A few weekends ago I was visiting my parents when I thought to look for one of the 1970s-era telephones they had in storage. I had recently realized that my kids had never heard the sound of a real ringing telephone and I thought that was a shame. Modern phones all come with electronic ringers, which pale in comparison to the urgency that a bell provides. The closest they could get to hearing the sound of a ringing bell is a ringtone on an iPhone. I found the old phone I was looking for and made it ring a few times for the kids’ sake (and ok, for mine too). What a contrast it provided to today’s phones.
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Futurist
There are 391 posts filed in Futurist (this is page 38 of 40).
The BP oil disaster: we’re all responsible
SF Gate columnist Mark Morford nails the BP/Gulf disaster, pointing the finger ultimately back to us and our insatiable need for more oil. This is exactly how I was feeling about the disaster.
Morford writes:
I think the most disturbingly satisfying thrill of this entire event — and it is, in a way, a perverse thrill — comes from understanding, at a very core level, our shared responsibility, our co-creation of the foul demon currently unleashed.
What a thing we have created. What an extraordinary horror our rapacious need for cheap, endless energy hath unleashed; it’s a monster of a scale and proportion we can barely even fathom.
Because if you’re honest, no matter where you stand, no matter your politics, religion, income or mode of transport, you see this beast of creeping death and you understand: That is us. The spill may be many things, but more than anything else it is a giant, horrifying mirror.
Go read the rest. And then start thinking of where we go from here.
Sen. Hoyle tries to block municipal internet
Sen. David Hoyle (D-Gaston)
Remember the battles against the big telecoms in the state to keep the cities’ right to own and operate their own Internet service? It’s time for round three, courtesy of Sen. David Hoyle (D-Gaston). He’s pushing a bill, S.1209 (the so-called “No Nonvoted Debt for Competing System” Act), that will hamstring North Carolina municipal Internet projects into using only general obligation bonds. Not only will this hurt municipal Internet projects, it will prevent initiatives such as Google’s 1 Gb fiber Internet. Bye bye, Google Fiber!
Previous attempts by Time Warner Cable, AT&T, CenturyLink (Embarq), and others tried to make the case that municipal Internet should not use taxpayer money. Now they’re saying these systems should use only taxpayer money, not the revenue bonds that they currently use. I think it shows their real motive is to block competition, sewing up Internet for themselves. With governments sidelined, they will be free to impose caps on Internet service, killing competition from video services such as NetFlix. The public loses.
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Cheap Thoughts: funding highways through tolls
My friend Billy posed a question the other day that got me thinking. I was surprised at how such a simple question could set off an hour’s worth of pondering. His question was this: would you be willing to trade the federal taxes on gasoline in exchange for paying tolls on every interstate highway?
My first reaction was to think well, who would want to pay tolls all the time? Then I thought, wait a minute – why should everyone play for highway construction and maintenance if only some drivers use it? This led to me to conclude that if highways all had tolls, drivers would be encouraged to make more local trips.
Since the opening of the I-540 Outer Loop around Raleigh I’ve been thinking about the problem of sprawl. Traffic engineers will tell you that new roads don’t solve traffic problems: they just shift it to another place. And it’s true. If 50,000 vehicles get on a highway all 50,000 are going to get off somewhere. The traffic jam is simply shifted. The Outer Loop caught my attention because its opening encouraged lots of development where there was none before, causing sprawl and stretching the limits of vital city services.
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Mark Cuban swings and misses
I used to think Mark Cuban was a smart guy. If smarts were judged by the amount of money in one’s bank account, Cuban would be a genius. So I don’t understand how Cuban could think that cable will threaten NetFlix.
The other thing to note is the percentage of Netflix subscribers that already subscribe to a TV provider. Netflix has to be concerned that it will be easier for those people to give up Netflix if their TV provider expands their VOD offerings and allows for queuing of streams to a TV channel than it will to give up the TV provider.
Maybe Cuban is worried because he owns a cable TV station and depends on subscribers. Maybe his billion-dollar bank account has blinded him to the burden that a $100+ monthly cable bill presents to the average American. Cuban’s certainly got to keep his cable television masters happy or face his HDNet channels being dropped. To say that a working-class family would opt to choose an ever-escalating cable bill with horrible service over a $15/month, all you can watch NetFlix streaming account is unlikely to me, but I admit I don’t watch much TV.
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Big telcos go after municipal broadband in N.C. again
It looks like the big telcos are trying once again to block municipal broadband projects in North Carolina. Legislation is expected to be introduced in the N.C. Senate’s Revenue Laws committee next week that will seek a moratorium on municipal broadband projects, allegedly because it will “harm state tax revenue.”
Please contact the folks below and let them know this bill is harmful to North Carolina:
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Cheap thoughts: performance reports
Daydreaming at a meeting last night, I realized that companies have it all wrong when they periodically gauge the performance of their employees. What they should be doing is asking their employees about the performance of the company. The shop-floor worker has a keen insight into what works and what doesn’t work, and her thoughts might not necessarily filter up to management. How can a process be improved? What causes slowdowns? What should the company be doing that it’s not? How can you as an employee be more successful?
Employees are valuable parts of the team and crucial to the company’s success. A smart business will do all it can to make that employee successful.
Cheap thoughts: sickness registry
One of my coworkers is out today, ill with what he thinks is a stomach virus. It made me think that an online registry may be useful in cases like this where one is too sick to work but not sick enough to deal with the hassle of seeing a doctor. An online registry may be able to show how a virus like this one spreads.
Google Fiber: what happens next
Google’s James Kelly, Product Manager for their Google 1Gbps Internet project, talks about where they go from here.
So what’s next? Over the coming months, we’ll be reviewing the responses to determine where to build. As we narrow down our choices, we’ll be conducting site visits, meeting with local officials and consulting with third-party organizations. Based on a rigorous review of the data, we will announce our target community or communities by the end of the year.
So, it’s all in The Goog’s hands, at this point. I’m hoping the City of Raleigh makes the cut, in spite of the less-than-motivating city effort.
Previously:
Raleigh works to woo Google Fiber.
Gaga for Google’s fiber – Independent Weekly
China’s oil demand ‘astonishing’
Astonishing, indeed.
China’s demand for oil jumped by an “astonishing” 28% in January compared with the same month a year earlier, the International Energy Agency (IEA) says.