October 2015

[Commentary] The conventional website is “space-organized.” Instead it might have been “time-organized,” like a parade.

We go to the Internet for many reasons, but most often to discover what’s new. Today, time-based structures, flowing data—in streams, feeds, blogs—increasingly dominate the Web. Flow has become the basic organizing principle of the cybersphere. The trend is widely understood, but its implications aren’t. Your future home page—the screen you go to first on your phone, laptop or TV—is a bouquet of your favorite streams from all over. News streams are blended with shopping streams, blogs, your friends’ streams, each running at its own speed. This home stream includes your personal stream as part of the blend—emails, documents and so on. Your home stream is just one tiny part of the world stream. You can see your home stream in 3-D on your laptop or desktop, in constant motion on your phone or as a crawl on your big TV. By watching one stream, you watch the whole world—all the public and private events you care about. To keep from being overwhelmed, you adjust each stream’s flow rate when you add it to your collection.

[Gelernter is a professor of computer science at Yale. Freeman is a founder of WickedlySmart]

New York state regulators are suggesting Charter Communications should build “gigabit” Internet networks in the state’s largest markets as part of the company’s $55 billion proposed acquisition of Time Warner Cable.

The suggestion was included in a Sept. 16 report by staff at the state Public Service Commission, which is reviewing the merger as part of its regulation of the utility markets in New York. Charter, which is already planning to sell Internet service that is faster and cheaper than Time Warner Cable’s existing plans, threw cold water on the idea of being forced to build out gigabit networks across the state. In a filing made with the commission, Charter’s lawyers argued that federal law prohibited the government from dictating which technologies or Internet speeds a cable company offers the public.

“There is no reason for the commission to take the unprecedented step of conditioning its approval of this transaction on the provision of certain minimum broadband speeds,” Charter wrote. Charter spokesman Justin Venich says the company’s plans for the state already include bringing Internet speeds of 100 Mbps or higher to upstate customers within two and a half years as it converts to an all-digital network, a move in line with the Cuomo administration’s goal to have universal 100 Mbps Internet service in place by the end of 2018.