For something I’m writing (for free), I want to make the case for the benefits of having a “wifi blanket,” by which I mean, loosely, making wireless Internet connectivity so common that we can rely on it being available just about anywhere we are in this country. Depending on how it’s implemented, that might work out to coverage as broad as the reach of TV or cell phones, or, say, cheap or free connectivity available to 90% of the population. (I’m making up this number.) And it doesn’t have to be wifi. If it’s WiMAX or open spectrum or something else, I don’t care, so long as it’s cheap or free, truly open, crosses economic strata, and is so common that we take it for granted.

For now ignore the costs and the practicalities. If such a thing were accomplished, how might it affect us? What opportunities would it open? What sort of economic stimulus might it provide, especially if we assume that a wireless blanket would stimulate the growth of wifi phones (or combo phones), which be more general purpose Internet devices. What might the blanket do for education? Politics? News and entertainment? Marketing? National security? Do you have any statistics you’ve found or made up? Pointers to actual research? Wild-ass speculation? Science fiction scenarios? Paranoid plots? Bring ’em on! [Tags: wifi net_neutrality telephony ]

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I just received my first copy of the final, real, tangible edition of Everything is Miscellaneous. The book goes on sale May 1.

The book is sitting on our dining room table like a mousetrap I’m afraid to check. I’m squeamish. No one likes to see a dead mouse. I dread reading it because all that it can contain for me are errors, infelicities and missed opportunities. The paper has absorbed the ink. It is irrevocable. My sentence has been pronounced.

But I’m going to have to read it because I no longer remember exactly what’s in it and what I cut. I couldn’t even at the drop of a hat summarize the book’s argument, at least not without some throat clearing and stumbles. And it is an argument that develops over the course of chapters, which may be a problem for reviewers who expect a business book that blurts out its idea early on. But Times Books has been great about dropping hats all over, so I’m going to have to be able to recount the argument in a couple of pithy sentences…and then, if all goes well, repeat those sentences in lots of venues.

I think it’s a good book. At least, when I finished it, I thought I’d done pretty much what I had wanted to do. So, don’t take the fact that I’ve hidden the printed copy under a pile of junk mail as a judgment of the book itself. Rather, it’s the done-ness that scares the bejeebus out of me. It was much less scary when it was still possible.

This scan doesn’t do the cover justice
The blue is metallic and the little circles are really
just shiny, shellacked bits. The cover, as they say, pops.

[Tags: everything_is_miscellaneous publishing books phobias ]

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I’ve posted at Huffington Post today my latest doomed-to-fail attempt at spoilers for the new season of the Sopranos. [Tags: sopranos entertainment comedy]

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Matthew Burton has developed a site — ReadableLaws.org — as a thesis (under the estimable Prof. Jay Rosen) where we can translate legislation into understandable English and discuss its implications. The first bills posted include one to broaden Fair Use, one that criminalizes hiding information about video games to skirt the ratings, and an expansion of Internet monitoring to prevent child pornography.

I can see the implications pages getting bogged down because the site has no built-in way of handling disagreements, but the translation-into-understandability pages look like a great idea. (And maybe the implications pages will work out, too.)

This is all part of Jay’s NewAssignment.Net project. [Tags: laws wikis media legislation matthew_burton jay_rosen everything_is_miscellaneous]

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Ok, so maybe a little blogging today…live from Union Station in DC.

Tristant Louis points to JibberJobber, a site that aggregates personal info from all those other personal info sites you’ve logged onto, liked LinkedIn and Plaxo. It’s all part of the continuous meta-oneupmanship we’re seeing as we pull together the info we’re dispersing like Johnny Appleseeds with holes in our seed bags. [Tags: everything_is_miscellaneous metadata]

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Yes, it’s a self-contradictory headline. But to heck with logical formalities. I’m still flu-ish, and I’l lbe on a train most of the day because my doctor told me not to fly. I’m in DC where I got to keynote the NTEN conference…over a thousand techies working for non-profits, long may they wave. (Thanks to Katrin Verclas for the invitation, and for all the good work she does.)

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I’d like to respond to the CNN piece about cyberbullying, but I have the flu and am unable to think longer than a sentence in advance. You can see the piece here. And here is my worry-wart post about my participation in it. Briefly my take is: It didn’t do the flat-out, ominous chords scare-mongering, but it nevertheless was perilously close to self-parody. [Tags: cnn media kathy_sierra chris_locke rageboy cyberbullying blogs ]

By the way, I should note that CNN got my attribution wrong. They say I’m a professor at Harvard. In fact, I’m a Fellow at Harvard. To be precise, I’m a Research Fellow at Harvard Law’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society. (The ampersand is an official part of the name.) And I was very clear about this attribution when CNN asked. There are major differences between professors and fellows, affecting everything from teaching to pay-scales to voting to having to wear a silly cap and picking up dry-cleaning for professors. (I’ve written about being a fellow here.)

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This video is very funny, if you’re the type of Web 2.0 geek who finds “Quakr Oars” funny. (Thanks to BoingBoing.) [Tags: everything_is_miscellaneous ]

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Harvard University Libraries held a workshop on social tagging and other such technologies last week. I blogged it here. Now the videos are up. Part I Part II. (I spoke in part I.) [Tags: tagging libraries folksonomy taxonomy everything_is_miscellaneous]

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If you happen to be in London April 11, as I won’t be, be sure to drop by the Open Rights Group party. Have a pint for me! [Tags: org]

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