Dana Blankenhorn

PointCast II

The more I read about MySpace, its success in getting users, and its problems, the more one word keeps coming to mind.

Pointcast.

I know you've got to be pretty old in Internet years to remember the PointCast fiasco. It was an early "push" system. You would sign up for news stories and get them delivered to you (yes, as in an RSS reader). Trouble was, so many people were getting so many copies of the same story sent to them that they were grabbing all the bandwidth their employers possessed. Worse, PointCast could not find a way to monetize all this traffic, since they didn't control the content.

MySpace is beginning to look like the same kind of fiasco.  The fact is, Rupert Murdoch and his team failed to vette the business model, failed to vette the technology, and failed to vette the political risks.

UPDATE: Vox Populis over in England, which is far more willing to call an emperor naked than any American outfit, notes that one of Murdoch's sons suggested he buy PointCast for $450 million in 1997 -- the company eventually fetched $7 million before disappearing. Oh, and the main point of the story is that News Corp. may not exist in 2015 because Murdoch's kids are idiots. (Maybe the tree doesn't lie far from the apple.)

The Real Political Divide

The real political divide in America is between the ascendent open source view on the one side and the proprietary view on the other.

Right now, the proprietary view holds absolute power. This is partly because open source is not organized. In fact, many with an open source view see what they're doing as merely "good business" and firmly reject its political implications.

At the Freedom2Connect Conference in Silver Spring this reticence was on prominent display. The technical experts who supported the open source view hoped that "competition" -- maybe from WiFi and WiMax -- might suffice to get them the network neutrality they sought. In fact, most wound up rejecting the network neutrality language being debated as part of the Barton Telecom bill.

Thus, it was a shock for them to wake up this week and find that the Movement had taken off without them. The issue of network neutrality had hit the mass media, without them. And, except for a few exceptions of right-wing grassroots organizations that have become dependent on e-mail, the activism here was coming entirely from the Left.

This means the proposal will go down. Anything with a Democratic label is going down this year.

But it also gives Democrats -- especially Netroots Democrats -- another  issue (as though they need one) that can win even some business support.

And that's the point. Open source, as a political wedge, is useful in siphoning business support from the GOP.

That's because all forms of open source -- open source software, open spectrum, and network neutrality -- make sound business sense. More and more businesses are endorsing them. Sun Microsystems is merely the latest. But all companies that have succeeded on the backs of the Internet -- Google, Amazon, eBay -- are in the same boat. So is Intel, which has hitched its future to unlicensed wireless.  None of these companies wants to be partisan in any way, but they are going to find (like it or not) that they are being steadily pushed into the Democratic camp.

That's because their business opponents, seeing themselves increasingly hemmed-in, have essentially turned to Washington for relief. And Republicans, seeing big campaign cash as the only way to prevent a Democratic sweep, are ready to give them whatever they want. Right now, for instance, an even-stupider DMCA bill is in the works. Republicans may decide to sell all the abandoned TV spectrum to the highest bidders, and give none of it to unlicensed use. And of course U.S. trade policy is all for enforcing Microsoft copyrights.

New Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz' (above) most recent blog entry is titled The Brazilian Effect. It's all about the opportunities open source has for Brazil, how Sun's business strategy endorses those changes, and about the threats to it from a proprietary world:

Click over to see what he wrote:

The Democratic Fault Line

Just as Republicans split 40 years ago, between those who would accomodate the Democratic majority and those who rejected it, so Democrats are now splitting in a similar way.

On the one side we have accomodationists, or "Clintonistas." On the other we have the Netroots, who identify first with DNC chair Howard Dean but have gone beyond him.

Conventional analysts will call this split a sign of weakness.  History shows it to be a sign of strength.

Unlike the 1966 Republican split this one is not ideological. In fact many "movement" Democrats, like Ohio candidate Paul Hackett, are far more conservative (in their political opinions) to "establishment" Democrats (like Nancy Pelosi, almost Hackett's Minority Leader).

The split is over tactics. The "movement" wing rejects both accomodation with Republicans (Joe Lieberman) and with big business "Astroturf" campaigns. The accomodationists claim the movement can't win, that it's extreme, that it's impractical.

Into this latter category should go the names of Mike McCurry and Andrew Young.

• McCurry, who was press secretary to Bill Clinton, is in trouble for joining the Bell "Astroturf" campaign against network neutrality.
• Young, who was UN ambassador for Jimmy Carter and stood next to Martin Luther King Jr. the night he was shot, is in trouble for a joining a Wal-Mart "Astroturf" campaign.

What does this mean?

Proofs of Excess

Lately the Web has been filled with stories of conflict.

• The Attorney General wants to ban pornography from the Web, not just child pornography but even depictions of adults doing their biological part.
• The government's new abstinence education programs extend even to adults. Anyone who is unmarried (and only male-female unions are recognized) may have sex.
• Parents want to ban Harry Potter for "teaching witchcraft."

The people writing breathlessly about this stupidity are both well-meaning and correct. All these efforts are madness.

But in one way they are very good news indeed.

Politics of Net Neutrality

For the loser now, will be later to win.
For the times they are a-changin'

This neatly summarizes the current network neutrality debate.

Advocates for network neutrality will lose this year. AT&T and Verizon will be allowed to try and favor certain companies (Yahoo) and their Web sites over everyone else. They will be allowed to turn their lines into Cable TV lines.

But something interesting is going on. Folks are noticing. MyDD has noticed. Public Knowledge has prepared a YouTube video on the subject. Online leftists like Atrios and Think Progress have talked it up.  American Progress has written about it and (as previously noted) Moveon.org has launched a petition drive about it. FreePress has a petition on it, and on Monday a coalition including Google will launch a Web site called Savetheinternet will launch dedicated to the issue.

