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Netizens-Digest Volume 1 Number 484
Netizens-Digest Thursday, April 10 2003 Volume 01 : Number 484
Netizens Association Discussion List Digest
In this issue:
[netz] Time Perspectives on Netizenship?
Re: [netz] More or less democracy
Re: [netz] More or less democracy
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Thu, 10 Apr 2003 00:52:18 -0400
From: "Howard C. Berkowitz" <hcb@gettcomm.com>
Subject: [netz] Time Perspectives on Netizenship?
I've attached a posting to the CYBERTEL mailing list from Gordon
Cook. It is somewhat long, and I hope I don't offend anyone by doing
so. Normally, I'd post a URL to it, but while it was sent to a public
list, it's not archived in a manner where I can give a direct link to
it.
We've talked about independent media _on_ the Internet -- perhaps
here's a next step of independent media _about_ and _on_ the
Internet. Cook is an independent Internet based journalist who writes
about the Internet and related technologies. While he posts a number
of articles to lists, as well as summaries, his income is based on
sales of his private newsletters. He is controversial in some of his
conclusions. Some industry people, who really don't seem to have any
vested interest, consider him something of an alarmist, but I find
him worth reading.
Why do I bring in this post? It's certainly not the definitive word
on Internet economics. You will note that it does consider the
Internet in a very broad sense, including telephony and other "basic
services." Indeed, it does touch on variants of "public utility"
models that have been mentioned on the list.
The main reason I introduce it is to point out there are very real,
very current economic problems in maintaining the viability of
Internet services. If we accept a definition of Netizenship that
presumes the Internet as the basic enabler of new social and
political communications, it follows that the viable existence of the
Internet is a prerequisite for there to be Netizens.
When I talk of problems in Internet governance and economics being on
topic for the list, and suggest these are as or more relevant than
overall governmental and social models, my medical analogy is that
you have to keep an injured athlete breathing before you can
rehabilitate and retrain her to compete at the Olympic level. Whether
we individually believe in network-enabled self-representation,
representative democracy, or some other model, the key is
network-enabled.
Cook's article talks about here-and-now issues of the market, of
capital to build and operate networks, about creation and loss of
specialized Internet jobs, etc. These are very real and pressing
issues. There's been much talk about the early Internet pioneers, but
there may or may not be a realization that a substantial number of
the best minds working on the current world networks are unemployed.
I'm personally struggling to rebuild my own income, which has dropped
50-60% from two years ago. While my principal interest is the core
architecture of the Internet, much of the work I can get deals with
integrating telephony with data services, hopefully with networked
medical applications, and training.
I'd like to discuss, as best I can on a nontechnical level, some of
the very real problems we face in growing the Internet itself -- some
of the technologies will give out in a relatively short number of
years until we develop new paradigms. That's a subject for a separate
posting.
But if I've been irritable about discussion primarily dealing with
world governance and policies, it's because I see a quite immediate
set of problems keeping the relevant infrastructure operating, and
indeed growing to provide the unfettered access that seems the very
air that global Netizens must breathe. There are regulatory,
business, and financial issues that jeopardize the air supply, and
are sufficiently at the junction of the social and technical that I
see this list as a good place to discuss ways to work on them outside
the telecommunications industry.
Food for thought, I hope.
[a brief glossary. "legacy network", in general, refers here to
telecommunications services provided by traditional telephone
companies and national telecommunications monopolies. In fairness,
many of these operators built their network under monopoly
assumptions, and, in particular, financial assumptions assuming a
fixed return on investment, rather than prices set in a free market.
It's often hard to comprehend the tremendous amount of capital in the
legacy networks' plants.]
At 11:55 PM -0400 4/9/03, Gordon Cook wrote on CYBERTEL:
>The Paradox Of Commoditization
>
>Trying To Save What Is Inevitably Lost, We Lose What Could Otherwise Be Gained
>
>Introduction
>
>The monopoly control of customers by Legacy networks is destroying
>the economic benefits that could be obtained from the on going
>pervasive and inexorable commoditization of telecom and information
>technology. We face a paradox. While we have eyes, we cannot see.
>
>We act as though we could wish away what is happening to new products
>and prices. But the fact is that the on-going commoditization of
>technology cannot be undone. Products will continue to get better but
>they will also continue to fall in price. In the face of these
>dynamics jobs will melt away. The only growth in the industry will be
>come from a variety of education, customer support, strategic
>evaluation and consulting positions. The only additional growth can
>come from use of the technologies in an open architecture that
>preserves the freedom to innovate.
>
>If we adopt the mind set that commoditized telecom and IT is basic
>infrastructure, we can struggle to keep the infrastructure open. In
>doing so we shall also keep open a seedbed of new economic
>development and new creativity and technology. In addition to a
>foundation for new business, this course will also support
>opportunity for further growth in customer support and education.
