Wireless spectrum opened up

The FCC will require about one third of the new wireless spectrum being sold be made available to customers buying any cellphone or other wireless device they want. No longer will you have to use only the cell phones or products sold by your cellular carrier. One of the major forces behind this new system is Google. Now doesn't that open up some interesting possibilities.

Along these lines Ooma has begun it's move into free phone service which is totally transparent to the user. The business model currently used by the telcos and cable companies is quickly unraveling.

We appear to be rushing very quickly into the reality of free connections and wireless mesh networks are not even here yet. There will be no gatekeeper.

The course of wisdom

Dana Gioia , chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, reminds us that Marcus Aurelius believed that the course of wisdom consisted of learning to trade easy pleasures for more complex and challenging ones.

Well put.

Globalisation

"The extension and use of railroads, steamships, telegraphs, break down nationalities and bring people geographically remote into close connection commercially and politically. They make the world one, and capital, like water, tends to a common level". This is David Livingstone talking about his experiences in Africa in the 1850s.

Terrestrial re-broadcast of satellite programming

Telegent makes chips that allow mobile phones to receive terrestrial broadcast. Streaming video over cell phone connections does not scale. Will wireless-broadband grow fast enough to skip the terrestrial broadcast?

When programming is available on my mobile unit will the fee structure (if there is one left) for the phone be my primary reason for picking a provider for my mobile unit and my home TV. If the mobile unit can receive it then surely I will be able to watch it at home through my computer or a conversion device hooked up to my TV.

This changes the gate keeper once again.

Baggage

Interesting to think that countries less well off than the U.S. often leap ahead in the use of technology because the do not have the baggage of current installed technology to deal with. The Economist talks about Croatia having developed a way to purchase and display train tickets on a mobile phone. The inspector can view the ticket on your phone’s screen instead of having expensive ‘readers’ (machines used to talk to the phone) installed at all the terminals.

This baggage can effect many things. Norway has developed stand alone Hydrogen gas stations powered by solar cells. You can place these things almost anywhere, almost like coke machines. How will the “baggage” of our installed gas stations and the institutions behind them help or hinder our progress towards this energy?

Euroscepticism

Hitler declared “The essence of Europe is not geographical but racial”….now that’s interesting. Euroscepticism (from European and scepticism) has become a general term for opposition to the process of European integration

annihilates the future

George Orwell said the “great redeeming feature of poverty is the fact that it annihilates the future”.