The role of technology and policy in transforming online culture – chronicled by David Ellis
Industry Canada
Misguided assumptions behind the CRTC’s broadband target (3)
245 days
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How do you know?
This is an important question in many walks of life. In the natural sciences, it’s the most important question.
I’ve been doing some work with my son recently and had a chance to see that for myself. As a medical geneticist, Jordan devotes a lot of time to carrying out research and sharing his findings with other scientists in peer-reviewed journals. In his field, the standards of proof are extremely high, both because molecular medicine is so complex and because peoples’ lives are at stake.
I’d be exaggerating if I said lives were at stake in my classroom. Yet what I teach liberal arts students in a seminar about the Internet is based on a sense of respect for the same principle: you can’t write a research essay based on hearsay.
Students make bold assertions without giving a thought to why we should believe them. Of course, it’s a lot less work for the student writer to forget the “proof” and move on. But it’s well worth the effort on everyone’s part to encourage an understanding of when empirical evidence is important and when it isn’t.
Which brings us to the CRTC. (more…)
Keystone Canada: Federal Court proves Ottawa isn’t Cairo – yet
364 days
Inmates in charge of asylum
Today I’m turning the tables on Tim Wilson, editor and publisher of Telemanagement. For the last several 
months, Tim has been posting “Comments” from me in the magazine, mostly on policy and regulatory affairs.
Tim sent me a link to the piece below, which he’s written in a non-journalistic style – pretty much a rant in fact, so it’s found a good home. Btw, the pic of beleaguered Minister Clement (after the jump) is not photoshopped. He was apparently looking through a tube at the time, an allusion to jokes made at the expense of the late Republican Sen. Ted Stevens, jokes that went on to become Internet memes. Tim dropped in the photo to suggest parallels between the senator and the minister – and the parallels are no joke. (more…)
Some context for Jan 27 CRTC/UBB post
372 days
by David Ellis
in affordability, Bell Canada, censorship, data caps, Industry Canada, OECD, privacy, UBB
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On Friday I mass-emailed dozens of my closest friends asking them to read my previous day’s post, on the forces turning Canada into a digital banana republic: the Holy Trinity of Cope, Clement and Chairman von Finckenstein.
Several friends emailed me with feedback quite different from the comments that have gone up with the post itself. They break down into three kinds of reactions:
- Your post is way too long; why don’t you put in a much shorter summary. Fair enough, I’m not famous for brevity, and will follow up on this suggestion. (more…)
Of bit caps and market forces: Why the Tories’ digital consultation will fail Canadian consumers (part 1)
612 days
Are any Canadian politicians ready to dismantle the market forces doctrine?
The current government’s digital consultation faces deeply-rooted problems which I predict will derail any meaningful policy changes of benefit to mainstream Canadian consumers.
Some of these problems are built into the consultation (point #1 below). Others are contextual – structural constraints like the anti-consumer “market forces” doctrine that rules Canadian telecomm policy (point #2 below). A third problem concerns the long-time failure of Ottawa’s mandarins to help Canadians understand their technology-related decisions, something neither public hearings nor consultations are designed to do (point #3 below).
To provide perspective, I’ll be making invidious comparisons between the recent triumphs of the FCC and the corresponding failings of the CRTC. If this post isn’t long-winded enough, I also have an opinion piece on the politics of the consultation in the current issue of Telemanagement (in which I argue that the Liberal Party, despite Marc Garneau’s progressive views, seems as oblivious as the Conservatives to the real social and economic opportunities of broadband).
1 – The digital consultation has tossed consumers over the brink, while lavishing its attention on the needs of business. Here’s a semantic clue: The consultation background paper uses the word investment over 70 times; it uses the word affordable exactly once. And that latter usage refers in the paper to technology for creators – “the value of our digital infrastructure depends on the content it carries” (p.25). This is from the chapter devoted to Digital Media and the irresistible inclination to see the Internet as a delivery system for professional content. This is a highly prejudicial assumption: that policy should bend to the needs of content creators, rather than the needs of the millions of Canadians who use the Internet overwhelmingly for personal not “cultural” reasons. Download the paper here. (more…)
