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FEATURED TOPICDigital Transition -The term "Digital Transition" describes the process all organizations must go through in the 21st Century, as they leverage new technologies that provide new options for Applications, Equipment, Processes, and Networks that make them more effective. In contrast, the term "Municipal Wireless" is limiting. It puts the network technology ahead of the application and process changes that drive the business case. ORIENTATION |
The ABCs of Community Broadband
The new cover - I edited ALL weekend, but I'm glad I did. I finally received my first proof back from the publisher and had at it with red pen, slash and burn time - ha! and to think I thought I was almost through this process! Seriously, one more proof round, and I hope to have it ready for public release no later than mid-August (fingers firmly crossed). You'll be able to buy it through Amazon, of course, but I'd urge you also to keep an eye on the MetroNetIQ eStore, link posted on this site on the lower right column, just scroll down until you see it...it'll be a few bucks cheaper over there... See the excerpt available in this previous post... Posted on July 29, 2008 at 04:44 PM | Comments (0) Rest In Peace, Randy PauschA day or two behind, I'm listening this morning to yesterday's NPR Saturday Morning Edition radio show, where I just heard that Carnegie Mellon professor Dr. Randy Pausch has succumbed to the pancreatic cancer that overtook him, passing away on Friday, July 25. Dr. Pausch offered a wonderful gift to his kids, and to the world, in his Last Lecture, recorded for posterity and memorialized in a book, The Last Lecture, which is currently on the NYT Best Seller List for Hardcover Advice Books. I covered this topic in a post on January 12 of this year titled Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams, which provides access to video clips. Do yourself a favor and spend a little time on this video. Buy the book and give some thought to what you are doing in your life and why you are doing it. Kiss and hug the ones you love. Thank You Most Sincerely and May God Bless You and Your Family, Randy Pausch. Posted on July 27, 2008 at 06:29 AM | Comments (0) From Space and Cold War to Broadband and Climate Change: Facing Challenges Requires CommitmentOn May 25, 1961, President John F. Kennedy, just 4 months in office, addressed a joint session of Congress. After detailing several threatening developments in SE Asia and the march of communism around the world (here comes Vietnam!), Pres. Kennedy concluded his speech by issuing a challenge to Congress and the American People. So stirring was the response - today is the 39th anniversary of that famous walk on the moon's surface - that no doubt to the surprise of the many doubters, it worked! And it provided scientific momentum for decades. It's time to get busy again, it's time for bold leadership, again. This is what real leadership is like, challenging followers to a noble task related to a noteworthy vision, a task that will cause them pain but will make them more fully human, will lead them to a greater place. Here is the text of that speech, the money parts, near the end, quoted directly below. Finally, if we are to win the battle that is now going on around the world between freedom and tyranny, the dramatic achievements in space which occurred in recent weeks should have made clear to us all, as did the Sputnik in 1957, the impact of this adventure on the minds of men everywhere, who are attempting to make a determination of which road they should take. Since early in my term, our efforts in space have been under review. With the advice of the Vice President, who is Chairman of the National Space Council, we have examined where we are strong and where we are not, where we may succeed and where we may not. Now it is time to take longer strides--time for a great new American enterprise--time for this nation to take a clearly leading role in space achievement, which in many ways may hold the key to our future on earth. I believe we possess all the resources and talents necessary. But the facts of the matter are that we have never made the national decisions or marshaled the national resources required for such leadership. We have never specified long-range goals on an urgent time schedule, or managed our resources and our time so as to insure their fulfillment. Recognizing the head start obtained by the Soviets with their large rocket engines, which gives them many months of lead time, and recognizing the likelihood that they will exploit this lead for some time to come in still more impressive successes, we nevertheless are required to make new efforts on our own. For while we cannot guarantee that we shall one day be first, we can guarantee that any failure to make this effort will make us last. We take an additional risk by making it in full view of the world, but as shown by the feat of astronaut Shepard, this very risk enhances our stature when we are successful. But this is not merely a race. Space is open to us now; and our eagerness to share its meaning is not governed by the efforts of others. We go into space because whatever mankind must undertake, free men must fully share. I therefore ask the Congress, above and beyond the increases I have earlier requested for space activities, to provide the funds which are needed to meet the following national goals: First, I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth. No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important for the long-range exploration of space; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish. We propose to accelerate the development of the appropriate lunar space craft. We propose to develop alternate liquid and solid fuel boosters, much larger than any now being developed, until certain which is superior. We propose additional funds for other engine development and for unmanned explorations--explorations which are particularly important for one purpose which this nation will never overlook: the survival of the man who first makes this daring flight. But in a very real sense, it will not be one man going to the moon--if we make this judgment affirmatively, it will be an entire nation. For all of us must work to put him there. Secondly, an additional 23 million dollars, together with 7 million dollars already available, will accelerate development of the Rover nuclear rocket. This gives promise of some day providing a means for even more exciting and ambitious exploration of space, perhaps beyond the moon, perhaps to the very end of the solar system itself. Third, an additional 50 million dollars will make the most of our present leadership, by accelerating the use of space satellites for world-wide communications. Fourth, an additional 75 million dollars--of which 53 million dollars is for the Weather Bureau--will help give us at the earliest possible time a satellite system for world-wide weather observation. Let it be clear - and this is a judgment which the Members of the Congress must finally make - let it be clear that I am asking the Congress and the country to accept a firm commitment to a new course of action, a course which will last for many years and carry very heavy costs: 531 million dollars in fiscal '62 - an estimated seven to nine billion dollars additional over the next five years. If we are to go only half way, or reduce our sights in the face of difficulty, in my judgment it would be better not to go at all. Now this is a choice which this country must make, and I am confident that under the leadership of the Space Committees of the Congress, and the Appropriating Committees, that you will consider the matter carefully. It is a most important decision that we make as a nation. But all of you have lived through the last four years and have seen the significance of space and the adventures in space, and no one can predict with certainty what the ultimate meaning will be of mastery of space. I believe we should go to the moon. But I think every citizen of this country as well as the Members of the Congress should consider the matter carefully in making their judgment, to which we have given attention over many weeks and months, because it is a heavy burden, and there is no sense in agreeing or desiring that the United States take an affirmative position in outer space, unless we are prepared to do the work and bear the burdens to make it successful. If we are not, we should decide today and this year. This decision demands a major national commitment of scientific and technical manpower, material and facilities, and the possibility of their diversion from other important activities where they are already thinly spread. It means a degree of dedication, organization and discipline which have not always characterized our research and development efforts. It means we cannot afford undue work stoppages, inflated costs of material or talent, wasteful interagency rivalries, or a high turnover of key personnel. New objectives and new money cannot solve these problems. They could in fact, aggravate them further--unless every scientist, every engineer, every serviceman, every technician, contractor, and civil servant gives his personal pledge that this nation will move forward, with the full speed of freedom, in the exciting adventure of space. I've included a call for local Broadband Leadership that I made on this website 17 months ago, after the jump. Yesterday, I made a similar call for local leadership regarding climate change (see A Time to Be Bold). We need leadership to move our nation away from burning carbon fuels - talking about our compelling need as a a society to change the way we make electricity, highlighting Al Gore's recent speech echoing JFK's challenge to the nation with a new one - 100% carbon-free electricity in 10 years. The problem is carbon fuels, the challenge is real, the response awaits. Broadband Leadership? It Starts at Home This article was written and published on MetroNetIQ on Feb 10, 2007. I'm a little nostalgic tonight, as I sit here watching a DVD with my family - Apollo 13. I'm turning 50 this summer, so I was almost exactly my daughter's age (12 1/2) back in April 1970 when these events occurred. Seeing Act One of this movie, with all that good classic rock and roll in the soundtrack, and the launch scene of the Saturn V rocket, brought back memories of NASA's Gemini and Apollo programs, and I got nostalgic reminiscing about the "good old days" when our government actually charted out ambitious and visionary goals and we as a nation got behind them - and it all came together and it worked, albeit with adversity to work through. Sure, it worked, but it worked because we made it work, together. We managed to get to the moon eight years after Pres. Kennedy, facing the challenge from the Soviets, proclaimed his challenge to the nation to put a man on the moon by the end of the decade and mobilized a nation on a truly historic path. It's still amazing. How fast we forget what we're capable of when we focus. It wasn't a walk in the park either. We overcame the disaster of a fire on the launch pad on Apollo 1 that tragically took the lives of three astronauts, then we moved on to the success of Apollo 11, and then the program encountered this disaster on the Apollo 13 mission. The NASA team pulled together and brought the boys home, and they did it with slide rules and no PCs (and no broadband, by the way). I know that Hollywood and director Ron Howard have a way of putting a nice shine on things, and that nearly 40-odd years of hindsight help me to put the Apollo effort in perspective, and to gloss over the difficult times. Still, it seems that we had something then that we have lost...life seems at once more complicated and less clear, and our challenges greater and more numerous today than they were back then. So what, you may ask, does this have to do with broadband, anyway? Well, it's a coincidence, I guess, that a few hours before this movie, I started reading several blogs and Internet postings about a recent essay promoting a national broadband policy. Here's the blog on Cook's Collaborative Edge that kicked off this whole train of thought. After reading and surfing around, I was struck by the juxtaposition of the way the government took a leadership role in the Space Race back then (President Kennedy's famous challenge), and the general fumbling and failure of our leadership today to develop a national broadband policy (President Bush's assuring vision statement). Back then, we understood we would all have to work together, today, we're told "Don't worry, I assure you we'll get there" and then, in predictable fashion, we don't get there. And they wonder about declining trust in politics and government leadership. So I'm struck by the difference between what we were able to do back in the 60s and 70s, with sheer will power, perseverance, and good old American can-do attitude, compared with what we are not doing today as a nation, as we watch countries like Japan, Korea, Sweden, and France, move ahead with strong national leadership and vison, as they implement a broadband strategy to create a national communications infrastructure that befits the 21st Century. Why is that? How come, I ask myself, broadband doesn't capture the imagination of people today the way that space exploration did back then? Well, for one, we've become pretty used to techological magic in the past 40 years. For another, we lack the leadership we had back then. No leadership focus, no national mobilization. Personally, I wore out on this whole discussion and took a voluntary hiatus from the national broadband debate sometime last summer, as I became more focused on my own activities here in Central Texas. But a recent essay by metropolitan broadband luminary Jim Baller has brought me back to this topic, and its time to weigh in. Jim's essay really demands some inspection and review, as Jim is one of a handful of true experts in this field, and his tireless efforts to promote progress deserve this attention. I respect him. So, Jim Baller wrote this essay on a National Broadband Strategy last month (January 2007), commenting on his article in the October 2006 issue of FiberPrism journal, where he and his partner opined on the need for a national broadband policy. In his recent essay, Jim takes a stab at a point-by-point program to get to such a policy. I recommend both of these articles. Doing a little more digging, I came up with this article cited in the essay: in Foreign Affairs magazine, Thomas Bleha comments on the need for a national broadband policy, back in Summer 2005. In a follow up article, Philip J. Weiser takes a slightly different tack and we have also the commentary from Bleha. All this talk about broadband policy in the US, amidst all this action abroad (see this link for a good update on OECD broadband activities, circa June 2006). I have to admit that I've become disenchanted with the long wait for national leadership in this area. In fact, I've structured a career that doesn't depend on national leadership - I'm putting my money on local leadership. I've met enough impressive local leaders that give me confidence. I still hope for national leadership that will mobilize the public on this issue and will focus resources to get our country moving, so that we will be competitive over time. But I have to say, we could all grow old waiting for the powers that be to get serious about wiring up our country with fiber optics to the "last mile." It was three years ago that President Bush, in his style, laid out a vision for Ubiquitous Broadband by 2007, and then his administration failed ot follow up on it. We had a couple of blogs on this topic on this site a full 18 months ago, here and here. So, its out of my control, and in Stephen Covey Seven Habits fashion, I suggest that we focus on what we can control in order to get results and make progress, and that, my friends, starts at the local level. Better, in my opinion, to get busy to get local projects underway, to start generating the lessons learned and all the little steps that need to be done to move a country forward, collectively, in this area. I trust that real leaders like Jim Baller and others will continue to work to motivate our national political leaders, and that a National Broadband Policy Task Force will someday get organized and busy on doing the necessary heavy lifting to get the full weight of the country's resources behind this effort. But as for me, I'll keep doing my little part to move things forward, by showing that we can do something today, and that something is to get individual cities wired up, with wireless and with wired broadband networks, and where possible, to get regions to collaborate. But part of me longs for the type of leadership and can-do spirit, the imagination and chutzpa we had a generation ago in this nation, the "right stuff" that would send men up in tin cans into space, and bring them back alive, just to show that we could. I feel better when I reflect on that - that same kind of spirit still resides in the hearts of local leaders that initiate and promote these municipal wireless projects and see them through. In our own way, here in the 21st Century, we are pushing out the envelope on technology in a myriad of ways, and forging new paths, if on a less dramatic stage than back then. And so it goes, as I approach 50. My own dreams, like those of our nation, are a little scaled down now, in this more complex world of the 21st Century, where I find myself as an adult. But I'm now a player in the game, rather than a spectator. After all, there is undeniable progress on the digital front. I watched this movie on a DVD on my flat screen TV, whereas I watched the Apollo moon landing on a tiny black and white screen as a budding teenager. I'm active in spreading broadband connectivity at the local level, and I'm blogging on a laptop in my living room, as I watch the movie. And .. oh yeah, as a postscript, the Apollo crew made it back down to earth, in one piece, thanks to the thousands of people on the earth that supported them. Our dreams may be more distributed today, more "down to earth," if you will, but we're still pushing out the frontiers. And the wireless networks we build are going up thanks to the thousands of people in this new industry who are helping to make it all happen. Posted on July 20, 2008 at 06:01 AM | Comments (0) A Time To Be Bold, Not to Do As You're Told39 years and 3 days ago ... the United States met a challenge laid out to it, indeed, they beat the 10-year challenge, putting two men on the moon and bringing them back alive, with nearly 2 years to spare. Oh, those were the days. Were we giants, or did we just have more spine? The irony struck me as I sat watching this video of the dramatic blastoff of the Saturn V rocket, with massive flames spewing out the bottom of the rocket. It was really the controlled explosion of a huge cannister of fuel, a mixture of liquid oxygen and rocket petroleum fuel. This may turn out to be the epitome of the use of carbon-based fuels, the most dramatic example of what we were able to do with fire and sequestered carbon-based fuels. Now it's representative of a grand success, meeting a bold challenge laid out to the nation. The challenge - to quit using carbon-based fuels to heat water to make steam to run turbines that power our electric grid. It's not as clean a story, but it's an important challenge. Al Gore made a surprise visit to my hometown today, to address a gathering of on-line progressives - that inspired me to track down the text of the speech he gave this week. I've read enough articles about it, but I hadn't had time to read the actual text. Thinking you might be in the same boat, I'm posting this link to the speech text, and I've copied it below, if you just want to read it here. If you want the bottom line, here it is. Al Gore observes that times are bad (no kidding!) and claims that all our solutions these days tend to be tepid and our problems are out of control, way out of control. It's time to be bold. And many of those problems tend to have a common element - an over-reliance on old approaches, even as they grow less and less effective, including a big reliance on carbon-based fuels. With great timing, Al Gore highlights the great opportunity we have with the upcoming change in national leadership and an international conference on climate change. He borrows from JFK by issuing a challenge to our nation - to go 100% renewable in our production of electricity in the US in 10 years, eliminating carbon from power plant fuels. It's not as sexy as putting a man on the moon, but it is a helluva challenge, and in fact, the stakes are far, far higher, notwithstanding the many benefits the space program gave our society. We're talking about turning our nation around, perhaps even about saving the planet! Many people deny it can be done, but isn't that the definition of a Bold Challenge? I've always thought that this great nation can do whatever it sets its mind to, and I think that goes double for our nation's communities. With all the technological advantages we have, we can do this too. But, there's that little thing about setting our mind to the task. This task will take an effort on the part of every community in America. The timid need not apply. It's a time to be bold. For too long we've said No to challenges, No to anything that lay beyond a six-month horizon, No to anything that had any political risk attached. Are we ready to start saying Yes to Hope and Change? Are we up to it? Is your community up to it? Here's the picture from 39 years ago