Everything You think, Do and Say Is in the Pill You Took Today.

In his chapter "Who Shall Control Cyberspace?" James Beniger raised interesting questions and makes rather accurate suppositions about the future of cyberspace. What's most interesting, though is that for Mr. Beniger, there are two classes of people in cyberpace: Those who use it for a social end and those who use it for some other (read as nefarious) end. It would seem that Beniger has no love for people who use the Web to traffic in "less than legal" activities. However, he recognizes that protecting free expression on the Web can not be one sided. It has to have universal applicability in under to mean something. Ultimately, Beniger wants cyberspace to be free of a dominating hand, though he believes that the responsibility of cyberspace "governance" will fall to the powers that be already at large.

Beniger's piece made me think about the recent actions of Comcast. It was recently discovered by the Associated Press that Comcast has been selectively blocking its users access to certain sites, the largest blocked site being BitTorrent and its associated Web sites. Here's the full story. The general consensus from other news sources, and user comments, is that Comcast shouldn't have the power to selectively limit where someone can go on the Web. While in this instance the focus falls on a site primarily used for illegal file sharing, it has much broader ramifications. Namely, what if Comcast doesn't like the Web site you're looking at that's perfectly legal? If the site disparages Comcast, or perhaps the powers that be at Comcast have a moral belief against a certain site? As far as anyone knows, there's nothing stopping this from happening. It raises serious questions about what an ISP is and isn't allowed to do.

There really are no easy answers on how to regulate the internet. And there really are no clear answers on who controls the internet.



John Barlow would probably say that since the providers are only giving you the hardware accessibility to the internet, and that the Web sites aren't located anywhere physical, no one has the right to govern where you go on the Web. Not even your local, regional or state government. For a more in depth look at it, check out Barlow's A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace.

And for a look at how Canadians are dealing with similar issues, take a look here.



Title taken from lyrics from the Zager & Evans song "In the Year 2525."

Doesn't AOL Control Cyberspace?

James Beniger sees the very decentralized structure of cyberspace as the very reason it can become so powerful and influencing. Beniger uses the transformation of the U.S. Postal system from a hand and sort entity into a computerized mass mailing database of the future as the warning that cyberspace's power and appeal are not unnoticed by the politically savvy and business power hungry of the world.

Beniger's analysis of cyberspace's capability to amplify the reach and persuasion of mass communication brings up important points about the versatility of the Internet, and is another demonstration of how it has become the all encompassing medium. Indeed as Beniger puts it, the thought of a personalized and intimate form of mass communication, wherein 2 way communication is possible and a record of who believes what is feasible makes for a pretty scary tool for your deceptively persuasive dictator. Beniger brings up the particularly interesting point about cyberspace's threat to the centralized order as being the main attraction it has to the very people it poses a threat to .

While discussing the future of cyberspace, Beniger brings about the likely rationalization of its structure in some form or another. Just as cited in the Postal system's use of it to categorize the masses into whatever subset they please, e-commerce has used cyberspace to make the Internet one big focus group. With so much of this world unclear as it continues to develop, the business and government elites are using this uncertainty to their advantage. Recalling AOL's divulging of several thousand personal accounts to the government a couple of years back I can't help but think that some of Beniger's predictions are already happening. Not to mention what another peer has stated about Google's power. The decentralized world of the cyberspace runs along a digital divide, so its more likely as Beniger puts it that those who control society at large will be controlling cyberspace and indeed, might be already.

Physical Cyberspace

I discuss the concept of physical cyberspace, as opposed to perceptual and conceptual cyberspace, in the Introduction to Communication and Cyberspace: Social Interaction in an Electronic Environment, edited by Lance Strate, Ron L. Jacobson, and Stephanie Gibson and the following article from Technology Review discusses a dramatic example of this material foundation of our shared sense of space.

http://www.technologyreview.com/Infotech/20152/?nlid=854

Tuesday, February 05, 2008
Analyzing the Internet Collapse
Multiple fiber cuts to undersea cables show the fragility of the Internet at its choke points.
By John Borland

When the Internet suddenly collapsed early last Wednesday across the Middle East and into India, it provided a stark reminder of how the Net's virtual spaces can still be held hostage to real-world events.

Almost simultaneously, two separate undersea fiber-optic cables connecting Europe with Egypt, and eventually with the Middle East and India, were cut. The precise cause remains unknown: experts initially said that ships' anchors, dragged by stormy weather across the sea floor, were the most likely culprit, but Egyptian authorities have said that no ships were in the region.

