As if by magic

I write about the issue of power, and lo I then discover a story about the 147 companies that control everything. An interesting read about modelling of networks really.

These are mostly financial houses as per my note about corporate power.

A retort tried to argue that these finance companies were ultimately just agents for all of us as investors - but that is technically rubbish, especially if what we "own" is an investment in a super fund.

Meanwhile in another observation on complexity economics we learn 'Groupon Is A Disaster'. Anyone who lived through the tech boom and bust of the 1990s could have told you that.

That is about as un-newsworthy as is The Internet is Insecure. Problem with that report is the assertion "Australia is taking a positive lead by working with other nations to identify and try to solve some of the issues with the internet. But the pace of this world-wide effort is glacial and more needs to be done." Stuffed if I can see that happening given the very low Australian presence at ISOC and IETF meetings.

Novae Meridianae Demetae Dexter delenda est

Convergence - nearly forty years old and counting

Many thanks to Michael Gordon-Smith who responded to my tweeting of my blog post on convergence.

In my tweet I asked for earlier references to "convergence" than 1977. He offered me two.

The first is from New Scientist 15 November 1973 P. 471. It reads in part;

After six years of steady sniping by the computer specialists at the telecommunications engineers over their failure to rise to the challenge of computing, the counter-attack by the telecommunications engineers has started. The computermen have long alleged that the telecommunications designers were incapable of providing the needs for communicating between computers, and that the role of the computer within the telecommunications system itself was being belittled. However, times are changing. Recently the Chairman's address to the electronics division of the Institution of Electrical Engineers tackled the subject. His address to a London audience was entitled: "Computers and Communications - convergence or conflict?"

The speech is reported to have defended the highly standardised telco industry against the then highly chaotic computing industry. The speaker argued the conflict between the two camps stemmed from the fact "that the injudicious injection of computer technology into telecommunications may also inject the incompatibility which is so much a feature of many present-day computers."

The article itself goes on to describe current circumstances (in 1973) saying;

For several years many UK computer users have used packet switching as a hefty stick with which to beat the Post Office. The technique uses intermediate storage of data travelling between two computers. .... Endless papers have been written about the virtues of packet switching and the Post Office will shortly set up an experimental service.

The most lauded example of packet switching in use is the ARPA network which serves research computers across the United States and in a few places in Europe.

The article went on with a bit of discussion of the telco engineering side denigrating packet switching as a long term solution. (The conflict side of this resulted in the great coalitions for changes in regulation of telecommunications - but that is another story.)

Of course we now know that the packet switching brigade won, and the ARPAnet evolved into the Internet.

The second example was a book from 1972, Government Regulation of the Computer Industry which at four places between pages 70 and 82 refers to the "growing convergence of computing and communications."

This is interesting as it explicitly in a policy setting. They are, of course, only references to part of the convergence discussion, and don't otherwise address the telecommunications/media convergence that is more the focus of our "convergence review".


Novae Meridianae Demetae Dexter delenda est

Middle-power diplomacy and cyberspace.

The release by President Obama of the US "International Strategy for Cyberspace" was greeted by some in the Australian commentariat as flagging that the strategy stood in stark contrast to Australia's efforts to introduce a mandatory Internet filter.

Today in Crikey Bernard Keane notes (behind paywall) "the main media message for which seemed to be that the US reserved the right to respond to cyber attacks with real-world attacks if necessary."

However, he goes on to note that "the principles espoused in the strategy document clash fundamentally with the enthusiasm of the Obama administration ... to act as the enforcement arm of the US copyright industry." After discussing the processes the US is attempting to use through treaties he notes "The attitude of the Obama Administration to the "PROTECT IP" bill before Congress will also be instructive. This bipartisan bill ... would mandate an internet filter for the United States by requiring ISPs to block the DNS for sites alleged to be engaged in "infringing" activities by the copyright industry."

It is all too easy in the Internet space to grab hold of a half-truth and then wilfully or unwittingly misrepresent it.

But in the context of our vary own Convergence Review we have an opportunity to consider how we would at least like the Internet to work.

In the case of television the TV broadcaster makes an assessment of the content against an agreed set of criteria and puts a rating on the show. Where the show is "live" the production process is designed to ensure that it stays within rating, and there are "kill switch" mechanisms if it doesn't (and on talk-back radio a delay to ensure the offending bit can be suppressed before going to air).

Domain name owners have the same ability to control the content on their site. Even the big social media sites have a take down policy of things that they get alerted to. That means it would be theoretically possible to put a classification system in the DNS to advertise to browsers the classification of a site.

In TV land certain classifications can only be shown at certain times. The Internet equivalent would be permissions established in the browser that stopped it from navigating to sites with certain ratings.

Now at this point there will be howling that the Internet is global and that we can't "regulate it". I don't want to. But I'd like to think that we could have an informed contribution to make. Why is it that only the US publishes pontifications such as this? Where is the Australian strategy?

More importantly why are we not taking the opportunity to practice middle-power diplomacy in this space?


Novae Meridianae Demetae Dexter delenda est

The Smith Family has conclded that having access to a computer and the internet "is a key educational resource that influences educational outcomes". ("Home computers key to school success" SMH Tues 31 Dec).

The fact that personal possession of some learning resource is an advantage is not new, however, and similar studies conducted a decade ago showed a high correlation between educational attainment and ownership of an encyclopaedia (and I believe home delivery of newspapers).

The efficient response to the fact that access to resources is educationally advantageous is not to try to get every household to own the resource - but to make sure that the resources are available in common usage spaces for access by all students.

These common usage spaces go by the name of libraries - and house both computers with internet access and encyclopaedias. What remains bemusing is the limited hours of operation of school and Council libraries, and why we try to maintain two distinct geographically dispersed networks of them.