Reading blogs #21
I am having a really hectic month with very little time to blog or even to read blogs. Nevertheless, there are some interesting links that keep on piling up, so, here is another digest. It looks like in this batch most of the material is coming from Twitter. Should I rename this category? :)
As always, thoughts, comments, and reflections are welcome and highly appreciated!
I guess until the actual Internet Governance Forum will take place, there will be a lot of local events and news associated with them. Here, for example, is a summary of the IGF USA that took place on October 2 in DC and here is the Internet Governance Project’s summary of the event – “IGF-USA plenary voices support for global Internet Governance Forum process“.
Also, ICANN is gearing up for its board meeting in Seoul in the end of October. There has been so much going on, that they even published a guide to their recent activity, which is really great in terms of reaching out to the public. For example they released application guidebook for new top level domain names (gTLDs) and an application plan for the international domain names (domain names in non-Latin characters). Here is one response to these developments and here is another really interesting conversation (you have to read the comments to get the full value out of it). I guess there will be more coming, especially when criticism is already starting to pour in. There is a nice article on CircleID summarizing the first 100 days of the new president of ICANN and also give a good overview of its activities.
And of course, there are responses keep on pouring to the recent AoC announcement between ICANN and the Department of Commerce. Some of those are super positive and enthusiastic. Andrew Mack of AMGlobal Consulting claims that: “ICANN’s Positive Affirmation: Good News for Africa and Emerging Markets.” He is so excited that I am not sure I completely follow all his arguments in the post (but then I must be missing something). Steve DelBianco, who states that he has originally supported extension of the Joint Project Agreement, is also pleased with the new arrangement and you can read about it here – “ICANN’s September Surprise.” I think that such enthusiasm can be partially explained by the fact that both Mack and DelBianco are consultants who are doing ICANN related work.
There are also some more critical voices being heard. For example, Anja Kovacs asks in the Noncommercial Users Constituency (NCUC) community – “The ICANN-US DOC ‘Affirmation of Commitments’ – A Step Forward?” – and then gives an answer, which ticks ICANN off, “no.” I think while she makes some valid points, she is also overlooking some practical limitations such as the current landscape of the internet industry. Avri Doria is also voicing a concern in her post – “Post JPA – tempered happiness” – which makes a point similar to mine – while the US control is at least nominally relinquished, the overall government control has nominally increased and not all the stakeholders are particularly happy about that. Multistakeholderism is a tough philosophy and I do not envy ICANN leadership.
The commercial players are also responding. Jeremy Rabkin and Jeffrey Eisenach published an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal titled: “The U.S. Abandons the Internet,” where they claim that the US has left the Internet and the industry that relies on it at the mercy of the UN and international politics (Eisenach represents Verisign, which helps to place things in perspective; update: Verisign sent a letter of support of the ICANN’s decision as a reply to that op-ed). Lynn St.Amour of ISOC published a laconic reply titled: “U.S. Not Abandoning Internet Role.”
Interesting reports, numbers, and visualizations
“The Next Generation Connectivity” – A really comprehensive report form the Berkman Center on the state of the broadband; FCC is now also seeking comments on the report. And here is also a follow up interview with Yochai Benkler, the PI of the report.
“In Rural Africa, a Fertile Market for Mobile Phones” (via @rebekahredux) – A NY Times article about mobile adoption in Africa. Seems like a continuation of the Economist report on telecom in developing countries that got published last week.
“State of the Internet” – An interactive report from Akamai (also available in PDF). And there is also a forthcoming “Two-Year Study of Global Internet Traffic” by the Arbor Networks, the University of Michigan and Merit Network (via ISOC-NY).
“State of the blogosphere” – Technorati is publishing a new report and PEW release a report about Twitter – “Twitter and Status Updating, Fall 2009“.
“The World in 2009: ICT Facts and Figures” – A very brief pamphlet from the recent ITU Telecom 2009, showing some basic stats about the state of the ICT globally.
“From Twitter to MySpace, social networks are now run by women over 35” (via @rmack) – A Times article full of anecdotes and stats about what proportion of social media users are women and how they use those applications.
And only one country update this time:
- Nigeria – telecom investment;
Interesting thoughts, ideas, opinions, and discussions
FCC held a meeting to discuss the US national broadband plan at end of September. The video of the entire meeting and a bunch of other media and documents, are available here.
“What future for ICT4D?” (via Twitter) – An interesting compilation of various blogs and talks discussing the idea of ICT for development. While the post highlights some rather obvious points, which have been discussed by social scientists for at least a decade, it also brings in interesting and different perspectives. One thought that it has triggered in me is that I have yet heard about socially-responsible marketing, which may emerge as an issue in the near future.
“The Day It All Changed” (via @OLPC) – “Follow the Reader” reports on a demonstration by the Internet Archive’s Brewster Kahle of the Book Server project that gives access to 1.6 million books on a variety of devices (including the XO laptops). There are also some interesting numbers in that report, such as that 20% in libraries worldwide are in public domain. Really interesting.
