Posts about Internet

Support for the disconnected of Egypt

January 28, 2011 by Jeff Jarvis
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Governments are the single point of failure for the internet and thus for the public’s tool of empowerment. We are seeing that in Egypt today as the government ordered telcos to shut down the internet as a whole in the country. We have seen that in the past when Libya shut down .ly domains it did not like. Our internet is too fragile.

I took some solace from Clay Shirky reminded me today that by the time governments shut down the internet or its services, it has so far been too late: the protestors are organized. I tweeted that and someone responded that the lesson for tyrants is: take care of the internet first, the protestors second.

The chicken-egg debate about the credit the tools of the internet and publicness deserve in Iran and Tunisia and now Egypt is rather pointless, even offensive. These tools were stolen from the public by a government trying to forbid them because they are a means of shifting power. They do not belong to government. They belong to the public, who are using them to claim their rights as the public.

I am in Davos where, in 1996, John Perry Barlow wrote his Declaration of Independence for Cyberspace. It becomes only more relevant:

Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather.

We have no elected government, nor are we likely to have one, so I address you with no greater authority than that with which liberty itself always speaks. I declare the global social space we are building to be naturally independent of the tyrannies you seek to impose on us. You have no moral right to rule us nor do you possess any methods of enforcement we have true reason to fear.

Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. You have neither solicited nor received ours. We did not invite you. You do not know us, nor do you know our world. Cyberspace does not lie within your borders. Do not think that you can build it, as though it were a public construction project. You cannot. It is an act of nature and it grows itself through our collective actions.

At a session here at Davos on governance in a new-media world (their words) we discussed the inevitability of greater transparency through these new tools and the need for principles to govern those who would govern it. (I’ll write more about that later.) This is why I am working on my own suggestions for such a set. (Here is the most recent version of a constantly changing list; I no longer call it a Bill of Rights but instead a set of principles and, again, I ask for your help in framing the discussion).

The first and most fundamental principle is that we have a right to connect. Egypt violated that principle — that human right — today.

We, the people of the internet, the citizens of this eighth continent (as the CTO of the U.S. VA calls our newly discovered world) must stand in support of the disconnected of Egypt. I don’t have the eloquence, passion, and credentials of Barlow, so I will not pretend to be able to respond to the call made by @jwildeboer proposed on Twitter just now: “Will Netizens at publish support statement for ? Or are they too busy talking to Tycoons? cc @JeffJarvis”

Yes, such a statement of support should come from each of us, particularly those of us here in Davos. This is mine. Yours?

A classic of curmudgeonliness

December 10, 2010 by Jeff Jarvis
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Newsweek issues what is either a genius act of subtle satire or a classic case of curmudgeonliness and resistance to technology and change in this slideshow alleging to list the things the internet has killed. It’s hardly worth a response except, in its slide-show simplicity, it neatly encapsulates the hymnbook of the old church. Among its obits:

* Facts: Insert the tired, old argument that “anyone can disseminate false information…. These days, politicians, pundits, lobbyists, and bloggers make so many false statements that more than two dozen fact-checking operations have been launched by news organizations or universities this year in an effort to stem the torrent of untruth.” Well, that sounds nice in alliteration. But it’s bullshit. I argue that we as a connected society have, instead, come to expect facts in an instant. Back in the day, when we didn’t know something, we might vow to look it up, but since that entailed driving to a library, the odds what we would fulfill that pledge were nil. Today, when you want to know something, don’t you reflexively reach for the Internets and the Google? When someone spouts bullshit, don’t you often ask them to show you the link, and if they don’t, you discredit them? This worldview comes from the old journalists’ belief that they were the priests anointed as caretakers of facts. I’d say we’re doing much better with facts on our own.

* Reference books: Only a few slides later, Newsweek acknowledges that we don’t really need those tomes. “Encyclopedias fall behind less-reliable [ah, they couldn’t resist] but more timely competitors, like Wikipedia. And why carry around a dictionary, thesaurus, or atlas when you have Internet access and Google?” Why, indeed?

* Privacy: Oh, crap. I’d argue about this one but it would take time away from writing a book on the topic. I talked to new-Newsweek head Tina Brown about the topic here.

* Letter writing: OK, so what? We now have more means to stay in touch with more people in less time than at any time in history. I’m involved in projects on the future of the Post Office and I say there that the first-class letter will be extinct. And now we have blogs, which are often letters to the world. How wonderful.

* Concentration: I forgot what I was going to say about that.

