Politicians using media, from Roosevelt's fireside chats to Obama's Ask me Anything

President Roosevelt used radio -- "fireside chats" -- to communicate with the American people. President Eisenhower was the first to campaign on television and Kennedy used it effectively. One can argue that President Obama is the first president to effectively use the Internet.

The most recent example of his use of the Internet was the live "ask me anything" (AMA) session he held at Reddit.com earlier this week. Reddit users typed questions for the president and he answered the ones that were voted up. The questions he took and his replies are shown below.

In our class, we talk about the implications of the Internet for individuals, organizations and society. Internet chat and AMA provides a new way for a candidate to campaign and for an official to interact with the public. In that sense it is reminiscent of President Roosevelt's fireside chats.

You can see the questions President Obama replied to along with his answers below. It is a mix of personal (he's a Bulls fan, eats with his family then goes back to work, and plays a game of basketball or golf every week) and political dialog. You also hear a conversational tone -- "Hey everybody -- this is barack" -- not the polished public speech voice.

Here is what he had to say:

"Hey everybody - this is barack. Just finished a great rally in Charlottesville, and am looking forward to your questions. At the top, I do want to say that our thoughts and prayers are with folks who are dealing with Hurricane Isaac in the Gulf, and to let them know that we are going to be coordinating with state and local officials to make sure that we give families everything they need to recover."

SharkGirl: We know how Republicans feel about protecting Internet Freedom. Is Internet Freedom an issue you'd push to add to the Democratic Party's 2012 platform?

Obama: Internet freedom is something I know you all care passionately about; I do too. We will fight hard to make sure that the internet remains the open forum for everybody - from those who are expressing an idea to those to want to start a business. And although their will be occasional disagreements on the details of various legislative proposals, I won't stray from that principle - and it will be reflected in the platform.

PartyInYourMouth: How are you going help small businesses in 2013 and 2014? and what if any bills are you going to impliment for small businesses, in 2013, and 2014?

Obama: We've really focused on this since I came into office - 18 tax cuts for small business, easier funding from the SBA. Going forward, I want to keep taxes low for the 98 percent of small businesses that have $250,000 or less in income, make it easier for small business to access financing, and expand their opportunities to export. And we will be implementing the Jobs Act bill that I signed that will make it easier for startups to access crowd-funding and reduce their tax burden at the start-up stage.

karlfranks: Who's your favourite Basketball player?

Obama: Jordan - I'm a Bulls guy.

Silent1mezzo: What's the recipe for the White House's beer?

Obama: It will be out soon! I can tell from first hand experience, it is tasty.

Suzmerk: What are you going to do to end the corrupting influence of money in politics during your second term?

Obama: Money has always been a factor in politics, but we are seeing something new in the no-holds barred flow of seven and eight figure checks, most undisclosed, into super-PACs; they fundamentally threaten to overwhelm the political process over the long run and drown out the voices of ordinary citizens. We need to start with passing the Disclose Act that is already written and been sponsored in Congress - to at least force disclosure of who is giving to who. We should also pass legislation prohibiting the bundling of campaign contributions from lobbyists. Over the longer term, I think we need to seriously consider mobilizing a constitutional amendment process to overturn Citizens United (assuming the Supreme Court doesn't revisit it). Even if the amendment process falls short, it can shine a spotlight of the super-PAC phenomenon and help apply pressure for change.

Fifth Surprise: What was the most difficult decision that you had to make during this term?

Obama: The decision to surge our forces in afghanistan. Any time you send our brave men and women into battle, you know that not everyone will come home safely, and that necessarily weighs heavily on you. The decision did help us blunt the taliban's momentum, and is allowing us to transition to afghan lead - so we will have recovered that surge at the end of this month, and will end the war at the end of 2014. But knowing of the heroes that have fallen is something you never forget.

Daveforamerica: What is the first thing you'll do on November 7th, win or lose?

Obama: Win or lose, I'll be thanking everybody who is working so hard - especially all the volunteers in field offices all across the country, and the amazing young people in our campaign offices.

hmlee: I am recent law school graduate. Despite graduating from a top school, I find myself unemployed with a large student loan debt burden. While I'm sure my immediate prospects will improve in time, it's difficult to be optimistic about the future knowing that my ability to live a productive life -- to have a fulfilling career, to buy a house, to someday raise a family -- is hampered by my debt and the bleak economic outlook for young people. I know that I'm not alone in feeling this way. Many of us are demoralized. Your 2008 campaign was successful in large part due to the efforts of younger demographics. We worked for you, we campaigned for you, and we turned out in record numbers to vote for you. What can I say to encourage those in similar situations as I am to show up again in November? What hope can you offer us for your second term?

