[00:00.750 --> 00:06.490]  Okay, so I'm up against spy versus spy and mesh VPN networks.
[00:06.530 --> 00:09.270]  If you were planning to be at either of those talks, you're in the wrong room.
[00:10.510 --> 00:14.250]  I am the telecom informer, also known as TProphet.
[00:14.390 --> 00:18.230]  I write page 13 of every issue for 2600.
[00:18.350 --> 00:25.650]  And what I wanted to talk about today is how telecom actually creates culture on our planet.
[00:27.530 --> 00:29.730]  So, today we take it for granted.
[00:29.890 --> 00:33.910]  We can communicate instantly for free or very, very cheaply.
[00:34.550 --> 00:38.130]  And we can do this, you know, even on our phones.
[00:38.130 --> 00:40.530]  But it wasn't always this way.
[00:40.770 --> 00:48.490]  You know, in the past, communicating with other people was actually real work if you were going any farther than, you know, the next block.
[00:48.490 --> 00:50.570]  You'd have to pick up a quill pen.
[00:50.890 --> 00:58.990]  Or if you were the Anasanzi people, you'd draw pictograms on rocks and hope people going past would see the messages that you sent.
[00:59.270 --> 01:06.950]  If you wanted to send something over distance, you'd be loading it onto a ship and, you know, the ship might sink along the way or get caught in a storm.
[01:06.950 --> 01:11.630]  You know, this was a very slow and unreliable way to communicate.
[01:11.910 --> 01:17.350]  And we take for granted now that it's actually easy and cheap.
[01:17.530 --> 01:21.190]  But this is a relatively recent development in human history.
[01:22.910 --> 01:25.950]  In the past, as well, communicating was asynchronous.
[01:25.950 --> 01:37.770]  So, you know, if you look at the example of war generals, there would be messages that would be sent from a distant capital or distant orders from a distant general.
[01:38.090 --> 01:41.770]  And actually, there was a... you wouldn't know what happened.
[01:41.950 --> 01:47.490]  You'd send... you would flip instructions over the wall and you'd find out weeks or months later what the result was.
[01:48.490 --> 01:50.550]  Oversight was extremely limited.
[01:50.850 --> 02:00.090]  My corner of the Pacific Northwest was explored originally, you know, by white settlers by the Lewis and Clark expedition.
[02:00.990 --> 02:07.230]  And, you know, this was a case where these guys were given some money and some supplies near Washington, D.C.
[02:07.350 --> 02:08.450]  and just sent west.
[02:08.710 --> 02:15.210]  And, you know, it was a couple of years before they came back with stories of their attorney.
[02:15.510 --> 02:21.890]  And, you know, of course, the ability to have any oversight at all was not only limited, it was impossible.
[02:23.450 --> 02:29.170]  And then, you know, all of that changed because the telegraph was invented.
[02:29.870 --> 02:39.410]  And all of a sudden, over distance, we were now able to send messages and get responses back in the same day.
[02:39.690 --> 02:50.250]  And this was huge because not only was the telegraph relatively reliable, not completely, but relatively reliable, but it sped up our ability to communicate.
[02:50.870 --> 03:04.310]  And this was a massive shift in how we communicated as humans, even more profound than the telephone, because this is really the first time that over distance, we were able to communicate on the same day.
[03:05.250 --> 03:08.230]  And it created a massive culture shift.
[03:08.230 --> 03:20.890]  And, you know, every time there is a technology with a lot of potential, it's replete... you know, the universe is replete with futurists who make a ton of predictions about what that's going to mean.
[03:21.010 --> 03:25.950]  And so, you know, some of those predictions came true, and some of the predictions didn't.
[03:26.770 --> 03:29.050]  You know, the world did get smaller.
[03:30.310 --> 03:32.690]  International business was enabled, but not seamless.
[03:32.690 --> 03:34.330]  You know, tariffs were still there.
[03:34.470 --> 03:35.550]  Countries still exist.
[03:36.510 --> 03:38.830]  You know, it didn't lead to world peace.
[03:39.010 --> 03:46.550]  Every time we've had an innovation in communication, you know, people come out and say, well, this is how we're finally all going to get along with each other.
[03:46.670 --> 03:50.390]  And, you know, that didn't happen with the telegraph or the telephone or the Internet.
[03:50.910 --> 03:55.770]  And, you know, another culture shift, this was the first form of wiretapping.
[03:56.210 --> 04:07.450]  So rather than steaming open somebody's letters and reading them, you know, you had the ability, if you were a government, to monitor people's communications silently with zero evidence that you ever did it.
[04:07.630 --> 04:09.990]  And it didn't take nearly as much work.
[04:11.410 --> 04:16.790]  The telecom era came along later, and this was actually another revolution.
[04:17.030 --> 04:35.810]  It wasn't, you know, if you look at how revolutionary was it versus, you know, being able to communicate only across distance with a weeks or months later shift versus, you know, going from telegraph to telephone, the degree of dramatic...
[04:35.810 --> 04:39.010]  the degree of how dramatic the change is is slightly less.
[04:39.290 --> 04:41.710]  But I score it as a revolution.
[04:41.730 --> 04:47.670]  And the reason why I do is because telecom became a primary means of doing business.
[04:48.090 --> 05:04.630]  And if you really think about it, you couldn't actually have a company prior to the telephone in any really effective way where people could do business with you without ever actually coming to your place of business.
[05:05.150 --> 05:08.530]  There was mail order to some degree.
[05:08.870 --> 05:14.710]  There was, you know, you could mail order over the telegraph with some mail order houses that were particularly innovative.
[05:15.070 --> 05:24.750]  But generally speaking, if you had a business that wasn't a simple catalog business, it was very, very difficult to do that over a telegraph.
[05:24.750 --> 05:28.690]  But things like Domino's Pizza actually became possible with the telephone.
[05:29.010 --> 05:33.970]  And the telephone enabled truly synchronous communications without the hassles of radio.
[05:35.250 --> 05:50.090]  So I put more efficient than the telegraph with the question mark because you used to have to be very deliberate before the telephone in which communication you made because of the asynchronous nature of that communication.
[05:50.650 --> 06:00.210]  You'd have to think very carefully if you were instructing your generals in the field about what all the contingencies were and actually address them in a written communication.
[06:01.630 --> 06:05.390]  Because prior to the telegraph, you might not actually...
[06:05.390 --> 06:10.010]  There may not be the ability to sync back with you and find out what you really meant.
[06:11.590 --> 06:13.530]  Well, the telegraph sped all that up.
[06:13.710 --> 06:16.550]  You could actually ask questions and get a reply the same day.
[06:17.790 --> 06:22.290]  With the telephone, you can actually just pick up somebody and call them and ask questions.
[06:22.450 --> 06:30.330]  And so maybe it's more efficient because it enables faster turnaround, but maybe it's less efficient because people are less thoughtful in how they communicate.
[06:32.950 --> 06:34.590]  Mobility brought further evolution.
[06:34.590 --> 06:45.250]  And, you know, when you think about it, think about the ability of being able to receive a call any time and place as opposed to having to be in a fixed location.
[06:45.790 --> 06:47.690]  That's actually another change.
[06:47.890 --> 07:01.090]  So when you consider how decisions are made, how quickly they're turned around, how reachable we are as humans, the mobile phone was just as big an evolution as going from the telegraph to the telephone.
[07:01.930 --> 07:04.430]  This also enabled more and closer surveillance.
[07:04.910 --> 07:11.690]  We can actually now be followed everywhere we go through the GPS and our mobile devices.
[07:12.050 --> 07:14.030]  The microphones can be turned on remotely.
