ReasonedResponse.com

I've been a journalist in one venue or another for more decades than I care to admit to here, beginning with my first news writing course at the University of Iowa, through radio, network news, newspapers, to magazines and now to blogs, podcasts and more. Which is why I am very sympathetic to fellow journalists who believe that the Internet has killed what little ethical reporting remained in our industry.

Jay Carney, the Washington correspondent for Time Magazine, blogged eloquently about this at Time.Com, noting that many of the so-called news sites did little more than stir controversy in order to generate ad revenues via their sensationalism. His is not the only cogent voice on this issue.

The problem is as old as the news business itself, though not seen as starkly as this since the "muckraking" days of the early 20th Century. It has three root causes:

** The decimation of the newsroom has removed most of the checks and balances that assured any kind of truth in reporting. In my day, anonymous sources were banned; every fact had to be verified; controversial facts had to be verified by at least two sources; and the entire story was vetted out by on old (and generally curmudgeonly) editor who would not let nonsense go unpunished. Above the editor was a publisher, whose job it was to ensure that the news served the community and its people. All of these are virtually gone today.

** Reporters are encouraged to engage in the two primary games of news -- "gotcha" reporting, which seeks to misquote or take out of context any statement that can generate controversy or outrage; and "he-said, she-said" reporting, which seeks to counter any statement or report with a "counter" report in the hopes of generating controversy.

** Flat out lies, distortions and outrageous name-calling. This is favored by many blog sites in order to build traffic, in the hopes that having more people respond to the lies and distortions will lead to greater profits through advertising.

The truth is complicated, slow and boring. Advertising dollars chase the simple, expedient and interesting. Each day must bring more controversy in order to generate more attention and thus more ad dollars. The surviving sites can't be truthful (though there are exceptions to every rule, including this one), and truthful news sites can't survive.

It is a reprehensible game being played by many of the biggest names in the Internet news business, including the preponderance of bloggers. The blogosphere is rife with liars, con artists, charlatans and get-rich quick artists, with a few raving lunatics thrown in for good measure.

But before we simply give up and write off the future of Internet news and blogging, I would note that the blogosphere is doing just fine, thank you. Really.

It's just that you have to look beyond the lurid headlines and front-page blog posts, which are normally untruthful drivel, to the comments and replies of real people. For every nonsense statement up front, there are bound to be a dozen replies by ordinary folks who see through the bluster and lies. And they are quite eloquent. Which is why they are hidden from sight or require additional effort to find.

Look at most of the blogs covering broadband and technology, and you will find in the comments section what the headlines and major blog postings lack -- thoughtful discourse, balanced arguments, rational thoughts and genuinely nice people who are better informed than the bloggers they respond to.

Because I say things they don't like, I tend to get attacked a lot by bloggers and so-called journalists. They delight in misrepresenting what I say and what I write in the hopes of getting richer on the Internet or being perceived as more relevant. Fair enough. If I had a thin skin I would have chosen a different career. I'm long past the point where I over-react to name-calling, fabrications or jibes about what I do and why, and I am painfully aware that no one is truly relevant 15 minutes after they retire or die.

But of late I have been noticing how many people aren't buying the ranting, controversial, lying, twisted words of the bloogers and op-ed artists. Sure, there are some who swallow the Kool-Aid and knee jerk a response. But there are just as many -- and perhaps more -- who do not. They read. They think. They post and discuss.

I think that is worth noting because all too often the politicians and pundits who make technology policy don't take the time to read what the commenters and repliers have to say. They read only the headlines and the controversial posts without ever experiencing the feelings and opinions of real consumers and real people in the real world.

And that is a shame. Because in their comments and replies, the real promise of the Internet is being fulfilled, and the world is being changed. People have a voice. The consumer is heard. One post at a time. By ordinary, involved, informed, rational and sensitive people. Who may, in the final analysis, not be so ordinary after all.

For more than a decade, "untethering" was the core mantra of technology geeks.

We cut the landlines for telephone service, opting instead for the better features and lower costs of mobile phones.

We made Wi-Fi a national obsession, left behind the limitations of Ethernet cables and power cords for laptops that could be used in places as obscure as airplanes and city parks, and replaced wires with Bluetooth for personal headsets and microphones.

All of which makes it curious that I, like millions of other geeks worldwide, are busy getting tethered again.