tomorrow, on July 20, 1969, we had our own Columbus moment, sending human beings where human beings had never gone before, indeed, accomplishing a task and meeting an objective that never even in their wildest imaginations had they even dreamed that such a thing could be done. A Generational Challenge to Repower America This speech was given today (July 17, 2008) at the D.A.R. Constitutional Hall Ladies and gentlemen: There are times in the history of our nation when our very way of life depends upon dispelling illusions and awakening to the challenge of a present danger. In such moments, we are called upon to move quickly and boldly to shake off complacency, throw aside old habits and rise, clear-eyed and alert, to the necessity of big changes. Those who, for whatever reason, refuse to do their part must either be persuaded to join the effort or asked to step aside. This is such a moment. The survival of the United States of America as we know it is at risk. And even more - if more should be required - the future of human civilization is at stake. I don't remember a time in our country when so many things seemed to be going so wrong simultaneously. Our economy is in terrible shape and getting worse, gasoline prices are increasing dramatically, and so are electricity rates. Jobs are being outsourced. Home mortgages are in trouble. Banks, automobile companies and other institutions we depend upon are under growing pressure. Distinguished senior business leaders are telling us that this is just the beginning unless we find the courage to make some major changes quickly. The climate crisis, in particular, is getting a lot worse - much more quickly than predicted. Scientists with access to data from Navy submarines traversing underneath the North polar ice cap have warned that there is now a 75 percent chance that within five years the entire ice cap will completely disappear during the summer months. This will further increase the melting pressure on Greenland. According to experts, the Jakobshavn glacier, one of Greenland's largest, is moving at a faster rate than ever before, losing 20 million tons of ice every day, equivalent to the amount of water used every year by the residents of New York City. Two major studies from military intelligence experts have warned our leaders about the dangerous national security implications of the climate crisis, including the possibility of hundreds of millions of climate refugees destabilizing nations around the world. Just two days ago, 27 senior statesmen and retired military leaders warned of the national security threat from an "energy tsunami" that would be triggered by a loss of our access to foreign oil. Meanwhile, the war in Iraq continues, and now the war in Afghanistan appears to be getting worse. And by the way, our weather sure is getting strange, isn't it? There seem to be more tornadoes than in living memory, longer droughts, bigger downpours and record floods. Unprecedented fires are burning in California and elsewhere in the American West. Higher temperatures lead to drier vegetation that makes kindling for mega-fires of the kind that have been raging in Canada, Greece, Russia, China, South America, Australia and Africa. Scientists in the Department of Geophysics and Planetary Science at Tel Aviv University tell us that for every one degree increase in temperature, lightning strikes will go up another 10 percent. And it is lightning, after all, that is principally responsible for igniting the conflagration in California today. Like a lot of people, it seems to me that all these problems are bigger than any of the solutions that have thus far been proposed for them, and that's been worrying me. I'm convinced that one reason we've seemed paralyzed in the face of these crises is our tendency to offer old solutions to each crisis separately -- without taking the others into account. And these outdated proposals have not only been ineffective - they almost always make the other crises even worse. Yet when we look at all three of these seemingly intractable challenges at the same time, we can see the common thread running through them, deeply ironic in its simplicity: our dangerous over-reliance on carbon-based fuels is at the core of all three of these challenges -- the economic, environmental and national security crises. We're borrowing money from China to buy oil from the Persian Gulf to burn it in ways that destroy the planet. Every bit of that's got to change. But if we grab hold of that common thread and pull it hard, all of these complex problems begin to unravel and we will find that we're holding the answer to all of them right in our hand. The answer is to end our reliance on carbon-based fuels. In my search for genuinely effective answers to the climate crisis, I have held a series of "solutions summits" with engineers, scientists, and CEOs. In those discussions, one thing has become abundantly clear: when you connect the dots, it turns out that the real solutions to the climate crisis are the very same measures needed to renew our economy and escape the trap of ever-rising energy prices. Moreover, they are also the very same solutions we need to guarantee our national security without having to go to war in the Persian Gulf. What if we could use fuels that are not expensive, don't cause pollution and are abundantly available right here at home? We have such fuels. Scientists have confirmed that enough solar energy falls on the surface of the earth every 40 minutes to meet 100 percent of the entire world's energy needs for a full year. Tapping just a small portion of this solar energy could provide all of the electricity America uses. And enough wind power blows through the Midwest corridor every day to also meet 100 percent of US electricity demand. Geothermal energy, similarly, is capable of providing enormous supplies of electricity for America. The quickest, cheapest and best way to start using all this renewable energy is in the production of electricity. In fact, we can start right now using solar power, wind power and geothermal power to make electricity for our homes and businesses. But to make this exciting potential a reality, and truly solve our nation's problems, we need a new start. That's why I'm proposing today a strategic initiative designed to free us from the crises that are holding us down and to regain control of our own destiny. It's not the only thing we need to do. But this strategic challenge is the lynchpin of a bold new strategy needed to re-power America. Today I challenge our nation to commit to producing 100 percent of our electricity from renewable energy and truly clean carbon-free sources within 10 years. This goal is achievable, affordable and transformative. It represents a challenge to all Americans -- in every walk of life: to our political leaders, entrepreneurs, innovators, engineers, and to every citizen. A few years ago, it would not have been possible to issue such a challenge. But here's what's changed: the sharp cost reductions now beginning to take place in solar, wind, and geothermal power - coupled with the recent dramatic price increases for oil and coal -- have radically changed the economics of energy. When I first went to Congress 32 years ago, I listened to experts testify that if oil ever got to $35 a barrel, then renewable sources of energy would become competitive. Well, today, the price of oil is over $135 per barrel. And sure enough, billions of dollars of new investment are flowing into the development of concentrated solar thermal, photovoltaics, windmills, geothermal plants, and a variety of ingenious new ways to improve our efficiency and conserve presently wasted energy. And as the demand for renewable energy grows, the costs will continue to fall. Let me give you one revealing example: the price of the specialized silicon used to make solar cells was recently as high as $300 per kilogram. But the newest contracts have prices as low as $50 a kilogram. You know, the same thing happened with computer chips -- also made out of silicon. The price paid for the same performance came down by 50 percent every 18 months -- year after year, and that's what's happened for 40 years in a row. To those who argue that we do not yet have the technology to accomplish these results with renewable energy: I ask them to come with me to meet the entrepreneurs who will drive this revolution. I've seen what they are doing and I have no doubt that we can meet this challenge. To those who say the costs are still too high: I ask them to consider whether the costs of oil and coal will ever stop increasing if we keep relying on quickly depleting energy sources to feed a rapidly growing demand all around the world. When demand for oil and coal increases, their price goes up. When demand for solar cells increases, the price often comes down. When we send money to foreign countries to buy nearly 70 percent of the oil we use every day, they build new skyscrapers and we lose jobs. When we spend that money building solar arrays and windmills, we build competitive industries and gain jobs here at home. Of course there are those who will tell us this can't be done. Some of the voices we hear are the defenders of the status quo -- the ones with a vested interest in perpetuating the current system, no matter how high a price the rest of us will have to pay. But even those who reap the profits of the carbon age have to recognize the inevitability of its demise. As one OPEC oil minister observed, "The Stone Age didn't end because of a shortage of stones." To those who say 10 years is not enough time, I respectfully ask them to consider what the world's scientists are telling us about the risks we face if we don't act in 10 years. The leading experts predict that we have less than 10 years to make dramatic changes in our global warming pollution lest we lose our ability to ever recover from this environmental crisis. When the use of oil and coal goes up, pollution goes up. When the use of solar, wind and geothermal increases, pollution comes down. To those who say the challenge is not politically viable: I suggest they go before the American people and try to defend the status quo. Then bear witness to the people's appetite for change. I for one do not believe our country can withstand 10 more years of the status quo. Our families cannot stand 10 more years of gas price increases. Our workers cannot stand 10 more years of job losses and outsourcing of factories. Our economy cannot stand 10 more years of sending $2 billion every 24 hours to foreign countries for oil. And our soldiers and their families cannot take another 10 years of repeated troop deployments to dangerous regions that just happen to have large oil supplies. What could we do instead for the next 10 years? What should we do during the next 10 years? Some of our greatest accomplishments