[07:14.310 --> 07:21.450]  So actually, it's not just what we're saying on the telephone, but everything going on around us that could potentially be monitored.
[07:21.910 --> 07:25.930]  And we still haven't figured out as a society how to deal with that.
[07:25.930 --> 07:29.070]  And the telecom era is still growing.
[07:29.390 --> 07:31.250]  Many people are still not connected at all.
[07:31.390 --> 07:33.790]  A surprisingly large number, in fact.
[07:34.930 --> 07:53.050]  The final point that I'll add, you know, that telecommunications revolutionized, is that we actually have seen a convergence of IT systems with telecom, which has unlocked a huge number of scenarios of access to information and ability of humans to innovate that didn't exist before.
[07:56.980 --> 07:59.820]  So telecom tells a story.
[08:00.300 --> 08:05.600]  And it actually, you know, in my travels around the world, I've been to all seven continents.
[08:05.860 --> 08:16.300]  One of the things that really is interesting to me is, as telecom comes into a society and as it gets adopted and used, how does that change how people interact?
[08:16.300 --> 08:21.700]  And actually, what can you tell about how people...
[08:21.700 --> 08:24.540]  about where a country is on the development scale?
[08:25.500 --> 08:31.840]  And what stage are people at in development economically by what telecommunications looks like?
[08:32.000 --> 08:33.780]  So let me take you to South Africa.
[08:33.980 --> 08:36.100]  This is a one-cell community phone.
[08:36.320 --> 08:42.840]  You'll find these in a lot of communities in South Africa where people don't actually have phones.
[08:44.280 --> 08:47.520]  There's still... there's 55% unemployment there.
[08:48.000 --> 08:54.980]  While more and more people are able to own mobile devices, there are still many places where they cannot.
[08:55.340 --> 09:08.280]  And so what these one-cell booths allow is, if you'd like to make a call, they cost 90 Rand cents, which is around 7 cents at today's exchange rate per minute.
[09:08.420 --> 09:11.180]  And you can call phones almost like a pay phone.
[09:11.180 --> 09:14.020]  But the way it works is, you go into one of these booths.
[09:14.440 --> 09:17.220]  You leave a small deposit with the person working the counter.
[09:17.380 --> 09:18.160]  You pick up a phone.
[09:18.680 --> 09:21.340]  It actually runs over the one-cell mobile network.
[09:21.580 --> 09:23.640]  And you take... you make your call.
[09:23.720 --> 09:24.340]  It's timed.
[09:24.480 --> 09:28.020]  And then when you finish, you can pay the guy who's sitting in the booth working.
[09:28.520 --> 09:30.980]  And this is the way that a lot of people communicate.
[09:31.140 --> 09:33.620]  When they need to make a phone call, they actually have to go somewhere.
[09:34.640 --> 09:35.600]  It's not in their house.
[09:35.720 --> 09:36.700]  They don't have a mobile phone.
[09:36.700 --> 09:40.680]  And they pay somebody, just like if you were taking a letter to the post office.
[09:40.880 --> 09:45.080]  And in fact, this particular one I took across the street from a...
[09:45.080 --> 09:50.800]  This particular picture I took across the street from a post office in a remote community.
[09:56.000 --> 10:07.280]  Additionally, you'll see cases where people who don't have mobile phones, and, you know, the number is shrinking, but the technology is still out there, who want the ability to communicate with people that do.
[10:07.460 --> 10:16.580]  And so one innovation that we saw that was, you know, kind of interesting in Thailand is the addition of SMS capability to pay phones.
[10:16.720 --> 10:21.800]  And you also... it's not only in Thailand that this is the case, but it actually gets used there.
[10:22.160 --> 10:27.040]  You know, there's... if you use a British telecom pay phone, you have the ability to send SMSs from it.
[10:27.080 --> 10:29.700]  It never really got popular, but these still get used.
[10:29.700 --> 10:34.340]  And the reason why they do is because you can send a text for a very cheap price.
[10:34.420 --> 10:38.880]  And if you're out of mobile credit, you can do it from one of these phones very easily.
[10:40.280 --> 10:47.220]  But you probably noticed in both of those communications scenarios, it's an asynchronous form of communication.
[10:47.760 --> 11:02.820]  So, you know, if you have access to a telephone, but you don't have the ability to receive calls, if you will only have the ability to send messages, you're really not a whole lot better off from an economic standpoint than you would be if you had a telegraph.
[11:04.160 --> 11:14.600]  Your ability to be able to, for example, start a small business where you can actually fulfill orders in real time is going to be limited.
[11:14.840 --> 11:17.020]  And so, you know, I want to drive that home.
[11:17.020 --> 11:20.940]  Neither Thailand or South Africa are poor developing countries.
[11:21.280 --> 11:28.120]  They are both developing rapidly and fairly developed on the world scale.
[11:28.340 --> 11:37.220]  But even in countries like these, there are people who don't have access to the technologies we all take for granted and the abilities that those give us.
[11:37.940 --> 11:46.220]  You know, another thing that I think is interesting culturally is the kinds of businesses and the kinds of innovation that get enabled through telecommunications.
[11:46.860 --> 11:55.660]  For example, you can get solutions to your problems from a world-famous Pandit...
[11:55.660 --> 11:59.360]  I apologize, I cannot pronounce this last name.
[12:00.220 --> 12:04.560]  But, you know, this is one ad from a newspaper in Paramayibo, Suriname.
[12:04.560 --> 12:09.520]  And, you know, these kinds of services are taken seriously in the local market.
[12:09.980 --> 12:12.340]  There are multiple providers of these.
[12:12.580 --> 12:21.200]  And it's actually, you know, it's a call for, you know, for help with love and marriage and, you know, business and so forth.
[12:21.640 --> 12:24.620]  And you can actually arrange all of this over the telephone.
[12:25.880 --> 12:29.580]  Obviously, this is a service that you didn't use to be able to do over the phone.
[12:29.680 --> 12:33.940]  But people actually prefer to do it in this market over the phone because it's more private.
[12:33.940 --> 12:37.580]  They're not seen going into a counselor or an advisor's office.
[12:38.160 --> 12:52.360]  They can get in touch with their mystic spirituality without running into this strong Dutch sentiment that also exists on the business side of Suriname, as a former Dutch colony.
[12:52.620 --> 13:00.880]  So, you know, it's kind of an interesting balance where we can feel comfortable doing things over the telephone that we aren't necessarily comfortable doing in person.
[13:00.880 --> 13:08.160]  and that makes services available to us to consume that weren't necessarily as accessible before.
[13:10.540 --> 13:16.780]  Another point of accessibility to telecommunications and the things we all take for granted, this picture is from Palau.
[13:17.500 --> 13:24.260]  The Palau National Communications Company is your one way in and out of that country and it all goes over this satellite dish.
[13:24.260 --> 13:35.520]  So when you really think about it, if you want to use the Internet, if you want to make a phone call, if you want to do anything that isn't on the island of Palau, you're going through a pretty slow satellite link.
[13:35.640 --> 13:36.280]  It's constrained.
[13:36.940 --> 13:39.800]  And there's a 500 millisecond delay on top of it.
[13:39.840 --> 13:40.700]  So what does that mean?
[13:41.680 --> 13:46.100]  It's pretty expensive to make phone calls off of Palau around 50 cents a minute.
[13:46.600 --> 13:54.260]  If you want to use the Internet, you have a limited amount of data that you can use and the bandwidth that you have access to is like dial-up.
[13:54.480 --> 13:55.640]  So you can do some email.
[13:56.080 --> 13:59.200]  You can do some very, very simple web browsing.
[13:59.340 --> 14:05.520]  In fact, people in Palau prefer to use mobile websites because they're optimized for using less bandwidth.
