June 17, 2008

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What you frame is what you get

June 17, 2008 in Ideas | 18 comments

I’m due to be on a panel at Supernova in five minutes. I won’t be there. If I were, I would say the following, and then some. Alas, no time. But, since the Net is essentially spaceless, here ya go:

  If you say the Net is a system of “pipes” and “lines” for “transporting” stuff called “content” that you “deliver” from “producers” to “consumers,” what are you saying the Net is? More importantly, how would you regulate it?

  Now, if you say the Net is a collection of “sites” that you “architect,” “design” and “build,” at “locations” with “addresses” and “domains,” across an “environment” or a “world” or a “space,” what are you saying the Net is and how would you regulate it?

  These are not academic distinctions. These are the very understandings, some of them very contradictory, on which we build businesses and make or apply laws that govern the way the Net is build and used — and who gets to do either.

  For a picture of where this can lead, let me direct you to the FCC Consumer Facts Page on “Obscene, Indecent, and Profane Broadcasts.” Especially this line:

  Obscene material is not protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution and cannot be broadcast at any time.

  The Supreme Court has upheld the law here.

  Look at the framing of obscenity law, and of the 1934 and 1996 communications acts. They are filled with the language of transport.

  Then think again about what the Net is.

Novel norms

June 17, 2008 in Health, News, Places, Science | 47 comments

So here I am at 3am for the second day in a row, taking a moment betwen hits of Dilaudid to do something that was for many years normal for me: writing something.

I have a new normal now, and it’s getting old. I’ve lost count of the wires and tubes running from my body to mechanical and electrical instruments. I haven’t eaten in close to a week, and my intake is entirely from bags of liquid dispensed by “smart pumps” that beep loudly and often for what seems most of the time to be no reason at all. I’m creepily cool now with being 90% helpless, even as I’m close to 100% hopeful that I’ll get past this thing, which remains pancreatis, with complications, the latest of which are fluids in my abdomen, with encroachment on my right lung: the same one that took a hit from a wayward embolus a couple months back, when I first made my acquaintence with this hospital.

It’s a Harvard teaching hospital, which means that a procession of young doctors come through, each with a fresh line of inquiry, few of which, when fulfilled, contributes to an institutional memory. Most of the doctors I’ve seen here have been only once or twice. Nice folks, all, however. And all less than half my age, it seems.

My new room is a solo one. I miss the company of other patients, but I do like some of the posh features, such as a toilet that has more than five square feet of flooor space. They moved me here so they could monitor me more closely. I do appreciate that. But the reason creeps me a bit: so I won’t get pneumonia or chronic pancreatitis of the sort Suzi reports here.

Well, that’s about all I have energy for. Look for another report in a few hours, I hope.

And thanks again for all your kind wishes. I’m really looking forward to returning to normal normalcy.