Philosophy

Let me qualify this by saying, I'm NOT a biologist and I have only a scant understanding of the subject.

That said . . . WOW! This could be bigger than the Internet in terms of sheer impact on society.

I've spent a good chunk of the last week or two going over the explosion of research going on in and around microRNA and the technologies for suppressing (antagomirs) and activating certain forms of gene expression. I'm completely blown away. I think this may be the most important development in applicable biological understanding since penicillin (ok, a bad analogy - nevertheless, it's a major development). The mechanism was first identified in 1993 and has since been found to have a role in embryology, in some forms of cancer, is interfered with by viruses from HIV-1 to nearly all of the Herpes viruses and MAY even play an important role in aging and longevity (jury is still very much out on the aging question). Identifying this mechanism and having the tools to regulate it's function is (from my arm-chair position) an incredible achievement.

So so cool . . . okay, back to the IT stuff . . .

Nietzsche says the following in his Second Essay on the Genealogy of Morals:

Is it an indictment of our system of Justice (both Civil and Criminal)? Does this "moral canon of Justice" do our society harm? Aren't we, as a society and a species, better than this?

This quote has always troubled me . . .

(I've been meaning to post this for ages . . . apologies if it sounds old, it is.)

Internet regulatory policy that allows for vertically integrated "service" offerings based on QoS or QoS-like tiering is completely wrongheaded (I must sound like a broken record by now).

Some of the reasons are well known. Most obviously, tiering only makes financial sense to a small oligopoly of broadband providers who stand to profit from restraining broadband capacity, and the regulatory body that's laid claim to oversight (the FCC) of broadband has huge problems defining things like 'broadband' and 'competition' in terms that don't flagrantly and unjustly benefit the handful of incumbent providers. Their definition of broadband (200 Kbps) and the way they measure broadband penetration (by ZIP-CODE!?) are both woefully inadequate (at least according to the GAO); and if they actually applied sane measures of competition and concentration (like the HHI) they'd never have allowed the Terminator-esque merger-mania that's lead a return of Ma-Bell. The phenomenon of 'regulatory capture' is nearly synonymous with the FCC these days; despite the hard work of Commissioners Copps and Adelstein. But such arguments are well worn and well-known. They're arguments we're all familiar with by now (or at the very least ought to be) and they're very 'policy-minded'.

Instead of dwelling on these deficiencies of our regulatory system, I want to focus on a larger, more profound reason it's a mistake to allow such "tiered services." The reason I'm thinking of depends on basic understanding of what it is to "be digital" (apologies to Nicholas Negroponte). It is the not-so-simple observation that:

Computation IS Communication

The "services" model - the model we currently suffer - grossly fails to grasp what it is regulating. Here I need to make a point that cuts to the core of a number of issues that are being hotly debated - not least of which is the patentability of software, to which I'll return in another blog. The crucial point is that digital communications - as opposed to analogue communications - is by definition digital computation. I cannot emphasize the profound importance of this fact enough. It is the key to understanding why the BrandX decision was such a travesty and why the history of FCC regulatory intervention has been such a disaster. The insight is neither my opinion nor a veiled form of 'technological determinism', it is rather a FACT about any digital medium; it is a fact about "being digital".

Some legal thinkers and policy wonks have already touched on this aspect of "being digital", though haven't gleaned (or refuse to entertain) the full extent of it's impact. I'm thinking particularly of Jonathan Zittrain's influential article on "The Generative Internet" and Kevin Werbach's article, "The Federal Computer Commission" (North Carolina Law Review 84:1-75). Zittrain, on the one hand, argues that focusing on the end-to-end principle of digital networks is “myopic;” dangerously assuming the continued openness of the equipment attached at its ends. Werbach, on the other hand, argues that FCC regulation has in effect, if not in intent, already regulated the equipment at the ends of the network. At least, it’s done it more than most policy analysts would like to admit. I would contend that the breakdown at the ends of the digital network is actually more profound than either Zittrain or Werbach have entertained; that, in fact, regulation of digital communication IS regulation of computation, period. Put another way, the stuff going on at the "ends" of the network that Werbach and Zittrain are expressing concerns about IS EXACTLY what is going on in the network itself.