[14:05.520 --> 14:11.820]  And they can actually use mobile apps to accomplish things like ordering on Amazon, which they can do.
[14:12.020 --> 14:12.680]  The U.S.
[14:12.760 --> 14:16.220]  Post Office actually works in Palau, even though it's no longer a U.S.
[14:16.300 --> 14:16.640]  possession.
[14:19.640 --> 14:30.480]  So people have changed their lives around not only the access that's available, but the limits to the access that's available.
[14:30.580 --> 14:35.000]  And I think it's particularly interesting how creative people in Palau are.
[14:35.600 --> 14:39.600]  around how to get around the limited amount of bandwidth that they have.
[14:41.800 --> 14:43.740]  So this picture is from China.
[14:44.120 --> 14:52.200]  And one thing that's very interesting culturally, I think, in China, I lived there for three years, is people like to go places to do things.
[14:52.400 --> 14:59.400]  You know, you just get used to, in China, going to the phone company's office to be able to deal with paying a bill, for example.
[15:00.040 --> 15:03.420]  And you don't actually need to go to the office to pay a bill.
[15:03.420 --> 15:05.740]  I mean, we've been doing that online for a long time.
[15:05.980 --> 15:09.540]  But people who've gotten in the habit of doing it just keep showing up at offices.
[15:09.740 --> 15:15.040]  And so it's been impossible for China Telecom to close down their offices and move everybody to online platforms.
[15:15.340 --> 15:20.200]  So this is a way that they've innovated around how people interact with them.
[15:20.740 --> 15:21.820]  It's a kiosk.
[15:22.060 --> 15:27.980]  Anytime you see a kiosk, if you really think about it, you could probably do the same thing with a mobile app or a web page.
[15:27.980 --> 15:36.520]  But actually, you find kiosks all over China for all sorts of things just because people are used to actually physically going places to do things.
[15:38.260 --> 15:42.700]  This is a ninja telephone, but that's not the focus of this.
[15:45.260 --> 15:54.980]  Germany is a country that many of us think of being very open and very freewheeling and having a high degree of Internet freedom.
[15:55.300 --> 15:58.900]  But actually, in Germany, you have to tell the police when you move.
[15:59.480 --> 16:02.440]  And you're not allowed to use the Internet anonymously.
[16:02.440 --> 16:10.400]  Even if you use a Wi-Fi access point that's public, you have to provide a telephone number so you can be tracked.
[16:10.720 --> 16:13.660]  And telephones aren't available anonymously in Germany either.
[16:13.660 --> 16:20.520]  So this is a pretty effective way of being able to spy on what everybody is doing, both online and offline.
[16:21.460 --> 16:23.480]  So why do I include this?
[16:23.800 --> 16:29.340]  Because actually, surveillance is a part of how people interact with communication.
[16:29.660 --> 16:35.080]  You know, we all know that surveillance is a factor, and it's a question of how in your face it is or isn't.
[16:35.280 --> 16:38.200]  In Germany, it actually is very much in your face.
[16:38.640 --> 16:42.540]  The same is true in South Korea, where the same set of restrictions exist.
[16:42.540 --> 16:50.700]  And in Turkey, it's also very difficult to get a mobile phone or access to the Internet without providing a high degree of personal information.
[16:52.680 --> 16:57.240]  This is VirusNet, unfortunately named place in Quito.
[16:58.140 --> 17:02.720]  It's an Internet cafe where the computers may or may not have viruses.
[17:02.980 --> 17:19.920]  But I think that this is a fairly interesting place because everything this business sells actually only exists because of the new ways in which we're communicating that are relatively recent in human history.
[17:20.080 --> 17:36.960]  We have an entire segment of the economy, an entire segment of small businesses that are some of the most profitable businesses in small towns often that only exists because we have the ability to communicate in these new ways.
[17:37.900 --> 17:43.440]  In fact, even in Somalia, we have the ability to communicate.
[17:44.080 --> 17:47.560]  Hormud Telecom is actually profiting handsomely.
[17:48.440 --> 17:51.800]  Calls and revenue have been going up when fighting erupts.
[17:52.320 --> 17:58.340]  And so, you know, I shouldn't laugh because it's, you know, it's actually a very unfortunate thing that's happening there.
[17:58.340 --> 18:04.180]  But, you know, they're actually cheering for instability sometimes because they make more money when it happens.
[18:05.140 --> 18:07.660]  Young people, additionally, are banned from socializing.
[18:07.820 --> 18:12.680]  And so, this is one of the things that they do is use SMS for that.
[18:12.840 --> 18:15.640]  Young people are going to socialize anyway, whatever the government says.
[18:16.040 --> 18:21.260]  And telecom is allowing that not only to happen, which I think is a really exciting thing.
[18:21.960 --> 18:24.760]  You know, social control could have been affected before telecom.
[18:24.760 --> 18:35.460]  It's much less so now, but it's also an interesting driver of being able to have telecom in the first place in a very war-torn area.
[18:37.320 --> 18:49.020]  So, I don't know if you've seen Grindr or Cuddly, the dating app for geeks that I've built, but even the way that we meet each other has changed significantly with the advent of new ways to communicate.
[18:49.020 --> 18:55.520]  We can actually meet somebody in this very location, if we want to, within, you know, within a mile of here.
[18:56.560 --> 19:06.040]  That is one of the most profound changes in how we interact as humans that I think has actually happened in the past century.
[19:06.680 --> 19:12.320]  Where else on demand can you meet somebody who has almost exactly the same interests as you?
[19:15.280 --> 19:17.180]  You can download concierge apps.
[19:17.340 --> 19:19.980]  There are all kinds of apps, so I'm not going to go through all of them.
[19:20.120 --> 19:23.860]  But the official concierge app for India I thought was kind of interesting.
[19:24.060 --> 19:25.800]  I don't know what makes it official exactly.
[19:26.580 --> 19:40.920]  But you can show up in a country where you've never been, as I did in India, and actually get a whole bunch of information that you used to have to find out from locals who had their own agendas what to do.
[19:40.920 --> 19:49.260]  You have access to being able to land in a strange city and navigate on maps with a pretty high degree of reliability.
[19:49.540 --> 20:04.200]  And so when you consider the impact that this has on human behavior, you can, you know, I can literally land in a country where I've never been, feed myself and find my way around, and never even really interact with the locals in any way other than transactional.
[20:06.280 --> 20:13.180]  You know, even in my home state of Washington, you can get a lot of information about our new legal marijuana.
[20:13.400 --> 20:14.300]  There's an app for that.
[20:14.400 --> 20:15.360]  It's called Leafly.
[20:16.020 --> 20:20.140]  And there are marijuana... like, find marijuana apps and what kind of marijuana.
[20:20.480 --> 20:22.920]  And so, you know, why do I bring this up?
[20:23.060 --> 20:35.480]  It's because for any... you know, we're getting to the point where for anything that you look at in a human society, there is literally a way that you can use telecom to enable scenarios around it.
[20:35.640 --> 20:38.960]  And this is actually something that's never existed before in human history, right?
[20:39.160 --> 20:45.640]  If you think about it, you know, if you wanted pot 10 years ago, you didn't pick up an app.
[20:46.440 --> 20:48.600]  You needed to get introduced to a drug dealer.
[20:48.800 --> 20:50.660]  And, you know, it's a very different world today.
[20:52.980 --> 21:01.780]  So, pointing at some of the infrastructure that enables this stuff, this is a, you know, a payphone that's probably not going to be there for much longer and is missing a handle in the Netherlands.
[21:02.160 --> 21:07.280]  But actually, you know, I just spoke to somebody from Ecuador and this is changing.