Not in the old sense of tying oneself down to a stationary cable. But by replacing Wi-Fi connections with a high-speed data connection through a cell phone or card. All of the major cell phone providers are now offering an option to "tether" your data-enabled phone to your computer as a means of getting broadband service. Using a USB cable, the data-enabled cell phone becomes a "modem" through which a PC or laptop can access the Internet.

This "tethering" arrangement isn't yet all that it could be. After all, EVDO version A - the dominant form of data transmission for CDMA cell phones - transfers data at a relatively anemic rate of less than 500 Kbps.

That's about one-third of the standard DSL or cable transmission rate. HSDPA, the data transmission favored by GSM providers in the US, isn't appreciably better.

And the cost is higher than simply using Wi-Fi, since you must pay for an unlimited data service plus a monthly tethering fee of about $15.

Still, there are some excellent reasons why broadband users may want to take a second look at this "Cell-Fi" service over Wi-Fi or the someday-may-actually-arrive WiMAX for their wireless Internet service:

It's more secure. Wi-Fi, as you will note from my many scathing references to it, is somewhat less safe than playing with scorpions. Any time you make a Wi-Fi connection, you place yourself, your company and your friends at serious risk. Cell-Fi, by contrast, has built-in security capabilities that are far superior. In fact, for the average hacker a cellular data transmission is virtually impossible to hack.

It's more available. Let's face it, Wi-Fi's limitations are extreme. It won't penetrate buildings. Or trees. Or much of anything else. Even without obstacles, the signal doesn't penetrate very far. And trying to find a signal and connection even in "hot spots" can be daunting unless you are prepared to pay handsomely.

It's more reliable than satellite. Living in the country, I use a satellite as my primary Internet connection. It's an acceptable broadband service, unless the weather is very bad or some jerk is tying up the uplink trying to swap video files on a peer-to-peer network. Then the service can range from very slow to non-existent. On the other hand, I can tether at speeds only slightly lower than satellite and with substantially less lag time.<

I'm not the only broadband geek getting into tethering. A report from Infonetics Research predicts the mobile data market will quadruple in size over the next three years, with more than 144 million subscribers by 2011.

That growth will be driven by upgrades to HSDPA and EVDO to deliver download speeds of 1.5 Mbps or better over the next two years. And further reductions in pricing that will make the use of either a tethered cell phone or an "air card" more attractive to mainstream consumers

Broadband via cell phone is still a work in progress, and it will be a few years before there is enough movement in both price and performance to make it feasible for the masses. But for selected applications and locations, getting tethered may be a welcome trend in broadband access.

I don't much care for what passes as research these days, particularly when it relates to the Internet.  So much of it is pure hooey, sloppily manufactured in order to give credence to some political point of view -- as when the net neutrality crowd claims that consumers don't support tiered pricing, or when a report claims that there are hundreds of thousands of predators online at any given time.  The first time someone asks to see the source data that documents this nonsense, it collapses.

Other research is simply tail chasing.  That is, the survey asks people for their opinion rather than measuring fact.  There is a lot of that online today, particularly when we survey people about whether broadband is being deployed quickly enough.  One has to wonder why the answer would be the subjective opinion of someone who may or may not know anything about the subject, when we can simply apply quantitative measures.

Whatever the reasons, nearly all of the research that makes headlines is junk.  I know this because my many years of post-graduate work in education and business have included a staggering number of classes in research and statistical analysis.  But it's also not just my opinion -- it has been noted extensively by publications that include the Wall Street Journal and scientific journals.  The problem is that surveys and studies are pushed out into the blogosphere or front pages as fact -- with no peer review, no evaluation of the design of the study, and no application of statistical analysis to the results.

But sometimes there is also a glimmer of a fact that bears consideration and further research.

Last week, Burst Media reported a survey of more than 13,000 web users 18 years and older about their views on the availability of age focused online content, website design, and targeted online advertising.

The conclusion: a majority of Internet users 45 years and older believe online content is focused on younger age segments and does not meet their needs.  In fact, within this age segment only one in three (35.4%) believe online content is focused on people their own age. Few respondents 55 years and older say Internet content is primarily focused on people their age.