Obama: I understand how tough it is out there for recent grads. You're right - your long term prospects are great, but that doesn't help in the short term. Obviously some of the steps we have taken already help young people at the start of their careers. Because of the health care bill, you can stay on your parent's plan until you're twenty six. Because of our student loan bill, we are lowering the debt burdens that young people have to carry. But the key for your future, and all our futures, is an economy that is growing and creating solid middle class jobs - and that's why the choice in this election is so important. The other party has two ideas for growth - more taxs cuts for the wealthy (paid for by raising tax burdens on the middle class and gutting investments like education) and getting rid of regulations we've put in place to control the excesses on wall street and help consumers. These ideas have been tried, they didnt work, and will make the economy worse. I want to keep promoting advanced manufacturing that will bring jobs back to America, promote all-American energy sources (including wind and solar), keep investing in education and make college more affordable, rebuild our infrastructure, invest in science, and reduce our deficit in a balanced way with prudent spending cuts and higher taxes on folks making more than $250,000/year. I don't promise that this will solve all our immediate economic challenges, but my plans will lay the foundation for long term growth for your generation, and for generations to follow. So don't be discouraged - we didn't get into this fix overnight, and we won't get out overnight, but we are making progress and with your help will make more.

gobearss: How do you balance family life and hobbies with, well, being the POTUS?

Obama: It's hard - truthfully the main thing other than work is just making sure that I'm spending enough time with michelle and the girls. The big advantage I have is that I live above the store - so I have no commute! So we make sure that when I'm in DC I never miss dinner with them at 6:30 pm - even if I have to go back down to the Oval for work later in the evening. I do work out every morning as well, and try to get a basketball or golf game in on the weekends just to get out of the bubble. Speaking of balance, though, I need to get going so I'm back in DC in time for dinner. But I want to thank everybody at reddit for participating - this is an example of how technology and the internet can empower the sorts of conversations that strengthen our democracy over the long run. AND REMEMBER TO VOTE IN NOVEMBER - if you need to know how to register, go to Gottaregister.com. By the way, if you want to know what I think about this whole reddit experience - NOT BAD!

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You can see the transcript and thousands of comments on Reddit.

IT items on the Beloit College mindset list for the class of 2015

Beloit College publishes an annual list of characteristics of their incoming freshman class.  This helps them be sensitive to what their new students do and do not assume.  

Several of the items each year are related to the applications and implications of the Internet and information technology.  Here are the IT-related items for the class of 2015:

• There has always been an Internet ramp onto the information highway.
• They “swipe” cards, not merchandise.
• As they’ve grown up on websites and cell phones, adult experts have constantly fretted about their alleged deficits of empathy and concentration.
• Their school’s “blackboards” have always been getting smarter.
• Amazon has never been just a river in South America.
• Video games have always had ratings.
• Dial-up is soooooooooo last century!
• Music has always been available via free downloads.
• Electric cars have always been humming in relative silence on the road.
• Some of them have been inspired to actually cook by watching the Food Channel.
• Their parents have always been able to create a will and other legal documents online.
• They’ve often broken up with their significant others via texting, Facebook, or MySpace.
• They won’t go near a retailer that lacks a website.
• “PC” has come to mean Personal Computer, not Political Correctness.
• The New York Times and the Boston Globe have never been rival newspapers.

These are just the items relating to IT for this year.  There is a lot more from the Beloit list and other schools at the Mindset List web site.

Is fair use moot in the Internet era?

Today's New York Times has an excellent article on a case in which the court ruled that artist Richard Prince had broken the law by using photographs from a book about Rastafarians in a collage without permission.

The article (and its enlightening comments) goes well beyond this case. It examines the notion of "fair use" of copyrighted material, in which the result transforms the thing used, adding value to the original and culturally enriching society.

But, cultural enrichment is in the eye of the beholder.

Do you think Stephanie Lenz should pay the musician Prince a royalty because his song "Let's Go Crazy" is playing in the background of this video of her baby?

U.S. Federal District Court Judge Jeremy Fogel answered "no" and the video was restored to YouTube.

That case is pretty blatant -- it did not cost Prince sales and was not intended for the same audience as his recording. But, how about this case -- do you think 2 Live Crew should reimburse Roy Orbison for their sampling of his song "Oh Pretty Woman?"