>But, if, as seems currently more likely, we follow the course of
>permitting the legacy industry a closed monopoly in order to save
>itself, we prolong the current agony and forego what economic
>development and growth could flourish in an open environment.
>
>The Commoditization of Everything
>
>We are witnessing the commoditization of the entire industry. It is
>not just telecom. It is telecom and all of information technologies.
>Both industries are finally maturing across the board. While new
>products are appearing, they cost less and do more. They bring a
>different kind of economic value. We are no longer likely to see the
>creation of any new industry giant like a Cisco or Microsoft. Open in
>architecture and cheap to produce, the new products are staggering
>the industry precisely because they are one or more orders of
>magnitude less expensive than the closed and proprietary systems they
>replace.
>
>While most new products are still designed in North America, Japan,
>or Europe, the majority of their components are made and assembled in
>Asia. There RAM is a commodity endlessly replicated in multi billion
>dollar "fabs." Around the 'corner' in Taiwan and other areas,
>commodity disk drives are mass-produced. A terabyte in the pocket is
>not far off. Commodity open source Linux and open source web services
>stand ready to do battle against Microsoft's closed systems.
>
>When new software is needed, it may be designed in North America or
>Europe. But the code is written in Bangalore, or Moscow, or Shanghai.
>Hua wei is sued by Cisco for doing what is in effect a commodity
>knock off. Back 'home" a handful of folk do the integration, first of
>the software, and then of the firmware and prototype hardware. They
>ship the result back to Bangkok or Kuala Lumpur for replication and
>assembly. Container ships bring the boxes back to ports like
>Yokahama, Newark, or Antwerp for sale on the shelves of Best Buy and
>Comp USA and other warehouse retailers. Prices are driven inexorably
>downward.
>
>This new, cheap and powerful hardware and software is being installed
>in networks with fiber cores terminating in monopoly controlled
>copper local loops. If the network is the Stupid network, in other
>words if it is an open access end-to-end Internet, boxes running
>commodity Ethernet can switch and route packetized information as
>appropriate. With the addition of a VoIP gateway card, the same
>devices can achieve vast cost savings by turning voice telephony into
>an application that rides alongside other digitized and commoditized
>applications such as email, web services, and television.
>
>But most networks are not open Internets. They are copper based
>networks with last miles subject to a monopoly controlled, content
>centric approach. They are bastions of legacy technology using an
>infrastructure far more complex and 10 to 100 times more expensive
>than that of the Stupid network. The legacy telco network is one
>where the monopoly must cut its own throat to try to compete with
>open architecture Internet upstarts that would take away its more
>profitable business customers. In other words, while the prices it
>receives for its services plummet, it must write down the value of
>its plant and equipment to a level where, given its smaller income,
>it cannot maintain its current cost and employment structure and
>sustain the ability to pay its debt.
>
>When voice no longer rides on the TDM transport that was especially
>designed to carry it and is just a packet-encapsulated application on
>an IP network, the new central office is no longer a building housing
>five million dollars worth of equipment. It fits on a desktop using
>SIP, SIP proxy servers, and ENUM databases. It costs well under five
>thousand dollars and delivers an entire range of services not
>possible to derive from now obsolete TDM hardware costing a thousand
>times more.
>
>Commoditization Makes More Job Losses Inevitable
>
>If telecom in the United States has lost 500,000 jobs in the past
>three years, with the inevitable demise of the LECs, it will lose
>another 500,000. Attrition in computer hardware and software should
>cause 500,000 more positions to evaporate. What is left will be
>administrative, financial product planning and marketing.
>Unfortunately, in this brave new world the marketers will be figuring
>out how sell $100 products in Best Buys rather than $100,000 systems
>to enterprises.
>
>As a result of this upheaval, customers will be left even more on
>their own. They will need help to figure out how to put the products
>together and assess what combination of products most effectively
>meets their needs. Until everything is truly plug-and-play and
>automatically-configured when attached to the network, education of
>the customer on product capability and system integration is the
>remaining critical area of competition. It is also the only bright
>spot for future industry employment.
>
>Commoditization dictates competition. But now that the companies are
>in trouble, competition on the part of the legacy, monopoly-owned,
>circuit-switched side of the telecom business is being allowed to
>disappear. Until the legacy companies go bankrupt and swap out their
>obsolete equipment, there can be no benefit to anyone from
>commoditization.
>
>The innovation and cost performance benefits of commoditization are
>all on the side of the open access, end-to-end, packet-based
>inter-networks. So far such networks in competition with each other
>for market share cannot make a profit.