* The yearbook: That’s just flat-out wrong. My kids have yearbooks. School papers are dying but that’s not because of the internet; it’s because of budget cuts.

* The peep show: That would be more accurate if they said the porno store. Drive around Florida or Vegas or even Manhattan and you’ll find plenty of strip clubs. Just this morning, driving in, I saw a new billboard for Hustler’s. (A true case of mis-targeted advertising, I’ll add.)

They also declared toast video stores, vacations, the 9-to-5 job, Polaroids and other film, the telephone, book, the CD, and….

* Civility: Oh, fuck me.

Now, Newsweek, let me suggest what the internet really kills:

* Government secrecy.

* Opaque markets.

* Central control.

* Power elites.

* Borders.

* Inefficiency.

* Ignorance.

* Newsweek.

Content I will pay for: farts

September 7, 2010 by Jeff Jarvis
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“The internet needs you,” I said to Howard Stern when I called into the show this morning as he was ranting about his contract negotiations with Sirius XM and the possibility that he could take his show and more to the net.

Do it, Howard.

“You made satellite radio,” I told him. “You will make the internet.” For Stern is the one media entity who can absolutely, positively get people to pay online — even me, the alleged opponent of all things paid. Today I pay $12 a month for Stern — more, actually, with my internet account and my wife’s and son’s cars. Stern is talking about charging $5 a month and for that we’d get his radio show plus his TV shows plus much more, even music — and no advertising (“why should I hire a sales force?” he asked).

Sold.

Why the hell would I pay for Howard Stern and not pay for news? Because Howard is unique. News isn’t. There’s no end of potential competition for any news provider and its unique value expires in seconds. Not so Howard. Arianna Huffington was wrong when she says that people will pay for business news and porn. There’s no need to pay for porn because there’s no scarcity of people who will strip and shtupp in front of a webcam. But there’s only one Howard.

I wrote about Howard’s potential internet empire here. Fellow Howard fan Doc Searls wrote about the potential here. Way back in 2005, I wrote an open letter to Sirius’ Mel Karmazin urging him to embrace the internet and see satellite as just as transitional delivery mechanism for his valuable content (ignore the fucking spam links on the post). He didn’t listen. Apparently, he’s not listening to Howard, either.

Fine. Even though I’m a Sirius shareholder and even though his departure would lead to a plummet in the stock price (from 2¢ to 1¢), I want him to leave because he will turn the internet into a credible, sustainable, mass entertainment medium. The delivery’s tricky but that will be fixed quickly as we carry connected devices all the time, everywhere: our phones, computers, TVs, cars, tablets, and devices we can’t imagine will all be connected (if the phone companies don’t fuck it up). The critical last six inches for Stern are not his penis but the means by which his show gets from my phone to my car speakers. But it’ll be cheaper to install a bluetooth transmitter than a Sirius radio. If we millions of Stern fans went to the trouble of subscribing to and installing Sirius, we’ll do it with something even easier that gives us the entire internet all the time.

For Stern, the economics have to be extremely tempting. He should not work for a company. (Howard: Don’t get sucked into signing on with another employer!) He should be the company. He can charge us less than half what we pay now. He can build the infrastructure for next to nothing (as he said today, he can build a studio — big deal). All he needs is a billing mechanism (Paypal?) and a bandwidth provider (Akamai?). He won’t need to market; he already is viral. And he gets to keep the profits. Sweet.

For us, we get to listen to Stern whenever and wherever we want. (Howard: Please let us listen to repeats on our own schedule, on demand!) We pay less and don’t suffer through ads for itchy-ball cures.

For the internet, we get to prove to unique entertainers everywhere that they can cut out the middlemen — networks, studios, all that — and create valuable relationships directly with their fans, getting much richer in the process. And that, in turn, forces entertainers, studios, networks, and cable companies to sell us entertainment a la carte, so I can stop paying for the damned 95% of my channels I never watch.

What’s not to love?

Do it, Howard. Leave old technology. Build the next medium, our medium. To hell with all the old media companies that have screwed you and us all these years. This is real freedom.

Bad things could happen

August 7, 2010 by Jeff Jarvis
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Farhad Manjoo New York Times review of Clay Shirky’s Cognitive Surplus relies on the argument I hear a lot in privacy circles: Bad things could happen.

Shirky imagines what good things people could do if they watched less TV and created more stuff together (2,000 Wikipedias bloom). Manjoo yes-buts him:

Nearly every one of his examples of online collectivism is positive; everyone here seems to be using the Internet to do such good things.

