I followed some of the recent talks about net neutrality, the spin on that which has been called "ISP transparency" and what appears to be the outcome and current FCC thinking as recently expressed by the chairman.
It occurs to me that we're at real risk of the Internet continuing to develop like our national highway system, our power grid and our health care system, all of which are teetering on the cusp between maximum capacity and breaking down. The capacity problems are about peak load and a small population taking advantage of the lack of controls. I could draw some parallels but many should seem obvious: poor drivers equate to health-maintenance-by-emergency-room use equate to torrent spams equate to air conditioners in uninsulated buildings. To be able to even have discussion about "neutrality" (i.e., sustainable systems for all users), we need to address root abuses on both sides: provider and consumer.
Any neutrality regulation also has to take on applications which will attempt to maximize their own utilization without regard to total availability. Yes, one could argue that it is not the domain of the application engineer to control that, but then you've put the onus back on the ISP for balance. Consider the ways that our highways have developed, with every individual deciding when and where they will drive and the concomitant traffic jams that occur. Out power grids suffer the same demand load balancing problems. We have clear examples of how a complete hands-off policy doesn't maximize our resource investment. So "net neutrality" should not be cover for hamstringing net management just as it shouldn't be cover for ISPs who are also content providers (e.g. Comcast) to be able to provide preferential treatment for their own revenue enhancements (e.g., video on demand).
This is a deep problem, and heavy hands by regulation is the most likely potential cause to exacerbate the problem. Too much, too soon is a real hazard. A working group study to find a "neutral" (to coin a phrase) balance between technical and social demands.
In the meantime, the FCC and congress both would find their time better spent to make sure that the access needs of the populace are met before slicing up bandwidth for the privileged. TV box subsidies are fine, but how about "lifeline" data access for all, much as voice access is subsidized for the poor and fixed-income elderly. That would be true "net egalitarianism", a step beyond "neutrality".
Thursday, April 24, 2008
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
Language is magic
"Any language that can express all that is needed for a wide range of application areas could be considered unnecessarily complex for any given application, but it must cope with an essentially unbounded set of applications."
I was immediately struck by the similarity to Arthur C. Clarke's axiom:
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
Clarke's is the superset, but Stroustrup explains why it is difficult to figure out entirely how language works.
Friday, April 11, 2008
Suspension of Disbelief
I listened to much of the recent Petraeus testimony to the House Armed Services Committee. Mostly on the radio to and from work and during a lull in my afternoon. It was largely as expected, posturing and political puppet shows from the committee on both sides of the aisle and the general and ambassador tap-dancing and trying not to be caught having someone else mis-characterize their own statements.
I'm not going to agree nor disagree in this posting with the policies or current actions nor future actions--it is easy to see that this is a very complex issue and neither "stay the course" nor "bring them home" bumper sticker slogans can translate into those actions with success for the Iraqi people. In short, my opinion since "Mission Accomplished" has been aligned with former Secretary of State Colin Powell: "You broke it, you bought it." We've an obligation to get out of a sovereign nation as quick as we can, but without leaving vast numbers (thousands, tens of thousands) of innocents at risk of genocide, religocide, or to be driven from their homes or in a new war with Iran--and other crimes against humanity which are currently held at bay by our military presence. How and when we are able to leave without such horrific outcomes--it is clear to me from both the testimony and Committee questions--is that no one knows. We have a lot to figure out there.
Of course others have differing opinions, and one phrase in the disagreements expressed in the hearing stood out. Senator Clinton said that it would require a "willing suspension of disbelief" to accept the claim that the "surge" was working. That stuck with me. The concept behind that phrase is familiar to anyone who has studied film or literature. Suspension of disbelief is the essence of fiction. It is the contract a writer or filmmaker creates with an audience to require that the audience leaves some aspect of their critical thinking at the door, in essence to "believe" what the author is saying. If you suspend disbelief, you are believing. Not to understand as a scientist would, but to accept as truth without deep questioning about the veracity of all aspects of the story.
The premise behind the phrase is that we are skeptics in our natural, presumably intellectual, discourse. That we should bring to all encounters a presumption of disbelief--not harsh nor pejorative, but critical. Critical in the intellectual sense of the word, not in the casual, emotionally-charged sense that seems to pervade many aspects of culture--especially inter-generational communication. (How to express a critical posture without alienating the person you're engaged with is a topic for many other essays.) We generally do interact with new encounters skeptically, critically, with disbelief. Because we want to understand and see how what we're encountering fits in best with what we already know.
With literature, we don't have to have it "fit in best" with our accepted reality. We begin with a premise of fantasy, of an imagined place that has some familiarity with our shared reality, but not exactly. We accept that the author is going to take us on a journey where the fantastic or unexplained may happen. We don't pick at the edges, we relax our judgment--our active participation in judging the veracity--in order to what? For what reason would we not want to understand completely and know the truth of what is being presented to us? To be entertained. In the movie Galaxy Quest an alien race has no such facility, they accept that their Sci-Fi entertainers really have all the technology and power needed to do what the screen fiction presents to them.