The Supreme Court decided in favor of 2 Live Crew, ruling that their recording was a parody of Orbison's and was aimed at a different audience.

Regardless of your viewpoint on any of these cases, it is clear that there can be no definition of "fair use" that will satisfy everyone. Indeed, the whole thing may be moot in the Internet era. Do you really expect me to contact the copyright holder and get permission before I use an image I find using Bing or Google to illustrate a blog post?

Data mining for science and marketing

Researchers at Google and the U. S. Centers for Disease Control discovered a correlation between an index they compiled based on health related search terms and the incidence of flu recorded by the CDC.

Vicks has taken it a step further by sending ads for a safe home thermometer to mothers in high flu regions of the country. The ads offer the thermometer and give the location of nearby stores that carry it.

Is this a spooky invasion of privacy or targeted delivery of relevant information?

Video chat and the family

The New York times has an article on the way video chat is reshaping domestic rituals like holiday parties and birth announcements. (Skype video chat averages 300 million minutes per day).

It can also reshape every day life. My wife is Chilean and chats with siblings or her mother in Santiago every day. Here you see her talking with her sister Anita, Note that they use both iPads and Skype while they are talking.

She and Anita often chat twice a day and it can easily be for more than an hour. I doubt that they would see each other that much if they were both living in Santiago.

When my grandparents came to the US from Europe, they knew they would never see the people they were leaving behind again. Times have changed.

Recommended podcast: State for Sale

I just listened to a Terry Gross interview of Jane Mayer on her New Yorker article "State for Sale," in which she describes project Red Map, which has the goal of winning control of state legislatures by conservative Republicans. Mayer's article and the interview focus on one state, North Carolina, because it is an important swing state and provides an example of Red Map in action.

She reports that foundations controlled by Art Pope, a discount-store multimillionaire, have spent $35 million pushing a far-right political agenda in North Carolina during the last decade. In 2010, they spent $2.2 million on state legislature elections, defeating 18 of 22 targeted democrats. Republicans now control both both North Carolina legislative houses for the first time since 1870.

There is a lot more in the podcast. For example, Mayer discusses the collaboration between Pope and the Koch brothers, backers of the Tea Party movement, the impact of the Citizens United Supreme Court ruling on large, tax-decutible political contributions, and the critical role of state legislatures in Congressional re-districting.

The interview reminded me of an earlier post on James Allworth's Harvard Business Review post suggesting that we may have to choose choose between democracy and captialism and a quote by Supreme Court Judge Louis Brandeis, who stated that "We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both."

It is also noteworthy that Creative Commons founder Larry Lessig, who has shifted his interest from Internet copyright reform to campaign finance reform, offers an antidote to concentrated political influence in his new book, Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress -- and a Plan to Stop It, which is reviewed here.

I feel a little guilty about recommending an explicitly political podcast, but there is a connection between Red Map and the anti-competitive political efforts by large Internet service providers. For example, I doubt that new North Carolina legislature will be supportive of efforts at municipal ownership of local backbones.

Two studies of concentration of power -- government and industry

A study of the relationships between 43,000 transnational corporations has identified a relatively small group, including many banks, with disproportionate power over the global economy.

(Study details are available in this paper).

The image shown here (click to enlarge) represents the 1,318 transnational corporations that form the core of the economy. Superconnected companies are red and very connected companies yellow. The size of the dot represents revenue. Each of the 1,318 had ties to two or more other companies, and on average they were connected to 20. The anlysis revealed that 147 even more tightly knit companies controlled 40 percent of the 43,000 corporations analyzed.

Characterizing the concentration of power in this way is time timely in light of the recent "occupy Wall Street" demonstrations, and provides background for James Allworth's suggestion that we may be facing a choice between capitalism and democracy.

This sort of concentration is worrisome from the standpoint of stability as well as equity. What is the effect of the failure of one of a limited number of large entities -- like banks that are "too big to be allowed to fail?" Note that the database used in the study was compiled in 2007, so it does not refelct changes that have occured during the current economic crisis.

This study reminds me of another case of concentration of control. Around ten years ago, I worked on a study of the state of the Internet in Singapore for the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). I noted at the time that the government played a central role there. They picked critical areas of the economy -- oil, shipping, banking, information technology, biotechnology -- and acted as a heavy-handed venture capitalist. With the help of my nephew, who was working for Goldman Sachs in Singapore, I put together this diagram showing government ownership in the telephone and ISP industries.

