Okay, here is what I know that you all have been waiting for, a steaming hot update on Internet technology! No? Really? You waste parts of your life on the Internet wasting your time reading Bad Hat and you don't really care what it's all about and how it all works? And that website you monitor? You know, "Steaming Hot Babes holding Cute Puppies"? And you never thought about the broader implications of what is going on?
In the meantime there are some interesting things happening in terms of the social and political impact of the Internet. Facebook. Kid's stuff? Umm, maybe, except that the most viable moderate challenger to President Ahmadinejad of Iran set up a clever and dynamic Facebook page designed to keep his fans informed about his campaign and send them details and dates of upcoming campaign rallies, some of them drawing 30,000 participants. Why did he do that? Maybe because the official media in Iran was sort of told to ignore him. The current President of Iran has to pay people to come to his rallies and send buses to pick them up, presumably because he is sooo popular. Not. The current President of Iran, who is also a hypocritical moron, was recently forced to explain that it was someone else in the government, not he, who mysteriously blocked access to Facebook to all Iranians. Think about that for a bit. Change is coming everywhere. The Genie is out of the bottle. Doubtless Ahmadinejad's minions are feverishly working on THEIR Facebook page, but it will be a matter of too little, too late. The odds are fair that Iran will soon have a new and more moderate President, in part thanks to Facebook. Since that could stop a war and help calm regional tensions in the Middle East, I for one think that's a really, really big deal. Governments try to control what their citizens know and think, but if there are independant sources of news and connections, that is significantly harder to do.
Another fun fact about Facebook? Russia just made a massive purchase of its stock. Say what? What the heck were the Russians thinking? No one really knows, though speculation is running wild.
If you have the patience, read through this fairly dry article, which tries to be breathless and hot, but you know how hot scientists are. Their hot is our luke-warm. But there are some facts in there that bear consideration. The number of possible links to the Internet is about to get really, really large. I cannot tell whether it is 340 trillion, or 340 trillion, trillion, trillion, as is written here. Either way, it's a ton. The author, no fool, suggests that every part in a car could separately report to a central communications point how well it is performing and wearing. Really? Kind of quantum leap beyond testing the compression, isn't it? But leaving aside car parts, pretty much everything else could be connected to everything else, to whatever extent that made sense.
Some years back I took two half-time sabbaticals to work in my kids' schools on their computer technology program when they were in 4th to 7th grade. Very rewarding to do so and I learned a ton about networking and computers. The Superintendant took me to lunch one day to thank me, which was sweet of her and at one point in our discussion of "networking" we came around to the role of the Internet going forward. I explained to her that there really is just one network in the world, that the issue is not so much building networks in schools as in connecting them to the one great network that binds us all. Kind of like the one great union. I vividly recall her eyes beginning to glaze over, wondering if I was about to start frothing at the mouth, but that is all it is; one big network, that binds every human being and every computer on the planet into a unified whole, capable of doing great good, capable of great abuse, very close to being able to erase the gulf of the different languages and cultures that divide us. Too nuts to qualify? Have you run a translation program on a website recently? They are fairly dreadful, but they are a start. Have you watched a sympathetic video of people in another country? The effect is amazing. My God, they are just people! Who knew? And when we can all see each other, and speak to each other, however haltingly and awkwardly, who can say what effect that will have? I can't, but I think that it will change history, not because anyone set out to change history by creating the Internet, but because a bunch of techno-geeks thought it would be cool to set up a really big network and see if they could send messages over it. And that is how history gets made.
In the meantime there are some interesting things happening in terms of the social and political impact of the Internet. Facebook. Kid's stuff? Umm, maybe, except that the most viable moderate challenger to President Ahmadinejad of Iran set up a clever and dynamic Facebook page designed to keep his fans informed about his campaign and send them details and dates of upcoming campaign rallies, some of them drawing 30,000 participants. Why did he do that? Maybe because the official media in Iran was sort of told to ignore him. The current President of Iran has to pay people to come to his rallies and send buses to pick them up, presumably because he is sooo popular. Not. The current President of Iran, who is also a hypocritical moron, was recently forced to explain that it was someone else in the government, not he, who mysteriously blocked access to Facebook to all Iranians. Think about that for a bit. Change is coming everywhere. The Genie is out of the bottle. Doubtless Ahmadinejad's minions are feverishly working on THEIR Facebook page, but it will be a matter of too little, too late. The odds are fair that Iran will soon have a new and more moderate President, in part thanks to Facebook. Since that could stop a war and help calm regional tensions in the Middle East, I for one think that's a really, really big deal. Governments try to control what their citizens know and think, but if there are independant sources of news and connections, that is significantly harder to do.
Another fun fact about Facebook? Russia just made a massive purchase of its stock. Say what? What the heck were the Russians thinking? No one really knows, though speculation is running wild.
If you have the patience, read through this fairly dry article, which tries to be breathless and hot, but you know how hot scientists are. Their hot is our luke-warm. But there are some facts in there that bear consideration. The number of possible links to the Internet is about to get really, really large. I cannot tell whether it is 340 trillion, or 340 trillion, trillion, trillion, as is written here. Either way, it's a ton. The author, no fool, suggests that every part in a car could separately report to a central communications point how well it is performing and wearing. Really? Kind of quantum leap beyond testing the compression, isn't it? But leaving aside car parts, pretty much everything else could be connected to everything else, to whatever extent that made sense.
Some years back I took two half-time sabbaticals to work in my kids' schools on their computer technology program when they were in 4th to 7th grade. Very rewarding to do so and I learned a ton about networking and computers. The Superintendant took me to lunch one day to thank me, which was sweet of her and at one point in our discussion of "networking" we came around to the role of the Internet going forward. I explained to her that there really is just one network in the world, that the issue is not so much building networks in schools as in connecting them to the one great network that binds us all. Kind of like the one great union. I vividly recall her eyes beginning to glaze over, wondering if I was about to start frothing at the mouth, but that is all it is; one big network, that binds every human being and every computer on the planet into a unified whole, capable of doing great good, capable of great abuse, very close to being able to erase the gulf of the different languages and cultures that divide us. Too nuts to qualify? Have you run a translation program on a website recently? They are fairly dreadful, but they are a start. Have you watched a sympathetic video of people in another country? The effect is amazing. My God, they are just people! Who knew? And when we can all see each other, and speak to each other, however haltingly and awkwardly, who can say what effect that will have? I can't, but I think that it will change history, not because anyone set out to change history by creating the Internet, but because a bunch of techno-geeks thought it would be cool to set up a really big network and see if they could send messages over it. And that is how history gets made.
Arthur
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