Two (Radical?) Thoughts on Infrastructure
We hear a lot about infrastructure investment today: roads and bridges, mostly. But we live in an information society and an information economy. We need investment in information infrastructure, and that, in the near term that is relevant for a recovery package, means massive public investment in Fiber To The Home (FTTH) and creating a fundamentally new system for adult education and its conversion into greater local involvement in education programs at local public schools.
Fiber to the Home
Sometimes, in the context of the need for infrastructure investment, we hear about communications infrastructure and broadband. Up to this point, however, this has meant some forms of subsidy or tax relief to current firms in the broadband business, and an increase in what the United States defines as "broadband" so that within two years we will define broadband as 10 megabits per second downstream to the home. To get a sense of how ambitious this is for the world's largest economy, consider that Japanese consumers have already been enjoying 100 megabits per second service for a few years. Future to the Back, I guess, more than Back to the Future.
The fundamental mistake is to take as given that communications infrastructure must be produced, from the ditch digging up, by private firms. No one imagines that we will privatize highway and bridge construction in order to update them. They are shared core infrastructure, that is run as a commons, and are maintained at public expense by private companies that employ workers, foremen, and managers, and whose employment fuels the economy. Why can't communications infrastructure be the same?
The primary cost of laying fiber to the home and small office is digging up trenches and putting in conduits, big pipes, through which the fiber runs. That does not mean that the government then gets to say who uses the infrastructure. The government does not get to say who uses the highways. It does not even mean necessarily that the government could not contract the construction out to firms already in the field, like Verizon or Comcast. British Telecom, which was privatized years ago, still does most of the actual investment in new communications infrastructure in the UK. But it must then share its facilities with competitors. There's the rub.
In order for this investment to work, it has to be coupled with regulation that enables competing Internet providers to use the physical facilities on an open, equal basis. This idea was the central innovation behind the Telecommunications Act of 1996, but it got delayed by litigation in the 1990s and was killed when a new FCC took over in 2001. Some version or another of this model is widely used in other countries, where broadband speeds have increased at greater rates than ours have. The basic idea is that if you built the road, or railroad, or pipeline, you get to charge for driving trucks or running trains or pumping oil over and through your infrastructure, but you don't get to discriminate against competitors who use your infrastructure. The idea is that federal money will fund jobs building fiber infrastructure to the home, and in exchange, no matter who gets the contract to build the network, the network will be available to anyone to connect their electronics to it, under nondiscriminatory terms, to run their competing Internet service over the network.
The primary argument against this has for a long time been that private companies will not invest in future infrastructure if hey have to share it. Well, now that the public has decided to invest massively in infrastructure, we can, and should. Unless the telecommunications and cable companies have a story to tell about where, exactly, they will get the money to make a major push to roll Fiber To The Home in the next five years, or why we should postpone our investments in core communications infrastructure until we see better days, they have no real argument against massive public investment in the most expensive, long-term part of our communications infrastructure.
Education
No part of the information infrastructure is more important than the education level of a population.
Imagine a program along the following lines; think of it, maybe, as a down payment on the idea of a national teachers' service corps. Take a few subjects. Imagine the question is Internet literacy and computer skills; or how to teach reading to a first or third grader; or how to teach a fourth grader to do multiplication or apply arithmetic to solving word problems. Now create a nationwide program where college kids, schoolteachers, knowledge workers, and knowledgeable others are hired by the federal government, on a full contract if they are not currently working or studying, or as a supplemental job, to offer courses in these subjects to other adults. Computer and Internet literacy courses should have a heavy emphasis on how to use the Internet, from the simple, like how to do more sophisticated searches or change defaults, to the more complex. They could focus on how to be a better consumer, from good price comparison practices to security awareness, and how to be better producers -- such as how to find ways of adding to household income by finding work online.
These teaching recruits are the first line of recipients of stimulus funds, and the people who are studying should receive a stipend for participation and completion -- a second set of stimulus recipients. Step one can create a large pool of teachers and adult learners, all of whom have received money while increasing their human capital. The second step is that the graduates of these six week courses (where an attendance record and reliable performance can be demonstrated by participants, as well as teachers) could then turn around and teach what they learned -- in either similar adult education courses, or, more importantly, in public schools. Not everyone, of course, but if you define the contribution finely enough, and you provide a system for supervision, then you could recruit quite a few people.
