April 2014

I Had a Nice Time With You Tonight. On the App.

[Commentary] All of my conversational habits have matured beyond the static phone dates of yore. We are now in constant and continuous communication with our friends, co-workers and family over the course of a day.

These interactions can help us feel physically close, even if they happen through a screen. And because this kind of communication is less formal than a phone call or an email, it feels more like the kind of casual conversation you might have over a meal or while watching television together. These conversations can also be infused with a lot more fun than a regular text message, because they often include cutesy features that let you add digital doodles to video messages, or send virtual kisses or cartoon characters. The downside is that it can be hard to juggle all the various ways to communicate.

But a modern kind of application, including one that we were experimenting with on that lazy Sunday, combines all those interactions -- and is designed with couples in mind. This focus on couples is relatively new. The online and mobile dating industry has built many tools and services for single people who are looking for romantic partners and new friends. They’ve evolved from websites like Match.com and OKCupid to mobile apps like Tinder that let people swipe through potential dates and select the ones that pique their interest. But in recent months, several entrepreneurs have been shifting their attention to people after they meet a mate.

“Tech entrepreneurs, long obsessed with making apps to help you find a relationship, have now begun trying to solve the problem of staying happy in one,” wrote Ann Friedman on The Cut, a blog of New York magazine. Friedman points to apps like Avocado, Couple and Between as smartphone apps that “keep you close with your partner through the power of a smartphone alone.”

Technology’s Man Problem

[Commentary] Today, even as so many barriers have fallen -- whether at elite universities, where women outnumber men, or in running for the presidency, where polls show that fewer people think gender makes a difference -- computer engineering, the most innovative sector of the economy, remains behind.

Many women who want to be engineers encounter a field where they not only are significantly underrepresented but also feel pushed away. Tech executives often fault schools, parents or society in general for failing to encourage girls to pursue computer science. But something else is at play in the industry: Among the women who join the field, 56 percent leave by midcareer, a startling attrition rate that is double that for men, according to research from the Harvard Business School.

A culprit, many people in the field say, is a sexist, alpha-male culture that can make women and other people who don’t fit the mold feel unwelcome, demeaned or even endangered.

But computer science wasn’t always dominated by men. “In the beginning, the word ‘computers’ meant ‘women,’ ” says Ruth Oldenziel, a professor at Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands who studies history, gender and technology. Six women programmed one of the most famous computers in history -- the 30-ton Eniac -- for the United States Army during World War II. But as with many professions, Dr Oldenziel said, once programming gained prestige, women were pushed out.

Over the decades, the share of women in computing has continued to decline. In 2012, just 18 percent of computer-science college graduates were women, down from 37 percent in 1985, according to the National Center for Women & Information Technology. This lack of women has become of greater concern in the industry for a number of reasons.

There are simply more jobs than can be filled by available talent. Some 1.2 million computing jobs will be available in 2022, yet United States universities are producing only 39 percent of the graduates needed to fill them, the NCWIT estimates. Tech’s biggest companies say that recruiting women is a priority. “If we do that, there’s no question we’ll more than double the rate of technology output in the world,” Larry Page, the chief executive of Google, said. Yet at Google, less than a fifth of the engineers are women.

Questions for Comcast as It Looks to Grow

[Commentary] It is hard to say how rugged the questions will be when Comcast goes before the Senate Judiciary Committee to defend its proposed megamerger with Time Warner Cable.

We do know that Comcast is feeling pretty confident about its chances. In a recent interview with C-Span, David Cohen, an executive vice president at Comcast and the man who will represent the company, said, “ I have been struck by the absence of rational, knowledgeable voices in this space coming out in opposition or even raising serious questions about the transaction.” Really? How can the largest cable company in the country bid to buy the second-largest and gain control over 19 of the country’s top 20 markets -- corralling a 30 percent market share in cable and a 40 percent share in broadband -- and there be no serious questions? Well, I’ll chime in:

