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SUMMARY:Political\, Philosophical and Economic Assumptions behind my resea
 rch - Jon Crowcroft (Computer Lab)
DTSTART:20090303T130000Z
DTEND:20090303T133000Z
UID:TALK17224@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Stephen Kell
DESCRIPTION:This talk will be on Politics\, Philosophy and Economics of my
  research agenda in Content Distribution and in Provider-less networks\, a
 nd will consist 75% rant\, 25% technical points. \n\nThe world has changed
 . The idea that we should continue to support a bunch of rich bankers maki
 ng money out of thin air (derivatives\, ninja loans\, futures markets\, ev
 en just plain old usury) is untenable.\n\n[I hope the irony is not lost\, 
 given I will be saying this in Switzerland at netarch2009 - viz: http://ww
 w.netarch2009.net/program.html ]\n\nOn the other hand\, no-one has a probl
 em supporting farmers\, builders\, artists and entertainers. We want house
 s\, food\, transport\, fun and engagement. We like healthcare. We probably
  want energy and cars in some affordable way. We like tourism. [cue talkin
 g heads : more songs about building and food]\n\nComputing and communicati
 ons is basically just an optimisation\, a collection of tools that let you
  offer the goods mentioned above and some services (I hate that word} such
  as entertainment and information (health\, education) less expensively th
 an in the old days when stone tablets were hard to post\, and sending smok
 e signals used up the last tree on Easter island.\n\nUnfortunately\, the i
 nfrastructure for communications is not free. Indeed\, traditionally\, it 
 was not only expensive\, it was a source of much political control. From N
 apoleon banning code books (so no-one could decrypt his messages to his ar
 mies) to the AT&T being the largest consumer of trees in the world for tel
 ephone poles\, the Net has been associated with the Man.\n\nWorse\, yet. R
 ecently under the guise of prevention against (and protection from) terror
 ism\, the government has put additional controls in place to intercept and
  store (or require business to do it for them ) all our words.\n\nThis is 
 not good. It doesn't even work as advertised.\n\nRecently\, we see that ne
 tworks connect people socially. The network is the people. Generalising Me
 tcalfe's law (and Reed's version) the value of the network is super-linear
  in numbers of users. But looking at small worlds the value of the network
  is also the value of the meta-network.\n\nI'm motivated to look at low-to
 -zero cost ways to connect people with each other and with content. This m
 eans I am interested in researching techniques and tools that build networ
 ks out of communities.\n\nFor a while this involved looking at community c
 ontent distribution. More recently it has involved looking at quite extrem
 e forms of community wireless networks\, since\, in the end\, there is ple
 nty of spectrum to do this\, and to use spectrum we don't need to cut down
  too many trees. \n\nWhy do the incumbents deserve to go broke? Well they 
 don't deserve it\, but history tells us that they are probably incapable o
 f changing. I don't expect telephone companies to see this - My experience
  with 1 large UK Telco was that they didn't realise the Internet might bit
 e until some ISPs had round 7 million customers - it was below their radar
 . Cellular is just as hidebound.\n\nBut more crucially\, we need to underm
 ine these incumbents in favour of primary producers and consumers. Music s
 hould flow from composer to performer and performer to audience. If the ch
 annel cost 100 times less (i.e. MP3 on IP compared to CD on truck) shouldn
 't all musicians get more\, and more obscure music be a possible sustainab
 le career\, while the consumer payers less? we stopped making and wasting 
 all that plastic. Show me the dividend.\n\nWhat is more\, the network conn
 ecting everyone reveals the real interest and the real interest dynamics. 
 We don't need marketing\, ever again.\n\nContent distribution is still way
  to centralised. Indeed\, successes like youtube are the enemy now.\n\nWe 
 need a vertical (cross layer) architecture that is fully decentralised sta
 rting with humans connecting (via social structures\, interests\, geo-spec
 ialisation etc)\, right they way through data driven nets\, down to Open s
 pectrum. Spectrum can be allocated to relevant communities. Fundamental re
 search is starting to yield some end runs on the gupta-Kumar limit to mult
 i-hop radio (not just David Tse's work\, or the DTN wireless capacity resu
 lt from Grossglauser\, but plenty of more concrete approaches to realising
  it).\n\n[cite Van Jacobson Data Oriented Networking etc etc]\n\nOf course
  incumbents resit. Governments don't like this: it is almost impossible to
  wiretap\, so they have to do the hard work of actually investigating peop
 le properly\, e.g. by infiltration or speaking to people\; the tax revenue
  on profits from telcos go away. On the other hand\, so does the pointless
  waste of money. the disposable income freed might actually pay for goods 
 that are also taxed but are actually useful. What a novel idea.\n\nNot onl
 y is the economic agenda aligned with this sort of idea we should also be 
 making loud claims to a massive Green dividend.\n\nFree music and networks
  now! Save the planet. 
LOCATION:Computer Laboratory\, William Gates Building\, Room FW11
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