Who would you recruit to run and manage these programs? Public school teachers, who are underpaid, and who could be recruited for generous overtime pay to harness large numbers of stipend-based volunteers. Another tier of stimulus recipients. The volunteers would then work on teaching what they learned to kids individually or in very small groups. The idea is that a large number of adults could teach young kids basic skills, like their multiplication tables, and many more than we usually think of might be able to help, more like intellectual personal trainers than all knowing teachers, even teenagers. The personal attention would likely be beneficial to both sides. Over the long term, these kinds of practices should be used to provide volunteering opportunities for the active aging population, and so should be set up so that they could continue as a volunteer program. But for the recovery period, say the next two years or so, these volunteers should earn substantial stipends, as yet a final tier of stimulus distribution.
The basic point is this. We are happily contemplating paying people to dig up roads and pour cement. They will be building our physical infrastructure. There is no reason why we should not be equally happy paying people to teach, learn, and share what they learned. They will be building our knowledge infrastructure. Coupled with fiber to the home, by the end of the recovery we will have more of our population connected to much faster networks that will allow them to work from home, and they will be much better prepared to use that connectivity in a networked information economy.
You need to get out more. Verizon has been running fiber to the home (FIOS) for a number of years. They offer TV, telephone and internet service, individually or bundled.
The problem is upstream where they haven't increased the bandwidth to support the new world of video and other coming offerings.
In addition the present configuration is heavily slanted towards downloads. Just try to run a web server on your home network and you'll see that it is prohibited by their terms of service.
The idea that users are both producers and consumers has not yet reached the network providers.
Verizon has also taken it upon themselves to filter out all traffic to the Usenet alt groups claiming that some of the binary groups may contain child pornography. So, without much of a peep from anyone, we now have gone from a common carrier model to big brother.
We not only need more bandwidth, we need more competition and we especially need the suppliers of the pipes to stay out of the content area.
December 4, 2008 4:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yup, all the streets got torn up here for that years ago!
December 4, 2008 4:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
When you say that "filter out all traffic to the Usenet alt groups", do you meant that they no longer configure their USENET servers for the alt hierarchy, or that they actually impair 3rd party contracts between their subscribers and a full-spectrum USENET provider? There is a chasm of difference between the two.
USENET has come to be viewed by many Net Access providers as a black-hole that sucks up a tremendous amount of bandwidth, fills up massive storage capacity, requires a team of paleogeeks who are adept in the arcane methods of net antiquities, and is used by only a small fraction of their customers. Additionally, it is fraught with dangers, for the users computers, and for thin-skinned users' psyches. I understand why major Internet Access companies would no longer desire to provide USENET as a service, and can see no valid reason they should be compelled to do so.
Now on the other hand, if Verizon is blocking USENET access their customers get through a third-party, then I think they are acting improperly. I use Usenet Monster for USENET access. It's $3 a month for 5gig of bandwidth, with any lunused getting rolled-over, and added to your total available bandwidth allocation. If that is not enough, they also have a $14 a month unlimited contract.
December 4, 2008 6:08 PM | Reply | Permalink
Running a web server from your home is prohibited by Verizon FIOS TOS because you are paying home prices. If they offered it to a business then the price would jump. They will block certain ports because they don't want residential consumers paying residential prices but acting like a business.
AT&T U-Verse Internet is offered to businesses and I bet there's a jump in pricing.
However, I installed service for an ISP that temporarily was out of his home until his new office was done renovating. My boss at the time, with an IT background, told him to call into the service reps and just tell them to unblock whatever ports he found to be restricted.
Just some thoughts.
December 5, 2008 1:03 AM | Reply | Permalink
Right - Verizon charges $99 a month for the basic business package which permits use of servers, compared to $49 for the basic consumer package (I think - I have the triple play service so it's a little difficult to factorize).
That last part makes it difficult for a consumer to take the business package, since the system assumes that a business doesn't want cable TV.
This is where FiOS is screwed up - if you're a consumer, and want cable TV and telephone, you're therefore considered not to be a producer. There's no reason for it to be that way...
December 5, 2008 12:33 PM | Reply | Permalink
The reason for AT&T U-Verse not to offer TV service I think is the current limitations on IPTV being multicast.
A business that would want multiple displays up would feel the effects of it because (as of the summer) there were only 4 TV streams coming in for use, no matter if you had 1 or 6 STBs. So people with only a DVR/STB would get the most benefit and record 3 shows and watch 1, or record 4 and watch one of those channels.
