Technology of digital communications is entirely convergent, despite the belief that packet switching could not be used for the real time exchange of voice or video or other data for human consumtion

• there is no technical barrier

The regulatory infrastructure that supports this is misguided

• not that no regulatory infrastructure would be useful, just that it has to be parallel to the technological infrastructure
• in the US – it is a cheap political hope – that you could give money to rich powerful people; to allow the business incumbents to create tight oligopolies and this would be acceptable, because convergence would drift the oligopolies towards competition
• this is not the same as regulatory infrastructure in other countries;
  • but there is an additional layer of regulation which we don’t have, which is on internet regulation
  • there is none because it has suited oligopolists by restricting to vertical structures

Obama commission – has some highly positive steps

• commission is operating – you want networks to have good flow but not to regulate them into your own networks
  • FCC is not prepared to solve this problem, but is seeking for disclosure and hoping consumers will police the highway
    • This is a threat to the money-making wireless oligopoly;
    • Network neutrality of Tim Wu is misguided
• so we are watching what the FCC is doing and we will see over the next few months the maneuverings between the Obama FCC and the carriers
• see the Commissioner’s speech and familiarize yourself with the issues

Analog information distribution systems – industrial in nature

• a spur to industry, in the very specific sense that the artifacts of info distribution are earliest engineers

The book – the first mass produced article in the industrial West

• • superb instrument; after 700, only the first meaningful challenge to the book as the primary means of info distribution
  • easy to store, simple to transport, durable
  • over the past 500 years, has developed as a pure article of technology in an inspiring fashion

Edisonian industry – production by 18th century of books and maps that were accurate was important

• we read visual information 300 years differently because it was scarcely available
• carricature and other opinionated forms of visual – the notion that you could get an opinion into a drawing – familiar to 19th century readers
  • but til 19th century, there was no easy way to capture it
  • profile – some collection of information designed to convey info about a person at a distance
  • but it was past 20th century when the face of the President of the US was familiar to the people

To have this production, you need light, amplification, so concern with electricity – all of this is essentially industrial in nature.

• synthesizing, structuring info to contain info consumable by individuals capable of being communicated
• music – before Edison, was a social process; can only happen where people were
  • participating in music (performing, listening, dancing) are all simultaneously occuring where the music is
  • a social process of connection, notated as sound

After Edison – music was commodified – could now be a thing that can be sold, not a thing that has to be experienced in the place of its making

• there were ways of annotating music and transporting it before Edison’s phonograph
• but the idea of music as a consumable article requires the Edisonian inventions
• Edison assumed that this belonged to him

Thomas Edison as the inventor of the phonograph; he assumed he would own all music that was recorded

• he assumed that the holder of the promethean technology, and musician would all be employees
• he’s a bad man; he appropriated the inventions of others

We entered the 20th century with a dead copyright law – not just books and maps, but with musical performances

• it’s an appropriation;

19th century political economy – to the conscientioius observers – they were on a collision course with their excellence; which Marx was

• defeating itself with its own success
• push the worker to the edge of subsistence – push the work to the least costly worker, and then link that worker with the small value
• will evolve a foreign policy – to globalization – the destructive kind

Marx – the problem which he thought of as the recurring overproduction of goods, that is the problem that is being solved by Ford and Edison,

• Ford – the right level of paying the worker was not release from poverty, but at the level at which he could consume the goods produced
  • Becomes part of the army of producers and consumers
  • Creates welfare – the system – capable of producing wants; it can create demand;

Entertainment in the analogue distribution system – is purchased

• not by the person who will enjoy it, but by the person who wishes to associate his business with the feelings created by the entertainment
• to pay for it – increase the price of the products that you want to consume more than it costs
• economics was about making people want things –

Outside the US, culture is subsidized; in the US, culture is barely of interest; it is not subsidized

Production of entertainment in analog society costs money. – so culture is seen as a thing that you have to pay for

• but digital technology fundamentally alters this
• “All that was solid melted into air.”
  • The nature of the situation prevailing arund the transactional culure fundamentally changed.
  • Now the practicalities are different.

When it is possible to distribute creativity or culture or knowledge to everybody at no costs – there are social costs to restriction

• those costs are not zero, they are substantial
• the costs of depriving people of information are larger than the costs of delivering it is true even in an analog world
• the costs of the non-provision of universal access is always far greater than the cost of provision, even in the analog world

In the 21st century – this is apparent to all societies

• in the world of industrial distribution – makes sense to say you can’t have it unless you can cover its marginal cost
  • there has to be subsidy if anyone is to afford the marginal cost
• where does the morality of exclusion come from?
  • It is not the question of should you be compelled to share limited food in your family; the question is, if you have infinite food in your family, why not share?
  • Because there is no marginal cost to distribution, it is hard to justify this

Every society in history has starved to death the brains it possessed. They were pevented from learning beyond the bounds of their sensory experiences.

• deprivation has been the commonplace
• almost all human talent has been destroyed simply from want of feeding
• so everything that does exist should no longer be retained by those who own it since there is no cost to reproduce

Note that even fixed costs of producing knowledge is going down.

There is no distance anymore between people. Attention economy – the currency is available eyeball time; how is this different from the Edisonian economy.

• the most successful thing in the attention economy is Google
  • it commodifies search
  • Google harnesses tiny amounts of attention that it doesn’t want to pay for at all, to give you exactly what you are exactly ready to receive
  • Unlike advertising which has to create a want, you already have a want; that is why you are searching. You are scanning the environment looking for a thing you want.
    • But Google keeps track of what everybody wants
    • So when you get people to pay attention, this attention is commodifiable.
    • People’s eyes and eardrums are enslaved.

-- AllanOng - 26 Sep 2009