Whatever the cause, the effects were immediate. According to its telecommunications ministry, Egypt initially lost 70 percent of its connection to the outside Internet and 30 percent of service to its call-center industry, which depended less on the lines. Between 50 and 60 percent of India's Net outbound connectivity was similarly lost on the westbound route critical to the nation's burgeoning outsourcing industry.

"This [fiber path across the Mediterranean] is a choke point, which until recently was a very lightly trafficked route where there wasn't great need for cable," says Tim Strong, an analyst at telecommunications research firm Telegeography Research. "There are many new cables planned for the region, but as it happens, they're not in service yet."

Undersea cable damage is hardly rare--indeed, more than 50 repair operations were mounted in the Atlantic alone last year, according to marine cable repair company Global Marine Systems. But last week's breaks came at one of the world's bottlenecks, where Net traffic for whole regions is funneled along a single route.

This kind of damage is rarely such a deep concern in the United States and Europe. The Atlantic and Pacific Oceans are crisscrossed so completely with fast fiber networks that a break in one area typically has no significant effect. Net traffic simply uses one of many possible alternate destinations to reach its goal.

Not so with the route connecting Europe to Egypt, and from there to the Middle East. Today, just three major data cables stretch from Italy to Egypt and run down the Suez Canal, and from there to much of the Middle East. (A separate line connects Italy with Israel.) A serious cut here is immediately obvious across the region, and a double cut can be crippling.

The two damaged cables, both cut about five miles north of Alexandria, Egypt, are the most modern of the trio. One, owned by the U.K.-based Flag Telecom, a subsidiary of the India-based Reliance Group, stretches nearly 17,000 miles from Europe to China. The second cable, known as Sea-Me-We 4 and owned by a consortium of 15 different telecommunications companies, stretches from Spain to Singapore. Together, they have a capacity of close to 620 gigabits per second, according to Telegeography Research.

The one remaining cable traversing roughly this route is the older Sea-Me-We 3 cable, which has a capacity of 70 gigabits per second--considerably less than its newer rivals.

A third regional cable, also owned by Flag Telecom, was cut the morning of February 1 off the coast of Dubai, in an apparently unrelated event. This break has caused less trouble, since it is part of a Middle East loop that offers alternative routes for data traffic.



A map of the fiber-optic cables crossing the Mediterranean, connecting Europe with Egypt, the Middle East, and ultimately India. The Flag Telecom Europe-Asia and Sea-Me-We 4 lines were cut last week just north of Alexandria, Egypt.
Credit: Telegeography Research

The cause of the cuts in the two main broken cables remains somewhat mysterious. A spokesman for Flag Telecom said on Monday that the company would not speculate on the causes until the broken line has been examined. However, Egyptian telecommunications officials said on Sunday that no ships had crossed the site of the breaks in the 12 hours before or after the incidents on Wednesday. The site is also a "restricted area," further lessening the chances of a ship's responsibility, the ministry said.

The unexpected collapse in service forced Internet providers across the region to scramble for alternative connections, most using backup bandwidth sources under contract for just such an emergency. Many ISPs began switching traffic east instead of west. Data from India to Europe might thus first pass through East Asia, across the Pacific, through the United States, and across the Atlantic Ocean before reaching its destination. While slowing traffic, in some cases significantly, this at least allowed data to get through.

According to ISP Association of India secretary R. S. Perhar, service providers in his country adapted to the cuts relatively quickly. Traffic from business customers was given a top priority on networks, with consumer traffic taking second place. Three of the country's largest service providers weren't affected at all, since they weren't buying bandwidth from the Flag or Sea-Me-We 4 cables, he says.

Many other Indian companies had diversified their network connections following December 2006, when an earthquake off the coast of Taiwan severed seven major undersea cables that served India as well as East Asia. But some providers who had not acted as quickly found themselves cut off entirely, Perhar says.

"Most have done good network planning and made sure they get bandwidth from several service providers," he says. "But there are people who did not have redundancy in their networks."

Outsourcing companies also found themselves facing potential disruption. With so much outsourced work now being performed in India or elsewhere in the region, companies in the United States and Europe are increasingly dependent on these broken lines for their everyday business. But like the ISPs, the biggest outsourcing companies said that they relied on redundant connections to ensure the flow of data.

"We have planned for circumstances like these," says Nathan Linkon, a spokesman for Infosys, a large Bangalore-based outsourcing company. "We have diversity in path and providers, and we haven't lost any connectivity to our offices or customers."

