Wired News Computers Are Green After All
"A new study of the power consumed by office computers and Internet equipment by a group at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has found that this equipment uses about 2 percent of the total electricity use in the United States."

"Beyond estimating the direct energy use of office and network equipment, Koomey's group is beginning to assess the indirect effects of the Internet on resource use in the U.S. economy. These effects include structural changes where new institutional arrangements and technological capabilities become possible because of the Internet and substitution effects where the new technologies substitute for established energy uses."

redux [01.17.01]
Salon Turn off the Internet!
"That's right. There's a convenient new villain in the California energy crisis, and it's not the utility companies that can't meet demand, crying bankruptcy and begging for a bailout by the government. It's not the greedy oligopoly of power generators cashing in on the state's failed, half-baked deregulation scheme. It's not even the environmentalists, whose green-friendly regulations make building a power plant in California about as easy as trying to raise venture capital for an e-tailer in 2001. Nor is it the conservation-clueless customers who can't even be bothered to turn off the lights when they leave a room.

No, it's the Internet."

Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory Re-estimating the Annual Energy Outlook 2000 Forecast Using Updated Assumptions about the Internet Economy
"This paper is an attempt to evaluate the potential influence of the emerging "Internet economy" on the nation's forecasted energy use and related carbon emissions. Our analysis shows small but significant differences in projections from just three modest changes in assumptions about the Internet and/or information-based economy. Other changes that could be important include reduced inventory and warehousing, reduced building construction, changes in other materials utilization, a greater trend toward outsourcing of energy services, and greater improvements in energy efficiency made possible by the new economy. Although the scale of impact for these initially analyzed effects is small, expansion of the scope of inquiry, as suggested by other recent analyses, may open up new and fruitful areas of research."

redux [12.07.00]
Salon It's not easy being green
"Now that we're fully in the throes of the ritualistic consumer frenzy that is the holiday shopping season, probably the last thing on most Net shoppers' minds is what impact all that clicking to buy has on the environment. The truth is, even policymakers, social scientists, environmentalists and engineers don't really know for sure. Researchers are only now beginning to study what e-commerce means for the Earth. The first major conference on the topic, the Joint Symposium on E-commerce and the Environment, in October in New York, brought together 100 researchers from the likes of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Ford Motor Co. to compare notes on everything from e-commerce and energy consumption to land use.

"Everyone is just starting to wake up and realize that e-commerce might have environmental effects that we aren't aware of," says H. Scott Matthews, a researcher with the Green Design Initiative, a faculty and student research group at Carnegie Mellon University that is conducting one of the few major studies of the issue."

Carnegie Mellon: Green Design Initiative Environmental Implications of E-Commerce, the Internet and the New Economy
"Some of the major concerns of e-commerce systems are the electricity used for infrastructure and the energy and packing materials used for product delivery. Reductions in inventories and waste represent significant opportunities for environmental savings. This project is intended to assess the system-wide effects of the new economy and to analyze policy options for reducing environmental problems.

The project is analyzing specific case studies of logistics networks, inventory and manufactoring changes. In addition, we are estimating the overhead cost of the internet"

redux [09.12.00]
The Standard Electrical Storm Hits New Economy
"The new-millennium energy crisis in the U.S. can be traced to the effects of deregulation, a lack of new generating capacity in recent years, and an antiquated distribution system – not to mention the unanticipated demands of the Internet Economy. An average office building with a computer on every desk but no significant network facility uses between 4 and 5 watts of electricity per square foot, according to Ed Quiroz, a regulatory analyst at California's Public Utilities Commission. If that building has a server farm and a network operations center, it sucks from 90 watts to 100 watts of energy a square foot or more. Or consider this: According to Mark Mills, an energy researcher with ties to the utilty industry, a Palm handheld device connected wirelessly to the Internet has the appetite of a refrigerator, consuming 1,000 kilowatt hours a year.

But estimates of the Net economy's power requirements vary. The fact is, no one knows for sure how much demand for energy will climb in coming years. Mills and colleague Peter Huber estimate that businesses that rely on digital equipment – personal computers, networking equipment, plants that produce high-tech gear and telecommunications networks – consume 13 percent of U.S. electric power. That figure will rise to between 30 percent and 50 percent of the nation's energy needs by 2020."

redux [08.24.00]
AlterNet.Org Internet Boosting Energy Efficiency
"The emerging new economy created by the Internet is producing more than just a business revolution -- it is also generating enormous environmental benefits. The Internet can turn buildings into websites, and replace warehouses with supply-chain software. It can turn paper and CDs into electrons, and replace trucks with fiberoptic cable. This means significant energy savings, and perhaps a very different type of economic growth than we have seen in the past."