Yet it seems obvious that not everything — and perhaps not even most things — that we produce together online will be as heartwarming as a charity or as valuable as Wikipedia. Other examples of Internet-abetted collaborative endeavors include the “birthers,” Chinese hacker collectives and the worldwide jihadi movement. In this way a “cognitive surplus” is much like a budgetary surplus — having one doesn’t necessarily mean we’ll spend it well. You could give up your time at the TV to do good things or bad; most likely you’ll do both.

Well, yes, Shirky’s examples are of good things because he’s trying to persuade people to consider new behaviors and thus he is arguing their benefits. Buy the punch line, buy the joke. In Manjoo’s school, Jim Fixx should have written running books leading off by arguing that it could give you skin cancer to be outside that much and it will wreck your knees and cars could hit you and dogs could bite you and you look silly in shorts and, oh, yes, you could drop dead of a heart attack. Feel like a run? C’mon! Get up off that couch! Turn off that TV, now!

As he tries to find his critical yes-but, Manjoo is betraying more about his thinking than Shirky’s. His is a case of classical (if you’ll forgive me that but it’s become a cliché if not classical) internet skepticism, which is really anti-populist fear of a loss of centralized control. Manjoo doesn’t trust people — “perhaps even most” people — to use their time wisely. That’s the snobbery I hear against the internet and publicness and what the public does with the internet.

So the next necessary question to such a critic needs to be: Yeah, and…? What is it you expect we should do then? The only logical answer in this context is that Manjoo wants people to keep watching TV in case they would otherwise do bad things (and he gets to define bad). So whether he knows it or not, he becomes Big Brother and TV is the opiate of his masses. Put down that remote control, now. Back away from the mouse. Just sit and watch media. That’s what it’s there for. Hush now.

The cloud crisis

April 18, 2010 by Jeff Jarvis
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The ash cloud is on my mind more than yours, I’ll bet, because I outran it and because I’m concerned for my friends at re:publica and elsewhere who are still trying to get home by tortured combinations of planes, trains, and automobiles (and boats). It’s a big deal, a profound crisis with profound implications.

But I don’t see government, the airline industry, and media responding that way. They can’t see past their noses and the ashes right ahead of them.

In media, I’ve seen next to no stories looking at the long-term impact and implications; that’s what Richard Sambrook — ex BBC newsman — asked for this morning. The best I’ve found is Robert Paterson asking whether the volcano presents a Black Swan event. All over Twitter and blogs I see the big questions being asked; I don’t see media trying to answer them. I fear it’s not built to.

The airlines are, understandably, engulfed in crisis. But I’d like to see them get dispensation from governments, airports, and other airlines to ferry passengers out of other airports: Get yourself to Rome, Lufthansa could say, and we’ll use a jet stuck in America to get you back (and not have to refund your ticket).

Governments are issuing edicts about safety, which is, indeed, their job. And now they’re going to face fights from airlines: KLM is sending up test flights and making noise about the bans being overkill: “We are asking the authorities to really have a good look at the situation, because 100 percent safety does not exist,” the spokesman said (how comforting; how good for their band; KLM becomes the Toyota of the air — safe enough). But others are testing, too, and are finding gunk in jets: see this and this (via Suw) and this (via Rob Paterson again). So government will have its work cut out protecting us.

Meanwhile, we, the people, are taking our fate into our hands — organizing without organizations, as Clay Shirky would see it. @calaisrescue organized a Dunkirk-like flotilla to take people across the Channel until French authorities stopped them. Friend Heather Gold, stuck in Berlin on her way to Finland, is sending people to ride-sharing and couch-sharing services to help. Friend Micah Sifry, who left Berlin for Zurich and next Rome, says Twitter — the people who use Twitter, of course — has been a Godsend, as it was for me, along with the Google Maps that navigated me and my rescuers to Munich. We’re doing the best we can.

What’s failing us, all in all, is our power structures, which aren’t built to think big and fast at the same time. They should be bending rules to get planes and people to where planes can fly to get people home. They need to be thinking about and taking action about the bigger implications for the European and then world economies (more on that later). Companies of all shorts should be standing up to provide relief (Skype and Cisco offering video conferencing; pharmacy companies offering to help the people lost without prescriptions I’m seeing in Twitter; airlines should let us use their sites to book seats and work out the refunds later, promising not to rip us off; bus and train companies moving mountains to move people — instead of ripping them off, as is unfortunately happening in some cases). They are treating this is a short-term, one-time event. It may well not be. This piece in the Times of London explains why and how this could go on for sometime — and repeat itself.