Is the merger good for the American consumer?
Why isn’t there more competition in the cable business?
Should one company own a lot of the pipes and much of what goes through them?
Is the cable merger about cable? Cable is a declining legacy business, shrinking even as the merger works its way through the regulatory process. “We want to be a tech company, not a wire company,” Roberts told my colleague James Stewart. In that context, the fact that Comcast is willing to divest about three million cable customers to remain below the threshold of 30 million is far less important than the fact that post-merger, it will own 40 percent of the high-speed broadband in the country.
Is the deal really good for innovation?
Will a bigger Comcast allow other broadband options to flourish? In 20 states, there are significant obstacles and in some cases, outright prohibitions, for municipal broadband efforts and much of that was engineered by the cable industry. In Colorado, North Carolina and elsewhere, well-funded lobbying efforts and public information campaigns supported by companies like Comcast and Time Warner Cable have fought back homegrown alternatives for cheap, reliable broadband.

In Scrutiny of Cable Merger, Internet Choice Will Be Crucial Battlefield

Since announcing plans to take over Time Warner Cable two months ago, Comcast has steadily beat the drum with one big message: The merger will not limit consumers’ choice in picking a cable-television or high-speed Internet service provider.

Comcast is expected to repeat this message twice -- during the first Senate hearings on the $45 billion deal, and again in legal filings it is expected to give to the two government agencies reviewing the merger.

But in highlighting how the two companies do not compete with each another in any metropolitan market, Comcast has exposed a potential weakness in its argument, legal experts say. The lack of overlap in cable TV is the legacy of government-granted local monopolies.

But the government never granted monopolies in the unregulated, highly lucrative business of high-speed Internet service -- an area where the two companies face little to no competition. As a result, regulators are likely to focus as much on how the merger will affect the market for high-speed Internet, also known as broadband, as how it will affect cable TV service. Comcast, however, might have provided evidence that it faces little competition in high-speed Internet in dozens of Federal Communications Commission petitions filed over the last few years seeking to get out from under local cable rate regulation.

In the petitions, Comcast argues that the nation’s two satellite television companies, DirecTV and DISH Network, meet those requirements in many markets by accounting for at least 15 percent of television service. While a few markets also have telecommunications, usually AT&T or Verizon, competing to provide television service, most of the petitions cite only the satellite companies as rivals. But satellite companies do not offer high-speed Internet service, as the technology prevents it. That means that in those markets, Comcast is usually the only provider of high-speed broadband using a cable modem -- the fastest service going, next to fiber-optic cable, which is not widely available in the United States.

Tech fights Internet ‘fast lanes’

Tech companies are pushing federal regulators to get involved in the multiplying disputes over how they connect to Internet providers.

The industry and allied groups are looking for opportunities to push for equal treatment of Internet traffic in the wake of a court ruling in March that opened the door to the use of “fast lanes” for Web traffic. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Tom Wheeler has said his agency wouldn’t look at the deals that websites strike with Internet providers -- called “interconnection” or “peering” arrangements -- in the agency's push to rewrite net neutrality rules.

Chairman Wheeler is keeping an eye on the issue, according to an agency spokesman. “Peering and interconnection are not under consideration in the Open Internet proceeding, but we are monitoring the issues involved to see if any action is needed in any other context,” he said.

Tech and advocacy groups say the FCC needs more information about the often-hidden deals, which were left untouched by the agency's first round of net neutrality rules. “We just don’t even know what’s going on in this market,” Public Knowledge Vice President Michael Weinberg said. “What we’ve been telling the FCC to do is figure out what’s happening” in the peering market, he said.

Taking national security to the cloud

There has been growing evidence that online surveillance conducted by the US government is impacting the tech industry. One area in particular? Cloud Storage.

Tech companies have started to move some of their facilities overseas under pressure from foreign governments. Some of those governments have even considered building their own infrastructure, so that their citizens information won't be stored in the US. Germany, in particular, is talking about a so-called "Bundescloud."

Edward Snowden, Glenn Greenwald Caution Against Wider Government Monitoring

Edward Snowden and reporter Glenn Greenwald, who brought to light the whistleblower's leaks about mass US government surveillance in 2013, appeared together via video link from opposite ends of the earth for what was believed to be the first time since Snowden sought asylum in Russia.

