November 2015

[Commentary] China’s Great Firewall is still blocking the services of Facebook, Google and Twitter, but that hasn't stopped top brass from all three Silicon Valley firms from visiting Beijing in a span of less than 10 days, perhaps hoping to boost their business prospects on the mainland. Following in the footsteps of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg -- who gave a much-discussed speech in Chinese late in Oct at Tsinghua University -- senior executives from Google and Twitter made appearances in Beijing on Nov 2, attending a technology conference.

“In fact, we do hope to provide service in China, and we continue to communicate with the Chinese government. This is also why I’m here this week,” said Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of Alphabet/Google. He added that the company has “always been in touch with the Chinese government" and that Chinese officials had visited Google offices in California in the past. When Google decided to abandon the Chinese search market because of censorship and hacking concerns and move its servers to Hong Kong in 2010, it kept about 500 employees on the mainland who are mainly responsible for selling Google’s ad services to Chinese companies looking to reach consumers overseas.

Wireless carriers have been experimenting with small cell technology to boost a network’s performance in crowded neighborhoods or smaller places, like coffee shops or doctors’ offices. T-Mobile said it would allow subscribers to bring this technology into their homes, with the 4G LTE CellSpot -- essentially a mini-tower that will deliver a 4G LTE wireless signal inside a residence or small business.

“It helps T-mobile in areas where coverage might not be optimal -- say, [if] you are an organization that would like to consider T-Mobile as your provider but coverage in the office is poor,” said Kantar Worldpanel research chief Carolina Milanesi. “It’s no coincidence that the release mentioned, specifically, small businesses. Second, it gives customers another reason not to leave.” Other carriers offer signal boosters that amplify an existing network strength in the home. AT&T markets a MicroCell Wireless Network Extender. Verizon offers something called a Network Extender to enhance indoor calling and data.

Access to a high-speed broadband network infrastructure is as important to today’s communities as the electrical, telephone and interstate highway networks were in the last century. Absent commercial build-out of the infrastructure, many states, cities and counties are taking it upon themselves to address this need. By leveraging best practices and a structured, comprehensive planning process communities can optimize their chances for developing an approach that delivers the necessary capabilities in a sustainable manner.

[Commentary] The future of libraries now has a very long history. Like all futures, it’s a moving target, changing as new experiences, expectations, and technologies change our sense of what’s possible. When the main branch of the New York Public Library opened on Fifth Avenue in 1911, it was a state-of-the-art futurist landmark, with pneumatic tubes zipping call slips to librarians who retrieved bound titles from enormous steel stacks and placed them on Ferris-wheel conveyor belts. Today, the building has been a historical landmark for 50 years, the tubes retired, the stacks empty. Yesterday’s futures become today’s nostalgic baseline.

In its own way, the mission is all very traditional. Collect and preserve original materials; make them available to researchers and the public; both serve and draw on your membership and community. And just as the Web has become increasingly not just mainstream but central to many of our lives, the projects by teams like NYPL Labs may still be experimental but less R&D than central to the basic proposition of what a library is in the 21st century. Every day, the future becomes the present, just before it disappears altogether.

[Tim Carmody is a reporter and recovering academic who writes about technology and media]