Erstellt am: 5. 5. 2009 - 11:27 Uhr

Today's webtip: A series of tubes?

or a collection of premium services? It depends on what you want from the net.

You might not have guessed it yet, but I'm a fan of the Internet. A massive, face painted, fanshirt wearing, too loud yelling jump up and down and do the wave kind of fan. I am a fan because of what it is, and because of what it still could become. I'm a fan of its raw potential.

It might sound a bit out of date and clichéd, but the Net could still end up being one of the most earth shatteringly disruptive technologies we have come up with.

So what is so special about it?

I am, now, as an individual, potentially connected to every other individual on the net. That could eventually mean being connected to nearly every person on the planet. A connection devoid of the traditional gate-keepers. And that is what makes it so disruptive. A good portion of our history and our society has been defined based on these gates and who controls them. And now, thanks to the Net, many of these gates have either become irrelevant, or they are being redefined. In some cases, we each have become our own gatekeeper.

It's not just the media and their traditional structures of publication and distribution that are faced with having to reimagine their roles. Religions, political parties and even government institutions are all facing massive changes due to the simple existance of ubiquitous point to point communication.

But where I see a massive potential for good, others see an imminant threat to their existance. Industries facing a complete rexamination of their business models are less than happy about this state of affairs.

I think the introduction of the Skype app for the iPhone is a particularly apt example. While some carriers panicked and saw the application as competition to their telephone services, other wireless carriers saw it as a benefit and an added service to help sell their tubes. As long as their is a healthy competitive market and I can choose which attitude I want to support, everything is cool.

But in markets where internet access is limited to one or two major providers, it could be a very bad thing indeed.

Of course, there are a lot of other people out there trying to explain this stuff. Some with short and catchy videos, other with more indepth explanations.

ipower.ning.com is the short form explanation on video.

www.iptegrity.com is a bit more in depth, and written by a Ph.D Candidate who has dedicated her blog to issues of Intellectual Property and Internet Protocols

isen.com Is probably the best of the bunch. It is the text of a presentation given to the Broadband Properties summit.

And finally www.blackouteurope.eu has an update about the current issue and the vote that is scheduled to take place tomorrow.