A sympathetic crowd of nearly 1,000 packed a downtown Chicago hotel ballroom at Amnesty International USA's annual human rights meeting and gave Greenwald, who dialed in from Brazil, a raucous welcome before Snowden was patched in 15 minutes later to a standing ovation. The pair cautioned that government monitoring of "metadata" is more intrusive than directly listening to phone calls or reading emails and stressed the importance of a free press willing to scrutinize government activity.

Amnesty International is campaigning to end mass surveillance by the US government and calling for Congressional action to further rein in the collection of information about telephone calls and other communications.

News Organizations Demand Protection of Journalists In Joint Statement

Participants at the BBC's Safety of Journalists Synopsium issued a joint statement calling for the protection of journalists, the BBC reported.

“We have gathered to protest at the increasing attacks on journalism around the world and the damage to free speech that can result from the rise in violence and intimidation against the media," the statement read. At least 70 journalists were killed worldwide in 2013, and 547 have been killed between January 2007 to 2014, according to the statement.

The supporters of the statement ultimately protested the censorship of journalists and fought for "establishing a safe and enabling environment for journalism." The statement called specific attention to Anja Niedringhaus, the Associated Press photographer who was shot dead in Afghanistan while covering the upcoming presidential election. It then pointed to Al Jazeera journalists Peter Greste, Mohamed Fahmy and Baher Mohamed, who have been detained in Egypt since December as a result of their coverage and alleged collaboration with the outlawed Muslin Brotherhood. Finally, the statement drew attention to the hundreds of journalists who have been killed within the last seven or so years, particularly the more than 90 journalists killed covering the three-year-old conflict in Syria.

The EU’s roaming and net neutrality vote puts it on the path to a digital crisis

[Commentary] The EU Parliament voted on a telecommunications package that includes free roaming and net neutrality.

Future historians will likely mark the date as a key event for the onset of the EU’s digital crisis. U politicians have made free roaming the centerpiece of their digital market effort. Essentially, it is an effort to harmonize mobile roaming prices across the 28 member nations, regardless of the underlying costs. It is nothing more than “feel good” politics. Plus, it’s a cheap win for politicians as operators foot the bill. No matter where their customers go, operators are forced to eat the costs of their customers’ traffic, even if the costs exceed their revenues.

There are two nasty intended consequences of the free roaming regime. First, artificial price ceilings create a perverse market for mobile arbitrage. People and speculators can game the trade of SIM cards, buying them in low cost traffic countries (Lithuania) and bringing them to high cost traffic countries (e.g. UK or Germany where spectrum costs and taxes are considerably higher). Second, in order to police this illicit activity, the EU will have to start a surveillance regime. Europe, which is still smarting from the financial crisis, is on the course for another, digital one, where users will not be able to get the network service they need because operators are too poor to deliver it.

Wrong-headed and overzealous investment has stifled broadband investment. Network neutrality is a mess, not least for content/applications providers. Creating a world with a patchwork of net neutrality regulation will itself provide arbitrage opportunities.

[Layton studies Internet economics at the Center for Communication, Media, and Information Technologies (CMI) at Aalborg University in Copenhagen, Denmark]

The Transformative Impact of Data and Communication on Governance: Part 2

[Commentary] In this post, I offer examples of the use of technology that at least partially address governance shortfalls in areas of limited statehood.

Put another way, I describe how technologies are used to provide for public goods, such as security, sanitation, drinkable water, and economic opportunity. Where states are consolidated, agricultural extension services, for example, provide farmers with information essential to the important work of feeding families and communities. Where states lack that capacity, NGOs use available technologies to fill the governance void.

For instance, the Grameen Foundation’s Community Knowledge Workers initiative serves more than 176,000 farmers living beyond the reach of state services through a network of more than 1,100 peer advisors. Using mobile technology to connect the advisors with the latest developments and to other farmers, smallholder farmers get accurate, timely information to help them meet their goals. M-Farm in Nairobi similarly provides Kenyan farmers with the latest crop pricing information and other valuable knowledge needed to sustain viable operations. International Trade Centre, a joint agency of the World Trade Organization and the United Nations based in Geneva, offers a variety of similar services -- called Trade at Hand -- to farmers around the world.

[Livingston is professor of Media and International Affairs at The George Washington University]

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