A Virtual Counter-Revolution

Fifteen years after its first manifestation as a global, unifying network, (the Internet) has entered its second phase: it appears to be balkanising, torn apart by three separate, but related forces.

First, governments are increasingly reasserting their sovereignty. Second, big IT companies are building their own digital territories, where they set the rules and control or limit connections to other parts of the internet. Third, network owners would like to treat different types of traffic differently, in effect creating faster and slower lanes on the internet.

It is still too early to say that the internet has fragmented into “internets”, but there is a danger that it may splinter along geographical and commercial boundaries.

Even more important, the internet is an open platform, rather than one built for a specific service, like the telephone network. Mr Zittrain calls it “generative”: people can tinker with it, creating new services and elbowing existing ones aside. Any young company can build a device or develop an application that connects to the internet, provided it follows certain, mostly technical conventions. In a more closed and controlled environment, an Amazon, a Facebook or a Google would probably never have blossomed as it did.

However, this very success has given rise to the forces that are now pulling the internet apart. The cracks are most visible along geographical boundaries. The internet is too important for governments to ignore. They are increasingly finding ways to enforce their laws in the digital realm.

Many media companies have already gone one step further. They use another part of the internet’s address system, the “IP numbers” that identify computers on the network, to block access to content if consumers are not in certain countries. Try viewing a television show on Hulu, a popular American video service, from Europe. Similarly, Spotify, a popular European music-streaming service, cannot be reached from America.

A lot of ink, however, has already been spilt on another form of balkanisation: in the plumbing of the internet. Most of this debate, particularly in America, is about “net neutrality”. This is one of the internet’s founding principles: that every packet of data, regardless of its contents, should be treated the same way, and the best effort should always be made to forward it. If operators were allowed to charge for better service, they could extort protection money from every website. Those not willing to pay for their data to be transmitted quickly would be left to crawl in the slow lane. The issue is not as black and white as it seems. The internet has never been as neutral as some would have it. Network providers do not guarantee a certain quality of service, but merely promise to do their best. That may not matter for personal e-mails, but it does for time-sensitive data such as video. What is more, large internet firms like Amazon and Google have long redirected traffic onto private fast lanes that bypass the public internet to speed up access to their websites.

As mobile devices and networks improve, a standards-based browser could become the dominant access software on the wireless internet as well.

The danger is not that these islands become physically separated, says Andrew Odlyzko, a professor at the University of Minnesota. There is just too much value in universal connectivity, he argues. “The real question is how high the walls between these walled gardens will be.”

Read more at The Economist.

The Virtual Curmudgeon

FROM “Wikinomics” to “Cognitive Surplus” to “Crowdsourcing”, there is no shortage of books lauding the “Web 2.0” era and celebrating the online collaboration, interaction and sharing that it makes possible. Today anyone can publish a blog or put a video on YouTube, and thousands of online volunteers can collectively produce an operating system like Linux or an encyclopedia like Wikipedia. Isn’t that great?

No, says Jaron Lanier, a technologist, musician and polymath who is best known for his pioneering work in the field of virtual reality. His book, “You Are Not A Gadget: A Manifesto”, published earlier this year, is a provocative attack on many of the internet’s sacred cows. Mr Lanier lays into the Web 2.0 culture, arguing that what passes for creativity today is really just endlessly rehashed content and that the “fake friendship” of social networks “is just bait laid by the lords of the clouds to lure hypothetical advertisers”. For Mr Lanier there is no wisdom of crowds, only a cruel mob. “Anonymous blog comments, vapid video pranks and lightweight mash-ups may seem trivial and harmless,” he writes, “but as a whole, this widespread practice of fragmentary, impersonal communication has demeaned personal interaction.”

Read more at The Economist.

Untangling the social web

TELECOMS operators naturally prize mobile-phone subscribers who spend a lot, but some thriftier customers, it turns out, are actually more valuable. Known as “influencers”, these subscribers frequently persuade their friends, family and colleagues to follow them when they switch to a rival operator. The trick, then, is to identify such trendsetting subscribers and keep them on board with special discounts and promotions.

