TL;DR I’m not arguing against contact tracing apps; I’m critical of Apple and Google’s approach.

In the past months our Iphones and Androids received operating systems updates, a joint effort by the two companies to help in the fight against COVID-19. The updates introduced new operating system functions for applications (APIs Application Programming Interfaces) to enable Contact Tracing apps developed by national health authorities. Without this update, Tracing Apps can’t work properly, mainly due to bluetooth power management by iphones.

When an iphone’s screen is off, it detects bluetooth beacons but does not emit them. It’s mute but not deaf. So, when an android meets a ‘mute’ Iphone, it cannot detect the contact. In a nutshell, Apple’s and Google’s APIs allow for a different management of the iphone’s Bluetooth to enable mutual detection of the contact also when the iphone’s screen is off.

The companies have decided that this functionality is reserved exclusively for States’ authorities.

This is the critical part: Apple and Google have agreed to provide States with a feature that bypasses the normal operations of the operating system and enables State Apps to do things the rest of developers are vetoed to.

Let’s forget the Covid emergency for a moment and reread the sentence above: functions on our devices that only State authorities can access.

Since this path has been taken, which reserved functions will States ask Google and Apple tomorrow ? Once this path has been taken, is it irrational to think that States will ask similar backdoors for surveillance purposes, obviously keeping them secret ?

Opening the source code of States’ apps won’t help much in inspecting what Apps really do. “Reproducible build” is a technical process to check if a source code corresponds with the Apps we download from the stores. Because of technical reasons, it is not possible to have an independent, byte-for-byte verification of all Apps using State reserved functions: The possibility of democratic oversight is undermined.

We welcome the effort of the duopolistic companies to make a contribution to public health. But this paradigm shift, making some functions reserved only to States’ authorities, is unacceptable. Reserving APIs to States is a paradigm echoing behaviors of totalitarian regimes, even worse of what George Orwell thought of.

We should welcome national health authorities who employ all available techniques in order to protect public health. The problem is not them using these APIs: they exist today, even if health authorities don’t use them.

The problem lies upstream; it lies in the concept itself that our devices, the homes of our digital dimension, provide services exclusively accessible to States’ authorities.

A striking difference with what William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham, who served as Prime Minister of Great Britain, said in 1763:
“The poorest man may in his cottage bid defiance to all the forces of the crown. It may be frail – its roof may shake – the wind may blow through it – the storm may enter – the rain may enter – but the King of England cannot enter.”

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Source (Consciousness -> Meaning -> Symbols) -> Communication ->(Symbols -> Meaning -> Consciousness) Receiving

When a person communicates with another the process may be described as above:The receiver interprets the symbols she received, extracting a meaning that she internalizes with her consciousness. The source was conscious and had the intention of communicating and a meaning of what she  wanted to communicate; she codified the meaning in symbols that have been communicated.

In this act of communication both source and receiving parties need to have some shared model to base the encoding and interpretation of the meaning; a shared context and culture (a common knowledge).

When a machine with an AI system generates a message (like in a chatbot) it generates it by algorithmically assemble symbols based on a statistical model. There is no consciousness, no meaning to form the intention of the communication.

The receiver would be wrong to assume that the machine intented to meant the information carried in the message. It’s a purely mechanical product.

It’s the receiving party that can attribute a meaning to the sybols, not the source.

Meaning is only in the eyes of the beholder.

Think of an abstract painter. She is concious and wants to commnicate something to the observers; she  codifies the message in the painting but then eventually the observer looks at the painting and is unable to attribute a meaning; the observer  just sees symbols and cannot extract a meaning.

This is symmetric to what happens with AI: the machine just mechanically assembles symbols and then the receiver attributes a meaning.

The machine does not know what the message means, it does not know it is producing a message; it does not even know that its output is a message and that someone will receive it.

(Palau’s Bear)

With AI it’s like looking at rocks, stalagmites or clouds and seeing an animal.

The clouds don’t know it’s an animal; they don’t even know it’s a shape. They don’t know.

It’s just us, seeing the clouds who see an animal in them.

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The important report is here.

It’s a very important and interesting reading.

A mini-synthesis of the findings in the 400 pages long report can be found in this twitter thread.

As many readers know, I have devoted a significant part of my public life to promote competition in the digital space (“dimensione immateriale”), have proposed comprehensive bills while I was in the parliament and wrote a book “Capitalismo Immateriale” (in english it’d be “Virtual Capitalism”, 5 stars rating in italy and a good number of reprints) explaining in great detail the business models and practices that this report has found applied by these big four.

These are few highlights:

In June 2019, the Committee on the Judiciary initiated a bipartisan investigation into the state of competition online, spearheaded by the Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial and Administrative Law. As part of a top-to-bottom review of the market, the Subcommittee examined the dominance of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google, and their business practices to determine how their power affects our economy and our democracy. Additionally, the Subcommittee performed a review of existing antitrust laws, competition policies, and current enforcement levels to assess whether they are adequate to address market power and anticompetitive conduct in digital markets

…

To put it simply, companies that once were scrappy, underdog startups that challenged the status quo have become the kinds of monopolies we last saw in the era of oil barons and railroad tycoons. Although these firms have delivered clear benefits to society, the dominance of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google has come at a price. These firms typically run the marketplace while also competing in it—a position that enables them to write one set of rules for others, while they play by another,or to engage in a form of their own private quasiregulation that is unaccountable to anyone but themselves. The effects of this significant and durable market power are costly. The Subcommittee’s series of hearings produced significant evidence that these firms wield their dominance in ways that erode entrepreneurship, degrade Americans’privacy online, and undermine the vibrancy of the free and diverse press. The result is less innovation, fewer choices for consumers, and a weakened democracy.