The basis for this claim comes straight from some very basic aspects of computation and the idea of 'computability' - the idea at the heart of ALL modern computers. The principle was set out by Turing (a response to Hilbert's Entscheidungsproblem) in his paper, " "On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem." In the paper, Turing describes what has come to be called a Universal Turing Machine (UTM), an abstraction instantiated in the hardware and software of the modern computer. A UTM has a state that is altered by data/instructions it reads-from and writes-to some kind of storage medium. That is the full extent of a UTM's functionality, and it is this reading-from and writing-to storage that is both communication AND the very activity of computation. When Sun Microsystems CTO, Greg Popadopoulos, says, "The world needs only five computers . . . Google [for example] runs a computer [that] happens to have hundreds of thousands of processors in it, and millions of disk drives, but it's a computer. The important distinction is there is a point of control that determines what software is going to run, and then the systems work collectively to provide some service . . ." he is invoking this idea of computability that undergirds the very idea of the computer. An idea also at the heart of the company's slogan since its inception in the early nineteen-eighties, "The Network is the Computer."

Put simply, computation IS nothing more or less than the storage and retrieval of information (data); i.e. computation IS communication. The boundary drawn between the two is increasingly an artifice of political and legal definition rather than a practical and technologically determined (by analogue technologies) reality. Being digital means a near total breakdown of this boundary.

Artificial boundaries
Popadopoulos' comment demonstrates the arbitrariness of the boundaries regulators impose on the digital world. From a computational perspective, it matters little if the bits travel thousands of miles across national borders (as they might if you're participating in a distributed application like SETI@home) or on the same mother-board (as they might on a dual-processor-PC-under-your-desk@home), yet our regulatory framework is founded on imposing such arbitrary boundaries.

While motherboard-centric communications are free-flowing - with little or no filtering between CPU and storage - communications over broadband networks are (post-BrandX) subject to just about whatever limitations and crippling the telecommunications and cable companies wish to impose (in order to extract additional profits for absolutely no additional investment in infrastructure).

Motherboard manufacturers build products that meet inter-operating standards and compete on reliability and speed performance in a competitive market more-or-less free of regulatory intervention. Whereas, broadband access providers perpetuate last-mile scarcity in order to generate additional profits by crippling and limiting bandwidth to some customers in favor of others in a non-competitive market presided over by an oligopoly of telecommunications and cable companies.

While software programmers invest time and assets in development - relying on the communications between the local CPU and the local hard-drive - they cannot safely rely on the communications between the local CPU and a remote hard-drive.

If we are to reap the benefits of digitalization we must enact laws that reflect digital reality; this means a complete overhaul of communications regulation.

Recently, I've spent a little spare-time (who has any of THAT these days) looking into lake areas of northern Mongolia (Lake Hovsgol) and Siberia (Lake Baikal). They've got to be some of the most fascinating and extraordinary places. It's all got me thinking . . .

The Lakes
Lake Baikal (famously) holds 20% (one fifth!) of the world's unfrozen fresh water and is larger (in volume) than the United States' five Great Lakes COMBINED. This shocks me - even though it shouldn't. Baikal has it's own, incredibly unique eco-system (the world's only fresh-water seals, among other things) and has recently been declared a UN World Heritage site, which should provide some much needed protections. The Russian Government even seems to have begun to see the value in preserving the ecology of the area. Despite this, uber-rich oligarchs have built foundations for enormous houses on its shores and a paper-mill at the southern end continues to be a problem (according to many environmentalists).

Lake Hovsgul is in Mongolia, near the border with Russia - in fact, very near Lake Baikal. From what little I've read, it seems to be much more environmentally undamaged (permafrost damage from climate change being one of the principle issues in the area). The lake is nicely situated between Siberian forest and Mongolian pasture, with mountains to the West and rolling hills and valleys to the East. Moreover, it's part of the Lake Baikal watershed basin - so it essentially feeds into Lake Baikal.

Water-sheds and Africa
So, after doing a lot of Googling and reading, I emailed Marc (my brother) about these places. One comment he made in response (focusing on the "politics" section of a UNESCO report I'd sent) concerned the idea of organizing political 'units' around water-sheds. It's a fascinating approach that jibes nicely with some thoughts I'd been having about global politics

