Chris Boese's Weblog

New CNN.com column: The Internet imagined

I finally got to the follow-up column on the results of the Internet Predictions study with Pew Internet & American Life and Elon University study. I definitely recommend going to the site and reading through all the experts' comments. What a treasure trove it is to read!

The column below is so dense with juicy bits from the study, I can't keep myself from posting nearly the entire thing here, but go read it at the CNN.com site too!

Chris

The Internet imagined: 'We are immigrants to the future'

By Christine Boese
CNN Headline News
Wednesday, January 26, 2005 Posted: 5:12 PM EST (2212 GMT)

(CNN) -- Is the Internet vulnerable to an attack?

Sixty-six percent of the 1,286 technology experts surveyed in a recent study said they believe at least one devastating attack will be launched against the Internet infrastructure or the U.S. power grid within the next 10 years.

More than half of these same experts also predicted that the Internet will be deeply integrated into our lives through both objects and physical environments, often with higher-speed connections (and more surveillance).

In November, I wrote about participating as an expert in a Pew Internet & American Life and Elon University study, "The Future of the Internet."

In it, a diverse group of technology experts and ordinary Net surfers offered their visions of what could happen with online technologies and society in the next 10 years.

[...]

The experts predicted the most radical changes caused by the Internet will hit news organizations and publishing, citing blogs as a catalyst.

By contrast, most of them said religious institutions will experience the least radical changes because of the Internet.

Education is another area of significant agreement among the experts. Fifty-seven percent predict virtual classes will become more widespread, with students grouped by interest and skill in the future, rather than by age.

But in their comments many expressed frustration at how resistant educational institutions were to technological innovation in the past 10 years.

Fifty-six percent said telecommuting and home-schooling will expand, blurring boundaries between work and leisure, affecting family dynamics.

Fifty percent of the experts say they believe anonymous and free Internet file-sharing on peer-to-peer networks will be as common 10 years from now as it is today.

The experts didn't agree on everything. Half the respondents disagreed that people would use the Internet to support political biases and stop reading anything that disagreed with their views.

Also, half disagreed with a prediction that online voting would be secure and widespread by 2014.

As much as I enjoyed completing the survey, I also loved digging deeply into the extensive typed responses posted to the Web site, comparing my own responses to those of some of my "Internet heroes" and writers whose work I read avidly.

Some said what I expected: Howard Rheingold predicted flash mobs or "Smart Mobs" (the title of his book) will mobilize political action with cell phones and digital assistants, sooner in some countries than others.

David Weinberger said "hyperlinks will subvert hierarchy," a common theme on his blog and in his book, "Small Pieces Loosely Joined."

"We the Media" author Dan Gillmor said traditional kinds of "intermediaries" will be undermined, and new intermediaries will emerge.

But those who follow Gillmor's career know he believes this so strongly about journalism that he left his job at the San Jose Mercury News to commit himself to a grassroots project to envision new journalistic intermediaries.

[...]

Ethernet originator and 3Com founder Bob Metcalfe could still imagine wildly futuristic visions, predicting that people would stop moving to cities, the Internet would replace schools, and video blogs would replace television channels.

[...]

As one anonymous respondent put it, "We are immigrants to the future. It's all in our children's hands now."

read the entire column at CNN.com...

RELATED

• Imagining the Internet: Predictions Database
• Collection of expert predictions on each survey question
• Formal report on the experts survey

Neat topic for my latest CNN.com column

I just love this angle on online fund-raising with the Tsunami Relief Project. This was a fun story to work on.

Tsunami relief effort may break new ground in fund raising

By Christine Boese
CNN Headline News
Wednesday, January 19, 2005 Posted: 11:56 AM EST (1656 GMT)

(CNN) -- The devastating tsunamis in southern Asia have inspired an unprecedented global outpouring of relief. Now some philanthropists are looking to "hot-wire" a tsunami relief effort on the Internet.

The Disaster Relief Project adds an interesting twist to Internet fund-raising by organizing "EAid... for the tsunami victims." More than 100 experts, business leaders, motivational speakers, authors and celebrities are sharing the secrets of their success. Included in the group are the authors of "Chicken Soup for the Soul" along with management guru Tom Peters and senior vice president of the NBA's Orlando Magic, Pat Williams.

To raise money for the charity, the project is auctioning off online access to these speakers in several different electronic formats, from audiocasts linked to Power Point slides on the Web, to one-hour video Webcasts with question-and-answer sessions. The auctions, webcasts and seminar materials and the charity are all online.

Money raised is funneled to tsunami relief through the American Red Cross International Response Fund, the Save the Children 2004 Tsunami Relief Fund and Habitat for Humanity International.

Other charity auction items include face-to-face lunch sessions with some high-end speakers and tickets to exclusive or special events.

Larry Benet, founder of "Outside the Box Philanthropy," which is sponsoring the effort, says many of the speakers can get $75,000 to $100,000 just to give a talk, but they are donating time for the tsunami effort.

