Category: Technology

Declaration of Internet Freedom, from…

Earlier today, “the internet” posed a Declaration of Internet Freedom.

Readers of this blog would probably guess that these are principles I would stand behind.

What is perhaps interesting about the declaration is what is left out: who or what are we as the Internet declaring freedom from?

It is pretty clear that this statement is targeted at:

  1. States that wish to regulate the Internet, and
  2. (Largely) corporate interests who act as internet service providers and own the wires that make up the ‘net.

Perhaps unlike other declarations, Internet Freedom is completely dependent on both states and providers going along with the principles. This does not defeat the proposition, however. States and corporations are made up of people, who decide to put pressure in the right places to ensure that the declaration is upheld in practice.

The flip side of “freedom from ___” is “freedom to ___.” The 5 propositions set a great baseline for the Internet to enable a lot more freedom of doing.

Make your voice heard.

Has the opportunity passed us by?

A recent piece in The Observer (The real cost of the smartphone revolution) started to get at a very interesting notion — that we’re oblivious to the implications of the information revolution that is going on around us.

Strangely, our problem is not that we are short of data about what’s going on; on the contrary we are awash with the stuff. This is what led Manuel Castells, the great scholar of cyberspace, to describe our current mental state as one of “informed bewilderment”: we have lots of information, but not much of a clue about what it means.

The author then goes on (citing Zittrain) to describe how the power of companies like Apple, Facebook, and network providers have locked hold extraordinary power over the shape and use of this technology.

This might not seem a big deal – after all, it’s just capitalism doing its thing. But what it means is that with every new smartphone subscription we take another tiny but discrete step towards a networked world dominated by powerful corporations that can not only “regulate” the system in their own interests, but also control the speed of technological innovation to a pace that is convenient for them rather than determined by the creativity of hackers and engineers.

I agree with this conclusion, but not the defeatist attitude. The early internet was filled with walled gardens, with networks like AOL and Prodigy, and hardware that was closed to experimentation (hello, Mac Classic). While they realized some success, their more open and standardized counterparts (the Internet and the PC) found much greater success.

The problem of today is that companies like Facebook, Apple, and Google offer such great experiences that it is difficult to envision things any differently. The shortcoming of these experiences, however, is that they have all taken a “one size fits all” approach — if you don’t like the design of any of these tools, you either don’t use them or break the terms of service.

Open source products (like Linux or Diaspora) are taking a long time to evolve, but I believe that over time their flexibility will win people over. Rather than killing off e-mail, people will look to an open standard for social networks to make disparate tools work together. Rather than succumbing to digital locks, the urge to tinker will defeat efforts to keep a curious mind out of the iOS lockbox.

I think innovation depends on it. Hopefully the opportunity has not passed us by.

Twitter is killing its new user base

I am often called upon to do Twitter support at conferences. Explaining non-intuitive concepts like “hash tags” to folks who aren’t digital natives takes a bit of… effort.

I have posted before about how great Twitter is at conferences, and I’ve found that it’s an environment that often brings in these new users.

A year or so ago, Twitter for the web began breaking their search function into two tiers, “top” and “all,” with top being the default. Only seasoned tweeters appear in the Top search.

The result of this decision is that newbie tweeters don’t see their own tweets without clicking the obscure “all” link, and have no way of seeing their tweet on mobile. This causes questions like, “did I submit my tweet,” or “why are my tweets not showing up?”

I am sure that this design helps with server load, but it is a bad decision for building a user base. On the web, first impressions are everything. I have personally seen this initial experience drive some very smart people away from tweeting.

Follow me @fixtobreak

Crowdsourcing tech law

The Internet BlueprintA few days ago, the tech advocacy group Public Knowledge unveiled a website (The Internet Blueprint) where the public can propose bills, vote on other users’ submissions, and where groups and congresspeople/senators can get behind the proposal. It’s actually pretty close to the model that I suggested for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, some time back. The site gets right to the heart of the matter that geeks have quite a bit to offer, in terms of how to structure our “east coast code” to jibe well with computer (“west coast”) code.

The one thing it slightly lacks is a community element. While there’s voting, and the ability to get behind a proposal, I think the tools to generate a real online community around an initiative could really 1) show where the momentum is, and 2) craft the greatest solutions from many/great minds. I’m thinking of a “My Barack Obama” like website for tech law. Both are/were built in Drupal, so the possibility is most definitely there!