With just two cables at issue, restoring service is expected to go more smoothly than did the 49-day process required after the Taiwan earthquake. Flag Telecom has told its customers that a repair ship that launched from Catania, Italy, will arrive and begin work today. The company said that Egyptian authorities are "expediting the permits" so that work can begin as soon as the ship arrives.

These repair operations have become fairly routine, with marine service companies on call around the world to launch a ship as quickly as possible when a nearby cable has been torn by a ship's anchor or fishing net, or, more unusually, by a natural event such as an earthquake.

A repair ship will typically take several days to reach the site of a break, says Stephen Scott, commercial manager for the U.K.-based Global Marine Systems, which is not involved in fixing this week's break.

A ship will locate the break in the line, sometimes by using a remote-controlled submarine device that can send signals up and down the cable, Scott says. The cable is then cut entirely at the break, and the little sub brings one half to the surface. Alternately, some operations simply use long grappling hooks to grab the cable.

Once the first half is brought to the surface, the crew splices on a long segment of replacement cable. The first half is let back to the sea floor; the other broken half is brought to the top, and the other end of the replacement cable is spliced on.

Unless the seas are rough, this double-splicing operation can take about 20 hours from start to finish, Scott says.

In the wake of the fiber breaks, Perhar says that his organization is encouraging ISPs and companies dependent on fast connections to continue diversifying their bandwidth sources as much as possible, and to lobby for new cable to be laid.

Telegeography Research counts at least four new fiber lines planned for the Europe-Egypt route over the next few years, including another by Flag Telecom, one by Telecom Egypt, another by the Egypt-based Orascom Telecom, and a fourth funded by the India-Middle East-Western Europe consortium of companies.

But even these will all use roughly the same route, says analyst Strong. That will keep this Mediterranean zone a "choke point" worth watching.

"With more cables, it's getting better over time," Strong says. "But there will still be a lack of physical, geographical redundancy. That is something of a concern."

I would just add to this that satellites are also part of physical cyberspace, and knocking them out of orbit would also have an effect on the internet.

Sue Barnes and Marvin Minsky Challenged

While no one has directly responded to the readings yet, I wanted to address a couple of things I thought about in CH. 14.

It was suggested that "By connecting ourselves to artificial worlds in cyberspace we not only leave our physical bodies, but also the physical world in which we live (p. 233)." I believe that this may conceptually be possible when one enters a MUD, MOO or themed chat room however, often times I believe that what one does online often overlaps into the real world. Personas lived in VR as described by Barnes on pg. 243 with her example of "The Naked Lady," prove that the development or change of self in the real world can be a direct result of one's connection to virtual worlds. Another way in which online communication and social interaction overlaps into our every day life is with the use of social networking sites such as MySpace or Facebook. From my experience, people on these sites primarily interact with friends and family. Besides the "edited" version of one's personality given in one's profile, people tend to try and represent who they actually are in the real world through customizing profile settings. It is less likely for someone to develop an entirely new persona or "character" in this environment where they are affiliated with the same people in the real world. And because they are dealing with friends and family, the CMC occurring here becomes more of an extension of one's real life into cyberspace.

Another point I wanted to debate was Minsky's discussion about replacing one's brain (or biological brain cells) with computer chips. Minsky says that microscopic difference between the human individual and the digital self would have microscopic differences because "it would be impractical to duplicate with absolute fidelity, all the interactions in the brain (p. 235)." He argues that these microscopic differences would not matter "because we are always changing as we age. Because people are never the same from one moment to the next, you cannot claim that your brain machine is not you...Therefore, from Minsky's view, there is no difference between the real you and your digital clone." .... I disagree.

Although we do change with age, the digital replication of you could not compare with you or be you as you might age. As we grow, new life experiences affect how we will react to certain situations in the future. As we learn/grow as individuals and have new experiences, we often change how we will react to certain situations in the future create new emotions. Your digital self cannot replicate these new emotions, reactions or sense of logic unless they are streamed data on your every new experience directly as you experience them and can learn directly from your reactions. Still, as a result your digital self would only be mirroring you current personality. An equal, individual/independent growth of the digital self that might parallel your physical self (like a clone) seems impossible. I think that the differences matter.

Also check out an interesting and kind of relevant link to this chapter about "Robots [Who] Learn To Lie".

See you all in class!

Magic...Whole Lotta Magic

Interesting Stories in the news:

Nasa investigates virtual space

Facebook faces privacy questions

Yap-lication unlocks canine moods

Bereaved father wants suicide website ban


Just things I thought were interesting over the weekend and wondered what the class and others would think about them.


Also here is some interesting reading, A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace.