Archive for May, 2008

Jonathan Zittrain, the co-founder of the Berkman Center and professor at Oxford University, has a new book entitled “The Future of the Internet – And How to Stop It” in which he solidifies himself as one of the leading thinkers in Internet studies.

JZ provides a simple framework for understanding digital technologies whose implications are profound. For JZ, what make the Internet (and to a lesser extend, other technologies) great is its ‘generative’ nature. “Generativity is a system’s capacity to produce unanticipated change through unfiltered contributions from broad and varied audiences.” The generative nature of the net has enabled a whole new era of innovation spawning Google, Wikipedia, YouTube and more. However, with these welcome advances has come another effect of generativity – badware. The generative state of the net also allows malicious exploits like spam, viruses and spyware.

These massive enterprises pose an existential threat to the Internet as it has functioned and prospered thus far. As a result, a new form of digital devices and networks have arisen. JZ calls these sterile and TiVo, most cell phones and other locked down devices are prime examples. A middle ground is exemplified by the iPhone whose SDK provides a form of “contingent generativity” – you can generate new innovations as long as Steve Jobs approves. The rise of intermediaries is something about which I have written before.

What Zittrain has done in The Future of the Internet is fire a warning shot past the bow of all the tech geeks who relish their TiVos and iPhones. He openly admits that these devices are wonderful accomplishments of technology and design, but the book forces the reader to come to grips with the ideological and practical implications of these “safe devices.”

The implications are manifold and often unwelcome. Sterile devices tend to make innovation more difficult as freedom is limited. Wikipedia would not have taken off and have millions of articles in a model of control. In fact, its predecessor, Nupedia, was a failed attempt at controlled encyclopedia creation.

Contingency provides government or other would-be oppressors an easy means to surveil or censor. Through his work with the OpenNet Initiative JZ has studied the dozens of nations who actively censor the Internet, in effect making the generative network a sterile one. Similarly, the shift to cloud computing or software as a service means that data centers are controlling huge amounts of other people’s businesses and have the ability to stop things they would prefer not occur or are more easily open to regulations which may stifle creativity.

The obvious and easy answer that governments, corporations and users are embracing to avoid the many negative effects of generativity (badware) is the shift to sterility. However, JZ thinks a more norm-based approach will be able to save the benefits of generativity while vastly limiting the downsides. A prime example is robots.txt, an optional but widely accepted standard which allows people to not be included in search engines. Google and Yahoo have no compulsion to follow webmasters’ requests, but they do. Likewise, Wikipedians by and large seek consensus and a neutral point of view, even though they are free to not do so. JZ’s plea is for “netizens” to vote with their processors and bandwidth for solutions which embrace the ethos of generativity. The Berkman Center’s StopBadware.org is an example and has worked with Google to stop people visiting websites known for disseminating dangerous code.

I have enormous respect for FT. Like it’s American peer, the WSJ, many of the articles are over my head as they deal with dense financial topics in which I have little background. However, this article which appeared in yesterday’s Financial Times seemed like a good opportunity to understand the financial underpinnings of something I do follow: Silicon Valley.

However, the FT article is just another failure of mainstream media to do any journalism. The sensational headline precedes a near absolute void of reporting. In place of any examination of finances or economics, the FT has produced a piece which provides contradictory quotes about the viability of web services during an economic downtown and a couple examples of statistical outliers.

The question the article purports to answer is an important one: are there real business models supporting Web 2.0 services? Can advertising be extended indefinitely? Are consumers willing to pay real dollars for digital services?

In many ways, the answers to these questions will determine the future of the Internet, entrepreneurship and innovation. These are serious concerns and luckily we have new sources on which to rely.

[Photo: Wikipedia]

Kevin Kelly has a new post where he relates a recent speech by Iqbal Quadir who is the founder of GrameenPhone, a Bangladeshi service which provides cell phones to those who traditionally could not afford them. The phone serves as a business (rented to others) and a source of connectivity to others. Quadir believes this distributed entrepreneurial approach is essential to eradicating global poverty.

Quadir is deeply skeptical of government spending to alleviate poverty, especially in unitary states. In his native home of Bangladesh, “everything of importance” was located in the capital, Dacca. I found this to be the case when researching development in Thailand last semester; Bangkok is disproportionately wealthy and healthy compared to the majority of the country – agricultural regions. The paper (PDF) I wrote sought ways to decentralize the state so that opportunities for advancement were present outside of the Bangkok Metropolitan Region. In both Thailand and Bangladesh, this centralization has led to corruption and stagnation. When all money flows through a couple hands, the potential for corruption is increased.

Of course, centralization has tangible benefits: increased productivity through ease of communication is an obvious one, efficiency another. However, Quadir thinks that “technologies that connect” are the key to bringing these advantages to decentralized systems.

Mobile phones are demonstrably effective in this regard. I do, however, worry that given the economies of scale and monopoly status of many telecoms, a new centralized power does, in fact, emerge. Although the Grameen organizations sought a mutually beneficial business ecosystem which alleviated poverty through profits, other businesses, ISPs included, may not be as socially responsible. Frequently, the head of the mobile phone networks in developing countries are related to the country’s leader. Serious thought should be given to the intermediaries’ ability to control “technologies that connect.”

Quadir is now examining other industries which might be “decentralizable” so that the benefits of, say, energy production can be distributed.

[Photo: MIT Legatum Center]

Two of Africa’s lesser known nations are embroiled in a border dispute over a dusty patch of the Horn of Africa. According to the New York Times, Djibouti and Eritrea have troops stationed face-to-face in a strategic coastal region which controls access to the important shipping lanes through the Red Sea. The Eritrean domestic situation has been exceedingly dismal and some observers attest that this new geopolitical conflict has been designed to distract disgruntled citizens.

This distasteful tactic is well-known to any student of history: too often nationalism is cultivated to put off needed reforms. The creation of an “other” serves to unify the state into a body whereby their own disagreements are ignored, not solved.

However, as the original article is quick to point out, amidst the excruciatingly arcane politics of geographic disputes is the fact that both the United States and France support Djibouti and maintain military presences there. Given the Eritrean leader’s new bilateral agreements with Iran, and America’s support for Eritrea’s foe, Ethiopia, in recent disputes with Somalia, it is unlikely the West will look kindly on displays of Eritrean force.

[Photo: Jehad Nga for The New York Times]

On Wednesday, the White House announced that it was permitting Americans to send Cuban relatives cell phones. This followed Raul Castro’s policy change which allowed the ownership of cell phones in the oppressive one-party state. To me this is a no-brainer and hopefully indicative of a broader American policy which recognizes the failure of the 40 year embargo which has neither removed Communist rule or bettered the economic position of the Cubans.

Not only should free speech and its tools be encouraged in the States, the agency enhancement – economic, political and social – which results from mobile communication should be actively supported abroad. For example, amidst Kenyan post-election turmoil earlier this year, a tool was created called Ushahidi which allowed Kenyans to report in real-time, via text message, incidences of violence. More generally, the merits of cell phones are often noted when producers need to determine distant market prices.

However, even though Cubans may now own cell phones, questions of infrastructure remain. A joint venture between the Cuban carrier and Telecom Italia is said to be expanding, but as long as we are in the business of providing wireless communication to Cuba (as we do with Radio and TV Marti) why not provide cell phone coverage and encourage Americans to send unlocked mobile devices?

Harvard Law Professor Cass Sunstein has written a book whose brevity does little to indicate how much there is to take away from it. Infotopia is a short book which examines “how many minds produce knowledge” by comparing surveys, deliberation and markets. I feel a certain dishonesty in trying to summarize or critique such a cerebral book in a brief blog post, but I wanted to note some of his important points.

Sunstein’s work is an academic investigation of how the Internet allows projects like Wikipedia or Linux to succeed. Drawing on the scholarship of Friedrich Hayek and others, Sunstein notes the dispersed nature of knowledge. Starting with Hayek’s commentary that “Each member of society can have only a small fraction of the knowledge possessed by all, and each is therefore ignorant of most of the facts on which the working of society rests…” Sunstein analyzes three methods of decision-making: surveys, deliberation and markets.

Each method has its strengths and weaknesses which the author is quick to point out; in fact, his honesty in these appraisals is what makes the book so refreshing: as a book jacket quote from Robert Maccoun points out, Sunstein is “neither a Utopian nor a Luddite…”

For example, the average of everyone’s estimation of how many jelly beans are in a closed container is often the most accurate guess, but in cases where the answer is not binary, this may fail. Or, in deliberation, the supposed bedrock of democratic institutions, we are apt to see failure due to social pressures or exclusion of minority voices. Finally, the value of markets (especially prediction markets) is extolled – after all, people tend to only put their money where their mouth is if they are confident – but qualified by noting bubbles, biases and manipulation.

