We have covered Spectrum bridge before (An analysis of early white space network success stories and their future implications ..)  and at that time, I wanted to write a follow on blog on their MWC demo.

White space networks are of interest to me both intellectually and also from a PhD perspective and in this post, I wanted to explore the wider implications of ‘spectrum harvesting’ on the industry.

I see white space technologies as ‘incrementally disruptive’ – i.e. just like Wi-Fi – they will be used by all industry players. White space networks also have some immediate use cases: Rural broadband, Machine to Machine and alleviating the spectrum crunch. ‘Spectrum harvesting’ relates to the ‘spectrum crunch’ aspect of white space i.e. the last element

The question is: will spectrum harvesting become the norm in future?

The basic announcement from spectrum bridge and Interdigital at MWC was: InterDigital to Collaborate with Spectrum Bridge on Spectrum Harvesting Technologies

Essentially, InterDigital and Spectrum Bridge collaborate to develop Dynamic Spectrum Management technologies that intelligently harvest TV White Space (TVWS) and other under-utilized frequency bands. Spectrum harvesting opens new blocks of radio waves for use by Wi-Fi®, LTE, and other wireless systems, addressing the ever-growing demand for wireless bandwidth.

Spectrum Bridge is a pioneer in white space databases (pdf) and the InterDigital Dynamic Spectrum Management solution uses this white space database for ‘spectrum harvesting’ – in practise, that means:

•  Allocation and aggregation of contiguous and non-contiguous frequency channels across licensed, unlicensed and TV White Space;

•  Database and sensing-assisted spectrum allocation;

•  Extension of legacy systems such as Wi-Fi® and cellular into under-utilized frequency bands.

The interdigital announcement talks of a ‘network of networks’ : “The interdigital press release says: “that enable a network of networks to operate on underutilized frequencies, including TV whitespace (TVWS). Wi-Fi®, LTE, and other wireless systems can use this ground-breaking technology to harvest additional spectrum to service more users, increase data throughput, avoid interference, and build out the small cell, heterogeneous  network that is now being recognized as the future of wireless

infrastructure.”

But how does this work?

Have a look at this video

At 0.55 mins, ‘available channels’ means all types of channels (LTE, white space, Wi-Fi)

This is truly disruptive – i.e. channels of network types are accessed transparently.

The final question is: What does White Space add to Wi-Fi?

Two things

a)     First more bandwidth. Whatever spectrum you have at 2.4 and 5GHz now you add multiples of 6-8Mhz of UHF spectrum.

b)    Also, propagation. White Space signals carry further so Wi-Fi range is extended and where a weak signal would mean low bandwidth you would now get more bandwidth.

 The concepts are pervasive i.e. in the home, at a venue etc – if spectrum is seen not as ‘spectrum types’ (LTE, Wi-Fi, White space etc) – but rather holistically as ‘channels’ which may be ‘harvested’ by a service – that is truly interesting. I believe it could be the norm.

Comments welcome.

Frans van der Reep has written a long article about a theme that he has covered before i.e. The Middle Ages in the Internet-era: What is happening around us? (1995, 2001, 2010)

Curiously enough, as I was reading Frans’s article, I also came across an article in the well respected policy magazine – the national journal – called ‘In nothing we trust’ – which has similar echoes. So, frans may be on to something with his metaphor of the ‘revival of the middle ages’

Here is a summary review of the key points as I see them:

-  Banks, newspapers, churches and even our governments are no longer what they used to be. Increasingly, they are run with a bias on short term results.

- There is currently a shift in the power structure. During the last century, the phrase “knowledge is power” led to a social revolution which secured access to education for everyone and transparency of government. Today, knowledge is no longer scare and hence no longer a leverage for power.

- In the middle ages, large scale organizations, with the exception of the church, did not exist yet. Even the army was often a temporary project of the highest paying nobleman. In this small world everyone knew everything about everyone – gossip was rife. Everyone was connected via one, two or maybe three steps with everyone via clear-cut social networks.

- The premise of the article is: We are entering a similar world to that of the middle ages in the age of the Internet and this will have wide ranging impacts. For instance:

The internet will reinstate  respect for craftsmanship.

Ranks and positions become more obvious: some are allowed more than others.

Increased evidence of story telling in our culture

The plague has also returned.

The relationship between the citizen and the state is shifting, not being automatically looked upon as trusted advisor.

