June 2014 – Looking Forward

June 25, 2014

The Internet versus The Nation-State?

I’ve been reading two books that haven’t usually been mentioned together. The authors – one pair from and heavily influenced by the tech industry – and the other from the foreign policy establishment end up taking positions that are somewhat opposite to where they would be expected.

Together the two books lay out a debate as to whether the Internet will have only a surface effect on government or be part of a fundamental change.

Eric Schmidt, Executive Chairman of Google, and Jared Cohen, former member of the US Department of State’s Policy Planning Staff wrote “The New Digital Age: Transforming Nations, Businesses, and Our Lives”.

Despite its futuristic vision in parts, the book’s concept of government seems mostly to be stuck in the present, perhaps even the past. The authors’ view is that the Internet is “just a tool” that will be used by the nation-state and citizens to interact in much the way they have done so in the past couple hundred years – since the idea of a nation-state began to form. Their chapter on revolutions even has the dynamics of protest and revolution following old rules, with the Internet playing a supporting role.

But new tools are not always merely new means to old ends. They change things in fundamental ways. Consider the impact of tool making and tools on the evolution of the human species. Or, remember the succinct statement about television a couple decades ago by Marshall McLuhan: “the medium is the message.”

And then there’s Moisés Naim, former Foreign Policy editor and Senior Associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, who wrote “The End of Power: From Boardrooms to Battlefields and Churches to States, Why Being In Charge Isn’t What It Used to Be”.

He writes:

“We know that power is shifting from brawn to brains, from north to south and west to east, from old corporate behemoths to agile start-ups, from entrenched dictators to people in town squares and cyberspace. But to say that … is not enough. Power is undergoing a far more fundamental mutation … Even as rival states, companies, political parties, social movements, and institutions or individual leaders fight for power as they have done throughout the ages, power itself – what they are fighting so desperately to get and keep – is slipping away.

“Power is decaying.

“To put it simply, power no longer buys as much as it did in the past. In the twenty-first century, power is easier to get, harder to use – and easier to lose…

“The decay of power is changing the world.”

Naim’s book makes a persuasive case that the Internet, along with other major factors, is fundamentally reducing the power of the nation-state and other centuries-old institutions. The tools are diminishing and modifying the nation-states, not merely being added to their arsenal.

©2014 Norman Jacknis

[http://njacknis.tumblr.com/post/89859756227/the-internet-versus-the-nation-state/]

June 18, 2014

Only One Way To Get Broadband?

For the first time ever, there was a Master Class focused on rural communities held two weeks ago as part of the annual summit of the Intelligent Community Forum. There were people from Europe, the USA and Canada, Asia and as far away as New Zealand in the class.

Part of the focus of the class was on how rural areas can get broadband. Too often there is the assumption that broadband and fiber optics are the same thing.

One of my former colleagues used to describe the passion of some broadband advocates for fiber connections as a kind of “Fiber Taliban”. But while fiber makes economic sense in densely populated urban areas, it becomes very expensive to deploy in the countryside. As a practical matter, exclusive use of fiber is a dream that stands in the way of getting broadband to the countryside. This may be one situation where, as the old line goes, “the perfect is the enemy of the good.”

In the class, I pointed out that just as there isn’t only one way for a person to get from Point A to Point B, there isn’t only one way for a person to get broadband.

Like many people, I used to think that the laws of physics provide a natural cap on the amount of data that can go through the air. And, in a theoretical sense, that is still true. But the engineers have nevertheless made dramatic improvements.

Verizon Wireless, for example, now usually range of 10-20 MB, although in NYC, it’s been independently measured above 30. Its 4G is, according to Verizon, ten times the speed of 3G.

A couple of weeks ago, Huawei promised more.

Huawei Technologies officials say the giant tech vendor has successfully tested a WiFi service that hit more than 10 gigabits per second, a speed that is 10 times faster than what is currently commercially available.

There are a variety of ways that data can travel over the air. The most well-established, alternatives include satellite, Wi-Fi and standard fixed wireless. Free space optics, pictured below, offers a large pipe that can be especially useful for rugged territory.

Also of interest is the future use of “white space” as television goes digital.

And balloons, which act as flexible and inexpensive towers. Google has proposed balloons at high altitudes. But even below the aviation floor of 500 feet, balloons can provide coverage over a wide swath of countryside.

The Internet protocol doesn’t care what the communications medium is, so you can combine different methods to provide broadband to different kinds of places

By the way, there is also a lesson here in another important aspect of deploying broadband into the countryside – funding it. The most successful broadband projects have usually combined more than one purpose:

High speed communications
Healthcare
Education and libraries
Business development
Smart grid and management of other infrastructure
Etc.

This combination opens up more sources of funds and means more people have a reason to use the broadband, thus making the project successful and sustainable.

This is a natural approach in really remote places. A couple of the folks in the class came from Wanganui in New Zealand. That town’s Mayor described their bottom up approach in which each farmer extends the network further into the countryside. And, if you’re thinking this is just some semi-rural, small town place, look at this picture of what their broadband project eventually has to cover.

Pictures via:

Free Space optics – http://www.fastlinks-wireless.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/free-space-optics-570.jpg
White space – http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-cH593vvGhzM/Twdza7jYyUI/AAAAAAAAQkU/FWuvh3KP54U/s1600/AWR-white-space-radio-outdoor-mounting.png 80 gig
Helikite balloon – http://www.allsopphelikites.com/
Waverly, Whangui, New Zealand – Google Earth

©2014 Norman Jacknis

[http://njacknis.tumblr.com/post/89157915184/only-one-way-to-get-broadband]

June 11, 2014

Accelerating Internet Activism?

