I saw this happen a couple time at yesterday's conference: people get up in front of a microphone, they tell pretty obvious and outright lies, but do so in a calm, non-threatening, even friendly manner. Then, when people are incensed by their lying behavior, the liars can portrey their behavior as rational, and the people who attempt to call them out as irrational.

This was most definitely in evidence on the Network Neutrality panel/debate. Chris Wolf, who heads up the faux-organization called "Hands off the Internet," which is actually a front group for major phone companies like Verizon, AT&T and BellSouth, and Steve Effros, who painted himself as an independent even though he's a strategic consultant for major Cable companies and is a "Senior Advisor" for their trade association.

It was sort of maddening, which, I suspect, was part of the point.

I wrote Rep. Anthony Wiener, who was moderating and "trying to make up his mind" the following email:

Rep. Weiner,

I was one of the younger audience members who got a little hot under to collar during yesterday's debate. I apologize for that, and for perhaps making the pro-neutrality side seem less calm and professional and well-intentioned as you weigh the issues. Chris Wolf and Steve Effros used a number of disingenuous and provocative tactics in their side of the debate, and in many cases were (in my opinion) telling outright lies.

Anyway, all that aside, I had one constructive comment to add for your consideration.

As you correctly pointed out, the growth of the internet has been driven by innovators in content and services, not by companies building out physical infrastructure. Most users of the internet are not "consumers" of information, or at least not exclusively so. The most important and vital aspect of this network is its bi-directional nature, and the way in which this has empowered individuals to innovate outside an institutional framework.

As Tim Brenners Lee said, he didn't have to ask anyone's permission to invent the world wide web. This is because the fundamental rules have (until now) said that anyone is allowed to send data around any way they please.

This two-way/conversational structure is what makes the internet such an amazing marketplace for information and ideas. Like all marketplaces, it needs some regulation to prevent abuses and keep the action competitive. The Government has a role to play in establishing the rules of the game, and indeed it has historically played this role very well.

Since its inception, the rule of the internet has been that if you own a piece of physical infrastructure -- a pipe, if you will -- you have to treat anyone's data the same. This is a vital part of why the internet has developed so quickly. Without this, we're likely to see many more attempts at corporatized central-planning, backroom deals between big players to offer exclusive "consumer only" services, and a precipitous decline in the ability of individual and small-scale innovators to make an impact.

Without network neutrality, the "next generation" of the internet will likely be the exclusive province of large corporations. Google and Yahoo and Amazon and all those types we talk about, they'll be fine. They may have to pay more money to the telcos, but they can afford it. However, the so-called "marketplace" for next-generation services, whatever they might be, will be limited to these and other large scale players.

The alternative is not what the cable, telco and other last-mile providers would have you think. The First Amendment doesn't make the government a gatekeeper to speech, and a network neutrality statute wouldn't make the FCC the boss of the internet. All we're really talking about is continuing to keep the traffic laws of the internet the same as they have been for the past 15 years. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

The idea that deregulation in the context of the current marketplace will enhance customer service and promote innovation flies in the face of facts. It's an ideological position, based on the notion private corporations are agile, responsive market players, and government is a lumbering bureaucracy that smothers everything it touches.

You think the government is a frustrating bureaucracy? Try calling up Verizon for technical support. The telco and cable companies are massive and lumbering and full of small-minded people too. The only additional difference is they have a profit motive, aren't accountable to any sort of democratic force, and their leaders have actively stated their desire to annex broadband services as their personal fifedom.

Don't be fooled by the anti-bureaucracy, anti-regulation rhetoric. All we're looking for is the continuation of a level playing field.

I saw this happen a couple time at yesterday's conference: people get up in front of a microphone, they tell pretty obvious and outright lies, but do so in a calm, non-threatening, even friendly manner. Then, when people are incensed by their lying behavior, the liars can portrey their behavior as rational, and the people who attempt to call them out as irrational.

This was most definitely in evidence on the Network Neutrality panel/debate. Chris Wolf, who heads up the faux-organization called "Hands off the Internet," which is actually a front group for major phone companies like Verizon, AT&T and BellSouth, and Steve Effros, who painted himself as an independent even though he's a strategic consultant for major Cable companies and is a "Senior Advisor" for their trade association.

It was sort of maddening, which, I suspect, was part of the point.