Right now all these people, and the experts lined up on their side, and the giant companies allied with them, are not enough to carry the day.

But there is an election coming in November. The deck is going to be scrambled, for reasons unrelated to this issue.

Surprise in Net Neutrality Debate

The surprise is that the debate exists at all.

By its nature, net neutrality is not a high-profile issue. It is assumed that net neutrality will be an issue dealt with by elites, by what Bob Frankston calls the regulatorium.

But the Democratic Netroots are being activated on this issue. Here, for instance, is an article accusing former Clinton press secretary Mike McCurry of pushing "Astroturf" for the phone companies. Movon.org has even launched a petition drive on behalf of network neutrality.

What got this started was the AOL Goodmail controversy, which we have covered here. But now that these groups are looking more closely, they are seeing the issue of network neutrality clearly.

This fact should not be underestimated. For reasons unrelated to network neutrality the power of these groups is due to rise after the next elections. Phone and cable companies operate with fairly long time horizons. They are not going to like to have to fight against an aroused, and networked majority in order to gain short-term advantages that can be overturned by new laws.

UPDATE: Consumers Union has also decided to enter the fray through a Web site called Hearusnow.com.

Hard to Digg It

Digg has become the site du jour. Like MySpace was last month.

The idea that users will vote with their mice, endorsing stories with merit so others will read it, sounds great.

Trouble is it's false.

Anyone who saw the old Weakest Link show fail in the U.S. knows how it works. Once the mediocre see the truly excellent in action, they dump on them, supporting instead other mediocrities they think they can beat.

If you don't believe that last statement, then watch American Idol -- the same thing happens. Excellent singers are voted down when there are a bunch to choose from. The winners or runner-ups often turn out to be no-talent but attractive hacks.

Boingboing quotes today from a statement by Fark.Com founder Drew Curtis to thie effect, and links to a post claiming that Digg editors are manipulating the results. If they have any sense they are.

Journalists trained to go after excellence, who are allowed to go after excellence (and not manipulated it against it by editors or publishers) usually find it. They have an incentive to be fair, and to be right.

Most of us don't have such an incentive, so we do what we like. We either base everything on our prejudices, or we lack experience in differentiating good from bad, of we think Desperate Housewives is Great TV.

The 1966 Game: Who Is Nixon Now?

Last time, we identified the position of John McCain as analogous to that of Hubert Humphrey, and gave some hints as to who might be the New Nixon.

Did you look at them? (I'll wait.)

Remember, Nixon is in the opposition party. He was a leader of the Anti-Thesis to the FDR thesis. So the New Nixon is a Democrat who was a leader of the Anti-Thesis to Ronald Reagan.

A few more hints before we reveal the answer.

• Nixon was a lightning rod for criticism, hated as much by Republicans in 1966 as Democrats.
• Nixon was already running in 1966, supporting other Republicans nationwide and collecting debts he would cash in the next campaign.
• Nixon was essentially triangulating between the New Right in his own party and the Democratic majority, working to make himself, if not acceptable, at least less anathema. Where do you think the phrase "New Nixon" came from?

OK. Ready?

How to Get Always-On Medical Happening

The Washington Post has a story today trumpeting what I call Always-On Medical applications while  Techdirt pooh-poohs it (because doctors don't e-mail).

Naturally the Posts' hook is that some big companies -- Honeywell and Philips -- are getting into the market. (They never said a word when it was all start-ups.)  They seem especially excited about the TV hook-ups which are part of these systems. (Actually, the story in question is actually from The Wall Street Journal (which explains a lot), rescued from behind that paper's paid firewall.)

In fact, what we're looking at here is bloatware aimed not at patients but at insurance companies. Instead of spending $800/day for near-critical care, they trumpet, push the patients out the door with $150/month boxes as big as TV trolleys. Rii-i-i-ight.

Real Always-On medical monitoring can be much, much simpler and much, much smaller. Sensors can be the size of a single chip. They can be embedded in clothing. They can be made for pennies. Their signals can ride on 802.11 networks to a standard PC for analysis and storage. The alerts can ride the cellular network.

And here's the part that no one gets.

The Time of Lies

Most of us know we live in a time of lies.

We're not winning in Iraq, and we're not fighting for freedom there. Freedom is not on the march, especially not in the U.S.  Global warming is affecting us. We are not really at war. American technology is losing its edge. Deficits matter.

All these are political lies.

The most dangerous lies, however, are economic. These lies blind us in dangerous ways. They can make you broke in a big hurry.

There are always such lies around. Yahoo in 1999 was not a good investment. Oil prices were not headed to the Moon in 1980.

But these are micro-economic lies. They impact only some of us. Far more dangerous are the macro-economic lies, the lies told with statistics and repeated over-and-over again by "experts." CNBC lies.

Here are some of the most pernicious:

1. Inflation is in check. False. Energy prices are impacting all of us. Food costs more. Getting to work costs a lot more. The way the CPI is being calculated is, frankly, bogus. Productivity gains are hiding a lot of inflation that is simply not being acknowledged.
2. The stock market is rising. False. The stock market has been treading water for over five years. What has been happening is that earnings have slowly been catching up with prices. We are only now reaching historic multiples of prices to earnings, yet the leak in the market still exists.
3. The economy is growing. False. Housing is growing. Free money, government subsidies (both direct, indirect and hidden) and rampant speculation make homes appear to be worth many times more than they were a few years ago, creating what looks like economic growth. But it's false growth, built on government-funded sand.