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Jock Gill
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David Weinberger
Paperless Papers
Open Spectrum FAQ
Why Open Spectrum Matters: The End of the Broadcast Nation by David Weinberger
Nodal Politics by Jon LebkowskySocieties of Cooperating Cognitive Solutions, a weblog post by Jock Gill
Is Money Killing Democracy in America? by Jock Gill
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Archives
January 2003
December 2002 November 2002
Thursday, January 30, 2003
The Regulators and the Candlestick MakersNot too surprisingly, apparently only a very few of the recent comments to the FCC on spectrum policy reform have taken the Open Spectrum approach: David Weinberger's comments [based upon his work with the Greater Democracy group] and those of the EFF are two examples that look forward and not backwards.There are two related questions here:
Question #1 seems to be answered by the government's seeming lack of interest in basing its approach to regulation on the best current science. Question #2 is what does the best science tell us about wireless communications? There is, with out a doubt, a wide spread and deeply entrenched belief that "interference" is a key "fact" of wireless communications that requires regulation and leads, logically, to notions of "scarcity" which then slides into notions of "property", "rights", "privatization" and "auctions". Let's, however, ask the key question that nobody wants to touch: Is interference in the electromagnetic spectrum physically possible? This leads to a technical question: what makes up the "signal" that carries the information we want to send and receive? The answer appears to be "photons". If this is true, then the implications are profound: photons can NOT interfere with one another and the whole edifice built on "interference" collapses in a flash. I.E. the emperor is standing before us in all his splendid nakedness. Now it is true that there are deep problems with sending and receiving content accurately and at the highest possible quality, but these are problems of the architecture of the send/receive encoders and decoders and their related technologies, NOT interference in and between signals in the electromagnetic spectrum. Thus, the inaccurate description of the problem as "interference", forces us into looking in the wrong places for the solutions to the deep problems and tends to tie our hands with regulations which can not, in fact, even see the true problems and their locations. This drunk will never find his car keys under the streetlight. An interesting third question is simply this: What is the theoretical limit of the electromagnetic spectrum's capacity for carrying information? The answer is, as far as we know, unknown! There is a great deal yet to be learned about this field. For example, is it possible that, with the proper enabling architecture, the capacity for carrying information actually increases with the number of users? If this is true, would it not be to the Nations great advantage to embrace this unexpected abundance? Why would we want to deny ourselves this undoubted advantage? Wouldn't it be valuable, and even a question of national security, to find the answers to these questions? Yet current FCC regulations put substantial barriers in the way to running the experiments required to find the answers. As someone has said: the candlestick makers did not invent the light bulb. I am beginning to wonder if the Congress, the NTIA and the FCC are, in fact, leading members of the candle makers guild. –Jock Gill
Capturing our mindsIn The Intellectual Property Meme, I rant about one of the medium term threats to democracy. Our culture and democratic debate won't survive very long if every idea is tangled in a net of property rights that make all communication and expression subject to the whims of property owners? Where only the most impoverished and worthless ideas can be shared without permission? Will it take one of us trademarking the phrase "Faith-based initiative" and suing the government for a "taking" and infringement for Congress to wake up?
Tuesday, January 28, 2003 The Nuclear Option in IraqIn a Los Angeles Times article republished at Common Dreams, William M. Arkin says military leaders are considering the possible use of nuclear weapons in Iraq. (Suggested by Jeff Fisher.)What worries many senior officials in the armed forces is not that the United States has a vast array of weapons or contingency plans for using them. The danger is that nuclear weapons -- locked away in a Pandora's box for more than half a century -- are being taken out of that lockbox and put on the shelf with everything else. While Pentagon leaders insist that does not mean they take nuclear weapons lightly, critics fear that removing the firewall and adding nuclear weapons to the normal option ladder makes their use more likely -- especially under a policy of preemption that says Washington alone will decide when to strike.
Monday, January 27, 2003 War PhotographerIf you get a chance, I recommend you see the film "War Photographer".If these victims of war, and other economic/political deprivations, now require a western photographer to tell their story, what if they had access to Open Spectrum? Could they tell their own stories? How would their story telling be improved if they did not rely on mega generation plants in far away central locations? How would their conditions change if human beings were superior and corporations were inferior? How would a politics of cooperative gain change the picture? James Nachtwey's images are, in some way, records of some of the unintended consequences the current regime. We need to change at least a few of the fundamentals if we want to get better picture in the future. Nachwey succeeds very well in forcing us out of our Western/Consumer/Entertainment echo chamber -- at least for the duration of the film. –Jock Gill
Sunday, January 26, 2003 We Must Elect Ourselves to Make ChangeMitch Ratcliffe puts it beautifully:Individuals need to rise up and sieze the power they have always had and been urged to forget. Beyond voting, we need to organize and actively debate everything, from the sidewalks in our home towns to the bills before Congress and the ad hoc rulings from the executive branch. We need a parallel government that forces the attention of politicians back to the people and away from the monied interests.Discuss Elect Ourselves to Make Change
The Blogs of RevolutionDo you think government could be run better?Then how could you not blog right now? Blogs are a combination of Revolutionary musket, Martin Luther's theses, Poor Richard's Almanack, and Paul Revere's ride. How could you not seize a musket when offered, or hold the nail and mallet and pound your broadside onto the Wittenberg church door? How could you not turn the crank on Ben Franklin's printing press, or swing up onto Paul Revere's horse? Blog. Blog to your family, and blog in the communities where you hold thought leadership. Tell the world it must change, and how you think it should. The tools of change are at hand today -- they're simple, and Revolutionary, right now. I happen to be a toolsmith, and I'm working with everything I've got to make them more powerful and more widespread, as are many others. But the time to start is now. Blog. Blog now. Tell the world it must change, and how you think it should.
Saturday, January 25, 2003 Open Spectrum and Free SpeechBob Frankston has a new essay that makes the case that the current spectrum management system unduly restrains free speech. He writes:
The FCC was in 1934 created to deal with a technological limitation of radios of their day. Frequencies had to be assigned exclusively to broadcasters to optimize reception. That meant that access to the "public airwaves" was gated by corporations with enough capital to build expensive transmission systems. The government over the years has recognized that this is a problem, legislating ameliorating solutions. But modern technology means that we don't need the broadcast chokepoints. All that's keeping the public from using the public airwaves are regulations based on outmoded assumptions about technology. Our free speech is being restrained. Bob also points to an essay by Yochai Benkler and Larry Lessig posted by the New Republic: Will technology make CBS unconstitutional? A snippet:
Both of these articles are must-reading. This issue is really beginning to boil... (Don't forget the two articles on this site: Reframing Open Spectrum and an Open Spectrum FAQ.)
Friday, January 24, 2003 Joi Ito's Web: Davos Blueprint for Japan 2020 panelJoi Ito has posted some thoughts about Japan's problems, and he could just as well be speaking about the USA. [Link]Anyway, I said what I usually say here which is that we need a revolution, not reform. To use Idei-san's words, a quantum leap. Democracy requires that you trust the people. Mass media focuses on ratings and then cause a kind of populism that makes people feel negative about the ability for people to be rational. In fact Japanese are rational and all we need is the media (or the Net) to focus on the real problems and wake the people up. Carlos Ghosn said that EVERYONE at Nissan knew that they were on a burning platform. After they got all of the facts out, it was all-hands-on-deck getting the company running. No bullshit. Idei-san suggested we focus on tax issues. I agree that this may be good. Follow the money. Tax is what fuels the administrative power. Shed light on the relationships. Show where peoples' money goes. Then maybe people will wake up and have a Boston tea party. I think that it is, at the end of the day, about trusting the public and empowering them. Tamura-san said that we already have all of the laws of a democracy. Just no power or will to execute.
