This was the panel that I was speaking on, alongside Bruce Schneier and Danny O’Brien. Obviously I couldn’t take notes myself, but Heath Row did an excellent job:

Bruce
Me
Danny

Thanks Heath!

Although the talks were all streamed live, I’m not sure if the video is going to be archived somewhere. If it is, I’ll blog about it.

Technorati Tags: F2C2008

Research from the book Here Comes Everybody, and one of the stories was about a bus company that sued some cleaning women who car pooled, by saying that they were stealing their business. They petitioned the French gov’t to take way the women’s cars. Same mentality that’s going on in the music industry. Can lead to two mindsets: let’s take advantage of new opportunity; or let’s try to maintain the status quo.

French court threw the case out, but took two years during which these women had to defend themselves.

In Canada, a car pool scheme was shut down by a bus company because they said it was an illegal bus service.

Book tagline: group action just got a lot easier. Only four other media revolutions of this magnitude: the printing press; telegraph and telephone; rise of recordable media; rise of broadcast. Ones that creative large groups didn’t create two-3way communications and the ones that created two-way communications didn’t create large groups.

Now the internet does both. Going to end up in a world where the triple play goes away because there’s no triple. First new communication pattern of the internet is the many-to-many pattern. What we’ve done with this is LOLcats. But freedom is freedom, freedom to be banal as much as to be important.

Three stories that demonstrate the way that the tools don’t set the conditions for use, once you open up group communications you open up the possibility for them to be used for both silly things and important things.

Summer 2006, HSBC recruited a bunch of college students and recent grads, offering free overdraft. That summer HSBC rescinded that offer, giving students 30 days to switch accounts. HSBC knew they had the power, because the students weren’t on campus so couldn’t co-ordinate, and the switching cost is high.

But an annoyed student puts a page up on Facebook, and people started posting detailed explanations of how to change banks and discussing deals. When one person had done the work, everyone could benefit.

Then the students started the online protests, media picked it up. Then a real world protest in front of HSBC, which never happened because HSBC totally caved. PR guys says that they don’t want to make people unhappy, but HSBC didn’t back down because their customers were unhappy, but because they were unhappy and co-ordinated. Up until a few years ago HSBC enjoyed the informational and organisational advantages.

People now can assemble in a system that gives us an ability to bring some organisational solvency against the institutions that previously had an advantage over us.

There was nothing complex in the tech. Most of the effort behind Facebook is scaling, but being able to put a web page up goes back to ’94. It wasn’t the tool, it was a question of social density. If 10% of the students had been online, you wouldn’t have got the leverage that 100% of the students had. This stuff doesn’t get socially interesting until it gets technologically boring.

Question at last talk [at the RSA, as blogged by Kevin], asked what is the most important tool that’s coming up, expecting an answer like Twitter. But the answer is email, because that’s what people are comfortable with. If your mum is going to get involved in something, it’s going to be by using email, it’s the backloaded weight of society using these tools that’s important.

Second story. Flash mobs. Gathering to engage in a moderately surprising behaviour. Flash mobs organised by Bill from New York, as a critique of the braindeadness of hipster culture. That they would set aside a sense of judgement to do something that they thought would be mildly insulting to the bourgeoisie. Flash zombies, etc.

Then happens in Minsk, a Flash mob to go to October Square eating ice cream. But in the photos documenting it there are ones of secret police dragging the people out of the square. Illegal to act in concert in October Square. Lushenko, president of Belarus, stole election in March 06, and banned group activity to forestall protest.

In order to protest that they needed a countervailing action. So decided on flash mobs. Can’t penetrate group because it’s all online. And can’t prevent the group gathering because they don’t gather as a group until last moment.

It’s not just the tool, it’s the environment. In freer environments tools are used to distraction; in oppressed environments they are used for political statements.

Twitter was launched and people said that it was the stupidest thing ever and a sign of the end times. Pro-democracy activists in Cairo using Twitter to keep an eye on people who have been arrested, keeping track of who’s in custody. If people know you are in custody, you might end up there longer, but are less likely to be tortured. Twitter makes it possible to have the group aware. Tools in high-freedom environments are trivial, in low-freedom environments can be profoundly important.

Third story, wished it was in the book. Group in Palermo, 2004, ran around stickering the town saying that if you pay the mafia you lack dignity. Got a lot of media attention.

Then realised that media wasn’t enough. Can only create awareness. Created website to allow businesses to stand up together to defy the mafia. If people did that alone then their businesses were destroyed and people sometimes killed. So far, as they are doing it as a group. and no one has been killed.

The relationship between the mafia and business is the same as Lushenko and the protesters, and HSBC and the students. Power differential. Co-ordination problem solved for customers, students, protesters.

So in Palermo they did a site that allows you to only trade with companies that don’t pay the mafia. Provided a co-ordinating layer for a population that shared a problem.