>
>The mind-set of the political and regulatory system cannot comprehend
>the resulting paradox where the most productive and advanced networks
>cannot make money because, founded on commodity technology, they can
>be cheaply cloned with cookie cutter reliability. Staring into the
>headlights of the onrushing train wreck, it is blinded by fear of the
>destruction of shareholder equity and putting people out of work. It
>is seduced by the complaints of the incumbents who are selling the
>false premise: "Give us monopoly and we will have incentive to
>build." Determined to protect legacy interests, it consequently tilts
>the playing field in the US against the commodity players and against
>innovation.
>
>The truth is that, even with monopoly, will they not build. They will
>instead die, unless somehow, they managed to get use of the
>packet-switched, commodity-based technology successfully outlawed.
>
>To our great misfortune we do not yet understand that Commoditization
>has turned telecom and information technology into a basic enabling
>infrastructure like the electric, the water, the sewer and the
>highway grids. This new commoditized, powerful, and cheap technology
>can be used to deliver value and new jobs through preserving for
>everyone the ability to tinker and to innovate. Commoditization has
>removed the incentive for value creation from the monopoly network
>and left it with only the incentive to squeeze every penny of return
>for as long as it can prevent encroachment.
>
>The Legacy networks can and do use the new IP, commodity technology.
>But they are prevented by their debt obligations from being able to
>acquire enough of it. Furthermore, even if they could implement it
>extensively, their business model assumes a monopoly over access to
>transport. Because they must do it all, they are paradoxically denied
>its fullest advantage. The find themselves with no choice but to use
>packet switching and VoIP in an effort to sustain their traditional
>way of doing things. Protecting what they have, they lose what gains
>the new inexpensive equipment could offer.
>
>For example they would seek to offer international VoIP over their
>own dedicated network while a new competitor can dispense with the
>sunk cost of maintaining a physical network by simply renting access
>to an Internet that others maintain. Since the competition has only
>to rent access to transport and run voice as an application on that
>transport, it can offer service that is unencumbered by legacy costs.
>The business model of control of both applications and customers
>prevents productive investment.
>
>The paradox of commoditization leaves us with our uninhibited
>creativity as our only new source of economic development and growth.
>If all we do is drive prices down while maintaining the old
>structures, all we do is drive more people out of work. Failure to
>understand this leaves the legacy networks in power and able to
>preserve their obsolete assets by killing creativity, innovation, and
>experimentation.
>
>The backyard tinkerer has for the past century been the principal
>source of wealth in the United States. In the inexorable transition
>to a new commodity-based world, given current policy, we are
>exporting the freedom to be a tinkerer to Canada, Sweden, Japan and
>Korea. Having to compete in a global economy, we are sacrificing the
>viability of our resulting economic infrastructure in a foolish
>attempt to shore up legacy networks that can no longer serve as
>adequate means of competition.
>
>These are the lessons we carried home from Spring 2003 Voice on the
>Network where most were upbeat and pitching in to spread the new
>application
>
>April 7, 2003
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 10 Apr 2003 08:55:03 -0400
From: Luis De Quesada <lgd1@columbia.edu>
Subject: Re: [netz] More or less democracy
Hello Jay: If you can mention a good reference book or other publication that
explores participatory democracy, which I think dates back to ancient Greece,
I'd appreciate it. I've always been in favor of representative democracy, we
had it in Cuba during the Ramon Grau San Martin (1944-48) and the Carlos Prio
Socarras (1948-1952) the Autentico Party administrations and in other previous
periods. I am suspicious of any process that suspends elections, but learning
more about participatory democracy would be very interesting.
Lou D.
Jay Hauben wrote:
> On Tue, 8 Apr 2003, Howard C. Berkowitz wrote:
>
> > >I wrote:
> > >For me netizenship is a taking of responsibility for contributing to the
> > >future of the net.
> >
> > >The net
> > >makes self-representation possible and therefore makes possible the
> > >replacement of the current systems of political representation.
> >
> Howard responded:
> >
> > If replacing republican system with self representation is the
> > essence of netizenship, then I am clearly not a netizen, and indeed
> > opposed to netizenship. I would rather that the goal of netizenship
> > be less all-encompassing, so we can cooperate on things such as
> > network access and information freedom, rather than having to accept
> > an alternate political system.
> >
>
> Do we agree that the net makes self representation possible?
>
> That I feel is the great promise of the net. I hope the cat is out of the
> bag. I feel, given the chance and the encouragement, people will choose
> self representation and that will prove a greatly improved system from the
> representative republicanism that perhaps was historiaclly necessary. The
> net makes possible the availability of all opinions and sources of
> information, with time to absorb them, most people will be quite capable
> of contributing meaningfully in the decision processes and the decisions.
> Then those decisions will much more thoroughly benefit the mass of people
> who participate in making them.
