Enjoy!

Recent news related

Google’s confrontation with the Chinese government, Hillary Clinton’s speech that followed, and the somewhat anticipated reaction have been all over my RSS feeds, Twitter, and what-not.  Here are some of what I think the more interesting reactions, particularly to the later, diplomatic developments.  Evgeny Morozov of Foreign Policy was one of the first to post his rather critical comments and he has a few points.   Milton Mueller, over at the IGP blog, suggests that Clinton’s speech will backfire (or already is backfiring) in the way the Chinese government will act in the Internet Governance arena; he thinks the speech was an important event, but not in the mainstream view of it as a US stand for internet freedoms.  Finally, Aleks Krotoski, who is working on a BBC documentary about the history of the web, tries to draw a complex picture of opportunities as well as dangers that Internet brings with it; all this triggered by this recent clash.

Another topic that has been recently in the news is the new gadget from Apple – the iPad.  Leaving aside the humorous aspects of its design and name, there are some interesting discussions starting to emerge about the meaning of the direction Apple is taking to the future of our mediated experiences and perhaps the technology-based society.  Jonathan Zittrain published an opinion article in FT warning against Apple’s move towards a more closed and controlled platform.  He sounds both concerned and disappointed with this move from the open to the closed.  The comments on that article seem to disagree with Zittrain, but no so Rory Cellan-Jones who blogs for BBC.  Interestingly, the comments on the British website were not as defensive of Apple.  In another post, from David Parry of U. of Texas, is trying actively to discourage people from buying iPad because he argues it is a bad educational tool.  Finally, you may also want to watch a documentary about Apple fan-base I have posted a link to below – I found it to be really interesting.

Interesting reports, numbers, and visualizations

“floatingsheep.org” – A blog of a research project that maps out and analyzes user generated information about places; pretty neat.  Here is an example of their “Great American ‘Pizza’ Map“.

“2009 Year in Review: Filtering, Surveillance, Information Warfare” – The OpenNet Initiative at Berkman Center put up a neat tool that allows you to browse through various instances of filtering, etc. that occurred in 2009.

“Review of 2009: Telecoms During Global Recession” (PDF; via InformationPolicy) – A review of the last year in telecom industry issued by TeleGeography.  They show that while the subscriber base continued to grow almost as during the pre-recession times, the revenue growth has slowed down.  The most interesting observation though is that the developed regions of the world were more affected by the recession compared to the less developed ones.

“More Data To Fuel Metered Pricing” (via @Norm_Lewis) – A summary of a report with some interesting numbers about wirless browsing bandwidth usage (for example, YouTube accounts for 10% of worldwide bandwidth use) which leads the authors to a conclusion that metered pricing is the future for mobile data; I am not a prophet by any stretch of imagination, but I think this signals a tendency towards more expensive mobile internet.

“P2P and Broadband Adoption” – A blogpost about an SSRC study that shows that P2P, and by proxy copyright infringement, is the main driver behind broadband adoption worldwide.

“Generation M2: Media in the Lives of 8- to 18-Year-Olds” (via holesinthenet) – An interesting survey about media consumption of the US youth (not just the internet); because of multitasking, they actually pack in more media than the nominal number of hours.  And another related report from PEW – “Social Media and Young Adults” – mobile is taking over blogging.

“How different age groups are using the internet” (via @Viil) – Somewhat convoluted graphic representation of the subject over time.

“The Future of ICT for Development” – The Global Voices host a collection of blogposts about the online discourse about ICT4D; quite interesting to browse through them.  This is part of a project Berkman Center runs together with Canada’s International Development Research Centre (IDRC).  At the same time, University of Manchester’s Centre for Development Informatics has posted some stats about ICT4D scholarship on their blog – “ICT-for-Development Research: Size and Growth“.  Finally, and this may not belong to this section of the digest, Michael Best asks: “Do we have an ICT4D field? And do we want one?“

“The top 10 cleantech countries of 2009” (via @gbarzil) – Shawn Lesser of Sustainable World Capital posts brief profiles of a dozen of countries and what they do in terms of green policy and entrepreneurship.

