There were a couple of digital technology related letters to the editor in yesterday’s Globe.

Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff’s comment on finding holes in mobile broadband coverage will probably attract the greatest attention. It is a letter that mixes up mobile and fixed coverage, highways and buildings. Most importantly, the Oppostition Leader’s letter fails to address the majority of Canadians who are off the ‘net: those who have high speed service at their front door but haven’t subscribed. 

But, I would prefer to look at a letter by Joanne Mackay-Bennett written in response to a Margaret Wente article (Like It Or Not The Book Is Dead).

E-readers win hands down for being “on task,” but what about the long, slow gazing at illustrations while being read to as a child? Or the quizzical lingering upon first seeing the brightly coloured letters of a new word? The remembering of a friend each time I see her inscription on the inside cover of her favourite book, of a grandmother who gave a book that had opened her own young mind, or a father whose insightful letters were tenderly bound into a book for his son.

Just because an electronic reader can accommodate thousands of titles does not necessarily mean that it is always the best form factor. There will certainly be slobber proof and droppable e-readers developed in kid friendly primary colours. But, a paper book will have special meaning for an older cousin reading bed-time stories from a book with their personal stick-drawing annotations.

As the letter writer concluded, E-readers may have gigabytes, but real books have memory.

On Monday, I wrote about Tim Wu’s OpEd from the Wall Street Journal that concluded with a paragraph:

The Internet is still relatively young, and we remain in the golden age of these monopolists. We can also take comfort from the fact that most of the Internet’s giants profess an awareness of their awesome powers and some sense of attendant duty to the public. Perhaps if we’re vigilant, we can prolong the benign phase of their rule. But let’s not pretend that we live in anything but an age of monopolies.

Do the giants demonstrably act from an “attendant duty to the public”?

A paper entitled Responsibility of and Trust in ISPs was published in “Knowledge Technology & Policy” by Raphael Cohen-Almagor, Chair in Politics at University of Hull (UK).

This discussion is about the neglected concepts of trust and social responsibility on the Internet. I will discuss and explain the concepts and their implications to people and society. I then address the issue of moral and social responsibilities of ISPs and web-hosting companies. I argue that ISPs and web-hosting companies should aspire to take responsibility for content and that they should respect and abide by their own terms of conduct.

Let’s tie Dr. Cohen-Almagor’s paper to the conclusion put forward in the Wall Street Journal piece. To me, ISPs and web-hosting companies aspiring to take responsibility for content would be a demonstration by ISPs and internet giants acting from an attendant duty to the public.

The journal already has two responses to Dr. Cohen-Almagor’s paper. It is a provocative piece that should stimulate a public discussion of these issues.

I have a personal interest in the return to service for Carnival’s ship, the Splendor. We are planning to sail over the winter holidays.

So, it was not merely a voyeuristic interest that I took when searching for stories last week about the state of the ship and how the cruiseline was taking care of its customers.

I think there are lessons to be found in Carnival’s response and outreach, helpful for all companies involved in the delivery of services to consumers.

From the beginning, Carnival has kept their current and future passengers informed and they have been proactive in making generous offers to compensate those who have had their vacation plans altered. Part of the communications strategy has been to talk through the blog maintained by Carnival’s Senior Cruise Director, John Heald.

It is important to note that he has been blogging for more than 3 and a half years – cautioning readers that

The views and opinions expressed here represent my own (and some of the commentators that I have included) and not those of Carnival Corporation.

His writing style is entertaining, a little off-colour and most importantly, with 7 million hits, he has built a readership from Carnival’s core client base. It happens that he was the cruise director on board the Splendor for last week’s sailing.

As such, the blog has provided a platform for Carnival to get its version of the story out. Regular updates were being provided and now that the ship is safely in port and the passengers have returned home, he has taken time to record his thoughts.

I have been most captivated by the series of posts irreverantly titled “Smoke on the Water”, explaining what happened from the perspective of the guy charged with getting information to the people on board the stricken ship. I encourage you to start from Part 1 and work your way through the whole series.

The credibility of the posts was earned by the investment of more than 43 months of writing tales of good times and building a readership.

John Heald’s Blog provides a case study for communications professionals.

I am moderating a session tomorrow looking at Social Networking and its impact within financial institutions. The panel is taking place at the “Banking on Israel IT” event in Toronto. Registration is free, but please register in advance with Sharon.

Tim Wu had an OpEd published in the Wall Street Journal this weekend: In the Grip of the Internet Monopolists.

There are commentaries on the piece on The Technology Liberation Front and TechCrunch. The more I thought about the OpEd, the more troubling it seemed.

Looking at the size and influence of Google, Facebook, Amazon, Skype, Apple, eBay and Twitter, Wu asks how hard it would be to go a week without these “dominant” applications.

The Internet has long been held up as a model for what the free market is supposed to look like—competition in its purest form. So why does it look increasingly like a Monopoly board?

Wu posits that each of these companies control a sector: search, social networking, retail, online content delivery. The criticism by Adam Thierer at The Technology Liberation Front addresses the imprecision by the Columbia University law professor.

He has intentionally watered down the term “monopolist” such that it now means any combination of big firms he personally doesn’t approve of in markets that he has defined far too narrowly. That’s not a proper understanding of the term “monopoly” and it most certainly isn’t an accurate representation of the real world of exciting digital innovation and ingenuity that we live in today.

It’s a shame Tim Wu continues to adopt such a hyper-pessimistic worldview and take such static, myopic snapshots of the state of the Digital Economy. We should be celebrating the world we live in today, not bemoaning it.

I found Wu’s concluding paragraph especially troubling, in that I just don’t get any part of what he is trying to say.

The Internet is still relatively young, and we remain in the golden age of these monopolists. We can also take comfort from the fact that most of the Internet’s giants profess an awareness of their awesome powers and some sense of attendant duty to the public. Perhaps if we’re vigilant, we can prolong the benign phase of their rule. But let’s not pretend that we live in anything but an age of monopolies.

Try to parse the paragraph and see if it holds together. None of these companies are monopolies despite each of them being extremely successful. They are indeed powerful and aware of their power, but what is the evidence of “some sense of attendant duty to the public”?

The OpEd may be the kind of speech that gets believers to stand up and applaud, but it doesn’t seem to hold up to analysis. Besides driving sales of his new book, what is behind Wu’s thesis?

A new report [pdf, 4.2MB] was released by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, part of the US Department of Commerce.

This report presents the most accurate statistical profile of U.S. broadband Internet adoption currently available. The report features new analysis of “adoption gaps,” i.e., the differences in average broadband Internet adoption at home among different groups after controlling for demographic and geographic factors.

It is a 68 page report with a wealth of data to help understand the factors that differentiate levels of adoption and to try to understand the reasons for non-adoption of residential broadband.

In the US, people who don’t use the internet represent two thirds of non-users of broadband. A quarter of all American households reported that no one in those households used the Internet at any location. Looking at the data, about 20% of these explicitly blamed the price, about half said that they don’t need it or aren’t interested and another 20% said they don’t have a computer (or their computer is inadequate).

I suspect that this actually could be interpretted as cost and financial aspects keeping 90% of the people who aren’t using the internet from getting on-line. “Don’t need it” may mean that they have better things to do with their money, like feeding their kids or getting them warm boots.

The NTIA study is based on the US Census Bureau’s Internet Use Supplement, which surveyed 54,000 households in October 2009. There is a wealth of information to inform policy makers in countries developing a national digital agenda

It should be a guide for the type of data that countries should be gathering to understand their own unique factors.