Links and Thoughts 10: 17 May 2014
Tyrone Brunson – The Smurf
Good Morning.
Urban Studies:
We need small houses : BetterCities.net
I can see how some people in some neighborhoods might be opposed; “not in character” with the other houses, “lowering” perceived property values (I say perceived, because there are never numbers in these arguments) — but what we need is affordable housing for first-time home buyers and more often than not: the houses just don’t exist anymore. Who in the hell would buy a 400 square foot home? is the question — I would, for one. It would be all I need, and while I love some of the conveniences of apartment living, I would also like the opportunity to pay a mortgage rather than rent, and 400 square feet would suit me just fine, thank you.
When the time comes, I’ll likely have to build my own
see also: Tokyo Takes New York: Astounding Housing Facts : Next City
Mobile:
“The amazing cheap-o handset is the new iPhone.”
Don’t Diss Cheap Smartphones. They’re About to Change Everything : Wired Gadget Lab
“One of the key questions for both the carriers and, in particular, for device makers is whether the shift away from subsidies and two-year contracts will shorten or lengthen the average time between consumer upgrades.”
No-Subsidy Mobile Phone Plans Gaining Steam, With T-Mobile Leading the Way
“Unlike the high-end phone market where things progress at a steady clip, the low-end phone market has made bigger leaps with each generation as smartphones continue to overtake the global phone market.”
The evolution of the $150 cellphone
When we talk about Advances in Computing, usually the biggest revolution we ignore is The Computer In Your Pocket. Combined with ‘fast-enough’ data and web access, yes, your phone (or it’s close kin, the 7” tablet) is often a replacement for your computer, doing the things you used to have to sit down at a desk to accomplish (we don’t ignore but often forget that the laptop largely replaced the desktop 6 years ago). Phones are only getting more capable, so much so that tablets (the new hotness) are built using the phone operating systems. And while the $699 iPad may be the benchmark some like to use, I think the $150 phones are more exciting, and hold more promise.
If we get to the point where new phone apps can be programmed using nothing more than the phones themselves — at that point we’ve really democratized the platform. We’re not there yet, but getting smart phones into more and more hands is the first step.
Tech: …speaking of democratizing the platform -
“Everybody and their mothers (especially FCC commissioner Mignon Clyburn’s mother, apparently) are up in arms about this net neutrality thing. Why now? Net neutrality has been an idea, and occasionally a set of somewhat spotty regulations, kicking around the Internet for years, and the public hasn’t ever much seemed to care.
“Even a week ago, if you’d ask people for their thoughts on ‘common carrier’ regulation or ‘Title II’ or ‘paid prioritization,’ you’ll probably get a lot of blank stares. … But American citizens are sure paying attention now. I mean, who really goes to a FCC open meeting to shout down the commissioners?”
Why Net Neutrality Became A Thing For The Internet Generation
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Today’s Book Recommendation is The Master Switch by Tim Wu. From the publisher -
“It is easy to forget that every development in the history of the American information industry—from the telephone to radio to film—once existed in an open and chaotic marketplace inhabited by entrepreneurs and utopians, just as the Internet does today. Each of these, however, grew to be dominated by a monopolist or cartel. In this pathbreaking book, Tim Wu asks: will the Internet follow the same fate? Could the Web—the entire flow of American information—come to be ruled by a corporate leviathan in possession of ‘the master switch’?”
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Diary entry for 17 May:
Tim Wu’s book came out in November of 2010 — which means he was writing it well before that. The issues now coming to a head are 4 to 5 (or even 40) years old, so in a way — it’s nothing new.
There are three reasons we’re talking about Net Neutrality now, and why it’s become a “big deal”
1st: This hits people at home. You (generally) don’t give a rats ass about internet so long as it is “fast enough“ for whatever it is you do, but when Netflix slows down from what you’re used to all of a sudden it becomes an issue. If Netflix had always sucked on your connection, that’d be one thing, but if things were good but now they aren’t, you notice. You go online, you type things like “Is netflix down” or “why is netflix so slow” into a search box, and it pulls up news articles and forum posts. You educate yourself; and if there is one thing corporations hate, it is educated consumers.
