting machine. In the event of discrepancies or disputes, the paper ballots can be easily counted and verified.

The broadband access providers (aka the telephone and cable companies) are shocked, just shocked, that their customers are actually using broadband.

Their response?

According to this article in The Register, the big companies are already installing software that slows down much of what people want to do, to the point of making them give up and/or buying the service from the access provider.

For some time, anyone has been able to post comments without the need to register as a user. Comments did not appear immediately so that I could review comments for spam. That has worked reasonably well for about a year, but the spambot attacks have become a severe problem. Spammers use scripts that roam the Internet, looking for sites that allow comments, and when they find one, they run scripts that know how to post a comment in a form.

AOL struggles mightily with spam email. It has millions of subscribers who receive hundreds of millions of spam emails per week. At enormous cost, AOL (and every other provider of email service) has to try to filter out this dreck.

A core problem is that the cost of sending email is very low. It's easy to buy a server that can pump out millions of emails per day, and the service providers have to receive that email and deliver it to their users. It uses a significant percentage of the available bandwidth on the Internet.

If you are interested in how the ability to make and publish your own video programming is going to change the media landscape, take 5 minutes to watch this video made by some young people in Atlanta.

If you have ever driven on Atlanta highways, you know that the traffic on the ring roads circling the city are some of the worst in the country. Despite a posted speed limit of 55 mph, traffic routinely moves at speeds up to 80 mph.

The number of rural people using broadband more than doubled between 2003 and 2005, but that is still just a little more than half the number of urban broadband users. A new Pew Foundation study says availability seems to the primary factor--no surprise to anyone that lives in a rural area of the U.S.

Garth Graham is the visionary leader behind Telecommunities Canada; Graham has been thinking about communities and technology longer and with more clarity than most of us, and when Garth talks, I try to shut up and listen. In the hallway between PCNA sessions, I made a casual statement about how "technology is a tool." It's an innocuous phrase that has been uttered by millions of technocrats at one time or another.

Cory Doctorow, writing in the Canadian Globe and Mail, says that some of the more than 4.5 million World of Warcraft players are taking aim at Chinese communist censors. The popular multiplayer online game has a worldwide audience of participants, including many in China.

Here is my presentation from the morning keynote. Thanks for your interest. You can find more handouts and documents in the Library. If you are interested in the plastic microduct I passed around at the meeting, you can get more information about Emtelle FibreFlow here.

Florida is synonymous with the space program, and Lockheed Martin's replacement for the space shuttle will be assembled and launched from Florida. The U.S. has not designed and built a new space vehicle in two decades, but the shuttles are nearly worn out. The new launch vehicle is a more traditional rocket design that will carry six crew to earth orbit.

I'm at the Pacific Community Network Association Annual Conference in Vancouver, British Columbia. I gave the opening keynote this morning. I am really impressed with the energy and enthusiasm for broadband here. Folks up here understand better than many U.S. communities that broadband--affordable broadband--is essential to their communites. The province of British Columbia has hundreds of local community technology projects--active, vibrant efforts that are providing access, training, and services to hundreds of thousands of people in rural communities.

Blogs certainly have not caught on the way blog advocates thought. A Gallup poll says only 9% of Internet users read one regularly, and those numbers have not changed in a year. In Internet time, that's a very long time.

I have always been more interested in the technology that enables blogging, rather than the blogging itself. The weak link in blogging is the writing.

Dean Kamen, one of the most innovative inventors in recent times, has designed breakthrough wheelchairs that can go up and down stairs and is the man behind the two wheeled Segway electric scooter.

Benedict College, in Columbia, South Carolina, is hosting a Technology Summit that is focused on how broadband and technology can improve and enhance life in urban neighborhoods and rural small communities. I'll be giving the opening keynote talk next Tuesday.

Here is an article from an executive recruiter about what kinds of skills a business executive needs in the global economy. As we slowly dumb down our schools and universities to meet the demands of students who think school should fit their needs, we have reason to be worried. In particular, look at the need to be multilingual and to be comfortable in Europe, North America, and Asia.

Stephen Levy is a knowledgeable technology columnist for Newsweek, and his article on network neutrality is short and articulates the issues clearly. As Levy puts it, the Internet may end up with two classes of service: "steerage and first class," with nothing in between.

I got this link from a friend. It's a short video clip hosted on Google, and when I click on it, I get this message (so do many other people).

This video is not playable in your country.

As my friend asked, "Are living in China now?"

Google has stepped on a banana peel at the top of a very steep hill.

Update 2/22/06

I was completely wrong about this...see the comment below for a perfectly reasonable explanation.

The phone is dead. After a couple of months with my Treo 650, which integrates a Palm PDA and a phone, I'm convinced. And equipment manufacturers are releasing more and more smartphones that integrate similar functions, meaining I'm not the only one who thinks this way.