Rethinking data vs. delivery

I've been paying attention to Canadian news lately for a few reasons--among them the fact that Dennis & I will likely be vacationing there again this summer, but also because the recent skirmishing over broadband capping will--to some extent--set the tone for their US counterparts.

Tabatha Southey's UBB? Oh, it stands for Unbelievable Business Baloney in the Feb 5th Globe and Mail, IMO, puts things in proper perspective--particularly the actual cost of delivering a gigabyte of broadband data (perhaps ten cents, compared to the $1 to $5 charged by some Canadian ISPs). Certainly, businesses have to make a reasonable profit. But up to 490%--while simultaneously (and ham-fistedly) dictating the business models of downstream players? Throw in the fact that the telecom/ISP industry is nothing less than an oligopoly--one colluding to shut out content-only competitors like Netflix?

Unacceptable. Particularly in light of the fact that the same industry is due to receive a tremendous bargain when the government opens up new swaths of the wireless spectrum. It's loonies to long-johns that false scarcities will be manufactured to multiply profits even further.

Thus I'm overjoyed that average Canadians had the great, good sense to call B.S. and raise a ruckus earlier this year. If nothing else, it served as the proverbial warning shot over the bow--with luck, one heard across the border.

But what I find particularly interesting--albeit in an orthogonal way--about the whole business is how it highlights the way the human mind conflates data and media: How quickly some associations can be formed, and--conversely--how difficult they can be to break. In a sense, we're seeing the echoes of how our European ancestors perceived the elaborately decorated medieval holy books or the fantastically jeweled reliquaries of of otherwise humble saints. (In the worst case scenario, we're thinking in terms of our monastery-sacking ancestors.)

I thought Ms Southey boiled it down nicely:

Applying supply-and-demand logic to this problem confuses people because information is infinite. Fear not, Canada, we’re not about to run out of this thing you call Internet. Internet’s not something you can save for your retirement. There are no children toiling away in data mines. There are no data slag heaps in Kentucky. We can consume data without guilt. It’s more like unrealized potential. It’s best to think of it this way: Whenever you watch a panda roll down a hill on YouTube, a billion pixels are set free.

I suppose that medium-to-content association is also why some people don't consider copying movies and music from friends "stealing." When you don't have the DVD/CD in hand, it's just invisible bytes on a hard drive you can't (normally) see anyway.

Or why some advocates of the DMCA vociferously opposed the legality of backup copies. I wish I could remember which politician made the analogy that ran something like "If I go to Pottery Barn and buy a plate and I drop it, I don't expect them to give me a new one for free."

It's entirely possible that my memory loss was due to my forehead repeatedly banging against the nearest sturdy object. Because the bottom line is that the content is what you're paying for (although I do consider liner notes a huge bonus). The medium is normally dictated by the market's lowest common denominator definition of "convenience"--wax cylinders, 33-/45-/77-rpm vinyl, 8-track, cassette, CD, hard drive, streaming and whatever's waiting for us down the pike.

Or let's put it another way. Assuming the sound quality is more or less apples-to-apples, you you place a different value on a conversation with your best friend when it's over your landline vs. on your cellphone or via Skype? In that situation, even the question of "convenience" is largely dependent on time of day or day of week. Given the overlap between landline, mobile and internet providers, is there truly a significant difference in actual cost?

That's a valid question. Which, to me, means that the linkage of message to medium is itself a valid thing to question. Always. Starting sooner than later. Simply because hardware drops in cost and increases in power for the major telecom players just like it does for us. Similarly, software is increasingly free--Android phones and *NIX servers being cases in point. Just like it is for us. And let's not forget how the (particularly spendy) human dimension of delivering bytes is being offshored to lower-cost environments. Unfortunately, that doesn't work for us. Only think what we would be charged if we tried dialing Hyderabad or Manila on our own dime--me, I think a double-standard's clearly at work here.

In short, technology is moving too quickly and too globally to allow an oligopoly to drag either present or future down with false scarcities. But it would be much worse if we colluded with the gatekeepers of the internet by thinking that the delivery mechanism is more valuable than the payload.

Frivolous Friday, 03.25.2011: A four-legged lesson in humanity

Dennis didn't want to go out to dinner for his birthday, so it was an even more leisurely meal than most. Not that I was keeping an eye on the clock, mind you. I know this is true because Mister Kitty had not one, but two full post-dinner snuggles on the lap of his hoomin--a.k.a. the Birthday Boy.

Dennis looked down at the self-satisfied-looking creature shedding contentedly on his sweatpants and wondered aloud whether the ritual was merely another roundabout way of getting at more food. (Five-plus years on, the stray who appeared in our front yard still hasn't figured out that his next meal is more or less a given.) Presumably, over centuries, some cats have seen the benefit in turning from a feral hunter existence to living by cultivating certain understandings with two-leggers.