A bar, pizza place, or other TV entertainment business having 6 TVs hooked up could watch 4 channels, where 2 of the 6 TVs are using one of the same streams.
Where there is internet offered to businesses AT&T basically just has to drop the internet at a minimum point (I didn't do one before I left, but that was what we were expecting). Also, AT&T's aim to bring TV as an offering was to counter Cable's offering of VOIP (a competitor doing TV-Internet-Phone while you are only doing Internet-Phone has an advantage). So it's main focus is residential right now.
One of AT&T's next steps will be to probably offer VOIP (non-911 compliant during power outages fyi) services.
December 5, 2008 2:05 PM | Reply | Permalink
From where I sit it looks like the world is moving towards laptop computers, accessing the internet wirelessly, not via fiber networks. Aren't we going to be on the back side of the curve again if we spend billions of dollars putting fiber optic cables to everyone's homes?
It makes more sense to me to work on building up free wireless service covering the whole country, and with the very high speed that fiber optics now brings.
Our physical infrastructure does need to be built back up, so this communications infrastructure can't displace the physical infrastructure programs. In addition, there is the energy grid that needs lots of work - both the electric power grid and the natural gas pipeline grid. It isn't like its just hard to find things to spend money on now.
December 4, 2008 5:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
I worked for AT&T from summer of '07 to '08. Installing their Fiber-to-the-Prem and Fiber-to-the-Node (FTTP & FTTN) U-verse TV and Internet. Here in southern California its not the money that's the problem, its the cities trying to block AT&T from putting their fiber cabinets (VRADs) up for FTTN (which constitute for a majority of the services installed). Cities that don't want to see another box have tried to block/slow AT&Ts progress.
New homes being built in some areas are FTTP so there is no traditional copper lines. Verizon did the more expensive route and FIOS is all FTTP. However, they implement in different ways. FIOS is killer for internet people (IT and computer hobbyists) and AT&T seems to be more TV oriented, but still it's internet offerings are better than the local cable providers.
Also, in reply to hoppycalif2's comment about wireless. If you mean your local wirless router, then it gets its juice from the fiber optic in the ground and is necessary. If you are talking about wireless as in cell phone (3G) technology, then you have to keep in mind that there needs to be cell sites spaced out for what it seems in mile square coverage areas. Obstacles like hills, buildings, company RF interference can make it harder too. Also, those cell sites slowly switching from copper terminal to fiber terminals, to support more T1s and are needed for areas like substations or even Disneyland as electrical interference is too great for copper transmission lines.
So Fiber is the way to go, if the telecoms weren't going to do it, power companies like SCE (Southern California Edison) were eventually going to step in or maybe even The Gas Company. Telecoms have a advantage over cable providers in that their existing network infrastructure is easier to adjust. From what I hear, the cable companies would have to spend quite a considerable more amount changing their architecture to fit a FTTP or FTTN situation.
Just my thoughts. Hope this helps.
December 4, 2008 7:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
Not exactly. Actually wifi has some serious problems.
First of all, wifi is short range from wired hub to wireless devices. Any wifi bandwidth needs corresponding fiber bandwidth to location, which takes us right back to 1-line/1-building need for fiber.
Secondly, wifi's frequency bandwidth is limited and you can only cram so many users into a given proximity before interference becomes a problem. Currently with most people are browsing text and limited graphics sites, wifi may seem more than adequate. But, at some point when one expects to have HD video delivered on demand, anywhere and everywhere, with ten or more people doing so in close proximity simultaneously such as an apartment building or cafe and with each expecting 100% quality, there's going to be frequency/bandwidth problems.
December 4, 2008 8:21 PM | Reply | Permalink
We have all the communications we need. We've got it up the wazoo. Instead, let's build something we can export. Something green. New schools. Hospitals with emergency rooms for actual emergencies. Better roads (here in CA they're a disgrace). All kinds of things we can build that we actually don't have enough of.
December 4, 2008 5:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
Actually we could use a lot more bandwidth, exponentially more. At that point one can for example stream a HD movie in real time, renting or purchasing it entirely electronically. then you'll start to see massive increases in client side storage capacity.
So for example, Netflix could rent or sell streamed HD movies on demand. Instead of wasting money on player device and discs, and having to drive to the store to get/return the discs; all that effort and money could go into a better broadband lines, better screens and audio components, better computer and local storage capacity, and better software.