Nearly a centuryago, Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis wrote: “We must make our choice. We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we cannot have both.”Those words speak to us with great urgency today. Although we do not expect that all of our Members will agree on every finding and recommendation identified in this Report, we firmly believe that the totality of the evidence produced during this investigation demonstrates the pressing need for legislative action and reform.

These firms have too much power, and that power must be reined in and subject to appropriate oversight and enforcement. Our economy and democracy are at stake.As a charter of economic liberty, the antitrust laws are the backbone of open and fair markets.

When confronted by powerful monopolies over the past century—be it the railroad tycoons and oil barons or Ma Bell and Microsoft—Congress has acted to ensure that no dominant firm captures and holds undue control over our economy or our democracy. We face similar challenges today.

Congress—not the courts, agencies, or private companies—enacted the antitrust laws, and Congress must lead the path forward to modernize them for the economy of today, as well as tomorrow. Our laws must be updated to ensure that our economy remains vibrant and open in the digital age.

Congress must also ensure that the antitrust agencies aggressively and fairly enforce the law. Over the course of the investigation, the Subcommittee uncovered evidence that the antitrust agencies failed, at key occasions, to stop monopolists from rolling up their competitors and failed to protect the American people from abuses of monopoly power. Forceful agency action is critical.

Lastly, Congress must revive its tradition of robust oversight overthe antitrust laws and increased market concentration in our economy. In prior Congresses, the Subcommittee routinely examined these concerns in accordance with its constitutional mandate to conduct oversight and perform its legislative duties. As a 1950 report from the then-named Subcommittee on the Study of Monopoly Power described its mandate: “It is the province of this subcommittee to investigate factors which tend to eliminate competition, strengthen monopolies, injure small business, or promote undue  concentration of economic power; to ascertain the facts, and to make recommendations based on those findings.”

Now let me add a personal touch.

I started analyzing and understanding patterns echoing abusive behaviors when I had to close a startup I funded and founded more than a decade ago.

The dominant phone player at the time was european, the popular video format for small-screen handset was .3GP, UMTS was rolling out, smartphones where just born (but growing *fast*), the WII console was a hit and there were plenty of video sites.

My startup, based in the UK, developed a system that allowed a user to bookmark a video – any video, on any site – for later watching on any device the user owned (hiding all technical complexities such as format transcoding, synchronizing, etc.), allowing her to manage her playlists, share with a limited number of friends with a legal friendly “lending” mode, etc.

The smartphone app allowed for synchronization of the contents for offline viewing (there was not enough bandwidth for streaming and it was costly; there was no coverage in subways, trains or airplanes): when you arrived home/office, the app would recognize the wifi and start synchronizing all the videos to your device.

We even had a client for the WII so you could watch your playlists on TV (and on play stations as well).

We published the app on the store and downloads were ramping up very satisfactorily, and just by word of mouth.

There was a clear need of a service that allowed users to aggregate videos from one of the many possible sources(*) and watch them on any device, anywhere, online/offline.

(*) there was life beyond youtube, at the time.

Then our app was taken down from the store. And that happened time and again with motivations that seemed futile to me.

The app was clearly legit.

One day my CTO received a call which basically said that it was pointless for us to insist with publishing the app because they were supporting Youtube and didn’t want a competing app.

We discussed with the lawyers and for a while  we unsuccessfully  tried to get a written statement of what we’ve been told, to possibly start a legal action; Later, absent any proof of the facts above, I had no choice but to shut down the company.

I told my story to some friends and learned other similar stories; in one case I was told they were asked some million euros in order to let the app in the store.

I have no proofs, so I have been very careful to avoid references to a specific company.

But that’s the kind of power that gatekeepers have and the reason why we need ex ante regulation to protect device neutrality. And the report recognizes it. (page 378)

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Faccio mea culpa… Gli informatici come me spesso credono, in virtù della loro metodologia di approccio ai problemi, di sapere quale sia il processo migliore per la soluzionedel problema, di qualsiasi problema.

Quando poi le cose non hanno l’esito sperato, c’e’ sempre una colpa di qualcuno o un problema imprevisto ed inevitabile.

Con l’età poi si capisce che in genere i problemi avevano degli aspetti taciti, non formalizzati, ecc. che, se fossero stati presi nella giusta considerazione all’inizio, avrebbero mitigato la sicumera, che la funzione obiettivo che si cercava di indirizzare non era quella appropriata, ecc.

Source: Wired

Opinion: AI For Good Is Often Bad

After speaking at an MIT conference on emerging AI technology earlier this year, I entered a lobby full of industry vendors and noticed an open doorway leading to tall grass and shrubbery recreating a slice of the African plains. I had stumbled onto TrailGuard AI, Intel’s flagship AI for Good project, which the chip company describes as an artificial intelligence solution to the crime of wildlife poaching. Walking through the faux flora and sounds of the savannah, I emerged in front of a digital screen displaying a choppy video of my trek. The AI system had detected my movements and captured digital photos of my face, framed by a rectangle with the label “poacher” highlighted in red.
WIRED OPINION

Mark Latonero (@latonero) is a fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Carr Center for Human Rights Policy and a research lead at Data & Society.

I was handed a printout with my blurry image next to a picture of an elephant, along with text explaining that the TrailGuard AI camera alerts rangers to capture poachers before one of the 35,000 elephants each year are killed. Despite these good intentions, I couldn’t help but wonder: What if this happened to me in the wild? Would local authorities come to arrest me now that I had been labeled a criminal? How would I prove my innocence against the AI? Was the false positive a result of a tool like facial recognition, notoriously bad with darker skin tones, or was it something else about me? Is everyone a poacher in the eyes of Intel’s computer vision?

Intel isn’t alone. Within the last few years, a number of tech companies, from Google to Huawei, have launched their own programs under the AI for Good banner. They deploy technologies like machine-learning algorithms to address critical issues like crime, poverty, hunger, and disease. In May, French president Emmanuel Macron invited about 60 leaders of AI-driven companies, like Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, to a Tech for Good Summit in Paris. The same month, the United Nations in Geneva hosted its third annual AI for Global Good Summit sponsored by XPrize. (Disclosure: I have spoken at it twice.) A recent McKinsey report on AI for Social Good provides an analysis of 160 current cases claiming to use AI to address the world’s most pressing and intractable problems.

While AI for good programs often warrant genuine excitement, they should also invite increased scrutiny. Good intentions are not enough when it comes to deploying AI for those in greatest need. In fact, the fanfare around these projects smacks of tech solutionism, which can mask root causes and the risks of experimenting with AI on vulnerable people without appropriate safeguards.

Tech companies that set out to develop a tool for the common good, not only their self-interest, soon face a dilemma: They lack the expertise in the intractable social and humanitarian issues facing much of the world. That’s why companies like Intel have partnered with National Geographic and the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation on wildlife trafficking. And why Facebook partnered with the Red Cross to find missing people after disasters. IBM’s social-good program alone boasts 19 partnerships with NGOs and government agencies. Partnerships are smart. The last thing society needs is for engineers in enclaves like Silicon Valley to deploy AI tools for global problems they know little about.
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The deeper issue is that no massive social problem can be reduced to the solution offered by the smartest corporate technologists partnering with the most venerable international organizations. When I reached out to the head of Intel’s AI for Good program for comment, I was told that the “poacher” label I received at the TrailGuard installation was in error—the public demonstration didn’t match the reality. The real AI system, Intel assured me, only detects humans or vehicles in the vicinity of endangered elephants and leaves it to the park rangers to identify them as poachers. Despite this nuance, the AI camera still won’t detect the likely causes of poaching: corruption, disregarding the rule of law, poverty, smuggling, and the recalcitrant demand for ivory. Those who still cling to technological solutionism are operating under the false assumption that because a company’s AI application might work in one narrow area, it will work on a broad political and social problem that has vexed society for ages.

Sometimes, a company’s pro-bono projects collide with their commercial interests. Earlier this year Palantir and the World Food Programme announced a $45M partnership to use data analytics to improve food delivery in humanitarian crises. A backlash quickly ensued, led by civil society organizations concerned over issues like data privacy and surveillance, which stem from Palantir’s contracts with the military. Despite Palantir’s project helping the humanitarian organization Mercy Corps aid refugees in Jordan, protesters and even some Palantir employees have demanded the company stop helping the Immigration and Customs Enforcement detain migrants and separate families at the US border.

Even when a company’s intentions seem coherent, the reality is that for many AI applications, the current state of the art is pretty bad when applied to global populations. Researchers have found that facial recognition software, in particular, is often biased against people of color, especially those who are women. This has led to calls for a global moratorium on facial recognition and cities like San Francisco to effectively ban it. AI systems built on limited training data create inaccurate predictive models that lead to unfair outcomes. AI for good projects often amount to pilot beta testing with unproven technologies. It’s unacceptable to experiment in the real world on vulnerable people, especially without their meaningful consent. And the AI field has yet to figure out who is culpable when these systems fail and people are hurt as a result.

This is not to say tech companies should not work to serve the common good. With AI poised to impact much of our lives, they have more of a responsibility to do so. To start, companies and their partners need to move from good intentions to accountable actions that mitigate risk. They should be transparent about both benefits and harms these AI tools may have in the long run. Their publicity around the tools should reflect the reality, not the hype. To Intel’s credit, the company promised to fix that demo to avoid future confusion. It should involve local people closest to the problem in the design process and conduct independent human rights assessments to determine if a project should move forward. Overall, companies should approach any complex global problem with the humility in knowing that an AI tool won’t solve it.

via Opinion: AI For Good Is Often Bad | WIRED.