I was listening recently to a Berkman Center podcast featuring Eric Osiakwan and Ethan Zuckerman talking about African telco policy and how various submarine fiber schemes had emerged. The most interesting of which was a plan called "AfricaOne" that would've built a "ring" of fiber around the continent. It was a fascinating discussion. At one point, Zuckerman referred to someone's work on Africa (can't remember the name off-hand, but I'll find it) in which they placed much of the blame for lack of development on the lack of INTER-national infrastructure. I think the analogy made was something along the lines of, "imagine how the State of Mississippi might faire if it were an isolated nation?" Answer: not too bloody well. The talk then moved to a discussion of emerging trade-blocks. But, for me, the infrastructure point was the MOST IMPORTANT observation made in the talk. It addressed exactly the problem that, I think, interests both my brother and me when we think about policy. Zuckerman's point is very like - though not the same as - the point Marc was making about watershed politics. Namely, that in order to produce good policy, you must have political units (or strong alliances perhaps) that reflect shared interests - whether those interests are telecommunications, environmental sustainability, trade, or whathaveyou - and contemporary national (and corporate) entities are often the poorly arrived-at result of (usually unfortunate) historic and/or geographic fortunes (see Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel).

Bucky's Perspective
So, what to do?

At this point it occurs to me that "AfricaOne" would've been a major contribution to the global grid proposed by Bucky Fuller (though Bucky's grid was ostensibly for electricity, there's no reason to believe it couldn't be done for fiber). Here's his grid as proposed on his (patented) dymaxion map:

(pretty f-ing cool if you ask me - W22C4M - Hey Google! Build us a Bucky fiber network!)

We might even ask (as Bucky might have), what would a Dymaxion projection of major global watershed basins look like? I couldn't find one. But, heres a Robinson projection:

And how might a collection of strong, watershed-based, political alliances (or - as I'm being fanciful - nation-like entities) affect global development???

That's my question/thought for the day.

Any thoughts? All comments welcome (after all, you read it . . . why not comment?)

I seem to be well on my way to expatriate-hood. It's not something I've thought through particularly or sought-out in some reactionary, Paul Auster-ish way (though neither he nor his wife seem to have followed through on their threats to leave Park Slope). It's just . . . well, sort-of happened.

It does put me in an odd and ambivalent position though. On the one hand, I feel a lot of patriotism toward the US - more than I'd probably express back in the US. I continually assert the ingenuity, inventiveness and resilience that I honestly believe are the backbone of the American character. "Don't underestimate the American resolve and entrepreneurial spirit," I hear myself saying to would-be anti-imperialists. Yet, even as I say these things, I'm nagged by a suspicion that my idea of what American is (indeed, what it represents), is not what America has become. I worry that corporate interest and mass-media consolidation have conspired to usurp what passes for "public interest" in this alternate America. I worry that it has increasingly become a nation of consumers rather than citizens, and indeed, that these two concepts are increasingly at odds with one another.

While I know that there are a lot of good and resolute people fighting hard to prevent the encroachment of this alternate American, working tirelessly to prevent it from completely overwhelming the ideals we share, it seems a thankless, Sisyphean task. In fact, I think it's much worse. It's more like playing whack-a-mole with a single hammer . . . and the moles are multiplying.

So, here's a not-too-particularly-novel rambling on our relationship to our environment.

Humans are quickly becoming masters of their own domain. We're increasingly able to adapt our environment to ourselves rather than allowing ourselves to adapt to our environment. It's a strange, technologically inspired impatience. We live in large cities, travel enormous - inhuman - distances, eat industrially produced food, and have become accustomed to living in an environment we've substantially designed to service our various "needs." But, this does NOT mean that adaptation has transferred entirely to environmental management. On the contrary, I believe we continue to adapt to our environment; only now it's an environment of our own creation and the means of adaption are predominantly social, cultural and, yes Virginia, TECHNOLOGICAL - something I mean to write about in much greater detail soon.

What I find really extraordinary about this scenario is that while we can - and do - wax philosophical about how we ought to construct our environment to meet our various needs (and isn't this exactly what "policy" is largely all about?) we are still continually surprised by how we ourselves (collectively and individually) respond to environmental changes; i.e. despite ever more complex theories and models, "externalities" inevitably arise and shock us. We're continually forced to re-evaluate our ideas of both ourselves and our environment.

All this is a round-about way trying to get to the idea that, perhaps we should be more concerned with managing what we call our 'needs' (many of which are, if we're honest with ourselves, as much a human construct as our environment) and less concerned with managing an environment designed to meet them. In my opinion, we'd better start thinking of some humane ways of tackling such an agenda, because our environment (such as it is) is turning us into foul creatures indeed . . . and may well kill us.

It's just a thought.

This week I'm in London.

