Germany’s Rhine Valley, 1439: the movable type printing press comes to western Europe, making the renaissance (and much of what came after) possible.

It took over 500 years for another technology to come along with that kind of impact on the dissemination of information and knowledge, but here we are, in the age of the internet – and Google is now working with several major libraries to digitize their collections through its Google Books Library Project and make them available online via one free terminal at any library that requests one.  The company has also reached a tentative settlement with the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers concerning compensating the copyright holders, and in June the settlement goes up for approval by the US District Court of New York.  Carefully reviewing such a complicated issue can be a lengthy process, to be sure – but to the extent one believes in the judgment and impartiality of the courts to assess any public interest  issues,  the system would appear to be working (so far at least) – right?

Not so to Robert Darnton, director of the Harvard Library, who in a recent New York Times Review of Books article and in a recently NPR interview laments that it was Google and not the government that undertook the digitizing process.  Darnton expresses concern over what he describes as the “wizardry” of the internet making it possible for one private entity to gain a monopoly over the printed word, and is of the opinion that in terms of copyright law,   “Congress got it better in 1790 than in 1998.”

A few thoughts:

• It’s the individual libraries’ prerogative as to whether or not to opt in to the Google project -  of course, Harvard is free to decline to make their impressive collection available for scanning.
• Similarly, the copyright fee settlement itself concerns only Google and the copyright holder organizations – if academic library directors were not offered a seat at the table for a business negotiation that didn’t directly involve them, is that necessarily a sign of conspiracy?
• Having arrived at a copyright fee settlement, it’s important to remember that it’s still not a done deal – it remains subject to a thorough hearing an an open court of law this June.  I would hope any valid issues raised by Darnton (or any other concerned citizen, for that matter) concerning the public good would be duly considered and debated at that point.
• As to the threat to the traditional library, it’s very likely the project will increase visitor traffic – and if some people will have some time on their hands as they wait their turn at the one computer, that would seem to be a perfect scenario for traditional book browsing and borrowing (ironically, the banks of multiple Google computers Darnton feels each library is entitled to would ultimately be far more threatening to the traditional library model).
• Lastly, what the Google venture promises is nothing less than access to the immense “long tail” of  five centuries’ worth of the printed word.  To the extent one is of the opinion that information tends to want to be free, the Google initiative is just part of an ongoing larger natural progression – a disruptive progression, to be sure, but one sometimes difficult to manage or thwart.

Personally, I like paper – I don’t think Kindles or computers will ever become my personal ‘medium of choice’ for reading.   However, I do look forward to the option of accessing that otherwise inaccessible long tail.  Granted, there are monopoly concerns, and it’s not going to be a trivial issue to build in the necessary safeguards – but let’s not risk paralysis by (to paraphrase the very Google-searchable Voltaire) making the perfect the enemy of the good.  Let’s figure it out.

The basis of Darnton’s arguments have to do with the commercial nature of  Google, but would he prefer that the Google/library project be absolutely free?  Again, one can easily imagine that if it were , the treat to the traditional library model would only be only that much greater (and it’s also worth noting that putting information under state funding and control is no simple panacea either – ask China).

In any event, will the library’s role as gatekeeper change?  Yes, but that’s unavoidable – and the fact of the matter is that the wizardry of the internet, much like the wizardry of the printing press before it (which incidentally made libraries themselves possible), is going to be with us for quite a while.

Every now and then I come across a great website.  For example, consider The Computer History Museum (located in some area of California called “Silicon Valley” of all places), which has one terrific set of online exhibits.  In particular, the History of the Internet is worth a look, if only to remind ourselves of the humble origins of (and the people responsible for) the immense packet-switched beast we now rely on for buying airline tickets, getting jobs, and finding love.

I mean, look at this cover illustration from Computing Magazine circa 1979 – how dated and yet how prescient is that?

Televisions and set-top boxes with embedded network interfaces are coming, that much is agreed upon.  What’s up for discussion, though, is just what the user interface is going to look like – an “internet video-only” implementation that places a premium on simplicity and system stability, or a full-featured “browser for the couch” allowing full unrestricted access to the internet.

Gordon Campbell, a 30+ year veteran of the semiconductor design and marketing industry with stints at Honeywell, Motorola, Intel, and several start-ups under his belt, calls the former approach “hogwash.”   According to a recent article, his current company Personal Web Systems (no web site yet)) plans to bring a device to market later this year allowing full unrestricted access to the web (the company also has plans to subsequently offer that same functionality to CE manufacturers on a single chip).

“This generation doesn’t want their hands tied behind their backs. They want the same experience as with a PC (on their TV)“, Campbell states.

I think he is precisely wrong.