2nd: “We already paid for that”:
When we pay for a burger, we get a burger. When we pay for cable, we get cable TV. When we pay for a gym membership, we get to use the gym — many of us don’t actually use the gym fully, we don’t go every day, we go but for only a half hour, or we stop going… but we have the membership.
Internet companies have been selling us gym memberships: advertising the Whole Glorious Facility that We Can Use Whenever and However We Want — but also pretty sure that no one is going to actually use all of it. But then came peer-to-peer sharing, streaming online video, massively-multiplayer online games, skype and other easy-to-use two-way video chat, and the current catalyst: Netflix.
It’s not that Netflix was invented online video, but Netflix brought all their subscribers with them — and the current Netflix crowd loved movies and TV (that’s kind of the whole point of paying for the original Netflix DVD rentals).
Add up Netflix, Skype, World of Warcraft, bittorrent, 10 million or so xboxes and playstations, and families moving from the single desktop plugged into the internet, to the desktop plus laptops, tablets, and phones all on home wifi — and suddenly everybody was using the Internet Gym and using it All The Time. But that should also be fine, because that’s what we were promised, and that’s what we paid for. We’ve been overcharged for internet for a decade now.
That’s not how your cable company sees it. Obscene profit is (from their perspective) their god-given right, and customers using their internet connections to connect to the internet is (again, from their perspective) a betrayal, and an ‘abuse’ of the system.
And instead of upgrading the pipes, they squat on existing infrastructure, suppress any potential competition, start spending money on lobbyists and campaign contributions, and prepare to squeeze their customers for more money.
The Thing About the Internet is it’s not a water pipe, or electrical transmission wire, or a coaxial cable — once some fiber is laid down, the internet literally moves at the speed of light, and the ‘guts’ of the system aren’t pumps and transformers — the ‘guts’ of the internet are in fact just more computers.
I don’t know if you’ve been paying attention, but computing power gets both more powerful and cheaper every year. Unlike every other utility, basic internet infrastructure gets cheaper to expand and operate as time goes on. Sure, the user base is growing too, and the data throughput each one of us requires is also growing, but any industry run by professionals deals with growth as a very ordinary part of doing business — and in nearly any other business, growth would be a *fantastic* problem to have. This leads us to —
3rd: The ISPs are just getting greedy.
The ISPs see a rise in demand, and their response (instead of building more infrastructure to meet demand and customer expectations) is to artificially throttle the internet ‘supply’ and force prices even higher. Customers are already being charged at both ends — I pay for internet at home, and I also pay a webhosting company that serves you this website. You pay for internet, and Netflix also pays a carrier to access the internet from their side. [this is also very, very different from how electricity and water are delivered, which is why I hate those analogies]
Now, in addition to charging at both ends, Comcast and Verizon want to introduce a 3rd charge in the middle. In effect, their customers are a new commodity, and the ISPs want to charge companies to access them — to get to You. Taking it to extremes, the ISPs would also subdivide the internet you can access and charge you extra to access chunks of it — want Netflix? That’s five bucks. Or, allow me to sell you this bundle — all the internet ‘channels’ you know and love, and all it costs is an easy $80 monthly surcharge…
That’s how the cable companies work; we know that. We hate the cable companies. Cable sees internet as a great deal — currently, to get cable TV, your provider has to pay the networks for content, which they sell to you at a markup. In this brave new world that is forming, the ISP would charge Netflix for content, which they then get to sell to you at a markup. It’s not about getting paid twice, by customers at both ends of the internet pipes, but getting paid four times — charging for access to the pipes, then charging Web companies for access to customers, and also charging customers more for using too much data (by whatever definitions of ‘too much’ your ISP cares to define).
To solve this problem and return the internet to What We We’re Promised It Would Be, we need regulation to keep the ISPs from getting too greedy, and real competition among providers to give customers choices and let the market work to drive down prices. Baring real competition, we need even more regulation (past just Net Neutrality) because at that point we’re permitting de facto monopolies that need to be treated like other utility companies.
And it all comes down to Netflix. Before your Netflix started to suck, not enough people cared, and Internet Service would have slowly transformed into just-another-cable-TV bill without anyone noticing. Now, the issue has come to a head, and I only hope the notoriously-short-attention-span internet will stick with this issue until we get to see real change.
I’m not holding my breath, though. —M.
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