“Hi-tech teacher at their little fingertips” (via @OLPC) – OLPC goes to Sri Lanka. The Sri-Lankan government with the support of the World Bank is going to spend over quarter million US dollars on running an XO-based program in 13 remote schools, reaching 1040-1300 kids (US $200-251 per child). It will be interesting to follow this up and to learn more details. We already know that the laptops are localized, but there is nothing in the article about the investment in training of the teachers and tech support.
On a related note, the Economist writes – “Laptops for all” (via @OLPC) – an article reviewing the OLPC deployment in Uruguay, which I think is the flagship of OLPC deployments so far. There are around 380K laptops currently in Uruguay in the hands of primary school children (at the cost of US $260 per laptop + $21 yearly maintenance). The program is very popular, but there are difficulties in terms of connectivity and technical literacy of the teachers. We will have to wait to see the assessment of its impact.
“Bold Rwanda takes broadband leap” (via @OLPC) – A BBC article about the Rwandan efforts of improving their connectivity. And here is another article, showing the complexity of bringing connectivity to Africa (via Twitter) – “With the cables now in Uganda, what next?“.
“Apple Opens Shop In Ghana” (via Twtter) – I was not sure about adding this item here, but it is too surrealistic not to share. I am not completely sure why they are doing this other than PR, but Apple with its overpriced products (sorry, they are overpriced) is opening a store in a country with GDP per capita of $2,700 (in 2006) does not make much sense at this point. What are they trying to achieve?
“Amazon goes global. Sort of” (via @evgenymorozov) – Another interesting developments in which Amazon reveals its intentions to sell a simpler version of Kindle outside of the US. I think there is actually potential for such device, after all one of the main arguments of OLPC is that they are making books accessible everywhere. We’ll have to see how it works out, by Evgeny is skeptical.
“$10 billion takes fiber to every school, hospital in the US” (via Twitter) – The Gates Foundation met with the FCC to discuss an idea of “running fiber optic cables to every ‘anchor institution’ in the US—libraries, hospitals, community colleges, public schools.” Back in the day Google also talked about investment in infrastructure – I wonder where do they stand on that now.
“Broadband Mapping: Treasure for a New Age” – A sort of related article on the economics and politics of broadband mapping in the US.
“Soon, Bloggers Must Give Full Disclosure” (via @paddycosgrave and @lisa_dp) – Starting on December 1, buzz creators in the “new” media will have to disclose ties to companies whose products they are buzzing. I think this is a logical development, but unlike the author of the article, I am not sure how much difference it will make to this segment of the industry. What do you think?
There was a lot of buzz about Finland being the first government to make broadband a legal right of its citizens; it was not clear to me what exactly it means until I read this press release from the Finnish Ministry of Transport and Communication – “Access to a minimum of 1 Mbit Internet connection available to everyone in Finland by July 2010.”
“#beatcancer” (via Twitter) – This is an interesting social media experiment, which I think kind of failed. The idea was to raise money for cancer research utilizing the “power” of social media. For a period of 24 hours every mention of #beatcancer would result in a 1 penny donation towards the cause by Ebay/Paypal and MillerCoors Brewing Company. The organizers also hoped to set a Guinness record for for the distribution of the largest mass message through social media” (more here). The idea is really interesting, because unlike in the case with chain letters a few years ago, this is actually workable, because one can trace the mentions. But I think the experiment failed on both fronts. First, I got the message through Twitter a day after the campaign was over. At that point, the website showed 208620 mentions of the hashtag, which is relatively low in terms of reach of a viral campaign and a drop in the sea in its monetary equivalent. Nevertheless, as of at least 7 hours later, people kept retweeting the hashtag and calling others to do the same. Weird. Food for thought I guess…
Simply Interesting, Fun, and Coll Stuff
“The French Get Lost in the Clouds Over a New Term in the Internet Age” (via @evgenymorozov) – I am sure that French are not alone. Just a few years ago we’ve encountered a similar problem with Arabic and now I am trying to think about Hebrew terms for the Internet Governance jargon – it is challenging.
“ICANN GNSO Acronym Helper” (via @RodBeckstrom) – For anyone trying to figure out the world of Internet Governance or telecom policy broader defined, acronyms are the first line of barriers to entry; this website helps at least with those acronyms that are related to ICANN.
Wikireader (via Twitter) – This is a small, but promising device that allows you to access 3 million Wikipedia articles on the go without the need for Internet connection. The device itself is rather practical with a touch screen adopted for outdoors use and really long battery life. From time to time they also issue updates for the content and I wonder if it is possible to see the history of the article and the discussions (does not look like it from the video below). There was something weird about it on Amazon though, because it was available there at one point, but then it disappeared and the note there reads: “We don’t know when or if this item will be back in stock”. Strange.
businesses in those countries can now register their domain in their language and have it protected just as English businesses have had