Which Web do we Want?
Here are five questions:
All of the terms I just quoted are common ways of describing what the Web is, and what it's for. They are, however, derived from very different metaphors. Here is what we are saying in each of the four cases.:
The Web, of course, is none of those things; yet it is all of those things, because we think and speak about the Web in terms of all those things. That's the amazing way that metaphors work. We think and talk about one thing in terms of another. The logic is 100% irony: A = B because A &Mac173; B.
It's also why two people can talk right past each other while they think they're talking about the same thing. Imagine, for example, a conversation between Larry Lessig and Jack Valenti. We're talking 1+2 vs. 3+4.
This subject comes up for me because right now I'm thinking about wireless (the theme of the September issue of Linux Journal, which will "go to bed" -- talk about a metaphor -- in a few more days).
Wireless, as a subject, has the interesting effect of favoring the concept of the Web, and the Net, as a world. Why?
Well, I've been corresponding with some Very Wise Guys about WiMax, a wireless technology (the standard is 802.16; WiFi is 802.11) of a sort that has many Large Players salivating, and therefore promoting all over the place. The biggest of those players is Intel. Here's what they say about it:
WiMAX is a standards-based wireless technology that provides high-throughput broadband connections over long distances. WiMAX can be used for a number of applications, including "last mile" broadband connections, hotspot and cellular backhaul, and high-speed enterprise connectivity for businesses.
An implementation of the IEEE 802.16 standard, WiMAX provides metropolitan area network connectivity at speeds of up to 75 Mb/sec. WiMAX systems can be used to transmit signal as far as 30 miles. However, on the average a WiMAX base-station installation will likely cover between three to five miles. (From http://www.intel.com/netcomms/technologies/wimax/)
Other companies behind WiMax include Nokia, Proxim, Airspan Networks, Alvarion, Andrew, AT&T, Atheros, Analog Devices and a pile of other Usual Suspects. Nothing wrong with that, but with the exception of a very few, how many of those guys were around to promote the adoption of 802.11? More to the point, how many made 802.11 happen at all?
If you read "No Wires, No Rules", from the April 26, 2004 issue of Business Week, you'll hear WiFi called "the wildly popular wireless Net technology that took off last year with the support of chip giant Intel Corp." ... and then find it dismissed as "just the first step". Business Week explains, "Hard on its heels are four equally innovative technologies -- WiMax, Mobile-Fi, ZigBee, and Ultrawideband -- that will push wireless networking into every facet of life, from cars and homes to office buildings and factories. These technologies have attracted $4.5 billion in venture investments over the past five years."
So: questions arise. Did Intel really give Wi-Fi that big a boost? Or did it just spend $300 million to publicize its Wi-Fi-enabled Centrino chips? I put those questions to Glenn Fleishman, who publishes WiFiNetNews and covers Wi-Fi for JiWire, the Seattle Times, InfoWorld and other publications. Here's his reply:
The flight path was filed, the plane was taxiing down the runway, and suddenly on the tarmac, a crazy-eyed passenger appears running after the plane, trailing luggage that bursts out, clothes flying everywhere. In a feat of superhuman strength, Intel grabs the landing gear, climbs into the plane, and then spends the rest of the flight crouched in row 34 in the stowage compartment under a middle seat. When they arrive, they say, "Next time, I fly first class."
As for Wi-Fi's history, Glenn adds,
Wi-Fi started as a bunch of tiny little chip companies making this crazy wireless stuff. They were all purchased by much, much larger firms. Intersil bought out a tiny Dutch company. Lucent bought WaveLAN. The momentum started in 1999, and prices plummeted so that the cost of Wi-Fi was pretty marginal by 2002 -- that is, you didn't have to think much about the cost. Intel's 2003 launch of Centrino merely branded the idea. Their technology was non-innovative, late to the party, and already last year's news when it first shipped. They still haven't shipped an 802.11g adapter, which is a critical piece of enterprise gear, although laptops with that new g or a/g adapter will be out Any Time Now.
Intel bet on HomeRF initially, not Wi-Fi; so they took the wrong course into the home market. They did bet on Wi-Fi in the enterprise, but they don't really have products in the enterprise LAN space at all.
Essentially, Intel thought they could define Wi-Fi the way they wanted to, but they made missteps all along the way. The $300M they spent on marketing Centrino was only useful for the still nascent hot spot market, because it gave them co-marketing dollars. But the hot spot market still represents a very small amount of spending.
