I saw this image posted by someone I follow on Google Plus and I love it. It captures the perception of various people on what you do and in reality what you actually do! I saw something similar posted to our LTS discussion group about Librarians, which was very funny too.
OK, let us get down to the topic at hand. What is net neutrality? This definition by Wikipedia captures it well “Net neutrality (also network neutrality or Internet neutrality) is the principle that Internet service providers and governments should treat all data on the Internet equally, not discriminating or charging differentially by user, content, site, platform, application, type of attached equipment, and modes of communication.” Makes sense, right? It turns out to be not so and the Internet Service Providers such as AT&T, Verizon and Comcast have been fighting this in the courts. Net neutrality suffered a big blow recently when a court struck down this on technicality.
I am not a lawyer, so I don’t necessarily understand the intricacies of the difference, but as you see in this Time magazine article, “The groundwork for Tuesday’s defeat was established in 2002, when the FCC made the fateful decision to classify broadband as an “information service” not a “telecommunications service,” which would have allowed the agency to impose “common carrier” regulations prohibiting discrimination by the broadband companies.”
Bottom line – your ISPs will soon have a lot of control over what content and how it is delivered to you and you won’t have a say on it except to choose the best available option, which may not be necessarily the one you are so used to. You can read this article for “What the Internet could Look Like without Net Neutrality”
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After enjoying a fabulous Thanksgiving week, I fell sick. This is the usual flu like symptoms and cold and cough that I can’t seem to prevent twice a year. Except, this time it hit me hard. I rarely choose to stay home when I feel sick from cold and cough. After a long time, I had to do it. Now I am feeling much better, though I have a few more days of recovery left. On Monday, 11/26 and Tue, 11/27, some of us gathered in Bryn Mawr College for the Seven College Gathering. This used to be the seven sisters, which is now down to really six, of which one is a sibling (Vassar). This year, in addition to the usual groups that gather – the Presidents, Provosts and Deans of Students – they also invited the CIOs because of the importance and the future of Libraries and Technologies in small Liberal Arts Colleges.
It was a very nice gathering and the group of CIOs discussed various matters ranging from online learning to the Libraries as space, but most importantly, we agreed to collaborate on a couple of projects. One around digitization of materials in the archives for a Women in Education project and another around how best to support Digital Humanities in our campuses. The details of these will emerge later and I will be happy to share when we know more.
In case you have not heard, a UN sponsored conference begins in Dubai this week – World Conference on International Communication (WCIT) – organized by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU). The official language used here would lead one to think about this is yet another conference to talk about “international communication”, tariffs, taxes and the likes. It turns out that this is a conference where some select countries (the usual suspects like Russia and China) are pushing for international agreements on regulating internet traffic. As we all know, this has become the dominant vehicle for international communication. We all should pay attention to this and express our opinion on why any regulation is such a bad idea. You can do that at a Google Sponsored site – Take Action.
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I saw this image posted by someone I follow on Google Plus and I love it. It captures the perception of various people on what you do and in reality what you actually do! I saw something similar posted to our LTS discussion group about Librarians, which was very funny too.