So we sat down to watch the first week of the class, and it seemed to go fine at first, but after a short period of time, it started slowing down and stalling and, finally, pretty much stopped all together. All of our friends who tried to watch, and apparently many people around the world, had the same experience. Of course, most people attributed this to the half a million people sucking up bandwidth interacting with the show’s servers - maybe the web just can’t handle this sort of thing.

However, “according to an executive closely tied to the project”, as told to Shelly Palmer at JackMeyers.com …

… there were up to about 800,000 users when a logical error in the caching servers caused the system to crash. It is important to understand that the only way to ever find a coding error like this is to put a system truly under stress. You can’t simulate 800,000 users in the lab, you need to play with live ammo. Kudos to Oprah and her team for pushing the envelope this hard.

The crash was not caused by a lack of bandwidth, an overwhelming number of users or any infrastructure issues at all. It was a simple coding error – nothing more. The error was identified and is now fixed. It is entirely possible that next Monday’s webcast will enjoy over a million users, maybe more.

Whew, that’s a relief. Well, I’m not too sure about he accuracy of the report, but I will say, the same thing I said last week when the class stopped, which was , whatever happened, Oprah will make sure it’s fixed by the next class (tomorrow), and we’ll be tuned it to see what the web can do.

Of course, in Japan they can get 100M in most places for the equivalent of $40 a month. In fact, the US is way behind many countries like Japan. One of the main reasons is that cable and DSL companies don’t have to abide by common carriage, so don’t have any competition (as I’ve noted before).

The first cool thing about the high speed satellite thing is that the satellite internet thing could be a real competitor for the companies that control these land lines to our houses. Unfortunately, I’ve heard negative reports back from friends who have tried U.S. Satellite internet, and the U.S. companies certainly don’t offer options at that high of speed.

The second , and really exciting thing to me here is the implications of such a thing for people in the rural US, which is a big issue in terms of the digital divide, and is a big issue to me personally, since my ideal life would be for Maureen, the hound, and me to live back deep in the Ozarks woods, miles from anyone, next to a beautiful spring fed river, where I would rock contentedly on my porch, while surfing the web at high speed on a lap top. If Japan could just send one of those satellites over here, life would be perfect.

Since Andrew recommended it, and I love Rocketboom, of course I watched an episode and then subscribed, and enjoyed the episode.

A big part of the first episode was Sarah interviewing people on the street regarding internet celebrities and phenomena, and, not surprisingly most people hadn’t heard of anything. (In fact, I was disappointed that I didn’t know many of the topics/people either, and I like to think I’m some sort of a connoisseur of web culture).

This relates very much to a comment one of my student’s made on another post. The interesting thing here is that we forget, or, at least I forget, that to be immersed in the web is still a brand new thing, and it’s something that relatively few of us share. I’m not talking about using the web, I’m talking about being immersed in the web. (Like someone who would actually be reading this blog post by Richard who wasn’t required to do so for class).

In recent days, sites have popped up indicating that the ongoing online Obamamania has hit a wall. What kind of wall? A snarky, ironic, this-Obama-thing-has-gotten-over-the-top wall.

He then goes on to describe sites such as SenatorObamas.com and Is Barack Obama the Messiah?, interesting and negative variations on the Obama phenomenon.

I don’t see this web development is as negative as the title implies, rather it is inevitable, and it does make the important point that Obama on the web has grown way beyond the control of Obama’s campaign organizers. The web culture has taken the Obama message and facilitated it through YouTube videos like Yes I Can, and the more recent, and more entertaining, No You Can’t. Since that time, as the article points out, things have gotten out of hand, the Obama archetype has been co-opted, remixed, exaggerated, attacked, and generally taken on a life (many lives) of its own; good, bad, and ugly.

That’s the way the web works. Something grows at exponential speeds, and then branches off into a cornucopia of interrelated entities, each containing some part of the original, and no one can control it. Not even a Barak Obama or his campaign - they can only hang on for the ride.

Here’s why.

In researching net neutrality, I eventually came upon a very old concept, common carriage, and came to recognize that this was at the heart of the debate but, unfortunately, it was not often discussed. The basic common carriage concept is that there are certain businesses in society that require elaborate infrastructures that are fundamental for a functioning society such as communication and transportation. Further, it doesn’t make economic or social sense to duplicate these infrastructures. The most obvious example to most of us is the phone. When phone companies build phone lines, they are allowed access to public property, and they are often given the right to be the default company when people get a phone, but they are required to allow competitors to use their lines. You may recall a few years ago when all of us used dial up and we often had a choice among a number of internet service providers. This is because the phone companies were required to obey common carriage laws. Yes, common carriage is a type of government regulation, but at least this may explain the rationale behind it, and why, to me, it makes sense, both in terms of competition (multiple providers compete) and efficiency and common sense (you don’t have to keep building the same infrastructure again and again).

This, of course, brings up a big question, that you should be asking yourself (unless you already know the answer). Why is there only one choice of ISP for my cable modem or my DSL line? Aren’t they bound by common carrier laws?

The short answer is, no, they are not bound by these laws, due to a decision that the supreme court made in June 2005, which found that “… broadband cable modem companies are exempt from mandatory common-carrier regulation”. Their conclusion had something to do with re-classification of broadband companies as “information services” rather than “telacommunications”. Why this is true and/or why this matters, I can’t figure out. Feel free to read this supreme court ruling from the Cornell Law School site on this case, and then explain it to me. The DSL companies, of course, figured this was a big jip, since broadband is broadband, so the supreme court ruling was quickly followed by the FCC’s decision that braodband via DSL was also not bound by common carriage. Their rationale was that, the cable companies needed competition, which is ironic, of course, since the elimination of common carriage for either, dramatically decreases competition.

So, at this point, the DSL and cable companies have this monopoly/duopoly, which puts them into a position where they alone can control the flow of information accross “their” networks. At my home, a mile outside Rolla, Missouri, I have one choice for broadband, DSL, and one choice for ISP (Sprint). Inside the city limits of Rolla, like most communities, there is a duopoly, where they have two choices, DSL/Sprint, or Cable/Fidelity.

So, as you can see, the net neutrality thing is very much about competition and regulation, but not in the way you may have been lead to believe.

The topic came up in the news again recently, when it was discovered that the second largest U.S. cable provider, Comcast, was blocking access to peer-to-peer networks like BitTorrent. As a consequence of this and similar reports, U.S. Representative Ed Markey introduced a new bill that would add a new “Broadband” section to the 1934 Communications Act bill. The new section includes stuff like …

It is the policy of the United States to safeguard the open marketplace of ideas on the Internet by adopting and enforcing baseline protections to guard against unreasonable discriminatory favoritism for, or degradation of, content by network operators based upon its source, ownership, or destination on the Internet.

The bill would also require the FCC to actively assess “broadband services and consumer rights” through stuff like public hearings.

This all seems good to me, by the way, and is strongly supported by the Save the Internet Coalition, but there are some net neutrality advocate tech types, who think that the bill does not go far enough, since there are no specifications on details, like consequences of violating net neutrality.

• Here’s a brief combined bio of Jay Dedman and Ryanne Hodson, for one of their current projects, Ryan is Hungry. These two have had a huge influence on me with respect to personal media, and I suspect this is true for many others as well.
• This clip from NPR’s weekend edition from August 2005; which includes interviews with Jay, Ryanne, and my friend Schlmo Rabinowitz, captures a lot of what video blogging felt like and the time.

So I made a video blog, called it the Richard Show, posted a short video of a racoon eating from a birdfeeder, called it “ozarks birdfeeder“, and posted it. Within a day, several people, including Steve Garfield, who was - in many way - the first video blogger, commented on the video. On my second video, Amanda Congdon, the original host of Rocketboom - clearly an internet celebrity - commented, and, eventually became good friends with my wife and me. For my part, I was following many of the vloggers who were following me, commenting, and participating actively in the vlog group list. I haven’t slowed down too much since.

I presented a “creative research presentation” at the Association for Internet Researchers meeting this October in the form of a 15 minute video on the (my) history of video blogging, that sort of sums up my experience, and my take on this phenomenon so far.

Andrew Baron of Rocketboom, also made a very interesting blog post, commenting on the lack of coverage from main stream media (MSM)

My first thought about this situation is the, only via the web, feeling. Such a fervor is enabled by the wide distribution of rich media currently afforded by the web. My second thought is that it seems unfair to single out the scientologists. In my life I have researched and experienced everything from born again Christian to psychedelic explorer, and much in between. The fact is, there are many instances of things the Scientologits are being accused of within Christian/other religion/spiritual/new age/whatever. There are many beautiful, transcendent, and fulfilling things associated with all these traditions, but the fact is that many people want to know the truth, and they prefer to find someone/thing that will tell them what it is so they don’t have to think about it, and they will give anything to anyone to find “peace” in that way. Sounds screwed up, but I’m not sure if I begrudge these people since I’d be a hypocrite if I did.

I’m not saying what the Scientologists do is good, I’m just saying, that, in my opinion, it’s not that unusual or evil, in comparison to other things that have been done in the name of religion/spirituality in this complex, really bad, really cool, and perfect world.

By the way, my friend Steve Garfield just published an interview of two members of the anonymous group in Boston, who plan to participate in the protest tomorrow.