Blog: June 2007

Apple's iPhone is being released today amid tremendous anticipation and publicity. Several people have asked me if I'm going to buy one. But despite the great innovation it represents in mobile technology, the iPhone is also a step backward for some of the worst practices of the mobile industry, and I'm not planning to get one.

The phone will only work on AT&T's network, unlike other GSM phones, making it impossible for a customer to lawfully purchase it and then connect it to another GSM network in the U.S. (T-Mobile) or any GSM system overseas. This is the same AT&T that recently announced its intention to built technology to spy on its customers on behalf of the RIAA and MPAA.

AT&T will charge an early termination fee if you cancel service, even though they don't subsidize the phone at all, despite the widespread claim in the mobile industry that the purpose of the ETFs is to recoup their cost of providing a free or discounted phone with activation.

And worst of all, the iPhone doesn't allow third party applications at all - even worse than Verizon's practice, the previous worst, of requiring all application writers to go through an arduous approval process and pay high costs to Verizon. The iPhone does allow AJAX Web apps to run on the phone's Safari browser, which ameliorates much of the problem, but that has many limits, most of which aren't yet known. Will the apps be able to access the camera or microphone? (Porbably not.) Will they be able to take advantage of the innovative input gestures like zooming by moving fingers closer or farther? Access the address book? Save files locally? Apple could have built an API for developers, but they've never been particularly interested in fostering a development community around their technology.

Many defenders of wireless industry practices like early termination fees and locking argue that if consumers really cared about these things, they wouldn't purchase phones and plans with them. Well, I'm not purchasing an iPhone. And I hope you won't either.

Working Assets Wireless has launched a campaign to pressure Steve Jobs to unlock the iPhone for any network and has done a terrific job of building awareness of Apple's and AT&T's anti-innovation, anti-consumer practices. I encourage you to sign their petition, and most of all, don't buy an iPhone.

In honor of my moving on from Google, I threw a party where attendees were encouraged to wear t-shirts from past jobs or schools. The party ended up with a great group of friends and coworkers and an amusing collection of logo gear.

The field of computer science, at base, is about efficiency. Algorithms are evaluated based on the time they take to run - "big O notation", using formulas like O(n²) or O(n log n) telling how much time it takes to accomplish a task based on the size of the input. Programmers love to optimize systems, to make them run faster and better and more reliably. And one of the great joys of computer engineering, unlike, say, architecture or bridge building, is that if something doesn't work optimally, it's often not that expensive to simply rewrite it.

It's easy to think government ought to work the same way. After all, government is simply a social construct, governed by a set of rules (laws) just as a computer program governs a machine's behavior. (Larry Lessig famously wrote how "code is law".) If some aspect of government isn't working, why can't we just reprogram it?

Unfortunately, government is not just a socially programmed system executing a set of legal instructions, but it's a complex one with lots of dependencies. In software, you might choose to simply rewrite your code, but you may be running it on an operating system you didn't write, with an application server you didn't write, accessing a database you didn't write. (If they're open source, you can try to submit patches, but they won't always be accepted). Or maybe your client needs you to integrate your code with some legacy system written decades ago on an IBM mainframe in FORTRAN.

When dealing with a system we can't fix, we try sending it data and seeing what it will do. If I call this function, this happens. If I put that data there, that happens. Software engineers start acting like biochemists - if the cell's concentration of ions is such-and-such, then the cell will exhibit so-and-so behavior. You can complain about the cell or curse the people who wrote the FORTRAN code, but you can't reason with these systems and explain to them why they're wrong.

To get results, we must treat government similarly. Think of Congress as a black box that reacts to various stimuli. Send them ten thousand letters from citizens in their districts about an issue, and they'll pay attention. Get a lot of people to give money to their challenger, and they'll think long and hard before voting against your point of view. Make it clear that voters care about an issue, and they'll care, too.

People on Capitol Hill like to think they're impartial stewards of the country, thinking dispassionately about the Right Thing to Do. But usually there's no consensus on what that right thing is. And when people in Congress do the wrong thing, it's easy to get frustrated about their backward thinking. Ed Felten, a terrific advocate for engineers, wrote a clever post rightly excoriating Rep. Howard Berman for saying he'd consulted "all the interested parties" on patent reform legislation when in truth he'd only consulted all of the Beltway lobbying groups, not citizens. Many commenters chimed in that politicians only listen to the groups that give them money and "know which master they are serving."

Back when Berman was appointed chair of the House IP Subcommittee, Larry Lessig wrote a scathing critique of the Democrats, newly in the majority. "'Radical' changes in Washington always have this Charlie Brown/Lucy-like character (remember Lucy holding the football?): it doesn't take long before you realize how little really ever changes in DC. Message to the Net from the newly Democratic House? Go to hell." Lessig saw Berman's appointment as a rejection of the blogs and activist groups on the Net that regained them the majority.

Felten is right that Berman wasn't considering the public interest. Lessig was right that the leadership wasn't considering Net activists' concerns when appointing him in the first place. But simply saying that on a blog is like saying that a cancerous cell shouldn't be dividing so darn much. True, but we don't just talk about it, we develop chemotherapy and radiation and drugs to stop it. Instead of just blogging or whining on comments, we need to be developing antibodies to the special interest groups. The ordinary citizens, who Congress isn't listening to, need to make themselves heard, by writing letters, making phone calls, signing petitions, giving money, and voting.

We know it works. Just look at Net Neutrality, an issue that most people still don't understand. But a coalition of groups from Free Press to MoveOn to the Christian Coalition worked together and didn't just talk, they bombarded Congress with advocacy. And it got results. Several major Presidential candidates and the Congressional leadership came out in support of Net Neutrality. The stimulus was strong enough, and the response meaningful. That fight is far from over, but it shows what citizens can do when they take action.

Next time you read about the latest assault on Internet freedom, don't just blog about it. To Lessig, Felten, Cory Doctorow, and all the other great bloggers, don't just write about how much it sucks, direct people to get involved to fix it. Encourage them to join or give to groups like Save the Internet, Free Press, Public Knowledge, EFF, or the political action commitee I founded, IPac, as well as many more.

For a long time everyone complained bitterly about Microsoft's monopolistic behavior and its operating system dominance. Then some hackers got together, enlisted more hackers, and created an alternative so good that most Web sites don't run on Microsoft software and (coupled with several more innovations) some people say "Microsoft is dead." We can make the IP extremists' and the information gatekeepers' positions dead in Washington, too.