Incredibly moving episode this past Sunday portraying the assassination of JFK.
The show is successful in illuminating the paradox of American democratic capitalism, as the murder of a culturally significant political figure drives a wedge into the daily struggle for upward mobility. Meanwhile, allusions throughout the season to the violence in Vietnam (bloody foot, burning monk, Greg joining the army) come to an abrupt culmination as we watch Ruby murder Lee Harvey Oswald on live TV (and then in slow motion). The Draper marriage dissolves as JFK is buried, and guests force themselves to attend the marriage of a couple they hardly know, nobody really sure even where to sit. Great television.
I came across an article on Net Neutrality on the newly redesigned (nice!) CNN.com:
“Today I’m pleased to introduce the Internet Freedom Act of 2009 that will keep the Internet free from government control and regulation,” McCain said in a statement. “It will allow for continued innovation that will in turn create more high-paying jobs for the millions of Americans who are out of work or seeking new employment. Keeping businesses free from oppressive regulations is the best stimulus for the current economy.” - John McCain
That’s a lovely statement. Now let’s see what this guardian of virtue is defending us from:
The FCC voted unanimously Thursday on a proposal that would start the process for creating regulation that will keep the Internet open. The proposal itself uses the FCC’s open Internet principles as a foundation and would forbid network operators from restricting access to lawful Internet content, applications, and services. It would also require network providers to allow customers to attach non-harmful devices to the network.
It seems counterintuitive that network operators, a small oligopolistic group of companies protected by massive barriers to entry resulting from extremely high fixed infrastructure costs, would need congressional help defending against the tyranny of their own users.
Left to their own devices, network operators would not hesitate to exert their power over the content they serve. This isn’t malicious - it makes business sense, but it unequivocally stifles innovation.
Network operators own the path between content creator and consumer. Without regulation, they are free to offer different tiers of access to that path to the highest bidder.
For example - let’s imagine that Google’s ability to pay dwarfs that of startupx, so that when Comcast rolls out a premium service at $10MM/year, Google walks away with the fastest, most reliable delivery network available. Even if startupx’s product makes Google look like Microsoft, without the ability to deliver their service with the same speed and reliability that Google offers, startupx doesn’t stand a chance. Innovation stifled.
I can appreciate caution in this situation. Taking regulation too far can be equally egregious, but given the history of the telecom industry, I would err on the side of regulation.
[FCC] Chairman Julius Genachowski…said that the commission is faced with a “dangerous combination of an uncertain legal framework with ongoing as well as emerging challenges to a free and open Internet.”
But he said the consequences of doing nothing are too great. And “fair and reasonable rules of the road” can’t wait.
I wrote a post a few months ago in the heat of the Facebook vanity URL debate. In it, I argue that while owning your name space is important, the name itself is negligible - the links between your names are what matter:
Your identity online, in your own space, can be Jake Levine, Jakel25, Jakerlevine, levine.jake, or whatever pseudonym you wish to go by. Many will be forced to settle for almost-names (or will choose to). Or, god forbid, you may choose to forgo owning a domain name altogether!! Whether your owned namespace is chrismessina.com, facebook.com/chrismessina or factoryjoe.com, what is important is that search and discovery recognizes that facebook.com/chrismessina==factoryjoe.com==the Chris Messina I am looking for.
I thought it relevant to include this in light of Google’s recent announcement of a new service called Social Search. Danny Sullivan has done a great job explaining the service.
It is easy to see the value in Google’s social search offering. When searching for information about the new Google Social Search product, for example, I am far more likely to attribute value to a link provided from my friend Alex (who works at Google) than to a link generated by a generic Google search.
Now imagine if social search were implemented on a larger scale. Imagine if Google could pull in my contacts from LinkedIn, Facebook, and Last.fm. Perhaps a LinkedIn connection who works at Morgan Stanley has linked to an article on Twitter about the economy. Might that article have greater potential value to me than a quick search on WSJ.com?
(Unfortunately for this example, LinkedIn does not allow access to contacts data, so I would have no way of seeing this article unless I am also friends with this person on Twitter.)
I’m very happy to see Google get into this game. We all recognize that it is important to maintain an online identity above and apart from the proprietary services that make up the social web, but the fact is that while we nerds of identity might go waaaaay out of our way to make the connections between our online identities all too clear, the majority of social web users just don’t care to go through the trouble. And now, they don’t need to.
Making clear the connections between our siloed identities is the first step towards realizing a truly user centric social web. Here’s to hoping we can repeat history -
If you weren’t sure about 