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5G is fundamental for the economic development of the country. Yes, but why?

Because of its lower latency?

Because it will allow us to talk to the fridge and to know if the yogurt has expired?

To enable the circulation of self-driving cars or to allow remote surgical operations?

Let’s try to shed some light, let’s understand – beyond the hype – why the real “killer application” of the new mobile generation, for users, will probably not be any of those advertised so far.

5G, some technical elements

Let’s remember that the promise of the distinguishing features of 5G relates to a lower energy consumption for the same bits transmitted (which is ecologically commendable) coupled with higher “bandwidth” (throughput) with lower latency; all with greater capillarity and lower emissions.

To understand throughput with a simple analogy, think of a fireman’s hose and a straw: the throughput is the amount of water that comes out of the pipe per time unit. It depends on many factors such as the section of the hose, the water pressure and, last but not least, how much water per second the aqueduct is able to actually deliver to the hose.

Latency is a measure of how long it takes for the water molecule entering the pipe to exit on the other side.

Table 1 – Throughput (” bandwidth “) of the various standards (indicative values)

(*) without congestion

Table 2 – Latency (milliseconds) of the various standards (indicative values)

It is often said that 5G will have a latency of 1ms. This is a limit, under laboratory conditions that will not be experienced in practice.

We must also ask ourselves “latency to get where?”. In order for our bit inserted in the network in Rome to get out in Sao Paulo, Brazil, even at the speed of light and with few switching devices in between, requires over 100ms (Sao Paulo is far away!). So actually the latency will go from aprox 150ms with 4G to about 120 ms with 5G. It may seem a small reduction, but it’s actually a big gain.

If we consider that most of the contents and services that we usually access are not located on the opposite side of the world but in a datacenter near to us, we can understand that when accessing blog.quintarelli.it the latency will be nearly halved. If then we put a myriad of servers, with replicated content, in each city, then the latency could fall even beyond the values indicated in the table.

Low latency, for which business reason ?

What type of business would need such a low level of latency to justify such a large and widespread server infrastructure? Certainly not streaming video – it is not dramatic to wait 30milliseconds more for a movie to start – but for example interactive games that require fast reaction times (the reaction times of sportsmen vary between 100ms of a world record-breaking 100meter and 250ms of a “normal” professional). So a professional gamer connected to a 5G access would have an advantage over other professionals using 4G, a difference that could earn him the first step of the podium. (Of course, not all of us are professional gamers).

All this, provided that the rest of the network is carefully dimensioned and has no other bottlenecks (congestion) other than the access segment. And this is rarely the case.

While I’m writing, a simple ping command (which provides an estimate of round-trip latency) to a server located at the heart of the Italian network, from my PC reports a minimum value of 46ms and maximum of 68ms, with a variability of about 50%. (long live the smartworking! With so many people normally in the office contending the available network capacity, often the variability is larger).

There is then a further element to consider, that is where to put the application: let’s think about a virtual reality or augmented reality helmet: when the wearer turns his head, in order not to feel a motion sickness, it is important that the sliding of the images seen by the eye accompanies the sliding sensation determined by the vestibular apparatus in our inner ear. Having a low latency can be very useful to mitigate this annoying sensation.

The closer the application is to the viewer, the better.

Bringing applications as close as possible to users is a paradigm that is called edge computing. Some hypothesize to deploy myriads of small datacenters close to the antennas. But what would be the application that requires such low latency, staying within the operator’s business perimeter, in order to justify these investments? (that is to justify a sufficient number of users that pay something more than the traditional price in order to benefit from this latency reduction?).

The question is not trivial, especially if you consider that the most extreme level of edge computing is to put the computer in the user’s home. If the application was delivered from a home console connected with a cable (or an ultrawideband wireless link) to the helmet, it would be (with a few exceptions) even better than if the application was delivered from a server near the network border (near the radio access portion of the network). It’d be even better if the application was directly in the helmet.

So what is 5G really for?

Some TV commercials promote the image of 5G-enabled drones delivering cups of “frappuccinos” to our door, children entertaining themselves with dinosaur holograms popping up in the garden, advanced telemedicine, so much so that a surgeon can perform a surgery while waiting for a wedding, cars driving alone in the city and spectators watching basketball games circling their point of view around the players on the field.

But are these the applications of 5G? Searching online you will find interesting ideas for less extreme use than TV advertising. I comment some of them:

• “5G will make life easier for robots, that is, the world called the Internet of Things. Things, from traffic lights to the fridge at home, always connected to the network. The goal of 5G is basically to propose in mobility all those essential features present in fixed networks, but with a latency even lower than cable connections”.
  Traffic lights and refrigerators in mobility. But then are we sure that they need all this large bandwidth and that 20ms less are decisive to decide to switch from green to yellow or to tell us that the yogurt is running out?
• “…will also allow musicians, singers and artists who are in different places to interact in a single show”.

  A reduced latency, accompanied by low-latency interfacing circuits of musical instruments, will probably allow people to play musical instruments together remotely. The task is not trivial and also depends to some extent on the type of music played, but this is a use case that seems likely, even if it is not yet the killer application of 5G.

• “This connection will be important in the medical field for the new connected ambulances that will be able to give a lot of information to the hospital even before the patient arrives. Planned uses are in telemedicine and rehabilitative robotics with the possibility to use IoT devices and remote control”.

  Of course we are talking about all those ambulances that will have on board diagnostic imaging systems (CT, MRI) that must transmit many Gigabytes in a few seconds, yesssss….. because certainly to provide saturation informations and ECG requires just a few bytes and during the lockdown we all got used to make video conferences… Likewise for physiotherapeutic rehabilitation: clearly some believe that the electromechanical machines (that today are found only in specialized centers), if used at home, need much more than the 50Mbps that a current LTE can give and you can not do without a latency as low as hundred meter professional runner latency to be able to control the patient is bending a knee.

• “In the field of security and video surveillance will be used high resolution camera with 5G support, installable in stations and crowded places”.

  4K video requires about 16Mbps, 8K video (7680 × 4320) will realistically require about 40-50Mbps. Nothing a decent landline access can’t support. Of course, you can’t watch it if you’re not at home.

• “It will be also usefulin tourism and journalism, the latter thanks to 5G will be able to provide more timely images and news in every part of the city”.

  Which, as we know, is the core problem of journalism today…

• “5G also brings benefits to self-driving cars, as they will be able to communicate in real time with the road infrastructure and obtain important information for road safety and security”.

  One wonders how autonomous cars are doing today. Do we really need that latency reduction to signal positions and obstacles? Even assuming that this is indeed the case, that a very reduced latency is absolutely necessary, then wouldn’t it make more sense to make direct connections between cars, without passing through a network that, however, adds some latency?

  As you know, I am very skeptical about the concrete possibility of having cars autonomously whizzing through the cities because of safety problems related to an uneven and above all unmonitored environment. A differrent story are highways that are homogeneous and very well supervised environments. We will probably see autonomous driving on the highway, probably with reserved lanes and more than intervehicular communication we may need a lot of mobile bandwidth to be able to work or entertain ourselves during our travels.

• “Even smart homes will benefit from 5G, all objects in the home will be able to communicate with each other, receive information from the outside and be controlled remotely from a single device”.

  What is it that can’t be done today with fixed network access and wifi? (hoping that the device that remotely controls our home belongs to us…) Are we sure that the complexity of Narrowband-IoT (NB IoT) and the 5G version will prevail over wifi and bluetooth? It seems to me that the probability that this will happen in the short to medium term is quite low, unless some black swan gives the necessary impulse.

• “An ultra-performing network, will be fundamental for the transition to the Internet of things, i.e. to ensure the development of applications and services for the Smart City based on sensors (for example for traffic control, waste collection, urban lighting, logistics)”.

  In 20 milliseconds, many cars pass through street intersections and a lot of waste is thrown. If a lamp burns, then, we really know first!

• “The new, very fast 5G mobile networks will also help improve safety on the roads. In addition to allowing more data to be transferred in the same unit of time, they have a much lower latency and a reduced error rate: if one data packet in a thousand is “lost” with 4G, with 5G you get up to one in a million. It is these last two aspects that will make the electronic security systems of cars more effective, which will “dialogue” with each other in real time and with the certainty that the information arrives”.

  About the latency I mentioned above; about the loss of packets, as people who deal with networks know, network protocols (TCP) have control mechanisms to ensure applications that all transmitted packets arrive. This aspect, therefore, is already insurable to current technologies.

• “The productive world will be revolutionized through the full digitalization of production facilities – the so-called Industry 4.0 – and the development of precision agriculture”.

  Indeed in the business market there could be an interest in 5G for IIoT (Industrial IoT), unlike the residential market. The 5G will allow a higher communication density up to one sensor per square meter, that is one million sensors per square kilometer compared to the 50 thousand allowed by the best NB IoT technologies. We must also bear in mind that in the industrial field wired network technologies are very expensive (PROFINET cables and switches cost one order of magnitude more than the non-industrial equivalents) and introduce rigidity in installations that could be more flexibly realized and reconfigured using wireless connections. (examples 1, 2, 3, 4)

Be careful! I’m not saying that 5G doesn’t help, but that the “killer applications” that are proposed today (which often include “life saving” arguments, because on those you can’t squeeze investments), with the notable exception of the business market and IIoT, are generally trivial and almost certainly destined not to materialize.

Figure 1 – Piazza Maggi, Milan

This does not mean that a new network infrastructure should not be built, on the contrary! The first motivation for a new infrastructure is that it must precede the demand and enable it: the new infrastructure will serve a demand that is not there today. Einaudi, a very famous italian economist and politician, said that markets expresses demands, not needs, meaning they express immediate requirements and not long-term needs.

Also from this point of view the idea of pooling investments to co-invest in a 5G network infrastructure seems reasonable.

The networks they are a changin’

The “mobile” networks (which are not mobile: it is people who are mobile, not the networks) work by emitting signals that fade as you move away from the antenna, so that phones and antennas have to transmit with increasing power to be able to communicate, like two people talking to each other by moving away from each other. Or, another solution, is to place many more antennas that will be much closer to the user so that they will be able to communicate with lower power; the lower the power, the the larger the number of antennas that are needed. This is what has happened with mobile telephony: at every stage of evolution from GSM to UMTS (or 3G) to HSDPA (or 3.5G) to LTE (or 4G) emissions decrease and antenna density increases.

Consequently, the wireless access segment (the part from the user to the antenna) tends to become shorter: from the many kilometers of GSM (with low bandwidth) to a few tens of meters with Wi-Fi and 5G (which provide a lot of bandwidth).

With 5G, in Italy we will have hundreds of thousands of small antennas, with very low emissions (also because we have the lowest emission constraints in the world). In the future we will find them at the base of many buildings and they will provide us ubiquitously performances similar to Wi-Fi, wherever we go.

To each of these antennas we will need to feed some bandwidth with a network connection hookup (usually fixed). For this reason it is of obvious the importance of the presence of fixed networks, whether they are via the “old cable TV” as in some European countries or telephone networks with optical fibers. But it is good to overcome also this conceptual differentiation. The network is always and only one: it serves to carry data of any type. It does not matter if it was born for the telephone (copper pair) or for TV (cable networks) or if it is made with optical fibers.

Such a high density of antennas means that each antenna will be used by fewer people. If an antenna covers a radius of two kilometers, all users in a small town will connect to it. If an antenna covers a twenty meter radius, only the few people in that building will connect to it.

The transmission capacity available from an antenna is shared with the people who connect to it. In the case of the small town, it will be shared among many people; in the second case it will be shared among very few people so that each individual in the second scenario will have much more bandwidth available than their peers in the first scenario. Increasing the capillarity of the antennas helps to reduce emissions and increase the performance available to users.

Lower emissions thanks to 5G

It seems a counter-intuitive thing: lower electromagnetic emissions with more antennas; higher capacity with lower emissions. An example helps to clarify: imagine a room with forty people and two of them talking with a megaphone. The noise pollution will be very high and the overall capacity of the room will be just one conversation. If everyone whispers, the noise pollution will be minimal and the overall capacity will be twenty simultaneous conversations.

Ultimately, the network is not what we are used to think it is: a single object managed by an operator. Instead, it is a mix of different types of routes, with different technologies, much likey a road network.

From the point of view of the user, in the future there will not be a great distinction between fixed network and wireless network. The fixed network will have a very high capillarity and at its edge there will be an antenna. If located inside a house, it will still be a Wi-Fi managed independently by the most sophisticated users, if it will be located outside of the house it will instead be a 5G network managed by an operator.

A mental image of networks

Let’s picture circles to imagine service boundaries of an operator.

Today there is a circle that reaches the users’ home, the fixed network, to which a Wifi access point is connected; it can be right next to each side of the circumference, depending on whether it is provided and managed by the operator (inside the circle) or installed directly by the user (outside the circle). Outside this circle there are the user’s devices, from PCs to smart refrigerators (!?) to TVs connected to disks to store documents, photos and movies (and managing their complexity).

Then there is another circle, the “mobile network” one, which radius is smaller. It’s the network that powers the cellular radio stations located right inside the edge of the circle, inside the perimeter of the operator, to which users connect with their mobile devices.

Over time this second circle has expanded and with the 5G it will come close to the border of the first circle, so close that many users will find it more convenient to directly connect their devices, entrust the operator with the custody of their documents, photos and movies (without having to manage the complexity) reducing its management burden, often increasing the level of security and being able to have everywhere what would otherwise only be available at home / office.

These two circles, the fixed network and the mobile network have grown closer over time and will continue to do so with 5G; there is a large overlap in the surface area of the two circles. The more widespread the “fixed” network is developed, the more it will also contribute to the infrastructure for 5G.

The telephonist’s drama

Let’s go back to the use cases: many of those told, especially those that are presented as useful to save lives, suffer from what we could call “the telephonist’s drama”. I call it this way because i often perceive it when talking to many friends, very competent people, who work for telco operators who, being born as telephone operators, keep that imprinting in their DNA and seem to me they still are a bit conditioned by that way of thinking.

An example of a typical “telephone” way of thinking is that of value added services.

Let’s imagine a system to improve driving safety, based on a myriad of temperature and humidity sensors scattered along a mountain road so that a car that arrives that behind the blind curve can be informed there is a high risk of icing.

This is a typical use case in 5G narratives.

Let’s ask ourselves: did Vodafone or Telefonica put those sensors? If Vodafone put them, will they be accessible to cars connected to Telefonica’s network? And to those connected to Iliad’s ?

If we were in a monopoly situation, the problem would not arise: the same single operator puts the sensors and connects the cars.

But in a competitive situation, how can it be solved ? All mobile operators sign service interoperability agreements (and payment settling) whereby one operator gives the other access to the information of the sensors that he has placed in street X, a second operator gives access to the information for street Y to the first operator and then periodically they make a balance to see who owes the other how much money, after compensation.

You can bet that, while they are busy negotiating multiple bilateral service roaming agreements, someone will come along who will install sensors that will communicate via the Internet, taking away these possible services from the operators and making them over the top. And remunerating them with advertising, credit card or freemium models.

Does it recall something ?