[21:07.560 --> 21:15.440]  But until fairly recently, you know, payphones actually got used in Ecuador because they had different rates of billing between different networks.
[21:15.580 --> 21:28.840]  And so, it would drive some interesting behavior where if people ran out of mobile credit or if they wanted to call somebody on a different network, they would have an incentive to use a payphone of the other network in order to keep from being billed very high rates.
[21:29.020 --> 21:31.520]  And there are some places in the world where this is still the case.
[21:31.520 --> 21:32.740]  It's no longer true in Ecuador.
[21:32.740 --> 21:34.740]  So, this is a historical photo.
[21:35.720 --> 21:42.460]  But it is an interesting way that humans will change their behavior in order to communicate.
[21:42.740 --> 21:57.440]  You know, if you really think about it, until recently in Ecuador, you had to know all of the rates for calling different networks, what phone numbers matched what networks, and you would just drive somewhere and make a call in order to avoid being soaked on your bill.
[21:57.940 --> 22:07.680]  And, you know, you can actually do a lot of social engineering through telecommunications billing at this point, which is also a fairly interesting recent development.
[22:09.000 --> 22:12.220]  This is a place that I found through telecom that I would never have found otherwise.
[22:12.240 --> 22:14.700]  It's in Thailand and I will never tell where it is.
[22:14.700 --> 22:25.900]  But, you know, the point that I'm making here is that I was sitting on this beach with very fast Internet in one of the most remote places you can find in the country, which I found on the Internet.
[22:26.000 --> 22:30.880]  And if it had been 30 years ago, I would never have found this place at all.
[22:31.680 --> 22:37.400]  So, the point that I want to be sure to drive home is that this is very much a double-edged sword.
[22:37.400 --> 22:55.240]  We've created a tremendous number of ways to communicate that unlock massive scenarios that didn't exist before, but at the same time, we've cut back the ability to interact with each other at a more local level and at a more human level.
[22:56.840 --> 23:01.800]  We've even incorporated telecommunications vernacular into our language.
[23:01.800 --> 23:04.220]  Like, there's the 3-1-1 on air travel.
[23:04.420 --> 23:07.980]  There's the 4-1-1 on anything you need information.
[23:07.980 --> 23:17.440]  And we actually say these things without even thinking of the communications that sit underneath them.
[23:19.020 --> 23:21.380]  There's even telecommunications art.
[23:21.980 --> 23:27.460]  This guy did... that's exactly what you think that it might be, whatever that is.
[23:27.460 --> 23:31.580]  And, you know, this was an art exhibition in Paris.
[23:33.700 --> 23:37.060]  Telecom, even more recently, has shaped revolutions.
[23:37.060 --> 23:50.480]  Now, if you had told me 15 years ago that a coup would be plotted with one mobile app and thwarted with another, I would have told you that you were crazy, but actually, that just happened.
[23:51.020 --> 23:56.680]  A coup attempt in Turkey was plotted over WhatsApp, and then it was thwarted with FaceTime.
[23:58.140 --> 24:04.240]  Because the coup leaders failed to get control, you know, physical control of the president of Turkey.
[24:04.420 --> 24:07.520]  And so he was able to go on FaceTime and say, actually, I'm still in charge.
[24:08.340 --> 24:11.680]  Coups are all about who people believe is still in charge.
[24:13.640 --> 24:16.500]  Censorship has created digital divides as well.
[24:16.640 --> 24:21.580]  And that's something that I feel particularly passionate about, having lived three years in China.
[24:22.420 --> 24:28.260]  If you have access to information that's limited, then your worldview will be limited as well.
[24:28.740 --> 24:36.040]  So, you know, this is a screen where content was blocked because it doesn't apply with the acceptable usage policy of an airline.
[24:37.440 --> 24:41.780]  That was a boing-boing page being blocked in Turkey.
[24:42.880 --> 24:47.760]  You know, and it was about removing brakes from a car and, you know, how that happened accidentally.
[24:47.760 --> 24:49.540]  It was the most random thing ever.
[24:49.700 --> 24:51.000]  I don't know why it was blocked.
[24:51.000 --> 24:59.440]  But as we look at the new ways that we've enabled communication, we've also enabled new ways of censorship.
[24:59.500 --> 25:02.740]  And we've also enabled new ways of surveillance.
[25:03.240 --> 25:05.860]  And those all go hand in hand.
[25:06.340 --> 25:21.420]  And when you bear in mind that half of the world still isn't connected yet, and where those people live, we need to keep in mind that censorship and control may go along with bringing these people into the new world of communication.
[25:23.200 --> 25:25.460]  What does telecom say about our society?
[25:25.700 --> 25:27.760]  You can dial a machine gun in Las Vegas.
[25:28.500 --> 25:30.360]  This is actually something that's true.
[25:32.280 --> 25:34.460]  What can we learn from the rest of the world?
[25:34.460 --> 25:41.280]  You know, we have a very pariahical viewpoint in the United States that's Silicon Valley-centric.
[25:41.600 --> 25:48.220]  And very often we think that the scenarios that we've invented are actually the best ways to do things.
[25:48.280 --> 25:55.620]  But, in fact, if you look at the world of apps and the world of software, Europe does online banking better.
[25:55.920 --> 25:58.460]  Japan, by far, does mobile payments better.
[25:58.640 --> 26:00.180]  India does cheap connectivity better.
[26:00.380 --> 26:03.700]  You can get online cheaper in India than any other country in the world.
[26:04.640 --> 26:09.260]  We do, here in the United States, online commerce far better than anywhere else.
[26:10.100 --> 26:15.440]  And, you know, actually ravers do community better than anything on the Internet.
[26:15.840 --> 26:33.420]  So, that's one thing to consider is that, you know, how do we juxtapose the ability to have access instantly to all of the world's information and not interact with any of the people in it versus being a human being and wanting and craving that interaction?
[26:35.980 --> 26:39.480]  How do we bring the world closer but still maintain our cultural identity?
[26:40.140 --> 26:55.940]  You know, when you can literally step off a plane in a country where you've never been, call an Uber, take it to the chain hotel that's American or European or, you know, one of the larger Asian chains, go see the world but not be of it.
[26:57.400 --> 26:59.420]  What does that actually teach you?
[27:00.280 --> 27:03.140]  What does that teach the rest of the world about you?
[27:03.980 --> 27:10.460]  How do you really interact with the place that you're in and how do you live in the moment and be a person?
[27:10.640 --> 27:19.020]  And this is all stuff that we actually have to come to grips with because that's the world that we've built where we can be in but not of the world.
[27:21.080 --> 27:22.980]  There's very real upsides here.
[27:23.140 --> 27:24.900]  And I don't want to be a wet blanket.
[27:26.000 --> 27:32.700]  Amazon's enabled, you know, essentially anything you can think of to be delivered in a day, sometimes the same day.
[27:33.800 --> 27:42.780]  Uber and services like it, Miru in India, for example, allow you safe transportation at the beck and call of a button.
[27:43.420 --> 27:47.800]  And this is something that didn't exist before, particularly for women in India.
[27:48.520 --> 27:56.280]  You can actually, you know, Miru has a very interesting service where you can order a cab for women only with a female driver.
[27:56.540 --> 28:03.300]  And so women can actually feel safe in a way that they never felt before riding around in taxis.
[28:03.460 --> 28:05.640]  And, you know, this is a massive upside.
[28:06.080 --> 28:09.220]  It delivers a huge amount of freedom to be able to do this.
[28:10.400 --> 28:12.680]  You can maintain relationships through distance.
[28:12.920 --> 28:16.480]  I'm dating somebody who lives a thousand miles away from where I do.