I mused aloud that perhaps the human half of such "understandings" might be a bit more self-serving than we'd like to admit. In an urban lifestyle where catching a mouse is an extremely rare diversion, rather than quotidian duty, cats perhaps inadvertently cater to a human pattern best left centuries behind. "Cats are courtiers," I declared.

"But what about dogs?" countered Dennis. "No," I decided after a few moments' thought. "Cats are aristocrats. The third or fourth sons of the family who have to make their fortune elsewhere. As poets, scholars, soldiers--courtiers. You know, to the manner born. Because we Lords and Ladies of the Manor have to surround ourselves with fellow aristocrats." Just as we cultivate the illusion of felines sharing "hoomin" norms via LOLcaptions, cartoons and what-not.

Kind of sad to find such tendencies thriving in a country that pitched monarchy overboard two centuries and change ago. Tabby cat hair on navy blue sweatpants aside, I suppose it's a harmless enough "legacy" of Western history. As long as it stays with the four-legged, of course.

Curating the Cult of the Self

For the past couple weeks, Deaf Ear Record has obligingly humored my private nostalgia-fest by finding the CD versions of stuff that's been languishing in one of those briefcase-style cassette holders. Perhaps I'm not quite self-aware enough to know quite how banal and haphazard my musical tastes are, but I am grateful to T. and the gang for not batting an eyelash. (I joked on Facebook that a GenX vs. GenY smack-down was averted because I didn't have to call anybody "Indie McHipsterpants" for snarking at my choices.)

And speaking of Facebook, I've tripped over an odd parallel in reaching back into the past to curate one's present reality--at least when one's beyond a certain age. Case in point: Best friend H. introduced me to the Moody Blues compilation that's quietly playing counterpoint to the rain as I write. The tape deck munched my copy in the early 90s, so this is my first full listen-through in nearly twenty years. A few operatic flourishes get up my nose these days, but I have yet to facepalm.

Pair that thought with the way the can sometimes come to find you on social media (or is so much easier to find if you go looking for it) simply because of the other connections. Case in point: I saw the brother of J. (who was--in hindsight--the truest of my friends from middle school) friend up my friend from high school debate/Forensics, and within a couple of minutes had a friend request out to J. A couple days more brought a re-connection...and eventually more requests to re-connect by friends more loosely associated back in the day. As with music, past and present come to some sort of terms--but remain largely at our fingertips.

But with the immediacy also comes an unprecedented ability to filter. To uncheck the weaker songs cassettes made it too annoying to fast-forward through. To minimize the downside of friends by hiding the drunken/whiny/obnoxious/politically-incorrect posts from my feed as people never could while say, hanging out at a house party.

Think of how much attention we First World primates lavish upon the reality brought to us by gadgets whose data lives elsewhere, largely powered by software that makes it stupid-easy to cater to our own preferences. Perhaps, rather than grouching about the concept of "curated computing" at the hands of Steve Jobs, I might have done better to look in the mirror earlier to wonder how much curating ability is necessary to make shrines to ourselves of these little screens--and the "likes" and retweets and playlists and so forth they feed us.

Overall, I don't worry about it all that much--I've just a little too much faith in human beings for that. Not only their capacity to mash up and caption when they aren't creating something entirely new. But also their tendency to set those creations loose on the interwebs. Which I hope means that the digital shut-ins will always be outnumbered by those willing to leave in their wake the online equivalent of. say, an ice-sculpture, or flash mob performance in Grand Central Station, or bit of first-hand living history for children visiting a museum, or . . .

Certainly, we can curate our interactions in Web 2.0. But sending our handiwork out to be critiqued is another matter. That requires generosity of time and talent as well as the magnanimity to take feedback that can't be curated.

Frivolous Friday, 03.18.2011: The Gilbert & Sullivan edition

'Spesh'ly for Koch Industries and their ilk. To ape Eben Brooks, I apologize to W.S. Gilbert. But not very much. (All the same, I live in hope that he'd at least appreciate the oh-so-very-sincere sentiment behind the satire.)

I am the very model of a modern multi-national
With business rationale which, frankly, borders on irrational.
When payroll I can't evicerate thru' outsourcing overseas
Stateside wages I'll deflate by lobbying for H1-Bs.
Likewise, my tax-burden I have arranged to shift off-shore
While blaming public debt on both the unions and the poor,
Deploring unwashed masses who won't get off their duffs,
To summon enough gumption to work two jobs to afford my stuff.

I far prefer an ad-blitz to cultivating word-of-mouth
And racing to the bottom with my moral compass pointed south,
But still in matters mercantile, fiscal and fi-nan-ci-al
I am the very model of a modern multinational!

