Thursday, 10 April 2003

P2P Mobile Phones? I have a question for the techos out there who are familiar with GSM mobile phone architecture, possibly most relevant to the Java-enabled phones: Can a phone be hacked to communicate peer-to-peer (P2P) with other phones? Can one either modify the firmware, or get control of the OS through Java apps? Why? Well, I had this brainwave; here's the train of thought: The enlightened ones among us see a time where decentralised (decentralized), bottom up, P2P, wireless networks come into being. The kind of thing where we're not dependent on a carrier or telco to be able to communicate with the wireless device in the next room, or street, or even city. I read a quote from some telco exec recently saying that the idea of a bottom-up WiFi network is crazy and will never happen because of the sheer number and density of access points required for coverage. Maybe. Maybe not. But then it hit me: in this country at least, we have near-enough 1 mobile phone per person. That's a lot of wireless devices. And these are devices which communicate with towers up to 35km away, somewhat better than the 50m afforded by my WiFi base station. Now I don't know anything much about this, but I had the thought that, were these phones capable of P2P, they'd offer almost seamless coverage over the entire populated area of the country. And it'd free too. No inflated 3G charges, none of that. Now does my question make sense? Yup, I know it's very naughty, etc., and that 35km to a high-placed, powerful transceiver is not the same as to another phone, and data-transmission is 9.6kb/s instead of the 54Mb/s of 802.11g, and each phone might need to chat to the telco's network to find out where it is geographically to effectively route packets over multiple hops. But, can it be done? 9:41:50 PM    comment []

Friday, 14 March 2003

Nothing to Add It's near midnight already. I've been reading and reading today; so many blogs, so many lucid, eloquent, thinking dudes. I have one or two grand thoughts in a year; these people are dishing them out on a daily basis. Maybe I should be reading instead the outpourings of teenagers and offer worldly advice from 20 years in their future. Instead, I feel as though I'm wandering through a coming together of giants, me looking up in astonishment, almost keeping up with what's being said, but not knowing how to begin to enter the conversation without looking like a prize yokel by compare. Actually, it's not dissimilar to the mildly-drunk-at-the-party feeling. At these times, I try to remember to trust my guts. I see things that most of my peers don't, I know what is universally true when I hear it and what isn't; I can do that. But I can't articulate very well the why of it. Anyway, I've been writing comments on other peoples' blogs today. Liz, you were right: "commenting is much easier than creating original content". And maybe even these super-clever, A-list dudes like some genuine, personal feedback too: "Hmmm, 4,321 hits today. Well happy with that I suppose, but nobody commented. Oh well, obviously the mindless saps all agreed with me totally." Erk, midnight! And I'm rambling. I did have some stuff I wanted to talk about, mostly this whole inexorable movement to ubiquitous networks, P2P, WiFi, Emergent Democracy, etc. And an astonishing paragraph in Dee Hock's email to Joi Ito: I wonder if you realize that a dozen or two people like yourself with the right combination of communication, technological and organizational skills could design and implement a global government without the consent of any present form of organization and provide it with the neural network to insure its success. A government that could continually evolve to ensure that no matter affecting the public good or the health of the planet fails to be disclosed, examined and understood. Or that any existing organization could escape being confronted with synthesized opinions and alternatives that would swiftly emerge. Such an organization based on rights of participation and withdrawal and consent of the participants could be something entirely new in this tired world. Now that would be something truly worthy of the best within us and the best among us. And a great deal of fun in the bargain! It would, in the fullest sense, be far from democratic since the Internet remains largely a tool of the privileged and technologically savvy. That, we can hope, will change in time. One must always begin somewhere, remembering that the sages tell us our responsibility is to succeed in the world as we find it if it is ever to become the world we wish it to be. But it's been another day of rather more elemental existence, of being with my children, the eldest off school with chicken pox, while my dear wife sleeps off whatever viral nasty is making her feel so sore and tired. I have nothing intelligent to say right now. Perhaps tomorrow. I have good vibes about tomorrow. 12:17:37 AM    comment []

