In 2003, “wifi” went from geek toy to mainstream. But WiFi is only part of a much larger revolution in how people access and use the electromagnetic spectrum. Now, numerous competing and ill-fiting anaologies, “property,” “public commons,” “public trust” battle it out among Washington regulators. What’s at stake? While it sounds hyperbolic, this regulatory battle ground holds the key to the next stage of evolution of information technology. This is a background piece. I will post the current developments piece later.
Year: 2004
Tales of the Sausage Factory: Why A Comcast/Disney Merger Sucks Rocks
This op ed appeared in the industry Magazine Broadcasting and Cable on Monday Feb. 23.
They forgot the ever-popular “dictator handshaking style”
Ah, Donald Rumsfeld… Secretary of Defense, coddler of dictators , and master of many arcane forms of martial arts. Truly a man for all seasons.
Wetmachine so far
Half a year (or so) ago I decided to get serious about livening up my Wetmachine website. Wetmachine had been around since October 1999, but I had only updated it a few times. I wanted to transform it into a site that people would come back to. A blog of some kind was clearly in order.
Knowing that it would be a drag, not to mention probably impossible, to singlehandedly make Wetmachine sufficiently compelling to warrant return visits, I invited some friends to play along. About three months ago we made the switch to blog format. Read on for some brief musings on the experiment so far.
Tales of the Sausage Factory: RFID– Are Smart Clothes a Smart Idea
Most folks have yet to hear of RFID, or radio frequency ID tags. As explained in this article in The Nation, RFID opens a host of interesting issues.
Nanotech hiring.. philosophers?
An article in the Washington Post provides a general overview of nanotech. The one interesting fact that caught me eye: nanotech companies and researchers are hiring sociologists, philosophers, and ethicists, in attempt to get ahead of the curve on public opinion.
Tales of The Sausage Factory: CBS caves again for Bush
For those of you haven’t followed, Bush and the Republican leadership fought off an broad attempt by Congress to roll back the national television ownership cap to 35%. The compromise was to freeze the limit at 39%, which means that Viacom (parent of CBS) and News Corp. (parent of Fox) don’t have to sell off any stations. Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) says that CBS has paid the administration back for this favor by refusing to sell time to an anti-bush ad on the Superbowl.
expressing things that matter; an old story
I was touched by this story in today’s Boston Globe.
I liked the human crafstmanship in the telling, and deeply moved by the dramatic yet universal tale of the failure to live up to our potential.
So I gave it to my 11 year old daughter to read. I asked her why she thought I wanted her to read it. “So I won’t take drugs. Duh.”
I said, “something like that, but there’s something else….” But she had already left the room, singing Avril Lavigne.
Yet More On Fileswapping
Fileswapping is in the New York Times today. The RIAA gears up for more lawsuits while some bands try to actually serve their fans and make a buck. Wow!
MIT AI researchers develop healthy technoparanoia
Or, so says The Onion, in any event.
“The more we thought about it, the less we were able to laugh off the threat of killer machines,” said Dr. Henry K. Arronovski, a leading expert in the field of heuristics classification. “It really started to freak us out. What if, decades from now, humans end up in a virtual-reality construct designed to blind them to their enslavement to the hivemind—all because of the work my colleagues and I started?”
Added Arronovski: “I want no hand in creating a world where only Keanu Reeves can protect my great-grandchildren from a giant drill that plummets through the ceilings of subterranean cave dwellings.”
As a true technoparanoaic, I guess I wish there were more truth to the story. . .
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Tales of the Sausage Factory: Why A Comcast/Disney Merger Sucks Rocks
This op ed appeared in the industry Magazine Broadcasting and Cable on Monday Feb. 23.
They forgot the ever-popular “dictator handshaking style”
Ah, Donald Rumsfeld… Secretary of Defense, coddler of dictators , and master of many arcane forms of martial arts. Truly a man for all seasons.
Wetmachine so far
Half a year (or so) ago I decided to get serious about livening up my Wetmachine website. Wetmachine had been around since October 1999, but I had only updated it a few times. I wanted to transform it into a site that people would come back to. A blog of some kind was clearly in order.
Knowing that it would be a drag, not to mention probably impossible, to singlehandedly make Wetmachine sufficiently compelling to warrant return visits, I invited some friends to play along. About three months ago we made the switch to blog format. Read on for some brief musings on the experiment so far.
Tales of the Sausage Factory: RFID– Are Smart Clothes a Smart Idea
Most folks have yet to hear of RFID, or radio frequency ID tags. As explained in this article in The Nation, RFID opens a host of interesting issues.
Nanotech hiring.. philosophers?
An article in the Washington Post provides a general overview of nanotech. The one interesting fact that caught me eye: nanotech companies and researchers are hiring sociologists, philosophers, and ethicists, in attempt to get ahead of the curve on public opinion.
Tales of The Sausage Factory: CBS caves again for Bush
For those of you haven’t followed, Bush and the Republican leadership fought off an broad attempt by Congress to roll back the national television ownership cap to 35%. The compromise was to freeze the limit at 39%, which means that Viacom (parent of CBS) and News Corp. (parent of Fox) don’t have to sell off any stations. Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) says that CBS has paid the administration back for this favor by refusing to sell time to an anti-bush ad on the Superbowl.
expressing things that matter; an old story
I was touched by this story in today’s Boston Globe.
I liked the human crafstmanship in the telling, and deeply moved by the dramatic yet universal tale of the failure to live up to our potential.
So I gave it to my 11 year old daughter to read. I asked her why she thought I wanted her to read it. “So I won’t take drugs. Duh.”
I said, “something like that, but there’s something else….” But she had already left the room, singing Avril Lavigne.
Yet More On Fileswapping
Fileswapping is in the New York Times today. The RIAA gears up for more lawsuits while some bands try to actually serve their fans and make a buck. Wow!
MIT AI researchers develop healthy technoparanoia
Or, so says The Onion, in any event.
“The more we thought about it, the less we were able to laugh off the threat of killer machines,” said Dr. Henry K. Arronovski, a leading expert in the field of heuristics classification. “It really started to freak us out. What if, decades from now, humans end up in a virtual-reality construct designed to blind them to their enslavement to the hivemind—all because of the work my colleagues and I started?”
Added Arronovski: “I want no hand in creating a world where only Keanu Reeves can protect my great-grandchildren from a giant drill that plummets through the ceilings of subterranean cave dwellings.”
As a true technoparanoaic, I guess I wish there were more truth to the story. . .