In order to avoid a similar scenario, the operators should probably make a consortium and create a joint over the top service provider, presenting themselves on the market as a single integrated entity.

I doubt it will ever happen. Genetic imprinting is hard to die. Consider that in the 2020’s 5G WhitePaper issued by the NGMN Alliance (Alliance for Next Generation Mobile Networks, an association of operators, vendors, manufacturers and research institutes operating in the mobile phone industry) the word “Internet” appears only once (just once!), in the glossary, in the definition of “IIoT: Industrial Internet of things”.

What fate for 5G networks?

I have to make a major premise: the operators’ business cases to sustain the realization of widely spread 5G networks, with myriads of access points, are anything but obvious. It is likely that we will see a gradual roll-out, starting where the market can reward technology, i.e. in the business market, especially in industry.

As far as the residential market is concerned, the destiny of 5G use, for a growing user base, could lead to a reduction in the myriad of WiFi access points, now bought everywhere and by anyone, installed by anyone and uninspected for quantity and quality of their emissions. For many users 5G could greatly reduce their need of a fixed hookup to their homes, replacing the last meters of WiFi access with the last tens of meters of 5G.

TodayAs today, the way we use the network at home or on the move, are different: at home we have our files, backups, and our devices that (in general) we cannot access when we are on the move. A scenario like the one described could allow the members of a family to benefit from all their data in mobility, anywhere, as if they were at home. Perhaps this could be a killer app (that might be of interest to operators, though in a clash with OTT and device manufacturers who already provide these services, although with a looser billing relationship with the customer ).

However, there is a fundamental consideration that must be made: history teaches us that at home as at work, on the internet, people want to do more and more things in less and less time. So the traffic increases in a sensitive and inexorable way.

It is true that in nature there are no exponential curves that grow forever (sorry Mr. Kurzweil!), that all exponential curves sooner or later become logistic curves and flatten. There is certainly an asymptote of how much bandwidth a user can consume. My impression is that we are still very far from reaching it. This seems to be confirmed also by the recent actual usage data trends: the bandwidth used in Italy (and in the world at large) is still growing by ca. 50% per year with a comparable number of users.

As Alfonso Fuggetta said with a lucky expression, one cherry pulls the other, i.e. we start with simple things and then we make more and more, more and more complex, more and more requirements and more and more bandwidth. And at the same time our expectation of ever shorter reaction times increases.

Ultimately, for users, the killer app is still human impatience.

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Post muto.

Il Ministero ha allestito 140 sale Centro Intercettazioni Telecomunicazioni (CIT) con rete dedicata e cablaggio e dotazione dedicata di Pc portatili. In ogni sala CIT è stato inoltre installato il server ministeriale e realizzato il software per la gestione dell’archivio digitale multimediale e per l’archivio documentale; 60 milioni di euro sono gli investimenti già spesi per le infrastrutture tecnologiche, per le opere murarie e per gli acquisti necessari; 700 i server e i rack dedicati alle sole intercettazioni; oltre 1100 i PC dedicati e destinati alle sale d’ascolto; circa 3.500 le persone coinvolte nella formazione specifica (personale amministrativo, magistrati e polizia giudiziaria).

via Intercettazioni, in vigore la nuova disciplina – Bonafede: investiti 60mln.

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English version below.

Questi sono dei passaporti sanitari italiani (“fedi di sanità”)  in vigore durante la peste del 1722 (grazie wikipedia, ebay).

All’inizio della pandemia avevo letto una intervista ad un famosissimo virologo americano (che non ritrovo) in cui dava per scontato che ad un certo punto avremmo avuto dei braccialetti attestanti la nostra immunità.

La Electronic frontier foundation ha scritto un pezzo molto acuminato contro l’idea di passaporti di immunità digitali. In esso mischia considerazioni a base tecnologica con considerazioni a base medica. E’ chiaro che un prerequisito affinchè un simile passaporto abbia un senso è che i test medici siano accurati e che l’immunità sia duratura e prevedibile. Non credo francamente che la EFF sia nella posizione per affermare che questo non sarà il caso. Anche la questione etica in sè delle “fedi di sanità” e delle discriminazioni che ne potrebbero derivare, a ben vedere prescindono dalla questione tecnologia; non cambia se è un braccialetto o uno smartphone. Ne scrivo più sotto.

Le critiche legate all’aspetto tecnologico mi paiono molto legate alla situazione negli USA, non tanto a quella italiana:

1. le persone si potrebbero abituare ad esibire “prove di stato” digitali che potrebbero riguardare altri aspetti delle persone che i gatekeeper considerano rilevanti – però mi pare che sia già così quando paghiamo la metropolitana con lo smartphone o esibiamo il biglietto per entrare al cinema o il titolo di viaggio in treno. Possiamo fare tutto in cartaceo ma l’utente può scegliere di farlo in digitale.
2. tutte quelle informazioni potrebbero essere accumulate in un DB – si, ma solo se chi effettua quei controlli è lo stesso soggetto. nell’esempio precedente se il gestore della metropolitana, del cinema e della ferrovia appaltassero i sistemi di verifica allo stesso soggetto con possibilità di accedere ai dati (cosa limitata dal GDPR)
3. essere obbligati a fornire il proprio telefono, sia bloccato che sbloccato, ad una autorità di controllo potrebbe essere una fonte di abusi – non so quante persone sappiano se e quando ci si può opporre a consegnare il proprio dispositivo alla polizia. In Italia ciò è possibile solo in caso di perquisizione, sequestro o arresto in flagranza. (quindi in linea generale non si può) E comunque non si è tenuti a consegnare i propri PIN/password di cifratura.
4. immagazzinare informazioni mediche nei dispositivi potrebbe essere foriero di leak di dati – a ben vedere anche accumulare i dati nei sistemi degli ospedali e dei laboratori di analisi.

