b.cognosco
Where leaping to conclusions is my primary form of forward motion.
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Wednesday, January 8, 2003
The One-Way Internet
The one-way Internet -- this is the best description of the broadband Internet I've heard.
Defining Broadband in Only One Direction. Wall Street Journal: After Internet's Big Bust, Broadband Shift Went On. Much of the new content being developed for broadband users is premised on the unproved assumption that people will be willing to pay for a wide range of entertainment on the Web. If they are, get ready for a two-tiered Internet, with the hottest content sites charging subscription fees.Implicit in this story, and the attitudes of the reporter and the companies mentioned, is the idea that broadband is solely about the delivery of "content" to consumers. This is little more than television, updated for online.
Oh, there will be some interactivity -- some clicking by users on buttons that say "Buy This" and "Vote" and other such things. But real interactivity requires bandwidth to be fast upstream, not just down.[...] [Dan Gillmor's eJournal]
Dan Gillmor's description of the broadband conundrum is on target. The very notion of Asynchronous DSL is brain-damaged and a clear demonstration that broadband providers never imagined users would actually use the Internet. Rather, all they could see was consumers swallowing whatever providers could shove down the pipes. As Bob Frankston has said regarding the Net industry's fixation on entertainment, "You'd think the purpose of a roof is to keep rain off the television."
The media industry seemingly views itself as the only industry, and sees the only possible use for upstream bandwidth as a tool to steal from them. When stated so bluntly it's a preposterous position, but it is a real one.
The upstream speed on my DSL line is a pathetic 5-10k/sec. I use remote access software to get to my computer from outside the office, and even on high-speed lines the delay is interminable. There's no way I could ever run a server from home.
But I'd love to. I go to ClarkConnect in a heartbeat and buy one of their pre-packaged Linux home servers for $125 if I had decent bandwidth. And I'd sign up for their $7/month intrusion monitoring plan. No, I wouldn't host all my own web sites, but I'd host a single domain that I could use for storing photos, documents, and whatever else I wanted to access remotely. I'd start experimenting with audio and video blogging, and I'd develop my own photo albums for family.
I'm hopeful that eventually the old regimes will fall and we'll get to the point that the Internet can be used to improve the way we live and work on a broad scale. For that to happen we must get to a realistic market structure for bandwidth, and past the idea that the Internet is a one-way street.
Terry Frazier at 6:21 PM
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Monday, December 9, 2002
Radio: The First Six Months
My first weblog post was June 4, 2002. Two Strategy Tips for Printers recorded thoughts on coping in a difficult and uncertain business, and marked my first success using Radio Userland. I have made a lot of progress since and can now say, with only moderate fear of contradiction, that I have mastered Radio Basics and become a Radio Power User. [more...]Monday, September 2, 2002
Excel Integration
I have been exploring messaging and reporting architectures for demand-driven systems and ran across this cool tool for automatically integrating remote Excel spreadsheets into a single master.KnowNow's Excel Application Connector looks like it can connect literally hundreds of external spreadsheets to a single master spreadsheet, which can then upload data to a larger database or accounting system.
This Management By Excel (MBE) is extremely common in the printing industry and is, in fact, the number one way of reporting and tracking operations at all the small copmanies I've seen. Something like this type of remote integration tool could be a very useful concept for linking additional sites or licensing a distributed system.
There is also a good piece on demand propagation and real-time supply chain management, Supply Chain Coordination Using KnowNow Demand Propagation. Worth reading.
Terry Frazier at 12:00 AM
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