FCC opens free 'white space' spectrum Latest Wireless News - CNET News
Biggest news of the day is buried in election day excitement. From a technology view, bandwidth has been the bottle-neck to the economy since 2001 when the phone companies gained monopoly control of bandwidth. If we cannot utilize the astronomical capacity of fiber-optics (due to the phone companies sequestered dark fiber), we turn to the airways with cloud computing. Is this enough? It's a start, but the minions of the dark side remain a major threat.
Computer technology's incredible growth was based on free information and capacity for manipulating, exploiting and moving data at a geometrically expanding rate. The cost of that capacity fell as rapidly as the capacity grew. Computing and digital information moved from the desk top to the local network to the Internet. Today's term, "cloud computing," refers to the Internet itself as the computer.
Ah, but for that to happen, the Internet must be connected to people, and that connection must grow in capacity at the rate of advancement of computers. The software to make productive work of the free information, must grow as well. --- Two cultures collided at the turn of the millennium.
One was an old, post mature, administratively driven, monopoly that derived revenue through highly developed pricing strategies and carefully engineered scarcity. That sanctioned utility was so well ingrained in our culture that these phoney companies, the Telcos were able to extend the same strategy of carefully managed scarcity to the last mile of the Internet, and by way of the FCC gain almost total control of the Internet, not with technology, but with politics.
The other colliding culture could not be more opposite or more opposed. This was the technology culture of young techies, idealists: small, competitive, innovative and most notably fast moving. This culture is what brought us the Internet in the first place, the computer, the software and yes the i-pod. Fortunes were made. Moor's Law was alive and well, but the technology community was politically naive and was unable to outmaneuver the old "Ma Bells" who had spent several lifetimes out maneuvering anti-trust efforts from the Department of Commerce; they managed to defeat and for the most part stamp out the small innovative competitive challengers.
That collision of cultures vying for the Internet, resulted in a prolonged victory for the incumbents, the dinosaurs that Greenspan said would die out and make way for the new. The engineered scarcity of bandwidth makes the phone company rich but the consumer poor. Meanwhile technology is shackled by an insurmountable limitation of access, both from the server, and into the rural communities, the small businesses and the home --- the fundamental driving forces of our economy.
Now it is no small surprise that such a limitation to productivity, has had an unfavorable impact on our economy. Google may be the first challenger with enough market power to successfully take on the entrenched cartels of the telco industry. It seems that they, Google and their allies, will be successful. A turn in the political environment may help as well.
Biggest news of the day is buried in election day excitement. From a technology view, bandwidth has been the bottle-neck to the economy since 2001 when the phone companies gained monopoly control of bandwidth. If we cannot utilize the astronomical capacity of fiber-optics (due to the phone companies sequestered dark fiber), we turn to the airways with cloud computing. Is this enough? It's a start, but the minions of the dark side remain a major threat.
Computer technology's incredible growth was based on free information and capacity for manipulating, exploiting and moving data at a geometrically expanding rate. The cost of that capacity fell as rapidly as the capacity grew. Computing and digital information moved from the desk top to the local network to the Internet. Today's term, "cloud computing," refers to the Internet itself as the computer.
Ah, but for that to happen, the Internet must be connected to people, and that connection must grow in capacity at the rate of advancement of computers. The software to make productive work of the free information, must grow as well. --- Two cultures collided at the turn of the millennium.
One was an old, post mature, administratively driven, monopoly that derived revenue through highly developed pricing strategies and carefully engineered scarcity. That sanctioned utility was so well ingrained in our culture that these phoney companies, the Telcos were able to extend the same strategy of carefully managed scarcity to the last mile of the Internet, and by way of the FCC gain almost total control of the Internet, not with technology, but with politics.
The other colliding culture could not be more opposite or more opposed. This was the technology culture of young techies, idealists: small, competitive, innovative and most notably fast moving. This culture is what brought us the Internet in the first place, the computer, the software and yes the i-pod. Fortunes were made. Moor's Law was alive and well, but the technology community was politically naive and was unable to outmaneuver the old "Ma Bells" who had spent several lifetimes out maneuvering anti-trust efforts from the Department of Commerce; they managed to defeat and for the most part stamp out the small innovative competitive challengers.
That collision of cultures vying for the Internet, resulted in a prolonged victory for the incumbents, the dinosaurs that Greenspan said would die out and make way for the new. The engineered scarcity of bandwidth makes the phone company rich but the consumer poor. Meanwhile technology is shackled by an insurmountable limitation of access, both from the server, and into the rural communities, the small businesses and the home --- the fundamental driving forces of our economy.
Now it is no small surprise that such a limitation to productivity, has had an unfavorable impact on our economy. Google may be the first challenger with enough market power to successfully take on the entrenched cartels of the telco industry. It seems that they, Google and their allies, will be successful. A turn in the political environment may help as well.
Comments