>
> > >
> > >Howard continues:
> > >
> > >> I am a little hesitant to comment further without a very clear
> > >> definition of "participatory democracy." It is very unclear to me
> > >> this would work at national levels. I am opposed, however, to
> > >> replacing a republican system with a pure democratic system not based
> > >> on voting. One of the benefits of a republican system is that it
> > >> does allow formal deliberation, and the introduction of expert
> > >> opinion that might not be otherwise available.
> > >
> > >The advantage of the net is that it allows amateur as well as expert
> > >opinion so that the range of opinion to learn from is expanded.
> >
> > There is a strong difference between amateurs learning basics, and
> > the level at which legitimate experts operate. Forget about war
> > issues, forget about network access. Tell me, for example, how a
> > consensus model works in medicine.
> >
> When patients and their families have a chance to pool their experiences
> which the net provides they can interact with the professional doctors
> on a basis of mutual respect. The outcome is much better treatment and
> progress in the understanding of the the deseases and ills that afflict
> us.
>
> Already, sick people often join support groups on the net and go to their
> doctors with a much higher level of knowledge and expectation than before.
>
> > How could surgery be done by consensus? There isn't physical room in
> > the patient for multiple surgeons.
> >
> Both the surgeon and the patient and the support community they are part
> of can improve the process and the outcome of surgery.
>
> I see unfolding a netizenship that aims for participatory democracy and
> self representation because it promises a better life for the great
> majority of people.
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 10 Apr 2003 09:05:16 -0400
From: Luis De Quesada <lgd1@columbia.edu>
Subject: Re: [netz] More or less democracy
Hello Mark: Jay and I have been co-workers and friends for many years, he knows
where I stand when it comes to representative democracy as I was a member and fan
of the Autentico Party in Cuba, which stood and still stands in exile, for
representative democracy. Him and I differ on that and various other politcal
issues, yet I am a netizen and we are the best of friends and co-workers and I am
certain my "netizenship" is not in peril because of my belief in representative
democracy. I would like though to learn more about participatory democracy.
Take care,
Lou D.
lindeman@bard.edu wrote:
> Quoting Jay Hauben <jrh@umcc.ais.org>:
>
> > On Tue, 8 Apr 2003, Howard C. Berkowitz wrote:
> >
> > > >I wrote:
> > > >For me netizenship is a taking of responsibility for contributing to the
> > > >future of the net.
> > >
> > > >The net
> > > >makes self-representation possible and therefore makes possible the
> > > >replacement of the current systems of political representation.
> > >
> > Howard responded:
> > >
> > > If replacing republican system with self representation is the
> > > essence of netizenship, then I am clearly not a netizen, and indeed
> > > opposed to netizenship. I would rather that the goal of netizenship
> > > be less all-encompassing, so we can cooperate on things such as
> > > network access and information freedom, rather than having to accept
> > > an alternate political system.
> > >
> >
> > Do we agree that the net makes self representation possible?
> >
> > That I feel is the great promise of the net. I hope the cat is out of the
> > bag. I feel, given the chance and the encouragement, people will choose
> > self representation and that will prove a greatly improved system from the
> > representative republicanism that perhaps was historiaclly necessary. The
> > net makes possible the availability of all opinions and sources of
> > information, with time to absorb them, most people will be quite capable
> > of contributing meaningfully in the decision processes and the decisions.
> > Then those decisions will much more thoroughly benefit the mass of people
> > who participate in making them.
>
> I'm wondering whether we can separate these issues. Jay, you first wrote
> that "netizenship is a taking of responsibility for contributing to the future
> of the net." Howard wants a definition of netizenship that doesn't entail
> doing away with representative government, but allows us to "cooperate on
> things such as network access and information freedom." My question is: is
> Jay's definition here such a definition? On its face it appears to be. Folks
> with all sorts of political and social beliefs have been contributing to the
> future of the net all along. That was rather the idea of "netizen," as I
> understand it.
>
> The second issue has to do with whether the net "makes self representation
> possible" and, if so, whether we can anticipate doing away with representative
> government. I've stated some views on that, and I could again, but I would
> rather see if we agree that we _don't_ have to agree on the second issue in
> order to be part of the netizen project. (Need I repeat, I don't mean that we
> shouldn't _talk_ about the second issue.)
>
> One way of putting the question is: does Jay agree that Howard is a netizen
> regardless of his beliefs about the net, self representation, and government?
> Or does Jay instead believe, to paraphrase Howard, that "replacing [the?]
> republican system with self representation is the essence of netizenship," so
> Howard really isn't a netizen? (Jay may believe that this replacement is the
> ultimate ideal of netizenship, and still believe that Howard is a netizen.)
>
> Mark
------------------------------
End of Netizens-Digest V1 #484
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