[28:16.880 --> 28:19.000]  And we're able to Skype every day.
[28:19.380 --> 28:22.100]  And that actually does a lot to maintain our relationship.
[28:22.400 --> 28:23.940]  It would fall apart otherwise.
[28:24.260 --> 28:28.820]  Especially if we were writing letters to each other and it took a week every time.
[28:30.300 --> 28:31.820]  There's a digital economy.
[28:31.820 --> 28:34.460]  And, you know, this can't be overlooked.
[28:34.740 --> 28:41.220]  It's a very, very, very amazing thing that we can actually create software.
[28:41.540 --> 28:45.120]  We can create things that take very little effort.
[28:45.120 --> 28:49.560]  And you can be somebody who just has developed a skill and has an idea.
[28:49.560 --> 28:55.560]  And you can go out with basically no resources at all and build a business around it.
[28:55.560 --> 29:04.320]  You know, where else would a guy in Vietnam with a couple of years of development experience be able to have such a blockbuster as Flappy Bird?
[29:04.840 --> 29:14.360]  This is something that would never have happened before the technologies that we all rely on today.
[29:15.380 --> 29:17.920]  And, you know, there's actually... there's an upside.
[29:17.920 --> 29:20.660]  Now, you may say, aren't you... TProphet, you're crazy.
[29:20.840 --> 29:22.420]  There's no more transparency in government.
[29:22.700 --> 29:26.540]  But the reality is there is more transparency in government than ever before.
[29:27.260 --> 29:32.200]  And the reason for that is because it's not just what a government officially gives you.
[29:32.440 --> 29:33.540]  It's what gets leaked.
[29:34.080 --> 29:49.760]  And the amount of information coming out of the government today, the amount of access that you have, the ability of people to see what their government is doing and read the exact policy decisions behind it, is much more than we've ever had.
[29:50.040 --> 29:57.040]  And that enables if... if we can... we have a... we have a more informed democracy if we just choose to be more informed.
[29:57.440 --> 29:59.880]  In the current election season, we're not choosing to.
[30:00.880 --> 30:03.900]  But the structure is there to do so.
[30:06.140 --> 30:14.300]  So, the question I want to ask... and, you know, this is... this is a little bit different than most of the talks that I give, because I'll outline a whole bunch of problems and solutions.
[30:14.300 --> 30:22.480]  And really, I don't have any solution for how do we change the fact that being a human is different with all these tools that we've created.
[30:24.320 --> 30:26.480]  Is online space a different place?
[30:27.120 --> 30:32.440]  And this is something that you can think of for yourself and where these technologies fit into your own life.
[30:32.580 --> 30:36.680]  Because actually, online communities really are real places.
[30:36.680 --> 30:38.460]  They have real cultural identities.
[30:38.960 --> 30:40.500]  So, are they a new place?
[30:40.660 --> 30:44.220]  Do they supplement your existing communities that you're already part of?
[30:44.440 --> 30:45.660]  Do they supplant them?
[30:46.060 --> 30:47.860]  I grew up mostly online.
[30:47.860 --> 30:50.200]  I'm actually pretty socially anxious.
[30:50.760 --> 30:52.940]  I was able to not be on IRC.
[30:53.160 --> 30:57.320]  And I met an entire community of hackers, many of whom are in this room.
[30:57.320 --> 31:02.700]  And that actually was my community growing up.
[31:02.860 --> 31:04.580]  And it's still part of my community.
[31:04.820 --> 31:07.880]  It's how I was formed as a person.
[31:08.120 --> 31:16.740]  So for me, the online space, it actually isn't a whole lot different than the offline space, because there's a massive amount of interaction.
[31:16.740 --> 31:25.720]  But, you know, the people around me playing Pokemon Go and stealing Pokemons from me, like, is that...
[31:25.720 --> 31:27.560]  Are they a different place?
[31:27.560 --> 31:28.700]  Are they part of the same thing?
[31:28.840 --> 31:38.840]  You know, there's actually a ton of technologies that we've developed where we're blurring the lines, particularly with augmented reality, between what's an online and what's an offline space.
[31:38.940 --> 31:41.560]  And who are we interacting with online and offline?
[31:41.560 --> 31:47.020]  And I think we haven't really figured out, as a community, how to deal with that.
[31:49.340 --> 32:00.880]  So, the Internet, I think, is not only a series of tubes, to quote Senator Ted Stevens, but it's at adolescence.
[32:01.180 --> 32:08.780]  You know, and with all due respect to the teenage people in the audience, if there are any, the Internet's self-absorbed.
[32:09.200 --> 32:09.820]  It's impulsive.
[32:09.820 --> 32:11.420]  It doesn't think through consequences.
[32:11.700 --> 32:15.540]  And, you know, an example, and to be clear, I love the good folks at Grindr.
[32:15.600 --> 32:16.640]  They're really nice people.
[32:17.180 --> 32:19.860]  I've met most of them, but they made a horrible mistake.
[32:20.380 --> 32:29.760]  They actually made the physical location of people using Grindr at very high accuracy, available through their API.
[32:31.120 --> 32:40.720]  And the Egyptian government at one point, and this was a couple of years ago, figured this out, found out where all the gay people were in Cairo, rounded them up, and tortured them.
[32:40.820 --> 32:42.560]  And this was not a good day for Grindr.
[32:42.560 --> 32:44.840]  And, you know, this is...
[32:44.840 --> 32:46.340]  We have a...
[32:46.340 --> 32:54.860]  We have made it so easy to create and publish apps that have such a high degree of personal information.
[32:57.160 --> 33:12.420]  And we have a community around startups that values getting things out very quickly, that we really aren't thinking through the consequences before we do things that actually could be very harmful to people using software that we build.
[33:13.000 --> 33:14.960]  There's a 24-hour news cycle.
[33:15.580 --> 33:20.280]  And this is not only enabled, it's almost mandated by the Internet.
[33:20.620 --> 33:34.760]  And, you know, again, if you had to wait 24 hours for news to actually go through an entire editorial process, and headlines to be written, stories to be gone through...
[33:34.760 --> 33:43.220]  There's times where stories that become headline news wouldn't have in previous years.
[33:43.440 --> 33:46.900]  And I'm not sure we're necessarily the better for a more rapid news cycle.
[33:47.300 --> 33:53.100]  Because news gets out very quickly, but it's way less thoughtful and considered than it has been in the past.
[33:53.780 --> 34:00.260]  And, you know, when you look at all the stuff that we're doing with mobile apps, with the Internet, this all happened with phones.
[34:00.980 --> 34:04.200]  You know, people made prank calls on phones.
[34:04.200 --> 34:08.320]  There was all sorts of quack medicine that was sold over phones.
[34:08.600 --> 34:15.820]  You know, any problem that you can think of happened with... that we have today, practically all of them happened with phones at one point.
[34:15.980 --> 34:17.860]  And we came to grips with it as a society.
[34:18.040 --> 34:19.620]  Phones went through in adolescence too.
[34:20.020 --> 34:25.140]  They're now mature and we have a set of rules around them that we all accept as a society.
[34:25.140 --> 34:27.880]  I think the same will happen with the Internet.
[34:27.880 --> 34:33.840]  But we can shape that conversation or we can be shaped by it.
[34:33.980 --> 34:36.480]  And as hackers, I think we need to shape it.
[34:39.420 --> 34:41.320]  Humans have always been global in nature.
[34:41.580 --> 34:50.640]  And this is actually... if you look back even before the Roman Empire to the Mongol Empire, they ran nearly a global empire at one point.
[34:50.840 --> 34:53.660]  It was strictly economic and trading based in many parts.
