Technology Futures

For some time, I have been telling communities that quality of life and affordable broadband are the drivers of economic development in rural areas of the country. But over the past few months, I have come to believe that there is a third factor: reliable electric power. As we store more and more data and dish more of that data out to a global audience via our Web sites and businesses, reliable electric power is a critical resource that is needed to keep electricity-hungry servers humming.

How important is it? Wired reports that Google is building a new office campus and data center next to a hydroelectric dam. It turns out that not only do communities need redundant fiber connections to the Internet. They also need redundant power connections into business parks and business districts, to minimize power outages. A company like Amazon is doing millions of dollars of business PER HOUR, and just a few minutes of losing connectivity to the Internet or to electric power is disastrous.

Regions served by public electric utilities or by electric coops are well-positioned to take advantage of the new interest in rural areas by high tech companies, because those utilities are more flexible and can more easily make investments that benefit the community.

Finally, safety and security are also driving the shift to placing these in rural areas. In the aftermath of 9/11 and Katrina, companies are realizing decentralized operations are a business necessity. And the low cost of land, lower wages, less traffic, and the beautiful countryside helps too. Rural communities, start your power generators for the coming boom of the Energy Economy.

In a victory for personal privacy, a German court has ruled that if a customer requests it, an Internet Service Provider (ISP) must delete the IP log data that shows what a customer has been doing on the Internet and when. In the U.S., unfortunately, we are headed in the other direction, with the Federal government anxious to make ISPs responsible for retaining such information--forever! It is a huge and costly burden, with little justification, since most of us will never commit a crime that might require such data, and in my opinion, it is intrusive and an invasion of privacy.

According to Kevin Maney, in USA Today (page 3B), Walmart is shocked--shocked--that downloads of movies from the iTunes store are being sold for less money than the old-fashioned DVDs that use enormous energy to make and transport. Walmart is upset that they might be losing sales to digital downloads, and they apparently want someone to do something about it.

In this case, the giant retailer is apparently pressuring the Hollywood content owners that license the movies for sale to force Apple and other online retailers to keep prices artificially high. This is the part that baffles me. Hardly a week goes buy that we don't see some article about some business being disrupted by the Internet. However, too often these businesses are demanding special protection against the big bad Internet. Somewhere along the way, too many American businesses have acquired the bizarre notion that government and/or consumers owe them something--that something being the inalienable right to sell something nobody wants anymore.

In the case of movies, no one wants to get in their car and fight the traffic in the Walmart parking lot and the long lines at the checkouts to buy a $12 movie. Not if they have broadband and can download it from the 'net.

We are seeing the same strange thinking from the big telecom companies, whose entire business model is slowly but surely going to be stripped from them in the coming decade as we move to community-managed digital road systems that lower telecom prices and provide a lot more choice. But some telcos think they have somehow acquired a natural right to a monopoly on telecom, and that it is the government's job to force everyone to pay more for poor service.

These companies have only two choices in the real world: adapt to changing markets or go out of business. In their bizarro world where everything is backwards, they apparently think they can stay the same forever. I don't think so. Too much money is at stake, and as businesses, government, and citizens figure out better ways to buy stuff like music and videos, these companies will have to leave bizarro world and join the rest of us.

This falls squarely into the "What were they thinking?" category. USA Today has an article in today's paper about the Hubble space telescope, which is now relatively old and needs upgrades and repairs. Yet NASA and its "high tech" contractors built many parts of the device in a way that makes it almost impossible to repair or upgrade in space!!

So they are designing and building a SPACE-based device and never thought to ask themselves, "How will this be fixed or upgraded?" Just an example of why it is so important to do due diligence with technology vendors. The fact that they are building high tech equipment does not mean they know what they are doing. This is especially true with communitywide broadband systems. Many vendors are simply selling repurposed corporate and institutional network gear that may work okay for small and pilot community projects, but the stuff does not scale up well to support multiple service providers or thousands of subscribers. You have to take the time to check out vendors and their promises (Disclaimer: Design Nine helps communities do just this--we make sure the hardware and systems you are buying fit the job).