Companies can spot these influencers, and work out all sorts of other things about their customers, by crunching vast quantities of calling data with sophisticated “network analysis” software. The market for such software is booming. By one estimate there are more than 100 programs for network analysis, also known as link analysis or predictive analysis. In the past five years IBM has spent more than $11 billion buying makers of network-analysis software. Gartner, a market-research firm, ranks the technology at number two in its list of strategic business operations meriting significant investment this year.

Read more at The Economist.

Putting your money where your mouse is

WIKIPEDIA (is) an example of “crowdsourcing”, it demonstrates that on the internet, as in the real world, many hands make light work. Can the same approach be applied to money as well as time? That is the idea behind “crowdfunding”, in which lots of small contributions are aggregated online to support artistic or creative ventures.

Millions of dollars, in increments as small as $5, have poured into efforts that connect artists, musicians, writers and others with people willing to fund their projects. crowdfunding works by raising money for a well-defined project within a specified time limit and with a goal of raising a particular minimum sum (typically around $2,500). If the goal is not met, no funds are collected. Donors usually get some kind of reward or recognition (a mention in a film’s credits, for example), but they do not have any rights in the resulting work.

Read more at The Economist.

iTunes for Journalism

Ebyline — an angel-financed startup founded by two former Los Angeles Times executives that launched today - believes it can make journalism more efficient by creating an open marketplace: a kind of iTunes for journalism. Freelancers have to cold-call publishers and then negotiate their own rates, then they have to invoice and manage their own billing and payment. Ebyline automates that process, handling all the billing and payment between the writer and the publisher. Freelancers can also “self-syndicate” by putting their content up for bid in Ebyline’s marketplace. Selling content produced by freelance writers makes Ebyline sound a little like Demand Media, Associated Content and other so-called “content farms,” but Ebyline handles only content produced by trained journalists. The company is already working with Variety magazine, ProPublica, MinnPost and the Texas Observer, and is currently trying to raise a Series A financing round.

Read more here.

Google TV this Fall

Google will launch its service to bring the Web to TV screens in the United States this autumn and worldwide next year. The service, which will allow full Internet browsing via the television, would be free, and Google would work with a variety of program makers and electronics manufacturers to bring it to consumers.

Sony said last week it had agreed to have Google TV on its television sets, and Samsung has said it was looking into using the service. Schmidt also said Google would announce partnerships later this year with makers of tablet computers that would use Google's Chrome operating system, due to be launched soon, rather than its Android phone software, which has been used for mobile devices until now.

Read more at Reuters.

Citizen Journalists at the 2012 Olympics

Two years from now, the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games will draw to a close, concluding what will become known as the first social media Olympic Summer Games. The city of London is promising to make the city a pervasive wi-fi zone and the British government's move towards a "Digital Britain" (@DigitalBritain) coincides with this period.

There is a good chance that official media may need to become part of this new wave of gonzo journalism to fully do their job of reporting what these games were all about. Yet, the biggest challenge is not convincing professional journalists that their power is waning or that they need to reskill towards the blogosphere. Rather, the bigger problem is the public relations officers who have spent years cultivating relationships with professional journalists on the belief that this will get their organizations kudos and coverage. This loyalty to a diminishing power can frustrate collaborations between professional and citizen journalists.

Read more here.

Life Without a TV Set

Only 42 percent of Americans in 2010 said they felt that a television set was “a necessity,” according to a telephone survey of nearly 3,000 people conducted in May by the Pew Research Center. The proportion of people counting a TV as a must-have has shrunk by one third since 2006, when 64 percent of Americans said they needed one.

However, as Pew points out, these numbers do not mean that Americans are throwing away their televisions. The number of televisions per home has risen steadily, according to Nielsen, so that more than half of American homes have three or more televisions. Rather, they suggest a decline in the perceived status of the television set.

Read more at the New York Times.

Brain Waves & Newsstands

In early August, the British magazine New Scientist published a cover that had scored well on a test conducted by neuromarketers, who study the brain’s response to products. The issue sold 12 percent more than the same issue a year ago.

Read more at the New York Times.