And of course, some regional stats:

• Belarus – online marketing
• UK – SMS
• USA – Internet, broadband, and cell phones
• World – SMS

Interesting thoughts, ideas, opinions, and discussions

“Obama’s mixed record on tech policy” – An article, written by William Reynolds from Duke Law School;  it goes over some recent steps taken by the Obama administration, but mostly in the realm of copyright.

“Internet Self-Regulation and Fundamental Rights” (via @infopolicy) – An SSRN article discussion the use of ISPs as intermediaries in internet regulation.

“Clay Shirky, info overload, and when filters increase the size of what’s filtered” – David Weinberger from the Berkman Center shares some thoughts about information overload and the changing meaning of filters in this reality.

“Using Mechanical Turk to Crowdsource Humanitarian Response” – Some thoughts and observations from Patrcik Meier who is working on his PhD at Tufts on related subject; I would also recommend to take a good look at his website as he has some really interesting thoughts and observations there.

Digital Divide

“World Computer Exchange” – An interesting initiative that refurbishes computers from the ‘developed’ countries for continuous use in ‘developing’ countries; of course there has been criticism about the global dump for electronics from the global north, i think this project shows how it can be done well.

“UN telecom agency makes plans for Haiti’s present and future” (via @UN) – A plug about ITUs efforts in Haiti; as the amount of news from that region is going down, I think it is actually really interesting to see what grand problems remain to be resolved and what is done about that; there is also a bunch of numbers about the telecom sector in Haiti.

MICT regulation

“Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications (BEREC) and the Office” (via Information Policy) – Yes, there is a new European regulatory body on the block.

“UN chief calls for treaty to prevent cyber war” (via @ITU_News) – A scary article both in terms to the problems it raises and the solutions it proposes.

MICT business

“Mobenzi” – This is a South African company that basically allows crowdsourcing using mobiles; companies can submit any data-related tasks that require human intelligence and people perform them in a distributed fashion, while making some money; interesting idea.

“New” media

“Replacing your TV antenna with an Internet connection by using Boxee or Hulu” – We gave up TV and have been watching TV shows on computers for a while now; this is something that can make us reconsider getting a TV set I think.

“Facebook Largest News Reader?” – HitWise suggests that Facebook is becoming the largest RSS reader on the web.

MICT and politics

“Data.gov.uk versus Data.gov – Which wins?” – FollowingData analyzes the two websites and declares the UK site as a winner.

Simply Interesting, Fun, and Coll Stuff

“Project H Design” – Sean pointed out this really interesting initiative that designs solutions to ease people’s lives in the challenging regions of the world.

“Real Lives” – A potentially interesting game that allow the participant to simulate life in anyone of the 192 countries based various statistical data about those countries; I have not tried it, but it sounds intriguing and the the demo downloadable from their website allows you to try tree different lives.

“Maga No Need Pay” – My friend ‘Gbenga, who is very much involved in the Nigerian internet-related matters, posted this video, which is a rather innovative way of raising awareness of anti-cyber-crime efforts in his home country.

“MacHeads” – Ever since moving to US I am surrounded by people using Macs and it is quite phenomenal; this is a full length (about an hour) documentary, trying to unpack the phenomenon of Mac users (or more precisely fans) and how it has been changing over the years.  I found it very interesting.

And for those of you who have ever doubted that engineering is cool, here is a reminder from the IBM folks (via Sadat):

Rhetoric has been always a very powerful tool in promoting both policy and business agendas.  Russian telcos are now putting the old-good argument of security in promoting legislation that may allow them to succeed where their European and other colleagues have failed.

It seems that all around the world the telcos feel threatened by Voice over IP (VoIP) applications that run on their infrastructure and offer free of charge voice services, with Skype being an iconic example*.  Only recently, the European telecos tried to argue for unfair competition and asked to discriminate against the use of VoIP on their networks.  The European Commission took a firm stand against it arguing for principles of net-neutrality also on mobile networks.  In the US AT&T, together with Apple, work against VoIP applications such as Skype and Google Voice to be used on the iPhones.  It will be now up to the FCC to take a stand on that issue.  Finally, the Israeli leading mobile service provider, Cellecom, is also seeking ways of limiting its users’ access to VoIP and some other technologies, under the slogan of “quality of service.”  The Israeli Ministry of Communication actually took a pro net neutrality stand in this case, but the argument is still going on.