[34:53.960 --> 34:57.400]  But it stretched all the way from Europe to Korea.
[34:59.060 --> 35:01.000]  And we trade with each other.
[35:01.120 --> 35:02.260]  We communicate with each other.
[35:02.400 --> 35:03.040]  We intermarry.
[35:03.180 --> 35:05.280]  I mean, this has been going on for a very long time.
[35:05.520 --> 35:12.280]  But I think that of the human population, hackers most naturally seek a global perspective.
[35:12.280 --> 35:14.700]  We're really far ahead of society.
[35:15.000 --> 35:26.420]  And so when I hear presidential candidates talking about building walls and closing our economy off from the rest of society, this actually worries me a lot.
[35:26.600 --> 35:42.340]  Because when you look at the scenarios that we've enabled by being able to communicate better, when you look at the scenarios that we've opened up by making truly free instant global communication, that's something that I could, you know...
[35:42.340 --> 35:56.300]  20 years ago, phone phreaks were actually stealing thousands and even hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of phone services just to be able to communicate in a way that we take for granted today, because it wasn't free.
[35:56.520 --> 36:06.640]  So the scenarios that we've opened have put us so far ahead of society that I think that we really have a unique perspective that can be valued.
[36:08.260 --> 36:10.880]  There's best and worst case scenarios in the world today.
[36:11.380 --> 36:15.220]  And in the United States, we can be part of the best or the worst case.
[36:15.840 --> 36:22.100]  If you look at China and North Korea, those are not good scenarios for Internet freedom.
[36:22.380 --> 36:25.940]  They're not good scenarios for enabling global communication.
[36:26.780 --> 36:34.620]  But if you look at Estonia and Switzerland and Iceland, you know, these are kind of the other side of the coin.
[36:34.620 --> 36:46.500]  And a country like Iceland, having been able to be a major banking center with as small a population as it's had, was literally only enabled by its Internet policy.
[36:46.760 --> 36:48.180]  It didn't work out well.
[36:48.400 --> 36:50.840]  They did have a massive financial crisis.
[36:51.420 --> 36:56.420]  You know, finance goes through adolescence too and learns as well.
[36:57.440 --> 37:01.680]  But you cannot blame the open Internet for that failure.
[37:02.140 --> 37:07.980]  You can credit the open Internet for the ability for that to have even happened in the first place.
[37:08.000 --> 37:12.740]  And it was truly remarkable for Iceland's banking industry to have evolved as quickly as it did.
[37:14.740 --> 37:17.900]  Half of people in the world are still unplugged.
[37:17.900 --> 37:20.740]  And that's an astonishingly large number.
[37:20.980 --> 37:32.580]  So there's a huge opportunity for us to bring people into the fold with services that we take for granted, but in a way that's culturally relevant to them and in a way that's synchronous.
[37:33.020 --> 37:39.820]  And this is actually one of the things that I think is the biggest problem today in bringing unplugged people connectivity.
[37:39.820 --> 37:45.140]  If that connectivity isn't synchronous, then you're just giving them telegraphs.
[37:45.480 --> 37:52.460]  The connectivity needs to be at least as good as a telephone that you can both place and receive calls on, and hopefully better than that.
[37:53.400 --> 38:03.120]  Slightly over 50% of the human population was online in 2015, but by 2019 it's only going to be 65%, and most of them will be through mobile devices.
[38:03.280 --> 38:04.020]  Bandwidth limited.
[38:05.440 --> 38:07.060]  Very expensive connectivity.
[38:07.060 --> 38:14.140]  So there's a truly massive opportunity to make people's lives better, and we can be right in the middle of that.
[38:15.540 --> 38:18.620]  The future truly is ours to create as hackers.
[38:19.960 --> 38:31.480]  Across seven continents there are opportunities for us to lend our insight, but what I would urge is that while we do that, we consider the human element.
[38:31.600 --> 38:33.200]  We consider the human perspective.
[38:33.760 --> 38:42.240]  We think of ways to bring people closer together rather than allow people to be in the world, but not of it.
[38:42.680 --> 38:45.800]  And with that, I'll open up for questions if there are any.
[38:46.460 --> 38:46.940]  Is it on?
[39:07.800 --> 39:08.280]  Sure.
[39:08.620 --> 39:11.180]  And questions don't have to just be about this talk.
[39:11.360 --> 39:15.280]  If you've read my column, feel free to ask anything about any of those.
[39:15.280 --> 39:20.720]  If you just want to know about some corner of the world where you haven't been and I have, I'm happy to help if I can.
[39:22.320 --> 39:22.760]  And...
[39:22.760 --> 39:23.380]  I thought that that...
[39:23.380 --> 39:26.880]  I thought your talk was extremely thoughtful, really.
[39:27.260 --> 39:28.660]  I want to go back to...
[39:28.660 --> 39:30.120]  I can't do that.
[39:31.200 --> 39:32.340]  Earlier in the...
[39:32.340 --> 39:33.880]  When you were talking about...
[39:33.880 --> 39:37.760]  You're really looking at the digital divide internationally, right?
[39:38.700 --> 39:39.180]  And...
[39:39.180 --> 39:44.940]  I don't know if I can form a coherent question, so I kind of wanted to ask if you're willing to just riff on the thought.
[39:45.820 --> 39:56.480]  There's such different issues that are throttling the digital... causing the digital divide internationally, and then what causes the digital divide here in the United States.
[39:56.480 --> 40:05.200]  And since there's such different causes, right, are there similar solutions?
[40:05.380 --> 40:17.320]  I hear people talking often about how we're going to get Internet to these remote locations, and that synchronous piece is so important when we talk about just in the United States.
[40:17.340 --> 40:22.140]  Parents need to be able to receive information from the kids' school in real time.
[40:22.140 --> 40:27.800]  And so there's very similar issues, but it seems like they're thought about very differently.
[40:28.060 --> 40:28.620]  And so I just...
[40:28.620 --> 40:28.880]  Yeah.
[40:28.880 --> 40:31.280]  If you want to riff on that at all, I would love to hear your thoughts.
[40:31.520 --> 40:32.380]  So that's a great point.
[40:32.600 --> 40:33.240]  You know, there's...
[40:33.240 --> 40:46.100]  If you look at an example of a technology that can really enable scenarios that didn't before, and it's communications-based, I would encourage everybody, if you haven't seen it already, to look at M-Pesa, M-P-E-S-A.
[40:46.700 --> 40:50.520]  It's a micropayments company in Kenya, and it's based on mobile phones.
[40:51.060 --> 40:59.080]  And you actually, as a currency, use mobile phone credit, and then you can pay for things through M-Pesa, and it deducts your mobile credit.
[41:00.180 --> 41:02.700]  There are other similar services in other countries.
[41:02.980 --> 41:06.840]  But, you know, banking just isn't a thing in a lot of the world.
[41:07.120 --> 41:13.880]  And, you know, banks are open for three hours a day, and you need minimum deposits, and, you know, there's no ability to pay anything online.
[41:13.880 --> 41:15.600]  It's just, you know, it just isn't there.
[41:17.060 --> 41:22.380]  So, we can actually... you know, we leapfrog landlines in a lot of parts of the world.
[41:22.500 --> 41:25.680]  They don't... they basically never got built, and people went straight to mobile.
[41:25.960 --> 41:35.300]  We can leapfrog old industries as well to bring the conveniences that we have and take for granted, but doing it in a different way.
[41:35.600 --> 41:51.620]  And so, one thing that I think is really important, and this is the point I really want to drive home, is whatever we invent needs to be synchronous, and it needs to actually unlock scenarios that are relevant and useful to whom we're unlocking them for.