It seems all the cool kids here are riding these amazing (or, as Lawrence Lessig might say, "W2C4M") folding bicycles, which go from this:

to this:

My cousin Ben (who I caught up with last weekend, has two imaginative and rambunctious children - well, one's too tiny to tell just yet - and works in the City) was a big enthusiast of commuting to work by bicycle a few years ago, and probably still does. People in the Big Smoke are really going for the cycling commute (a 100% increase between 2000 and 2005 according to the BBC), which led me to thinking . . . isn't it curious how, just as the Asian car markets are exploding (particularly in China), people in large western "metropoli" are starting to cycle more? Perhaps there's an equilibrium to be found somewhere.

I'm still waiting to settle somewhere and get a folding bike for myself . . . or perhaps a Segway . . . dream dream dream . . .

I had a great afternoon yesterday doing a little graphic design for a lecture here at CEU (I'd nearly forgotten how I love doing this sort of work). Pete Tridish of the Prometheus Radio Project is coming to talk about his organization and the threat of media consolidation in the US. I immediately thought of a poster from the Paris '68 student riots that would be perfect (at least I thought so). A few hours in Photoshop and here's the result (I helped with the title as well):

All comments welcome! What do think? (I hope I got the French right . . . ack!).

The weight of network neutrality support is behind a definition of "network neutrality" that might lead to an escalation of end-user cryptographic use. This may or may not be a good thing.

The prevalent definition of "network neutrality" would allow for some forms of discrimination. This thin-edge-of -the-wedge - the proverbial "camel's nose" - would allow for discrimination where IP packets are part of a VoIP application's communication, an IPTV application's communication, etc.; i.e. discrimination for particular service types. In general, this "network neutrality" follows the path described by Lessig and Wu. The Dorgan-Snowe bill appears to takes this approach (12(a)(4) and 12(a)(5) are the relevant sections).

Sidenote: No one appears to take the testimony of Gary Bachula on the red-herringness of QoS seriously . . . Why? (more on this anon)

So, to adopt Wu's language, some discrimination is good, some bad (a sort-of affirmative action policy for the Internet?). What might such a policy beget?

Crystal ball time.

Here's a possible scenario. Recognizing that VoIP packets are prioritized over others, an enterprising software developer writes a bit of code to send ALL traffic as prioritized VoIP packets. Perhaps even sending some useless traffic on the "dirt-road" broadband to avoid attention. To avoid deep-packet inspection he may also encrypt the traffic and/or drop the relevant data (PDF) steganographically into something that genuinely looks like a voice conversation. The network operator will likely respond with more intrusive and sophisticated packet inspection.

A downside. The upshot of this oneupmanship would be an escalation of cryto-warfare that might ultimately prove more damaging to the efficient use of network bandwidth than implementing QoS enables.

An upside. The public might finally (and inadvertently) start adopting encryption tools on a massive scale, leading to greater privacy protections.

It's a commodity business.

No matter how incumbent providers try to steer the issue and put lipstick on their digital-porkbellies - "triple play", "video services", "voice services", etc. - it cannot change the fact that what they do is move IP packets from point A to point B (Eli Noam is simply wrong on this, a bit really is a bit).

What's disappointing is that the FCC is the major cosmetics supplier to the digital-porkbelly lipstick market and - Chevron aside - 6 out of 9 Supreme Court Justices are so impressed with the make-up job, they fail to recognize that what they're looking at is in fact merely the digital equivalent of porkbellies.

At some point US regulators are going to have to come to grips with this fact (to use J. Scalia's terminology) and re-assess their "services" based regulatory regime, which simply doesn't apply to a digital communications framework. Unfortunately, by the time we get around to correcting our misguided regulatory regime, it'll be too late. The rest of the world are moving to a utilities-like model (paying for broadband much as we pay for water or electricity), while US consumers continue to pay obscene fees for the digital equivalent of "shower services", "toilet services", and "kitchen-sink services" (instead of paying the digital water utility bill).

Like climate change, we're in a race against time; i.e. the rest of the world are not merely "catching-up", they've set a pace to outstrip the US in broadband penetration - and MANY ALREADY HAVE! Future generations in the US will curse us for our myopic outlook and protection of incumbent industries that weren't agile enough (or patriotic enough) to adapt their creaking business models to the realities - facts - of a digital world.

Call me a pessimist, but it's already too late to offset the damage our regulatory myopia has done thus far . . . the real question is, HOW BAD WILL IT GET BEFORE WE DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT?