Archives for June 2016

The Guardian Avatar

An intellectual expedition into the future of voice services led me and my Hypervoice Consortium colleagues to a very unexpected conclusion. For us to successfully navigate the “metaverse” of human-computer symbiosis, we each need a “Guardian Avatar” to take care of our interests.

The Hyper Wellbeing manifesto

I believe that the computing industry is at the beginning of a fundamental shift. We have spent decades making machines perform human tasks, to liberate us from drudgery. Now our job is to humanise technology, and use it to raise our quality of life in new ways.

Hypervoice ecosystem map

In 2014 the Hypervoice Consortium undertook a research project into the future of voice. As part of that work we put together a map of the emerging ecosystem. It has been sitting on my laptop ever since, generating value for nobody. I have belatedly decided to share it with everybody.

“Non-discriminatory” broadband: Just carriage, or miscarriage of justice?

The foundational idea behind “net neutrality” is one of fairness by constraining ISP power over network mechanisms. The theory is this: if there is “non-discriminatory” local traffic management, then you have “fair” global outcomes to both users and application providers. There are thousand of pages of academic books making this assumption, and it is the […]

Measuring Internet quality between Russia and Europe

For gamers located across Eurasia, servers in the wrong place can be matter of virtual life and death. For enterprises, a laggy virtual desktop is a torture instrument for employees. So imagine you are building data centres across Russia and Central Asia, and are working hard to attract business for these applications.

FCC Open Internet Transparency

The US Federal Communications Commission has issued guidance on how ISPs should go about disclosing the performance of their service. (The FCC guidance notes together with my highlights are here.) I have undertaken a quick and informal review of these guidelines to determine if they are fit for purpose.

Twitter: too much media, not enough social

Twitter is my digital chocolate. The term ‘addicted’ is inappropriate, as my level of commitment and attachment to both is near-absolute. Remission and rehab from their use is unthinkable. Instant information and copious cocoa are essential everyday luxuries: commodities that once were unknown, then expensive exotica, and now have become absolutely quotidian.

Beasts to superheroes to gods

What’s the greatest possible aspiration for technology? And what’s the one problem we need to solve if our beastly bodies are going to be morphed into gods?