Report lists
E-
top six ICT PDF | Print |
mail
trends
Written by Noric Dilanchian
Wednesday, 21 May 2008
A new report by the Australian
Communications and Media Authority
(ACMA) highlights six trends in the
Information Communications Technology
(ICT) sector.
The report suffers from a fixation on
technology. Its comfort zone is bits, bytes
and gizmos. Equal space should have been
given to use made of IT and
communications by business and
consumers and the wide-ranging
implications of changing patterns of use.
The 18 page report is titled Top six trends
in communications and media
technologies, applications and services:
possible implications (PDF file).
Six trends
The report succinctly lists its top six trends
set out below. We've added links to related
reading on this website.
• TREND 1: An accelerating
pace of change driven by
overlapping developments in
technology, and connections
between people, databases and
objects. For reference to
evidence of acceleration see
- Speed pays in IP
commercialisation.
• TREND 2: Diversity in the
development of physical
infrastructure, including
broadband, digital broadcasting
of radio and television, location
sensing [eg Geographic
Information Systems (GIS) and
GPS], sensor networks [eg
Radio Frequency Identification
(RFID) tags] and intelligent
transport systems. See: 7
commercialised IT
technologies. Illustrated is an
IBM RFID shopping trolly
technology. Presumably it
responds to shelf-specific
offers or information.
• TREND 3:
Continuing spread of
distributed connectivity
through the integration of
information processing beyond
the desktop into everyday
objects and activities. Relevant
here is the ongoing reduction
of the costs of data storage and
the increased availability of
storage devices. These include
solid state or flash memory.
Connectivity is being enhanced
also with the spread of
transmission using internet
protocol (IP), eg Voice over IP
(VoIP) systems such as those of
Skype, internet video and
internet protocol TV (IPTV).
See Four billion subscribers
and DVRs and video on
demand in Australia.
• TREND 4: Enhanced content
and network management
capabilities driven by
developments in deep packet
inspection and content filtering
technologies. The discussion
here includes comments on
identity management (IdM)
standards developed by the
International
Telecommunications Union
and Digital Rights
Management (DRM)
endeavours in the face of
illegal file sharing. See
discussion of DRM here -
Grappling with fallacies: music
formats and DRM.
• TREND 5: The emerging
social web acting both as a
platform and database.
Reference is made to the
increasing trend of third-party
development of applications
programming interfaces
(APIs), mashups (eg content
drawn from multiple websites),
widgets (portable code that
users can install and execute on
their web pages), and web-
enabled mobile devices. See
Structured networks and the
next internet wave and Why is
social media such a hit?
• TREND 6: Continuing
scientific and technological
innovation. The way this is
treated there's no evidence of a
trend as such. Rather, there are
short references to a few topics,
eg Moore's Law and new
display technologies (claimed
to be better than LCD and
plasma) and leading to ultra-
thin screens.
Six gaps
Lightbulb has written extensively about all
six trends and gone beyond.
There are major gaps in the report. It is
really only a research note. It tends to fall
for gizmos and technologies, rather than
soft considerations which may ultimately
be more significant than many of the six
trends.
• There is little discussion
regarding the nature of changes
relating specifically to content.
• There are merely two
references to the word
"advertising". Yet it is changes
wrought by ICT to advertising
and business models sustained
by it (eg those of many print
and digital publishers and all
ad agencies) that should bump
that topic into the six top
trends.
• There is too little discussion of
changing user and consumer
attitudes, behaviours, habits
and lifestyles. For example see
Teenage mobile phone use
statistics and
 Commercialisation of IP and IT
products for Australian
children: trends and statistics.
• While acceleration seems
apparent, the report provides
little supporting evidence.
Again see Speed pays in IP
commercialisation. If change is
accelerating that is vital to
evidence; otherwise it's like
claiming global warming but
failing to comment on its
speed.
• Too little note is made of the
open source software
movement, increasing data
mining by Google, Yahoo!,
Microsoft and others with huge
online data capture
opportunities, and peer-to-peer
(P2P) technology. See
Lightbulb discussions - The
benefits of free and open
source software and Learn to
love P2P filesharing.
• There is a fixation on
consumer-level use of ICT,
rather than on use in business.
There is for example little
discussion of either e-business
or the spread of e-commerce.
See SMS revenue models and
e-marketing legal compliance.
Remember the 1990s? Media
fixation on the next big thing of
the internet brought with it
under-reporting of other major
trends, eg enterprise resource
management.
Legal issues and blind spots
Following are legal or regulatory issues, Moreover it is blind to some major
noted in the report as common to all six evolving legal issues. To take one
trends: example, Google's moves with AdWords,
YouTube and Google book search. They
are reshaping the competitive landscape
• Privacy law. for publishers and advertisers. Google puts
• E-security, including itself in the middle, creating a "perfect
interception and surveillance, market" for itself, "selling" one to the
malware, phishing and identity other.
management. Discussed further
here - Checklist of 51 hints for
data and IT security.
• Competition law considerations With no attempt to capture any framework
such as interoperability, which might simplify the regulatory
network interconnection, context, the report leaves us with
operational systems inter- disparate legal shopping lists. This is not
working. good enough, though it is a common cop
• Energy efficiency in line with out in discussions about law, including
international agreements. those by lawyers. See the Lightbulb
simplification, for example, here: Fox in
• Issues with regulatory
Socks: A parable for 30 years of IP for IT.
definitions, eg "broadcasting"
under the Broadcasting
Services Act 1992 (Cth) which
excludes streaming services but
covers them in Schedule 7
All up, Lightbulb gives the report a pass
applying a "much higher
mark, maybe six out of 10.
benchmark to permitted versus
prohibited content" says the
report.
This sample list of legal considerations, ---------------------------------------------------
raised by the trends and noted in the -----------------------------
report, does not even scratch the surface
of the breadth and depth of law applicable
to the trends. For example, there is no
mention of the now even more pervasive
role of contract law (eg in terms of use for
websites, mobile phone contracts, triple
play deals etc).