Thursday, January 23, 2003 Ginsberg's ManifestoIn 1959, Allen Ginsberg wrote an Independence Day Manifesto that begins: Recent history is the record of a vast conspiracy to impose one level of mechanical consciousness on mankind and exterminate all manifestations of that unique part of human sentience, identical in all men, which the individual shares with his Creator. The suppression of contemplative individuality is nearly complete. The only immediate historical data that we can know and act on are those fed to our senses through systems of mass communication. These media are exactly the places where the deepest and most personal sensitivities and confessions of reality are most prohibited, mocked, suppressed. At the same time there is a crack in the mass consciousness of America -- sudden emergence of insight into a vast national subconscious netherworld filled with nerve gases, universal death bombs, malevolent bureaucracies, secret police systems, drugs that open the door to God, ships leaving Earth, unknown chemical terrors, evil dreams at hand. Because systems of mass communication can communicate only officially acceptable levels of reality, no one can know the extent of the secret unconscious life. No one in America can know what will happen. No one is in real control. America is having a nervous breakdown... Now we have new cracks in the broadcast stranglehold on what we know and what we count as interesting. We have one another, unmediated, through the Internet. The Internet should be America's nervous breakdown. And not a moment too soon.
Monday, January 20, 2003 The Village Voice: D.C.'s Second Massive Antiwar March"Just maybe the zeitgeist is beginning to shift," according to this article on last weekend's antiwar protests. The article in today's Village Voice notes that support for a war with Iraq appears to be eroding.The biggest surprise was the march's sheer youthfulness. Despite the occasional contingent of aging Quakers, old enough to have sung "We Shall Overcome' back in '64, most of the marchers sported rosy cheeks, braces and adolescent pimples. Bundled up in their handknit caps and down jackets, they could as easily have been on their way to freshman orientation at some liberal arts college in Maine. Nearly 100 traveled from St. Teresa's Academy in Kansas City, Missouri, according to Rachel Hogan, 16, who said, "I don't think any of us would be able to live with ourselves if we didn't speak out against the killing of civilians."
Sunday, January 19, 2003 "Debate" About WarI guess I'm glad the anti-war demonstrations went well. But remember that as long as the big issue of the day is the "debate" about war instead of the real issues facing the US, the Bush Administration is winning.
Open Spectrum FAQDavid Weinberger, with expert assistance from David Reed, Dewayne Hendricks, and Jock Gill, created a list of frequently asked questions and answers about Open Spectrum. Link to the Open Spectrum FAQ [Discuss Open Spectrum FAQ ]
Wednesday, January 15, 2003 Has the United States of America Gone Mad?British author John Le Carré on the current state of the U.S.:The imminent war was planned years before bin Laden struck, but it was he who made it possible. Without bin Laden, the Bush junta would still be trying to explain such tricky matters as how it came to be elected in the first place; Enron; its shameless favouring of the already-too-rich; its reckless disregard for the world’s poor, the ecology and a raft of unilaterally abrogated international treaties. They might also have to be telling us why they support Israel in its continuing disregard for UN resolutions.[Discuss The United States of America Has Gone Mad ]
Tuesday, January 14, 2003 Conserving the Death PenaltyThomas Oliphant's column (here today, gone tomorrow) in the Boston Globe suggests that conservatives ought to be in favor of abolishing capital punishment because it is a clear example of Big Government's inability to manage a program efficiently. Good point, although I'm afraid the conclusion conservatives would actually draw is that capital punishment ought to be privatized.
Landmark or Landmine?
And who was representing the customers' interests when this deal was done?
Secret GovernmentLast Friday's episode of This American Life, the public radio documentary show, is about "Secret Government". It contains three investigative stories on different aspects of US governmental secrecy since Sept. 11. You can listen to it as real audio stream at the This American Life web site.The three articles cover: 1. Secret deportations of immigrants. Some smart ACLU lawyers contacted foreign embassies requesting names of deportees. Pakistan gave them a list. David Kestenbaum went to Pakistan and interviewed some of the deportees about their experiences. 2. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) Court. This secret court authorizes wire taps on people who could be foreign spies. In this court the standards of probable cause necessary in criminal investigations do not apply. In the 24 years it has existed, the court has never said no to any wire tap request from the government. This past spring the 7 conservative judges, all appointed by Chief Justice Rhenquist, ruled that Attorney General John Ashcroft and the Justice Department had gone too far. The judges on the court felt strongly enough about Justice Dept abuses to make their ruling public and to allow the ACLU to file a brief during the Justice Department's appeal of the court's decision. 3. The story of Jose Padilla, and American citizen designated as an "enemy combatant." He has been held without charges, stripped of all rights, in a military jail, since last spring. The story suggests that the less evidence the government has against a suspected terrorist, the fewer rights it allows the suspect. This link was forwarded Benjamin Greenberg.