A revival of patronage

A revival of interest in spirituality has returned as well:

The medieval “fierceness of daily life” and “rough reality”, to speak in the terms coined by Johan Huizinga, appears to be making a comeback. Executions are videotaped and uploaded onto Youtube.

The article then goes on to discuss the impact of these changes 

- We are still waiting for the ‘elite’ the bourgeoisie, who took over from the up-till-then reigning nobility at the end of the middle ages

-  We are struggling with a sense of Identity

-  We usually know what we don’t want, but we don´t know yet what we do want.

-   There is a now a tendency towards self-organization in many domains – entrepreneurship,

energy, funding etc

- In many aspects connections are restored. Connections between the origin and destination of money for instance, in peer to peer banking, a connection  we can also find in Islamic banks.

- The main question – is whether human beings will improve through these changes. Or not?

We need a shared vision and the risk is – in this vacuum new crusades are fought. A new fundamentalism may appear. Old instruments of control lose their influence and new ones are created. But which of these will bring us, as individuals, the most opportunities?

A golden age (renaissance) or an age of turbulence?

The full link is: Middle Ages in the Internet-era: What is happening around us? (1995, 2001, 2010)

As you know from reading the OpenGardens blog, I have been interested in Arduino

Recently, I chaired a successful event in Amsterdam called Apps for Smart cities – bringing the ideas of Open source hardware to a smart cities context.

So, when O Reilly offered to send me a review copy of Mike Riley ’s book – Programming your home – I was happy to accept it

The book is about ‘hacking the home’ i.e. home automation and Mike Riley is ‘excited about the broader possibilities for home automation and wants to instil the confidence to build upon these and your own ideas’

In this context, ‘Home automation’ is defined as a ‘product or service that brings an action or message to the home environment’

The book starts with first principles and then discusses incrementally complex examples from water level monitors to the relatively complex ‘android door lock’

The android examples are interesting since I expect that it’s a direction where apps will evolve – and was reflected in the Apps for smart cities manifesto . Android apps for home automation based on the sparkfun IOIO boards and android open accessory development kit –  and practical accessories like Xbee radios  are discussed in detail building up from simple initial ideas

I follow the idea of hacking the home (for that matter – hacking the city) with great interest especially through Arduino. The fundamentals of any arduino program are the same:

- #include statements import code libraries.

- The setup() routine is used to reference physical wiring connection points(arduiono pins)

- After variable assignment and setup the program enters an infinite loop waiting for an event

Any device (ex smoke alarm monitors) can be made ‘intelligent’ – but the significance lies in using simple, open technology.  An ‘event’ may be generated from any action in the home or city. Thus the idea of ‘the home is the computer’ – a play on the word John Gage’s famous phrase  – The network is the computer  - is a powerful concept.

Hence, my interest in the book because it leads to two ideas I have been speaking of recently:   The city is the computer (or more specifically – Smart cities should mirror the Internet – the city should be a platform) and the idea from Clay shirky that – ‘lower the barriers to a technology and the crowds pour in’.

Here in the UK, we see the Raspberry Pi – also contributing to the grassroots effort

My final thought on the significance of this book comes from a vintage interview by Steve jobs  and the Steve Jobs quote – “Man is a toolmaker, has the ability to make a tool to amplify the amount of inherent ability that he has…”

Hence I recommend this book i.e. the ability to be tool makers / hack the home/ make the home as a computer

“Man is a toolmaker, has the ability to make a tool to amplify the amount of inherent ability that he has…what we are doing is building tools that amplify a human ability…the industrial revolution was an amplification of a human ability, sweat…What we are working towards now is the ability to amplify another human ability and we are just starting to get glimmerings of where it is going to go.”

‎”… founded on one princpiple … one person, one computer … one to one relationship …”

- Steve Jobs (1980)

I have had the pleasure of reviewing Paul Golding’s books before

Like his previous books, his latest book Connected Services: A Guide to the Internet Technologies Shaping the Future of Mobile Services and Operators keeps up the excellent tradition!

These books are quintessential reference books and over the years, their scope has expanded as the industry itself matures.

Thus, in comparison to the previous books, Connected services takes a major leap forward

Over the years, the perspective and the audience of Paul’s books remains the same – i.e. the Telco professional who wants to understand the wider ecosystem – specifically the Web and the developer ecosystems that preceded the mobile ecosystem – and evolves with it.

Even relatively recent topics of discussion like Web 2.0, web v.s. apps seem ‘old’ as the industry moves fast with the merging of the Web and the Telco worlds.

Paul’s recent work with O2’s various platform initiatives gives him the background to comment on this merging of two worlds ..

This book provides both the foundations (ex sections like Beneath the hood of web 2.0 – CRUD MVC and REST) but also covers many emerging trends in great detail.

The sections I learnt from most were – Big data, Real time web, Augmeted web and modern device platforms

The last two chapters of the book are for the Telco guy .. Operator platform: Network as a service and Harnessing web 2.0 start-up methods for telcos

I read them with interest ..

Will the Telco listen to this advice or will they worry about the OTT players and lose the game entirely?

Time will tell ..

And finally, I enjoyed the great humour at the beginning of each chapter ..

Here is an example

Platform = case app

when “Game” then “Native”

when “Blog” then “Web”

when “Comms” then “Either”

when “Weird” then “Widget”

when “Everything” then “Text”

else “Web”

end

Like Paul’s previous books, I very much recommend this book.

Link is Connected Services: A Guide to the Internet Technologies Shaping the Future of Mobile Services and Operators

Like many people, I am a huge fan of Spotify.

Mark

There are a number of areas where your article over simplifies things

I will blog more on my blog later this week, but here are some initial comments

a)     As I understood it, this was a first of a series of meetings – and not a ‘result’ as you imply.

b)    There were many other attendees you did not include – ex from Cabinet office, Ministry of justice etc

c)     You mention ‘telecoms’ – and yes – that’s where I come from as well. It is overly simplistic to exclude telecoms from the argument of open standards. When we include Telecoms, we also see the value of IPR in standards. Many successful standards like GSM which have licensing that includes IPR – and have been proven to be successful. We will see the same discussions for HTML5 as well ie it is a web standard but with implications for the mobile web

d)    Many in telecoms see it as a slippery slope – ex the standards hub  - covers a wider discussion of standards. So, I see an artificial dichotomy in separating telecoms  and hence agree to the belief that competition and innovation will be enabled through a more telecoms-like standards approach – ex through FRAND.

e)     Excluding such companies and innovation will be detrimental to the interests of UK companies and startups ex a UK company like picochip depends on IPR to create innovation 

I look forward to continuing the discussion

Kind rgds

Ajit

Many people – including me – supported Google because their actions, although commercial,  enabled web freedom.

Today that is less clear as two headlines demonstrate.

On one hand – Google is accused of invading privacy by asking people to identify blurred house numbers from pictures .. but also Google says – Web freedom faces its biggest threats

While I believe that Web freedom faces it’s biggest threat – the challenge for Google is – many people do not believe that Google is the upholder of that freedom.  

Google is no longer cool and after including G+ results in Google search  - many people will go along with this – but will await the results of EU findings since this is definitely a misleading picture for search.

By this I mean -

a)  Most real people (non geeks) are on FB and twitter(not G+)

b) Google is the dominant provider for search

c) By including G+ and ignoring FB and Twitter in Google search, search results do not reflect real life

Hence, while Internet freedom is under threat – one would question if Google is the upholder of that freedom?

On one hand you could argue that Google is too big to care for such intellectual support .. but the road to antitrust is paved with many companies who made exactly that mistake!

Image source: rescuepost

This blog is based on a presentation for a new book written by me and my eight year old son Aditya. (Concepts of programming languages for kids - By Ajit Jaokar and Aditya Jaokar) – It will be a book but much more ie a new teaching technique for the concepts of programming languages  

It is based on a technique I used to teach him computer programming which I elaborated in a paper I wrote for  a leading education technology journal(see below).  I love the ethos of teaching computer programming in a completely different way.  I presented these ideas to education technologists in Europe and America and to other programmers who I respect.

We welcome your comments at ajit.jaokar at futuretext.com

A portion of all earnings will go to autism charities.

Image source: Nasa

I once knew a Nasa scientist who said very poignantly that ‘In a world of division between humanity, Space is one of the few things which unites us all .. ‘  - I think so does technology – especially when taught to young people

However, the way computer programming is taught could be changed and improved in the Internet age. I am reminded of this excellent quote from  Richard Feynman

“You can know the name of a bird in all the languages of the world, but when you’re finished, you’ll know absolutely nothing whatever about the bird… So let’s look at the bird and see what its doing– that’s what counts. I learned very early the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something.” — Richard Feynman

The ideas here are presented in a leading educational publication as a paper.