All of which is multi-purpose (education, games, social networking, etc) becasue it's PC based, unlike a dedicated disc player.
Instead of creating a trade deficit by importing players, discs, and opther cheaply produced electronics, we'll instead be replacing that with local infrastructure creating local installation and maintenance jobs, and software development and content providers where we already lead.
It's a win/win. It's just more efficient all around.
December 4, 2008 8:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
AT&T TV is IPTV, as of the Fall, making available 2 HD and 2 STD streams to each home using multicast. Your DVR settings are saved server-side. You needed a minimum amount of bandwith and it was tested (if a Fiber to the Node and copper to house setup) during the install.
VERIZON FIOS however uses RF, and my friends father told me that you can't go ethernet from the fiber terminal to the router, it has to be coax. Also the router can't feed ethernet to the Set-Top-Box (I've tried this on my own home), it has to be coax. The download/upload speeds of the internet is amazing. The TV service GUI is bad and IPTV is limited, plus their pricing scheme is horrible on many levels. Not trying to be much competitive with Cable/Satellite offerings.
U-Verse can go ethernet, coax, or a single twisted pair to the router and then ethernet, coax, single twisted pair to each TV (some cases providing dial-tone split off at the STB). On fiber homes, its usually all ethernet. Imagine having a TV STB and a computer both being fed by the same switch. Each room needing just an ethernet jack (or pair of jacks if want landline, battery backup when power goes at terminal). Makes portability a lot easier.
The infrastructure is being built right now, but how its used depends on the carrier. Would be nice to have U-Verse TV but FIOS internet.
Having electric or gas companies be competitors in the mix would be a bonus for the consumer. If infrastructure is spent upgrading the electric grid or whatever gas system they have, those companies should really take the opportunity, if feasible, in expanding their capabilities with fiber.
December 5, 2008 1:16 AM | Reply | Permalink
You might have verizon running fiber in your neighborhood, but that doesn't do much to help the other 95% of the country. It's taking way too long.
The government should definitely create incentives for the telecoms to accelerate this process, while at the same time imposing rules on how the telecoms can restrict use by competitors and consumers.
Wireless technology will continue to march forward, but we've got a long way to go before it'll match the speed that fiber optics currently run at. Also, there's continuing development on fiber technologies, the lines underground now are not running at their peak potential. Technology will allow us to squeeze more and more bandwidth out of those lines for a while.
December 4, 2008 6:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
Where I last lived I had fiber optic internet and TV and telephone service, by SureWest. It worked great, except when it didn't, which was whenever too many people were using it at the same time. Then the speed dropped way down. It isn't just wireless systems that need upgrading.
Sacramento has SureWest expanding into it, but that is a very slow process, with small neighborhoods getting that service as they get to it. I am now about 5 miles from where I had the Surewest service, and have been here 3 years, but still no schedule for expansion to my area.
December 4, 2008 10:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
I agree with the authors intent. Just because I live in a city with many ways to connect to the internet doesn't answer the question of why this isn't true for the rural areas of the United States.
Perhaps some the people who responded need to get out more.
I love how city-dwellers look down their nose at the thought of people in rural areas having access to services city dwellers take for granted.
December 4, 2008 6:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
In reply. Cities are most cost-effective because of the profitability of any project. Some rural people may still have to use satellite or dial-up for their internet means. If you live in a rural area, don't expect to have all the same services as a more densely populated area. The Palm Desert/Palm Springs/Beaumont (desert) area has fiber optic, that's where FIOS bases their transmission come from for the Los Angeles market.
A friend of mine used to live in Iowa and he had fiber internet. He lived next to a school or district office and the state or county pulled in fiber. So he was able to partake.
However, most of the cost of fiber is in the last mile for city blocks. It seems to more than doubles the cost as fiber is pulled around turn after turn through a neighborhood.
Now imagine if you pulled fiber for just a relatively few people. Who's paying for that? Is it really necessary to our infrastructure? Japan and Korea are nations will less land (more dense population) and there are other considerations why they went with fiber before the United States. What about a problem of people that stole copper and sold it as scrap back when they were trying to put together their systems?
Instead of putting money into telecoms and such. How about we put it into schools and academia? That is where we are suffering the most. Teachers spend their own money for basic supplies. Kids have a tougher time securing loans. Universities raise tuition and community colleges aren't so affordable as they were 7-8 years ago. Invest in something that returns even more back.
