is what i do

Is that being alarmist? Maybe. The story is in the Washington Post, and it’s chilling.

The big telcos, headed by Bell South and AT&T, are promoting the idea that they should be able to control the Internet traffic that flows through the channels they control, to deny access to services that compete with services they offer, and to charge big content providers, like Google and Yahoo, to give their traffic priority over traffic of small content providers, like this blog.

It’s not hard to see that such a scheme would mean the end of the Internet as we know it, which is the Internet that many of us have come to consider indispensible. Lest we miss the point, Smith gives us another example a little later in the article:

This is not a theoretical discussion. There’s legislation in the Energy and Commerce Committee of the House right now that would give Smith what he wants—legislation, need we add, whose passage through Congress is being liberally greased by contributions from the telcos and cable companies.

There’s a pretty powerful coalition of interests opposing the legislation as it’s written, including Amazon, Google and Ebay, but it’s unlikely that they own as many legislators as the network providers, being so new to that game. And given the various other things happening on the national scene these days, something like this could gain a good deal of momentum before the public in general, or even most legislators, become aware of it.

It’s probably not too early to drop a note to your congressfolk to let them know that you are aware of what’s going down, and that you are mighty disturbed by this attempt to hijack the Internet, and that you will be watching their response to the legislation. It’s probably also a good idea to get to know Public Knowledge, a digital rights advocacy group that has been quick to speak out against the so-called “pay-for-performance” concept, and even to give them a contribution to help them with their good works.

Thanks to The Progressive Blog Alliance and Blogonymous for the heads-up on this one.

OK, here’s what you need to do:

• First, do not click on this link to Sam Harris’s astoundingly wonderful manifesto, “Imagine There’s no Heaven“.
• Second, take a few deep breaths, compose your mind and consider how you typically deal with a long interesting article on the web.
  • If you print it out, with the intention of reading it later, DON’T DO THAT!
  • If you bookmark it, with the intention of reading it later, DON’T DO THAT!
  • If you skim the first page to pick up the high points and don’t click through to read pages 2,3, & 4, DON’T DO THAT!
• Instead, do this:
  • Clear 15 minutes of time, during which you will let nothing distract you from the task at hand.
  • Close, hide, or minimize all of your running applications except for your web browser; maximize that to fill your screen.
  • Resolve that you will read this one through to the end. If you must, pray to God for the strength to do that.
• Now, click on this link. Don’t come back here (or go anywhere else) until you’ve read Sam’s article through to the end.

Wasn’t that worth it?

Wikipedia’s been much in the news recently (if, by “news”, one means the gossip of the blogosphere; and right now, it seems to me, that’s the best news we have). Adam Curry was busted when he attempted to edit Wikipedia’s article on podcasting to pump his own contributions and eliminate or downgrade the contributions of others (particularly Dave Winer). And Dave, in today’s Scripting News, points to an article by Rex Hammond which cautions against unquestioned acceptance of Wikipedia’s authority, calling our attention to a situation in which the Wikipedia bio of John Seigenthaler Sr., courageous editor and publisher emeritus of the Nashville Tennessean, had been changed by an anonymous ill-wisher to implicate Seigenthaler in Robert Kennedy’s assassination. Rex cautions us, “You’re crazy if you take what you read in Wikipedia at face value.” And, of course, he’s right. And he’s also right when he goes on to say that we shouldn’t take any source at face value.

But I think he’s not quite so right when he says, further on, that we should be especially wary of “personal [media] like blogging … or a collaborative one like Wikipedia”. I think, on the contrary, that we should be on our most watchful guard with the impersonal and corporate media: The New York Times, Encyclopaedia Britannica, NPR. It’s not simply that the bias of the articles in those media are just as carefully concealed as those of the articles in Wikipedia (although they are). And it’s not just that those media speak with a weight of authority that Wikipedia lacks (although they do). It’s that the biases in traditional media are less subject to correction by those who do not share them. If a newspaper is caught in a particular egregious misstatement, it may publish a correction, days or weeks later, in small type on an inside page. NPR might broadcast a one-sentence apology at the end of a newscast on a single day. Any outrageous bias in a printed reference book must wait for the next edition to be corrected, if it ever is. Wikipedia, on the other hand, is on the case in hours or days; the podcasting article was rolled back to its prior state and locked for further editing before the first articles on the Curry case surfaced in the corporate media; the Seigenthaler article has also been corrected, and the story of the article’s pirating has been incorporated into the article itself. That’s a level of responsibility (in every sense of the word) that traditional media simply cannot rise to, even if they were to try (although I wish they would).

Wikipedia is an amazing resource—one whose nature I could never have predicted prior to its emergence. I find it invaluable as a source of basic background about people, events, places, ideas and things that I’ve not heard about before or about which my (book learned) knowledge is fuzzy. The more widely I range through the World Wide Web, the more such things I encounter, and I’m grateful to Wikipedia for being always at hand, and so close at hand. But I don’t believe everything I read there, either.

We’re sending email back and forth, trying to arrange a weekend with a few old friends. The first date we choose, Jo writes, conflicts with their annual Superbowl party. John writes back, “[The new date] is ok with me. You will tell me what a superbowl party is though won’t you?” Here’s my answer: