O O Ø O O O O
One Way Street
Why can’t I have it my way?
A number of years ago I read a pretty interesting book by a fellow named David Brin. The name of the book was “Earth,” and the main premise of the story was a bunch of people who discover that somebody dropped a black hole into the centre of the planet. This was bad, because black holes eat mass for breakfast, lunch, and dinner and I’ll let you make the leap from there. The story is one of my favourite reads, in spite of it not being close to one of the best books I’ve ever picked. While this seems contradictory, the reason it’s one of my favourite reads is Brin’s description of the not-too-distant future.
While methods and software exist which let us maintain control over our information, they are not easy to use and have been largely ignored by the general public
The book, which was released in 1990, portrayed an Earth some thirty-odd years in the future from today. In addition to the agricultural, genetic, social, and environmental issues, it presented some conceivable (in my mind) technological advances. The biggest advance was the availability of an über-high speed global network that allowed anyone to connect to anyone and everyone they chose. This network was used for searching and retrieving information from various sources, exchanging information between individuals, and creating virtual private networks as required. It just worked, and the command and control of the information flow remained with the individual connected to the network - not a third party access provider or content hosting company. It was known simply as “The Net,” and the idea was put forward a few years before the Internet really started to go mainstream.
A lot of critics and reviewers have opined that Brin’s idea of The Net was a spot-on prediction of what the World Wide Weeb was to become. I don’t think that’s fair. The Net, as Brin described it, was something with a lot more depth, and the control remained with the individual. The applications and support software that were described gave the indivudual control over their data, how it was protected, and where it was stored/routed through. While methods and software exist which let us maintain control over our information, they are not easy to use and have been largely ignored by the general public.
Our access providers hold the keys to what information we can and cannot receive, and are controlling this for economic and legal reasons. More and more we are charged for the bytes we upload and download, even if that content comes from our access providers network, and they extract marketing and usage information that can be used against us.
We rely on third parties to tell us where to get information, without any real understanding of whether the information returned from those third parties is authentic. We host our content on platforms that are not terribly flexible, and are shared by thousands of other users, all in the interest of being economical and easy. We trust those same service providers with sensitive information on their systems without understanding how that information may be processed, archived, or exchanged. We send almost everything in the clear, and in most cases don’t understand that this is a bad thing. In short, we have little control over our information, and don’t even realize it.
We have little control over our information, and don’t even realize it
I am using the great big “we” meaning every Tom, Dick, and Harry — oh, and Jane… can’t forget Jane, I might get pelted with dumplings* if I forget her — who use public IP services for exchanging information today. The little "we", which includes everyone here at pintday.org, has a little better understanding of the potential problems and what needs to be done to mitigate them. We also understand what technology can allow us to do with our information, and want to take advantage of it. We also know the biggest secret of all: most of the software you need to deliver these services can be had free of charge. For what we do here, all we need is a $200.00 Intel box and a decent pipe, and we’re rocking and rolling.
We’re kinda like the guy you know who does all the home and auto repairs, but geekier. Our solution is simple: we roll our own services. This is where the problems really start, because our access providers insist on telling us how we should roll things, and try to convince us that they know better than we do. They don’t mention they can also squeeze even more money out of us if we use them for additional delivery of services.
We don’t want or need the “value-add” services like e-mail, personal webspace (15 whole megs? Whoop-dee-fucking-doo), “security” services — I laugh hysterically as I type the word security — or any of the other crap that’s thrown at us. We have a ’NIX box, free software, and some brains. We can run our IP services far more cost-effectively than someone else ever can, and we can get exactly what we want and need.
All we need is a decent pipe at a decent price. All we want from our access provider is access; nothing more, nothing less. We only use a little bit of bandwidth every month, so we don’t need a 10Mb/s sustained connection, but it would be nice to have something more than a 160kb/s connection to the net. Traffic flows both ways, and there’s no good reason why you couldn’t deliver this to a house as well as a business. In fact, you and your competitors used to, but you killed it because you could get more bang for buck by going with a lame-assed solution that made you more money at the expense of a few happy customers. Thanks for taking away what we wanted, and for helping to make the Internet a little more like a housing project with every “improvement” you make.
We frequently educate your tech support staff and help diagnose the problem, because we’ve been doing this for over a decade and keep pace with the issues. We want to run everything ourselves, which should make you ecstatic because it means that we will never call you to complain about the contant barrage of spam, web servers that aren’t available, site defacements, and every other problem that occurs with those pack-in services we will NEVER use, and your liability for anything other than the pipe is ZERO.
Thanks for taking away what we wanted, and for helping to make the Internet a little more like a housing project
The problem is you want the same thing we do: control. You think you know your customer, and what’s in their best interest, so you decide for them. Your motivation, however, is squeezing every last dime from them by promising to do it for us, where ours is using the net as it was intended - a point you seem to miss completely. You prey on your customer’s ignorance or desire to take the easy way out, but sometimes your customer knows more than you, and wants something you don’t offer. They’ll stick with you for a while, but the first time something better comes along, you can bet your bippy your customer will leave.
I don’t mind you operating the way you do now, because you do meet the demands of 95% of your customers 80% of the time (you figure the math out ;) ). I just want the option to do it myself and for you to stay out of my way. I need a symmetric 2Mb/s connection with a /30 network at a price that won’t kill me. I want it in my home because I want to unleash the potential that The Net offers, but only on demand. I am willing to pay for it though, and you’d be surprised what I’d shell out for the service if only you offered it. I want the network when I need it, which isn’t that often, so your over-subscription models will still work with a bunch of customers like me. The technology is in place, why don’t you offer it, and for christ sake how about asking us what we want once in a while?
The pipe is there, and I promise I won’t abuse it by sharing Kjell’s Back Street Boys collection with the world, so I won’t kill your pipes like all the w@r3z k1dd13z. I want to do a little more with the net than the average person, and I just want complete control oover my information. Is that really too much to ask?
I want The Net Brin described, and I can’t have it yet because you melon heads don’t realize there is a customer base who wants to do what we do now. There’s more and more of us out there - heck, my ATV-riding redneck friend Willy probably knows how to forward ports requests through his gateway - and you may be surprised by how many folks would actually use the service if you took the time to offer something a little different than the commodity-based gruel you shovel out now.
I read about (and dream about) all the cool things we can be doing with the so-called connected household in the future, but I know it’s not going to happen until our access providers start thinking in more than one direction.
Frankly, that pisses me off.
Tuesday, April 8, 2003
PD DXCIV
* A genuine little can of Tim Horton’s coffee to someone who can guess the reference to the dumplings by April 15th, 2003. Mail me your answer.