Television web browsing has been tried many times before, with little or no success – and although today’s increased broadband penetration and (more text-friendly) HD screen resolutions suggest perhaps it’s time again to make yet another pass at it, the bottom line is that average folks just do not want a lean-forward PC experience on their TV, thank you very much.  And even if they did, there would be user input device issues to solve (keyboard on your coffee table, anyone?), challenging security issues to deal with,  and (in contrast with computer users), zero tolerance for crashes and restarts.

I could go on and on – but in short, I feel it’s a mistake to assume that internet access necessarily dictates a full PC/web browser paradigm – for example, consider twitter, skype, IM, even iTunes – all examples of succesful non-browser/non-PC dependent internet applications, none of which “this generation” would consider “hogwash”.

Once you explain to them what the word “hogwash” means, that is.  

To sum up, the consumer electronics industry has discovered the internet – and these new devices are not going to need (or look anything like) a PC or a web browser.

For better or worse, the TCP/IP protocol (and the internet it makes possible) will not remain the exclusive turf of the computer industry for very much longer – a point some in the industry are slow to see.

This caught my attention, only because it’s the first time I’ve seen it: yahoo! sports is now syndicating content from youtube…

hmmm.

A little recent history: in an “if-you-can’t-beat-’em-join-’em” move, last year yahoo! had planned to outsource a major part of its paid search results business to google, until google walked away due to antitrust concern.  Other than that short-lived attempt to do business together, though, the two companies are competitors on several fronts:  search, email, and yes, video.

Well, maybe “competitors” is too strong a word, at least in the short-form online video space – google’s youtube has of course largely marginalized all other short-form video websites out there (maybe you’ve heard).

But so much so that yahoo! sports is now linking to youtube for video content?

Two ways to look at this: on one hand, not a great sign for the yahoo! video brand – but on the other, perhaps this level of cross-syndication is healthy…

I know this is not a political blog. But Washington’s elected officials seems to have gone (finally) seriously digital. 

And I just can’t help myself but chime in.

I recently wrote about the Obama administration’s fervor for online social networking and viral (political) marketing.

Turns out US Congress representatives have long taken similar interest in making Web 2.0 their own. 

No matter where you stand politically, I believe this is generally good news for the technology industry, plus associated consumer software products and applications.

From mundane announcements of “one minute speeches” to instantaneously delivered results on House votes, at least since November 2007, the Clerk of the US House of Representatives regularly provides copious live updates “scraped” right from daily session inside the House chambers.

Then I got curious. Did I also miss the US Senate’s foray into micro-blogging? 

Sure enough, I did 

Although seemingly limited to Senator votes on the floor alone, Twitter has been carrying those posts at least since November 2007.

Turns out, they all nicely track back to govtrack.us, an independent Web site to “help the public research and track the activities in the US Congress.

Little did I know, D.C.’s interest in twittering created a new virtual C-SPAN if you will, sort of the “local access” approach parsed out one online message at a time.

And during yesterday’s historic session (voting on a trillion dollar support budget no less), US House representatives took to Twitter like college students (secretively, under their desks), pushing Blackberry and smartphone keys – eager to issue last-minute statements right from inside House chambers.

To top it all off, now even closed-door Presidential meetings experience their first Twitter “leaks”.

So, if this is not a political blog, why am I (still) writing about this stuff?

I am simply excited about how Web 2.0 is rapidly growing up, maturing from its early teenage “angst” appeal to a “mainstream” text and video channel – all within a couple of years.

Think of it.

As more politicians, news outlets and civic organizations thrive to adopt Web 2.0-style concepts, instant viral messaging from elected officials and others raise the legitimacy of collaborative software as a whole.

From Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Twitter, Qik, or Utterz, you name it, this is good for the devices and the connecting broadband services that support Web 2.0 at home and on-the-go.

If you still think this trend is not real, the US Postal Service announced today a fiscal-year loss of at least $6 billion, due to a 4.5% drop, or 9 billion items replaced by email and other forms of digital viral communications. 

And although it is not entirely clear to me that the same $6 billion shifted into Web 2.0 software in its entirety  (most social networking and micro-blogging services are free or ad-based at best), it clearly shows a fundamental shift in how we capture and disseminate information these days.

On that note, have you twittered today?

Historically, administration of the internet (that same internet that now supports billions of dollars of e-commerce) has been a remarkably communal, non-commercial endeavor, depending on a loose collection of several multinational government research agencies and non-profit corporations.  That such a non-centralized and flat coalition of groups and interested individuals could successfully manage the astronomical scaling up of the internet we’ve witnessed over the last few decades is truly amazing, yet largely taken for granted.

These days, though, one of the primary long-term trends we’re seeing is the emergence of the Content Delivery Network – in essence, a privatized internet.  The growth of these additional proprietary layers is primarily driven by technological considerations – both internet video and cloud computing are placing demands on the internet Vint Cerf could not have imagined.