So if Intel wasn't responsible for Wi-Fi taking off, who was?
The chipset and hardware makers certainly deserve some credit. Atheros, PRISM, Orinoco, Proxim, Broadcom, 3Com, TI, Linksys, D-Link, Netgear, Belden and many others come to mind.
Among PC makers, Apple was a pioneer. The company built Wi-Fi support into iBook laptops in 1999, which is when it also began selling its AirPort branded Wi-Fi hot spots and interface cards. Earlier this week it introduced another innovation: AirPort Express.
Wayport was the first commercial Wi-Fi hot spot provider that's still around. The company began installing access points in hotels and airports way back in 1997. Nokia was the first to deliver Wi-Fi at a major trade show (Networld+Interop), in 1999. MobileStar (now T-Mobile HotSpot) began installing hot spots in Starbucks outlets in 2001.
Yet what made Wi-Fi take off, more than anything else, was deployment of countless hot-spots by ordinary citizens, small businesses and grass-roots organizations, some working behind the scenes with local governments.
Take a "wardrive" in a taxi through the streets of Manhattan, and you'll rarely be outside the range of a Wi-Fi hot spot. In many locations you'll find a dozen or more Wi-Fi signals. Most are provided by local citizens, as a civic grace that Nicolas Negroponte compares to putting out flower boxes.
Browse the Web on a laptop in Bryant Park and you'll be greeted by a splash page identifying your free access provider as NYCwireless.net, a local nonprofit organization whose primary mission is to "promote development of public wireless infrastructure in the New York City area."
NYCwireless was co-founded by Terry Schmidt and Anthony Townsend. Schmidt is a veteran Linux programmer and Townsend is a research scientist at NYU's Taub Urban Research Center. The two men also co-founded Emenity, a commercial company that works with municipal organizations and other groups to deploy Wi-Fi around New York. Most of NYCwireless' locations run on Debian Pebble, a version of Debian Linux customized by Schmidt for Wi-Fi installations. In fact, most Wi-Fi deployment, even by large commercial companies, involves resourceful and creative use of free or cheap tools and building materials. (Terry has since left and gone off to enjoy the world beyond the Web. Last I heard from him, a couple weeks back, he was touring around South America somewhere.)
Look at Austin Wireless, BAWUG, Personal Telco or any of the dozens of other local free wireless .orgs, and you'll see grass roots (another world/earth/commons) metaphor activity that involves symbiotic relationships between public and private sector organizations, intermediated and implemented by hackers. And by ordinary users who simply want to improve the public space we call the Web.
I didn't see the metaphorical bottom line in this thing until my seven-year-old son told me to look something up on the Web when we were driving in the car. "What makes you think I can pick up the Web here?" I asked.
"You don't pick it up," he answered. "The Web is everywhere in the world."
"Why do you think it's in the world?" I asked.
"Because people put it there."
He's seen me wardrive. He knows that most of the hot spots I use are provided by individuals, or by friendly businesses with which I have some kind of relationship. (Starbucks, for example.) To him, the Web is a part of the world that people put there (including three in my own house, plus another I carry in my briefcase). Public Wi-Fi is a civilized thing, like roads and streetlights and sidewalks and public parks.
The founding metaphors of the Web were #s 1 and 2, above -- publishing and real estate, basically. That includes the public part of the Web that Wi-Fi establishes. The shipping and entertainment concepts -- #s 3 and 4 -- came along later, with the dot-com boom. Beware of them. They're what we're fighting against with Creative Commons and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (both leveraging the World concept). They're what Hollywood and its puppets in Congress and the current FCC are fighting for: by conceiving the Net, along with broadcasting, as a shipping system for the delivery of content, and as a performance venue where entertainment companies put on shows.
That's why the House, shocked by Janet Jackson's breast at Superbowl halftime, and by the vexatious persistence of Howard Stern on morning radio, passed the Broadcast Decency Enforcement Act (with a mere 22 voting against), which allows the FCC to impose fines of up to half a million dollars against broadcasters, and even individuals, for such "indecency" as the FCC feels inclined to define it. Talk about a chilling effect. This one is more like a deep freeze. It will make the Bush Years an ice age for broadcasting.
Technology revolutions, henceforth, will be more public than ever. And they will happen in public spaces of our own creation. Yes, big companies will be involved. We need them, and they need us. But they will not be leading the way they used to, no matter what BusinessWeek says. We're making a public marketplace here. And nobody owns it.