as a nation have resulted from commitments to reach a goal that fell well beyond the next election: the Marshall Plan, Social Security, the interstate highway system. But a political promise to do something 40 years from now is universally ignored because everyone knows that it's meaningless. Ten years is about the maximum time that we as a nation can hold a steady aim and hit our target. When President John F. Kennedy challenged our nation to land a man on the moon and bring him back safely in 10 years, many people doubted we could accomplish that goal. But 8 years and 2 months later, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the surface of the moon. To be sure, reaching the goal of 100 percent renewable and truly clean electricity within 10 years will require us to overcome many obstacles. At present, for example, we do not have a unified national grid that is sufficiently advanced to link the areas where the sun shines and the wind blows to the cities in the East and the West that need the electricity. Our national electric grid is critical infrastructure, as vital to the health and security of our economy as our highways and telecommunication networks. Today, our grids are antiquated, fragile, and vulnerable to cascading failure. Power outages and defects in the current grid system cost US businesses more than $120 billion dollars a year. It has to be upgraded anyway. We could further increase the value and efficiency of a Unified National Grid by helping our struggling auto giants switch to the manufacture of plug-in electric cars. An electric vehicle fleet would sharply reduce the cost of driving a car, reduce pollution, and increase the flexibility of our electricity grid. At the same time, of course, we need to greatly improve our commitment to efficiency and conservation. That's the best investment we can make. America's transition to renewable energy sources must also include adequate provisions to assist those Americans who would unfairly face hardship. For example, we must recognize those who have toiled in dangerous conditions to bring us our present energy supply. We should guarantee good jobs in the fresh air and sunshine for any coal miner displaced by impacts on the coal industry. Every single one of them. Of course, we could and should speed up this transition by insisting that the price of carbon-based energy include the costs of the environmental damage it causes. I have long supported a sharp reduction in payroll taxes with the difference made up in CO2 taxes. We should tax what we burn, not what we earn. This is the single most important policy change we can make. In order to foster international cooperation, it is also essential that the United States rejoin the global community and lead efforts to secure an international treaty at Copenhagen in December of next year that includes a cap on CO2 emissions and a global partnership that recognizes the necessity of addressing the threats of extreme poverty and disease as part of the world's agenda for solving the climate crisis. Of course the greatest obstacle to meeting the challenge of 100 percent renewable electricity in 10 years may be the deep dysfunction of our politics and our self-governing system as it exists today. In recent years, our politics has tended toward incremental proposals made up of small policies designed to avoid offending special interests, alternating with occasional baby steps in the right direction. Our democracy has become sclerotic at a time when these crises require boldness. It is only a truly dysfunctional system that would buy into the perverse logic that the short-term answer to high gasoline prices is drilling for more oil ten years from now. Am I the only one who finds it strange that our government so often adopts a so-called solution that has absolutely nothing to do with the problem it is supposed to address? When people rightly complain about higher gasoline prices, we propose to give more money to the oil companies and pretend that they're going to bring gasoline prices down. It will do nothing of the sort, and everyone knows it. If we keep going back to the same policies that have never ever worked in the past and have served only to produce the highest gasoline prices in history alongside the greatest oil company profits in history, nobody should be surprised if we get the same result over and over again. But the Congress may be poised to move in that direction anyway because some of them are being stampeded by lobbyists for special interests that know how to make the system work for them instead of the American people. If you want to know the truth about gasoline prices, here it is: the exploding demand for oil, especially in places like China, is overwhelming the rate of new discoveries by so much that oil prices are almost certain to continue upward over time no matter what the oil companies promise. And politicians cannot bring gasoline prices down in the short term. However, there actually is one extremely effective way to bring the costs of driving a car way down within a few short years. The way to bring gas prices down is to end our dependence on oil and use the renewable sources that can give us the equivalent of $1 per gallon gasoline. Many Americans have begun to wonder whether or not we've simply lost our appetite for bold policy solutions. And folks who claim to know how our system works these days have told us we might as well forget about our political system doing anything bold, especially if it is contrary to the wishes of special interests. And I've got to admit, that sure seems to be the way things have been going. But I've begun to hear different voices in this country from people who are not only tired of baby steps and special interest politics, but are hungry for a new, different and bold approach. We are on the eve of a presidential election. We are in the midst of an international climate treaty process that will conclude its work before the end of the first year of the new president's term. It is a great error to say that the United States must wait for others to join us in this matter. In fact, we must move first, because that is the key to getting others to follow; and because moving first is in our own national interest. So I ask you to join with me to call on every candidate, at every level, to accept this challenge -- for America to be running on 100 percent zero-carbon electricity in 10 years. It's time for us to move beyond empty rhetoric. We need to act now. This is a generational moment. A moment when we decide our own path and our collective fate. I'm asking you - each of you - to join me and build this future. Please join the WE campaign at wecansolveit.org. We need you. And we need you now. We're committed to changing not just light bulbs, but laws. And laws will only change with leadership. On July 16, 1969, the United States of America was finally ready to meet President Kennedy's challenge of landing Americans on the moon. I will never forget standing beside my father a few miles from the launch site, waiting for the giant Saturn 5 rocket to lift Apollo 11 into the sky. I was a young man, 21 years old, who had graduated from college a month before and was enlisting in the United States Army three weeks later. I will never forget the inspiration of those minutes. The power and the vibration of the giant rocket's engines shook my entire body. As I watched the rocket rise, slowly at first and then with great speed, the sound was deafening. We craned our necks to follow its path until we were looking straight up into the air. And then four days later, I watched along with hundreds of millions of others around the world as Neil Armstrong took one small step to the surface of the moon and changed the history of the human race. We must now lift our nation to reach another goal that will change history. Our entire civilization depends upon us now embarking on a new journey of exploration and discovery. Our success depends on our willingness as a people to undertake this journey and to complete it within 10 years. Once again, we have an opportunity to take a giant leap for humankind. Posted on July 19, 2008 at 10:48 PM | Comments (0) A Broadband "Amuse Bouche"
Ever been to one of those fancy restaurants where the waiter brings out a little morsel - something that you didn't even order and that you don't have to pay for!!!??? It is intended to be a delightful surprise, and it generally is. If on the rare occasion it isn't, well then, what the hell, you didn't pay for it, after all! It's called an Amuse Bouche (ah-mooz boosh), which is French for "make the mouth happy." Here is a sample excerpt from my new book, my own little Amuse Bouche for you all my readers to start the weekend. Enjoy. Download file Stay tuned for the release date for the book, The ABCs of Community Broadband: How Digital Transitions will Transform America's Communities, One at a Time, which should become available for purchase around the end of the month. Posted on July 18, 2008 at 02:59 PM | Comments (0) MetroNetIQ's First Book Hits the Presses
It's been an exciting effort to produce our first book! It's at the publishers now and with any luck will be available within the next couple of weeks on Amazon and through this website. Here's the back cover language, which says a lot about why I wrote this book ... With Municipal Wireless on the ropes recently, many wonder what's next. The one sure thing is digital transition - all communities must go through a transition to digital, replacing labor and paper-based processes with more efficient digital tools and processes. Because digital equipment runs on multiple types of wired and wireless commercial and private broadband networks, new alternatives are now made available for those communities ready to cast their lot with the 21st century. All it takes is a little planning, some nerve, a dash of leadership, some conversation, a little more planning, some funding, and of course, good luck. That may sound daunting, and it is, until one considers the alternative - economic stagnation and more of the same. The good news is that when it comes to public approaches to broadband, Municipal Wireless may be toast, but that phase is over, and it was just a beginning, not the end. With lessons learned over five years of experimentation, Community Broadband and Digital Transitions are teed up and ready to go to work - all that's missing is the orientation to help civic leaders recognize the opportunity at hand and realize that our society is at the dawn of a new era, where creativity and the harnessing of human resources offer hope to all of America's communities. The ABCs of Community Broadband provides the orientation. There's also the will to embrace the future. That challenge lies ahead for our local community leaders. I wrote this book because most of what the layman/laywoman hears about this industry is through one of the many and sundry newspaper or magazine articles documenting how screwed up Municipal Wireless is. Casual readers have not had an opportunity to learn what we have. The fact is, it's a pretty good technology, for what it does. Mostly what they've read has been the bad news, which is the other fact - the business model it was launched under did Wi Fi Mesh a tremendous disservice. It was never meant to do the things the industry tried to make it do, like solve the Digital Divide. Fugggedaboutit! But it all gets looped into the same article and the take away is "Wi Fi?" Municipal Wireless" "I heard that was a big, big mess!" and the next thought is "I don't want anything to do with it!" This story needs to be told, and there are details that need to be soaked up before the casual reader - and this fits many of our business and government leaders at the local level, when it comes to broadband - really has an opportunity to understand what they are walking away from, and what they are accepting in terms of their future economic potential. It doesn't make sense to leave good tools sitting on the bench when they're ready to go to work. Metropolitan Broadband, Community Broadband, Digital Transition - however you call it - there is tremendous potential in these technologies for those communities that are diligent and deliberate and focus on efficiency. We still waste so much money doing things the old way in our local governments, because "that's the way we've always done it." And just think about where the internet will go when everyone gets on board - so let's start building infrastructure, for Pete's Sake! Here's the Table of Contents - I'll keep you all posted as the book comes on-line, and I hope you all will go buy one or more copies. Baby needs a new pair of shoes! Table of Contents 7 Introduction Posted on July 16, 2008 at 06:34 PM | Comments (0) Innovation for Savings - Focus on Field Digital Transition as a Way to Get StartedFive Ways to Innovate During Budget Cuts - Government Technology This article caught my eye and I bookmarked it a few weeks back. I've been busy finishing a book that I'll talk about in the next post, so I haven't been putting much up on the site lately. I'm intrigued because this article suggests that there's something positive and constructive IT managers can do, even in the face of budget cuts. These hard economic times can be depressing, certainly, but worse, they risk being compounded by bad morale when we feel disempowered by events beyond our control. Author David Raths highlights five things CIOs are implementing today, even as bad times seem to get worse and worse. Details after the jump. 1. Increase efficiency through consolidation. 2. Make a budget case. 3. Look more proactively at outsourcing. 4. Create an IT standards team. 5. Improve service offerings. The bottom line: A smaller budget doesn't mean an end to innovation. Through consolidation, careful budget planning, and other proactive measures, CIOs can increase efficiency and productivity. I would add a separate category that would focus on how the IT budget is spent on mobile activities. The solutions above, as with most public sector IT focus, concern organizational shifts and/or events inside the buildings. It's amazing how little time and effort are spent on the mobile environment, when one considers that about half of the entire public sector workforce in most cities spends a considerable amount of time away from their desk, out in the field. Those workers are still following business processes from the 20th century, and in many cases, they are notoriously unproductive when separated from their desk environment. I call this area Field Digital Transition, and we'll be writing more and more about this subject in coming months.
Posted on July 16, 2008 at 07:39 AM | Comments (0) The Young and the RestlessSpoiler Alert - despite this video clip above of a famous soap opera, this post has nothing to do with soap operas! Sorry! Go back to surfing if you came here looking for soap opera coverage! No, the "Young and the Restless" does not refer to the sex-filled soap opera, but to those who chomp at the bit for a more digital society. The attached brief explores the developing Generation Gap brought on by the rapid changes in digital technology. Do You Speak "Digital?" As the first decade of the new millennium nears its conclusion, children in the developed world who never knew a non-digital life are maturing and entering the workforce. To them, broadband is nothing special. To them, being unconnected for even a moment is unthinkable, regardless of location. So different is the perspective of this new generation from prior generations, it's as if they speak a different language. At best, adults who came of age before personal computers (or even before the internet) can adapt, but they will never see the world the same as those who grew up immersed in digital technology, just as someone who learns a foreign language will never speak as well as a native speaker. That difference in perspective when it comes to digital policy is the nature of the gap between Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants. While any generalization such as this is prone to errors and abuse (all members of one generation are not alike, for instance), it does have value in describing a general trend and the potential implications.
That Was Then Political leaders in the US today grew up in a different world. The average age of members in the US Senate is 62, and with leadership based on seniority, many committee chairmen are over 70. The average age of members of the U.S. Senate is older than it has ever been, according to Senate Historian Richard Baker. For many senators, advanced age is starting to show, raising questions about their ability to govern. Health Problems Pose Governing Challenge
So the "old men of computing," inventors of the Apple Macintosh, Microsoft Office, and the World Wide Web, were all born in 1955, a year when the "old men of politics," our national political leadership, were graduating from high school, slide rules in hand. Back when our senators graduated high school: This list could go on and on - the point is that life was very different, just a short two generations ago, different in many ways ... the world has changed immeasurably in the past 50 years, and in big chunks, decade by decade. The really big digital impacts didn't even begin until 25 years ago, when our leaders were well into their 40s. The world of the last century is gone forever, but many who vote continue to elect leadership that looks backward instead of to the future. Many of those who resist change and deny its significance either don't understand it fully, underestimate its impacts, or simply resent the pace of change. As younger people begin to get politically active, they offset the votes of their older parents and grandparents. As those who value technology stand up in the political process to demand technological sophistication from their leaders, we can hope to begin to see informed lawmaking in Washington, DC. TechPresident is a website helpful for tracking the twin issues of technology and the presidential race. But until the day arrives that our national political leaders are well versed in technology, federal government will lag progressive local governments, where younger people in select communities have a more immediate, louder voice for political leadership. Kids send text messages to their friends hourly (or more often than that). They view email as "old fashioned." They use social networking websites like MySpace and facebook as a way of staying connected. Given a choice, they would rather have their cable TV service cut off than their broadband internet account. The 2008 presidential contest demonstrates this digital generation gap. Just compare the two candidates and campaigns. Young people have flocked to the Obama campaign, for instance, accessing the campaign website to get involved (the website is an example of optimal leveraging of digital connectivity). In contrast, John McCain, a generation removed from Barack Obama, recently admitted that he does not even use a PC or the internet personally, but relies on his wife to stay connected. The McCain campaign website, while improved, remains dramatically less developed to reflect new digital tools like MySpace and facebook. Digital Adolescents Stuck in Digital Puberty As a society, we're like confused teenagers beset with hormones when it comes to digital issues. We need to learn to live in a new mode, but for now, we're stuck in a Digital Adolescence, between the analog childhood that to which we had grown so accustomed - predictable, relatively slow, high touch - and the digital adulthood that is now a fact of life and that we know deep down is our destiny - forever changing, fast-paced, hard, technology-based. When did this happen to us? We had a long, slow run up with the Rise of Computers from the 1960s through the 1980s, then we crossed the Rubicon sometime around 1995. (Some may argue that we're still in an Information Age, but the Internet marked a significant disruptive transition from the Information Age to the Network Age.) Being connected is distinctly different from being dependent on information. Since the Rise of the Internet a little over 10 years ago, we've experienced many different attitudes, but mostly we've been collectively in denial as the internet matures and grinds away at our institutions. For many, if not most in society, these changes lie under the surface, unrecognized, subliminal. But they affect us all, nevertheless, and we see more and more evidence of change, and the need to adjust, if we just open our eyes. Once you've had this realization, it's hard not to notice the evidence all around. The significant changes associated with transitioning from Analog to Digital, from stand-alone to connected, from fixed to mobile, constitute one of the biggest challenges our society faces today. Adjusting to change has to be one of the hardest things to do in life, yet we all have to do it as we age, so it's one of the most universal of themes. As societies go, adjusting to change can be seen as a barometer of health: healthy societies adjust, less healthy ones don't. The least healthy societies get stuck and close themselves off from any outside influence in order to stay the same: just think of Cuba and North Korea. Change and Grief Recognizing this state of Digital Puberty that we've entered is not unlike going through the five stages of grief in the Kubler-Ross model, because such significant change involves a death and a rebirth. In the end, allowing oneself to be reborn, to reemerge from the process of change, involves accepting the death of the previous state. Until then, one remains stuck.
Kubler-Ross, a psychologist who studied the reactions of those who had been diagnosed with mortal illnesses, developed a model that has since been widely applied to a variety of catastrophic personal loss situations (job, income, freedom). Since this model gained widespread acceptance, we've gained a better understanding of how people deal with change and its accompanying loss. Some claim that any significant personal change can elicit these stages as a reaction. Change, even positive change, demands a response, and as change can often be seen as a threat, responses to change are not always positive. When it comes to technology change, we initially tend to deny that a change is all that significant. But as the years pass, companies rise and fall, and society changes. Who can argue that we are not a significantly different society than we were 10 years ago, a mere blink of an eye when it comes to history? Just one decade ago, who had even heard of broadband, of Google, Yahoo, Amazon, eBay, etc., etc., etc.? Recognizing changes and doing something about them is not easy. We have all kinds of terms for those who fail to grow up, from the "Peter Pan Syndrome" to the more recent "Failure to Launch." Part of the challenge in dealing with such radical change comes from a lack of leadership. When we have leaders who look back instead of looking forward, as a society we're hamstrung. We become stuck in distracting and unproductive debates that stall any progress and divert our energies from adjusting to change to preserving the status quo. We persist in acting like rebellious teenagers, holding on to our childish ways in the face of change, denying the need to accept our progress into an adult world of hard decisions and consequences. Communication, or the inability to communicate, is a major theme in how a society adjusts to change. Parents struggle with change every day. Parents the world over share a common bond: wanting the best for their children. Parents struggle against the vagaries of fate that threaten their children. Education is the Key Because we all care about our children, we are more willing as a society to spend for our children, especially when it comes to education. Accepting the burden of educating their young ones, for the future of the society and the economy, has become a sign of a modern society. In the realm of metropolitan broadband, the intersection of municipal government and the university community, as well as the larger city community life and the secondary education system are the keys to engineering dramatic changes related to technology. And as an added bonus, the K-12 and higher education environments offer ready access to the younger generations who embrace technological change. There is a crying need for leaders to start acknowledging the dramatically different perspectives we have on technology and society, especially considering the options we choose to educate our youth, and methods we choose to improve our situation. Many secondary schools are still slow, distressingly so, to adapt to the trend of incorporating digital tools. Still relying on textbooks that quickly go out of date, these schools lament budget shortfalls but do not consider digital alternatives that offer more relevance to digital lifestyle perspectives, more flexibility for information management, and lower total cost of ownership. Technology is dramatically changing everything, including how we can or should educate our youth. Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms by Will Richardson is a book that is chock-full of good information and references regarding the potential uses of technology in the classroom. Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything by Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams also does a good job describing and investigating the societal impact of technology changes. A digital transition through a community-based metropolitan broadband network project may start off as an innovative way for citizens to get city services more efficiently and to make broadband access more affordable. One hundred years ago, earlier generations were inspired to donate land and create land-grant universities, to ensure that future generations would have the education they needed to build a modern lifestyle and sustain a healthy economy. In that sense, digital transitions and metropolitan broadband networks may be but one more step on a well worn path, where the young and the restless focus the efforts of society on our society's youth, for the sake of all in our society and for a better future. ATTRIBUTION REQUIREMENT - The reader is encouraged to link to this post and to share this material, with the understanding that they provide an attribution to MetroNetIQ and share any alterations with MetroNetIQ.
Posted on July 07, 2008 at 06:12 PM | Comments (0) NEST, the Creative Class, and Economic DevelopmentAs both individuals and communities made up of individuals, we start with Talent, we develop Skills, we gain Experience, and we create Social Networks. When we put these four elements together, we get what I call NEST: A Model for Enhancement of Potential. While all have tremendous potential to grow along these various lines, most of us fall far short, both as individuals and as communities, when we fail to plan for such growth in a deliberate fashion. Communities that do plan in deliberate fashion compete to attract creative talent, what some call the Creative Class. Attracting such talent to a community with technology infrastructure like a Metropolitan Broadband Network is a key element in a region's Economic Development strategy. Such are the themes explored below in the attached issue brief. NEST
Communities are part of larger networks, linked not only by geography. Communities of like size often share many things in common. Communities in similar situations have much to learn from each other. The value of developing a network of communities is the strength inherent in association. Cultivating a network involves short-term habits and activities that grow into an investment that will pay dividends over the long-term.
Experience is cumulative and in the best of worlds, is progressive. That is to say, one can gain the same experience over and over, but each successive experience, while reinforcing, provides less and less value. On the other hand, one can actively seek and gain new experiences that build on previous experiences, providing either more depth or breadth of experience, either of which can have value, depending on the goals.
NEST as a Structure to Understand Potential Starting out as individuals, we each have latent talents that we each develop over time (or do not) into realized talent. Moving beyond talents to skills, we begin from birth to develop skills from the most basic skills to the enhanced skill levels. With some time, experience is gained - both positive and negative. Moving from initial experience to new experience levels only comes with time. Finally, the true achievement of potential is in society, intentionally learning to expand an initial social network into a professional social network. Communities are nothing more than groups of individuals who share something in common, from geographic location (neighborhood), to interests (affiliate association) to government (city or town). Communities can improve their odds for success by targeting high value individuals, a group of people that author and economic development guru Richard Florida called the “creative class” in a series of books and lectures earlier this decade. Starting with his 2002 NY Times bestseller The Rise of the Creative Class: And How It's Transforming Work, Leisure, Community and Everyday Life, Richard Florida penned a work that might be called a 21st Century Economic Development bible. For anyone involved in city government at the leadership level, or in an Economic Development role, even at the staff level, this book is recommended reading. Florida, a PhD in Regional Economic Development, formerly of Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh and now at George Mason University outside our nation's capital of Washington, D.C., demonstrated his pioneer spirit and big thinking by stepping out to create a new vocabulary for a change in society. Often those who get to name something do quite well, and that seems to be Florida's path, as he was first to perceive, then name a shift in working behavior patterns. Florida recognized the advent of a new class of workers with new ideas about working and living as a new demographic category, which he labeled the "Creative Class." Work life has evolved over the past 125 years, Florida explains, changing society as the nature of work has changed. Agriculture was the dominant category once, but the Industrial Revolution brought more and more workers into the city in search of more preferable Industrial jobs, making that the dominant category for much of the 20th Century. But by the second half of the last century we began to see the rise of the Service Sector, where workers provided services to various segments of society. Florida notes that more and more, there are new Creatives, who do not fit into any of these previous three categories, and who represent a sea change in their approach to working and living. Those in this new Creative Class make a living using their brains, and many are highly paid. Unlike those before them, they tend to choose a place to live first, and a job second. They don't proceed from job interviews to the location where their new employer sends them. They identify an area first, then seek jobs in that area. Those areas chosen by the Creative Class seem to score high on what Florida calls the Three Ts: Talent, Technology, and Tolerance. First, workers seek a high concentration of workers with talent like themselves, reasoning that there will be plentiful jobs in the area, and acknowledging that the average tenure for their types of jobs tends to be measured in a few years rather than in decades like their parents generation. They want to know that they will have choices when its time to move on, so they won't have to move away. Second, workers seek a concentration of technology, the engine of economic growth in this new economy and an employer of choice for Creatives. Third, they seek an Open Society characterized by tolerance for diversity. Florida cites such measures as the Bohemia Index and the Gay Index, two ways to measure and compare cities and rank them according to diversity and tolerance (if a society is tolerant of gays and hippies, it is likely to be tolerant of newcomers of various ethnic backgrounds, so the reasoning goes). These creative types who live alternative lifestyles tend to congregate in cities that are open and accepting of diversity, and it's no coincidence that these same cities attract a large proportion of the Creative Class workers. The bottom line lesson for those interested in Digital Transitions and Metropolitan Broadband is the connection here between having a technology asset such as a citywide wireless network and fitting in with cities like Austin, San Francisco, Boston, and Seattle. In addition to ranking high on Florida's Creative Class criteria, all of these cities successfully attract creative workers in droves AND are out in front in terms of ensuring ubiquitous affordable broadband access, of both the wired and wireless varieties. The best approaches to economic development highlight the attractive differences of a community, city or region. Traditional approaches to economic development stress such attractions as regional assets, culture, sound infrastructure that supports and sustains economic activity, and even provide inducements such as tax breaks, tax credits, or even free land or office space. In contrast, the Creative Class approach suggests a new approach, to gather together a dynamic community of talented individuals that has better potential than other communities. With his three Ts approach, Florida suggests an economic development strategy that focuses less on hard assets, but seeks rather to attract Talent by leveraging Technology infrastructure and opportunity and fostering a Tolerant social climate. The NEST model for Enhancement of Potential suggests an additional area of focus for a community. By first identifying, attracting and developing Talent, a community makes the most of what it has. By building in a program to add Skills and develop its human resources, a community goes further to enhance its potential. Through a deliberate program of gathering relevant Experiences, a community moves further and further down the learning curve and becomes ever more attractive, capable of supporting a growing array of jobs and industries, and weathering the inevitable economic downturns. Finally, by creating a Social Network of like communities and sharing knowledge and insights, a community moves ahead of its competition and becomes even more resilient, attractive, and in the long run, a sustainable society. Like individuals, communities, towns, villages and cities start out with a defined set of talents, skills, and experiences. What they do with what they had to start with determines the extent to which they ultimately live up to their potential. We all start out with a unique DNA, but we develop a brand as we go through life. It's the same with communities. Some are blessed with bounteous resources, others with natural beauty, still others with location: proximity to the sea, a river, a mountain pass or to valuable trade routes. Some are blessed with all these advantages. But most communities are not so blessed. For those communities who are so lacking, they can find hope in the fact that all communities are comprised of individuals. All communities have the potential to develop an environment that will bring out the best of those individuals. All communities have the potential to attract the best and the brightest based on the atmosphere they create in their local areas. As Dr. Florida suggests, cities like Austin, San Francisco, Boston, and Seattle staked a claim to be leaders in the new economic order by their focus on human capital. By creating a brand as attractive destinations for the best and brightest of the new Creative Class, these cities and others who choose to go down this path seek to grow and build in the areas that will have value in the 21st century. Digital Transitions and Metropolitan Broadband Networks are strategies to create the foundational technology base on which a community can establish its own brand as a Creative Class community. Whether or not investing in digital infrastructure and new digital business processes attracts any new creative class talent, it remains a strategy to draw out the most potential of the community along the lines of the NEST model.
Posted on July 06, 2008 at 11:10 AM | Comments (0) The Coming ExaFlood
This is the ... Internet ... I know, it looks like an internal view of the eye, or something. But this is what the internet is - a conglomeration of various local networks of different sizes. Some say there's a flood a' comin'... I'm not sure about that, but I know that the internet is an ever bigger part of our lives, and we're in a very dynamic situation where what we considered "a whole lot" two years ago is "not that much" two years from now... This brief addresses the growing need for internet bandwidth - communications infrastructure capacity at the backbone and last mile, being driven by a multitude of factors.
How Much is "Enough?" Bret Swanson of the Discovery Institute gave this nascent debate the name "ExaFlood" in his January 2007 Wall Street Journal editorial, entitled The Coming ExaFlood. The word exabyte is the basis for the term "ExaFlood", the neologism created by Swanson. The Exaflood refers to the rapidly increasing torrent of data transmitted over the Internet - it's a classic case of demand for bandwidth out pacing supply. The amount of information people upload, download and share on the Internet is growing at an exponential rate (due in large part to video, audio and photo applications). Meanwhile the capacity of the Internet, its bandwidth, remains limited and susceptible to a "flood" of data. At the Broadband Properties Summit 2007, a panel on the ExaFlood raised a challenge. The panel: David Kozischek, Corning Cable Systems; and David McClure - U.S. Internet Industry Association; Larry Irving, Internet Innovation Alliance. The Challenge: How will the Internet handle the estimated traffic in the near to mid-term? The key point driven home in this fascinating keynote panel discussion was this: Not one, but several signs indicate a growing issue, if not a coming crisis. Whether the ExaFlood represents an an issue, a crisis, or a market opportunity is a matter of perspective, however. Whether there is a growing need for bandwidth is not. The FTTH Council Video on the ExaFlood, summarized in the Signposts inset above and shown below, provides a quick overview of the themes of this discussion. A Matter of Scope When faced with any problem, it helps to put it into perspective before spending too much time on a solution. When it comes to the "ExaFlood," how much do we know about data and the internet? The amount of traffic on the Web has grown dramatically over its short lifetime, and it continues to show strong signs of growth.
Growth is driven by three primary factors: first, number of users - how many access the Web daily; second, frequency - the number of times each user accesses the Web; and third, bandwidth, the type of content that flows over the Web. All three of those factors are on the rise, but it's the third - the type of content - that is most worrisome. The rise of video content, especially high definition video, dramatically increases the amount of data traffic. According to Doug McClure of the US Internet Industry Association, print is not the problem, per se. Where a typewritten page is about 2,000 bytes, and a small graphic image is about 100 kilobytes, the complete works of Shakespeare about 5 megabytes, and an entire pickup full of books about a gigabyte, it would take a billion of those pickup trucks to amount to a single exabyte. It's video that is the bandwidth hog. Standard definition video consumes 450 times the bandwidth of a regular web browsing session, but high definition video bumps that to 2,700 times the bandwidth. YouTube Growth JANUARY 29, 2007 YouTube videos comprise two percent of all Internet traffic. Surveys: Internet Traffic Touched by YouTube JUNE 19, 2007 In six months, YouTube video traffic has grown from two to ten percent of all internet traffic. YouTube Comprises 10% Of All Internet Traffic | WebProNews FEBRUARY 1, 2008 Six months later, YouTube video traffic comprises 20% of all internet traffic. Alexa.com YouTube traffic statistics However one looks at it, this is a statistically significant growth curve that supports the concerns about the ultimate capacity of the internet, fast becoming as critical an infrastructure as our electric grid. The Consequences of Growth As more and more Internet traffic is video traffic, and as more and more subscribers start using broadband to gain access to the Internet, we will face some mixture of these consequences, to an ever growing degree. First, without significant investment in infrastructure, continued growth in network traffic is likely to result in network performance degradation, most likely in the form of slower uploading and downloading. One significant consequence is pressure to manage the Demand Side (i.e., Net Neutrality debate). As one follows this debate, one quickly recognizes the political agenda - there usually is a political agenda when looming shortages and the need for a change in public policy enter the picture. The ExaFlood and Net Neutrality debates are - inevitably - interwoven, and predictably, political. A driver of the conditions that create the Net Neutrality issue in the first place is the scarcity of broadband bandwidth. Incumbents argue for the need to differentiate on service pricing in the face of scarce bandwidth. The ExaFlood is all about scarce infrastructure. Moves by ISPs to suspend heavy users or cut them off entirely reflect the sense of scarcity. Political pressure to allow ISPs to charge varying rates for different levels of service or on the other side, to prohibit different levels of service are each signs of looming issues. Incentives to manage the Supply Side may be a preferred alternative. While there will be increasing business incentives to build more last-mile broadband infrastructure, political incentives may be another way to stimulate broadband infrastructure growth that would relieve such scarcity. Clearly, when it comes to broadband, efforts to fit all this increasing traffic into an already tight pipe (i.e., current network capacity) must be contrasted with some effort to figure out a way to get a robust sustainable infrastructure built out. Anyway this issue is sliced, we're going to have to spend more capital on broadband infrastructure. We should be talking about the best ways to get this infrastructure built. Fiber v. Wireless Broadband In the face of ever growing demand for bandwidth, we need both the infinite capacity of fiber broadband, and the ubiquitous mobility and utility of wireless broadband ... we need to meet the ever growing need for both bandwidth and mobility. We need wired solutions like Cable, and DSL, and wherever possible, FTTH, for reliable connectivity when we are in a fixed position, like at home or at work. We need wireless solutions like cellular wireless and wireless broadband when we are mobile and away from our normal fixed locations. Hot Spots, by the way, are not really adequate substitutes for a mobile solution. They're a portable solution - not mobile, but an alternate fixed location while roaming. Wireless and wired broadband should be considered two equally valid, complementary technologies. Asking which is better pre-supposes that there is a certain need being filled and that wired and wireless are comparable solutions to fill that need. Most times, one is better than the other - the variable is the need for capacity v. the need for mobility. In considering the need for both FTTH and wireless broadband - not one or the other - an apt analogy is " The 747 and the Helicopter." The 747 is hard to beat if the objective is to move a large number of people economically and comfortably over a very long distance, say, over an ocean or between continents. The helicopter is the best solution if the objective is to move a small number of people or things from any one location to another, generally over a relatively short distance, irrespective of airports and runways. There is no better network for capacity than fiber - FTTH offers nearly infinite capacity and long-term viability because of its physics. But there is no better network for mobility than wireless broadband - Wi Fi Mesh offers a relatively low-cost wireless solution that goes up relatively quickly, then provides far more bandwidth than a cellular air card solution to far more people. Which should come first, capacity or mobility? On the one hand, a small town may opt for a FTTH solution first, because they have very poor alternatives for triple play services, and little need for mobility. But after the network is in place they may grow more interested in a Wi Fi Mesh network, because with fiber widely available, the price of Wi Fi Mesh goes down, and its utility goes up. On the other hand, another town, perhaps a little larger than the previous one, may opt for wireless broadband because they already enjoy adequate competition for triple play service, but their city government operations could benefit from more options for mobile solutions. But after the wireless mobile broadband solution is in place, the value that the community places on broadband goes up, and there may be a more compelling appreciation for the benefits of FTTH. It's a matter of priorities and at some point, after some experience is gained, it's about awareness and perspective. But in every case, we must come to some agreement that we all will need both the infinite capacity of FTTH and the ubiquitous mobility of wireless broadband, before all is said and done. Some of us will get it sooner than others. And those local populations that adopt broadband lifestyles, whether fixed or mobile, are more likely to devote the resources needed to get the other. The Debate on Solutions Advocates of Net Neutrality tend to argue in favor of flat pricing for access and separation of infrastructure ownership and/or management service from content delivery service (structural unbundling). Opponents of Net Neutrality argue for continuation of status quo vertical integration, variable pricing options to ensure quality of service and network management flexibility and little-to-no regulation to ensure adequate (abundant) revenue sufficient to finance network construction. There is significant distrust on both sides of the argument, and lots of history.
Source: Wikipedia article on "Bit" But back to the approaching shortage of bandwidth. The first question is whether one believes that there even is a coming shortage. Debates about other shortages seem more long-term - the coming oil shortage as we approach Hubbert's Peak, the theory about approaching finite limits of oil production on the planet; or projections of world population growth and coming food shortages and famine (see also the Limits to Growth by the Club of Rome and Thomas Malthus). The difference is that while the Club of Rome's projections of disaster and calamity have been proven wrong (so far), and Hubbert's Peak remains an unknown (so far), the ExaFlood dilemma seems more immediate and real, and we can still imagine that the problem is somewhat manageable. Drowning in the ExaFlood gives an interesting counterpoint to this suggestion of a coming "flood" of data transmission shortage. Author Tim Lee, a fellow at the Libertarian Cato Institute, makes the argument that we are facing less of a "flood" of bandwidth shortage and more of a simple extension of the continuing need for telecom firms to build out their infrastructure, which supports his rationale for government to get out of the way. Bring On The Exaflood by Bruce Mehlman, former assistant secretary of commerce under President Bush, and Larry Irving, former assistant secretary of commerce under President Bill Clinton - both currently co-chairmen of the Internet Innovation Alliance - embrace the problem and see solutions at hand, as follows. All sides agree that we need ongoing investment in content, massive upgrades of infrastructure and relentless innovation to handle the phenomenal growth in data traffic. We need advancements in how we build and operate networks, including new file compression technologies, upgraded traffic management software, better spam and virus filters, and new delivery platforms. And we need substantial investments in short-haul bandwidth through fiber to homes, broadband over power lines, satellites and fourth-generation wireless networks. The formula for encouraging such extraordinary investments is clear: minimize tax and regulatory constraints and maximize competition. Policymakers across the nation have ample opportunity to implement this blueprint right away. They should pass common-sense legislation such as permanently extending the Internet tax moratorium, building broadband-ready public housing, and cutting depreciation schedules for network equipment and infrastructure. The Bottom Line The ever growing demand for bandwidth appears to be quite real, but also incremental, so it need not be a crisis. But it deserves much greater attention and more creativity. The ExaFlood scenario makes a strong argument on all sides to build out real broadband infrastructure at both the backbone (transport) and last mile levels (100 Mbs - 1Gbs) ASAP. Such speeds mean fiber in all its forms - nothing else will get us those speeds and be truly future-proof, or in this case, Exa-Ready. And the need for infrastructure means letting go of limiting the number of players in the infrastructure business. We need more energy and creativity to accomplish such a Herculean task. Conferences and articles may be good to raise the hue and cry and get people motivated and busy. But this is a project no less exciting than building the railroad network was in the 19th Century, and it demands the attention of leaders at all levels. We should be building out broadband networks, both wired and wireless, as robustly as possible. Given these trends of exploding data needs, most especially the growing popularity of video applications in all their forms, we appear to be at little risk of overbuilding (certainly out on the edge we are not). We are quite likely to see an unending need for bandwidth in the foreseeable future.
Posted on June 30, 2008 at 06:26 AM | Comments (0) The World Wide Web: W3, Web 2.0 and Beyond(Amazing video on Web 2.0 - check it out before reading on - you'll want to watch it a couple of times, it's so chock full of images.) There follows a brief on all things World Wide Web. Lots and lots of links. Be sure to watch both of the YouTube videos on this post, you won't regret it!
The internet is the system of connected local area networks, the network of networks that uses Internet Protocol (IP) language as a common system of data transfer. The World Wide Web - 'Web" for short - is the system of hypertext documents connected by hyperlinks, accessed via a Web browser (Internet Explorer, Safari, Firefox, etc.) over the internet. The concept of the Web has to do with how we extract value out of internet connectivity, and significant changes are afoot, highlighted by what has come to be called Web 2.0. The Web Grows Up Web 2.0 is a good jumping off point to discuss the evolution and implications of the World Wide Web. More important than the term Web 2.0 is the evolution it embodies. Web 2.0 as a label emerged at the Web 2.0 Conference in 2004 sponsored by Tim O'Reilly. So far, feedback on this concept is wide-ranging, from "it's a load of hype" to "it's the second coming of the Web." For the unitiated, Wikipedia is a great resource on the relatively new phenomenon of Web 2.0 - see both the Web 2.0 listing, as well as the entire Web 2.0 Category listing. At its most simple, Web 2.0 is a term that describes what the Web is becoming: websites are more and more interactive, now including features like YouTube video clips, blogs, wikis and podcasts - tools for interactivity - that provide much more utility than older websites, which tended to be more static presentations of information, with limited e-commerce capabilities. Here's a synopsis of what the Web looks like (looked like, this was written nearly three years ago): The scope of the Web today is hard to fathom. The total number of Web pages, including those that are dynamically created upon request and document files available through links, exceeds 600 billion. That's 100 pages per person alive. How could we create so much, so fast, so well? In fewer than 4,000 days, we have encoded half a trillion versions of our collective story and put them in front of 1 billion people, or one-sixth of the world's population. That remarkable achievement was not in anyone's 10-year plan. The accretion of tiny marvels can numb us to the arrival of the stupendous. Today, at any Net terminal, you can get: an amazing variety of music and video, an evolving encyclopedia, weather forecasts, help wanted ads, satellite images of anyplace on Earth, up-to-the-minute news from around the globe, tax forms, TV guides, road maps with driving directions, real-time stock quotes, telephone numbers, real estate listings with virtual walk-throughs, pictures of just about anything, sports scores, places to buy almost anything, records of political contributions, library catalogs, appliance manuals, live traffic reports, archives to major newspapers - all wrapped up in an interactive index that really works.
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