The government was not a passive investor. They hired the best and the brightest coming out of the universities. They created some of the earliest strategic IT forecasts and plans, which were put into effect through significant investment. (The best and the brightest avoid government in the US, but that has not always been the case).

This approach has served Singapore well. Today, they are ranked 19th in the world on the ITU ICT Development Index. The top twenty nations all have powerful governments -- most would be considered socialist failures in tea party circles.

We've seen two studies of the concentration of power -- one in the hands of business, the other government. No study or theory will ever be able to fully comprehend anything as complex as an economy or an industry, but these cases indicate that government has a place in ensuring stability and encouraging the development of infrastructure.

Draft of IT literacy paper

I just posted the draft of a paper called IT literacy – evolution, curriculum and a modular e-text.

In the paper, I review the evolution of the IT literacy course from the 1960s to today, then describe my Internet-era curriculum and the modular e-text (currently 104 modules) I am developing to teach it.

Amazon offers California a sales tax compromise

Two months ago, the California Legislature passed a law requiring Amazon to collect sales tax. Amazon refused, dumped all its California affiliate stores (costing the state tax revenue), claimed they were not operating in California and started a petition campaign for a ballot measure to overturn the law. In the meantime, they are not collecting tax, and when the measure qualifies for the ballot, the law will be temporarily suspended.

Now Amazon has offered to build two warehouses in California and hire 7,000 workers if the legislature will put the issue off for a few years. (Does the 7,000 include the affiliates they cut off or would it be the reinstated affiliates plus 7,000)?

I live in California and love it that Amazon is tax free -- often choosing them over another store for just that reason. Regardless, I think they should drop the referendum and start collecting sales tax and I predict they eventually will have to.

Here are a few reasons why (in no particular order):

• Amazon asserts that an online sales tax would cost California jobs. I find their faith in low taxes as an economic silver bullet reminiscent of the Tea Party. It will cost some jobs and pay to create or maintain some others. No one knows the net change.
  
• The California Retailers Association (Walmart, Barnes and Noble, etc.) says Amazon's refusal to collect sales tax cost California over 18,000 jobs and a $4.1-billion loss in sales resulting in over $7 billion in lost economic activity in 2010. I trust their figures about as much as I trust that Amazon gives a hoot about California jobs.
  
• California loses jobs when consumers pay higher taxes and when Amazon affiliates are zapped, but we also lose jobs with the bankruptcy of Amazon competitors like Circuit City and Borders Books. The same goes for laying off teachers, state employees, and others.
  
• I believe California needs added revenue and am willing to pay my share.
  
• I worry that a sales tax might be a burden for the poor, but I bet Amazon shoppers are relatively affluent. This is an empirical question that Amazon could answer.
  
• The early rationale for an online sales tax exemption was that it would allow Internet e-commerce to take off. Amazon has taken off.
  
• Amazon thinks it might be cheaper to do a ballot referendum than to fight the law in court, but what about the cost of a referendum to the taxpayers?
  
• The media and advertising business will surely like the referendum – both online and brick-and-mortar retailers will spend tons of money on misleading, simple-minded ads.
  
• Amazon cut off their California marketing affiliates in order to claim that they had no operations the state, but seven California addresses are on the list of United States Subsidiaries at Amazon’s Web site.

Let me know what I have left off this list – on both sides.

California is a large, precedent setting state, and this battle has national implications. Wikipedia lists 13 states where Amazon is in a controversy over sales and use taxes. My fearless prediction is that the list will grow, and, in the long run, we will be paying tax on online purchases. That will change the retail landscape (and maybe Amazon will open stores when it happens).

The Net is back up in Syria -- why did they take it down? Why reconnect?

As shown in this graph from Renesys. Syria, like Egypt in January, was disconnected from the Internet for 28 hours, but is now back online.

Why did they take it down? Why did they reconnect it?

I am sure the takedown was under consideration and debated internally for some time. The deciding factor may have been the world wide revulsion at the YouTube video showing the tortured and mutilated body of 13-year old Hamza Ali al-Khateeb. (A good place to read about that is David Brooks' commentary on it in the New York Times. If you want to see the video itself, you can find it on YouTube. I've not watched it -- Brooks' description was sufficient for me.)

