Digital Home Thoughts - News & Reviews for the Digital Home

"On the day of the collision last month, visibility was good. The sidewalk was not under repair. As she walked, Tiffany Briggs, 25, was talking to her grandmother on her cellphone, lost in conversation. Very lost. “I ran into a truck,” Ms. Briggs said. It was parked in a driveway."

It is becoming illegal in more places to use your phone while driving, without at least using hands-free and overall, I agree with the movement. I see driving as a privilege, and I see people holding a handset, let alone texting, as very dangerous. However, the war between drivers and pedestrians rages on, and pedestrians are far from innocent. People not using crosswalks and paying attention to the traffic signs is bad enough, but then there are those that are completely oblivious to the world around them which makes them just as much a danger as distracted drivers. If only there was a way we could impose or enforce the laws we currently have to encourage people to pay attention to the world around them, at least where safety is concerned.

"TEXT messaging is a wonderful business to be in: about 2.5 trillion messages will have been sent from cellphones worldwide this year. The public assumes that the wireless carriers’ costs are far higher than they actually are, and profit margins are concealed by a heavy curtain. Senator Herb Kohl, Democrat of Wisconsin and the chairman of the Senate antitrust subcommittee, wanted to look behind the curtain. He was curious about the doubling of prices for text messages charged by the major American carriers from 2005 to 2008, during a time when the industry consolidated from six major companies to four."

As a Canadian, I watch the US telco scene closely since it affects me, north of the border. That's why I'm very concerned over developments in text messaging. The New York Times has raised some issues in how wireless carriers are trying to hide just how much they profit from texting. In short, increased text messaging usage does not equate to increased operational costs for the carrier. This means that text messaging is almost all pure profit. In Canada, some carriers even charge for recieving text messages if you don't have a plan. For me, this is very worrisome because wireless carriers are exploiting our ignorance of the technology to make an obscene amount of money. If this continues, it hampers our ability to make full use of useful technology. A line has to be drawn and we have to start standing up by making sure that companies, especially monopolies and oligopolies are held accountable to the government for their practices. Anyone else angered by this abuse? Anyone know what you can do to help reign it in?

"This growing list of backwards policies is already creating a sense of digital isolation: Canadians can’t stream the videos Americans stream, download the files Americans download, remix the media Americans remix, or tweet the way Americans tweet. With the election of Barack Obama, digital culture in the U.S. hit a tipping point, where a robust online public sphere proved itself capable of changing the world. Meanwhile, here in Canada we’re approaching our own tipping point, where a series of ignorances and capitulations threaten to turn our country into a digital ghetto."

Living in Canada, the digital climate has a direct impact on me and my concerns echo a lot of what Jesse Brown has posted. Internet access, both wired and wireless, in Canada is relatively expensive and slower than our friends south of the border. This in combintion with a growing effort on DRM restrictions makes Canada a less inviting atmosphere for innovation. One case in point mentioned in the article is Twitter recently shutting down outbound SMS messages in Canada. Canadians, well, anyone, needs to make an effort to make sure that their country strives to keep its Internet access as cheap and open as possible. With the impact that a pervasive Internet can have on our lives, it's worth that effort.