[41:52.940 --> 41:57.080]  You know, can the Internet be useful to somebody who doesn't know how to read, for example?
[41:57.080 --> 42:01.860]  Actually, it can, because if you can speak, we can use text... we can use speech to text.
[42:02.640 --> 42:05.680]  You know, you can just talk to Google Maps, and it can guide you, for example.
[42:06.060 --> 42:13.200]  So, there's a lot of scenarios that are really amazing, and yet to be built, that I think can be unlocked by technology.
[42:13.220 --> 42:21.680]  But there's also a lot of surveillance scenarios that can be unlocked as well, and we need to consider the impact of the services we're building there.
[42:22.540 --> 42:23.240]  Next question?
[42:24.200 --> 42:24.640]  Thanks.
[42:24.820 --> 42:25.400]  Fantastic talk.
[42:26.860 --> 42:30.600]  So, can you talk a little bit about telephone service in Antarctica?
[42:31.560 --> 42:32.540]  Yeah, absolutely.
[42:33.160 --> 42:37.920]  And any other places that are, like, as remote that maybe you've been to, and how it works there?
[42:38.280 --> 42:38.720]  Great.
[42:38.860 --> 42:40.260]  Well, let's go north and south.
[42:41.120 --> 42:46.980]  I can talk about Barrow and Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, and I can also talk about Antarctica.
[42:46.980 --> 42:48.000]  I've been both places.
[42:48.560 --> 42:52.140]  So, if you are in Barrow, Alaska, it looks very much like Palau.
[42:52.140 --> 42:54.180]  There's a giant satellite dish.
[42:54.320 --> 42:55.340]  That's what you're talking over.
[42:55.900 --> 42:59.400]  There's very slow and laggy connectivity.
[43:00.200 --> 43:04.500]  When there's a storm, it doesn't always work because satellites up there are really low to the horizon.
[43:04.740 --> 43:07.600]  And so, you know, the Internet just cuts out there sometimes.
[43:09.120 --> 43:13.200]  So, what does that mean for the economic opportunities of people in Barrow?
[43:13.940 --> 43:18.360]  Actually, not a whole lot because the Barrow is the center of government.
[43:19.040 --> 43:21.120]  And that's most of the economy there.
[43:21.320 --> 43:25.380]  There's also a college called Ilisagovic College.
[43:25.980 --> 43:29.400]  And, you know, it's kind of the community college for the North Slope.
[43:30.040 --> 43:37.060]  So, you know, it's based on... the economy is based on education and government and some whaling.
[43:37.980 --> 43:44.720]  So, you know, if you're planning a whaling expedition, you just go talk to people next door.
[43:44.720 --> 43:47.280]  So, you don't really need the Internet for that.
[43:48.580 --> 43:50.920]  Prudhoe Bay, you know, different scenario, right?
[43:51.020 --> 43:57.200]  That's where you actually do have a pretty strong need for connectivity because that's the center of the Arctic slope drilling.
[43:57.420 --> 44:01.820]  So, there's tons of oil derricks, rigs, you know, there's a massive oil industry there.
[44:01.820 --> 44:08.700]  And the oil industry actually ran fiber up the Dalton Highway, which is locally called in Alaska the Hall Road.
[44:08.920 --> 44:12.780]  I've driven it from Fairbanks all the way up to the North Slope to Dead Horse.
[44:13.260 --> 44:14.920]  And, you know, it's a two-day drive.
[44:14.920 --> 44:16.360]  You've got to camp one day.
[44:18.280 --> 44:19.660]  Watch out for grizzly bears.
[44:20.020 --> 44:32.640]  But it's... you know, the interesting challenge that they face is there's a condition called frost heaves where the permafrost thaws in the summer and it refreezes in the fall.
[44:33.100 --> 44:37.360]  And that causes it... that causes the permafrost to go up.
[44:37.500 --> 44:41.040]  And, you know, they made the bad decision to bury the fiber optic cable.
[44:41.060 --> 44:44.020]  So, it breaks basically every year.
[44:44.260 --> 44:48.660]  And they don't have connectivity for a while until they build it because there's only one fiber there.
[44:48.660 --> 44:56.520]  I went to Antarctica with World Tour, which was organized by the folks who run ToorCon and ToorCamp.
[44:57.800 --> 45:00.080]  ToorCamp just happened in Washington State.
[45:00.440 --> 45:03.860]  And we took a boat across the Drake Passage.
[45:03.940 --> 45:10.640]  And actually, you know, there's Internet access and there is telephone access through Marisat.
[45:10.780 --> 45:15.000]  So, it's expensive, it's slow, but it does work.
[45:15.000 --> 45:22.880]  And, you know, people that are stationed in McMurdo Station, generally speaking, have pretty good access to the Internet via satellite as well.
[45:23.520 --> 45:28.360]  You know, by pretty good, it's around as good as, you know, Barrow, Alaska.
[45:28.660 --> 45:29.960]  So, it works sometimes.
[45:30.600 --> 45:36.120]  People at the South Pole, there's only one satellite that can hit there and only for part of the day.
[45:36.320 --> 45:40.220]  So, actually, it's completely dark for part of the day.
[45:40.340 --> 45:42.180]  They have no outside communications at all.
[45:43.160 --> 45:45.640]  Does that answer your question?
[45:45.900 --> 45:46.660]  Or did you have...
[45:46.660 --> 45:47.020]  It did.
[45:47.260 --> 45:47.360]  Okay.
[45:47.520 --> 45:47.720]  Awesome.
[45:50.380 --> 45:51.420]  Talking about...
[45:53.380 --> 45:57.760]  Talking about slightly less rural places, I'm from Montana.
[45:58.160 --> 46:08.460]  And some of the work I do for an AV company involves installing cell phone amplifiers for people who live too far away from cell phone towers to actually get good service.
[46:10.340 --> 46:18.600]  A couple of issues ago in your column, you were talking about how voice over LTE was becoming a bigger thing and it's going to replace most of the voice services.
[46:19.900 --> 46:40.760]  When that happens, will some of these slightly rural, just outside the cell tower range where you're getting a reflected signal and amplifying it, will those places tend to be losing more of their connectivity because the LTE requires better connection to be amplified than,
[46:41.040 --> 46:43.540]  say, 3G or just voice?
[46:44.240 --> 46:45.740]  That's a really great question.
[46:47.720 --> 46:49.220]  Where's your sweatshirt from, by the way?
[46:49.440 --> 46:50.760]  Is that an evergreen sweatshirt?
[46:51.280 --> 46:52.040]  No, the green one.
[46:52.400 --> 46:52.520]  Oh.
[46:53.180 --> 46:55.380]  Actually, I just got this at the local farmer's market.
[46:55.540 --> 46:56.380]  Oh, it's a farmer's market.
[46:56.480 --> 46:56.580]  Okay.
[46:56.660 --> 46:57.000]  It's awesome.
[46:57.160 --> 46:58.740]  It looked like one from my college.
[46:58.740 --> 47:00.100]  Okay.
[47:03.780 --> 47:10.180]  The same questions were raised when we switched from analog to digital technology.
[47:10.180 --> 47:13.180]  There used to be a technology called AMPS that was not distance limited.
[47:13.440 --> 47:20.040]  And we switched to, you know, HSDPA on the legacy GSM side.
[47:20.040 --> 47:25.860]  And we switched to, you know, 1X RTT and 1X EBDO on the legacy CDMA side.
[47:26.160 --> 47:29.040]  Both of which technologies were distance limited.
[47:29.560 --> 47:33.780]  As it turned out, companies, cell companies built more towers for one.
[47:34.200 --> 47:36.520]  And they're putting up new ones all the time.