"There's already evidence of a sudden shift in the American energy diet. While the nation's economy grew by more than 9 percent in 1997 and 1998, energy demand stayed almost flat in spite of very low energy prices, marking a major departure from recent historical patterns.

Part of this trend can be attributed to the growth of information technology and e-commerce. For example, for each book sold, the online retailer Amazon.com uses just one-sixteenth the energy to operate its buildings that a traditional bookseller uses. Internet shopping also uses less energy to get a package to your house. Shipping a 10-pound package by overnight air -- the most energy-intensive delivery mode -- uses 40 percent less fuel than the average roundtrip drive to the mall. Ground shipping by truck uses just one-tenth the energy of a trip by car to the store."

The Economist What the Internet cannot do
"A whole industry of cybergurus has enthralled audiences (and made a fine living) with exuberant claims that the Internet will prevent wars, reduce pollution, and combat various forms of inequality. However, although the Internet is still young enough to inspire idealism, it has also been around long enough to test whether the prophets can be right."

"But might it reduce energy consumption and pollution? The Centre for Energy and Climate Solutions (CECS), a Washington think-tank, has advanced just such a case, based largely on energy consumption figures for 1997 and 1998. While the American economy grew by 9% over those two years, energy demand was almost unchanged—because, the CECS ventures, the Internet “can turn paper and CDs into electrons, and replace trucks with fibre-optic cable.” No wonder one enthusiastic newspaper headline begged, “Shop online—save the earth.”

"Sadly, earth-saving is harder than that."

redux [07.23.00]
The Standard When Data Checks In
"When it opened in 1928, the former R.R. Donnelley & Sons' Lakeside Press plant on the near South Side of Chicago embodied the splendor and sweat of the old economy."

"Now, the building is on the verge of becoming a bellwether for the new economy."

"Across the country, real estate investors are turning obsolete manufacturing plants and warehouses – as well as derelict office buildings and failed retail centers – into so-called telecom or carrier hotels. Instead of packing the buildings with crates, lathes or die casters, companies this time around jam them with racks of switches, routers and generators. Once brick-and-mortar icons of heavy industry, the structures are being rehabbed to house the backbone of the Internet Economy."

"These structures were built to house heavy machinery, so they usually feature floors that can support more than 125 pounds per square foot; high ceilings that provide clearance and ventilation for telecom-equipment racks; and space for generators to take over in case of power outages. The Lakeside Technology Center, for instance, has more than 80 generators and stores 300,000 gallons of diesel fuel to run them."

"Generally, upgrades require bringing in huge power supplies – the Lakeside Center could use up to 96 million megawatts – as well as state-of-the-art heating and air conditioning systems."

redux [07.05.00]
The New York Times Digital Economy's Demand for Steady Power Strains Utilities
[requires 'free' registration]
"Read-Rite's milling machine is indicative of a long-running, but accelerating problem: the nation's electrical power supply system is not up to the task of meeting the digital economy's needs. While the utility industry has historically prided itself on delivering fairly stable power 99.9 percent of the time, today's computerized economy is demanding even fewer interruptions and a much steadier current.

That is because electricity is more than just energy for computers -- it is the medium they use to do their job. Rapid, minute changes in voltage represent the ones and zeros that make up digital information.

Those patterns are ultimately translated into a human voice during a phone call, a calculation during a banking transaction, a dose of radiation during cancer therapy or a photo of a new baby e-mailed to scattered relatives. Any disruption in the power supply that compromises the processor's ability to manage those voltages can lead to lost data or system crashes."

USA Today Internet saps California's power grid
"As California's tech-savvy businesses and households plug into an increasingly wired economy, the state's power system is sputtering like a frayed electrical cord."

"Computers consume about 13% of the nation's power, according to EPRI Corp., a Palo Alto research and development group that studies the utility industry.

The Internet's borderless community also is taxing U.S. power suppliers because about 80% of online traffic comes through this country.

To handle all the Internet action, businesses are turning entire offices into warehouses for the powerful computer servers and peripheral equipment needed to navigate networks. These so-called ''server farms'' consume 10 to 12 times more power than the traditional office building filled with human workers. "

The New York Times Kafkaesque? Big Brother? Finding the Right Literary Metaphor for Net Privacy
[requires 'free' registration]
""Understanding the problem as surveillance fails to account for the majority of our activities in the world and web," he wrote. "A large portion of our personal information involves facts that we are not embarrassed about: our financial information, race, marital status, hobbies, occupation and the like. Most people surf the web without wandering into its dark corners. The vast majority of information collected about us concerns relatively innocuous details. The surveillance model does not explain why the recording of this non-taboo information poses a problem."

Recognizing that privacy in the digital realm can be invaded even if no secrets are revealed and even if nobody is watching us, Solove argued that the better guide to modern life in cyberspace is Kafka."

redux [09.14.00]
Wired News Private Folks Really Tell All
"Nearly all Internet users say they are concerned about privacy online, but despite those fears nearly two-thirds of Web surfers have transmitted such highly personal information as a credit card number, according to a study released Wednesday.

The study, published by the Andersen Consulting Institute for Strategic Change and the Owen School of Business at Vanderbilt University, said 95 percent of consumers have significant concerns about their privacy online."

"But the researchers said they were surprised to find how often Internet users' actual behavior conflicted with those fears, calling it a "a hidden willingness to provide information online."

redux [09.02.00]
The Washington Post 'Opting In': A Privacy Paradox
"Some big computer out there knows all about Joan Schram. Its massive memory has stored the birth dates of family members and friends, the fact that she drives a Ford Explorer, and the names and birth dates of her American shorthair cat and rare Brazilian fila dog.

And she's thrilled about it.

Schram gave out the information herself, answering screen after screen of personal questions from LifeMinders Inc., a Herndon-based company that collects such data from consumers and e-mails them information in return – reminders of important dates, tips on when it's time to treat the cat for ticks, and news and advertising targeted to their interests.

But like many Americans, the Kennedy Center employee also says she's uncomfortable with the thought that when she goes online, other Internet companies could be monitoring her wanderings and gathering the same kind of personal information that she freely gave over to LifeMinders. If somebody else knew about her Explorer, she says, "I'd be a little disconcerted."

It's one of the more puzzling conundrums of online life. While companies that capitalize on the Internet's powerful potential to invade privacy are denounced as villains of the information age, millions of people type out highly personal data and send it off to Web sites they've barely heard of, with no strong legal protection against misuse of the information."

redux [04.30.00]
Salon Twilight of the crypto-geeks
"Neal Stephenson, a writer with a cultlike following among the technologically minded and author of the classic "Snowcrash," has given an over-long, hugely digressive -- and brilliant -- speech. After many, many turns and a deep stack of points and stories, Stephenson gets around to saying that the best defense for one's privacy and personal integrity turns out to be not cryptography but, what do you know, "social structures." He is not explicit about the exact nature of these structures, but from the slides that follow, we get a sense of every sort of social relationship from neighborly friendliness to political parties. The slides show drawings of small circles representing areas of social trust. The circles widen and merge, to create a field of autonomy, a trusted space.

Stephenson is making a point about code: Without a sociopolitical context, cryptography is not going to protect you. He singles out PGP for criticism, saying that relying on the encryption scheme is like trying to protect your house with a fence consisting of a single, very tall picket. A slide shows the lone picket rising into the sky, a bird considering it with bulging eyes."

LA Times Comparing Prices, With No Wires Attached
"No doubt mobile price-comparing appeals to hard-core techie shoppers--those outfitted with the latest equipment to surf wirelessly and spend freely at the same time. But we found it to have its drawbacks. For one thing, staring at a tiny phone screen showing four or five lines of type at a time and having to hit the scroll button constantly to read more was a pain."

"But most disappointing of all were the Internet prices we found. We price-checked five items at Circuit City. If we did find an e-tailer selling the item for less, it usually was one we hadn't heard of."

"Finally, after an hour in the store and nothing to show for it, Sharon grew weak in front of a nifty little Sony Micro Component System CD player (CMT-EX1) for $299.99. "Everyday low price, guaranteed," the store sign said."

redux [06.17.00]
ComputerWorld Report debunks early potential of wireless e-commerce
"Anyone planning to make a fortune in mobile e-commerce — the new-millennium version of last year's dot-com frenzy — should think twice about where to invest their money, according to a hype-busting report from Ovum Inc., a Boston-based consulting firm."

"The report discounts consumer interest in new mobile wireless services, warning wireless-wannabes to focus on business users and "genuinely unique" consumer services. Dennis Brown, co-author of the Ovum report, said that even business users "won't pay a premium for existing (wireless) services, which are easier and cheaper to access using their phone or PC . . . if suppliers are to survive and prosper in the long term, their early offerings will have to be very targeted and very compelling.""

Infoworld Oh the horror, the horror: The new world of wireless commerce runs amok
"Stop and ask yourself: "Just because we're developing the capability of purchasing via mobile systems, does that really mean people are going to develop a sudden and inexplicable Pavlovian desire to buy all the time?" Do we really expect the world to be gripped by the same fever that drives the Home Shopping Network? My bank account just happens to be a few orders of magnitude smaller than Bill Gates', so I actually don't want to spend money all the time."

"M-commerce -- no, make that successful m-commerce -- will not be about purchases. M-commerce will be about providing information which facilitates a purchase. Don't think commerce, think communication. There's a Grand Canyon-sized gap between those two ideas. It's the difference between offering a gadget for sale via handheld and giving access to information about that gadget -- the reviews, who's put it on their Christmas list, etc. -- and the ability to make a note to one's self: "Check this out, I might want it.""

The O'Reilly Network: openp2p.com Code + Law: An Interview with Lawrence Lessig
"I think that when these cases eventually work their way to the Supreme Court (if the companies that are being sued are around long enough to push them to the Supreme Court), the court will actually restore balance to this discussion in a way that will help protect innovation in the space. But now the real danger is that the recording industry has succeeded in its objective, which as Hillary Rosen (president and CEO of the Recording Industry Association of America) said, is to guarantee that no venture capitalist invests money in new modes of distribution unless Hollywood signs off. Well, that's to reinforce an old model of creativity that I think the Internet has the opportunity to destroy."

News.Com Napster gains another powerful ally
"Joel Klein, the former antitrust chief for the Justice Department, on Wednesday was named chairman and chief executive of the U.S. division of German media giant Bertelsmann. In his new job, Klein will help Bertelsmann fulfill its plans for keeping Napster the leader of music sharing on the Internet as it prepares to unveil a subscription service."

ZDNet Guerilla tactics will win music war
"Consensus within the Internet industry suggests these guerrilla tactics will prove too much for the litigious RIAA. Jon Davis, founder of online music site iCrunch.com says dealing with thousands of online hackers creating decentralised sharing utilities will end in defeat, even for the Big Five."

"Clarke agrees and suggests the music industry rethink its tactics. "Gnutella would be very hard to shut down," he says. "I basically think that this can't be stopped and that eventually people are going to have to change the way they think about intellectual property.""

Media Guardian Prophets of doom at online news profits
"Leaning down from the stage, Rupert Murdoch, the head of News Corporation, made it clear that the honeymoon with online news was over. "I just don't see how you can make money out of it."

Since that comment, at an annual meeting last November, many other media bosses have started to wonder whether they will ever make money online. After years of worrying that their business would be eaten up by upstarts staffed by twentysomethings, the new era finds them wondering whether they will ever recoup the millions invested in new staff, new technology and new advertising."

redux [01.22.00]
The New York Times Rethinking Internet News as a Business Proposition
[requires 'free' registration]
"The first era of newspaper experiments on the Internet, fueled in part by the fear that the Web would devour profits, is over. A new era of newspaper experiments on the Internet, fueled in part by the fear that the Web will not generate profits, has begun.

Where will it lead?"

Editor & Publisher Online What's Wrong With Today's News Web Sites
"It's that time of year for me again. As one of the 30 judges of the annual Editor & Publisher EPpy Awards (which honor the best Web sites of the newspaper and news industries), I've spent a lot of time in the last few weeks poring over newspaper sites.

In a nutshell, here's what I've noticed: Over the years that I've been volunteering as an EPpy judge, news sites have grown to be more comprehensive and feature more and better content. But comprehensive, while an admirable trait, is not always enough to get users to make visiting and using a site a habit."

redux [01.26.00]
Online Journalism Review Soul-Searching Time at Online News Units
"As nearly every week brings word of a new round of layoffs and cutbacks in new media, current and former online staffers, executives and industry analysts are surveying the wreckage and wondering whether the reluctant, often testy romance between media companies and the Internet has come to an end. My God, was it all ... just ... a meaningless fling?

The consensus so far? Media companies have begun some serious retrenchment and rolled back a number of initiatives, but they have not yet begun a full-scale retreat from the online medium. While the Holy Grail of online publishing -- a profitable business model -- remains elusive, the quest continues."

Editor & Publisher Online MSNBC.com TO REDUCE SPENDING
"A"We're certainly not reducing our coverage of news," said Nicol, when E&P asked him about the letter. Several hundred employees work for MSNBC.com, which shares bureaus with NBC News to complement newsgathering efforts.

For MSNBC.com, the past year had some months with record profitability, but other months fell short. Although planning is not completed, targeted cuts will be made in travel and entertainment, freelance expenses, and other discretionary spending, Nicol said. Some open positions around the company will be eliminated, but hiring will continue for critical positions."

redux [02.02.00]
First Monday Interactive Features of Online Papers
"According to McAdams, who helped create the Washington Post's online service, "A journalist with little online experience tends to think in terms of stories, news value, public service and things that are good to read, but a person with a lot of online experience thinks more about connection, organization, movement within and among sets of information and communication among different people". Journalists today must choose. As gatekeepers they can transfer lots of information, or they can make users a smarter, more active and questioning audience for news events and issues. Making users smarter means involving them in a collaborative experience; i.e. interaction"

Salon Gates decries "market failure" in global fight against disease
"Gates, speaking on a panel with U.N. health officials, said he was shocked by the small amount of money going into research and treatment of diseases in the world's poorer countries.

"There is a real market failure here -- a failure of visibility, a failure of incentives, a failure of cooperation that has led to a very disastrous situation," he said."

redux [12.21.00]
Netfuture Bill Gates' New Concerns
"One of the salient facts about the globalizing culture of high tech, symbolized by the increasingly monocultural Silicon Valley, is its remarkable provincialism. It's a provincialism akin to that of the interstate highway traveler and the air traveler: the culture of highway rest stops and airport shops is "global" in only the thinnest of senses, its primary function being to conceal the cultures of the globe rather than to engage or cultivate them. This function is carried to a new extreme by the almost solipsistic isolation and immobility of the cybertraveler, which can be compensated for only through an intense (and often foregone) inner effort to reach out imaginatively and sympathetically.

What has led Gates to break through some of the provincialism of the high- tech culture appears to have been his responsibility (shared with his wife, Melinda) for billions of philanthropic dollars."

redux [11.03.00]
The New York Times Bill Gates Turns Skeptical on Digital Solution's Scope
[requires 'free' registration]
"As the "Creating Digital Dividends" conference drew to a close in Seattle recently, the final speaker arrived and started asking skeptical questions. The premise was that "market drivers" could be used "to bring the benefits of connectivity and participation in the e-economy to all of the world's six billion people," according to conference materials, but the speaker would have little of it.

"I mean, do people have a clear view of what it means to live on $1 a day?" the speaker, William H. Gates, asked. "There's no electricity in that house. None.""

Pacing the room, waving his hands, he conjures up an image of an African village that receives a computer.

"The mothers are going to walk right up to that computer and say, My children are dying, what can you do?" Mr. Gates says. "They're not going to sit there and like, browse eBay or something. What they want is for their children to live. They don't want their children's growth to be stunted. Do you really have to put in computers to figure that out?"

The New York Times Magazine Look at Brazil
[requires 'free' registration]
"Since 1997, virtually every AIDS patient in Brazil for whom it is medically indicated gets, free, the same triple cocktails that keep rich Americans healthy. (In Western Europe, no one who needs AIDS treatment is denied it because of cost. This is true in some American states, but not all.) Brazil has shredded all the excuses about why poor countries cannot treat AIDS. Health system too fragile? On the shaky foundation of its public health service, Brazil built a well-run network of AIDS clinics. Uneducated people can't stick to the complicated regime of pills? Brazilian AIDS patients have proved just as able to take their medicine on time as patients in the United States."

" Brazil is showing that no one who dies of AIDS dies of natural causes. Those who die have been failed -- by feckless leaders who see weapons as more alluring purchases than medicines, by wealthy countries (notably the United States) that have threatened the livelihood of poor nations who seek to manufacture cheap medicine and by the multinational drug companies who have kept the price of antiretroviral drugs needlessly out of reach of the vast majority of the world's population."

redux [08.09.00]
The Observer How Dr Dre sings out for the Big Six
"Dre v Napster is the musical sideshow of the bigger war over ownership of intellectual property, ranging from ditties to DNA. In my last column, I described how the Clinton administration blocked South Africa's purchasing of low-cost drugs to stem the spread of Aids. To protect the right of Glaxo-Wellcome to embargo cross-border sales of AZT which don't meet the company's terms, Clinton threatened South Africa with trade sanctions under the World Trade Organisation's Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights (Trips).

Today I can report that one nation has finally displayed the huevos to stand up to America's bully-boy enforcement of WTO dictat: the US."

"But then, hypocrisy is the oxygen of the new imperial order of thought ownership. Every genteel landlord of fenced-in intellectual real estate began life as a thief. Under WTO and US law today, how many products built on the ideas of others could never have made it to market? As Isaac Newton would say now: 'If I see further than others, it is because I stand on the shoulders of giants too dumb to patent their discoveries'."

Wired News Brazilian Plea: Wear a Condom
"When AIDS exploded onto the world health scene in the 1980s, Brazil was hit nearly as hard as Africa. But while the rate of AIDS in adults in Africa today is 20 percent, in Brazil it's less than .06 percent, thanks to aggressive campaigns encouraging condom use.

But this success is skewed dramatically towards the male population.

In the beginning of the '80s, studies showed that 25 men to 1 woman in Brazil had AIDS, while today the ratio is 2 men to 1 woman."

""I believe that only when Brazilian women stop being so emotionally submissive they'll get the power of saving themselves," Alves said. "I wouldn't trust chauvinist Brazilian men to be in charge of avoiding giving women HIV infection.""

Online Journalism Review Soul-Searching Time at Online News Units
"As nearly every week brings word of a new round of layoffs and cutbacks in new media, current and former online staffers, executives and industry analysts are surveying the wreckage and wondering whether the reluctant, often testy romance between media companies and the Internet has come to an end. My God, was it all ... just ... a meaningless fling?

The consensus so far? Media companies have begun some serious retrenchment and rolled back a number of initiatives, but they have not yet begun a full-scale retreat from the online medium. While the Holy Grail of online publishing -- a profitable business model -- remains elusive, the quest continues."

Editor & Publisher Online MSNBC.com TO REDUCE SPENDING
"A"We're certainly not reducing our coverage of news," said Nicol, when E&P asked him about the letter. Several hundred employees work for MSNBC.com, which shares bureaus with NBC News to complement newsgathering efforts.

For MSNBC.com, the past year had some months with record profitability, but other months fell short. Although planning is not completed, targeted cuts will be made in travel and entertainment, freelance expenses, and other discretionary spending, Nicol said. Some open positions around the company will be eliminated, but hiring will continue for critical positions."

redux [06.13.00]
Freedom Forum Web news scores above print, broadcast on credibility
"The most-credible Internet news sources are Web sites run by network or cable TV outlets or national newspapers, according to a new survey. Such well-known Internet names as America Online, Netscape and Yahoo! ranked higher on credibility than lesser-known sites."

"Among news media, continuing a trend, the Pew poll found key segments of the nation's news audience, particularly younger and better-educated Americans and those seeking financial information, are turning increasingly to the Internet."

""Increasingly, news organizations that are going to be successful have to offer news on a 24-hour basis..."

The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press Investors Now Go Online for Quotes, Advice
"Traditional news outlets are feeling the impact of two distinct and powerful trends. Internet news has not only arrived, it is attracting key segments of the national audience. At the same time, growing numbers of Americans are losing the news habit. Fewer people say they enjoy following the news, and fully half pay attention to national news only when something important is happening. And more Americans than ever say they watch the news with a remote control in hand, ready to dispatch uninteresting stories. To some extent, these trends are affecting all traditional media, but broadcast news outlets -- both national and local -- have been the most adversely affected. "

redux [04.20.00]
The Round Table Group Young Adults Most Often Get Info From Net - Study
"Young adults say the Internet, not newspapers or television, is their number one source of information, a Round Table Group survey has found.

Fifty-nine percent of Internet users in the 18- to 24-year-old age group say that their household gets more "useful information" from the Net than from newspapers; 53 percent say they receive more information from the Internet than from TV.

Fully 84 percent say that their household is more likely to use the Internet to find useful information than to go to the public library. For specific questions, 68 percent are more inclined to consult the Internet than turn to a newspaper and 67 percent are more likely to go to the Net than rely on television."

The New York Times Mining the 'Deep Web' With Specialized Drills
[requires 'free' registration]
"In fact, traditional search engines have access to only a fraction of 1 percent of what exists on the Web. As many as 500 billion pieces of content are hidden from the view of those search engines, according to BrightPlanet.com, a search company that has tried to tally them. To many search experts, this is the "invisible Web." BrightPlanet prefers the term "deep Web," an online frontier that it estimates may be 500 times larger than the surface Web that search engines try to cover. And that uncharted territory does not include Web pages that are behind firewalls or part of intranets.

To dig deeper into the Web, a new breed of search engine has cropped up that takes a different approach to Web page retrieval. Instead of broadly scanning the Web by indexing pages from any links they can find, these search engines are devoted to drilling further into specialty areas — medical sites, legal documents, even Web pages dedicated to jokes and parody."

redux [12.19.00]
New Scientist Surf like a Bushman
"WHICH OF THESE activities occupies more of your time: foraging for food or surfing the Web? Probably the latter. We're all informavores now, hunting down and consuming data as our ancestors once sought woolly mammoths and witchetty grubs. You may even buy your groceries online.