Last week I was at the Personal Democracy Forum (PDF), the annual gathering of technologists, political activists, entrepreneurs and many others focused on the ways that the Internet is playing a role in government and society. As it does every year, PDF had an interesting and thought provoking range of speakers and panels. The event was inspiring both in the activities of many of these individuals and the sheer creative ambition that drives them.

With more than 140 speakers in both plenary sessions and breakouts, it is not physically possible to hear everyone. But something was bothering me in many of these sessions I did attend.

It was brought home by Anthea Watson Strong’s reference to the Calculus of Voting written many years ago by the political scientists William Riker and Peter Ordeshook. This was a relatively rare moment in which someone explicitly or implicitly referred back to previous research and analysis of political behavior.

And in a breakout session, Ben Berkowitz, the founder/CEO of the very useful and successful SeeClickFix, rightly expressed concerns about the focus of many activists on just the next election. He asked for a new approach – a consistent effort, an organization, that helps people with the daily public issues and annoyances that bother them.

I told him that there used to be organizations that did just that – the old urban political machines. They were building long term supporters for a party, so their timeframe was more than just the next election campaign of one politician. While they helped people with their problems, of course, the old machines were also corrupt. A modern more ethical version may be what he’s looking for. Not a new idea, just a better one. (For a recent assessment of the political machines of the 19^th and early 20^th centuries, see Terry Golway’s book “Machine Made: Tammany Hall and the Creation of Modern American Politics”.)

This was one of several examples in which more historical context would have been helpful.

Perhaps it was entrepreneurial enthusiasm to push ahead and not look back. Perhaps it was a matter of being so convinced that what you’re doing is so new, no one before you could have something of value to contribute to your thought process. (I have to admit that this is something I’ve also been guilty of myself in some of my entrepreneurial enthusiasms.)

Newton famously said: “If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” In the world of political technology this means understanding previous political thought and analysis, history and modern research on political behavior.

Most people in the audience were excited by the possibilities for true democratic governance that the Internet and related tools make possible, including me. But to accelerate this movement there needs to be more context and deeper knowledge on the part of the creators and activists.

Otherwise, we end up becoming another example of the old story about reinventing the wheel. Not only is that wasted effort, but, without learning, each new reinvention of the wheel seems to start out as immature as the last one. In turn, that immaturity and lack of progress may dampen the potential engagement of the larger number of potential citizen activists which the PDF movement will need.

[http://njacknis.tumblr.com/post/88472868695/accelerating-internet-activism]

June 4, 2014

Crowdsourcing For Legislators?

[This blog is a slightly early contribution to the dialog of the annual Personal Democracy Forum to be held tomorrow, June 5, 2014, in New York City. See http://personaldemocracy.com/conferences/nyc/2014 .]

In a previous post, “Is The Voice A Model For Crowdsourcing?”, I noted that crowdsourcing can be a modern manifestation of the civic involvement that is the foundation of successful democracies – by providing public officials a good sense of the priorities of citizens, in addition to giving them new ideas.

When he took office in 2009, President Obama made crowdsourcing a key element of his open government initiative, using the IdeaScale platform. So did other elected officials in national and sub-national governments around the world.

In some respects, it is surprising that public officials with executive responsibilities have taken to crowdsourcing more than those in legislative positions. Most legislative bodies in democracies have encouraged petitions and testimony from the public as they consider new laws. The National Conference of State Legislatures of the USA prominently features the importance of citizen engagement, mostly focused on ways this has happened for decades.

So, in the Internet age, crowdsourcing would seem to be a natural extension of that traditional pattern. But that’s happening slowly.

I would expect this to pick up as legislators realize it is in their professional interest to better engage with their constituents. That engagement helps to even the playing field in the frequent contests between legislators and public executives – a situation where most voters have much less awareness of their legislators than of the executives and so can provide less support for the legislative side.

There are two interested examples of crowdsourcing in the legislative arena.

Last year, the Ministry of Environment in Finland used crowdsourcing to draft a new law on off-road traffic, a subject with conflicting public priorities so it was good to encourage wider involvement in the debate than would normally occur.

A GovLab report, at the end of last year, noted these ways in which this was a positive experiment:

Almost all the comments were constructive, with a very small percentage weeded out.
Participants as a group were realistic about their expectations and the fact that their input would need to be refined.
The participants learned from each other which helped to elevate the level of the debate and presumably made it easier for the government to arrive at a reasonable compromise.
The “crowd preferred commonsensical and nuanced ideas, while rejecting vague and extreme ones”

Clearly the experience of the Finnish would indicate that some of the fears public officials have had about crowdsourcing haven’t come about. The public is trying to participate as reasonable adults in a governmental process; they’re not attacking officials with their “virtual pitchforks”.

Earlier this year, in what he said was a first for the USA, California Assemblyman Mike Gatto of Los Angeles did the same for a proposed new probate law. The number of people who took advantage of the opportunity was relatively small, not surprising considering that probate law is perhaps not the most exciting topic for most people. Nevertheless, he plans to shepherd the ideas from the crowd through the legislative process as part of a larger effort to modernize the way that citizens interact with government.

As crowdsourcing in legislation – both big and small – continues to develop a good track record, I would expect to see many more legislators and legislative bodies begin to use the modern tools for gathering ideas and priorities from the public.

[http://njacknis.tumblr.com/post/87794829020/crowdsourcing-for-legislators]