Tag: internet

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Tangled Web

Belated topic time: Few months ago, I changed copyright on this blogsite and my Flickr from a Creative Commons non-commercial variant to All Rights Reserved. I did this in response to so-called artificial intelligence algorithms scraping content from websites for various purposes—improving learning models being one of them.

Some of that content can and likely will be repurposed for profit and in manner outside my artistic control. Software developers, many of them large tech companies—think Apple, Google, and Microsoft, for starters—can claim plausible deniability. “Hey, we didn’t know that would happen”.

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Web by Joe Wilcox
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I Got to Giggle About Gaggles

Sometimes I can only laugh at the strangeness of Internet domain trading and squatting. In August 2015, I registered, for two years, the dot net, org, and xyz extensions for gaggles. The com was taken. I grabbed gaggles to create an email address for people to contact me to support my then-in-progress exposé about Google. With the sound geese make in mind, I sniped at the search entity’s new parent company and alphabet.xyz domain.

Last month, I let all three expire. I own too many domains that are too costly to keep for the value they give: None. Had gaggles.com been mine, though, I would hold them all. More renewals are passing by, or have gone. Meanwhile, I got to giggle about gaggles, because someone else snatched up the dot net and would like me to buy it back. Eh, seriously? 

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Web by Joe Wilcox
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I Love ‘X Factor UK’ But Must Leave It

Six months ago, nearly a year after cutting the cord, the Wilcox household reattached—to AT&T U-verse. At the time, my daughter was moving back home, and Cox cable comes into the room where she would reside. Given the importance of the Internet to my daily work,and not wanting the modem and WiFi access point to be in a place with limited access, we signed up for AT&T Internet service and television with it. The connection is in the main room of our apartment, where Cox can’t come without drilling and cabling the landlord won’t allow.

Before the Fall college semester started, Molly moved out to a group place near the ocean. Around the same time, U-verse started to behave badly. We had bandwidth, but some websites consistently hung or slowly loaded. Top of list: Anything Google. I would later learn that, coincidentally or perhaps not, Google Fiber courted San Diego County. 

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Web by Joe Wilcox
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Gimme Google Fiber, San Diego!

Please take my money, Google. Tap the vein right here if blood is the currency you need. I am ready, willing, and over-excited. If you disappoint, I understand, though. My city is a brick wall when it comes to new commerce. It’s regulation central. So good luck to you, GF.

This afternoon I received email from the Google Fiber team that stopped my heart: “We wanted you to be among the first to hear the news. Today we announced we’re exploring bringing Fiber to San Diego”. Hell, yeah, baby. Sign me up. Which up-for-reelection-politician needs me and other native and transplanted San Diegans to be thorns in the butt? Give us more speed than we possibly need for prices we probably can’t afford. 

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Web by Joe Wilcox
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File This Story Under ‘Less is More’

Molly, my daughter is moving home, at least for the summer, and my wife and I are scrambling preparations. One unexpected: Changing Internet Service Providers. Our Cox connection comes into the bedroom where my daughter will go. Access from the main living area would require new wiring that the landlord won’t allow. I can understand why he wouldn’t want the fancy molding drilled up. We already know that AT&T U-verse Internet is live in the living room.

With Cox coming in to a modem connected to a wireless router, location shouldn’t matter. But peace of mind is an intangible, but real, cost. I’m not confident that my 20 year-old wouldn’t somehow take down the service, or, worse, her cat could chew through wiring when left free. Also: We want to create her space, which wouldn’t be with our stuff in the room. Because I mainly work from home, Internet is crucial. There is no compromise. 

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Web by Joe Wilcox
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There’s Something You Should Know About Google

In 2004, at JupiterResearch’s defunct Microsoft Monitor blog, I took a contrary view about Google, by asserting that it is not a search company. “Search is a means to an end, and information is that end. Google monetizes the information through search and contextual advertising”. That Google is all about information should be obvious enough now, although perhaps not to many people outside the company 11 years ago.

In a post four days ago, but only seen by poor pitiful me this morning, Washington Post reporter Brian Fung rightly explains why Google will “win” with its push into telecommunications. He writes: “What made Google one of the world’s five biggest companies? Data…If Google forges into the wireless space, the search giant wouldn’t just be another alternative to Verizon and AT&T. It would control a vertical slice of this universe in a way that no other company does”. Yep. The information giant’s interest in wired and wireless information share the same destination. 

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Society by Joe Wilcox
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Internet Attention Deficit Disorder

Nicholas Carr’s book, The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains, may be the defining manuscript of the World Wide Web era; so far. I haven’t read the book yet, but I have followed Nicholas’ writings leading up to The Shallows. I get his point, because I’ve experienced it. He merely wraps research around the experience. The point: Interaction with the Web changes how we think, in part by rewiring how we consume information. Attention spans are shorter and tasks like reading a long magazine article or book are harder.

In June 2008, I read a short post by Nicholas linking to his Atlantic story “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”

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