!@#$%^&*()!@#$%^&*()!@#$%^&*()!@#$%^&*()!@#$%^&*()!@#$%^&*()
------------------------------------------------------------
SMART Letter #27 - September 22,1999
Copyright 1999 by David S. Isenberg
At isen.com we accumulate intellectual capital
the old fashioned way -- we LEARN it.
isen@isen.com -- http://www.isen.com/ -- 1-888-isen-com
------------------------------------------------------------
!@#$%^&*()!@#$%^&*()!@#$%^&*()!@#$%^&*()!@#$%^&*()!@#$%^&*()
CONTENTS
> Quote of Note: Phil Agre
> How a Generalist Makes a Living by David S. Isenberg
> Quote of Note: Hugo de Garis
> Tool with Two Edges by David S. Isenberg
> Quote of Note: Peter Huber
> Smart Remarks from SMART People: Matt Oristano, Anonymous
> Miscellany: Sin of Omission, GPS Rollover,
Canada Orders Cable Data Service Resale,
Dado Vrsalovic Quits AT&T
> Quote of Note: RCN's Mike Adams
> Conferences on my Calendar, Copyright Notice, Administrivia
-------
QUOTE OF NOTE: Phil Agre
"In a world where any meaningful shared symbol will turn
up in a sneaker ad next month, it becomes important to
fly beneath the radar of the surveillance machine of
commercial culture."
From "Find Your Voice: Writing for a Webzine," by Phil Agre,
in Red Rock Eater News Service, July 30, 1999,
http://dlis.gseis.ucla.edu/people/pagre/rre.html
-------
HOW A GENERALIST MAKES A LIVING by David S. Isenberg
"There are no jobs for generalists," said my undergraduate
advisor as he twisted my arm to apply to graduate school. He
was wrong -- I'm finally making a living as a generalist after
a Ph.D., three post-doctoral years, and half a career at Bell
Labs
In school, people who inspired me were "big picture" folks --
Arthur "Ghost in the Machine" Koestler, biologist Kurt
Goldstein, neurologist Charles Sherrington, Plato, the
Grateful Dead, Andre Citroen, and most of all, Buckminster
Fuller. I spent my grad school and post-doc time resisting
pressure to become master of something.
Bucky Fuller's observation that the power structure exalts
specialists to keep smart people from challenging bigger
"decision" issues was reified by what happened to me at AT&T
when I wrote "Rise of the Stupid Network".
The success of "The Stupid Network" surprised me. The thrust of
Tom Petzinger's Wall Street Journal write-up gave it escape
velocity. My 15 minutes of fame -- whirlwind public speaking,
reporters calling, fringies bugging with harebrained schemes
-- lasted a year.
Now I've entered the second stage of 'the job I always
wanted'. Leaving AT&T, my biggest fear was that I would lose
my collegial community. It proved unfounded. The community
of SMART People is bigger, more interactive, more powerful and
more sustaining than I anticipated. The SMART Letter -- still
free, despite repeated advice from certain quarters that I
make it a revenue producer -- is my way to give back to you,
my SMART power base. THANK YOU!
Here's what I've been doing in stage two:
I have joined the advisory boards of three start-ups -- each
in its own way is bidding to make the communications
infrastructure faster, cheaper, more open, more accessible.
I'll write more on this as soon as they're ready to come into
the open.
In addition, I've joined the Think-Tank of the world's first
on-line mutual fund, OpenFund (need I add .com? -- look it
up!). OpenFund displays its portfolio (and buy/sell activity)
in real time. It is the only mutual fund that lets you email
its managers, "Why'd you buy that, you dunderheads?" and get
an immediate response (dunderheaded or otherwise) revealing
the thought behind the transaction.
The other OpenFund Think-Tankers are Peter Sprague (the
founding CEO of National Semiconductor) and Nicholas "MIT-
Media-Lab" Negroponte. Negroponte has challenged my "Stupid
Network" idea on the OpenFund discussion board; suggesting
that "agnostic network" might be more apt. In return, I
suggest that deep in Negroponte's digital heart of hearts, I
betcha he believes that the Stupid Network is a "one".
If a mutual fund is too stodgy for you, if you want more risk
and more upside, I can introduce you to some opportunities
like that too. Email me.
And that's not all. I hosted a month-long roundtable
discussion on CMP's PlanetIT website. The CMP folks report
that it got "over 8,000 pageviews . . . by far the heaviest
traffic we've ever received for a single Roundtable." And I
helped judge the World Communications Awards for Emap Media
(the Communications Week International folks) to be presented
at Telecom99 in Geneva in three weeks. And I seem to be on
some kind of brain trust for the Ernst & Young Center for
Business Innovation (according to their glossy literature);
certainly, my friendship with E&Y's John Jordan and Chris
Meyer endures.
And that's not all. I continue to be invited to present the
Stupid Network to top echelons of telco-classic incumbency.
The paradigm-breaker these days seems to be wireless (wired =
tired). It's another case of what Bucky called
"ephemeralization," which is the process of replacing stuff
with ideas. Instead of sunk costs, these float.