Thinking is for doing. Similar thing is happening to media. Publishing is for acting. It doesn’t just create shared awareness it creates the possibility of a platform for co-ordination, not just say something but do something. In Belarus, the Live Journal page lead to collective action, but that led to more media, as the protesters weren’t just out there to force the state to react, they were there to document. They brought their cameras, they wanted those photos online, they wanted to use the collective action to create more media to spread the message. Create a complete circle. Nothing says dictator like arresting someone for eating ice-cream.

They’ve done it several time. They went round October Square smiling at each other. There’s a problem for the cops.

Capability for media to be not just a source of information but a site for action is starting to be manifested in ordinary society. That’s a really big change, and it’s something to be optimistic about.

But the big asterisk. The danger to this new freedom to act is principally a regulatory one. If you lived in a society that wanted freedom of speech and freedom of the press, but there were some actions you couldn’t take part in, like libel, and they wanted no chilling effects and no prior restraint. Seems like a list you can only pick two from.

Yet we all live in a world like that, or have until recently, but law isn’t internal to itself. The law grows around the society it’s in. And recently there was one very salient fact about media – it was done by professionals. Power comes form the neck of a bottle. The expense of owning a printing press, having access to spectrum, creates not just an engineering bottle neck, but also created a class of professionals committed to the long term viability of that bottle.

So end up in a game of prisoners’ dilemma. People running TV or news, are involved in a tit for tat relationship with government. They think twice about publishing some things because they are concerned about ability to still publish. Government can identify list of places content can come from.

Teaches at NYU, average age of students has remained the same whilst his age increases at a steady rate of one year per year. Has had to start teaching 80s/90s as ancient history. Have to explain what the media landscape was like. But the sticking point, the thing that they don’t really grok is that prior to the mid-90s, if you have something to say in public you couldn’t. You had to get permission from someone else to say something in public.

The regulatory structures look for a new class of professionals to interact with. Find new people that they want to watch what’s going on, whom they want to rope into the same system they used to have the publishers/broadcasters in.

The domain name system is the thing that looks to the regulators most like the old publishing industry. Can remove domain names to remove access to sites.

So we have to get the engineering right, and have to realise that a degree of centralisation is also where the threat of the reintroduction of this class of regulation is.

Used to be that freedom of speech and freedom of the press were different, and different to freedom of assembly. Now have a medium that provides all three freedoms together. Not just a net win but a huge new win. There are downsides, though. But biggest threat is to prevent the TSE-style ‘we’ll sue you til you behave like the bus commuters you used to be’. Have to watch out for that.

Q: What about future shock. People can’t deal with lots of change happening very quickly. Danger is backlash.

The really interesting example is from about two years ago this month, where 40,000 high school students organised a walk out to protest anti-immigration. Organised in 2 days, using MySpace and SMS. None of the school admin saw it coming. The reaction to that was to lock the doors in school the next day, even locking the classroom doors.

When you move from iterated relationship to one-off transaction is that the punishments become a lot more draconian. Have to raise the threat level so high it puts people off trying. The thing that worries my most is that these one off political event is that the threat of punishment is going to become very extreme. That’s the bit that worries me most.

Q: Ask more about gatekeepers and the media. My understanding is that there were a lot of pamphlets early on in our history. When did that change? It wasn’t how the system was designed.

What we know of as a corporation didn’t exist then as it does now. There were committees of correspondence, discussions, letters going from group to group and they’d discuss them informally. What happened is economies of scale, as long as there are unit costs for individual copies, or there are economies of scales for geographic reach they are going to privilege the largest actors. The link of economies of scale with economy of tension, you can publish your own newspaper but it’s hard to support a vibrant newspaper culture.

Reversion of lots of engagement at lots of levels.

Q: Sophistication of revolt. Any insight into Tibet?

Looking at protests in Leipzig in 91, people banging pots and pans walking round the square. Gov’t didn’t crack down because it didn’t seem worth it, but every week a few more people joined. By the time it got to the thousands, by that Sept, the gov’t said that they were going in, and the next week 10,000 people showed.

Gov’ts learned from that, don’t let any protests happen. the mistake by that gov’t was not to round up the initial 50 and throw them in jail.

In Tibet, that information cascade has accelerated. So new cat/mouse protest game is how quickly can you get big enough to cross a threshold that the whole world is watching. In Burma, everyone’s watching. Getting media out stiffens people’s spines. the acid test will be if there is a significant protest on the opening day of the Olympics in China. There’s more willingness to imagine that because of the visible protest coming out of Tibet. There’s evidence that the protest is happening and people are aware of that.

Shared awareness is the precursor of action. The protest moved from ‘everybody knows’ to ‘everybody knows that everybody knows’.

Q: Domain name issue. Saw that bottleneck coming. It’s more than the gov’t seeking to enforce laws, it’s the IP owners seeking to enforce more than their existing rights. what do you recommend?