That reminds me... time for my EECS class.
December 4, 2008 7:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think a lot of you forget the reason for the stimulas. OK they may be good ideas we need to work on in the long run and with more thought. but we need something we can do quickly, that employs a lot of labor, that we need, and that can be turned off quickly.
A lot of states are having to shut down projects that have been approved, planned, and part way started. Lets just help the states and cities continue and when things pick up (I hope) then the locals can continue with their own financing.
December 4, 2008 6:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
Now if you REALLY want to do something radical, propose that the government at all levels actually hire people competent to deploy information technology. If you aren't going to outsource it, you have to hire managers, and technical and business analysts with the skills to develop it and those are not low paying jobs.
December 4, 2008 6:33 PM | Reply | Permalink
10mbps might be nice but it's hardly the bottom floor of "broadband". I'm quite happy with 1+mbps DSL here, and we sometimes have 4 computers online at once.
What's with shilling for the fiber optics industry here??
In fact, the government does have a big say in who uses the roads and how they are used. But yes, internet connectivity can be viewed as a commercial product, a commercial service, a utility, or an entitlement. Putting in 1000Amp electric service into a single family home is called "overkill" in any such scenario.
"Japan has it" is silly.
Yes, computer literacy is a nice niche-service industry for education to spend money on.
December 4, 2008 6:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
Wow! The parochialism of these comments is astounding!
@rdf. There's fiber in your neighborhood, so that must mean everybody has it -- except that they don't, not even in all metropolitan areas. Let alone suburbs and exurbs.
@hoppycalif2. Laptops and wireless for everyone! Except most people don't have laptops, laptops are more expensive than desktops, laptops are not suitable for all people or all tasks. And wireless access doesn't just happen, access points have limited range before the signal attenuates into uselessness so the signal has to get to the access point some other way than wirelessly or the system would degrade to static. Even WiMax needs a cable component to actually function.
December 4, 2008 6:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yochai Benkler is exactly correct about this and the people in this thread who don't get it, well they just don't understand it.
What he's proposing is essentially a South Korean model for broadband deployment. There are many books on the subject and it's usually held up as the example of an efficient marketplace working with government oversight and standardization to leapfrog IT infrastructure. Bill Joy of Sun is a big proponent. I've only been raving about it for several years as the prime example of what a forward thinking government and industry could accomplish if people sopped bickering so much.
It's also important to understand deploying this creates enormous growth opportunities in education, entertainment like HD video on demand and rich content, social networking, games, and software generally from business to household electronics like smart homes and appliances. Meaning, it creates both labor and tech jobs immediately, and increases the long term competitiveness of an economy.
In S Korea several years ago they rapidly, and almost universally, deployed broadband about 10x faster than DSL lines in the USA. They keep getting faster and deploying closer to 100%.
In application, S Korean homemakers are video conferencing with their cooking club or relatives from the kitchen PC while using dedicated social networking software and web sites as well as hardware such as LCD screens, web cams, etc. The husband is streaming a HD video on demand from the living room onto a large LCD TV from the lounge PC, while the kids are tele-studying or playing online game from their rooms. All over the same data line.
That's a lot of economic growth potential and job creation from simply installing high speed broadband near universally to metropolitan areas.
BTW, those who spend all day online with politics aren't necessarily the most tech savvy. In fact, I find most tend to be home bound or cafe dwellers with very little technical knowledge.
December 4, 2008 8:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
Hey, a topic I actually know something about. :)
I'm going to start with a response to rdeaver. Mostly I agree with you, but...
- Laptops aren't more expensive than desktops (Perhaps on average they are, but the cheapest laptop I am aware of [OLPC] is cheaper than the cheapest desktop).
- More laptops are sold than desktops.
- Laptops are suitable for 75% of everything. Add a separate screen, and it's 95% of everything.
- The truthiness of the above statements will continue to accelerate (Ok, that doesn't make any sense).
But you are correct about the wireless needing a physical basis.
So here's what we do:
We need to upgrade the electrical grid anyway, in order to allow long distance transmission of power. While we are doing that, we should lay down some serious cross-country fiber. Where we put in HVDC lines, we put in as thick data lines as possible. That will give us the generalized bandwidth we need for...
