Thank you for your digital manifesto (Wired 2.10); a concise document raising what are and will increasingly become fundamental social issues for our world to address.We fully echo your views, especially with regards to the shift from scarcity to abundance being the central pivot of the new age. But I would like to say that some parts of government are coming round to this vision, albeit slowly and not all are "getting it horribly, dangerously wrong". Be careful not to stereotype government, as not all are as quick to act or as blind to the obvious as the current UK police activities (and others) would suggest.
On this note I would like to point to the recent activities of DGXIII (Telecomms) of the European Commission. We, KPMG ICE Consulting, have recently completed a major study for DGXIII on Public Policy Issues surrounding "Convergence". In this study, which has been heartily accepted by our client, we argue the case for information abundance and the negative affects of regulating using old scarcity-based concepts. Sure this study is only a start, but it is a start to thinking in the right direction. A green paper will be in development soon. You can access the report via the Information Society Project Office Web site.
Of course, the ultimate result of the digital age brings into question the current notion and modus operandi of government, as you so clearly describe in your Manifesto. You can't expect governments to accept such change quickly, but don't assume that they are all ignorant to this fact. Even government has wired people. Many thanks again for your vision and leadership. Let's start building.
Simon Cook
New Media Consultant
KPMG ICE Consulting
simon.cook@pobox.com
Congratulations on your digital manifesto - it made me want to train moles to lay cable into rural areas. I would like to take issue, however, with your notion of allowing self-elected communities to "filter out whatever their constituents do not wish to hear". It seems to me that everybody, especially children, should be exposed to unexpected, possibly unpalatable, ideas from time to time. For our present day cultural waves grow from small "future ripples" and many people who are now overwhelmed by the prospect of the digital age, instead of surfing through it, have previously applied just such a filtering process mentally.Given that technological improvements are allowing us to make explicit many of our mental information processing mechanisms, both individually and as communities, how can we ensure that at least the suggestion of debate, on many different issues, is available to all? Advertising and word of byte provide possible but patchy solutions: my suggestion is that this process could become part of the new role of government.
"Protected bandwidth" would, properly implemented, provide information, discussion and debate of the highest quality, doing so as a public service, available to all who choose to access it and not filtered by any community (at least in theory!). Ideally it would provide a cultural, cross-community conduit with the content provision discussed and ultimately owned and controlled by the online democratic process.
This is a simple idea in many ways. In common with the rest of the digital manifesto it requires our mutual commitment and tolerance in order be effective. Now, where was my moleskin jacket?
Amanda Lamb
Clinical Engineer
mem1al@surrey.ac.uk
The extensive review of The Net-Head Handbook in your last issue (Wired 2.10) was not up to your usual high standards.I am writing to add my voice to those authors currently calling for an end to the practice of appointing as a reviewer someone who is well-known to the author (myself). D. A. Barham, the reviewer, is credited at the front of The Net-Head Handbook as a contributor. Indeed, one of the characters is modelled on her.
I think we should be told.
Nick Rosen
nick@intervid.co.uk
Since when are quality and sophistication a problem for Wired? We're sorry to hear that your Jargon Watch (Wired 2.09) team find fucking dull - mostly we tend to find it rather stimulating (and distinctly un-beige). Perhaps you should have a closer look at EVE (Peter Gabriel's new ROM, at realworld.on.net) - no fucking, not dull.Martha Ladly
Real World MultiMedia
MarthaL@realworld.co.uk
If Wired do one more article about how machines are going to take over the City ("RoboTrader", Wired 2.09), I am going to petrol-bomb your offices. How about a piece on the fact that 90% of the volatility in the markets is due to human irrationality and profit comes from volatility?Martin Bartle
martin@delve.co.uk
I couldn't empathise more with Russell Davies ("Shunt and Grind", Wired 2.09) and the missing online railway timetables, but this is just one of many gaping holes in the UK Web. Online telephone directories, for instance.But wait! This morning's snail mail (typical!) brings news of "BT Online Information": complete national rail timetables; national telephone directories; Yellow Pages; OS Maps; postcodes; you name it. Wow! I've found it! The data motherlode!
But hold on - they want a £29.99 sign-on fee plus £12.99 a month, it needs its own software (Windows only, so no good to me, a mere Mac user), and you still have to pay each time you use any of the databases! Not to mention your call charges. Good ol' BT.
Surely these people recognise what the Web is all about? How many hits a day would a railway timetable or telephone directory Web site attract? How much could they charge for advertising on a site like that? What's wrong with these people?
Pay-through-the-nose dial-up services are dead (hurrah!). Wake up, corporate Britain! Even if you must charge for your data (say OS maps), put it on the Web so people can pay as they go with a card number, or an online account. I, and the vast majority of netizens, will never pay for a dial-up service. Put it on the Web!
Did I say online banking? Just don't get me started, OK?