The thing that made me saddest was when the idea of just having hundreds of TLDs. There’s no insuperable constraint to having hundreds. Abundance is the natural state of the internet. Any scarcity is at the least a failure of the model in one layer of the stack. The problem right now is that because it’s a name space problem and not an engineering problem, it seems to me that there is, given the way the system is now, there is no good alternative. Plan B ought to be having a bunch of non-US LTDs pointing at your domain that don’t rely on the largesse of the US gov’t. Can’t see that there’s a way, short of a fork of the root name server which is a worse solution than a problem. When a domain name goes away i can’t see a good way or reaching the audience that relied on that domain name.

Regulatory solution is the only solution. Need to keep on to ICANN. If you could go back in time, mid-84 is a good way to go back and say these root name servers are going to be a problem. But it was v. different then.

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Robin Chase
Often think about the past, Anne Frank or Elizabeth Eckford. Are we heroic people?

Climate change. Careful with what science she chooses, but are looking at a possible catastrophic change with massive species loss.

Predictions look at what’s going to happen by 2020 or 2050. Looking at cap and trade, and CO2 reductions, but these aren’t happening any time soon. Alternative fuels, are another one. But if we bought fuel efficient cars we could make a difference now.

We need to act within the next 2-3 years in order to make the difference we need to. Many technological solutions aren’t going to do anything in that time frame. Need to change behaviour now, e.g. by using a carbon tax.

Strong believer in the realm that low cost and ubiquitous data bits are important, need face upload, manipulation and download of information, so can share resources efficiently, group intelligence, expert intelligence.

US CO2 emissions, 29% is the car. People talk about light bulbs, but your residential utility bill at 17%, and lighting is 13% of the 17%. Last thing Americans want to do. Can’t let that car sector linger til last.

Zipcars, parked through cities, for users to use by the hour or day, reservations online. Behaviour change, this is a great example. Because you’re paying for your car by the hour, all your sunk costs and variable costs are lumped together. If your car’s in your driveway you can drive to get ice cream, but if you have to hire the car out then you won’t spend $10 to hire it to get ice cream.

Zipcar people drive about 90% less than people who own a car. Using it selectively an appropriately. This is 100% tech enabled. Could never have done this if it weren’t so easy to book the car.

GoLoco, trying to do for ride sharing what they did for car sharing. Ave American spends 18% of their income on their car. So was coming to Washington, so booked the flight, then booked the car on Zipcar, then put trip on GoLoco, and someone wanted to share the car on that trip. The man who wanted to share the trip turned out to be going to the same conference, to be able to do the navigating etc.

So if you can’t not have a car, at least you can share it with someone else.

Paris. Free bikes, going one way for half an hour with no charge. Are distributed every four blocks. Share networks can transform the way we think about things.

Also looking at congestion charging and road pricing. How do we build out that infrastructure. $500m spent in Stockholm to do a pilot, but didn’t end up with a wireless city. So trying to get US gov’t to make these networks more open.

These are places we can look to get most stuff done. Need to create Infrastructure 2.0, distributed and created by end users.

Financing 2.0, don’t need one person spending billions, but we can each spend a little bit.

Bill St. Arnaud
Two biggest challenges: global warming and broadband infrastructure. If we do not do something now about global warming we will have problem and we need substantive changes.

ICT industry produces same amount of CO2 as the entire aviation industry. ICT energy consumption increasing, Co2 will double by 2010.

Big aspect of internet is datacentres, Facing serious challenges from energy perspective. By 2008% have insufficient power and cooling, by 2010, 50% of data centres will have to relocate due to power shortages.

Not just climate change, but also an energy challenge.

Need two step approach, we need to reduce our own carbon emissions, and we can reduce it to zero. Can use the internet to promote or induce consumers to reduce their own carbon footprints.

A lot of talk about energy efficiency from vendors, but this is wrong. Increased energy efficiency increases usage. Seems counter-intuitive. Last energy crisis legislated for improved efficiency, so if driving is cheaper and homes are cheaper to heat/cool, then people drive more and get bigger homes. End up with more consumption and more energy usage.

These ideas need to be examined closely. If we decrease energy use, consumers buy more.

Need to look at zero carbon, look at now internet and broadband architectures. Not just reduce carbon emissions, but make them zero.

If you have high speed internet you can relocate data centres anywhere in the world, e.g. to Iceland where there is geothermal energy.

Access to power in going to be harder in our cities, and increased demand for green power. Lots of untapped renewable power in remote areas, but no other industries can access that as they need to be close to customers. Data centres can move and use them. Need to get them to remote locations where the power is untapped and cheap.

Initiatives in Canada, as well as Iceland and Lithuania, to do that. In Canada, using renewable energy. Using sites that are unused, and where it’s uneconomical to move the electricity to where it’s needed.

Plans to build small data centres lined by windmills and optical networks. Windmill not connected to electrical grid. Distributed across Nova Scotia as low cost and reliable data centres.

That’s the sort of thinking we need. Project in Canada, next generation internet to reduce global warming. Lots of big companies in a research consortium, to look at future internet architecture that has a zero carbon footprints. Incremental energy efficiency isn’t enough, need a radical rethink. New ways of building wireless networks, infrastructure, etc.

Got to solve this problem for this industry, then maybe we can look at other sectors and help them too.

Worldwide, carbon taxes would probably be the best solution, but it’s a very difficult thing to sell anywhere else in the world. Problem is the gov’t get addicted to them as they have with other ‘sin taxes’. Even if money is supposed to go back into the climate but it will get siphoned off.

Carbon offsets, lots of companies being sent up to sell/trade carbon offsets. Can make money out of it, these companies will audit your reduction of carbon and will sell those offsets to other companies. Getting a bad name, desperately needs regulation.

What about carbon rewards? Helps change behaviour. This is not just sack cloth and ashes, there are good business opportunities too.

Consumers control 65% of the Co2 emissions, 35% directly, 25% influenced. Need to induce consumers to change their behaviour.

Canada also struggling to build out fibre to the home. Can’t make money on selling infrastructure, need to offer services. But voice and TV revenues are declining, as more of those services move to the internet. Many UK companies give away internet, so how do ISPs compete with free? Everyone is struggling. What is the business case? Specially if you have to open u p your network and let competitors in.

Project in Ottawa, providing free fibre and internet, bundling with gas and electric bill, so pay extra on your energy bill but if you reduce your consumption you can get internet for free. Incentive to allow consumers to reduce energy.

Electric and gas resellers are no utilities, very gungho, keen to work on this. Bundling internet with energy isn’t new, but the incentive might make it more attractive.

Ideas like this, rather than imposing taxes but providing rewards to reduce carbon footprint is a different model for reducing global warming.

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Kathy Brown – Verizon
Been trying to find tools to conserve energy and become energy efficient since the 80s. Need to think about how we bring down our energy uses, become more efficient, and yet the use of high speed iTC isn’t part of the discussion. Proposition is that we are not going to reach the efficiencies we want to reach without high speed broadband networks.

In the 90s we talked about the productivity gains we could make through the internet, and those gains were achieved with respect to manufacturing, inventory, and many other things. This technology, the internet, and what was attached to it at the edges has caused us to rethink the way we do things. The growth of broadband is something we need to pay attention to. The kind of penetration, of 53.5 m broadband lines, 49m connect homes, and that’s a significant change to the infrastructure that connects all of us.

The high speed networks helps to save energy. Shouldn’t think just about the energy we use to run the internet.

Global C02 emissions 2% come from tech needed for the internet. Verizon, Cisco, BT, are thinking about how to bring down that two percent. But need to focus on the other 98%, and idea we can affect that by better use of the broadband and the internet.

For every extra kilowatt hour consumed by ICT, US economy’s energy saves has increased ten times, but haven’t optimised it. Discuss efficiencies in our homes, but not about this.

Broadband by itself doesn’t solve the problem, but it can be used as a tool, and need to think about how that could be.

Study at Verizon. Spent our time thinking about major issues confronting customers, and how do we think about the use of broadband. Broadband can decrease our dependence on oil by 11% over next 10 years.

Look at savings through telecommuting, teleconferencing, e-conservaction, e-commerce. Makes a bit difference if we focus on this. e-conservation, e.g. saving plastic by providing download instead of CD.

Telecommuting/Teleconferencing. All tried this, all not done this. All too jerky, and so we walked away from it. Cisco has a product using high-speed lines, and provides a clear picture that overcomes the human problem with conferencing. but an expensive product. Smaller product for retail home.

That fidelity overcomes the problem that people say they just can’t use this stuff. 600m tonnes of CO2 from telecommuting. Saving jet fuel by not travelling to India is the same as cost of year’s teleconferencing twice a week.

What does broadband speed have to do with this? people won’t wait, and if it doesn’t work fast they walk away from it. Net is so much faster. Things people want come faster and easier, e.g. downloading music and books. E.g. CDs in a plastic jewel box with further plastic wrapping, and you have to go to the store and come home. Downloading that music means that none of that happens.

Books, you can download the book with no paper, no travel. But if you have to go to the store to get it, then a 20 mils round trip is 1 gallon of petrol, where as shipping packages 100 miles consumes only 0.1 gallons, because of the aggregation effect of mass shipping.

Savings in carbon, energy efficiency, etc.

These are logical, but there are so much more. The way we consume and produce things is saving energy. Haven’t tried to quantify that or figure out what the right metric is.

You can’t produce a product that’s greener without making its smarter. These notions have to be married. All growth has to be smart, green growth.

Housing. We’ve talked about this forever. Can networked ICT bring down energy usage in homes? Power Authority in NY is experimenting. WWF study reports 10/15% savings in energy using wireless connected thermostat. In a connected home, where the entire home is connected by networked ITC, you can control energy all over the house.

New world of broadband and wireless, as 4G comes, more machine-to-machine will happen, so can achieve more efficiencies.

Smart transportation. To be more fuel efficient, UPS used a GPS technology to help its drivers never to make a left turn (right turn in the UK!). Company shaved 28.5 million miles off it’s route, saving 3m gallons of petrol, reduced Co2 by 31, tons. used GPS and mapping, which allowed drivers to map a route where they don’t make a left-hand turn.