Lieberman, McCain back greenhouse gas reductionsLast week, Senators McCain and Lieberman introduced a bill proposing mandatory reductions in greenhouse gases and a carbon dioxide trading system like the one used successfully for sulfur dioxide, which contributes to acid rain. Also last week, New York's Governer Pataki announced in his annual address to the legislature a directive for 25 percent of the state's electricity supply come from sources like solar and wind power within the next decade. All of these politicians are well to the right of left. Protecting the environment is a thoroughly mainstream policy. It shows how far outside the mainstream the current oil-funded administration is with regard to the environment. New York Times links require registration. Summaries by Gil Friend don't.
Tuesday, January 07, 2003 The Blankenhorn Effect: Balance SheetsDana Blankenhorn explores the political uses of an important accounting principle, the balance sheet. [Link to Dana's essay.]... We need to manage to the balance sheet, not just the income statement. And we need new kinds of balance sheets. We need capital budgets, a balance sheet that show what our borrowings are doing. We need budgets of human capital, balance sheets that show how our people are doing. And we need budgets of environmental capital, balance sheets for how our Earth is doing.[Discuss The Blankenhorn Effect: Balance Sheets]
Is the "Daily Me" at the doorstep? In the mid-90s, as internet adoption picked up steam, Nicholas Negroponte at the MIT media lab used to talk about the "daily me." Individuals would be able to create personalized filters to view a newspaper that contained only the articles they wanted to read. Social critics worried that the "Daily Me" would be the death of democracy. They argued that that this lead to a world where people lived in their own bubbles, only seeing the information that confirmed their own prejudices. That world may have arrived. Valdis Krebs, who consults about social networks for a living, did some interesting analysis on link patterns in the "people who read this book also read" recommendation engine on Amazon.com. He started with a single book that he was looking up on a recommendation, The Silent Takeover, and traced that patterns of recommendation that surrounded it. Here's the pattern Krebs discovered. There's a set of books that seem to represent "left-wing" readers, with titles by Chomsky and Michael Moore and Tom Friedman. And there's a parallel set of books that seem to represent "right-wing" interests, with books by writers including Ann Coulter and Patrick Buchanan. The clusters of recommendations seemed to be mutually exclusive. Only one book appeared on recommendation lists in both clusters: What Went Wrong, a book by Bernard Lewis about Middle East history. Does this mean that we've arrived in the world Negroponte saw in his crystal ball? In Valdis' words, "once the propoganda gets into the echo chamber, you hear the same message continuously from many different sources, and you begin to believe that is how the world works." The methodology he followed was "snowball sampling", as it's called in network analysis circles. The links were selected by browsing, following a near-infinite set of links in for a finite amount of time. It would be fascinating to do similar analysis with a larger data set, to create a more conclusive result. If a search of Amazon's entire virtual bookshelf revealed the same result, what would it mean? It doesn't tell us whether society has gotten MORE polarized than in the past; history is full of divisive partisan politics. And it only tells us that the self-selected group of people who read political books have polarized opinions. We know that less than half of the eligible population votes. Most people tune out of political conversations. As Valdis said by email, "The challenge is to create *bridges* so that diverse information and ideas can be exchanged (not just via hollering and arguing)." We need to create a conversation where more people are talking and more people are listening.