Paul Carter
paul.concept@zetnet.co.uk
As a new Wired reader, I was initially impressed to find a monthly feature giving investment advice on IT companies ("Follow the Money") - until I discovered it is always about US companies. On the cover of Wired it says UK; how about a monthly feature on UK companies?Greg Newman
greg.newman@somerfield.co.uk
I have seen the future, and it is giving me a sick headache. Why is a magazine which appears to put a premium on intelligent contributions so crassly badly designed?My immediate frustration is Simon Davies' piece in the October issue on privatising data systems ("Big Brother plc", Wired 2.10). This is an interesting and, I am sure, important subject. But it is literally unreadable. Any chance of emailing a plain text version, so that I can find out what he actually says?
Meanwhile, please have your designers write out one hundred times: "I will not run text over pretty coloured patterns, especially if I am using a sans typeface." If you reviewed a Web page that was as daft as this you wouldn't give it any marks out of ten....
Jon Turney
ucrhjon@ucl.ac.uk
Just to say well done on a very refreshing magazine. Much better than the States. Especially like the fifth and sixth colour usage. Thank you for putting something worthwhile on the newsagents shelves.Everyone at Pose Design Consultants
JDors10049@aol.com
Regarding "Archimedia", (Wired 2.08), can architects give form and value to the digital frontier?And what, if anything, do architects have to offer? What does "give form to the digital frontier" mean? Does it mean that digital architects design physical buildings inhabited by digital community members? Does digital architecture mean something as mundane as drawings of buildings for on-screen perusal, or are we talking about interactively designing frameworks for people to inhabit?
It's all a bit vague. How does a digital architect, or anyone for that matter, "give value"? It's not in the dictionary. Add value, perhaps? Define a value, even. In that case, is designing a functional structure, a building, or a group of buildings, digitally or not, via a digitally-linked community of architects, adding value in an existing market?
How do a group of digital architects add value to anything? Are people already doing this? Would a digital architect be able to "give form and value" to a solar-powered high-security eco-friendly computer workspace, either in a back yard, as part of a mobile vehicle, or ideally, up in the mountains? For physical inhabitants of digital communities. Real people with knackered equipment and a dodgy ISP. No stucco, but lots of wood and plants and whatnot inside the atrium.
Offers from digital architects, either ether or otherwise, welcome. Don't forget to say what it will all cost, including the hardware....
Peter Beresford
petedla@knoware.nl
I couldn't help but reply to James Flint's article "Two-Headed Painting" in Wired 2.09. In it your man Flint extols the virtues of digitised portraits (yawn). "There's only so much you can do with a face and a canvas.... Portraiture in the age of photography seems irrelevant."Now don't get me wrong; I'm not some latter-day Luddite or anything (well, I must admit, I'm not averse to the idea of taking a weighty mallet to my PC on occasion), but to me this is a bit like going up to Michelangelo just after he's finished David and saying "Never mind, eh, there's only so much you can do with a lump of rock and a chisel ... Have you ever considered using polystyrene?"
The human being is a tangible creature. People are not digitised information, and like it or not tangible objects are going to be around a lot longer than technology (whether it's being used for Art or not) that will be laughed at in 20 years time.
Christian Furr
Art Director
Virtual Studios
christian@vstudios.com
Whilst I agree with the majority of statements made by Nicholas Negroponte in "The Future of Phone Companies (Wired 2.09), I find his closing remark disturbing. The idea that channelled or focused news and information should be provided removes one of the potential driving forces toward innovation: serendipity.If you believe Paul Romer ("The Economics of Ideas, Wired 2.08) the loss of inventiveness through serendipity removes the lifeline of intellectual evolution which prevents a Malthusian slide to disaster, prevents the cross-fertilisation of ideas from one discipline to another, leading to innovative or creative thought. The majority of inventions which alter the paradigm of human existence appear to arise from moments of serendipity where two disparate fields are united to yield an idea which breaks the mould of thinking within a discipline.
If we focus our reading purely on current interests and have our reading material filtered for us so that we are only able to read or learn about material in our channelled discipline, where will the opportunity for cross-fertilisation of ideas arise from?
The Internet offers an unbridled and unparalleled wealth of material covering a vast gamut of subjects. Instead of focusing our thoughts purely on the subject in hand, the odd occasional bout of surfing may in fact lead to an epiphany which could yield the next paradigm-shifting idea, preventing a vastly overcrowded and under-resourced planet from decline. I'd like to know how Negroponte first became involved in computers and new media - a serendipitous encounter, perhaps?
Christopher J. Thorpe
Webmedia
christ@webmedia.com
Although I have accepted Wired's unthinking acceptance of "more technology is good technology" as the price to be paid for a magazine which covers the cutting edge, your article on the StarBright Foundation (Wired 2.09) went too far.There are children starving and dying all over the world for want of basic food and medicine, some as a result of General Schwarzkopf's old job, yet the article did not discuss any of the ethical issues of choosing to spend money in such an unbalanced way.
Nor did it seem to realise the salient purpose of the entire project: to use these sick children as guinea pigs for market research into commercial projects-to-be. Such exploitation is rendered all the more repugnant by an attempt to dress it up as an attempt to help those in need.
Rónán Kennedy
ronan.m.kennedy@ucg.ie