Stanford professor and author Lawrence Lessig gives a preview of his new book in the latest issue of Foreign Policy magazine. Here's the lead-in:

Who owns the Internet? Until recently, nobody. That's because, although the Internet was "Made in the U.S.A.," its unique design transformed it into a resource for innovation that anyone in the world could use. Today, however, courts and corporations are attempting to wall off portions of cyberspace. In so doing, they are destroying the Internet's potential to foster democracy and economic growth worldwide.

The Internet Under Siege | Larry Lessig in _Foreign Policy_

This company (probably just a few people) is located in 415 ... one of the principals is Fen Fabalme. Anyone in SF know him?

Broadcatch Technologies is a software and consulting venture that encompasses a wide range of products and services built upon the secure, open source reputation servers provided by the OpenPrivacy platform. These services - which are designed to enhance web access while protecting personal privacy - include:

* infomediary agents that capitalize on the anonymous digital marketplace by streamlining marketer access to interested and qualified customers
* personalized portal and community building systems
* pseudonymous publishing and reputation capital accrual
* inter- and intra-community persona, profile and reputation management
* anonymous verification and authentication facilities
* OpenPrivacy systems support and consulting services

Broadcatch Technologies

IX was formerly (and perhaps still) an activity of ARDA (ic-arda.org) rather than DARPA. But it appears this new DARPA office will address similar technical issues, although perhaps for different applications.

"The Information Exploitation Office (IXO) develops sensor and information system technology and systems with application to battle space awareness, targeting, command and control, and the supporting infrastructure required to address land-based threats in a dynamic, closed-loop process. IXO leverages ongoing DARPA efforts in sensors, sensor exploitation, information management, and command and control, and addresses systemic challenges associated with performing surface target interdiction in environments that require very high combat identification confidence and an associated low likelihood for inadvertent collateral damage.

Site under construction."

Check back for more details, and expect a few BAAs to be posted soon.

DARPA Information Exploitation Office (IXO)

Regular readers of Suck (suck.com) may remember Polly Esther. Well, Polly has a weblog now, into which this was written yesterday (that's Thursday, November 15, 2001 -- at present, it's about 20% of the way down the page):

"WHY I DON'T LIVE IN SAN FRANCISCO

1. It's cold.

2. It's small and brightly lit and filled with cute stores and cute restaurants and butt-white people, like a big, indoor mall, except without the central heating.

3. It's arguably more provincial and goofier than a much smaller, more isolated town.

4. It's a well-established, widely-known fact that the women are all smart and funny and great and the gay men are great but the straight men either have bed-head and play in joke-rock bands, or they're sort of wiener-y.

5. It's chilly and wet and you never have a coat with you, because you're a moron who'll never learn.

6. It's filled with perpetual adolescents who share a scornful attitude toward mainstream America, like you're not cool unless you drink green tea with soy milk and listen to This American Life and have the inside scoop on Salon. Snore.

7. Yeah, I like those people just fine, too. But still. It's cold.

8. Ambition is seen as an affliction that only strikes the shallow and the soulless.

9. There's a fundamental flavor of alienation in the air, like you're all living in some huge hipster ant farm. You tire of the other ants, but you're afraid of the real world. It's sort of like college, really, only everyone's dumber and uglier and you have to pay for the beer. And it's really fucking cold.

Yeah, I'm generalizing. What else is there to do? I'm a fucking rabbit!"

SF crew: With which of these points, if any, do you agree? Disagree?

Polly Esther (of Suck fame) on San Francisco | rabbit blog

Washington Post columnist David Ignatius explains how ubicomp can help save the world from terrorism. All that it takes is your acceptance of the Scott McNealy reality.

... We're all still waiting on you; are you ready yet?

This article also recommends John Arquilla's new book, _Networks and Netwars_, available at rand.org and referenced elsewhere in my log.

Netting Bin Laden

Just published (in October 2001) by MIT Press, with a forward by Hal Varian. 256 pages, ISBN 0-262-18217-3.

"Bandwagon effects increase the benefits to each user as additional users consume a product or service. They pervade high-technology industries. The book surveys and expands the economic theory of bandwagon effects. It applies sophisticated (though non-mathematical) bandwagon theory to provide detailed objective analysis of a number of high-technology industries. The economic analysis lends insight regarding what is going on in those industries and shows how bandwagon theory can help in developing effective strategies for business managers and public policy makers -- so that powerful bandwagon effects work for them, rather than against them. It explains similarities and differences between outcomes in various high-tech industries in terms of the underlying bandwagon economics."

Bandwagon Effects in High-Technology Industries

From an article in the Australian newspaper _The Age_:

"Reputation is the key to sifting the good from the bad on the Web.

"How do you sort out the good stuff on the Web?" People have been asking this question ever since the Web specification escaped from its home in a Swiss nuclear research lab. Most Web professionals see it as pointless: They know what they trust. But only when I tried to answer this question for a friend recently did I realise how the answer has continued to change."

Read the rest...

Winnowing grain from the Internet chaff

A report on the Cato Institute conference held this week. I logged the conference site in this topic back on November 11.

John Perry Barlow said, "I think I can safely say that history of the 21st century is going to be about the struggle between open systems and closed systems ... This is going to be an interesting and complex struggle ..."

Rick Boucher wants Congress to pass legislation that will promote competition in the business of online music services. Remember the Telecom Act, anyone? (Remember? The act that brought you the CDA?) Thanks, but no thanks. Online music services are already meeting everyone's needs, except perhaps the RIAA's, and if so it's their own fault for stalling so long.

Intellectual property conference: Copyright law has gone too far

A new specialized web directory; worth a look. From the announcement:

"EEVL provides access to quality networked engineering, mathematics and computing resources and aims to be the national focal point for online access to information in these subjects."

Some of the recommendations were well known and fairly obvious ("for general research on computer communications networks, try _IEEE Transactions on Networking_"). Others were equally useful though perhaps less well known, like Tech Law Journal (techlawjournal.com), which unfortunately is moving to a subscription model on January 1.

EEVL : the internet guide to engineering, mathematics and computing

Not a new publication, but potentially useful. Published in 2000 in the Journal of Memetics.

From the abstract: The science of memetics aims to understand the evolution of socially transmitted cultural traits. Recently attention has focused on the interaction between memetic and genetic evolution ... A body of formal theoretical work already exists that can be readily employed ... We reject the argument that meaningful differences exist between memetics and ... population genetics methods. The goal of this article is to point out the similarities between memetics and cultural evolution ... We illustrate how the theory can be applied by developing a simple illustrative model to test a hypothesis from the memetics literature.

Mathematical Models for Memetics