Oh yes. Just like RSS. And 802.11b will usher in a new era of Commerce, weblogging salons and Starbucks. Just as soon as the EuroCommies throw away that nasty GSM tat and revel in the Pax Americana...
... Oh, fuck off.
(Hey, am I channelling Andy Orlowski yet?)
I'm sure there were other things that were going to Change The World, but damned if I can recall any of them...
Well, quite. We've already got a near-ubiquitous supply of wireless bandwidth that has a fantastically low barrier-to-entry (See any PAYG iBooks + 802.11 kit? No, I don't believe you do.) and is run by a de-facto utility.
This is yet another problem I have with Septics in general and CorybloodyDoctorowYesIKnowHe'sCanadianYou'dThinkHe'dKnowBetter in particular - the implicit assumption that Big Business Will Provide, and if they don't the Rugged Individualist American Frontiersman will jolly well Heinlein his way out of trouble. Yeah - slurping coffee while weblogging in a trafficjam of SUVs is really going to make Daniel Boone proud. [You'd never guess I'd been at the American social history books, would you?] I don't know how many more spectacular failures of privatised utilities we'll need to see before it's understood that infrastructure (water, power, railways, roads (if you must) and... Communications) should all be viewed as a public good to be held in trust for the nation by groups of benevolent and far-sighted engineering-types.
Ok, that'll need a radical (in the black flag and shooting manner) change of governmental style, but a chap can dream...
It's more or less the same bloody argument we've just had over broadband - it's not the absolute bandwidth that's important, it's the ubiquity and the fixed cost. A future where I have a phone-thing in my pocket (or at least the wireless terminal part of my PAN infrastructure) which is also where my what-equates-to-a-weblog resides, rather than on a machine far away - how 90s is that? - that I choose to interact with it how I will, will be a good place.
[This should be a post/say, rather than a comment. The people who I want to see this (that's you that is, Sulston) may well pass it by.]
Sportal? Didn't they have a mongo auction of all sorts of mad toys a couple of years ago?
I guess they'll catch up in the end, but not till their cellular operators mature a bit, and the Yoof take up the cheap stuff so enthusiastically that the grownups can't ignore it any more. It takes a bit of experience of cellular ubiquity before it seems so obviously the right thing.
*Laughter* I shall tell him about this. Good man, Andy. Exceptionally jammy, also, wangling relocation to CA just about titsup.com time and keeping it. So we don't go drinking much.
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momijizukamori
no subject
Date: 2003-07-15 07:47 am (UTC)Wasn't it going to have changed the world by now ?
no subject
Date: 2003-07-15 08:08 am (UTC)... Oh, fuck off.
(Hey, am I channelling Andy Orlowski yet?)
I'm sure there were other things that were going to Change The World, but damned if I can recall any of them...
Ah! Portals! Whatever they were...
no subject
Date: 2003-07-15 10:32 am (UTC)Remember Sportal ?
no subject
Date: 2003-07-16 05:34 am (UTC)This is yet another problem I have with Septics in general and CorybloodyDoctorowYesIKnowHe'sCanadianYou'dThinkHe'dKnowBetter in particular - the implicit assumption that Big Business Will Provide, and if they don't the Rugged Individualist American Frontiersman will jolly well Heinlein his way out of trouble. Yeah - slurping coffee while weblogging in a trafficjam of SUVs is really going to make Daniel Boone proud. [You'd never guess I'd been at the American social history books, would you?] I don't know how many more spectacular failures of privatised utilities we'll need to see before it's understood that infrastructure (water, power, railways, roads (if you must) and... Communications) should all be viewed as a public good to be held in trust for the nation by groups of benevolent and far-sighted engineering-types.
Ok, that'll need a radical (in the black flag and shooting manner) change of governmental style, but a chap can dream...
It's more or less the same bloody argument we've just had over broadband - it's not the absolute bandwidth that's important, it's the ubiquity and the fixed cost. A future where I have a phone-thing in my pocket (or at least the wireless terminal part of my PAN infrastructure) which is also where my what-equates-to-a-weblog resides, rather than on a machine far away - how 90s is that? - that I choose to interact with it how I will, will be a good place.
[This should be a post/say, rather than a comment. The people who I want to see this (that's you that is, Sulston) may well pass it by.]
Sportal? Didn't they have a mongo auction of all sorts of mad toys a couple of years ago?
no subject
Date: 2003-07-16 07:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-07-16 03:59 am (UTC)*Laughter* I shall tell him about this. Good man, Andy. Exceptionally jammy, also, wangling relocation to CA just about titsup.com time and keeping it. So we don't go drinking much.