OT - Some observations and comments concerning "open"
Eric and Yihsuen,
While reading each of your posts I could not help but think about how
this most recent "open" issue -- in connection with ATHM's competing
ISPs and the MSOs -- has been rather ingeniously played by the ISPs
who seem to have borrowed the term from an earlier period in the
Internet's history, when it was championed as something else.
What I see being presented here is a Gordon Knot of sorts:
Do the ISPs really want to operate in an open system, or do they
simply seek inclusion in one which is closed?
The present coalition has leveraged and effectively metamorphosed the
original characteristics of the term 'open' beyond its originally recognizable
attributes, which described a then different kind of global openness on the
Internet. The coalition has reincarnated it into something that is perversely
different (from several different perspectives) from the former ideal which
bore the same name, when it was used by the early members of the Internet
Society who sought to manage and share information and R&D through
the most robust, yet least encumbered, means.
None of today's parties walks away from this Dr. Frankenstein-like
pursuit without having contributed in their own way to the unraveling of a
purer form of open, for they are all engaging in what the original
I-SOCiety had been worried about and fretting, with due cause, for
many years. And that is nothing short of the ultimate commercialization of the
'net, itself, as we have been experiencing for the past several years years,
for the most part, although some milestones leading up to this point in
time can be traced back to the early Eighties and prior.
Darwinists will applaud this, as I do on some level, but with competition
always comes differentiation, which in turn spawns other defining
characteristics, which in turn result in qualities that turn out to be highly
antithetical to the principles of true Internet "openness." Sometimes this
manifests in ways similar to what we are now seeing, where the largest
(the Top 3) wide area carriers are creating their own end to end offerings on
amounts to their own autonomous systems, in large part..
MCI's OnNet, FON's ION, AT&T's INC, to name a few examples.
Teraglobal has yet another end to end service, this time supported by
ATM, instead of IP, as their defining transport type. With any closed or
autonomous transport scheme the temptation is always greater to go
deeper into proprietary feature sets and handling methodologies, and
before you know it you have a virtual quagmire of differing types of virtual
wires strung across virtual marketplaces, with virtually nowhere to go but
to your own virtual carrier for their own brand of virtual services.
Witness, how some of the most popular service offerings today have gone
into a proprietary (read: closed) mode, like the ATHM backbone
intranet, itself, as a primary, but by no means the only, example. One must
consider that this is only the first step in the direction of proprietariness
where the cable operators can go -- for, they are no different in this
respect than the traditional inter-state telco type carriers.
Given the multidimensionality of the universe of services they have yet to
release, one also has to think that there is more closed-ness down the
road which is still awaiting us in the cable sector alone, never mind how
these will meld with the closed architectures will be spawned by the
traditional carriers, as well. And all these island platforms will work with
one another, because the gateways, electronic traffic cops, gatekeepers,
and other implements of complexity and toil will see to it that they work. I
am tempted to call this a form of regression, except for one of the
definitions of that word which stipulates: a gradual loss of differentiation.
Was this trend (with respect to the original direction of openness) done in
order to enable competitors (in this case, ATHM) to excel on their own?
Was it to create a more robust and predictable environment within which
to operate, regardless of the need for establishing border patrols and
crossing guards? Or was it done in order to exclude the others in this
space from taking away some of the fruits which they had nurtured and
grown to maturity? The food chain in this case is complex, and it's not as
straightforward as simply viewing this as an ATHM-MSO thing, but I
tend to think that all three of these reasons apply, almost equally, but not
as obviously as meets the eye.
What does all of this say if ATHM is going to open up its closed
architecture to others? Others, who at the present time are still a part of
what is still more typically classified as an open standards-based Internet?
An Internet which is still far more open than the one which the ISPs are
aspiring to become a part of, if they are truly negotiating for the same
kind or architectural rights and presence as ATHM occupies today?
There's some weird stuff happening here, folks, if you've been following
the bouncing ball. Don't you agree? All IMO, and comments/corrections
welcome, as always.
Regards, Frank Coluccio |