Why did they reconnect to the Internet? Perhaps they realized the futility of stopping the flow of information into and out of the country, as illustrated by this tweet:

@MadeInSyria Dial up access for #Syria: +46850009990 +492317299993 +4953160941030 user:telecomix password:telecomix, 11 hours ago

Perhaps it was the dictator's dilemma -- Syrian economic institutions had grown too dependent upon the Net to cut it off. Regardless, it is back up and the Twitter stream for #syria is again reporting on the situation, for example:

@MalathAumran: Hama reports tens of tanks gathering about 60 at the southern entrance of the city #Syria, 1 hour ago

@jenanmoussa: Ten dead as helicopter opens fire in #syria(n) city of #Edleb: al arabiya, 2 hours ago

@weddady: 63 peaceful protesters killed yesterday by the regime of Bashar Al-Assad in #Syria.. in other news, the world is watching.., 2 hours ago

@MalathAumran: Idleb: Military helicopters are shooting randomly on Jisr Alshghour city for half an hour now. more details @ http://j.mp/j2wR3s #Syria, 2 hours ago

@guardian: Syrian forces kill 70 protesters http://gu.com/p/2ph93/tw #Syria
2 hours ago

@FlashNewsPlus, #Syria: extremely disturbing report from witnesses that wounded are being taken from Al Badr hospital in #Hama and killed. via @MalathAumran, 8 hours ago

Messages like these are being read by government leaders and citizens around the world, and they cannot easily be ignored. They are also important for the people in Syria who can know what is going on in cities other than their own.

The Syrian government would like to suppress this news, but they cannot. Do they now wish they had reined in the Internet from the beginning, as, for example, Cuba did and continues doing? Cuba has paid a price for that decision, but it may have helped prolong Castro's regime.

The future of the (text)book

New media start by emulating old media, then evolve. Gutenberg's movable type was first used to print large bibles that, like their hand-copied predecessors, were kept in monasteries. It took about 50 years to evolve the form factor of the smaller "portable" book and still longer to settle on conventions for typography, punctuation, tables of contents, figures, indices, footnotes, and so forth. It took 80 years for early movies, shot with a relatively static camera, perhaps filming a stage play, to evolve into the fast-cutting style introduced by MTV.(Change is not always for the better :-).

The textbook is no different. A couple weeks ago, our class saw a digital book presentation by McGraw Hill. They are developing digital versions of their print books, starting with the best sellers and moving down the list. They supplement those with PowerPoint presentations, test banks, links to video, etc. geared to that textbook.

But, like the Gutenberg Bible, this is only the first step. I do not know where the textbook is headed, but I know we are not yet there. A few rough guesses as to future directions are that ...

• There will be a place for collections of modular teaching material rather than integrated textbooks for an entire course -- the professor will become a curator or editor, assembling material as opposed to a textbook adopter, selecting a textbook.
• Communities will form -- students, professors, and authors of learning material will be able to interact with each other, and their roles will blur.
• We will have different user interfaces. We are beginning to see new options with touch interfaces on tablets, but will see more. For example, we should be able to use voice input with speech recognition for control and annotation.
• Standards will evolve for formats, user interfaces, social platform interaction, etc., just as we evolved standards for book pagination, format, and punctuation. We are at version .1 today.

I could keep going on like this, but it is general and speculative. Many people are working diligently on the task of reinventing the book -- thinking about it and developing research prototypes and early standards and products. Here are some you might want to check out:

• The International Digital Publishing Forum is a trade and standards organization. Their activities include holding an industry conference and developing the open Epub format.
• Epub is an open standard for book publishing -- you can see reviews of Epub readers here.
• Archive.org has pioneered online access to audio, video, books, Web site archives and more. They have books in many formats including Epub, Kindle and PDF.
• Internet Archive also has a prototype reader. To try it out, pick a book, navigate to its detail page and click "read online," or jump straight to this example: Darwin's Voyage of the HMS Beagle.
• Pushpop Press has a noteworthy publishing platform and tablet user interface. Check out this 6 minute video demonstration featuring Al Gore's latest book.
• The Institute for the Future of the Book is a research institute focused on, no surprise, the future of the book. They value scholarship and research as well as aesthetics.
• If you'd like to read an old-fashioned book on the history of the book, check out Ivan Illich's In the Vineyard of the Text: a Commentary to Hugh's Didascalicon, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1993.

Faculty retention, tenure and promotion (RTP) in the Internet era

Teaching, service and research are considered when evaluating university professors for retention, tenure and promotion (RTP).