However, the end result could well be the marginalization of today’s egalitarian public internet (we’ve already touched on the growing presence of proprietary content delivery networks and Google’s pursuit of transcontinental fiber here, and on the resulting implications for Net Neutrality here).

CDNs and proprietary backbone links both represent workarounds of the public internet routing structure, but there’s another part of the internet undergoing similar changes: the Domain Naming System (DNS).   While routing is all about numeric IP addresses, DNS is about mapping these unfriendly numeric addresses (such as “216.239.113.101” or “2001:0db8:85a3:0000:0000:8a2e:0370:7334” in the case of IPv6) to more human-appropriate names such as “digitalmissive.com”.  In other words, DNS is essentially a massively distributed database – yet one the fulfills an absolutely crucial function, if you think about it.

However, as impressive as DNS is, it’s also a key point of vulnerability – if you want to see what a jungle it is out there on the internet, just try maintaining your own publicly exposed  DNS server and watch the attacks launched against it (trust me on that one).  Furthermore, it’s not a very transparent system, and any changes made to a DNS record can take over a day to fully propagate across the entire system.  It only follows then, that as with routing, proprietary DNS systems would emerge, representing the next step in the ongoing privatization of the internet.  And so we have Dynamic DNS and firms such Dynect.  Dynect offers enterprises using distributed cloud computing applications a highly optimized private dynamic DNS system – including additional features such as load balancing, traffic management, and failover.  As with CDNs, all this functionality is localized to the end user via Dynect’s geographically diverse network of data centers, to help minimize exposure to the increasingly strained and messy public internet cloud.

Clearly, there are sound technological reasons for the emergence of these additional privatized layers of the internet.  As for what it means in terms of the nature of the internet itself going forward, I’m less sure.

Any thoughts?

The Holy Grail: internet video directly from the TV.

While the primary challenges would seem to be hardware-based,  there are equally significant (and equally daunting) software challenges to be met as well, because no computer = no OS = no web browser.   Traditional operating systems aren’t appropriate for a lean-back passive viewing system on any number of levels, and studies repeatedly show that nobody really wants a full-featured browser on their television (and a keyboard on their coffee table) anyway, so in one sense it’s no great loss.  However, forgoing all that standardized functionality leaves one with a lot of design and development work to do: what about an operating system?  What should the user interface(s) look like?  Can we get by with the current button-laden remote as an input device, or should a Wii-like pointing remote be developed?  And how does the type of input device dictate what type of functionality can get built into the system itself?  All in all, a pretty heavy lift – because what we’re talking about here is the creation of an entirely new interface to the internet (potentially every bit as important as the web browser).

Into the void step Yahoo and Intel.  Just announced at last week’s CES is the Connected TV Widgets Channel, a ‘software foundation’ for internet-enabled television hardware built around a new generation of specialized Intel processors.  While the framework will be open to 3rd party software developers (according to Yahoo’s Patrick Barry, “We get a nice advantage, knowing the ins and outs, but we will not limit the platform to being addressable by us”), it’s worth noting that Yahoo and Intel are going with a lightweight “widget” model rather than a heavier-weight application model.   Running a widget on a modified JavaScript engine rather than an installed application down on the operating system itself tends to protect the OS from poorly-behaved software and also allows for more generalized control of what the software can and can’t do.  Much like the Apple App Store model, the widget model represents an attempt to strike a balance between encouraging open and innovative software development, while at the same time providing appropriate “guard rails” for what are, after all, consumer electronics devices rather than computers (look for this trend to continue as cloud computing and the overall “CE-ization” of home computing continues).

Initially at least, the Widget Channel appears to be primarily about adding ancillary features on top of the traditional cable/satellite television you already have – in other words, imagine being able to call up feeds from fan message boards or team websites in a dock at the bottom of your TV screen while simultaneously watching the big game on cable…   Or having a dashboard of specialized weather, news, or twitter feeds available while watching “Madmen” via satellite dish…

• On a purely technical level, though, there’s nothing to prevent a Connected TV widget from streaming video, either (bandwidth permitting).  At that point, things get interesting – as the innocent little ‘widget’ starts to eat into existing television distribution models.

• In fact, the terms “Widget” and “Channel” are both misleading, because the Intel/Yahoo initiative is not about merely adding additional incidental functionality -  it’s about (cue the thunderclap and the dry ice) letting internet video into your television.  In other words, that local weather report or eBay quote on the bottom of your screen is really something of a Trojan Horse (a point already probably not lost on the cable industry).

