Yours truly, a year ago writing about Paul Miller’s decision to “quit” the internet for a year:
In my month away from email, I didn’t miss it at all. Not for one second. Unfortunately, it’s a necessary evil of the modern world. But the internet is different. My guess is that in his year away, Miller will come to realize more and more that the internet is nothing if not one of the greatest achievements in human history.
It’s going to be a hell of a lot harder to live life without it.
I’m sure there will be a killer book deal on the other side though!
A year later, Miller’s own proposed titles for such a book:
No Internet, No Life: The Paul Miller Story
How To Disconnect From Reality In 365 Days
At First I Liked Not Using The Internet But Then It Got Kind Of Sucky
Does this mean that everyone who threatens to quit the internet now has to shut up? Please?
Such a great logo.
Oh, and a good post by Anthony Crupi for AdWeek: Legacy Cable Operators in Austin Are Terrified of Google Fiber.
Crupi:
On paper, literally everything about Google Fiber makes standard digital-cable service look like something that was cobbled together by members of a lesser phylum. Boasting gigabit download/upload speeds (up to 1,000 Megabits per second), Google’s connectivity is roughly 70 times faster than Time Warner Cable’s standard 15 Mbps plan.
The incumbents are scared shitless. And rightfully so. For far too long they’ve coasted on their over-priced crap services.
digg:
Another throwback: The internet in 1995
NYT journalist John Markoff shows how he uses “electronic mail” and opens up an email from Steve Jobs.
Oh you know, just this dude Steve who won’t stop emailing me.
Also, why does this video seem more like it was taped in 1985? Time really is compressing.
Tim Adams of The Observer sat down with Thom Yorke:
In the days before we meet, he has been watching a box set of Adam Curtis’s BBC series, All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace, about the implications of our digitised future, so the arguments are fresh in his head. “We were so into the net around the time of Kid A,” he says. “Really thought it might be an amazing way of connecting and communicating. And then very quickly we started having meetings where people started talking about what we did as ‘content’. They would show us letters from big media companies offering us millions in some mobile phone deal or whatever it was, and they would say all they need is some content. I was like, what is this ‘content’ which you describe? Just a filling of time and space with stuff, emotion, so you can sell it?”
Having thought they were subverting the corporate music industry with In Rainbows, he now fears they were inadvertently playing into the hands of Apple and Google and the rest. “They have to keep commodifying things to keep the share price up, but in doing so they have made all content, including music and newspapers, worthless, in order to make their billions. And this is what we want? I still think it will be undermined in some way. It doesn’t make sense to me. Anyway, All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace. The commodification of human relationships through social networks. Amazing!”
It has been well over six years since In Rainbows altered the musical landscape on the internet. Fascinating the Yorke no longer thinks of that as a good thing.
[via The Verge]
Susan Crawford for Bloomberg:
The Internet has taken the place of the telephone as the world’s basic, general-purpose, two-way communication medium. All Americans need high-speed access, just as they need clean water, clean air and electricity. But they have allowed a naive belief in the power and beneficence of the free market to cloud their vision. As things stand, the U.S. has the worst of both worlds: no competition and no regulation.
Such an important and easy-to-understand post. Essentially, the U.S. has fallen behind (and continues to fall farther behind) in high speed internet access because of deregulation gone-bad. It allowed greedy dickbags (the cable companies) to do what they do best (perfect being greedy dickbags).
Just read about how many millions of dollars each of them spend in lobbying to ensure that communities continue to have to pay them (many more) millions for sub-par service. Total. Fucking. Dickbags.
I hope Google (or someone) succeeds in their (insanely expensive) end-around approach. Because it’s pretty clear the government isn’t going to do shit at this point. I wrote this post almost three years ago — what has changed in the meantime? Absolutely nothing. It’s gotten worse. And it will keep getting worse.
