Month: January 2012

  • To the cloud and beyond

    Connectivity providers are aging behemoth’s kept alive by the life support of monopoly.  These monopolies, whether local franchise operations in the case of cable TV, or spectrum licenses in the case of wireless providers, assure premium prices for a commodity product, namely the connection from person to Internet.  Yet even artificial scarcity isn’t enough to…

  • The grid, the box, and the meter

    Information utility is all about ubiquitous access to data, which is all about the network, which is all about the balance of what is in the network versus what is on the network, and more explicitly, how that balance is managed – or operationalized, in the lingo of those who deal with such things. Network…

  • The consequences of infrastructure on creators

    Creators need infrastructure and I don’t mean just running water and electricity, I mean resources to create (synthesize) with.  For me that means network devices, the output of the IEEE and IETF and W3C, the entire ecosystem of network users, and the economic market of e-commerce among other things.  I’m not going to be very…

  • Some thoughts

    some thoughts on “burning pain” opportunities in arenas I know about: consumer networking gear – we’re getting more networked and Best Buy isn’t sufficient in expertise or selection to solve our problems getting connected, staying connected, and managing all our digital junk.  This is more than just zeroconf because I want to be able to…

  • Computers are not making my life better in ways that I care about

    There is this notion in my head that a computer should be part of that “Jetson Future” where we get to seriously contemplate what economics looks like when there isn’t any actual labor to perform, beyond the creation of machines which create machines to do work for us.  I know that prospect scares people, and…