RTP committees generally look at things like teaching evaluations by students at the end of a class, published journal articles and conference papers, and service on school committees.

Today's active, effective faculty do a lot of time-consuming work on the Internet -- things like:

Teaching: podcast lectures, develop online teaching material, help students via email, chat or VoIP, create a blog or Twitter stream relevant to a class.

Service: build a Web site or other application for a department or conference, build a Web site or other application for an organization in the community, offer mentoring or advising to students in feeder schools, offer tech training to colleagues, develop campus infrastructure.

Research: create a scholarly blog, publish in online journals, participate in online research communities, maintain an online database, make scholarly contributions to Wikipedia.

What would you add to these lists? Which of these activities would count toward RTP on your campus? Which should?

Auburn University recently considered significant contributions to Wikipedia in granting tenure to professor. Would your university have done so?

Does your city offer Internet service? Why not?

         

The community broadband map on the left shows the 133 US cities that offer residents Internet service. Is your city one of them?

It is common for local government to offer services like gas, electricity, water and sewage disposal to residents. Why do only 133 cities offer Internet service?

The reasons are different in each case, but one factor that is common to every case is that the telephone and cable companies do not want competition from cities. They fight to block municipal Internet services in many ways. In some states they have even gotten laws passed to prohibit cities from offering Internet service. The broadband preemption map on the right shows states with legislation prohibiting or making it difficult for cities to offer Internet service to residents.

(Both maps are interactive -- you can get further detail on the services offered and the restrictions placed on them by visiting the map pages and clicking on them).

The maps are taken from a report called Publicly Owned Broadband Networks: Averting the Looming Broadband Monopoly that was written by Christopher Mitchell and published by the Institute for Local Self-Reliance on March 23, 2011. You should also read Bob Frankston's comment on the report.

You may also be interested in Breaking the Broadband Monopoly, a report Mitchell wrote last May. It covers similar ground and includes many examples of municipal networks.

(We have also covered related topics on this blog in the past).

AT&T, the nations second largest wireless Internet service provider is trying to acquire T-Mobile, the fourth largest provider. If the acquisition is approved, how will that affect wireless Internet competition, service, and prices?

What are the arguments for and against municipal Internet service?

The Dictator's Dilemma

Ethan Zuckerman

I am not sure, but I may have been first to use the term "dictator's dilemma" in a 1997 report on the Internet in Cuba:

This presents a "dictator's dilemma" -- the desire to have the benefits of the Internet without the threat of political instability. How do you give people access to information for health care, education, and commerce while keeping them from political information?

I was naive at the time, and imagined the Internet as a force for democracy, but my view is more balanced these days. It is clear that dictators use the Internet as well as democrats -- they restrict access, block sites and people, and conduct surveillance. Terrorists use the Net for propaganda and recruiting, planning and logistics. Furthermore, happy, well fed citizens (for example in China) are relatively complacent in their attitudes toward Internet openness -- see this report and this interview.
With recent events in North Africa and the Middle East, the dictator's dilemma is back in the news. Hillary Clinton talked about it in a recent speech, and I wrote a post on current developments in Cuba, but the best discussion I have heard lately was on the radio show On The Media. On February 18th, they broadcast an excellent discussion of the topic with Ethan Zuckerman from Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society. If you are interested in the role of the Internet in politics and democracy, check it out. You can listen to the 19-minute discussion or read the transcript.

Before the Twitter revolutions, there was the Usenet revolution

Polina Antonova and Eugene Peskin operating Kremvax, the link between
Relcom and the West

The first example of relatively large-scale citizen journalism online was during the August 1991 coup attempt by eight high-level Soviet officials. There were two days of confrontation between demonstrators and troops, during which all Russian media except Usenet news groups were shut down by the authorities. Usenet, a precursor of today's Internet discussion forums, carried traffic into, out of and within Russia (70 cities) during the days of the coup attempt.

One of the quotes from that time foreshadows subsequent attempts to shut the Internet down. Polina Antonova of RELCOM, the Unix distributor that operated the network wrote:

They try to close all mass media, they stopped CNN an hour ago, and Soviet TV transmits opera and old movies. But, thank Heaven, they don't consider RELCOM mass media or they simply forgot about it. Now we transmit information enough to put us in prison for the rest of our life.

