Thoughtful article in the Globe and Mail about the riches of the Web and the mindset of those who graze (and provide) them.

“The Web has always attracted a sizable minority of literate dissenters, interested in more than Limp Bizkit MP3s and streaming video-porn clips. While institutionally supported sites such as Slate (Microsoft), the Atlantic Online (Atlantic Monthly), and Brookings.org (Brooking Institution) remain important stopovers, they more and more feel peripheral to the main attractions.

Instead of self-contained essays, the Web’s new intellectual hothouses offer diverse networks of opinion, and active participation. Reader power is where the Web really comes into its own.”

Digital Biology. The very idea!
New York Times review of Peter Bentley’s new book.

“Bentley describes how Adrian Thompson, a British engineer, came up with a few dozen random arrangements of transistors and programmed a computer to test how well they did various jobs, like distinguishing between high-pitched and low-pitched tones. The first generation of chips always performed miserably, but some of them a little less miserably than the rest. The computer saved the less miserable designs and combined them into hybrids. In the process, it also sprinkled a few random changes into the designs, mutations if you will. A few offspring could distinguish between the tones slightly better than their parents — and they produced a third generation. By mimicking evolution for a few thousand rounds, the computer produced chips that did their job exquisitely well. But Thompson doesn’t quite know how they work. To understand them, he resorts to measuring the temperature of parts of the chips, like a neurologist using an M.R.I. scanner to probe a brain. ..”

Virtual Reality used to get at the truth
New York Times story. Much to the chagrin of Ulster Unionists, the official inquiry into ‘Bloody Sunday’ — January 30 1972 when British paratroops shot dead 14 unarmed civil rights marchers in Derry — proceeds apace. One problem faced by the inquiry is that so much of the physical topography of the city has changed in the 30 years since the atrocity. The 10-storey block of Rossville Flats, for example, which played a key role in the story, have long been demolished. To help witnesses re-orient themselves to 1972 Derry, the inquiry commissioned a virtual reality reconstruction of the relevant part of the city.

“The Mouse that Ate the Public Domain”. Another fine article on the background to the US Supreme Court’s decision to have a look at the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act. Contains the interesting statistic that Disney gave $6.3 million in campaign contributions in 1997-98. Who says money can’t buy you friends?

Interesting, accessible article by a law professor pointing out that the Democrats take far more money ($24.2 million) from the entertainment industry than do the Republicans ($13.3). Which prompts the thought: copyright is an issue where Republicans could, for once, champion the interests of consumers. Will they break the habits of a lifetime?

More wireless networking developments!

Sputnik “envisions a world where people enjoy high-speed wireless access to email, the Web, instant messaging and more — wherever they are. That’s why we created Sputnik Gateway Software and the Sputnik Network, Earth’s first planetary broadband wireless network. When you set up a Sputnik Gateway, you can share unused bandwidth with other Sputnik Subscribers. In turn, you can access bandwidth on the Sputnik Network whenever you are within range of a Sputnik Gateway.”

News.Com: Amazon, Barnes&Noble settle patent suit. Amazon.com said Wednesday that it has settled its long-running patent-infringement suit against Barnes&Noble.com over its 1-Click checkout system. The details of the settlement were not disclosed. The settlement filed Tuesday with the U.S. district court in Seattle ends the dispute… [Tomalak’s Realm]

Nice Technology Review piece on the idea of wireless broadband as a community resource.

“This isn’t just some techno-utopian notion — it’s today’s reality. Of course, there’s not much incentive to set up towers and deliver free wireless broadband to homes that can’t get high-speed Net access through cable modems or digital subscriber lines. But many businesses and universities are doing their part right now by making wireless Internet service available without restriction in their buildings and nearby public areas.

The other day, for example, I was at the Boston University school of journalism to have lunch with a friend, but he wasn’t there. Realizing that I was half an hour early, I took out my laptop and discovered that I was getting an excellent signal from the school’s wireless network. But I didn’t just get a signal — the university’s network helpfully gave my laptop an address on the Internet. Within moments I was downloading my e-mail and surfing the Web. When I shut down my computer 30 minutes later, the address was automatically returned to the university. And since the J-school’s network wasn’t running at full capacity at the time, even my minor use of bandwidth had no impact on other users. Total cost to Boston University: zero. (The same thing happened a few weeks later when I was at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government.)”

At last — a real, working 3G network!
Guardian Online report.

Shhhh — don’t tell anyone, but the Isle of Man has the world’s first operational 3G mobile network. And according to this report, ” it is easy to see the attraction of 3G for laptop users: with 3G, suddenly you could have a mobile connection substantially faster than the one you have at home, as fast as the one in the office. But while Manx Telecom refuses to talk about pricing – all the trial users are on a free tariff for the first three months while their usage is monitored and analysed – it is likely that 3G will not be priced to rival fixed broadband services. Plug-in 3G PC cards for laptops are likely to be popular ways to use the technology, for travelling business people who need their corporate email or presentations from a central server, or online games players who need a quick deathmatch on the move. “

Just as I always thought: the main use for 3G is really as a fast modem.

More on wireless broadband — a downbeat assessment, this time
Salon story.

Wi-Fi Nation is on indefinite hold, at least until computer-carrying consumers can roam beyond the invisible tether of the base station at the office, or the AirPort in the family den. With tens of millions of customers ready to be wireless by next year, and the price of a Wi-Fi laptop dropping below $1,000, why isn’t AT&T setting up antennae for us, instead of shutting down its Digital Broadband service?

The answer is less about technology than the shifting flows of capital in the 21st century. The wireless Internet won’t be rolled out telecom-style, like DSL or cable modems. In the wake of embarrassing failures to create top-down networks, it will be built from the ground up, by a patchwork quilt of players. Imagine the gradual knitting together of cellular roaming service in the ’90s, but with 10,000 antenna owners rather than 10 giant carriers. Rather than risking billions of investors’ dollars on a ubiquitous rollout, entrepreneurs will play for smaller stakes in more proven local or niche markets: When we come, they will build it.