WiMAX (or LTE, or "white space", or something better) to 99.9% of households in the country. As we are upgrading the grid, and adding new data lines, we put wireless transmitters of the appropriate type all along the way (in an easily upgradeable fashion, of course). Bandwidth wouldn't be massive, but 2-10 mbits/sec is still an improvement for the majority of the country.
The new wireless network should be free to use. If an ISP wanted to build off the new data network to provide enhanced services, they would be welcome to. For example, HD video over the wireless network wouldn't perform very well, so for those who wanted it, they could subscribe to an ISP. Revenue for ISPs would go down, but their long-term costs should as well, because they would maintain a much smaller portion of the network.
The increased inter-country bandwidth would also provide significant savings (both in $$$ and efficiency) to businesses of many sizes that make use of the internet. I imagine they would still want to contract an ISP for their connection, but it should be substantially cheaper than it is currently. (Anecdotally, I probably lose 30 minutes a week transferring data between my companies head office and the one I work at).
In this way we could ensure that everyone had the option to be connected at reasonable speeds, which is a prerequisite to the success of many of Obama's plans to put government online. "Democracy over dial-up" just isn't very catchy.
It also would require a much smaller budget than getting fiber laid everywhere. Though to be fair, it puts far less people to work. But I would imagine we can find other things for them to do. If the money's there, there is plenty of infrastructure that needs improving.
So let's get 100+mbs high-speed cheaper, and much more widely available, and free "broadband" to everyone.
We have enough things in this country conspiring to keep us apart, we shouldn't allow unequal access to communications infrastructure to divide us further.
FIX IT!
December 4, 2008 8:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
I agree it would be great to offer free wifi broadband (or what we presently call "broadband") to everyone, for web browsing, email, etc.
But, ultimately we need to ask: what's the goal of the new infrastructure?
The answer has to be a quantum leap in capability to HD quality video, both up and down, with low latency. That opens up new possibilities from HD movies on demand to distributed computing and allows the internet to be radically more useful than presently.
December 4, 2008 9:52 PM | Reply | Permalink
While I certainly think we do need the bandwidth available for HD-everything over the internet, I'm not convinced that it's a must have, or something that should be paid for by the taxpayer.
But I would be very interested if you would like to elaborate on the benefits you think that would provide.
December 5, 2008 10:56 PM | Reply | Permalink
Good post, Passive! We also need a better "grid" of natural gas pipelines, which is another place to locate the fiber optic "main highways". The advantage of working on the electrical and natural gas distribution systems is that those may well be the secret to breaking our dependence on petroleum.
I don't downplay the need for improved internet access. By the way, how happy would any of us be if our telephones were unusable to any real extent a few years after we buy them, forcing us to buy new, higher speed, better models about every 2-3 years? Now, think of that fiber optic network as being equally obsolete that rapidly.
December 4, 2008 10:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
Very helpful information. Thanks!
December 4, 2008 10:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'm glad people got something out of my post. I'm not particularly a communications engineer, but I've seen how access to information drastically alters the outcome of many situations. It doesn't solve problems on it's own, but having the right information at least means you are trying to solve the right problem.
Plus, I'm a big geek.
December 5, 2008 11:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
Sorry if someone else has already said this, but it seems to me that one of the things we need to look for in determining how to invest is whether the thing we're investing in will eventually be able to be sold to other countries. For example, investing in clean coal tech would, all other difficulties aside, be something we could potential sell to the Chinese, who are building one new plant each week or something like that.
That said, I do also support the notion of improving our communication infrastructure - seems like a worthwhile investment.
-- Cris
My site: Obama Wallpaper Archive
December 5, 2008 12:36 AM | Reply | Permalink
What's important to me is to remove the chokehold that the infrastructure providers have on both customers and content - especially cable TV. There needs to be some kind of firewall between the 2 and lots of competition among them. Its what makes the internet so robust and television so lame. I have zero options as to who my cable provider is and the cable tv packages offered are one-size-fits-all/no-size-fits-any and very expensive. And when you're talking about the so-called-liberal-media - that chokehold is what allows conservative corporate directed news to blanket the country.
The stimulus to me is just an excuse to de-privatise the marketplace for information.
December 5, 2008 2:44 PM | Reply | Permalink
You have only one tv provider? You have cable, satellite (DirecTV, DISH, etc), and now we are getting FIOS/U-verse/other offerings from the telecoms. Also, I haven't looked into myself, but companies are offering TV streaming devices (ie Slingbox).
