The Innovation of Loneliness: a mograph piece

The Innovation of Loneliness from Shimi Cohen is a mograph that explores social networks and loneliness. Mentored by Eran Stern, it's inspired by Sherry Turkle's Alone Together and an article in Hebrew.

The new Twitter

For awhile AE Portal was often first to post AE news but Twitter changed that, even as made it easier to track news. A new Twitter will be rolled out in the coming weeks. There's much more in a Techmeme cluster and in the video intro (skip the first :50 sec):

Free the Airwaves

PrepShootPost explains "White Space" spectrum win in "WHITE SPACES" COULD BE OUR SPACES:

"We all know about the DTV transition, here in the US, in Feb. 2009. That's when our analog TV's will go black and all terrestrial video signals will be digitally broadcast. The thing is, those digital signals take up less space of the broadcast spectrum, about 70 percent less. These sections of the broadcast spectrum, previously crowded by terrestrial analog signals, will sit empty.

Since these "White Spaces" share the same spectrum as DTV, they aren't really "clean" enough for the FCC to sell for broadcasting licenses. They are kinda like the spaces between DTV signals, not really useful for broadcasters, just empty space. There was once another part of the spectrum that engineers called useless, they even nicknamed it "The Junk Band". It was the space filled with powerline and microwave oven emissions.

No one ever thought that anyone could do anything useful with it. This was the 2.4ghz to 5ghz range, and in 1985 the FCC said, "OK, you engineers, industrial tech folks and medical people, do whatever you want to with that useless junk band."* And then boom, a decade later the "junk band" became "WiFi", and you know that story. This is why this idea of a free and open, and otherwise marginally useful slice of the spectrum is so exciting. Imagine WiFi but instead of covering a 50 foot radius, it covers hundreds of miles.

Where ever you can get a TV signal you can get seriously high-speed wireless internet."

Read the rest at PrepShootPost.

Bruce Johnson at PVC also writes about this in Any News on November 4th?, as does TechCrunch and, most importantly, Larry Page of Google.

1000 Airplanes on the Roof

We're bizzy drones in San Francisco, though some like SNAFU want to limit willy-nilly building of antennas emitting radiofrequency (RF) radiation. Gavin Newson, Karl Rove's hero of the single issue 2004 election, wants to skip environmental reviews to build a sweetheart-deal wireless network instead of expanding the municipal installed base of fiber to compete with other countries (eg Korea) in internet speeds.

Phillip Glass has a sample of his sci-fi musical drama 1000 Airplanes on the Roof at his website. Wikipedia has a pertinent summary: 'The main character named "M" recalls encounters with extra-terrestrial life forms, including their message, "It is better to forget, it is pointless to remember. No one will believe you. You will have spoken a heresy. You will be outcast."'

But it's better to remember, and technology assessment is not heresy.