The Internet Distinction

(Original at Disruptive Telephony)

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We have before us a choice of futures.

One choice leads to a future where innovative companies like Voxeo can emerge, thrive, disrupt and succeed.

Another choice leads to a future where what little “innovation” there is exists only at the will of the gatekeepers to the network after appropriate requirements and/or payments are met. Other choices lead to outcomes somewhere in between those polarities.

How will we choose?

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[N]ow we see services like Facebook, Google+, Twitter and more that seek to provide a nice pretty space in which you can exchange messages, photos and more… without ever leaving the confines of the service… they are a walled garden with just many ways to access the garden and to look over the walls.

Everyone wants to own your eyeballs… to host your content… to provide your identity…

And we see companies like Apple, Google and Microsoft seeking to control a large degree of how we connect to and use the mobile Internet…

And we see a change from “permissionless innovation” where anyone can set up a new service… to a model where you have ask permission or agree to certain “terms of service” in order to connect your new service to other services or to have your app available on some platforms…

And we see countries that want to throw up a wall around their citizens… sometimes to keep information from coming in… and sometimes to keep information from going out… and sometimes to be able to shut down all access…

And we see players who did control our communications systems always looking for opportunities where they could maybe, just maybe, stuff the proverbial genie back in the bottle and regain that control they lost…

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[T]his coming Monday, September 19th, I will join the Internet Society as a staff member.

The Missing Link

The particular project I will join within ISOC is a brand new initiative targeted at helping bridge the gap between the standards created within the IETF and the network operators and enterprises who are actually deploying networks and technologies based on those standards. To help translate those standards into operational guidance… to help people understand how to deploy those standards and why they should, what benefit they will see, etc

The initiative is currently called the “Deployment and Operationalization Hub”, or “DO Hub”, and while that may or may not be its final name, the idea is to find/curate content that is already out there created by others, create content where there are gaps, make it easy to distribute information about these resources… and promote the heck out of it so that people get connected to the resources that they need. The initial focus will be, somewhat predictably, on IPv6, but also DNSSEC and possibly another technology. It is a new project and the focus is being very deliberately kept tight to see how effective this can be.

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