Saturday, 8 March 2003

World of Ends Doc Searls and David Weinberger have created an article, World of Ends: What the Internet Is and How to stop Mistaking It for Something Else. Doc Searls explains here, and David Weinberger explains here. Casting around the usual blogs sees a mostly positive response, though Burningbird pushes back some. I'm not sure yet; I read the thing through a haze of red wine and Friday-night tiredness. I also take a little while to process these things in background and work out what I think. So I'll write a proper response later, perhaps in a day or two. Having said that, a couple of things occur to me: Any "article" that gathers enough mind share to demand its own web site was likely a strong statement of position to start with, a manifesto if you will. Think of Cluetrain and The Cathedral and the Bazaar. And World of Ends was launched on its own site. Are Doc and Dave expecting big things from this one? Are they deliberately trying to engineer a movement? I do hope so ;-) In the context of our western, middle-class, privileged existence, Statement 8: The Internet's three virtues, and in particular 8b: Everyone can use it, is true. And so are statements like "Everyone has enough to eat". Yet, we don't have to look too far from our comfortable situation to see that for a very large part of the world, these things aren't true. OK, I'm hardly being original pointing this out, but for now it's still a real, and uncomfortable, obstacle to aligning with the movement. Except, except, I don't think Doc and Dave meant it this way. For a couple of related reasons: Think 42 years from now, to an age of ubiquitous, pervasive, wireless connectivity -- a true global net -- and 3-a-penny computing devices of all kinds, especially ones that let people talk or "pict" instead of read and type: the barrier to participation might be so low as to be effectively non-existent. Think of transistor radios today. OK, not a great example because they receive only, but I'm trying for the image of dirt cheap and globally available. "Using it" doesn't have to imply a PC, broadband connection, etc.: just as with a simple radio receiver where an entire village might cluster around to hear the BBC World Service, a single device might serve an entire family, or village, or community. I think while the Net right now is not able to be used by everyone, that's almost all about its current state of evolution, not its true and ultimate nature. Finally, for now, I'm wondering about something else related to all of the above: Cluetrain told us about what the Net was doing to markets and marketing; The Cathedral and the Bazaar told us about what open-source was doing to software development; and now World of Ends talks further about the Net itself. All good stuff. What I'm curious about is this: what does all this have to say about the business of business itself? To clarify, if everything naturally moves to decentralisation, to a distributed model, are large organisations as we know them ultimately doomed to go the way of the dinosaurs? And then, from a personal perspective -- personal, because I want to create a business and make some money -- how exactly does one make money in this brave, new world? You see, I have this uncomfortable feeling that capitalism, at least large-scale capitalism, just doesn't fit in. I'd love to get rich, but I think it's mutually exclusive with the truths that these movements have revealed to me. Yet again, I've come to the party after the booze ran out. Seriously, the way I think it can work is that while behemoths are indeed doomed, there's still money to be made. Not billions of dollars, but certainly enough to be comfy. This money can come from helping a few tens, or hundreds or thousands, of people get connected in some way, allowing them to find a way to express themselves. And we'll be doubly comfy because of the knowledge that the money has come from making a real difference to the lives of people. (Hmmm, haven't phrased any of that very well but the battery is running out and I want to get out for a walk. I'll try again a bit later.) All of which is kinda funny, because the Net was going to let the few businesses that got there first and had enough money behind them to build markets of billions of people. And now it looks as if what it's really going to do is let billions of people develop their own markets of just a few people. It's not really commie, more like in fact the small-scale capitalism that China has been slowly allowing to happen. 2:50:33 PM    comment []

Wednesday, 26 February 2003

Addendum Apropos of the last 2 posts, I idly clicked on the Radio selection in iTunes and instantly found 7 Web radio stations broadcasting the blues. Chose one at random (Young Guns) and, hey presto, wonderful, heavy, soulful blues. Andrew's happy. Mmm: 24/7 excellent blues (or Beethoven, as I've gleefully discovered) for nix, or 1 hour of music I can't even play on my PC for AU$25? Tough choice. 11:07:15 PM    comment []

A small win for Apple After the previous post, I must add this. I bought the Nora Jones CD the morning after the Grammy awards. Got back to the office and saw the copy-protection notice to the effect that it would play on certain versions of Windows PCs but couldn't be digitally copied. Oh no! Anyway, put the CD into my work machine -- an ancient WinNT4 notebook -- whereupon it asked me if it might install some files. I said yes, and the next thing it pops up its own little media player, based I think on MS Media Player. Hey, at least I can listen to it. Then I put the CD into the PowerBook. Tee hee: what copy protection? Windows executables aren't Mac excutables. The PowerBook ignored all that crap and presented me with a normal audio CD. Yes! So, of course I ripped it to MP3 using iTunes. Hell, do I want to carry 100 CDs with me everywhere I go? 10:59:46 PM    comment []

An open letter to Peter Gabriel Peter, late last year my dear wife bought me a remastered copy of UP. She knew I'd wanted it for a long time, particularly for Don't Give Up. I happily inserted the CD into my Apple PowerBook. It hummed and fussed and hesitated for a minute or more, but no music. It couldn't even read the CD. I tried it on my Windows PC with the same result. Bugger. Oh sure, it plays just fine on my DVD player -- when no one is watching TV, when I'm actually in that room and not in the bedroom or study or at work or on the train or anywhere else. Effectively, it's damn-near useless; I can't listen to it. It cost AU$25, of which I imagine you'll get about 10%, and Kate Bush maybe 1%. So, you have your money, and the retailer and Virgin have theirs. But I can't listen to it. And nowhere on the CD does it tell me that it won't play on my computer. It's faulty, defective, and I feel I've been shafted. It would seem that the recording industry is almost alone -- apart from Victoria's public-transport operators -- in regarding customers as the enemy, to be fought at every turn. I don't get it. The way I see it, that kind of attitude only comes from having to desperately defend an untenable, monopolistic position. Enjoy your AU$2.50 Peter. I'm making an effort to be a generous fellow, to spread some joy and wealth where I can. But I won't buy any more of your music if I can't be sure that I can actually listen to it. 10:50:23 PM    comment []

Sunday, 23 February 2003

Cool After a decent wait for my ISP to begin offering ADSL I'm hooked up. 512/128K, always on. Woo hoo! There was a slight hiccough as for 2 days I was without the line filters that let me use the 'phone while the ADSL is active. That's all fixed now. Then I bought a new Apple Airport Extreme base station. Woo hoo to the power of 4! Yeah, it's kinda cool sitting in bed or at the kitchen table with 512K Web access. It's even cooler that all I have to do is flip up the lid of the notebook and I have instant Web. No dialing up, no wait, nothing. This is the way it should be. Of course, life isn't that simple for the older Win2K PC: for some reason best known to Microsoft, Win2K won't recognise the existence of peripherals, like even the speakers, if they aren't turned on and active when the PC boots. Maybe I'm fussy, but even this techo thinks it a bit rich to have to go to Control Panel / System / Device Manager and right click to scan for hardware changes just because I forgot to turn the speakers on in time. Bah. Even that doesn't work for the ADSL modem. Bah squared. The dude in the Apple shop said once I switch, I'll never go back. I'm starting to believe him. 3:02:19 PM    comment []