Technology Futures

Like the emerging Energy and Space economies, the Nano Economy is also picking up steam. It's been about twenty years since scientists first began producing nanostructures, but practical applications are beginning to emerge.

Medical researchers have found ways to cause carbon nanotubes to attach to cancer tumors. Using infrared lasers, they can then heat the nanotubes up without harming healthy tissue. The heat absorbed by the nanotubes kills the cancer cells. It appears to be very effective.

Space technology, energy systems,

There is much conversation in the blogger world about the latest Technorati announcement that the blog-tracking service monitors 14 million blogs, or about double the number tracked at the beginning of the year.

The Rural Telecommunications Congress and Connect Kentucky, the host of Rural Telecon ‘05’, are pleased to announce that on-line registration for the conference is now open. The conference is scheduled from October 9 – 12. Some conference features include:

• Keynote Speaker – Dr. Dena Puskin, Office for the Advancement of Telehealth, U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services
• Keynote Speaker – Kentucky Governor Ernie Fletcher
• Keynote Speaker – Ann Pope, Appalachian Regional Commission
• Community of Interest Roundtable Discussions
• Over 35 experts presenting the latest information on broadband, community development, and new fiber and wireless technology.
• FCC Panel Discussion on broadband policy and how it affects communities.
• Vendor Exhibits, with vendors offering a wide range of broadband services and technology.

This year’s conference will be held at the Lexington Center with accommodations at the adjacent Radisson Hotel. I'll be a speaker at the conference (talking about the economic development value of community Web portals), but that's not the only reason to attend. The RTC conferences have been among the best community technology meetings I've been to over the years. They are consistently information-rich, and the RTC board works hard to get knowledgeable speakers and to keep out thinly veiled sales pitches.

The emerging Energy Economy marches on, with another potential breakthrough from a partnership between Dow Chemical and Cargill, the big ag company.

The two firms have figured out how to make plastic from corn. Most plastic is made from oil, with the exception of polypropylene, which is made from castor beans. As an interesting aside, in the oil crisis of 1973, the only plastic that did not suffer from huge price increases was polypropylene.

The new form of plastic is so similar to petroleum-based plastic that it is apparently hard to tell the difference. What's interesting is that among other things, the product is biodegradable. It also only takes a few months to create new raw material (i.e. corn) as opposed to millions of years to produce oil.

The cable companies, according to a Wired article, have decided to add wireless services to their current mix of wired offerings, which include TV, Internet access, and voice telephony.

It makes sense, and the cable companies are more likely to get it right than companies like Verizon, which are betting on hybrid systems like EVDO to deliver data to cellphones.

But I'm skeptical about how fast this "new" concept will move. The cable company vision of a very capable PDA/phone/TV thingie is where things are going, but to sell them, you have to have a compelling mix of services and content AND a wireless delivery system that covers whole markets.

In a widely reported AP report, NASA set new IP TV records with the launch of the space shuttle. Almost a half a million people watched via a Webcast, which is much higher than the record AOL broke just a few weeks ago with the Live Aid concert.

It demonstrates two things. First, there is a strong and continuing interest in space, and it's encouraging that there is more interest in space than in aging rock stars. We'll avoid the very serious U.S. problem of not graduating enough scientists and engineers for the time being.

Second, it shows the continuing rapid advance of IP TV. Half a million viewers is more than many cable shows have at any given time, so the Internet is well positioned to displace the old Manufacturing Economy television distribution system.

The incumbent telecom providers have been flooding the public arena with relentlessly negative (and often very misleading) information about public broadband projects.

The American Public Power Association (APPA) interviewed the managers of two municipal utilities to get their perspective on communities getting into cable television and broadband services. It's an eyeopening article that provides a lot of information you don't usually get to hear.

One interesting bit of information: one of the cities has two Fortune 500 company headquarters, and only one cable route out of the community. If that cable was cut with a backhoe, the company would come to a dead stop for as long as the cable was damaged. When the telecom company which owned the cable was asked if they planned to provide an alternate cable route into the community, they said, "No."

The FTC is finally using the CAN-SPAM law to crack down on spammers sending out X-rated email without appropriate warnings. The large fines should make some of these outfits think twice--one penalty was $650,000.

