Reading has never been cheaper, and for most of us, requires no additional machinery – only the source material itself. So why do we need to pay the online retailer Amazon.com $399 to read books?
Techno utopians
Warner slaps Nokia for Web 2.0 swap site
Nokia’s Music Store went live last week – but look in vain for anything by Led Zepp, John Coltrane, or Smokey Robinson. That’s because Warner Music Group (WMG) is refusing to license its catalogues to the phone giant, in protest at its Web 2.0 file swapping site, Mosh. WMG says Mosh is a hotbed of … Read more
VoIP is Dead. It’s just another feature, now
Business-wise, Skype is a basketcase. But that’s just one of the things that makes it one of the most emblematic companies of our time – a real, Ur-Web 2.0 company.
Like so many internet companies, Skype has millions and millions of users. Like these internet companies, too, it can’t make very much money off all these users. Hello, Facebook! And like these internet pin-ups, it owes a great deal to utopian power fantasies.
But what makes Skype so very of its time is the peculiar relationship it has with incumbent telecomms companies.
Think of Skype as a kind of parasitic virus that threatens to bring the host to its knees – but which can’t survive without a living host. Bloggers and mainstream newspapers are another good example.
How so?
Well, Skype has no network of its own – it’s simply an open protocol (SIP is more than one protocol, but bear with me) wrapped up in some proprietary bits. Apart from a few authentication servers, its only real asset is its “brand” – which isn’t the most concrete or tangible line item to have on your balance sheet.
Sadville is great for bubblewrap kids – BBC
TV shrink Tanya Byron blamed over-protective parents for keeping “bubble wrap” kids away from real social interaction and tethered to technology such as the internet, we reported yesterday.
The government is hiring Byron to tout a “Live Consultation”, soliciting views on how the internet might affect children. That’s your taxes at work, Part One.
How odd then that the BBC, while making deep cuts in real current affairs coverage, is investing heavily in “virtual worlds”. That’s your taxes at work, Part Two.
Miliband goes mad for Web 2.0
David Miliband, the environment minister tipped to be the next Labour Party leader by a friendly Westminster press, says “a new spirit” is afoot in the UK, brought about by Web 2.0.
Miliband said the web had polarised debate into competing extremities, where the truth was decided by whoever shouted the loudest. Traditional engineering values, where things work, had been replaced by a “Permanent Beta” mentality where the vendor tries to escape its responsibilities by selling the company before it has to fix its own bugs.
He also lamented the devaluation of expertise in favour of what he called “a permanent idiocracy”. He painted a picture of high streets decimated by home shopping, and an atomised and fragmented society that could only express itself by blogging into the digital ether. The political class, Miliband concluded, had a duty to temper this dark side of technology.
Impressive stuff, or what?
Miliband goes mad for Web 2.0
David Miliband, the environment minister tipped to be the next Labour Party leader by a friendly Westminster press, says “a new spirit” is afoot in the UK, brought about by Web 2.0.
Miliband said the web had polarised debate into competing extremities, where the truth was decided by whoever shouted the loudest. Traditional engineering values, where things work, had been replaced by a “Permanent Beta” mentality where the vendor tries to escape its responsibilities by selling the company before it has to fix its own bugs.
He also lamented the devaluation of expertise in favour of what he called “a permanent idiocracy”. He painted a picture of high streets decimated by home shopping, and an atomised and fragmented society that could only express itself by blogging into the digital ether. The political class, Miliband concluded, had a duty to temper this dark side of technology.
Impressive stuff, or what?
Of course he could have said all that – but unfortunately, he didn’t.
A monkey hangers guide to Net Neutrality
My presentation to the Westminster eForum on Net Neutrality. I’ll turn this into an embeddable slide show eventually, honest. For now, see The Register for transcript and slides.
Google snubs UK’s first Net Neutrality debate
The first significant Net Neutrality debate to take place in the UK was held today at Westminster. Chaired by former trade minister Alun Michael and the Conservative shadow trade minister Charles Hendry, the event attracted the chief Telecoms regulator and ministry policy chief, a clutch of industry representatives, and a sprinkling of members of both … Read more
On the Web 2.0 bubble
To London, where the web utopianism has a name (“Web 2.0”) and is a rage amongst marketing and media people. I reiterated a point I had raised two years earlier:
&ldquo”Let’s acknowledge what the Web has been successful at: as a presentation layer. But the Web 2.0 kids desperately want to write system apps on their “global operating system” – only they don’t have the cojones to do system level thinking. Real engineers look at where systems (and humans) fail – their priority isn’t a cool demo. They’re pessimistic. And there’s no place for pessimism at a Web 2.0 conference.”
Have a listen to the MP3, or click below the fold to read the transcript:
Tim O’Reilly had snootily replied that he was unable to respond to “innuendo”-
“… this is yellow journalismi: find the outliers, and attack them to make a point.”
For O’Reilly, infrastructure is an “outlier”.
John Doe blogger is ‘Person of the Year’
Few publications in the world take themselves as seriously as Time magazine, and Christmas each year finds it at its most unctuous and self-important, as Time chooses its “Person of the Year”. This year, the award for newsmaker of 2006 is given to “You” – the internet user.
But perhaps not you or me. The kind of internet user lauded by Time doesn’t do what most of us do – window shopping on eBay, adding bon mots to Popbitch or Something Awful, or grazing for free music. It has in mind a special idealised kind of “You” – the wiki-fiddling, bloggers of Web 2.0, or the “citizens of the new digital democracy” as Time editor Richard Stengler calls them.