Tim Oren's Due Diligence

RIP, Ivan Illich Deceased, in

RIP, Ivan Illich

Deceased, in Berlin, at the age of 76, sociologist and political philosopher Ivan Illich.

He was best known as a critic of institutionalized education and religion. And while anarchists with an anti-capitalist bent are not my usual cup of tea, his works of principled media critique such as
123 and
Tools for Conviviality as well as other essays pointed a way toward what some of us hacking around with new media in the '80s called convivial or symmetric media. While it was never clear that he had made a peace with technology, his spirit lives in the Web and blogs.

I'll remember and miss him. Go in peace.

Boeing's 'Bird of Prey' Stealth

Boeing's 'Bird of Prey' Stealth Prototype

Jane's carries a story on a Boeing stealth project that has been going on since 1992 (!), and produced a prototype with daylight (visual) stealth characteristics as well as a radar cross-section similar to a mosquito. This is a 'full stealth' effort with probably slow and clumsy handling.

Geek note: Whoever wrote this article was never a Trekkie. It was the Romulans who flew the Bird of Prey, not the Klingons. Come on guys, get your science fiction metaphors straight!

UCAVs move forward From Strategy

UCAVs move forward

From Strategy Page:

December 3, 2002; The second X-45A combat UAV made it's successful first
flight on November 21st. Fully loaded, the X-45 weighs about six tons, and
carries 1500 pounds of bombs. The new 250 and 500 pound JDAM smart bombs
are being built with the X-45 in mind. Aside from being cheaper to build
because it doesnât have to carry a pilot, the X-45 will be much cheaper to
operate. Manned aircraft spend, on average, 80 percent of their air time
just for pilot training. With a UAV, a lot more of this can be done with
simulators. Most X-45s would be stored, and are designed to remain ready
for action after up to ten years in their storage containers. When needed,
the X-45s can be assembled and ready for action in 90 minutes. The X-45 is
being designed to stay in the air up to three hours per sortie and have a
range of 1100 kilometers. Speed will be subsonic (max out at about 800
kilometers per hour.) Max altitude will be 35,000 feet. Sensors, computers
and software onboard will allow some, or all, of a mission to be flown
robotically (without outside control.)

UCAV is 'unmanned combat aerial vehicle'. The X-45A is a pre-production prototype. According to presentations I saw at DARPATech, the first UCAVs are designed for air defense penetration missions, to knock out radar and anti-aircraft weapons before attack by manned aircraft. Hence the light bomb load (most AA systems are 'soft targets') and the apparently stealthy profile of the X-45. Another case of 'suicide machines.'

Content is not King Hooray!

Content is not King

Hooray! I'm not the only one.

The Emperor has no clothes!

Why thumb typing wins and WAP fails. Why AT&T/TCI was a crock and AOL Time Warner is still.

The Internet is all about

The Internet is all about Trust

A great short piece from the Economist (which I overlooked in the print edition) about an IBM study finding strong correlation between trust levels in a culture, and its adoption of the Internet. Original availabe from IBM in PDF format
here. Found via Kevin Marks.

This is empirical evidence for Fukuyama's Trust hypothesis correlating social trust and economic activity.

Microsoft is good for something.

Microsoft is good for something.

A very interesting paper by some Microsofties analyzing the characteristics of P2P and other types of 'darknets' containing illegal content, and suggesting the futility of DRM (digital rights management) schemes as a defense.

Flat global address spaces and

Flat global address spaces and the Clash of Civilizations

From another old friend, Howard Rheingold, this clip extracted from a longer discussion:

One in eight people in Botswana have mobile telephones.
Six weeks ago, in Sao Paolo, I saw barefoot people in the slums talking on
their mobile telephones.
Somali traders of the coast of Dubai make deals via telephone. In rural
Bangladesh, the mobile telephone has been introduced via payshops run by
local women -- and the shops have become new social centers.

(Found via Corante and Brad Delong.)

Meanwhile, a blogger in Baghdad risks his neck to trade insults and sympathies with Americans and others on the net, and Iranian students plot revolt and gather global support on the Web.

We do live in interesting times. Who could have possibly imagined that spread spectrum radio and packet switching, both pioneered by the US DOD, would become a way for ordinary citizens to talk across national and civilization boundaries. What they find to say to each other may well determine whether Huntington's apocalyptic vision is correct.

Update: Salam in Baghdad has shut down, probably getting too much attention after Reuters mentioned his site. Hope he's OK, Saddam's goons aren't likely to find his activities humorous....

Joshua Danovitz from GAP says

Joshua Danovitz from GAP says that 802.11 hotspots are starting to become a serious competitor to 3G in Tokyo. DSL penetration into households is growing fast, so is 802.11 capability in notebook or sub-notebook computers at home and office. This is creating a demand for hotspots in neighborhood gathering places, and there's a natural synergy since the DSL and hotspots are provided by the same carrier.

This may be the beginning of the segmentation of the Japan wireless data market between the thumb-typers and sha-mailers on one end, and the higher end consumer and business users with (sub)notebooks and 802.11 on the other. And it's another example of market divergence driven by local cultural and competitive dynamics.