Technology Futures

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer has an article on a report issued by a City of Seattle task force that concluded that the city has to take broadband seriously, and must begin immediately.

This is a must read article that makes many good points. Rather than rehash them, here are some of them verbatim:

• Broadband networks will soon become what roads, electric systems and telephone networks are today: core infrastructure of society.
• The long-term problems and challenges that Seattle faces are not likely to be solved by wireless... What Seattle and all cities will need is a big, big pipe capable of 25 to 100 megabits (per second) each way.
• If Seattle does not move forward with the network, it could lose its edge to cities such as Amsterdam, Netherlands, and Seoul, South Korea, which have placed big bets on broadband....
  There are areas of the globe that are light years ahead, and Seattle should want to be among the global leaders...

The city task force was originally instructed by the City Council to look at doing a citywide wireless project, but after studying the issue, came back with a different set of recommendations that focused on fiber. One city council member has proposed creating an Office of Broadband to study the problem further.

ISUS (Improved Solutions for Urban Strategies) has an innovative alternative high school education program that helps high risk youths get a high school diploma while giving them a heavy dose of on the job construction training and high tech manufacturing skills.

The program provides proficiency-based high school classes that are integrated with work training in the construction industry. But the effort has a real high tech twist, and takes vo-tech to a whole new level by building and selling houses at market prices in distressed neighborhoods.

The program has a CAD-CAM manufacturing facility where students used computer design systms to design the homes, and these are very sophisticated homes, mirroring the traditional styles used in the nieghborhoods in the early part of the twentieth century--in other words, real style. Instead of the traditional industry approach of building on site, many of the walls and floors are built in the high tech manufacturing plant using computer controlled panel assembly equipment. Students learn to build using state of the art computer and manufacturing systems, then take the parts right to the work site and put the house together.

At risk youth are getting marketable job skills, graduating from high school, and in the neighborhood where the houses are being built, the new homes are raising property values and have encouraged others in the neighborhood to rehab and fix up other homes--a win-win-win for the kids, the homeowners, and the community.

This article about grass roots television programming illustrates the perfect storm developing that has the potential to wreck the Hollywood-based entertainment corporations. Since the days of Milton Berle's live broadcasts, television content has been generated largely by Hollywood. It's been a tight knit cartel of writers, directors, producers, and production companies that have kept video content locked up pretty tightly, in large part because of the cozy relationship with the broadcast networks. Cable has been chipping away at that, but innovation in cable has meant largely following the same old model, but just doing everything as cheaply as possible.

The limitation has always been the same, whether you were delivering a television program over the air, by cable, or by satellite--you have only twenty-four hours per day per channel, so everything is a trade-off of demand versus air time.

Like nearly everything else it touches, the Internet just plain breaks that apart. On the Internet, content is not bound by the delivery mechanism, so we are seeing the end of CDs, the end of DVDs, the end of radio "channels," and the end of TV "channels." Channels were a construct based on the scarcity of bandwidth, and there is no scarcity on the Internet.

So for $1.99, you can download and watch a 45 minute video on how to barbecue a whole pig. But that's not even the interesting part. DaveTV, which is offering the video service, has a BBQ "channel" with more than 1000 video segments, just on barbecuing. Try doing that using the traditional television programming system. You can't. But the Internet makes it simple.

So here's the thing--Hollywood no longer has an edge--none at all. What about your region? Do you have some of the pieces in place to start some Internet TV video production companies? Is your town on a major fiber backbone that could be used to pump video to the rest of the country? Do you have some program assets that could be the basis of a channel like the BBQ channel?

Side note to my southwest Virginia readers: If I lived on a crooked road, I'd be pretty excited about the potential to market assets to a worldwide audience. And a major piece of the puzzle is just down the road in Tennessee. There's another piece over in Danville.

The beauty of the Internet is that it changes the math. With the Internet, you can add 2 + 2 and get 10 if you do it right. And there's a 10 not only in southwest Virginia but many more all over the country.

Of course, there is never a free lunch. To get to that 10, communities have to be willing to do things differently, and that's the real challenge, not the technology.

Loma Linda, California, a community of 20,000 people, may be the first town in the country to require broadband infrastructure in new housing. This article from the May, 2005 issue of Broadband Properties (scroll down to get the PDF file) details the ordinance that requires builders to install structured Ethernet (broadband) cabling in every living space in new homes, as well as run fiber to the homes in the development, and to provide neighborhood colocation space for network equipment (what I call an NSAP, or Neighborhood Service Access Point).

This kind of approach future-proofs the community and reduces the cost of broadband access. Builders install the neighborhood infrastructure and turn it over to the town when the development is complete, just as they turn over other infrastructure like streets, sidewalks, water, and sewer. The article cites a study that shows homes with fiber to the home (FTTH) sell for $4,000 to $14,000 more than the same home without broadband access. So the builders easily recoup the additional cost, and the increased value of the home provides tax benefits to the town (which helps pay for maintenance).