I do not know how good the Burst Media data is -- there is no source data provided, so it could simply be more pablum.  But I am inclined to think it may have a glimmer of fact in it, because it is consistent with data collected over the past decade by the Pew Internet and American Life project that shows as many as one-fourth of Americans avoid using the Internet because it is not relevant to their lives.  A 2007 study by Pew's John Horrigan found only about 8 percent of the population avidly uses technology in their lives, and half use it only occasionally.

Roughly one-third of the population is over the age of 45, and the median age is 36.9 years.  That doesn't bode well for an industry obsessed with youth, social networks, music downloading, television over the Internet and ads focused on young people -- particularly since the percentage of older Americans is growing.

This is awkward.  We've spent so many years assuming that the "digital divide" was the result of some greedy and nefarious plotting by network operators that we never considered that the real villain could be an Internet that is boring and irrelevant to a major chunk of the population.  If this is true, the majority of politicians and pundits working on broadband issues may have spent the better part of a decade chasing myths.  And a majority of leading Internet companies are following strategies that may lead them straight to the poorhouse.

Of course, none of this may hold up under real scientific scrutiny.  But before we rush off to craft a national broadband policy, as so many are demanding that we do without delay, we ought to find out.  Because the Internet is so closely tied to our national economy and culture that we can't afford to rush off half-cocked.  For the sake of our seniors, our minority members, and consumers as a whole, we need more research before we leap to conclusions.

If the research holds true, we'll need to do some serious re-tooling of the economic model of the Internet.  Diversify the advertising so that it appeals more to seniors and minorities.  Clean up the sloppy mess that passes for news and information.  Find out what the other half of America wants and needs from its Internet experience, and take steps to provide it to them.  Shore up security so that banking online and health online -- two areas of special interest to those over 45 -- can be done without fear of identity theft or blackmail.

We'll have to stop this incessant bickering over imaginary threats and begin to work on real ones.  We'll have to kick the money-changers out of the Temple, stop pandering to the lowest common denominator, and tell most of the self-styled consumer advocates to take a hike.

At least, that's what this doddering old guy thinks.

The term "discrete codes" may not mean anything to you unless you have purchased home electronics in the past couple of years.  If you have, you already know that you have to maintain and use a half-dozen or so different remote controls because a single, universal remote won't run all of your devices unelss you are using a high-end, hundreds of dollars remote.  And maybe not even then.

The problem isn't the universal remote.  The problem is that manufacturers of electronics equipment keep their costs low by using the smallest possible set of discrete codes for their devices -- or creating new, non-standard codes.  They are able to then sell you a device that looks, sounds and performs just as you wish, unless you want to use a single remote to control the device.

Flat-screen televisions are not the only offenders, but they are the worst.  Buy a flat-screen at any of the dozens of discount electronics store and you'll quickly find that its remote won't work with your cable or satellite receiver, much less a DVD player or stereo receiver.  It may say it does, but chances are that remote was designed two years ago, using the codes available then but not now.

This would be okay if you could learn this before making the purchase and factor that into the buying decision -- do I want to save $10 but have to use six remote controllers?  But the people who review these devices almost never talk about how the remote control works, or even if it works.  And the manufacturers certainly won't 'fess up to how they have cut corners.

Deat CNet and Amazon:  please add this to the categores you review for electronics equipment. 

Dear cheapie manufacturers:  please add a buck or two to your costs and use the full set of discrete codes for your devices.

Dear reader:  caveat emptor.  Buyer beware.

A small news item this week caught the eye of many of us who have labored over the problem of peer-to-peer networks.  Verizon has presented the restults of its investigation into how network management can be used to enhance the ability of users to download and upload over peer-to-peer networks without encumbering other users on the network.

Whether it ever gets adopted, this is a nice piece of innovative thinking on the part of Verizon -- the very kind of innovative thinking that we will need as we move the Internet forward into the remainder of the 21st Century.  The problem is that this kind of innovation can't ever exist or even be considered if we rush to adopt a one-size-fits-all regulatory scheme for network management in the name of "neutrality."

The idea that the Internet should be a "dumb pipe" that operates without management was never part of Internet engineering -- that's why a "Transmission Control Protocol" had to be added to the "Internet Protocol" to enable the TCP/IP we use today.  Nor was there any agreement that we should somehow freeze Internet technology at 1980 levels in order to be "fair."  Rather, there was agreement that the Internet should be a place where innovation and new applications were encouraged, and that practices and protocols should be carefully managed through processes that allow the greatest number of users to have the greatest possible Internet experience at any single moment in time.

What happens when we replace this forward thinking with a single set of rigid rules enforced by a government agency that works months, or even years, behind real time?  Innovation dies, no matter how well-intentioned the government may be, because there is little point in innovating if the technology will be another year or two down the road by the time it can be approved for use.  New applications die because a small group of regulators, rather than consumers, get to decide which ones can survive in the marketplace.  And they will die because the investors who fund these innovations and applications can't wait years to see whether there might be a return on investment.

Network Neutrality would return telecommunications in the United States to a single, monolithic entity ruled by the government, where innovation was stifled in the name of "balance" and "fairness."  It would wrest the Internet from the hands of engineers and entrepreneurs and place it instead in the hands of telecom lawyers, lobbyists and career regulators.  It would choke the life out of the Internet as we know it today in order to ensure that the Internet returns to the "dumb pipe" days of three decades ago.

I celebrate Verizon's accomplishment and innovation, and look forward to other initiatives in network management that will deliver the fastest, most economical, most effective experience to me -- and every other user on the network -- in the most innovative ways the network operators can deliver.

And "neutrality" be damned. 

You can add Hometown Utilicom in Kutztown, PA, to the list of failed municipal networking ventures.  Though the cable TV and Internet service did manage to eke out an operating profit of $80,000 for the first time last year, it could only pay about 25% of its annual costs for capital improvements and debt payments on a $2.18 million loan from 2001.  Subsidies funneled into the project from the municipal electric utility have not been enough to offset the costs of the project, and the borough council has approved an additional $1.3 million to keep Hometown Utilicom going.  That's a total of more than $8 million in debt since 1999.

Like most of these lunatic projects, the Kutztown venture was entered into with little understanding of the marketplace, nothing even close to resembling a business plan, and little thought to the complexities involved.  Now the borough is stuck with a classic white elephant they can neither afford to feed nor easily get rid of.

I don't blame blame the people of Kutztown or its borough council.  They were prodded into this bad decision by the idiotic panderers of municipal networking and their henchmen in the left-leading media.  Why we continue to let these people spout their mantra of government-owned media is a mystery to me, but it's clear that anyone pushing the municipal networking agenda today is behaving irresponsibly. 

Other cities and towns would do well to heed the failure rates.

"Based on strikingly irrational beliefs and emotions, modern liberals relentlessly undermine the most important principles on which our freedoms were founded.  Like spoiled, angry children, they rebel against the normal responsibilities of adulthood and demand that a parental government meet their needs from cradle to grave."

I often despair of the twisted logic that seems to drive Internet policy discussions by those on the left.  And I have been known to refer to the "network neutrality" movement as "a coalition of the deranged" for their ever-shifting, based-on-no-facts, whining asertions of whatever imaginary abuses they claim to have suffered.  But I've never before heard an imminent psychiatrist actually make a clinical diagnosis that liberals suffer from a mental disorder.

But that is exactly what forensic psychiatrist Dr. Lyle Rossiter has done in a new book entitled The Liberal Mind: The Psychological Causes of Political Madness.  As Rossiter so keenly notes, "A political leader who understands human nature will not ignore individual differences in talent, drive, personal appeal and work ethic, and then try to impose economic and social equality on the population -- as liberals do. And a legislator who understands human nature will not create an environment of rules which over-regulates and over-taxes the nation's citizens, corrupts their character and reduces them to wards of the state -- as liberals do."

While I am not ready to write off everything to the left of Ronnie Reagan as a mental disorder, there is more to the current policy discussions than a simple disagreement over words and ideas.  There has been, almost from the inception of the broadband industry, a driving effort to force the nation's Internet infrastructure under the direct, heavy-handed control of state and federal bureaucrats in the name of "fairness."  As though some quirky sense of fairness should be our national goal, rather than growth, economic independence, personal empowerment and the best, fastest and most economical broadband service we can attain.

The Rossiter book announcement will have those on the left howling in outrage, those on the right howling with glee, and the rest of us busy forwarding the news reports to all of our liberal-minded friends in hopes of getting a rise out of them.  But in the back of my mind, I'm thinking I ought to try to file Rossiter's book as a reply comment in the FCC's current proceedings on network management...