So back to the Senator and the phrase as used in the hearing. I couldn't tell whether it was a sardonic remark. I would hope that it was. But under the sardony, there is a presumption: that we--the consumers of the reports of this administration and of their appointees' testimony--do indeed come to engage news and information with the same mindset with which we engage entertainment. It is easy to suspend disbelief--unraveled, that means it is easy to believe.
To believe is to accept without criticism. In our culture which has to contend with on a daily basis the challenges of a secular government and a spectrum of religions, we tend to ascribe "belief" to the realm of the spiritual, the religious. But belief has a strong component in all aspects of our engagement with the world. Philosophically, it is not possible to completely "know" anything. At some point one must "believe" that the authority on a topic--be it teacher, book or wikipedia--is correct, knows some level of detail more than we do. That's the essence of authority. But belief (in secular matters) should not be absolute, there should always be a measure of criticism available to any argument. And that is the essence of knowledge and learning.
What we as citizens are often faced with is the messages of our leaders and public servants (a label that politicians would be well-served to remember as part of their job description) which come through the same media as our entertainment. So we must always have our disbelief active, and only suspend it when we know that we're engaged to be entertained. If entertainment is not the intent, we should always have a "willing disbelief". Suspension should be reserved for a special relationships with authors and artists, and never with politicians nor generals.
I'm not going to agree nor disagree in this posting with the policies or current actions nor future actions--it is easy to see that this is a very complex issue and neither "stay the course" nor "bring them home" bumper sticker slogans can translate into those actions with success for the Iraqi people. In short, my opinion since "Mission Accomplished" has been aligned with former Secretary of State Colin Powell: "You broke it, you bought it." We've an obligation to get out of a sovereign nation as quick as we can, but without leaving vast numbers (thousands, tens of thousands) of innocents at risk of genocide, religocide, or to be driven from their homes or in a new war with Iran--and other crimes against humanity which are currently held at bay by our military presence. How and when we are able to leave without such horrific outcomes--it is clear to me from both the testimony and Committee questions--is that no one knows. We have a lot to figure out there.
Of course others have differing opinions, and one phrase in the disagreements expressed in the hearing stood out. Senator Clinton said that it would require a "willing suspension of disbelief" to accept the claim that the "surge" was working. That stuck with me. The concept behind that phrase is familiar to anyone who has studied film or literature. Suspension of disbelief is the essence of fiction. It is the contract a writer or filmmaker creates with an audience to require that the audience leaves some aspect of their critical thinking at the door, in essence to "believe" what the author is saying. If you suspend disbelief, you are believing. Not to understand as a scientist would, but to accept as truth without deep questioning about the veracity of all aspects of the story.
The premise behind the phrase is that we are skeptics in our natural, presumably intellectual, discourse. That we should bring to all encounters a presumption of disbelief--not harsh nor pejorative, but critical. Critical in the intellectual sense of the word, not in the casual, emotionally-charged sense that seems to pervade many aspects of culture--especially inter-generational communication. (How to express a critical posture without alienating the person you're engaged with is a topic for many other essays.) We generally do interact with new encounters skeptically, critically, with disbelief. Because we want to understand and see how what we're encountering fits in best with what we already know.
With literature, we don't have to have it "fit in best" with our accepted reality. We begin with a premise of fantasy, of an imagined place that has some familiarity with our shared reality, but not exactly. We accept that the author is going to take us on a journey where the fantastic or unexplained may happen. We don't pick at the edges, we relax our judgment--our active participation in judging the veracity--in order to what? For what reason would we not want to understand completely and know the truth of what is being presented to us? To be entertained. In the movie Galaxy Quest an alien race has no such facility, they accept that their Sci-Fi entertainers really have all the technology and power needed to do what the screen fiction presents to them.
So back to the Senator and the phrase as used in the hearing. I couldn't tell whether it was a sardonic remark. I would hope that it was. But under the sardony, there is a presumption: that we--the consumers of the reports of this administration and of their appointees' testimony--do indeed come to engage news and information with the same mindset with which we engage entertainment. It is easy to suspend disbelief--unraveled, that means it is easy to believe.
To believe is to accept without criticism. In our culture which has to contend with on a daily basis the challenges of a secular government and a spectrum of religions, we tend to ascribe "belief" to the realm of the spiritual, the religious. But belief has a strong component in all aspects of our engagement with the world. Philosophically, it is not possible to completely "know" anything. At some point one must "believe" that the authority on a topic--be it teacher, book or wikipedia--is correct, knows some level of detail more than we do. That's the essence of authority. But belief (in secular matters) should not be absolute, there should always be a measure of criticism available to any argument. And that is the essence of knowledge and learning.
What we as citizens are often faced with is the messages of our leaders and public servants (a label that politicians would be well-served to remember as part of their job description) which come through the same media as our entertainment. So we must always have our disbelief active, and only suspend it when we know that we're engaged to be entertained. If entertainment is not the intent, we should always have a "willing disbelief". Suspension should be reserved for a special relationships with authors and artists, and never with politicians nor generals.
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