I wrote Rep. Anthony Wiener, who was moderating and "trying to make up his mind" the following email:

Rep. Weiner,

I was one of the younger audience members who got a little hot under to collar during yesterday's debate. I apologize for that, and for perhaps making the pro-neutrality side seem less calm and professional and well-intentioned as you weigh the issues. Chris Wolf and Steve Effros used a number of disingenuous and provocative tactics in their side of the debate, and in many cases were (in my opinion) telling outright lies.

Anyway, all that aside, I had one constructive comment to add for your consideration.

As you correctly pointed out, the growth of the internet has been driven by innovators in content and services, not by companies building out physical infrastructure. Most users of the internet are not "consumers" of information, or at least not exclusively so. The most important and vital aspect of this network is its bi-directional nature, and the way in which this has empowered individuals to innovate outside an institutional framework.

As Tim Brenners Lee said, he didn't have to ask anyone's permission to invent the world wide web. This is because the fundamental rules have (until now) said that anyone is allowed to send data around any way they please.

This two-way/conversational structure is what makes the internet such an amazing marketplace for information and ideas. Like all marketplaces, it needs some regulation to prevent abuses and keep the action competitive. The Government has a role to play in establishing the rules of the game, and indeed it has historically played this role very well.

Since its inception, the rule of the internet has been that if you own a piece of physical infrastructure -- a pipe, if you will -- you have to treat anyone's data the same. This is a vital part of why the internet has developed so quickly. Without this, we're likely to see many more attempts at corporatized central-planning, backroom deals between big players to offer exclusive "consumer only" services, and a precipitous decline in the ability of individual and small-scale innovators to make an impact.

Without network neutrality, the "next generation" of the internet will likely be the exclusive province of large corporations. Google and Yahoo and Amazon and all those types we talk about, they'll be fine. They may have to pay more money to the telcos, but they can afford it. However, the so-called "marketplace" for next-generation services, whatever they might be, will be limited to these and other large scale players.

The alternative is not what the cable, telco and other last-mile providers would have you think. The First Amendment doesn't make the government a gatekeeper to speech, and a network neutrality statute wouldn't make the FCC the boss of the internet. All we're really talking about is continuing to keep the traffic laws of the internet the same as they have been for the past 15 years. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

The idea that deregulation in the context of the current marketplace will enhance customer service and promote innovation flies in the face of facts. It's an ideological position, based on the notion private corporations are agile, responsive market players, and government is a lumbering bureaucracy that smothers everything it touches.

You think the government is a frustrating bureaucracy? Try calling up Verizon for technical support. The telco and cable companies are massive and lumbering and full of small-minded people too. The only additional difference is they have a profit motive, aren't accountable to any sort of democratic force, and their leaders have actively stated their desire to annex broadband services as their personal fifedom.

Don't be fooled by the anti-bureaucracy, anti-regulation rhetoric. All we're looking for is the continuation of a level playing field.

At the Personal Democracy Conference. It's a pretty good turnout, definitely more than 2004. I'm speaking this afternoon on the "free tools" panel. Should be fun.

At the Personal Democracy Conference. It's a pretty good turnout, definitely more than 2004. I'm speaking this afternoon on the "free tools" panel. Should be fun.

It's a pretty good turnout here at Drupal Camp. Aaron and I got together last night and had seven beers and argued about the merits of Nuclear power, and managed to take at least a page of notes, so we should be cool to run the Advanced Development track.

It's a mixed group; should be pretty interesting.

The "real" Hummer, the H1, is going out of production:

The 2006 model year will be the last for the Hummer H1, the hulking, gas-guzzling status symbol that attracted celebrities and off-road enthusiasts but has drawn the ire of environmentalists.

That's sort of misleading. The much more popular H2 is also a gas guzzling pollution-machine, and it has the added bonus of just being an ultra-heavy Chevy Tahoe, so it can't, like, do anything special.

In light of that, I found this quote kind of illuminating:

"It's a great brand. There is a lot that can be done with that in terms of leveraging its ruggedness and toughness."

The brand contains the ideas of ruggedness and toughness, but the product itself does not. The H2 and H3 are not in any way extra-capable or able to acually do anything.

This is where we are as a civilization: so heavily invested in our own bullshit we don't know the difference between a tough vehicles and a "tough" brand. Like most hegemons in declines, we are militarily active, driven by signs and wonders.