Monday, January 06, 2003 Liberals need to pioneer dialog in new mediaMitch Ratcliffe cites Greg Beato about the Democratic error in simply following the conservative path into existing media. Instead, liberals need to pioneer new debates in new media. Beato says:Listen, influential Democrats, if you really think the best idea is to mimic the strategy that conservatives employed to drive the media agenda, then you should really mimic it. And the conservatives didn't succeed by bankrolling me-too entries into established media; they succeeded by pioneering new forms, i.e. talk-radio and partisan cable news. The new medium now, of course, is the Internet. And the new form is the blog. So instead of scoffing at "obscure Internet Web sites," why not support them?Ratcliffe comments: We've come a long way, but largely away from direct contact with the people. The New Democrat movement was largely a policy shift to the center without becoming more involved with the lives of the people government is supposed to serve. Meanwhile, the conservatives anchored their dialog in "talk" radio and its mutated form, the roundtable program, on television.Ratcliffe's full post includes an interesting historical analogy to Willam Gladstone, the 19th century British prime minister who pioneered the political tactic of election speeches. [Discuss Liberals need to pioneer dialog in new media]
Saturday, January 04, 2003 Now Corporations Claim The "Right to Lie"Activist Marc Kasky sued Nike after discovering deceptions in its PR campaign claiming it had cleaned up its subcontractors' sweatshop labor practices, citing a California law against corporate deception in personal statements. Nike (with support from other corporations) is arguing in its defense that corporations should enjoy the same "free speech" right to deceive that individual human citizens have in their personal lives. Nike has lost so far, but the case is on its way to the U.S. Supreme Court. [Full essay posted at Common Dreams.] [Discuss Now Corporations Claim The "Right to Lie"]In the next few weeks the U.S. Supreme Court will decide whether or not to hear Nike's appeal of the California Supreme Court's decision that Nike was engaging in commercial speech which the state can regulate under truth in advertising and other laws. And lawyers for Nike are preparing to claim before the Supreme Court that, as a "person," this multinational corporation has a constitutional free-speech right to deceive.
Friday, January 03, 2003 Societies of Cooperating Cognitive SolutionsIt's time we upgraded our approaches to both communications and energy. It is time to apply everything we have learned in the last 100 years, including the lessons provided by the internet and its new architectural approaches, to the core of the operating system for our democratic and civil society.The question at the very root of the Open Spectrum issue, politically, is this: Connections and communications for the many or the few? Democracy of opportunity or strictly controlled privilege? Do you need the central government's permission be connected and communicate? A permission system, as history has shown, means only the few may participate. This is blatantly against the grain of our democratic goals. On the other hand, we can offer everyone Connection and Communications without permission, the pro democracy approach, if we adopt OS-WE [Open Spectrum - Wireless for Everyone] We can build this as part of a system of new ideas. Reed offers "A Society of (cooperating) Cognitive Radios" But let's take internet architecture further and apply it to our electrical power system. This yields an "Intergrid" - every building powering itself as its demands require rather than every 'demand' depending on a centralized power station with a many decades replacement cycle. Just as centralized communications stifles innovation so does centralized power generation. We need a local grid for mutual security. That is, I and my neighbors need redundancy and back up in case our individual power system conks out. We will therefore connect our "homes" to one another in a mutual assistance grid. Logically it would make sense to then interconnect these edge grids for further security. Thus you organically build from the edges: the new InterGrid starts at the edges and builds in every direction, unlike the old central grid which starts at the center and builds towards the edge. As we know, the center based metaphor is, on a global scale, a colossal failure. Centralized power generation has meant power only for the few, the many, over 2/3s of the world's population, have no access to power at all. The same is true for centralized telephony: dial tone for the very few while the many, over 75% of the world's population, has no reliable access to dial tone. Isn't it about time to replace centralized power and communications approaches? They have failed for over 100 years. To persevere with the old approaches in the face of such clear cut failure is to make a mockery of the concepts of justice and fairness. To embrace new ideas for communications and energy would stimulate a great deal of innovation and economic activity as well as strengthen our democracy. Happy New Year! Written by Jock Gill (with input from David Reed) Related links:
How South Korean politics uses the InternetVery interesting article on how the winning presidential candidate, Roh Moo-hyun, and South Koreans in general are using the internet in elections. [Link]The winning candidate in last week's South Korean presidential election had little need for mass rallies or traditional campaign tactics.Discuss How South Korean politics uses the Internet
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