Dash – which send data to traffic behind to help them avoid traffic jams. Location, mapping, directions, brings the powerless of the net to car navigation. If it works it’ll be cool and solve part of our energy problems.

In Indiana, new network and being used to become more energy efficient. Community brings down its energy usage, can start scaling what a networked world can look like. About smart heating and cooling, energy efficient appliances.

Speed matters – the faster these networks are the more efficient they are and the more efficient they make human beings, but also them ore efficient they make machine to machine connectivity.

Verizon. Lifecycle management, recycling equipment, paperless billing reduced paper use by 400 tons of carbon, video conferencing, hybrid cars and vans make up 49% of fleet, and experimenting with fuel cells in central offices.

Broadband can play a greater role in facilitating energy efficiency. Need public policies to speed ubiquitous deployment; dev of innovative applications at community level which promote efficient behaviours; business leadership through legislation like cap-and-trade.

Kevin Moss – BT
Climate change is affecting BT business now, e.g. where to put data centres when there’s increased flooding. South coast of the UK could end up with a climate like the Med by middle of this century, which will have impact on things like cooling needs.

Globescan maps top national problem in each country – for Canada, UK, Australia, they think environment is key.

Lots of research on this. There are positive and negative effects. Licence to talk about the positive depends on doing something about the negative.

BT takes a direct approach, consumes 0.7% of all UK’s energy. Then addresses their products’ lifecycle; enabled reductions, then influencing employees.

Started measuring carbon footprint in 90s. 1996 it was 1.6m tonnes of Co2, not it’s down to 0.6m tonnes. Want to reduce to 0.3m by 2016. But have got the low hanging fruits and now need to make some significant and substantive changes.

Changing business processes, using energy efficient devices, and use energy from renewable sources.

Examples: 2004, signed biggest green contract in the world for energy, renewed in 2007. A lot of energy consumed in data centre is to cool the equipment, which is itself wasting energy as heat. They cool just the back of the server and not the whole room, using curtains to isolate racks.

Vendors specify operating temp, so when they buy new equipment they raised the operating temp that they were looking for, so that resulted in less cooling required. Also using solar energy for new office in California data centre.

When a product goes to a customer, such as broadband, one problem was that they were enabling people to run computers, for e.g., more of the time.

They are making products more environmentally friendly, e.g. phones which switch off power supply when battery is charged. Move from a paradigm of ‘always on’ equipment, to always available when we want it. In business, there’s a lot of requirement still to keep computers on overnight because of software patching etc., but need to work harder to always available.

Work with customers to help them understand their own data centres and how they can save energy. Came from having done it themselves.

Energy Insight’s top 10 prediction for 07., and five of them are about IT, one important one is the intelligent energy grid, as internet can make connection between demand side and supply side.

Impact Bt can have on the world around them to inform employees and public. Teenager game, Intrigue 2016, based around teaching about Stern report. Living Lightly, people can add pledges to site of what they are going to do. And internally, they have a ‘carbon club’ to encourage savings.

Finally, affecting government. In last year, have struggled to continue reduction, so are getting involved in influencing policy in this area. After Stern Report came out, an industry response came out in support of findings, and if anything said gov’t needs to do more, quicker, with a predictable path of regulation. Proposal regarding electricity labelling. So engaged in policy where previously they weren’t.

Bas Boorsma – Cisco
Was a slightly underemployed blogger, was enjoying his job. But 14 months ago, got a call offering him to work on using ICT to reduce carbon emissions. Programme to partner with cities to work with IT to create new products, services, proof of concepts, to create a more sustainable way of living, working, learning, transport. Five year commitment.

Public/private partnership. Three cities: San Francisco, Amsterdam, Seoul. Each has a lot of IT companies. Each ready to engage. Each has a lot of broadband, which is the basis for these solutions.

Not called sustainable urban dev, but connected urban dev, as the connected aspect is important.

Activists trying to ensure cities become green, and others making cities connected, so need to be green and connected. IT can do 10x more to save energy than it takes energy to run.

Change processes, change patterns of transport, education, healthcare, commerce, all together. Bring the information to the user not the user to the information. We don’t do this – people travel to work, and then you email lots of other places, which totally doesn’t make sense. Replace ‘information’ with ‘water’ it’s more visible. Have the technology to change all this, it’s not an opportunity it’s a necessity.

Talking to other cities, and are specialising in one particular area so their findings can be shared with other cities. Amsterdam focuses on smart work; SF on green smart connected bus; other cities are rethinking entire urban design all together; Lisbon is working on smart energy grids.

Amsterdam is one of the most congested regions in Europe. Some predictions say traffic in Amsterdam will grind to a halt in 2/3 years. Sense of urgency in policy makers, and want to know what they can do for connected urban development. Road pricing is an issue in the minds of policy makers around the world, some people like it, some hate it. Road pricing becomes an imperative solution, but if you get it out there you also have to think about creating sufficient alternatives. Alternative of public transport is a myth, it won’t work. So need to look at different means, but need to ensure that citizens have information available on all options.

E-work. People regularly associate it with working from home, which is perfect and much more economic. Get to mix private life and work. But problems: disturbances from family and children. And if everyone were to stay at home, there would be another consequence which is people put up their thermostats at home, so have less efficient energy use there. Home environment is not a very professional environment, can’t do meetings there.

So instead create a smart work centre environment, which is close to where people live, but which provides a large packet of services. Smart Work Centre, “integrated service concept”, flexible work stations, conference rooms, child day care, restaurants, telepresence facilities etc.

What’s nice about telepresence is that it’s really new. Can insert into larger Amsterdam region because there’s already huge fibre deployment. Putting in telepresence facilities in all smart work centres, takes up 20mbps. Also looking at residential versions.

Cisco have 190 telepresence facilities worldwide, and saved $75 m in avoided travel, especially short-haul flights.

Getting pilot work centre required a lot of collaboration and work, and things are working and ready to open up.

Broadband is essential, high bandwidth and symmetry is essential to facilitate smart work environments. Can scale into home environments too. Forging required network capacity that allows for smart buildings, smart energy grids, smart urban transport systems and smart citizens.

Are we in time with this? May never know.

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John Horrigan
Pew Internet Project. Do random digit dial telephone surveys of adults 18+.

Large variety of internet users, and distribution interesting: Lots of American the internet is peripheral to their lives. Even getting broadband deployment and infrastructure right, there are a lot of restrictions on adoption. There is friction.

Evolution of internet users over last two years. Vision of high speed internet from mid-90s very different to the way that it actually has developed. Pew picked up early many-to-many developments, e.g. communities came to light in 2000 survey. In 2004 was first time they saw more broadband than users at home. Doesn’t mean that the majority of Americans had broadband, just a majority within the population of home internet users.

As broadband started to gain a foothold, started to see not just many-to-many communication and participation. Started to see internet users blog, user their voice in a richer way, participate in the political sphere through blogging, support groups for medical problems, people sharing information online as a way to participate in their healthcare decisions.

As broadband spreads, always on is overlaid with always present. People willing to experiment with new applications, even on dial-up.

Developed a typology of different types of users, built around three dimensions of people’s relationship to tech: gadgets; actions; attitudes. 20% of the population like their tech for the productivity gains. At the other side of the fence, 50% of the population see ITCs as peripheral, people who have cell phones or internet connection but they are occasional users and they run into problems. Big on is usability, have problems with devices, have problems with dial-up and are worried about cost of switching to broadband.

They don’t find the internet that relevant to their lives, it’s peripheral to them, they don’t see relevant content or material on the internet. Internet is in the build-out phase, installing capabilities deeply in a society, and that’s the stage where institutions adapt to new realities. E.g. healthcare companies not just pushing info out but also monitoring.

Other element of the user experience is broadband, and there is a dearth of information on the availability and quality of broadband.

Drew Clark
BroadbandCensus.com. Trying to track and publish information about availability, quality and pricing about broadband in the US. Partnered with Pew. The site invites people to type in their zipcode, and you get the information as its available. So government doesn’t release how many broadband operators in an area so they are releasing that information for them.

Are identifying providers in an area, rating their speeds, service etc. There are lots of speed tests out there, and some other organisations trying to track the availability in particular states, which is very positive. But currently there’s not enough information about these services out there. As more people find out about the true state of broadband out there, they can make better decisions and competition will improve.

Using the NDT speed tests, and are working with the test providers to ensure that tests are served immediately when users visit the site.

Trying to create a pool of data that’s useful for many different groups of people. Users. Policy makers at federal and state level. Policy makers are an important group to reach out to, and are trying to increase number of states they are working with.

Data mapped on to zip code.

Need people to get involved, to take the test and promote the site, and get involved in their committee(s).

Technorati Tags: F2C2008

Alec Ross, Donna Edwards, Matt Stoller, moderated by Micah Sifry

Mica Sifry
We are living in amazing times, we have a new people-to-people system emerging, and all the things that have hit the commercial arena are now hitting the political arena. Want to look at how we can change governance, rather than how to change campaigns.

Sunlight Foundation starting new project, PublicMarkup.org, to let people on the web comment on legislation.

Alec Ross
Before we talk about the specifics of Obama’s proposals for transparency in government, we’ve seen candidates before propose things, and what’s more important than that is the attitude and mindset of the campaign. Obama hasn’t been in gov’t for decades and feels a close link to people outside the beltway, and knows that they are the ones that have valuable insight. Obama is fluent in technology but not a coder. What’s compelling for him is not tech, but what it can do. He didn’t start his campaign with an organisation or apparatus, nothing approaching the Clinton campaign, so had to figure out how to organise campaign very quickly. Had to figure out how to organise the reservoir of goodwill that was out there. Did it using tech.

Big chances Obama too last year where he got power by giving up power; used his website not just as a way to raise money from small donors but also as a way or organising the campaign. 100,000 offline events held because of stuff organised online. Principles around tech-based empowerment and openness have helped draw peop[le who are not normally part of the process into the process.

Obama gets it, he cares. Getting to the specifics, that’s where he’s been most bold. He has published detailed proposals which are at the bleeding edge of what’s acceptible in Washington. E.g. he said let’s take all government data and make it available in machin readable universially accessible format, so anyone can go and get it.

If you want to find out what pollutants are in your environment, Obama says if that content lives in Dept of Energy, should put it on the web, so you can put in your zip code and find out about your community. Level fo strust that he thinks gov’t needs to have so that citizens with information can make decisions in their own interest.

Also says, let’s take the communications from Congress and make it available to the public. A telecoms lobbyist, speculation at her relationship with McCain, you can assertain that what did happen that McCain sent letters to the five memebers of the FCC and he got one of her clients to get a media diversity waiver. So it’s not about the bheaviour, but let’s make it public and let the public make up their own minds. Let peopel organise around tissues as they see fit.

Detailed proposals for this. If Barack Obama president, there are a series of specific principles and ideas, lot of chattering about the “good luck implementing this stuff”. But that is a place where citizens themselves can take action.

Micah: Which is the hardest proposal?

Alec: Taking official communications between officials and making them public. The people who’s mail would be reaad would have to make that legislation. There’ll be opposition. Secondly making gov’t data available will be resisted over the cost.

Proposal for a government CTO. You can’t have a company in the US an not have a CTO. Our federal go\vt does not have a CTO so there are very basic things that aren’t happening, you get silos.

E.g. clean tech programmes that involved the Dept of Energy, Dept of Labour, Office for Sci and Tech Policy, there are no co-ordinating entities. Think about technology an FCC spectrum auction failed because gov’t didn’t play a co-ordinating role. People took for granted that there’d be leadership in the federal gov’t, but there’s no one to co-ordinate. So trying to create a level of organisation in the gov’t that doesn’t exist.

Matt Stoller: Am a blogger. Can we open up government is a question we’re addressing. Yes, we can, and it is happening. Question is what are the contours of what is happening. Doc Searls said, Can you fix congress the way you fix a dog? Congress is us, so if you’re angry at congress, how do we take responsibility to change that? That’s what we’re seeing over the last ten years or so. but we haven’t connected the organs of power to the public.

One blog encountered in 2005 was a blog in New Jersey, about very local issues. Was an argument about local swimming pool, and it being expensive because there were too many life guards, so parents argued with each other. Then the life guards came into the discussion and got offended. And that changed the dialogue, as the life guards had to defend what they do and parents had to understand what was going on. Took something implicit and made it explicit.

Legislation 2.0, to have a dialogue hosted by Senator Durban. Got an exciting discussion about internet policy, but it went nowhere. Didn’t turn into anything, didn’t generate any political mtion. Failed to connect that with political power; difficult to connect with real political power.

How do we create the bridging pieces.

Donna Edwards has had a long career in public advocacy. In early 90s working to lower prescription drug prices. Democrats didn’t want this in the bill, so Donna went to Seattle to editorialise against Senator Foley til he changed his mind. That’s a tough thing to do, but shows sympathy.

Donna Edwards: From a campaign perspective we really need to tool up what we are doing. Sometimes people don’t even know there’s an election on. Need to raise the discussion from the mire that it’s in. But step back from technology. Used to be a systems engineer for Lockheed working on Nasa programme. Things have changed a lot since then, but not all of our communities have been able to be a part of that change.

Where I live I have dial-up internet. Was at home last night, needed to work online, but couldn’t get on. Complete disaster. Reason I have dial-up is because Verizon says that they provide ‘broadband’,which is sort of true, except if you live 200 years away from where it’s routed. So really, they don’t provide service. Children in the community who maybe don’t have access to a computer at home, and who have to do research to keep up with their classes, have to go to the library to keep up with their coursework, etc. Think about many of our most vulnerable communities who lack the ability
to access the jobs and opportunities in the 21 century. This is shameful.

Look around the room, and you all look amazing, but you don’t look like those communities. If we leave out those people, they will just slip further and further behind.

For the campaign, we can use the internet to communicate, and it was amazingly helpful. But at the same time, some folks just need a bit of paper because they can’t get online. It seems extraordinary to be having this conversation now, but it’s reality. We were operating in two worlds, 21st C and 20th C, and that alone poses tremendous challenges.

Not at time in public policy anymore where we can hope that the tech community, the service providers, will do the right thing because it’s the right thing to do. Those of us who can afford it and have capacity will have access, and those who can’t won’t because it’s not efficient for some companies to reach out to vulnerable communities.

When I go into congress, I’m not thinking about a tech policy for us, but how do we have a tech policy that works for our most vulnerable communities.

In the campaign, it was fun to use blogs, and it was fascinating. Did something on the Washington Post blog, and took a long time to answer a question and the WaPo chap chastised her for thinking for a long time about a question. Not sure that she wants to read everyone’s emails, but she does want to see policy stuff come out, meeting results. Legislators need to have contact with the community.

