I fear we are doing the same thing with our failed internet policy. Sure, right now most of the innovation still happens in the US, most of the “web 2.0″ startups are here, but certainly not all. How long will it be until some startup’s model requires you to have a solid 5MB synchronous connection? It won’t happen in the United States anytime soon, and once it does happen how are we to know that networks effects won’t keep the core of innovation there? Will we be content with knowing that we sacrificed all that so that AT&T could sit fat with their cutting edge DSL from 1995?

We need to be supporting innovation, not obsolete economic models. Our goal should not be supporting the RIAA and telecom in their efforts to sell goods and services like it is 1995. We need to be able to move our economy faster, or we won’t be able to keep up.

I don’t really have any hope for them, or even something I think they should do. They have made so many mistakes over the years I don’t know if it can be salvaged. They have a completely out of control immigration problem which they have completely failed to integrate into their culture for many many years. I have argued that this is mostly due to racism, and I still agree. People say we have immigration problems but it’s not the same. Our biggest other language is spanish, and you can bet your local high school is teaching it. Do English kids learn arabic? Do they try? I am not sure, but you get the impression that immigrants are never really seen as English, but only immigrants, forever.

Even worse, and I don’t really understand this as much, are the issues they have with lawlessness in youth. I personally prefer systems based root causes, and I simply don’t know enough about the culture to understand this. It seems to be pretty pervasive, and perspectives that allow for such flagrant disregard for other people, and laws are not that easy to change. My sister in law is one of the many British living abroad, and I remember when she was somewhat new, she would always be afraid of groups of kids, like 12 years old. I thought she was being silly, and it actually took some convincing that a group of 12–15 year olds is actually pretty much harmless.

I won’t even go into the CCTV cameras everywhere, they are being rigged now to detect aggression by audio…

Maybe eventually the people will become outraged enough and do something about it, but I wouldn’t hold my breath.

Google has been thinking about their move, which is amazing for a publically traded company to admit it even might be wrong. Maybe they will be moved my wikipedia’s resolve.

“For example, if an operative now sees someone dropping litter, they can tell them to pick it up, or if they see an incident starting to get out of hand, they can give advice that will hopefully nip it in the bud.

“I think that it will give people extra confidence as they go about their business and re-enforce the message that Middlesbrough is a place that is constantly thinking about community safety.”

Yikes. Is this place a prison zone? Treat people like inmates and they act like them.

The author slams the telcos for not having their own R&D (unlike Intel or Microsoft) and for being suspicious of new technology. But that’s not really the problem. I think the problem for telcos is that the business of being a telco — charging people a lot of money to move bits (voice bits, movie bits, music bits) — has become a commodity business and the telcos are still behaving as if they were in the designer handbag business.

Very funny. That whole post is a pretty good read as well, some insight into telco maneuvering in europe, my guess is they are about 6 months to a year ahead of us in that domain.

The other facet is less popular, but more sad. The Chinese government couldn’t have maintained its censorship if Chinese people cared. Most of the censoring is done by companies. When you have a blog in China, it’s the company’s software that censors you. If you do IM there, it’s not the government that blocks certain words, it’s the IM provider. While I do think the Chinese government is evil and corrupt, I can’t help but think that the people are increasingly complicit in their own censorship. It’s easier to blame the government, but I’m not sure of it’s entirely accurate.

Who knows though, I’m certainly not that knowledgeable about the situation, and I’m sure it can’t last forever. Just sad.

Update: Yay!

It’s hard to really discuss something that is so stupid, and I still think the story must be presented incorrectly, or I’m not getting all the facts or something, but who came up with this idea? What problem are we trying to solve here? Too many people in prison? I don’t see how this solution is better than letting out a random percentage of inmates. And, does anyone think it’s a good idea to let the police at the scene of the crime act as judge and jury? Is that the model of british justice?

This whole situation, I think, is a modern failure to understand publicly traded corporations, they exist to increase shareholder value, and nothing else. We shouldn’t expect them to care about democracy or anything else, they are organizations with a single goal. That’s not a bad thing, because they act within the law generally, and people can make the laws. People should make the laws according to what they want, expecting corporations to have morals is naive and dangerous. I think the people in these companies are almost crying out for regulation though.

“Yahoo’s senior vice president and general counsel, Michael Callahan, said his company was “very distressed” at having to comply with Chinese law.”

“Yahoo cannot take this … on by itself,” he said. “We ask for the government’s help.”

“Schrage [VP Corporate communications for Google] told lawmakers that “the requirements of doing business in China include self-censorship—something that runs counter to Google’s most basic values and commitments as a company.”

Maybe this is what they really need.