After two tense days, the coup failed and president Mikhail Gorbachev was restored to power. For more on the role of the network during the coup attempt, see:

• The role of the network during the coup attempt (Internet Society)
• Description of RELCOM (CACM)
• Archive of all network traffic and other material (David Bozak, SUNY)
• List of quotes from the network traffic (ACM Risks Forum)
• More quotes (EFF)

The following video clip (3:13) was part of a documentary on the Internet. (It includes a short interview of me at the time -- no white hair :-).



Usenet played a relatively significant role during the Soviet coup attempt, but there was also some Usenet traffic during the 1989 Tienanmen Square protests. Everyone is familiar with the heroic image of the unidentified man stopping a column of tanks on June 6 1989 -- the day after troops had opened fire on protesters.

But, there was some Usenet traffic as well. Olivier Crepin-Leblond has saved a description of the situation that was posted by a Sun Microsystems employee on May 23. It describes the optimistic time before the storm, beginning with:

The situation here seems getting better and better. All army members are blocked outside Beijing city. The people’s life in the city looks as normal as usual.

Here is a movie clip of the tank man at Tiananmen Square:



This clip was not on the Internet at the time, but it is today -- providing a dramatic view of a heroic act and illustrating the futility of China's attempt to erase the memory of the event.

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Update 8/20/2016

Slate has published a relatively long post entitled "An act of courage on the Soviet Internet" on RELCOM's role during the Soviet Coup attempt of 1991. The article describes my involvement at the time, but fails to link to the archive of the network traffic and other material, which is available to historians and others interested in the event.

I believe this was the first example of active citizen journalism involving the Internet. The Internet has given us a means of documenting historical events in detail -- "big data" for historians. We need a mechanism for discovering and preserving such archives.

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Update 1/12/2017

Mark Graham, who relayed news over the Sovam Teleport link during the Soviet coup attempt, just sent me an article on their activity at the time. Unfortunately, the data they transmitted and received has been lost. Our archive is still online at the State University of New York site mentioned above and, even better, it is online at the Internet Archive.

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Update 7/7/2018

For an excellent article on the role of RELCOM in the Soviet Coup attempt, click here.

Tablet PCs will impact education, but it will take time.

Many new tablet computers were announced at the Consumer Electronics Show last week.  Walt Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal predicted that they will flood college campuses.

I agree that we will soon see students and professors carrying iPads and other tablets on campus, and, in the long run, I think we will view, annotate, discuss and share most of our teaching material on tablet-like devices.

But that is the long run -- they will not be part of mainstream education for many years.

Mainstream impact requires ubiquity.  Today, chalk and white-boards are ubiquitous.  We take them for granted and use them in every class.  Internet-connected computers with overhead displays are becoming widespread, and will also be taken for granted in the classroom.

Ubiquitous hardware is necessary, but not sufficient to drive major educational impact.  Standards are also needed.  The chalkboard works because we assume everyone speaks English or another language, and PowerPoint and Flash video are widely accepted standards for the classroom PC with a projector.

It will be some time before we can assume that nearly everyone has a tablet computer with a fairly standard hardware configuration.  It will take even longer to settle on standard formats for storing, annotating, and sharing teaching material.

Once the machines and standards are in place, we will see a significant impact on mainstream education, but that will not happen over night.

In general, we underestimate the time for a promising new technology to be adopted, but we also underestimate the extent of its impact on our lives, organizations and society when it is finally applied. I think this will hold true for tablet PCs in education.

(For an 18-year old article along these lines, see http://som.csudh.edu/fac/lpress/articles/uart.htm -- you can see what I got right and what I got wrong :-).

The 2010 Sloan online teaching survey

I recently summarized the 2009 Sloan online teaching survey. Now lets take a quick look at the 2010 survey.

Among other things, the survey found that online instruction is growning fast, federal regulation aimed at curbing financial aid abuse at for profit schools would impact other schools, but to a lesser degree, the market is competitive, and most academic leaders think online instruction is as good as face-to-face. Here are a few sample results:

• Sixty-three percent of all reporting institutions said that online learning was a critical part of their institution’s long term strategy, a small increase from fifty-nine percent in 2009.
• Over 5.6 million students (nearly thirty percent) were taking at least one online course during the fall 2009 term -- an increase of nearly one million students over the number reported the previous year.
• The twenty-one percent growth rate for online enrollments far exceeds the less than two percent growth of the overall higher education student population.
• Over three-quarters of academic leaders at public institutions report that online is as good as or better than face-to-face instruction (compared to only 55.4% of private nonprofits and 67.0% of for-profits).
• Nearly one-half the institutions report that the economic downturn has increased demand for face-to-face courses and programs while three-quarters report that it has increased demand for online courses and programs.
• The economic impact on institutional budgets has been mixed; forty-seven percent have seen their budgets decrease, but twenty-seven percent have experienced an increase.
• For-profit institutions report a potential negative impact from proposed Federal rules on financial aid on their enrollments at more than twice the rate of other types of institutions (33.9% compared to 12.2% for public institutions and 10.1% for private nonprofit institutions).
• A majority of institutions continue to report that there is increasing competition for online students.
• Public institutions report more pressure from the for-profit sector than do the private nonprofit institutions.
• Reported year-to-year enrollment changes for fully online programs by discipline show most growing, but with a sizable portion seeing steady enrollments.
• Virtually all recent growth in online enrollments has come from the growth of existing offerings, not from institutions new to online starting new programs.

It's noteworthy that public school leaders are most likely to consider online as good as or better than face-to-face instruction and they are also most likely to offer online courses. This raises the causality question -- are they more likely to offer online classes because they feel they are effective or vice versa? Regardless, will the growing proportion of online courses come to further differentiate public and private education?

It also makes one wonder how to judge the effectivness of a course. Is it scores on an objective exam, student satisfaction levels on a survey, the quality of interaction with fellow students, experience of the values and enthusiasm of a teacher, etc.? As stated in our review of the previous Sloan survey, hyrbid courses, which can offer some of the advantages of both modes of instruction, seem to be the best solution for some schools and some classes.

Immigration and future technology

Last Sunday, the LA Times had an article about a high school science project competition sponsored by Siemens. High school juniors were competing for scholarships and a chance to progress to the national competition.

The article described several projects and gave the student's names: Akash Krishnan, Matthew Fernandez, Ryan Chow, Eric Huang, Eric Wu, Hanna Lee, Angela Zhang, Jacqueline Wang, Lesley Chan, Edward Huang, Bonnie Lei, Sean Wang, Scott Zhuge, Abhishek Venkataramana, and Andrew Liu.

The names made me smile and feel optimistic about the US. It also reminded me of my father, who was the second of six kids born to immigrant parents in a three room house with no plumbing or electricity.

The entries focused mainly in biology and IT, and the contest winners demonstrated (and patented) a technique for classifying emotion in voice recordings. Being relatively open to immigration has its costs, but we should not overlook the benefits to our economy and culture.

ICT energy consumption -- in the data center and at home

We usually think of IT as saving energy, as being green. For example, we speak of the substitution of communication for transportation -- teleconferences replacing airplane trips. IT would save energy if all we used IT for was teleconferences, but our appetite for IT is growing rapidly.

This slide was taken from a Network World IT Roadmap talk by Frederic Chanfraou, Senior VP of IT at Schneider Electric.  (Schneider is an energy management company).

As you see, the production of data is growing rapidly and the cost of computing is falling rapidly. That leads to increased data center demand, and data centers consume a lot of energy. Chanfraou estimates that IT consumes 4% of our electricity today, and, if we do not increase efficiency, it would be 40% by the year 2030.

The problem goes beyond the data center. How about your home? What percent of your electric bill goes to information processing devices like TV sets, radios, computers, set-top boxes, DVRs, and chargers, as opposed to appliances, heating, lighting, and other uses?

Excellent customer support from SurveyGizmo

From time to time, I encounter noteworthy customer support. That might be excellent customer support from a company like Zoho or bad and wasteful customer support from a company like Verizon.

I am happy to report another example of excellent customer support from the online survey service SurveyGizmo.  They have tutorials and webinars on their Web site, and instead of customer forums, they offer email support.

I recently asked a technical support question, and, as you see below, received a cheerful answer in 51 minutes and an answer to a follow up in 68 minutes. Even better -- mine is a free account. If I were paying, I could have called on the phone with my question.

Here is the actual email exchange:

Larry Press
Sep 08 09:31 pm
Is there a way to delete a group of responses -- those before a specified date?

SurveyGizmo
Sep 08 10:22 pm
Hi Larry,
We don't actually have the ability to delete groups of responses, but this is a great idea. I think you should add this suggestion under our green Feedback tab on the right side of your account. This would be very useful!

Larry Press
Sep-08 2010 10:22 pm.
Thanks -- is there any way to delete them other than viewing and deleting them one at a time?

SurveyGizmo
Sep-08 2010 11:30 pm.
You can only delete all responses or delete them one at a time.
Sorry for the inconvenience!