Public oversight I'll block with Apocalypic admonition
(Unless it's regulation I'm assured will quash my competition).
Florid "Letters to the Editor" I can sock-puppet by the ream,
Wealth redistributing I abhor--unless, of course, it flows upstream.
Failing that, I'll bankroll election of compliant politicians--
Whose procedural chicanery will subvert opposition--
While carpet-bombing airwaves with part-truths and full-on lies
'Til absorbed are all the social costs--and the profits privatized.

My satraps gamely game my books as Dukes of robber-barons,
Their bonus earning on the backs of cube-serfs in faux-Aerons.
But still in matters mercantile, fiscal and fi-nan-ci-al
I am the very model of a modern multinational!

When I admit that fleas are caught from dogs I lie down with,
And stop mistaking Ms. Ayn Rand for Jesus Christ or Adam Smith,
When I stop paying CEOs the GDPs of nation-states
And renounce correlations of my tax cuts to employment rates,
When I stop acting though this planet's mine to plunder,
And attonement make for each dollar-goggled blunder--
In short, when my trickle-down is not only warm and yellow,
You'll say this global capitalist's a sugar-daddy fellow.

'Til then I'll live the fiction that is corp'rate personhood
My private interest rephrasing in cant terms of Public Good.
But still in matters mercantile, fiscal and fi-nan-ci-al
I am the very model of a modern multinational!

Recessionary inflation

The car-doctors down at Ballweg's again pronounced my bordering-on-retro Tercel in admirable shape, mileage and salted roads notwithstanding. One outstanding concern is the oil pan gasket "sweating" a bit of oil. One of the few truly practical life lessons I can claim is this: You know you've found a good auto shop when they try to talk you out of, rather into repairs. And it seems that the change in ownership (i.e. Steve Low's to Ballweg's) hasn't changed in that respect.

But I have to admit to wiping a smile off my face when the service desk dude who rang up the bill skimmed through the summary of work done, referring to the person who handled the work order as, "A.--who was your advisor today..."

"Advisor"? Really?!

Now. I'm probably bordering on hypocritical here, simply because my second job in college (not counting work-study) was at an ever-so-slightly upscale women's clothing store. At minimum wage (plus the discount on the clothing I was supposed to buy from the store for the privilege of coming into work), I held the title of "Fashion Consultant." Anyone who knows me--and my jeans-and-baggy-cargigan dress sense--should quite rightly be howling with laughter at the irony.

I'll grant you, the "title inflation" phenomenon is not exclusive to recessionary economies. Witness, for instance, how any fool capable of picking the correct Dreamweaver menu options in the late 1990s qualified for a business card reading "Web Programmer." But--based on my perceptions from the double-whammy unemployment/inflation deathtrap of the early '80s onward--it seems to me that title inflation is a form of compensation for jobs that would normally be considered beneath the average sitcom character. You know, that alternate universe in which baristas can afford Manhattan apartments. That sort of thing.

But the problem is that inflation--in titles as in money--has diminishing returns. And the only saving grace of a bubble is that its popping restores--however temporarily--an equilibrium. At least until some skanky wanker decides to cut in line and starts gaming the system and other fools follow suit. Sigh.

Yet, to me, it all begs the question of why "Sanitary Engineers" are more societally correct than "Garbage Collectors." ('Course, as a Java partisan, I can totally get behind the value-add of garbage collection, but that's a whole 'nuther story...) Imagine how quickly life would become noxious if garbage collection stopped or the sewers were allowed to back up--how quickly we'd open our wallets to clear the stench from the apartment or house. Imagine the office (and parental) strife when day-care providers shut their doors...or home care providers stopped knocking on ours.

In the time capsule that is Louisa May Alcott's Little Women, she has (Miss) Kate Vaughn stand in for the British classism that is foil to (morally superior) American democratic sensibilities:

Miss Kate strolled away, adding to herself, with a shrug, "I didn't come here to chaperone a governess, though she is young and pretty. What odd people these Yankees are; I'm afraid Laurie will be quite spoilt among them."

"I forgot that English people turn up their noses at governesses, and don't treat them as we do," said Meg, looking after the retreating figure with an annoyed expression.

"Tutors, also, have a rather hard time of it there, as I know to my sorrow. There's no place like America for us workers, Miss Margaret;" And Mr. Brooke looked so contented and cheerful, that Meg was ashamed to lament her hard lot.

"I'm glad I live in it, then. I don't like my work, but I get a good deal of satisfaction out of it after all, so I won't complain; I only wish I liked teaching as you do."

So the question is: Have we become the enemy--i.e. the Victorian elite whose servitors were expected to be velvet-footed, when not completely invisible?

