BigHook 2009: The Tussle

7Sept09

Introduction

The theme of BigHook2009 is "The Tussle," i.e., the tussle between market efficiency (or the profit motive, monetizability, etc.) and fairness (or public goods, or public interest).

Andrew Odlyzko recently wrote, "The name might change, the technology might change, but the tussle will go on." This theme will allow discussions on the uneven spread (and cost) of technology, the development of wireless technology and its re-regulation and control, and, pretty much the whole range of technical, economic, social, cultural, political, ecological, regulatory and business issues that will shape the network we want to leave to our grandchildren.

When do public goods trump private interests, and vice versa? The tussle over this question turns on where costs are allocated and benefits distributed. When pre-conditions change, the tussle morphs too. The Internet is the miracle it is because, accidentally, it matured far from the tussle, outside the purview of profit and loss. Now that the Internet has become critical business infrastructure, will the miracle survive, or will the Internet devolve to resemble the railroad and the telephone, or worse? -- David I

Music lovers of a certain bent want to exchange recordings with each other, but the rights holders want to stop them. People want to talk in private, and the government wants to tap their conversations . . . ISPs must interconnect, but ISPs are sometimes fierce competitors. It is not at all clear what interests are being served, to whose advantage, to what degree, when ISPs negotiate terms of connection. It is not a single happy family of people dedicated to universal packet carriage.

Tussle in Cyberspace: Defining Tomorrow's Internet, David D. Clark, et alia, 2002

. . . [T]he underlying issue . . . arises from a conflict between society's drives for economic efficiency and for fairness. There is no reason to expect that this conflict will lessen, and instead there are arguments that suggest it will intensify. Should something like net neutrality prevail, the conflict would likely move to a different level [e.g.,] search neutrality [or] "cloud computing" [which] could lead to dominance of a single service provider. The effective monopoly of that dominant player could then become perceived as far more insidious than any of the 'walled gardens' or 'intelligent network' that telcos would like to build.

Network Neutrality, Search Neutrality, and the Never-ending Conflict
between Efficiency and Fairness in Markets, Andrew Odlyzko, 2009

The decentralizing bias of [the Internet is] accepted and interpolated only until the market's intellectual guard can devise a new countermeasure for their patrons to employ on behalf of preserving business as usual.

Economics is Not a Natural Science, Doug Rushkoff, 2009

Agenda

[times are roughly stable, what happens at those times still subject to change]

Wednesday, 9/9

Noon to 1:30 PM: Check in, lunch, swimming, meet fellow participants
1:30 to 3:30 PM: Session 1a: Introductions
3:30 to 4:00 PM: break
4:00 to 5:30 PM, Session 1b: Intros, cont'd, Intro to "The Tussle"
5:30 to 8:00 PM: Dinner, fishing
8:00 to 9:00 PM, Session 2: Music by Miller, Snowe & Weed, talk by Dan Gallagher, President of OpenCape, on OpenCape
9:00 to whenever -- Five-minute talks on whatever people want to talk about . . .

Thursday, 9/10

7:00 to 8:30 AM: Breakfast, fishing
8:30 to 10:00 AM, Session 3a: Uneven economic development, interconnection, economic fairness and the Internet. Robert Pepper, discussion starter.
10:00 to 10:30: break
10:30 AM to Noon, Session 3b: The 21st century tussle: air power. David P. Reed, discussion starter
Noon to 2:00 PM: Lunch, swimming
2:00 to 3:30 PM, Session 4a: Let's see what happens here . . .
3:30 to 4:00 PM: break
4:00 to 5:30, Session 4b: TBD . . .
5:30 to 8:00 PM: Dinner, fishing
8:00 to 9:30 PM, Session 5: Spectacular Musical Event with with Ginny Snowe, John Miller & Joe Weed, plus An altogether different look at what’s important; a conversation with Gary Borisy, Director of the Marine Biological Laboratory
9:30PM to whenever: BOF Sessions

Friday, 9/11

7:00 to 8:30 AM: Breakfast, fishing
8:30 to 10:00 AM, Session 6a: TBD
10:00 to 10:30 AM: break
10:30 AM to Noon, Session 6b: Concluding remarks & learnings -- everybody.
Noon to 2:00 PM: Lunch, swimming
2:00 PM: Adjourn

Logistics

Information about Airports, Busses, Lodging, for BigHook is here. (It's pretty much the same as previous years.) Providence (PVD) is recommended because the airport is small and traffic is better than Boston, though "The Big Dig" has made Boston's Logan Airport more accessible.

Click the pic for "live" G-Map of Airplane House, etc:

Music

John Miller, Ginny Snowe and Joe Weed are BigHook2009's Musicians in Residence.

Sponsors & Acknowledgements

The BigHook community and isen.com, LLC owe a great debt of gratitude to Mark Peshoff of Cisco's Executive Thought Leadership Program for Cisco's consistent and far-sighted sponsorship of BigHook2009. We also gratefully acknowledge the support of Time Warner Cable, thanks to CTO Mike Lajoie, and Google via the good offices of Rick Whitt, Vint Cerf and Michael Jones.

Thanks also to

Chef Roland and his fine crew for the food
Dewayne Hendricks, Hartley Hoskins, Art Gaylord, and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution for Internet connectivity
Judi Clark for Web work
Willow Blish and Patricia Gadsby for "Eat Local" advice
Crissy Walford, for the loan of her bass
Gardner Miller, the Point man
Paula Blumenthal, my wife, sine qua non

Fine Print:

All of the above is on a best effort basis. I might fail to deliver on any of the above, so none of it is a promise, and no guarantees or warranties are implied. Here's my promise: I'll do my best, and if things screw up or stuff happens that causes plans to change, I'll do my best to give as much notice as I practically can. In other words, if you don't expect the impossible, I'll do my best to deliver it. -- David I

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Intro