Connected TV is, um, well-connected: on the hardware side, CE manufacturers such as Samsung, Sony, and LG are already on board, and for web content, deals have been inked with traditional heavyweights such as eBay and the New York Times (among others).  For the video over IP scenario to play out, though, what Connected TV needs are video content partnerships – and there too, Yahoo and Intel seem to have things well in hand: agreements have already been signed with CBS, Netflix, Amazon, Blockbuster, and Showtime

It’s been a while since we’ve seen much good news coming out of Yahoo, but they seem to be getting a lot of things right here.

Yahoo intends to monetize the Widgets Channel through advertising, but in an effort to reach a critical mass of users as quickly as possible, will reportedly go easy on the advertising initially.  So who knows, maybe in a few years from now, Yahoo stockholders could actually be thanking Mr. Yang for turning Mr. Ballmer down at $31 per share….

Inspired by Andreas’ post on the comparative online presence of certain politicians, I just checked John McCain’s Facebook account – although it was updated yesterday (1/8/09), the last previous update to his profile was made on August 6th, when he announced a change of his website.  In other words, for almost the last three months of the US presidential campaign, nobody on his staff touched his Facebook profile…

I find that remarkable.

(In contrast, photos of the Obama camp watching the election night results from their hotel room were available online immediately on his still-robust Flickr account…)

Oops, I stand corrected. My mid-December post about US presidential interests in post-campaign viral marketing wondered whether European heads of state would follow Mr. Obama’s lead.

Little did I know (I should have checked), Germany’s chancellor Angela Merkel has been podcasting weekly since mid 2006. 

Kudos to her (rather early) interest in this still relatively new digital medium. But this made we wonder, whether I had missed others among Europe’s leading politicians. 

As to France, I was unable to find anything on President Nicolas Sarkozy. Maybe this is because he is still relatively new in office and hasn’t quite gotten around.

But so is Prime Minister Gordon Brown over in the UK. But at least he does have his own website.

Although so far void of regular podcasts to the nation (and anyone else, for that matter), his site at least provides YouTube links to various ad-hoc press conference. A start.

Meanwhile, over in The Netherlands, Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkende has not yet taken to video podcasting either, it seems. I am somewhat surprised.

Turns out, neither does the country’s monarch seem interested in this sort of “modern” communication.

What makes me wonder is whether heads-of-state podcasts (or the lack of the same) are an indication for any government’s true commitment to bringing its country into the digital age. 

Like a CEO running a company, if you don’t try your own products, how would you know they work?

Any thoughts on this?

Be encouraged to chime in.

Net Neutrality.  Up to now, the conventional definition of the concept has been that internet service providers shall be prohibited from “blocking or slowing content from some applications or companies” (as quoted from a recent NetworkWorld article).  Arguably, the definitive infraction against this particular notion of Net Neutrality was Comcast’s recent ‘managing’ of Bit Torrent traffic via the insertion of spurious connection reset packets.

However, the whole issue the issue of Net Neutrality (at the last mile between the ISP and the consumer, at least) is rapidly becoming a moot point: in preparation for the expected explosion of demand for longer-form video over IP, most major carriers are now scrambling to assemble and/or acquire proprietary content delivery networks (CDN)s to avoid the ever more congested and unpredictable system of routers out there in the public cloud (a recent post about just what Google, Microsoft, and Verizon are up to can be found here).

So while your neighborhood ISP might maintain a commitment to Net Neutrality itself, the real action is well upstream, as major corporations join already established CDN players such as Akamai, Edge Networks, and Yahoo’s Cloudfront to distribute and/or cache digital media content out along the edge of the cloud, in effect forming competing private mini-clouds to minimize the role of the public internet itself.

Put another way, in the purest sense of the term, Net Neutrality has already become something of an anachronism – not due to any localized slowing down of unfavored packets at the ISP level, but due to a globalized speeding up of favored packets on CDNs, before they ever reach the ISP.   A recent Wall Street Journal article touches on just this nuanced distinction: according to Google, their recent proprietary internet/CDN initiatives “do not rely on the carrier’s unilateral control over the last-mile connections to consumers, and also do not involve discriminatory intent“ – and even the independent public interest organization Public Knowledge (whose directors include internet academic and Obama advisor Lawrence Lessig) now maintains that “caching in no way is a part of the Net Neutrality issue.”

I’m of the opinion there’s considerably more gray area here.  But no matter – since the public internet will simply not scale to meet the anticipated bandwidth demand once short-tail (mainstream) premium digital media over IP becomes widespread, both carriers and content owners will increasingly invest in proprietary content delivery networks – and as consumers buy into the mass-market internet video offerings made possible by these high-performance CDNs, the very concept of Net Neutrality will seem increasingly quaint – and the “internet” as a whole will come to resemble the American health care system: multi-tiered and largely privatized.

So to the extent long-form video over IP ultimately enjoys widespread mass-market success,  the innocent ideal of a truly egalitarian and fundamentally neutral internet is destined to end, no matter what your local ISP’s policies are.

Don’t shoot the messenger…