There are options out there. Just look for them if you have to.
December 5, 2008 4:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
Wow, compared to bridges that are falling down and killing people, and instead of water mains and sewers and storm drains that need replacing since they have reached their life expectancy (due to horrible management and underfunding for decades of those aspects of our infrastructure) and we need to keep getting to work or getting potable water or the ability to flush our wastes away - all of which have been neglected most all of their useful lives - you want to put the focus of spending taxpayer money on new technologies that are capable of paying for themselves by the people that want them?
No.
December 5, 2008 4:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
I can understand your hesitation (or possibly revulsion) at this idea, considering the other priorities that have been so badly neglected.
But I think it's terribly cynical to claim that any of those posting here are proposing communications infrastructure by the sole project worked on.
If it was one or the other, I think we would rather have safe drinking water. :)
But the fact is, it's not one or the other, and in some cases, in order to maintain clean water, we require an improved comm. infrastructure.
Monitoring water quality requires frequent testing, at a lot of different sites, and it's not glamorous work, so it's hard to find funding to pay people for it. However, there are plenty of common water problems that we test by machine, and if those machines can be monitored remotely, over my previously mentioned wireless network, you can save a lot of time and money.
The same goes for bridge stress sensors, and I imagine there are sensors you can install in drainage systems to determine efficiency.
My personal vision would be that most of these sensors would post their data automatically to publicly accessible databases. So if I was interested in local water quality, I could write a script that would query the appropriate database and perhaps use Google Maps to map out all incidences of poor water quality on a regular basis.
This kind of transparency into the maintenance issues of our infrastructure is what is required to get people caring about funding it. Any restrictions placed on access to this information increase the likelihood of a catastrophic event, like a bridge failure, before something gets done.
December 5, 2008 10:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
Good reply!
All your points are good ones. Yes, I do think that we will be able to walk and chew gum at the same time - handle more than one infrastructure mode at a time. Prioritizing and seriously adequate funding will be imperatives.
And I had not thought of sensors in drains, mains and on bridges. Good thinking! Blending all that into GIS will really give us a handle on everything, as long as the sensors are well placed and the right kind - and are replaced with a preventive maintenance program. In short, we have the technology. All we have to do is do it.
Keeping the infrastructure from decaying needs to be built into the paradigm (into the mindset, really) and sensors are a great tool for doing that. I applaud your foresight.
Also, will we be sane enough to keep out pork?
Also, in all of this, I realized a rebuttal of the Libertarian POV of the legitimate functions of government (defense, courts, police). Those are all part of infrastructure, if you don't take the 'structure' literally. I realized that any government's central purpose is to facilitate prosperity, and that means to provide an infrastructure - physical, yes, but also such things as laws are part of the infrastructure, as is safety, good roads to aid commerce, regulations to limit crazies from blowing the economy out of the water or polluting the air, etc.
As our infrastructure has decayed, the actual dollar value of AMERICA has declined. Look around the world, and you see very new infrastructure (as Obama has noted), and that facilitates those other economies, and brings widespread prosperity to all who use their infrastructures. God, we should have been keeping it up all along - just like US Steel should have been modernizing its plants, long ago. Our industries have decayed right along with the infrastructure - and for the same neglectful reasons - no one wanted to pay for it (let someone later deal with it!). But so have our principles, our defense, our police, our courts (look around at all the scandals - crooked cops, judges, pols, blah, blah, blah). When America was new, we all FELT better about the country. An improved infrastructure will help our self worth, not just in dollars but in how we feel about the country and ourselves.
Conservatives and oligarchs take the prosperity thing as "government is there to help me get rich." No. Government is there to help us improve our lives - "promote the general welfare", not the specific welfare.
Nuff sed...
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January 6, 2009 1:00 AM | Reply | Permalink
All you guys are very lucky. I live about 30 miles north of the Research Triangle Park in North Carolina- that massive conglomeration of multinational corporations' research facilities- and the only high speed internet that's available is the expensive, unreliable satelitte... stuff. (and what about all the people in urban areas that can't AFFORD cable? The public libraries are cutting hours and services.)
Rural areas are in the same place now as far as broadband goes, as they were 75 years ago with electricity, and for the same reason. Too few customers to make providing the services profitable. And the solution is the same: government sponsored and funded systems run, not for profit, but for the common welfare.
I get my electricity from an electric co-operative that was set up in the 1930s. The shit works.