In Russia, however, the local industry decided to make the long story short and instead of appealing to amorphous concepts such as “fairness” in competition or “quality of service” it turned to a more basic instinct – fear.  According to this article, Russian telcos have warned the Kremlin that:

“…the foreign-made VoIP software, easily downloaded from the Internet, is a threat to national security because it is resistant to eavesdropping by Russia’s intelligence agencies.”

To make things a bit spicier, they also added some nationalism.  The lobbying group was quoted saying that:

“The majority of brands operating in Russia, such as Skype and Icq, are of foreign origin and therefore we need to ensure the defense of national producers in this sector”

While some civil rights activists are concerned with the state openly talking about spying on people, others view it a bit more pragmatically.  In a recent hearing on the subject it was estimated that in about 3 years 40% of voice traffic in Russia will be VoIP.  This creates a significant incentive for the industry to cooperate on legislation that “will bring order” to the VoIP market.  Indeed such an effort is currently underway in Russia.

There was limited, but critical reaction on this topic in the mainstream Russian media and  even the blogsphere reacted only on the margines; some expressed concerns, others healthy sarcasm.  I wonder though, if conversations about VoIP are going on in other countries as well, and if so, what arguments are made against and for it.

* Disclamer – I use Skype and, to the most part, like it.

As many other similar events (such as the IGF) the forum is not aimed at producing binding resolutions.  Instead, its explicit aim is to set the agenda for the global telecom policy making.  Here is how it is described on its website:

It (WTPF-DE) is not designed to produce prescriptive outcomes with the binding force of an international treaty; rather, it strives to foster productive debate and build multi-stakeholder consensus on constructive ways forward.

This is why I think it is particularly fascinating event and this is why it will be interesting to look at how its outcomes describe MICT, priorities of related industries, and the associated regulatory principles.  Preparing for the trip I was pleasantly surprised to discover a wealth of information that the ITU made available online.  For example, there is a repository of all the iteration of the “Report by the Secretary General of ITU”, which is the pivotal document of this meeting.  In its preamble, the report states:

Decision 9 of the Antalya Plenipotentiary Conference states that arrangements for the fourth WTPF shall be in accordance with applicable Council decisions. In accordance with Decision 498 of the 2000 session of the ITU Council, discussions at the WTPF shall be based on a Report from the Secretary-General, incorporating the contributions and comments of ITU Member States and Sector Members (available at: http://www.itu.int/osg/csd/wtpf/wtpf2009/report.html) which will serve as the sole working Report of the Forum.

Since I am interested in words and in discourse, I thought to play a little bit with what was available.  Together with Veronica, and with the help of the Many Eyes project, we created the following visualization of the current Report by the Secretary General of ITU – the report that is at the basis of the upcoming discussion.  Here is what we got:

This image shows the 150 most common words in this 53 pages long document and the relative size of the word signifies its popularity.  As we can see from a quick glimpse, this forum is going to be about ITU, Internet, networks, services, issues, international, ICTs, countries, use, resolutions…

The decision in 2006 called for convergence to be the main topic of this forum, yet, as we can see in terms of popularity, the word “convergence” is loosing to many other concepts.  This is not to say that the discussion cannot focus on convergence using different terms, but I find this detail interesting.  it is particularly interesting, because if you look at visualization of the first draft of this report (before numerous comments by stakeholders were absorbed in it) the word “convergence” was much more dominant (you can see visualizations of drafts 2 and 3 in the links).

These visualizations do not tell us much about the substantive content of these documents, but I think they are a nice way to have a brief glance at the terminology that is dominating this debate.  I hope to continue following and blogging more on this subject.

Your comments will be highly appreciated!