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SMART Letter #11 - September 21, 1998
For Friends and Enemies of the Stupid Network
Copyright 1998 by David S. Isenberg
isen@isen.com -- http://www.isen.com/ -- 1-888-isen-com
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CONTENTS:
+ Lead essay: Here's Looking . . . Child Care Cams
+ Mark A. Frautschi's Embedded Processors & Year 2000 essay
+ New Talk: Internet Telephony: Sustaining or Disruptive?
+ Conferences on My Calendar, Copyright Notice, Administrivia
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HERE'S LOOKING AT YOU, KID
Child Care Cams could be a winner app*.
The usefulness of truly new applications is not a priori
knowable. And we can't ask our customers - they don't know
the future either. (For example, in 1992 there was zero
demand for web browsers.) The Stupid Network's advantage is
that it allows immediate (i.e., not mediated) user-to-user
experimentation. And lots of people love to experiment.
So the Internet provides a fertile field, and a thousand
flowers bloom. Occasionally one of these flowers catches
my eye.
The Child-Care Camera was the flower of a recent Sue
Shellenbarger Wall Street Journal column on Work & Family
(August 19, 1998). The column recounts a day-in-the-life
of the Mastons, a couple with high-tech jobs, and their
three-year-old daughter Maddie. Maddie Maston goes to a
nursery school that supports parent placement of cameras
connected to the Internet. During the day, Mr. Maston
keeps the image of his daughter's nursery school classroom
in a window on his workstation. He checks on his daughter
frequently, but briefly. His wife (a product manager in
another company) and his mother (a secretary in another
state) also look in on Maddie.
The story's unexpected twist is improved father-daughter
communication. At the end of the day, father could ask
daughter, "Were you sitting in the dark today?" because he
had seen her doing it. So prompted, the three year old
bubbled with talk about candles and birthday parties.
Without the camera, Maston might have asked, "What did you
do today?" Questions like this might seem simple to an
adult, but they are loaded with assumptions that a three-
year-old is likely to have difficulty parsing. The
question really means, "What did you do that was
interesting?" This requires a three-year-old to review her
day, culling out the event or two that might interest
somebody else - which, truth be told, is a skill that fails
many adults. The camera lets the parent take that
responsibility. The child, supplied with a specific
context, can now articulate a meaningful, sociable
response.
In times past, parents watched their children from lower-
tech windows. Times change - increasingly parents
and children return to the pod merely to eat and sleep.
Technology changes, opening new windows on new worlds.
Human needs, like the need of a father to glance at his
daughter as he works, and the need of a child to talk to
her dad, endure.
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*Do you like 'winner app' better than 'killer app'? If so,
feel free to use it in your work too (no copyright, no tm).
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EMBEDDED SYSTEMS AND THE YEAR 2000 PROBLEM is a definitive essay by Mark A. Frautschi, which can be found on http://www.tmn.com/~frautsch/y2k2.html -- it outlines the risk of some 50 BILLION embedded processors, one to three percent of which will fail due to a two-digit date AND a date-sensitive application. Only one percent -- what me worry? That's only 500,000,000 systems that will be failed links in a complex chain that clinks through every hasp of the economy -- manufacturing, raw materials, transportation, communication, medical care . . . Medical Care? Hey, better not be in a hospital on December 31, 1999 (as if you'll have a choice). This is REQUIRED READING, in my humble opinion. ------- INTERNET TELEPHONY: SUSTAINING OR DISRUPTIVE? Since I have given my Stupid Network talk at VON meetings in San Jose and Oslo, I thought I would use the Washington DC VON for something new. I based my talk on "The Innovator's Dilemma" by Clayton Christensen (See SMART Letter #10 for lengthy review), in which the distinction between sustaining and disruptive tech- nologies is clearly drawn. I examine IP Telephony in this light and observe that it has grabbed the attention of the major telcos, who are treating it as sustaining (better, faster, cheaper in the old market space). Meanwhile, I observe that the Internet is clearly disruptive in virtually every space it touches -- retail, news, radio, advertising, publishing, travel, gambling, pornography, etc., etc. What makes telephony different, if anything? Or are the incumbent telcos fooling themselves? (Note: the preceding is not a rhetorical question.) ------- CONFERENCES ON MY CALENDAR + September 28-29, 1998, Washington DC: International Institute of Communications (IIC) Telecommunications Forum. I don't know too much about this one, but it seems to be distinguished and international. For more information, contact "Rachel Coldeboeuf" rachel@iicom.org or +44 171 388 0671 + October 14-15, 1998, Toronto ON: IP Telephony and Voice/Data Convergence. A distinctly Canadian view. In many respects Canada is showing the way to the rest of us (e.g., CANARIE, the Canadian national optical network initiative). http://www.mondaq.com/ or 416-927-7936. + October 17-18, 1998, near Tokyo, Japan: Stupid Networks and the 21st Century Society, hosted by GLOCOM, The Center for Global Communications of the International University of Japan. Many SMART People know the perpetually peripatetic Izumi Aizu, and Shumpei Kumon, Executive Director of GLOCOM. http://www.glocom.ac.jp/ + October 26-29, 1998, Cannes, France: ISP Forum. IIR, Communications Week International and Total Telecom are organizing this most awesome event. http://www.totaltele.com/iir-conferences/ispf/ + November 2-6, 1998, Washington DC: Next Generation Networks (NGN98). Produced by John McQuillan for the Business Communications Review crowd. This is a conference that takes itself very seriously so I will leave my fool's hat at home and wear my business suit. http://www.bcr.com/confer/ngn98/Default.htm + November 19, 1998, Denton TX: Solutions 98! Sponsored by University of North Texas. I don't have much info on this one yet. Contact Mitch Land mland@unt.edu. ------- Copyright Notice: Redistribution of this document, or any part of it, is permitted for non-commercial purposes, provided that the two lines below are reproduced with it: Copyright 1998 by David S. Isenberg isen@isen.com -- http://www.isen.com/ -- 1-888-isen-com ------- [to subscribe to the SMART list, please send a brief, personal statement to isen@isen.com (put "SMART" in the Subject field) saying who you are, what you do, and why you are interested in joining the SMART List.] [to unsubscribe to the SMART List, send a brief unsubscribe message to isen@isen.com] [for past SMART Letters, see http://www.isen.com/archives/index.html] -------
Date last modified: 10 Oct 98