Bottom line: I'm doing a raft of things, and I'm still having
fun squinting at big picture issues. I'm making a living as a
generalist!
-------
QUOTE OF NOTE: Hugo de Garis
"I've been reading about the people who built the
atomic bomb, because I profoundly identify with
them . . . They knew what they were doing and where
it would lead, and I worry about where this will lead."
Hugo de Garis, who is building a silicon "brain" at ATR,
Kyoto, Japan, in New York Times Magazine, Aug. 1, 1999, p. 45.
-------
TOOL WITH TWO EDGES: Let's stop a minute and reflect on what
we're creating and what it means.
By David S. Isenberg
I am ashamed to admit that I played a small part in creating
the technology behind interactive voice response (IVR). I kick
myself every time I find myself on hold, a prisoner of some
idiot robot announcement.
At the same time, I delight as the Internet, using audio
technology with the same signal-processing roots as IVR,
shatters the star-maker machinery of the recording behemoths.
I exult when my cable modem bypasses the ever more
homogenized, monopolized, risk-averse broadcast media to pull
in an MP3 by a jazz artist I've never heard before, or a .wav
of a Grateful Dead concert from 1972 or a RealAudio stream of
traditional Polynesian music from KKCR radio Kauai.
I am ashamed that my amazon.com purchases make me complicit in
this month's closing of not one, but two small bookstores in
Westfield, N.J. And I share guilt for this year's loss of The
Market Bookshop in Falmouth, Mass., which was a labor of love
by its owners Bill and Caroline Banks that added much more
value to my life than I ever paid them for.
At the same time, I think that amazon.com embodies the promise
the future, and that Jeff Bezos is a genius. Online shopping
frees me from depersonalized megastores. It keeps me out of my
car. It bespeaks a radical discontinuity in retail that
promises to make expanded arrays of goods and services
available to - and affordable by - more people.
MONEY-COME-LATELY
Technology has always been a two-edged tool. We who have
sweated to hack our way onto the early Internet, who now
depend on it in our daily lives, find it a bit too easy to
feel virtuous. Todays' incredible market valuations provide
external vindication that makes it even easier.
We may not welcome the other edge of communications
technology. We may even deny that it will cut. Nevertheless,
it is swinging our way; the money-come-lately has arrived.
Before our eyes, the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF;
only yesterday a functioning meritocracy) warps into a
political forum where incumbents position and feint. The
Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN,
conceived only last year as an open body dedicated to Internet
self-governance) becomes a back room filled with today's
equivalent of cigar smoke. And AT&T's unfettered foray into
broadband monopoly (in the name of competition and
deregulation) could strangle the next swarm of harebrained
value creation in a silk web of economic justification.
We who have sweated to hack our way onto the early Internet,
who now depend on it in our daily lives, find it easy to feel
virtuous.
A reminder that technology is but a tool in the hand of
humanity arrives in my e-inbox every few weeks. It is a five-
year old 'zine called Netfuture: Technology and Human
Responsibility, [http://oreilly.com/~stevet/netfuture/] edited
and written (for the most part) by Stephen L. Talbott.
Netfuture, distributed to about 4,500 readers, provides a
consistent, moderate voice, reminding us, in Talbott's words,
that "we need to move to a deeper level of analysis."
TECHNOLOGY and HUMAN RESPONSIBILITY
For example, in Netfuture #91 (June 23, 1999), Talbott
queries, "[I]f you lived at the beginning of the 20th century
and if, possessed of unusual foresight, you had grave
misgivings about how the automobile was beginning to
restructure society, what would your message to your
contemporaries have been? ... How would the automobile itself
contribute to overall patterns of injury and health? How would
it play into our besetting tendencies to abandon community and
flee ourselves? How would it help to fragment and ghetto-ize
society?" Talbott continues, "you might find yourself [saying]
'You know, the more we as a society rely on this machine with
our current imbalances, the more we will, even with our good
deeds, strengthen certain forces that bring pain and suffering
to society.'"
As we rush to computerize our schools, Netfuture reminds us
that learning is about more than "shovelable ... atomic facts" -
that the deepest education comes from one human's faith in
another. As we build new communications and applications,
Netfuture affords a pause in the business buzz to reflect on
the decontextualization that comes when the answer to "Where
do you want to go today?" is whimsical, and technology
transports us at will. And as prostheses for blindness gain
efficacy, Netfuture points out that new ways of seeing,
developed by an individual's willful conscious effort, need
neither light nor retina to know aspects of our world that the
sighted never see.
Broadly, I believe that technology in the hand of humanity is
good, and especially that open systems will empower the
disenfranchised and capitalize the undiscovered. But in these
days of heady progress, it is worth remembering that we build
on the ageless legacy of our environment, our biology and our
psychology, which may not respond as we wish when we increase
the density of transistors and the speed of bits.
The article above appeared in the September 1, 1999 issue of
America's Network. Copyright 1999 Advanstar Communications.
-------
QUOTE OF NOTE: Peter Huber
"[N]obody will ever put it all in one package, wire
and wireless, voice and Net, Brooklyn and Burundi.
