Future of telecommunication and social networking

Ever since the inception of human civilization man has been in a constant strive for the proliferation of more and more evolved means of communication. From pouter pigeons to mobile phones, human ingenuity and innovation have always progressed with the passage of time. So what does the future hold for us?

Before delving into it we must reflect upon the trends we have now. The face of communication has changed dramatically over the past few years. Traditional telecommunication companies, which have historically dominated two-way interpersonal conversations, are increasingly being challenged by new market entrants that use the open platform of the internet to meet rapidly changing and diverse needs of the consumer. Until recently, the telecommunication industry has been multiplying day and night. They are one of the largest industries of the world in terms of active user base, with more than 4 billion active mobile users worldwide.

With the advent of Web 2.0 and social networking, the telecommunication industry is losing revenue from their basic functionalities i.e. one-to-one phone calls and SMS. People are becoming more and more disenchanted with the traditional and closed services provided by the telecommunication industry. People are flocking towards a more open, highly interactive and attractive new services like Facebook and twitter that place the user, their activities and preferences at the core of the of the service. These services are achieving more and more success among the final users.

All of this represents two long term shifts in trends of telecommunication. Firstly, there is a shift in communication patterns – from point-to-point, two-way interpersonal conversations to many-to-many, collaborative communications. Secondly, control of the communication environment is moving from the grasp of telecommunication companies to open Internet service providers. This shift is being made possible by better and cheaper technology, open standards, greater penetration of broadband services and wireless communication networks.

With numerous communication tools at their disposal, social networks are becoming integrated communication hubs. The integration of Facebook and Skype, for example, illustrates how social networks and communication applications can merge to benefit users. Facebook users can make Internet phone calls using Skype’s telephony .Twitter has become extremely popular. More than just a messaging platform, it has evolved into a platform for unified social communications where friends, business partners, and acquaintances can connect for conversation. Instead of sending e-mails, sending texts or making phone calls, many people choose to write short messages on Twitter and publish them via their computers or mobile devices.

In contrast, Telecom operators suffer from a lack of new innovative and successful services, as confirmed by the fact that traditional voice communication is still the major service. As acknowledged by different sources, the Telecom market needs to change - adopting the new principles of openness, collaboration, user participation, etc – in order to meet the new Web and enter the new multimedia service ecosystem. A new ecosystem is emerging from the shifts in communication trends that will require bold, significant changes by existing Telecom providers. The option of doing nothing is not a luxury they can afford as revenues from traditional services continue to decline and highly resourceful Internet service providers and IT companies enter the communications space to claim a larger share of the communication market.

Can i have some privacy please???

In 1972, Micheal Corleone hid in sicily for months after taking down Sollozzo and McCluskey, for revenge of attempt on his father, Vito Corleone's life. And in 2011, Serena Van der Woodson couldn't walk a block without being spotted and posted on gossip girl. How have our lives changed , or how have we changed it. Imagine a facebook addicted micheal corleone in 1972, constantly updating his status messages, could his coup on 5 families have been possible. I would have to say no.

We have compromised our own privacy and for what, for encroaching upon others??? Privacy, and the safety and security that word has always implied has become an illusion with time and technology. Every National spy network has access to all its citizen's emails and communication. Every webpage you open installs a malicious cookie on your computer which is in fact a spy to track you’re every move. There are analysts and predators in the legal space of digital world collecting data on your every click and close and predicting your behavior.With all these gadgets and technology only thing that has become cheap or even free is information. All you need is a person’s account nickname to find out what he has been doing.With just the information about zip code and date of birth you can uniquely identify a majority of influential population. That is how vulnerable we have become.

How obsessed have we become over gaining information, or rather i should say encroaching upon other's privacy. A person who is not perennially active on social networking circuit is out-casted. The only column that attracts us in a newspaper is Brad-Aniston break up or William-Kate marriage, not Japan's nuclear-seismic-tsunami disaster.

There is a reason we have right to privacy in our constitutions, because we deserve to choose and reveal selective information about ourselves. Constitution states no person shall be deprived of his life or personal liberty except according to procedure established by law. It represents our freedom, our autonomy, which is the premise of our society today.

But there is no doubt individual privacy is at its greatest peril at this time with increasing control of government and security services on our every move, which is , they say, absolutely needed to maintain order in society in these troubling times. But we must ponder, haven't we created tool of our own destruction. Isn't it our own doing, which could become our undoing. When this revolution came we chased it , grabbed whatever we could, and now we are fighting against it. Fighting and longing for something which we willingly gave up, our privacy.

Can we even think of a life where there is no privacy. We will be slaves. Our civilization, our philosophy , our values depends on privacy. We must fight for it to preserve it, like species on the brink of extinction ,for without it we are doomed.

Ethical debate over free software!!

“Free software is a matter of liberty, not price. To understand the concept,one needs to think of it as free speech and not free beer”

When Richard Stallman, Founder & President of the Free Software Foundation, said so he was clearly flabbergasted by the encroaching hypocrisy of the suit clad, board room dweller executives of Goliaths of the trade. When this movement was started back in 1985, it started as a social movement,a copyleft-based movement which aims to promote the universal freedom to create, distribute and modify computer software. But this movement, however admirable were its contributions and achievements, its hatred in commercial software world was highly widespread and disturbing. Then they coined the magic term open source in 1998.

As much as they look like each other, they are very different at their cores. While free software stands for freedom, a social reform, an ethical solution; Open source stands for profit, optimal solution. Open source is anything but for freedom, a calculated and heavily funded campaign to crush the free software movement that became a threat to the czars of the business.

But lets find out that even with all the goodwill why this movement was overshadowed. When we look into the motives of writing a free software we find that for some people,often the best programmers, writing software is the greatest fun, especially when there is no boss to tell you what to do. Nearly all free software developers share this motive. Also if you write a successful, useful free program, it will suffice to enhance your professional reputation. And then there is Gratitude, if you have used the community's free programs for years, and it has been important to your work, you feel grateful and indebted to their developers. When you write a program that could be useful to many people, that is your chance to pay it forward. But apparently it was not enough to sustain the consumerist needs of ever hungry human which always demands more compensation than effort.

Then comes the Issue of Ownership which has many aspects to it. Why and How does a person claims ownership? Firstly, the idea of name calling or legacy, where one cannot just use somebody else's creation and put one's own name on it. Secondly, economic loss (however exaggerated), caused by uncontrolled copying and distribution of the product. Thirdly, by the law, in form of intellectual property rights heavily supports the owner. Fourthly, the natural right, where author's desires and interests concerning the program simply outweighs those of anyone else. But then there are arguments that neutralize the some of these aspects like Constitution only permits such system like copyright and doesn't require one.

The Free Software revolution rejects the concept of the programmer as being the owner of the software. Ownership is being completely transferred at the time of purchase. By doing this it is negating the concept of ownership as whole which can lead to a very slippery slope.

Our Economic system depends upon the concept of difference and uniqueness.Without the concept of copyrights and owners, the Free Software Movement would eventually make the business structure working today obsolete.

Free Software revolution also violates Autonomy of the Author ,as once the software is sold to the individual, the buyer is free to do as he deems fit, irrespective of the intent of the programmer.

Despite all this there are some good things about this revolution. In the overall picture it causes beneficence to society, as Free Software provides users the source codes, loopholes in the software can then be removed by the user. It also discourages monopolistic practices and drives out the self interest driven part in the development of the program which in some cases can be against the common good of society. It strengthens the Autonomy of the User as Non-Free Software violates the autonomy of the user by not allowing customizations in the software to better suit the needs of the user.

The revolution is still fighting and hanging on to a loose thread of morality and freedom.I could have been the modern revolution in internet like the modern revolution in Arts which gave immense privilege and authority to the audience, but i guess we were not yet ready for that.