Net Neutrality: Shades of Gray

To many, the net neutrality debate may seem black and white: freedom versus greed. Like most things in life I believe there are many shades of gray.

I do not believe that the telecoms want to end freedom. They fear that if the FCC reclassifies broadband as a telecommunications service, they may required to share their infrastructure with competitors in the future. Telecoms are trying to ensure their future by protecting their investments.

On the other hand, I do not believe that the FCC wants to stifle innovation. They want to have enough regulatory power in order to serve and protect consumers by keeping the Internet free of biases and by implementing their National Broadband Plan, which will expand affordable broadband service to even the most remote areas of the US. In order to accomplish this mission, the FCC believes they need minimum regulatory power to prevent ISPs from slowing down or blocking network traffic for financial gain if that should ever happen.

There are legal parameters and marketing principles about this issue (and maybe even technology aspects) that I don't fully understand. However, I tend to agree with the “light-touch” regulatory approach proposed by the FCC. Broadband would be classified as a telecommunications service, but only the provisions needed to protect consumers would be invoked. This would ensure that companies who provide the backbone of the Internet, an essential component of 21st century life, wouldn't be allowed to route the flow of information in their favor. If the telecoms want to create their own awesome search engines and awesome marketplaces, then they should do it by the same rules as everyone else.

Perfect Is My Enemy

If you ever find yourself bogged down or even paralyzed trying to get “it” perfect, you may be interested in the following article.

http://chronicle.com/blogPost/The-Perfect-is-the-Enemy-of/24642/

I'm not sure if reading this article will help me change my ways, but it definitely stirred up some emotion in me. In the article, Erin Templeton relates her academic career to a personal finance blog tenet: the perfect is the enemy of the good. Erin explains, “the basic idea here, financially speaking, is that the quest for perfection whether the lowest interest rate, the best price, or the ideal time to start building an emergency fund leads us to put off doing the one thing that is most important in becoming fiscally healthy: getting started.”

I am constantly bogged down and paralyzed by perfection. I think that my desire for perfection is the main reason that I don't get things done until the last minute—including my course assignments. Ironically, my assignments are never perfect; nevertheless, I've toiled over them and suffered much frustration in the process. I think it's important to strive towards perfection sometimes, but I should probably learn to pick and choose my battles more carefully.

A Little About Open Courseware

I heard about Open Courseware (OCW) a few years ago and I tried to listen to an introductory computer programing lecture offered by an MIT instructor. I was just curious to see what it would be like. Well, I ended up not even finishing the first lecture. Then life got busy and I didn't give it much thought after that.

An article about OCW came up in one of my feeds and remembering the name I thought I'd check it out. It discusses the basics of OCW and some tips on how to set up your own course materials online. If you don't know anything about OCW and find the idea intriguing, this article may be a good place to start.

http://chronicle.com/blogPost/Developing-a-Personal-Open/24696/

MIT launched it's first pilot website in 2001 with 50 courses available freely to anyone with Internet access. Now there they host almost 2000 courses and belong to the Open Courseware Consortium which consists of about 200 universities from around the world.

Why would universities want to make their courses available to anyone for free when they make money by enrolling students? Why should we care about OCW? The article's author, Ethan Watrall gives depth to global benefits, institutional benefits, and faculty benefits of OCW, which are put forth by the Open Courseware Consortium.

What is personal information?

I still have many open questions regarding online privacy. I'm going to split up the questions in different blogs because it's taking me way too long to do it all in one.

I think there is a lot of confusion about the blanket term “person information.” Unfortunately, I have only questions, no answers. What is personal information? Which personal information is shared? How much personal information is shared?

Google's privacy policy states that they share personal information with third parties in order to deliver services. That makes sense to a certain extent. To find the right product, a company needs to know something about your or your likes. If I want to know if a certain product is in my area, I need to enter my zip code. Does that mean that Google shares everything they know about me to the third party asking for my zip code? Or did they just share my zip code? Or did they share demographic information like my zip code and that I'm a male between the ages of 35 and 45? I don't think that kind of detail is found in any privacy policy. Maybe the concern that the term “personal information” leaves the door open for anything?

Net Neutrality 0

Test blog.