Providers will keep promising single rates and simple
bills, but networks will keep multiplying faster than
any single provider can build and bundle."
Peter Huber, Forbes, Sept 6, 1999
-------
Smart Remarks from SMART People:
From Matt Oristano, MMDS entrepreneur:
"Up till now, I have successfully resisted the lure of
the prestige clubs and organizations, but after seeing
your newsletter, I say, the hell with Phi Beta Kappa or
MENSA, what I really want is to be a SMART person! . . .
From Anonymous, the famous author:
"Re Amazon: [At] Adelphia (the cable company) [the]
number 1 book was about how to get rich as a day trader.
[N]umber 3 was another day-trading "how-to" . . . and the
number 2 book? . . . (drum roll) . . . the latest John
Grisham novel. Sounds like they're really working hard
out there. [Also] Morgan Stanley's #1 was an introduction
to telecom. (Are they staffing up? Does this mean more
mergers to come?). Merrill Lynch's is a history of
Goldman Sachs (envy, fear?)."
-------
MISCELLANY
Sin of Omission: In the last SMART Letter, I said that Don
Norman's "The Invisible Computer" was on Microsoft's top ten
book list. But it is not just *on* the list, it is
*Number*Two* right after Ch@irm@n Bill's. Sorry, Don.
More on GPS Rollover Day: Two SMART People wrote to tell me
about their post-Aug21 GPS problems. Both owned Garmins,
different models than mine.
Canada Orders Resale of Cable Data Service. In Canada,
federal regulators laid down the principle that Cable
providers are common carriers, subject to the same regulatory
philosophy as telcos, in 1996. The CRTC ordered cable
providers to unbundle their cable data service some months
ago. But SMART Person Francois Menard reports that cable
operators dragged their feet, so on September 14, the CRTC
punitively ordered cable operators to resell data service at a
25% discount to any ISP who wants it. Let's see if this slows
down Canada's deployment of high-speed data services (as AT&T
would claim) or if it speeds it up. Watch for Menard's
upcoming piece in The Cook Report on Internet
http://www.cookreport.com.
Dado Vrsalovic quits AT&T! Vrsalovic is author of the only
articulate (if not well-reasoned) rebuttal to "The Stupid
Network" (ACM netWorker, v. 2.2, April/May 1998) and one of
the architects of AT&T's vapor-enshrouded Geoplex. Reportedly,
he is leaving "to pursue other exciting opportunities", which,
come to think of it, is why he left Sun Microsystems several
years ago to join AT&T. Vrsalovic, who is fond of saying,
"The hen has an interest in breakfast, but the pig is
*involved* in it," has taken his bacon off the table once
again.
-------
QUOTE OF NOTE: Mike Adams
"When all the dust settles, the guy with the ability to
deliver bits at the lowest cost is going to win."
Mike Adams, technology president, RCN, quoted in
"Glass Houses", by Scott Woolley, Forbes, Sept 20, 1999
-------
CONFERENCES ON MY CALENDAR
September 27-29, 1999, Lake Tahoe CA. George Gilder's
TELECOSM! Sorry, SOLD OUT! I'm im-moderating a panel on
The Stupid Network that includes Bill St. Arnaud of CANARIE
(the guy who showed how you can get 10 gigabits to the home
for the price of a cable modem), Vab Goel of Qwest, Victor
Parente of AOL, and the effervescent Nayel Shafei of stealthco
Enkido. (www.enkido.com? Sorry, nobody home.) For more info,
http://www.forbes.com/conf/Telecosm99/index.htm
October 10-17, 1999, Geneva, Switzerland. TELECOM99,
the every-four-year ITU extravaganza that always seems
to surprise AT&T's leaders. I will be there 10/9 through
10/13 posing as a wild-mannered columnist for America's
Network.
October 27-29, 1999, New York City. The New Economy
Conference, with John Browning and Spencer Reiss. Plus an
array of people who believe that knowledge is wealth, that
bigger ain't necessarily better, and that there are more
opportunities and fewer guarantees at the edge. I don't know
what I'll be doing there yet, but I suspect I'll be there.
Watch www.neweconomywatch.com for the emergent agenda.
November 4, 1999, New York City. "TechBrains Seminar" with
Merrill Lynch Technology Advisory Board members. Featuring
Phil Neches (founder of database machine company Teradata),
Don Norman (who wrote "Turn Signals are the Facial Expressions
of Automobiles," and other worthwhile reads), open source
spokesman Eric Raymond (who wrote the must-read essay, "The
Cathedral and the Bazaar"), and several others, no less
distinguished, whose work I don't know as well. I'll
participate too. Email me if you are seriously interested in
attending.
-------
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 1999 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, maybe
who you work for, maybe how you see your work connecting
to mine, 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]
[Policy on quotes: Write to me. I won't quote
you without your explicitly stated permission. And if
you ask for anonymity, you'll get it. ]
*--------------------isen.com----------------------*
David S. Isenberg isen@isen.com
isen.com, inc. http://www.isen.com/
1-888-isen-com 1-908-654-0772
*--------------------isen.com----------------------*
Date last modified: 23 September 99