Here is the second case of a person being arrested and charged for using someone else's wireless access. The perpetrator was caught deliberating cruising a residential neighborhood in the U.K. looking for open wireless access points (called wardriving).

Jakob Nielsen is an expert on Web usability, and he has a short, very readable article about how to design a business Web site.

Nielsen looks at Amazon and provides an interesting critique of how that ecommerce giant clutters their pages with stuff--on one page he counted 259 links to other information and sites. Although Nielsen says that works for Amazon, almost no other business should be doing things the way Amazon does.

Telus, the Canadian phone and ISP giant, has been blocking access to a Telus employee-sponsored Web site. Telus is in negotiations with their employee union, and no Telus customer using the company's Internet access services can view the Web site.

Telus claims that the site is publishing company confidential information and encouraging people to clog support lines with bogus service complaints.

But if those two claims are true, the company could pursue legal remedies. If the company can prove to a judge that confidential information is on the site (which should be trivially easy), a court order could force the shutdown of the site--legally.

I was initially skeptical of the heavy hype that this book received in the maintstream media. Friedman writes a column for the New York Times, and it seemed that the praise for the book was a bit over the top. But I finally picked up a copy, and while I still believe Friedman has over-simplifed some ideas and concepts, the book is worth reading.

For years now, if I need to get some serious work done on a project, I've had to leave the office--email, the Web, and the phone are too distracting; I can't stay focused long enough to actually think about a problem.

This CNet report details a study that shows the average office worker receives an interrupting distraction every three minutes. But here is the really bad news...it takes eight minutes for our brain to adjust and get focused in on a particular work task or idea.

Cisco is beginning to draw attention on the 'net for its practice of selling network equipment to the Chinese Bureau of Public Security. This is the organization that beats up peaceful protesters, routinely engages in brutal physical torture, and is turning China's node of the Internet into a highly controlled state network, where typing a word like "freedom" on your personal Web site might get you a visit from the Bureau of Public Security.

Cisco is claiming they have not broken any laws, and that if they don't sell the equipment, someone else will.

Voice over IP phone providers are trying to get their customers to acknowledge that they know their VoIP service may not work with 911. This is in response to an FCC ruling that requires all VoIP service providers to have 911 service working by July 29th or notify every customer that it does not.

The problem? It's darned hard to get some customers to acknowledge stuff like this. The FCC has not told VoIP companies what to do if a customer refuses to acknowledge they have received a notice, and some companies are being advised that they will have to cut off service.

This news item comes from Tom Christoffel's excellent Regional Community News email list. A study done in the San Diego metro area shows that 56% of residents are thinking about moving away from the overcrowded and expensive city. According to the article, that is up from from 39% just three years ago.

For rural communities that have a good strategy for land use, affordable broadband, and a "traditional" downtown area that is bright and clean, this kind of discontent is an incredible marketing opportunity. The number one complaint from those interviewed was the difficulty of getting around, especially the morning and afternoon commute.

The Finnish firm Teleste has announced new networking equipment that will allow cable modem service providers to offer much higher speeds--up to as high as 100 megabits per second. If this equipment works (it is in early testing right now), it could give U.S. cable companies a crushing lead over rival phone companies, who are stuck with the distance-sensitive DSL.

As part of the site upgrade, we have improved and extended our RSS news feeds. Each topic (category) has its own news feed, and if you prefer using a news reader, you can now subscribe to individual feeds, rather than the main feed for the entire site.

You can access the list of available feeds by using the site map item in the menu on the right.

In what may become a milestone in the quest for broadband, a public referendum in Lafayette, Louisiana to use municipal bonds to fund a fiber network passed by a wide margin (62% of voters said "yes"). Lafayette's public electric utility wanted to offer fiber broadband to its customers a couple of years ago, and the city became ground central for a bitterly fought battle led by the telephone and cable companies, which spent millions to stop the initiative.

The Supreme Court decision late last month (called Brand X) that cable companies do not have to share their lines continues to get debated across the Internet. I'm a contrarian here. While it's true that the cable companies enjoyed a monopoly position the marketplace for a long time, we changed the rules in 1996. They now have to compete, and I don't see the logic of expecting them to share their systems with their competitors.