Importance of having open access to the internet. Want to decide for ourselves what is useful or appropriate, and don’t want someone else sorting through it for me. Worries about policies that encourage gatekeepers. We’ve had too many gatekeepers, and vibrancy of the internet means limiting the gatekeepers, and to trust that we are pretty smart people who can figure out a lot of things for ourselves.

Jim Baller
Recently wrote an article evaluating positions of candidates on broadband policy issues. All three have very positive positions on this. Obama has the most extensive and a complete statement of his principles on his website; Clinton in the middle; McCain hasn’t said much but what he has said is revealing.

McCain and John Chambers (Cisco CEO), were asked what Congress could do to improve innovation. Chambers said they need to cut the rhetoric, make broadband a priority in the US, establish a national broadband plan, change FCC definitions and measurement, US is falling behind and will continue to do so. McCain said “I agree with John.”

McCain was also an early and strong supporter of community broadband. Introduced legislation with Sen. Frank Lautenberg to prevent states from erecting barriers to public entry.

(Updated after clarification email from Jim which filled in the bits I’d missed when transcribing. Thanks Jim!)

Matt
Legislation 2.0, they wanted to continue the discussion on Red State, and it was a good decision, was a high quality discussion about broadband strategy. Republican activists were saying that gov’t investment made sense. Tremendous opportunity to have a bipartisan discussion on broadband. Not enough enough faith in the system, but there is something close to a national consensus.

Micah
Regarding transparency, there’s a strange coalition. FCC tried to mandate what bloggers could say about politics, and the bloggers rose up and swatted that down. Was an effort to put together a database of all gov’t contracts, and bloggers got together to find out who was blocking it and got the block lifted.

Trust is a big issue. Transparency can breed trust. Learnt that from software. Donna, you said you wanted to get rid of gatekeepers, and trust the people more, and the artificial gatekeepers are losing their jobs, yet you also said you weren’t so sure you wanted to put all this information out there. Question is, where do you draw the line? If you’re not doing it, it will be done to you, as we’re all watching, yet I’m sympathetic, sharing all the information about what you’re doing is giving your opponents an avenue to attack you. You’ve said you’re going to keep blogging, so where do you come down on this.

Donna: There’s a huge difference for an elected official publishing their schedule, and they should be doing that. Recently I was in Indianapolis, meeting with legislators, and a guy came up and introduced himself a lobbyist form the nuclear power industry, and said would like to give her campaign money. But she turned him down, if you want to have a meeting then can do that. He said they wanted to help, but she rejected it. But he didn’t understand why she didn’t want his money.

So if I put on “I met with a lobbyist with the nuclear industry”, you’d see that they didn’t give a campaign contribution.

What I means about email communications, I do not think that completely effective communications are made by email and it’s not a window into policy making. Value of seeing that isn’t there. Schedules, legislation, that’s very important for public engagement. But want the public engagement to have meaning and not be just about voyeurism.

Micah: What can we do about mass deliberation on a bill or policy. We delegate that and the process, most people would agree, is broken. So what would you do that would be different? The Obama campaign has mentioned wikis and blogs and other tools. But what would that look like in practice.

Alec: Campaigns can be more efficient and effective when online. But sometimes, tech tools are ways of keeping dialogue in a pen, and checking the box. But Obama, they are developing the policy and are drawing good ideas from the discussion. All depends on the attitude. Are you using them to really engage, or just checking a box. Not sure how to use them in government. It’s a question of attitude, not what’s the best wiki.

Donna: I’ve been connected with technology for 30 years, and technology is a tool, it’s not a substitute for an engagement. Are we a democracy or a republic? People are very distrustful of government and those they’ve elected, and rightly so. As a result, some of us are thinking of ways we can engage these tools because we just don’t trust the people we elect to be deliberative or helpful. Not sure it’s in our political or democratic best interest to foster that distrust.

Spend a lot of time in the community and talking to people, trying to figure out how to use technology to enable discussions and engagement. How can we engage with people who are otherwise very busy, but tech isn’t a substitute, and I fear we’re going down that track.

Matt: What’s left out of this discussion is power. There’s a reason that white guys are the ones to talk about this, and it has to do with power. Everyone in this room is empowered, I have the luxury to experiment with tools and tech. What gets left out is our obligation as the most empowered citizens in the most empowered country in the world. How are we going to devolve power to those who don’t have it. It’s not just about access, it’s about everything, literacy, nutrition, about an economy where 40% of the population have no credit. This all relates fundamentally to democracy. How do we change that.

Alec: Was a proposal made by Clinton, when she issued her national broadband policy, she created America Connects, and Public Knowledge did a piece examining the group behind it. And Clinton actually removed all references to it, and completely changed her broadband campaign. Not a gotcha, but this is a case where one person who had no power, took the time to put a very thoughtful investigative piece, and within two weeks it affected a candidates policy.

People have become very cynical about “If I engage, will it matter”? Tech has made it easier for people who aren’t in seats of power to exert power and make it matter.

Technorati Tags: F2C2008