Crowdsourcing request: interview subjects for cyber governance

For a side writing project I'm working on, I'm looking to do some interviews (either by email or phone) on the subject of cyber governance.

What interests me:  What are the models out there in the real world for doing this?  What's the experience base of success and failure?  What are the major schools of thought?  Where is this debate heading and what does the future of cyber governance look like--especially as we migrate from the early perceptions of a totally free Web to something more fenced off?

You can either submit a comment or just email me at thomaspmbarnett@mac.com.

Trying to wrap this up quickly, so speak up if you want a conversation.  Nobody needs to know everything; just make sure you've got something to say or can get me someone with an interesting perspective/experience base.

Likewise, if you know of some great citation on the subject, pass it along.

The internet as trade pact

Great line from Economist "Leaders" bit on the web's "new walls":

 The internet is as much a trade pact as an invention.

Actually, until it became a trade pact, it was an interesting bit of technology and not much else--a fantasy of a back-up comms net once the bombs started dropping ("Can you read this?  Oh my God!  At least the two of us survived!  Now what?").

So the web really only works when people see commercial value, and when that commerce rears its beautiful head, barriers naturally arise.  Governments want to fence off its value proposition for national firms (far more than they care to keep out "bad" content).  Companies want to create "walled gardens" for their proprietary offerings.  Some net providers want sites to pay for premier promotion.

These are all unremarkable developments.  The web is certainly a generation or two beyond the telephone, but why it was supposed to be some everything-is-free nirvana is beyond me, any more than phones were going to change everything before and the telegraph before that.

These are the three types of walls cited by the Economist: national, company, and the possible downfall of the net-neutrality vision.  So Wired says the net is dead--that goes too far says The Economist.

It has been my proposition going back to the mid-1990s, that everybody wants the connectivity, but everyone also wants to control the content--to their tastes, to their fears, and--most definitely--to their advantage.

The fencing off of the web is not all that different from the fencing off of the American West.  If you want something to be truly tended, and not suffer the fate of the commons, people will need to own it and care about it.

But the free trade point made by the mag is equally valid; it just won't be the commons we imagined it to be.

And so it will need to go through the same negotiations--bilateral, multilateral, global, that regular trade goes through.

I'm not worried about the web.  I see this as a natural evolution.

Chart of the Day (2): Who censors the web more?

Economist piece on the "balkanizing web."

Admit it, you would have expected China, Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, etc. to be on top of this list (governments' content-removal requests to Google).

Instead we get Brazil (democracy), Germany (democracy), India (democracy), the US (democracy), South Korea (democracy), and so on.

Of course, this is a gross measure, so perhaps all this says is that these states are more connected and allow the freest content and so it makes eminent sense that the most abuses are encountered--and countered--on their sites.

But still, a bit counter-intutive--ja?

Iran: doing its best to block out sat TV

Iranians' love of foreign media is a well-documented fact, from the obsession with "Lost" to South Korea soaps.

Newsweek reports that the regime maintains its insane enmity to the Brits and the BBC, though.  After the putsch, the Revolutionary Guards made a supreme effort to block BBC's Persian TV channel. They blocked it by uplinking static to the satellite, but in doing so they scrambled a lot of popular fare from the same satellite.  

The problem:

Iran's domestic TV broadcasts--key to the regime's ability to maintain control and stability--depend on the very European satellites Iran is toying with to get its signals distributed across the country. (Arab-owned satellites have quit carrying Iran's broadcasts, and Iran has no satellies of its own.)

So chairman of broadcasting in Iran admits that when Iran messes with other people's broadcasts, they can easily retaliate, "So we have to make sure that we don't overreach ourselves."

Connectivity comes with code.

Charts of the day: The connectors!--an Emirates Airline production

Economist article on the amazing rise of the airline industry in the energy-rich-but-tiny Persian Gulf principalities.

Anybody who's been through Dubai (amazing airport) or flown Emirates (unforgettably good) is aware of the capacity, which has been growing at a stunning pace in the last five years.

Emirates, for example, now has only 138 wide-bodies, with 140 on order.  It plans to sport a fleet of 400, making it the biggest long-hauler on the planet. Profits last year were $1B--in a tough year!

Competitors allege all manner of unfair gov subsidies, and most of these charges are likely true, but this is a very big good for the region, and the logic is sound: as wealth creation spreads across the Gap, these super-connectors plan to take advantage of the resulting rise in demand for travel.

Twenty years from now, Emirates Airline will be better known than al Qaeda, and far more powerful a force in enabling globalization's spread than than al Qaeda has been in trying to stop it. 

Education follows the flag

Bloomberg BusinessWeek profile of John Sexton, president of NY University, who, with the help of Abu Dhabi's Crown Prince Al Nahyan, is trying to franchise his institution in the Persian Gulf.

Sexton's dream:  a circulating experience for students that connects them to six world-class universities spread around the world, with NYU as the anchor.

Sexton's use of foreign money to fuel global expansion is considered a model.  NYU has only a $2.2B endowment, or $50k a student.  Harvard's numbers are more like $26B and $1.3m per student.

My takeaway:  A lot of US universities going into countries that are friendly with us militarily.  It's a huge investment for both sides, so you want to go with people whom you have long and strong relationships, and with whom you're pushing connectivity.

Forget that offending billboard in Cairo. Take it online, kids!

Photo here.