A Repost from the Atlantic Monthly:

The world of management theorists remains exempt from accountability. In my experience, for what it’s worth, consultants monitored the progress of former clients about as diligently as they checked up on ex-spouses (of which there were many). Unless there was some hope of renewing the relationship (or dating a sister company), it was Hasta la vista, baby. And why should they have cared? Consultants’ recommendations have the same semantic properties as campaign promises: it’s almost freakish if they are remembered in the following year.

Interesting article in all. I've long felt that the culture around managment and related consulting is a kind of voodoo. The paralells Stewart draws between these gestalts and traditional religion are apt.

Most organizations can probably benefit more from increasing transparently (if only internally) than from any passing management fad, but this is something bureaucracies will always resist. Why? Well, it actually does make it hard to hide inefficiencies, which leads to the inevitable question of "how much more productivity could we have?"

This is part and parcel of the perverse American relationship to work and productivity. WE work too long for too little, and we produce too little of real value as well. I know a lot of people (including myself) who will work needless 16 hour days or 80 hour weeks because we think this makes us herculean performers in our trade, when in fact if we were just to plan and focus a little more we could have been done much more quickly.

The problem is that getting all your work done quickly and then -- egad! -- clocking out to do non-work things is seen as a sign of slackerdom, while objectively spending twice as long to accomplish half as much is seen as heroic.

This starts with a work-style that develops in the college system (slack and cram, all while managing perceptions), and becomes embedded and ingraned over the course of years.

It gets worse in larger organizations, where that "perceptions management" part becomes more important than the actual products of your work, which are unlikely to be truly consequential.

And now I'm off to file my TPS reports...

The Telcos have a folksy piece of flash propaganda out as a paid ad on most of the major blogs that's hitting back against Net Neutrality. It features freaky ranters (me), corporate fatcats (google, yahoo and microsoft), and a balding bureaucrat (the g-man).

The ad is highly misleading overall (of course). One of the things it doesn't feature is any telecommunication company. Funny, that. But to me, the best part is this:

"Net Neutrality is about who controls the internet: the people, or the government."

Huh. I wonder where turning over all phone records to Homeland Security spooks fits into this equation?

This is market fundimentalism at its finest: the will of the people is expressed through (unregulated) markets and frustrated by things like democratic government. This sort of ideology has been roundly shown to be false in real-world situations, yet it remains a strong force within the culture of Corporate America, which dominates the mindset of Washington DC. It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

You wanna see a real video about Net Neutrality? Ask a motherfucking ninja:

There's more here.

I have to learn to pay my webhosting bills on time it seems.

Yesterday's birthday dinner was fab. Julia made some amazing chicken and greens and carrots and slaw and macaroni. And there was grazy, praise be.

I haven't seen the new Lost yet, but it's in the torrentfeed.

The ratio of seeders is real good (maybe 15k seeds for 35k downloaders), and I got the whole thing downloaded in under an hour. For anyone who's wondering whether widespread use of bittorrent will work for releasing video content: the proof is in the pudding.

Warner Bros is doing a half-bright partnership here, and it blows my mind that people continue to miss the boat. Here's the deal, fuckers: you can eat Netflix's lunch and be poised to score big on the next generation of content that's going to suck the life out of cable networks, all without impacting your existing bottom-line. Get it? Good. Now keep it.

UPDATE: Hollywood may be in for an indie-shellacking soon: participatory culture style.

The Grey Lady Gets it Right:

One of the Internet's great strengths is that a single blogger or a small political group can inexpensively create a Web page that is just as accessible to the world as Microsoft's home page. But this democratic Internet would be in danger if the companies that deliver Internet service changed the rules so that Web sites that pay them money would be easily accessible, while little-guy sites would be harder to access, and slower to navigate.

Another issue aside from the "extortion problem" is that the Telcos want to sell their own rich-media services, and using the massively developed and adopted infrastructure known as "internet" makes that really easy. Except it only works (at a profit) if they're allowed to make their service some kind of special gated community, which means breaking network neutrality.

The new telco conglomorates and cable services see a future where you're "data services" include HDTV on-demand, traditional "internet", and e-commerce all through some AOL or Prodigy-like vertical silo. Which would be suxxomatic.

Action items here.