Benet says anyone who donates any amount on the Web site, whether $20 or $2,000, will get access to most of the digital content, including Webcasts and teleconferences, what he calls a "webinar," or a Web version of a seminar.

continue reading here....

RELATED
• The Disaster Relief Project
• List of mentors donating time for digital tsunami relief
• Volunteer as a speaker or digital contributor

"Unforgivable Blackness" Wow, what a terrific show!

Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson | PBS

I watched the first part of this last night on PBS and it knocked me out so much I stayed up until midnight and watched the entire thing straight through again.

In the meantime, I hit the PBS.org web site and went through all the material (I'd do the same with the Mark Twain program if I were you... PBS has some great interactive topics that are both informative and engrossing).

I'm just struck by the image of this utterly amazing athlete who had the guts in the time of Jim Crow, lynching, and blatant racism to stand up there in a boxing ring in a field of thousands of white faces spewing hatred at him, and to not only beat all challengers, but to taunt his opponents and the crowd. I can't imagine how he walked out of some of those venues alive.

Whenever I think of courage from now on, this is an image I will carry in my mind.

Chris

CNN.com column: Passport chips raise privacy concerns

I wasn't real thrilled with how this one came out, but what can you do when Mark Twain is surgically removed from your writing? Hell, we could just erase the entire 19th century while we're at it, right?

Anyway, it is a column that addresses some important issues, so I guess I'm not totally ashamed of it. Just, um, imagine Mark Twain running loose in there, OK? Sort of like "Innocents Abroad."

Chris

The U.S. State Department has decided to put identification chips inside all new passport covers. The process is scheduled to start by late 2005.

Passport chips raise privacy concerns

By Christine Boese
CNN Headline News
Thursday, January 6, 2005 Posted: 1:38 PM EST (1838 GMT)

(CNN) -- A controversy is brewing over a U.S. State Department decision to put identification chips inside all new passport covers, a program scheduled to start by late 2005.

The passport chips differ from those now commonly used for building entry or identifying the family dog. Those chips only provide one piece of information -- a unique identification number -- when pinged by a radio receiver.

The passport chips will hold much more data, from 64 kilobytes to eventually 512 kilobytes, as much as the first personal computers. They will hold the same information as a paper passport plus a digitized photo and face template for the still-unproven facial recognition software, which also is supposed to identify you from a distance, unnoticed.

The fact that passport data can be read unencrypted, with no physical contact, from up to 30 feet away, according to the American Civil Liberties Union, upsets privacy advocates for two reasons.

First, groups such as the ACLU note that information on your activities could be collected by government agencies (or commercial and marketing interests) without your knowledge.

The ACLU obtained documents through the Freedom of Information Act that it says show how the U.S. government pushed the idea of unencrypted chips through the standards-setting International Civil Aviation Association over objections from Germany, Britain and other nations. The ACLU says the United States is trying to get a global biometric database online with little debate within the United States, where there is strong resistance to a national I.D. card (see the link to the ACLU white paper in the sidebar to read more).

Second, many people are concerned that criminal or terrorist "data-skimmers" could set up chip readers to grab information from your passport and find out more about you, or "clone" your information and make fake passports, again without your knowledge.

continue reading here...

RELATED

• ACLU:  Global Identity Cards
• U.S. State Department travel information
• Current U.S. requirements for machine-readable passports
• International Civil Aviation Association statement on passport biometrics

Many thanks to Pat Kane and Play Journal

Link: Play Journal: Big ideas in Sci-Tech.

He found one of my "Future of the Internet" predictions at the Elon University and the Pew Internet and American Life project site that I didn't even know was up there. Now I gotta go back there and start digging around. The results of the study came out this past Monday, and I'm getting ready to do another column on the findings.

Thanks Pat, I appreciate the good words!

I'd almost forgotten I'd said this when responding to the survey, but I still like it, so here's a hunk:

An overview of the future

In the next decade, which institutions and human endeavors will change the most because of the internet? Tell us how you see the future unfolding.

Two counter-movements [are] pushing stridently against each other … One movement is related to radical democracy, distributed systems and open source. It is a force for the distribution of power among the many, viral replication of memes and other forms - activity similar to the asymmetrical warfare tactics of al Qaeda, to be specific, but also resembling the decentralization of solar energy, of people working with alternative power, going off the grid, defying convention … The opposing move represents something of Marshall McLuhan's media reversals. It attempts to use information technology and networks in a panopticon function, leaning toward increased central control and monitoring, and crunching all activity - both at the granular level and at the statistical mass level. It is an authoritarian backlash to the openness of the Internet and an attempt to put the genie back in the bottle. And it could be successful. The technology supports the success of this movement, but the activity of participants online provides resistance, building distributed forms into the politics of interfaces. Unfortunately, these distributed forms and open interfaces also facilitate panoptic monitoring and may seemingly undo their own advances. It is a bold move, not to fight fire with fire, but rather to combat control with greater openness instead of going into a secret underground, to avoid becoming the fascist in order to fight the fascists. While idealistically pure, it could be doomed to failure. It is a fascinating struggle.