Prolific Programmer on the Internets!

I don't hide my politics on this blog. In my opinion, the Republicans incessantly whinge about government incompetence when standing for election. Having achieved power, they proceed to prove themselves right. The Democrats are only marginally better. So, when people like Andrew Feinberg go on incessently about how Congress has an impact on our industry without convincing me. But, he has convinced Robert. Indeed, Robert is now gushing about what Andrew arranged for him. Now, here's my view and I can be, nay have been, criticised for it, but here it is: government actions impact an industry with the provision that you can't move. As an generation-0 immigrant myself, with a perfectly decent place to call home, I don't accept it. See, I'm part of the generation E, the world is my playground, and therefore no one country's government has any detrimental impact on me. I will grant you that the US government has a bigger impact than most (I mean who gives a rat's posterior if Zimbabwe bans the BBC vis a vis the US wanting to bomb al-Jazeera). You need to expand your purview and remove your arbitrary restriction and you'll realise that government actions don't matter half as much as the government says they do.

Evan Williams says that if you want to be big in a nascent industry, you must go to where the action is. So far I agree, the part I take issue with is further in the article:

Go to where the action is. And if you're in the Internet, that's Silicon Valley. There are more opportunities, companies, like-minded/impressive folks, and knowledge to be gained through osmosis here than anywhere else.

With respect, Mr Williams, I beg to differ. The action can be created anywhere and exists outside this bubble as well. When I graduated, in 2001, I didn't come out here, at least not immediately; I went to Ireland first.

Why? Because there's a lot going on there too. Further, the quality-of-life is a lot better than here. And now that I am in the Bay Area, I'd love to go back.

I recently found playnes, a site that embeds an emulator for the 8-bit NES. It's a new-to-me way to waste time online.

Capitalism, like it or not, works best when a number of players fight it out for control of a commodity. The rules of said fight are agreed upon and no participant violates them any more than anyone else. On the Internet, the only rule is that participants must be able to communicate with each other. This communication layer is termed TCP/IP. The structure of a general Internat packet is sufficiently broad that it can include practically any sort of information, be it text, images, video, audio. Because of the vast array of types of information that may be transmitted through the Internet, TCP/IP does not say much about how a packet ought to be structured. The argument presented is that those that do say how and where data should flow will control the Internet, whether the endpoints of communications are under their control or not.

Suppose I want to send a picture to my sister. I can't exactly go over and drop it off in Mainz over my lunch hour. So I may post it on a website, using a proprietary API. Let's say I post it on Zooomr and get her to do the same, writing code for her to do it. She's not the prolific programmer, she's merely my sibling. She's not even a programmer. So now, zooomr owns her, so far as hosting her pictures are concerned. If Kris and Thomas decide to change their terms of use, her pictures are still on their servers. This represents data lock-in and is one way of controlling the Internet. They who host the data, control the network

A second way is by controlling the transport API. Open Social is the most recent proof of this strategy. The alliance includes LinkedIn, Bebo, and MySpace, among others, none of which are controlled by Google. However, application vendors that write to the OpenSocial API trust Google. Same with advertisements.Those that control the transport mediums control the network

The most powerful player on the Internet is your local ISP. Why? So long as there's no network neutrality legislation, the ISP retains complete control of the on-ramp to the network. And so, they can charge whatever they want to either customers or content-providers. Comcast can reword its terms of service to say that access to the BBC and Facebook is now priced $10/month over the current baseline tariff. Those who control the onramp to the network control it

From the above three paragraphs, it should be apparent that control is to be found at the transport level or on the edges. If you control the medium by which information is transmitted, you have a great deal of power. Similarly, if you control the first access point, you hold a similar amount of power. Indeed, I suspect edge control is the stickier kind, but you can feel free to disagree in the comments.