Because, no matter how (cough!) "menial" (cough!) the job may be considered, the fact remains that we all--rich or poor, potentate or peon--have exactly 168 hours in a week---112 if you get your 8 hours of shut-eye. Even the increasingly Disney-esque fiction of the 40 hour workweek eats nearly a quarter of the grand total, and over a third of a human being's waking hours.

You can't claim to respect the sanctity of life on principle and auto-magically suspend that valuation in the face of The Suits' solemn invocations of "hard choices" in the name of "shareholder value." Nuh-uh. Not while I'm within earshot, anyway.

All of which makes me sorry that I didn't actually follow up yesterday's reference to "your advisor" with a dewy-eyed, "Oh, you mean the technician?" Because, frankly, "advisor," in my mind, implies self-interest, manipulation, puppeteering: Rasputin. Nostradamus. Karl Rove. Catherine dei Medici. Cardinal Richelieu...or even Wolsey, for pity's sake. Umm, thanks, but I just want someone to tell me which car-part is borked...and to put a not-borked one in. Trust me, I'll respect technical chops that a lot more than the eminence grise pretensions...most especially from someone almost young enough to be my child.

No post tonight

A house-type project has sprung up, one that I can pretty much guarantee will chew up the evening. (Hopefully, it'll only be this evening.) Torturing the shade of W.S. Gilbert--and possibly my gentle reader's poetic sensibilities besides--will have to take a rain-check.

Belated epiphany

Apparently, keyboards are like wine...at least so far as the correlation between price tag and one's tastes go. Meaning that there is really no correlation.

That being said, the cushy (though not back-lit), kinda-cheap Dell doesn't work with the USB-to-PS2 adapter that my keyboard of the past several years used to interface with the KVM switch. Which leaves me in a quandry of sorts, particularly in the coming months when I'll have to make some effort to make sure that software works a broad smattering of web browsers on various operating systems

(Side note: If you don't know what a KVM switch is--and to tell the truth, I've never even cared about it enough to bother looking up what the letters K, V, and M stand for, m'self--all you really need to know is that its a heinously overpriced brick that lets you connect multiple computers to the same monitor, keyboard and mice.)

My very own heinously overpriced brick is a tad...shall we say..."retro" in that it supports PS2 (rather than USB) mice and computers and VGA (rather than DVI) monitors. But the essential problem--other than the classic pull of sunk costs--has three truly viable solutions:

1. The hardware-based solution is to close my eyes, key in a credit-card number, and upgrade the heinously overpriced brick to anothe heinously overpriced brick that will natively support my USB keyboard/mouse and (hopefully) better monitor resolutions.
2. The (mostly) software-based solution is to spend a couple hundred bucks and then a weekend installing Ubuntu Linux (on a beef-up hard drive) alongside multiple versions of Windows so that I can boot into any one--but only one--of them at a time.
   
3. The hybrid solution is to install more memory, a buffer CPU and a bigger, badder hard drive and then at least a weekend figuring out how to intall Ubuntu Linux alongside multiple versions of Windows on a single workstation so that I can boot all of them and toggle between them at will.
   

Once upon a time, my business card read "I/T Manager," and several years on, I'm wondering whether that wasn't a joke (on the entire company as well as myself), because I suddenly--yea, even viscerally--grok the attraction of Option #1, otherwise known as "throwing more hardware at the problem."

That attraction, I should point out, is predicated on the assumption that hardware--at least in the short-term--is a better value for money on each iteration. (See also: Moore's Law) Of course, "value" is a slippery term if you can't blind yourself to the socializing-the-costs-and-privitizing-the-profits multi-national business model. I can't say I'm eyes-wide-shut there...maybe squinting?...I'll make a virtue out of being a late-adopting cheapskate yet...

Anyhoo. The term "peak oil" is certainly in cant use. "Peak food" and "peak water" aren't far behind, as our species kaleidescopes--yes, it's a verb tonight--its DNA toward 7 billion planetary neighbors. Which (in light of the push & pull of fact and rumor surrounding rare earth metals and their processing) makes the concept of "peak hardware" that much more conceivable.

What then, gentle reader? Please understand that I'm not asking that as a fatuous rhetorical exercise (e.g., No oil => no plastic; no rare earth => no chips; no plastics + no chips => no gadgets => you're screwed, jack: Discuss.) Would pinching off the option of "throwing more hardware at the problem" mean that human-based solutions would become more valuable...or even more commoditized than they already are?

Me, I'm still working through the implications. Either way, repercussions are unavoidable--and they're not particularly pretty. But that doesn't mean they're not worth serious consideration. (After all, that's the kind of thing showers and bus/subway rides were made for.)