[47:36.840 --> 47:43.140]  And also the technologies to be able to bring in signal from over remote distances got better.
[47:43.140 --> 47:47.980]  So I think we're looking at the same order of challenge, honestly.
[47:48.560 --> 47:52.360]  Yeah, the technology that you bought five years ago probably isn't going to work anymore.
[47:52.360 --> 47:56.200]  But something new will come out that will meet a communications need.
[47:56.720 --> 48:01.620]  Also in Montana, you guys are not super low to the horizon for satellite.
[48:02.000 --> 48:03.740]  You know, there's a lot of mountains in western Montana.
[48:03.740 --> 48:08.020]  So you may have problems actually being able to see the sky depending where you are.
[48:08.020 --> 48:23.040]  But I believe that for many consumer applications, as faster connectivity penetrates better into remote areas, the cost of satellite will drop because usage is already dropping.
[48:25.520 --> 48:27.580]  Sorry, separate follow-up question.
[48:27.860 --> 48:35.220]  It seems like audio connectivity in cities, especially in New York, has gotten worse over the last couple of years.
[48:35.220 --> 48:38.900]  Is that just my imagination and the imagination of my peers?
[48:39.080 --> 48:43.880]  Or is there any reason why you might know why quality might have actually gone down recently?
[48:44.200 --> 48:45.300]  It has gone down.
[48:45.480 --> 48:46.740]  It's not your imagination.
[48:47.460 --> 48:50.040]  Although I'm getting older and my ears are getting older.
[48:50.280 --> 48:51.840]  And it's much more of an issue.
[48:52.600 --> 48:55.440]  So do you use AT&T just by...
[48:55.440 --> 48:56.080]  No?
[48:56.280 --> 48:56.400]  Okay.
[48:56.860 --> 48:57.340]  Verizon?
[48:57.540 --> 48:57.760]  Okay.
[48:58.800 --> 49:06.500]  So T-Mobile for a long time was using a codec that was less efficient than the one AT&T used, but sounded a lot better to many people.
[49:07.400 --> 49:10.280]  It's, you know, called half-rate AMR versus not.
[49:11.360 --> 49:15.060]  We've seen the back-end move to a lot of voice over IP technologies.
[49:15.260 --> 49:27.120]  And every time this happens, it seems like a new codec gets thrown into play that uses less data and is therefore less expensive for the phone company, but also doesn't sound as good for voice.
[49:27.820 --> 49:31.700]  The flip side of that is people are using way less voice than they used to.
[49:32.220 --> 49:39.140]  And so I think that the reason why phone companies do it is because people won't pay for quality.
[49:39.700 --> 49:43.780]  You're getting unlimited, you know, like any cell plan that you buy today has unlimited calling.
[49:43.980 --> 49:46.080]  And people aren't calling as much as it is.
[49:46.080 --> 49:50.080]  So I'm not seeing that situation getting better.
[49:50.340 --> 49:51.660]  I only see it getting worse.
[49:52.760 --> 50:04.980]  There is a silver lining, and that is that as speeds to handsets get better, it's actually practical to use alternatives to going through your phone company to make calls.
[50:05.220 --> 50:09.400]  And one of the most exciting ways to do that is through a technology called SIP.
[50:09.400 --> 50:11.860]  It's getting easier and easier to use.
[50:12.020 --> 50:17.940]  Skype is also, you know, it's proprietary, but the quality of Skype calls is generally very good as well.
[50:18.120 --> 50:30.160]  So what I think we're going to see is people are going to be just doing less traditional phone calling and more Skyping or more using alternative applications like Facebook Messenger is another great example.
[50:30.260 --> 50:32.020]  They have phenomenal audio quality.
[50:32.200 --> 50:36.420]  So if you don't like your phone, try hitting people up on Facebook.
[50:37.780 --> 50:41.320]  Okay, I've got four minutes for any more questions if there are any.
[50:42.060 --> 50:43.580]  Just follow to that one then.
[50:44.660 --> 50:54.700]  How long before you think the audio quality for a random cell phone call or Skype will be at the level in terms of latency and quality of what we had with landlines?
[50:55.120 --> 50:56.220]  Because it seems like it's...
[50:56.220 --> 50:57.160]  Latency, never.
[50:57.500 --> 50:57.820]  Okay.
[50:58.280 --> 50:59.660]  Quality, it could be better.
[51:00.440 --> 51:06.400]  Actually, if you make a Skype-to-Skype call, the audio quality to most people sounds better than a lot.
[51:12.130 --> 51:17.030]  So if you want to ask a question, it's best on the mic.
[51:19.890 --> 51:20.950]  Yeah, I'm sorry.
[51:20.990 --> 51:21.590]  I was a little bit late.
[51:21.770 --> 51:26.110]  But have you discussed the deteriorating copper infrastructure and how bad that is?
[51:26.510 --> 51:28.890]  You know, that wasn't the focus of this talk.
[51:28.890 --> 51:30.670]  But that's a great question.
[51:33.890 --> 51:36.250]  Most copper in place in the U.S...
[51:36.250 --> 51:40.450]  So, you know, keep in mind, many parts of the world have just bypassed landlines entirely.
[51:40.790 --> 51:41.750]  They never built them.
[51:41.990 --> 51:48.030]  Because you can actually deliver services to more people much cheaper by using wireless technologies.
[51:48.390 --> 51:51.450]  So we're kind of in an interesting place where we have both.
[51:51.590 --> 51:55.850]  And, you know, if you look at Europe, they have a lot of old copper as well.
[51:55.850 --> 52:07.990]  So, for us to be able to bring in high-speed Internet and to bring in telephone service, there are a number of ways to do that.
[52:08.410 --> 52:16.950]  I don't see phone companies ever investing any more than the bare minimum in keeping up the old copper that they've laid before.
[52:16.950 --> 52:21.130]  What we are seeing is an increasing prevalence of fiber to the home.
[52:21.690 --> 52:35.830]  And as the cost of fiber comes down and as the copper infrastructure further deteriorates, I expect that we'll see phone companies where they see an economic opportunity bringing in fiber.
[52:36.050 --> 52:39.050]  But that leaves a big chunk of Americans out.
[52:39.230 --> 52:43.090]  And this is actually a really important point and maybe a subject for a future column.
[52:44.110 --> 53:01.170]  Many phone companies have persuaded state utility commissions to not require the sale of landlines anymore and have also persuaded state utility commissions to not regulate Internet services that are delivered over phone lines.
[53:01.370 --> 53:09.790]  And so what that's meant is that phone companies can basically do whatever the heck they want and sell to whoever they want or not sell to whoever they want.
[53:10.690 --> 53:28.730]  If you are rich and making six figures and living in an expensive suburb, you're probably going to have fiber to the home, but if you live in West Baltimore, if you live in Gary, Indiana, if you live in Compton, California, you're probably not going to get access to that.
[53:28.730 --> 53:47.250]  And so when we talk about digital divides inside the United States, there may be an infrastructure divide, or there might not be, because keep in mind the same opportunities around having high-speed infrastructure that have been delivered in developing countries could also be delivered here.
[53:47.350 --> 53:52.310]  There's really nothing stopping wireless technology from being deployed in a bigger way.
[53:52.310 --> 54:07.870]  And so what I think is going to happen is we may see some government policy put into place to ensure that everyone has a fair shot at broadband, but the way that's delivered may be different in the future than it is today.
[54:11.470 --> 54:16.690]  Of course, a lot of that, I will point out, depends on the results of the next election.
[54:19.330 --> 54:21.530]  And with that, I think we're out of time.
[54:21.830 --> 54:22.910]  Thanks so much for coming.