Bloomberg BusinessWeek article pointing out how online advertizing is beginning to take off in the Middle East, thanks to more Arabs going online and getting mobiles.  Broadband penetration remains low (12% compared to 64% in North America and we’re no great shakes either).  Another trick:  5% of web users/consumers are Arab, but only 1% of the content is Arabic.

Still, there is a leap-frog quality to this development: maybe traditional advertising never makes it in the region like it has in the West, but maybe the online version fills the gap and obviates the old models, which, for a lot of reasons, are trickier to navigate in that part of the world.

Gaza's tunnel economy

image here

Naturally, the Israeli graphic focuses on weaponry, but the larger truth is this is how most of the economy works--sad to say.  It's like one giant "Shawshank Redemption" (or a gritty "Hogan's Heroes," depending on your ideological take).  

Either way, it's an imprisoned society doing what people do when they face such circumstances:  they adapt and work around the best they can--and the middlemen profiteer nicely.

Key point from FT story:

For close to three years [the length of the blockade], the tunnels below Rafah have offered a unique lifeline to Gazans, who are otherwise deprived of all but the most basic humanitarian supplies.  They have also allowed Hamas, the Islamist group that controls the strip, to replenish its coffers and rebuild its military arsenal, making the tunnels a target for Israel.

The 200-300 surviving tunnels (there are air strikes) have become so efficient that "shops all over Gaza are bursting with goods."

But the local businessmen say this is no answer.  They insist that the smugglers "are creating a false sense of economic improvement while damaging the territory's battered private sector."  In other words, the tunnels bring in the same goods that could be produced locally, providing formal sector jobs--if the blockade was lifted.

One entrepenuer:

We are just replacing legitimate businessmen with illegitimate businessmen.

This is what gets you aid flotillas.

The "butcher of Beijing"--redux

graphic here

The Butcher of Beijing is a well-known hacktivist who blogs, tweets and uploads his way into the heart of the Chinese Communist Party.

He is one of the most daring of a growing band of full-time, internet-savvy, Chinese social activists who are beginning to take their calls for justice and transparency from the virtual into the real world.

Got tech and entrepreneurial background--no surprise.  Real name Wu Gan.

Focus:  defending downtrodden citizens who take on the might of the system, with a penchant for women's rights stories.  The 37-year-old radiates impending martyrdom in interviews.

The aha! moment for many of the newest netizen activists?  The 2008 government coverup on the milk scandal.

Very Upton Sinclair.

The quintessential sign of a System Perturbation: rise in videoconferencing

FT story.

Never ceases to amaze me:  whenever there's a System Perturbation, you see the article on how videoconferencing is suddenly enjoying a boomlet.

Got 9/11?  More vid conferencing.

Got SARS?  More vid conferencing.

Got a Great Recession?  More vid conferencing.

Anything really bad hit?  Buy stock in vid conferencing companies!

Google working around low internet connectivity in Africa

WSJ story.  Looking at the internet-penetration rates, not so good.  But already, in terms of cellphones, we're talking 30-40% penetration everywhere in Africa save the deep interior.

So Google apparently not waiting on the former to rise and instead targets the latter media device.  Mobiles are a party of everyday life in Africa, but the Internet is not (4% average).  Unfortunately, mobile costs are relatively high in Africa, and internet costs are even worse.

Google clearly takes the path of least resistance, and its aims are noble enough:  increase Internet usage by offering mobile text-based services as the lure.

An industry player is quoted as saying, "There is a tremendous pent-up demand for connectivity and access." This is why tech companies the world over are targeting Africa and its emerging middle class now--again, taking the shortest route and keeping it as practical as possible.  Five years ago, detailed online maps of African cities were nonexistent.  Now Google offers their usual stuff for 51 African countries (out of 55).

I will confess to being excited to use my new Motorola/Google Android phone with Google maps.

When civil strife actually improves ground-floor connectivity

Per my recent feature for WPR on telecoms, warlords are pretty good for cellphone connectivity--as in, they want it and everybody whom they either put on the run or force into fending for themselves want it.

Somalia appears to be the classic example here:

Banks barely existed in this war-torn African nation a decade ago.  Now, Somali residents can bank over their mobile phones.

The rapid evolution of technology in Somalia--and people's access to it--comes as several telecommunications companies here jockey for customers amid the absence of any government-regulated phone or Internet-access.  The competition to supply phone service has stoked the nascent revival of Somalia's shattered economy, and it shows that some complex business can thrive even in one of Africa's least developed markets.

Technology players moving in come from China, Korea and Europe, or basically New Core Asia in sub-Saharan Africa and established Euro players in the north.

My bit with the Core-Gap map has always been:  this is globalization's frontier and where it's moving is where you'll find churn and violence and frontier-integration, meaning both the good and the bad concentrated.  It is its own socio-economic revolution on top of whatever else is going on--both good and bad.

Naturally, Al Shabaab, the local radical Islamic group, fights this trend, saying such connectivity violates sharia. Oh, but they'll allow it if you pay them "taxes" and let them dictate its spread.

Classic stuff.

A classic evolution: American-invented becomes globally-owned--and locally adapted

BBC News online story by way of brother Andy.

"Historic" line comes from old friend Rod Beckstrom, now head of ICANN.

To me, this is one of America's most profound success stories in spreading globalization.  

As for the Balkanization fears, that's way overblown.  The future is machine translation.

Cultures have to be able to format the web in their own languages, plain and simple.  Enough language destruction will happen anyway, but the biggies like Mandarin and Arabic will thrive, and we will all learn them all, on some level, with our big advantage being American English's uncanny willingness to absorb new words from other languages.