But in an odd sort of way, Internet shopping has brought us full circle. According to researchers in the US, the strategies you use when you surf the Web are exactly the same as the ones hunter-gatherers used to find food. You may be plugged into the information superhighway, but deep down you're still a caveman."

First Monday Information Seeking on the Web: An Integrated Model of Browsing and Searching
"The research presented here suggests that people who use the Web as an information resource to support their daily work activities engage in a range of complementary modes of information seeking, varying from undirected viewing that does not pursue a specific information need, to formal searching that retrieves focused information for action or decision making. Each mode of information seeking on the Web is distinguished by the nature of information needs, information seeking tactics, and the purpose of information use. The information seeking tactics characterizing each mode were revealed by recurrent sequences of browser actions initiated by the information seeker. Thus, undirected viewing is characterized by starting and chaining actions; conditioned viewing is characterized by differentiating, browsing, and monitoring actions; informal search is characterized by differentiating and localized extracting; and formal search consisted of systematic, thorough extracting.

Overall, the study suggests that a behavioral framework that relates motivations (the strategies and reasons for viewing and searching) and moves (the tactics used to find and use information) may be helpful in analyzing Web-based information seeking. The study also suggests that multiple, complementary methods of collecting qualitative and quantitative data may be integrated within a single study to compose a more nuanced portrayal of how individuals seek and use Web-based information in their natural work settings."

Interaction Archtitect The Skeptical Internet User Does Not Search
"Our exploratory user study on the use of a major portal site in Belgium shows that a category of "skeptical Internet users" has abandoned searching the web. The skeptical Internet user has made a return-on-investment evaluation of his Internet experience, and has come to the conclusion that the return on some sites is just not worth the investment of his personal time and energy."

"The skeptical Internet user did not come to the Internet because of his innovative attitude. His motivation is not to learn and use the Internet. Instead he is motivated by the Internet's promise of offering value: comfort of living, entertainment, getting things done in a more convenient way. While he did get some of that, he also got a lot of discomfort: long download times, navigational and structural complexity, inconsistency, unpredictable behavior, disappointing value."

MSNBC Technology won’t stop music piracy
"The battle over music piracy is like the war on drugs: You can’t win it, but you can fight it forever, and spend millions on the battle."

"WE’RE NOW ENTERING the next phase in the recording industry’s fight for the control of music distribution. In this phase, the recording industry tries and fails to control distribution of copyrighted content with technology. Today I’ll tell you why that’s good news for IBM, why it’s a doomed strategy and why it’s the best they can hope for."

Business 2.0 IBM's Digital Music Catch-Up
""Right now, Napster is very important and popular for millions and millions of people, so the central question is whether technology like this can actually stop music from showing up on Napster, and the answer is, of course not," says Sheirer. "This is still the pre-Napster thinking about [digital rights mnagement] from the middle of 1999. It's not what the industry needs, and frankly, I don't think it is what the industry is looking for anymore.""

"Scheirer says that DRM technologies are simply misguided as a whole. In a Forrester report last September, Scheirer said that record companies should avoid strategies based on controlling content, and that they would be wise to instead deliver content the ways that consumers want it."

redux [09.21.00]
Silicon.Com Lawsuits dubbed 'a waste of time' in online music wars
"It is pointless for music companies to try to outlaw Napster-like file sharing with expensive lawsuits, according to a report published today by Forrester Research."

"The music giants would do better to steal back their markets by offering quality alternatives to pirating software, it claims.

According to Forrester, music publishers stand to lose as much as $3.1bn by 2005 as online music piracy increases. "You have to beat pirates at their own game, otherwise record companies could sustain large losses," said Eric Scheirer, analyst at Forrester and author of the report.

Peter Beverley, vice chairman at Magex, Natwest's Digital Rights Management (DRM) business, added: "The legal process on its own won't solve the piracy problem and nor will digital management technology. Instead you need to offer products that are worth having."

redux [05.02.00]
Infoworld Napster sends a message to music industry: 'Your customers aren't happy'
"The Recording Industry Association of America wants to educate consumers with the message, "Artists deserve to be compensated -- artists won't make music if they can't make money." I can only imagine the public service announcements with multimillionaire artists pleading for their right to a seventh Porsche in the driveway. There's no rationalization for piracy; it is what it is. However, rampant music piracy online indicates that the music industry's distribution and pricing model is out of whack with what people want. The problem isn't the piracy; the problem is unhappy customers. And the music industry had better do something about it. This is a dinosaur moment -- with the big rock looming overhead -- where the music industry needs to ask itself how it will adapt."

Internet World Nielsen on Usability: The Seven Sins of Copy Protection Tools
"Copy protection makes things harder to use, and people hate it. Early phonograph records had printed licenses that forbade their resale. People believe, no matter what the fine print says, that if they buy a thing, it's theirs. Books can be given away after use. Software can be used on both desktop and laptop. A CD can be taped and played in the car. A magazine can be read for free in the library. People need to share data among the many devices they own. Any content payment scheme that doesn't allow for the time-honored ways people actually use information is doomed and should be rejected."

Cryptome What's Wrong With Content Protection
"Converting the whole world to operate without scarcity is a huge task. Such a large economic shift would take decades to spread through the entire world economy, making billions of new winners and new losers. We will be extremely lucky if by 2030 we are prepared to end scarcity without massive social turmoil, including riots, civil unrest, and world war. If we are to find a peaceful path to an era of plenty, we should be starting HERE AND NOW, transforming the industries we have already eliminated scarcity in -- text, audio, and video. Companies that can't adjust should disappear and be replaced by those who can. As these whole industries learn how to exist and thrive without creating artificial scarcity, they will provide models and expertise for other industries, which will need to change when their own inefficient production is replaced by efficient duplication ten or fifteen years from now. Relying on copy-protection now would send us in exactly the wrong direction! Copy protection pretends that the law and some fancy footwork with industrial cartels can maintain our current economic structures, in the face of a hurricane of positive technological change that is picking them up and sending them whirling like so many autumn leaves."

redux [12.17.00]
Bad Subjects Beyond Copyright Consciousness
"Today's received ideas about intellectual property can be distilled into two major threads: technology killed copyright, and copyright is anachronistic in networked culture. Both of these notions are simplistic and ahistorical, and I'll try to argue that they're shortsighted. What we really ought to be talking about is access to works. Access is related to copyright, but is really more fundamental to our freedom to think and experience. I'd like to propose an expanded access scheme and offer an example of small steps that are being taken in that direction."

"At the Internet Archive, a nonprofit headquartered in San Francisco, a small group of engineers backed by a philanthropist are trying to create a new paradigm for access to archival material, in this case historical film from my own archives. By doing this, we're making a concrete move toward building an IP preserve."

redux [07.27.00]
Free Software Advocacy Against intellectual property
"The original rationale for copyrights and patents was to foster artistic and practical creative work by giving a short-term monopoly over certain uses of the work. This monopoly was granted to an individual or corporation by government. The government's power to grant a monopoly is corrupting. The biggest owners of intellectual property have sought to expand it well beyond any sensible rationale."

"This chapter outlines the case against intellectual property. I begin by mentioning some of the problems arising from ownership of information. Then I turn to weaknesses in its standard justifications. Next is an overview of problems with the so-called "marketplace of ideas," which has important links with intellectual property. Finally, I outline some alternatives to intellectual property and some possible strategies for moving towards them. "

"Intellectual property is supported by many powerful groups: the most powerful governments and the largest corporations. The mass media seem fully behind intellectual property, partly because media monopolies would be undercut if information were more freely copied and partly because the most influential journalists depend on syndication rights for their stories."

"Another problem in developing strategies is that it makes little sense to challenge intellectual property in isolation. If we simply imagine intellectual property being abolished but the rest of the economic system unchanged, then many objections can be made. Challenging intellectual property must involve the development of methods to support creative individuals."

The New York Times Rethinking Internet News as a Business Proposition
[requires 'free' registration]
"The first era of newspaper experiments on the Internet, fueled in part by the fear that the Web would devour profits, is over. A new era of newspaper experiments on the Internet, fueled in part by the fear that the Web will not generate profits, has begun.

Where will it lead?"

Editor & Publisher Online What's Wrong With Today's News Web Sites
"It's that time of year for me again. As one of the 30 judges of the annual Editor & Publisher EPpy Awards (which honor the best Web sites of the newspaper and news industries), I've spent a lot of time in the last few weeks poring over newspaper sites.

In a nutshell, here's what I've noticed: Over the years that I've been volunteering as an EPpy judge, news sites have grown to be more comprehensive and feature more and better content. But comprehensive, while an admirable trait, is not always enough to get users to make visiting and using a site a habit."

redux [02.02.00]
First Monday Interactive Features of Online Papers
"According to McAdams, who helped create the Washington Post's online service, "A journalist with little online experience tends to think in terms of stories, news value, public service and things that are good to read, but a person with a lot of online experience thinks more about connection, organization, movement within and among sets of information and communication among different people". Journalists today must choose. As gatekeepers they can transfer lots of information, or they can make users a smarter, more active and questioning audience for news events and issues. Making users smarter means involving them in a collaborative experience; i.e. interaction"