October 2013

What exactly is driving the Internet of things? “Imagine a world where all your devices are connected,” said Greg Duffy, CEO of DropCam. “That would actually be a really stupid world… The average consumer does not want their toilet connected to their toaster.”

Instead, Duffy thinks that we should stop thinking about it as the Internet of things and start thinking about it as the Internet of useful things. He thinks that the actual hardware isn’t as important as the software powering it. He suggests thinking that way is akin to thinking the important part of the Internet is the wires and switches that power it, rather than the information it contains. But there are lots of challenges we must face, particularly in the US. Duffy said the US is only rated 20th in the world for wireless connectivity, and lack of access to fast broadband holds development back.

Politics may have had as much to do with the HealthCare.gov failure as they had to do with the government shutdown, according to Lawrence Kocot, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution and formerly senior advisor to the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, who helped launch an online Drug Plan Finder application for Medicare Part D, the Medicare prescription drug benefit, in 2004 and 2005.

When a new government program is the subject of intense political debate, that can make building the technology systems that support the program especially difficult, he said. “Politics has probably played more of a role in this than in any other rollout I’ve seen,” Kocot said of the online health insurance marketplace. “That probably made [agencies and contractors responsible for designing the system] more guarded about information they were willing to share,” he said. “It probably resulted in a level of scrutiny of some decisions by career staff that otherwise may not have been as intense. It probably made them more aware of oversight. It probably hampered communication with other parties.” Increased scrutiny can be a good thing, he said, helping to catch errors early in the process and to ensure a host of federal agencies, state agencies, regulators, contractors and private-sector interests are all on the same page.

[Commentary] A funny thing happened while we all watched the tragic comedy known as the budget crisis – someone went and made some decisions about the future of the Internet. Or, well, not to put too fine a point on it, decided we need to make some major decisions on how to govern the Internet. Meeting in Montevideo, Uruguay, the leaders of organizations responsible for coordination of the Internet technical infrastructure globally recognized that the Internet and World Wide Web have been built and governed in the public interest through unique mechanisms for global multistakeholder Internet cooperation, which have been intrinsic to their success. OK, all good so far. But the leaders went on to discuss “the clear need to continually strengthen and evolve these mechanisms, in truly substantial ways, to be able to address emerging issues faced by stakeholders in the Internet.” And that’s what’s raising eyebrows.

[Commentary] The recent government shutdown was applauded by some who believe that small government is better, and so, by extension, that no government at all must be better still. That got us to thinking. Not about the whole government, just the piece we know best: the Federal Communications Commission. Suppose the FCC closed for good. Would anybody notice? We think the operation of our culture and commerce depends on at least three of the FCC’s functions: licensing, establishing technical rules, and participating in international treaty negotiations.