Zero-downtime Must Be a Standard of the Open Web
Freedom of information and the standard of net neutrality —connection providers not controlling content or access to content in any way— require that information posted online not be removed, blocked, or made unavailable to readers, so long as the publisher wishes to include that content. For content publishers and content consumers to shape the web experience they desire, not only do we need an ethical standard of total net neutrality, but we need a technical standard of zero-downtime bandwidth guarantees.
Zero downtime is necessary for providing fair service to online publishers and consumers for a number of reasons, not least of which is that some services require a wide-open uninterrupted secure connection. Online voice communications should fit into the net neutrality standard: some connection providers (ISPs) also provide voice telephony services, and would like to prevent low-cost or free voice-over-IP services, but a fair standard for managing basic web connection services cannot allow such interference with competition.
There are a wealth of breakthrough technological solutions that can revolutionize not only communications and mass media, but also the ability of the individual to achieve the self-empowerment of reliable information and to produce and secure data in ways that transcend the physical limitaitons of individual devices or storage centers, if we take advantage of the potential of “cloud computing”, or dispersed IT. Without a constant connection, devices and networking systems using cloud computing systems will be limited in their ability to provide the best quality of service to their users.
Achieving the zero-downtime standard would be in the interest of nearly all entities involved in the Internet business, except perhaps media giants that provide both access and separate telephony services, but increasingly, telecoms involved in the web connectivity business appear to be getting the hint that constant uptime and unlimited data, even unlimited anywhere web access, are good for business. If we reach the general standard of mass-market zero-downtime web connectivity, consumers should have a wide range of new options, both to achieve interesting new services and to protect their data.
As web infrastructure and connectivity standards evolve toward their optimal state, telecommunications should move toward inexpensive, flat-rate calling, eventually with global unlimited calling plans that cost little more than what we are accustomed to paying now for high-speed broadband Internet service. This will of course be a revolutionary moment in telecommunications and will spur a number of currently unimaginable media innovations, though it is likely that for sometime, quality of service considerations will prevent massive content downloads (like digital movie downloads direct to mobile phones) from being workable.
The zero-downtime question, coupled with net neutrality and consumer rights generally, raises important issues about whether media giants are required to facilitate or participate in the evolution of new technologies that capitalize on their services, but also surpass them and reduce their influence. In general, the United States has a unique media-innovation engine driving this debate, the First Amendment to the US Constitution, which prohibits any laws that “abridge… the freedom of the press”, and “of the people to peaceably assemble”, both of which relate to consumers’ interests in expanding the online clout of the individual.
The individual is now also the press, the press consumer is potentially part of the press, legally speaking, and anyone can become a publisher in the online media environment. Their freedoms are covered multiple times in the First Amendment alone, while major media companies, traditionally permitted to engage in a certain amount of laissez-faire decision-making, have grown into utilities that are less information providers than they are purveyors of a piece of basic infrastructure.
The open web is a dream that will enable a number of vital new democratic processes to evolve, where consumers and content-providers spontaneously organize to change the manner in which information travels through the broader culture. It will also allow much better access to vital and sometimes esoteric information for the average consumer, and eventually, new forms of digital data security, related to revolutionary dispersed coding platforms and segmented-multiple-redundancy data storage systems.
admin @ July 27, 2008