As then, so it is now. Such public systems are opposed by the for-profit companies, not because they want the customers, but because it sets a bad example. (If a quasi-government agency can do the job cheaper, why not let it?) They object to government competition in a market they have no intention of serving. A perfect capitalist rat f--k.
December 6, 2008 7:09 AM | Reply | Permalink
The types of comments we are getting shows one of the reasons why -- against my general pro-government inclinations -- I would argue against this.
In most cases, government can do a good job -- as good or better than private enterpise -- in providing services to people. But the one area where they have a problem is one with rapidly exploding technology, and that is still happening in broadband. My part of Brooklyn still is waiting for FIOS -- we were late with cable too, and it took a call to my local Councilperson to discover that the maps the cable companies had had skipped my apartment building so he had to intervene to get me hooked up.
But I've still gone from dial-up to low-end broadband (.7 mbs) to medium broadband (3.0 mbs) in five years. FIOS is next, but now Japan and Korea are apparently running near 100 mbs.
Whenever government intervenes, it has to pick a standard, and then it tends to lock that into place. And it is harder to change government intervention that private innovation.
SteveGinIL is right. It's not that government can't do several things at once, it is that this is uniquely an area where private competition and innovation -- and the chance to be wrong and fail, which government rarely has -- is still investing its own money in the system. Once things settle down, then this suggestion will make sense, but not quite yet.
December 7, 2008 2:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
Nobody has colled off after responding to the internet program long enough to work down to your much more solid education proposal.
One thing that should be said is that the proposal fits in nicely with
Obama's 'college in exchange for 2 years of national service' idea and could easily start there.
But it is very necessary to encourage people to take these classes -- and not just vocational ones but ones in general culture and 'academic' subjects. (Think how much improved our political and religious climates would be if more people were taught 'critical thinking' or even moderately accurate history.)
One place to start would be by resuming something that used to exist about 30 years ago, but has been shut down. People on welfare or unemployment used to be able to attend classes -- of any type -- and this would be treateed as the equivalent to a required period of 'looking for a job.' Something like this, or considering school attendance to be the same as working in the 'workfare' concept, seems to be as good a place as any to begin.
For employed people, this is one of the few places where 'tax credits' do make sense. Give people a certain amount of tax credit for any qualified course they took over the past five years up to a set maximum.
The point of the 'adult education' program shouldn't just be 'make adults smarter so they can teach kids to be smarter.' It should start with 'make adults smarter because we need a smarter work force-electorate-citizenry.'
December 7, 2008 2:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
Great post Prup (aka Jim Benton).
When I was laid off from a job, I took a contract job that lasted 11 weeks. It was from April to June that I received unemployment and learned that if I attended my community college or my University's summer session that my unemployment would stop, even if I kept looking for a job.
My father, back in his 20s was receiving unemployment while he learned his electronic electrician trade at a technical school after vietnam. He worked 8 years at the queen mary and 25 years in aerospace (hughes, raytheon, hughes, then boeing).
Education is easily overlooked because the effects are so long-term and the affected are those so young and not as 'vocal' (in votes) as the other age groups. Also, a huge part of the reason why I can reason out ideas and express them in a better manner is in part to my taking advantage of the opportunity to learn that was given to me. Now I have to fight for it.
During my college and university experience I have taken 2 more U.S. history classes (heavy on Revolutionary War to Reconstruction) that have shaped my understanding of our nation and encouraged me to think in new ways. These classes didn't go towards my degree, but I felt it would enhance my knowledge of why things are the way they are and how to avoid past mistakes in the future (Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it. - George Santayana).
Even after this election I had an influence on my roommates thought process. After prop 8's defeat (I'm a CA resident) one of them was trying to write a paper. So harking back to my "intro to philosophy" class, I recalled St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Augustine of Hippo were thinkers of theocracy. I looked them up on wikipedia (of course) and gave references to my roommate. Also looked up 1948's Perez Vs Sharp segregation case and made suggested correlations.
Now, without education, none of these things could be possible. Without the internet, I could not, on my own accord, as easily delve deeper into subjects on the fly and grow my own understanding. When we think of infrastructure, let's be all more aware of how much each new proposal can impact education in the positive and put more weight into those ones from that view.
Great slogan
make adults smarter because we need a smarter work force-electorate-citizenry
December 8, 2008 3:25 PM | Reply | Permalink