Educational Technology Magazine is the world’s leading periodical publication covering the entire field of educational technology, an area pioneered by the magazine’s editors in the early 1960s. Read by leaders in more than one hundred countries, the magazine has been at the forefront of every important new trend in the development of the field throughout the past five decades.  Its list of published authors is a virtual “who’s who” of the  leading personalities and authorities from all over the world active in educational technology research, development, and application

Here in England, they say that Programming is the new Latin (to be potentially taught to all students as Latin was once). There is some merit to this because programming teaches you how to think (as Latin also taught you a structured way of thinking)

But we risk making the same mistakes ..

We risk teaching children merely ‘how to program’ instead of teaching kids how to think.  And the two are not the same. To paraphrase Richard Feynman: we risk knowing the ‘name of the bird’ in many languages but risk understanding the bird itself ..

Concepts of programming languages is a set of techniques that teaches kids how to focus on the thought process behind programming languages  ..  i.e. to think ..

Broadly, there are two contrasting approaches for learning – Constructivism which implies inquiry based teaching vs. direct instruction where the teacher explicitly guides the student – the  Logo programming language used constructivist ideas.

Aditya Jaokar

The problem we ended up addressing : Re applying some of the original ideas of constructivism (from the 1960s) to a different problem – namely how to use constructivism to teach concepts of any programming language to kids(as opposed to teaching kids a specific language).

Programming languages are not new and in fact they predate computers because programming was used in devices such as Jacquard looms  (Jacquard looms used punch cards –which is a form of programming).

A programming language provides a mechanism for defining two things: Structured pieces of data and also the ability to perform operations on that data. Thus, a programming language is simply a way to communicate a set of instructions to a machine. In most cases, but not all cases, the ‘machine’ is a computer.

Why constructivism suits programming ..

A constructivist led approach is suited for learning concepts of programming for the following reasons:

-  Programming is by nature constructivist i.e.it is designed to be an enabler – and in doing so, programming is designed to be ‘invisible’ because programming is mechanism to solve real-life problems. However, in teaching programming, we divorce it from real life problems. An exploratory approach suits learning since it can often be used to relate to real life problems

-  A programmer needs to adopt the mind-set of an engineer i.e. the engineer starts with a set of tools and materials but every problem she solves is different. No two bridges are exactly the same. Thus, the ‘minimal guidance’ approach of constructivism are suited to programming because it encourages multiple ways of solving a problem

-  Finally, the Web and the Internet lend themselves to a constructivist mode of teaching since networks lend themselves to exploration

These ideas(constructivism) could be be re-applied in the Internet age by relating them to more conventional applications.  For instance, many conventional programming languages are used in the programming of the MARS Rover and it is easy to relate ideas of programming to concrete examples like the MARS Rover

Similarly, kids understand Javascript .. simply because its ‘under the hood’ for any web page and is so easy to learn

JavaScript is ‘real’ to an eight year old who is familiar with the Web (and many eight year olds are!).

Here are some techniques we followed … Note that the information is freely available, but we differ from previous approaches by focusing on teaching the concepts of programming languages 

1)  Teach more than one real world languages:  Why confine to only one language? We expanded our study to more than one language and in the end we decided to focus on four languages – JavaScript, C, Scratch from MIT and Raspberry Pi . Each language has different characteristics but they are all real languages used to solve real problems.

2) Combine abstractions with non-abstractions: An abstraction is a concept or an idea not associated with a specific instance. Most people struggle with programming and mathematics because both these disciplines involve abstractions. In practise, some abstractions which traditionally are taught later on are easier to understand upfront – for example Arrays. Kids understand Arrays because they are visual and are easier to relate to (for example an array can be a list). Thus, by teaching some elements like arrays earlier, programming becomes easier.

3) Teach in two stages and don’t get bogged down in syntax :  Programming is taught in a liner way. Traditionally, you start with the ‘hello world’ program. Then you learn specific statements like the IF statement, the FOR loop etc.  This approach has the disadvantage that kids get bogged down with syntax but soon get bored because they are not solving real problems. We teach a lot faster. We teach programming in two stages. In the first stage, we focus on the basic syntax for the instruction and in the second stage, we focus on the variants of the syntax. For example, to teach the idea of a LOOP in the first stage, we explain the loop concept and in the second stage, we explain different types of loops (FOR loop, WHILE loop, FOR .. IN loop etc). This means, we approach real problems a lot faster

So, this will be an ongoing effort over this year. We are already working with partners and friends as we expand the idea . We welcome comments and feedback at ajit.jaokar at futuretext.com