Infotopia has a lot to digest but will be a great resource to those designing or questioning communities online and societies off.

1.1 billion people do not have access to clean water supplies and recent disasters in China and Burma highlight the fleeting stability that even luckier people have. Drinking clean water is a multifacted challenge which requires access to water, transportation and purification. A recent post on Global Voices highlights a number of innovative solutions to this dire problem.

Often, the transportation of water can be a full day’s work involving a many-mile trek with heavy loads of water. The Q-Drum is a simple container which can alleviate this burden.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G8sMAolVUEw]

Once water is available for consumption, purity remains a major concern. More than 6,000 people die daily from drinking unsafe water. The LifeStraw is a purification tool which lasts for many uses and cleanses water of all major troubles.

If, however, a water source is available near the homes in the developing world, a clever system call PlayPumps provide a way to tap wells, store water and purify it using children who get to play on it’s rotating wheel.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMs_Z80JYls&eurl]

But, far and away, the most elegant solution highlighted was the Aquaduct. A mobile filtration vehicle, the Aquaduct is a tricycle which both stores and purifies water acquired at a distant source. It’s brilliantly simple and I’d love to hear more about it or other ways to utilize the excess energy created by bicycles which represent an environmentally sound way to travel.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-U-mvfjyiao]

What are other daily activities which have externalities waiting to be harnessed for good?

Charlie Rose consistently provides insightful questions and challenges to the big thinkers of today’s world. He recently spent 30 minutes with Jonathan Zittrain whose new book, The Future of the Internet, is keeping me up late. I am thoroughly enjoying its discussion of the value of generativity, or the ability to create through open digital platforms, and the possibility of the rise of sterile appliances – those devices like the TiVo or iPhone with limited capabilities for creativity.

Rose and Zittrain discuss the book but touch on a number of important topics including the future of technology, international competition, education and collaboration.

Watch the video here.

No sooner had I returned from Berkman@10 than I learned of BlabNote, the purely vocal social network. Instead of interfacing through a web browser, like Facebook or MySpace, a user just calls BlabNote which recognizes the caller ID and allows them to do a number of typical operations: create groups, leave voice mails, conference call, etc. As TechCrunch puts it, BlabNote will have a long, uphill battle.

I’m interested in BlabNote for another reason though. As I chronicled in my recent post, mobile phones are incredibly pervasive in the world. Within 5 to 10 years more than 80% of people will own a cell phone and these will be increasingly powerful. This GapMinder animation shows the rapid adoption of mobile devices throughout the world.

Mobile communications right now are predominately vocal. Although advanced phones do include Internet browsing, the main form of communication is spoken. A major benefit to developing world users is that they need not worry about literacy. Where educational institutions are weak, vast swaths of the population can be illiterate or even if they can read and write in a local language, little online content is available outside of major languages like Mandarin or English. For example, take a look at the distribution of Wikipedia languages where English more than doubles the closest competitor.

These two trends make voice-only services a viable alternative in the developing world. The most obvious problem? The speech-recognition software which has improved dramatically for English is not available in Cheyenne or Zulu. If BlabNote could port the technology to other languages, they might have the possibility to provide a useful service to consumers and businesses in the third world who place great importance on mobile phones.

Today, to much fanfare and consternation, Google launched their medical web service. The site promises to safely and securely organize patient health information and share the information with medical providers to better offer care and awareness. Google has other competition in this developing area, including Microsoft’s HealthVault. Google is often the target of privacy questions due to their aggregation and organization of so much information, but Google Health probably represents the most important step in this regard.

Traditionally, medical information is protected by strict federal legislation called HIPAA. However, Google is not covered under HIPAA. As users of Google Health, one places trust in the user agreements, not a specific federal law. As is very clear, Silicon Valley moves much faster than Washington, D.C. Google has developed a chart comparing the two systems of protection.

Regardless of the specific provisions, and I’m sure there will be much important discussion about the privacy policies and implications of storing health records with a third party, it was inevitable that this would happen. The medical industry is woefully antiquated and moves glacially. Going to the doctor is a painful process even before the shots. Internet ingenuity and thinking will be essential to drive forward this industry and others. There is a reason Kleiner Perkins now focuses 1/3 of their investments in green start-ups and why Internet thinkers are increasingly focusing on more fundamental problems than college networking or viral videos.