Mi limito ad osservare che è possibile fare dei sistemi sicuri, che non svelino informazioni se non su decisione dell’utente. Covidcreds è un sistema interessante che si basa sul paradigma della SSI-Self Sovereign Identity (la blockchain è una scelta implementativa con vantaggi e svantaggi).

Dal punto di vista delle considerazioni etiche, la cosa è forse meno ovvia di quanto potrebbe apparire; Wikipedia riporta due punti di vista opposti:

Human Rights Watch sostiene che, richiedere certificati di immunità per lavoro o viaggio, potrebbe costringere le persone a fare esami o rischiare di perdere il lavoro, creare un incentivo perverso per le persone a infettarsi intenzionalmente per acquisire certificati di immunità e rischiare di creare un mercato nero di certificati di immunità falsi o altrimenti falsificati. Limitando le attività sociali, civiche ed economiche, i passaporti di immunità possono “aggravare le disparità esistenti di genere, razza, etnia e nazionalità”.

D’altra parte, si sostiene che [in caso di restrizioni] sarebbe sproporzionato privare le persone immuni delle loro libertà fondamentali. Questo costituirebbe invece di fatto un caso di punizione collettiva. Di conseguenza, Govind Persad e Ezekiel J. Emanuel sottolineano che un passaporto di immunità seguirebbe il “principio dell'”alternativa meno restrittiva” e potrebbe anche andare a beneficio della società: l’aumento della sicurezza e dell’attività economica consentito dalle licenze di immunità andrebbe a beneficio di chi non ha la licenza. Ad esempio, l’assunzione preferenziale di persone immunitarie in case di cura o come operatori sanitari a domicilio potrebbe ridurre la diffusione del virus in quelle strutture e proteggere meglio le persone più vulnerabili a COVID-19. Gli amici, i parenti e il clero che sono immuni potrebbero visitare i pazienti negli ospedali e nelle case di cura.

Tutto questo, per commentare il fatto che, senza clamore, le fedi di sanità sono tornate tra noi.

Il ministro della Salute Roberto Speranza ha firmato un’ordinanza che prevede tamponi obbligatori per chiunque entri in Italia da Spagna, Grecia, Malta e Croazia o, in alternativa, un test sierologico negativo fatto non più di 72 ore prima dell’ingresso nel nostro Paese. Detto in altri termini: o fai il test quando arrivi (e stai chiuso in casa fino all’esito), oppure fai un test prima ed arrivi con una fede di immunità.

Non ci abbiamo fatto molto caso, probabilmente perchè si tratta di spostamenti internazionali. Ma se dovesse essere richiesto anche per poter andare da Milano ad Ancona ? O da Torino a San Siro ? E  quando arriveranno i vaccini, vorremo limitare agli immuni di andare al cinema o allo stadio ? Cosa ne penseranno gli esercenti dei cinema davanti alla possibilità di riprendere le attività dopo oltre un anno di paralisi ? dovranno aspettare moti altri mesi sino a quando avremo raggiunto una immunità di gregge ?

Credo che tra pochi mesi (settimane) il tema diverrà di attualità.

These are Italian health passports (“fedi di sanità“) in force during the plague of 1722 (thanks wikipedia, ebay).

At the beginning of the pandemic I read an interview with a very famous American virologist (which I can’t find) in which he took it for granted that at some point we would have wristbands attesting our immunity.

The Electronic frontier foundation wrote a very sharp piece against the idea of digital immunity passports. In it, they mix technology based considerations with medical considerations. It is clear that a prerequisite for such a passport to make sense is that medical tests are accurate and that immunity is long-lasting and predictable. I frankly do not believe that EFF is in a position to say that this will not be the case. Also the ethical issue itself about the  “fedi di sanità” and the discrimination that could result from them, in the end, does not change whether it is a wristband or a smartphone. I’ll write about it below.

The criticisms related to the technological aspect seem to me very much linked to the situation in the USA, not so much to the Italian one:

1. People could get used to showing digital “proofs of status” that could be about other aspects of the people that gatekeepers consider relevant – but it seems to me that this is already the case when we pay for the subway with our smartphone or show the ticket to the cinema or the train ticket. We can do everything on paper but the user can choose to do it digitally.
2. all that information could be accumulated in a DB – yes, but only if the company performing those checks is the same. In the example above if the company managing the data for the subway, cinema and railway would be the same, with access to the data (something limited by GDPR privacy regulation)
3. being forced to provide your phone, whether locked or unlocked, to a law enforcement authority could be a source of abuse – I don’t know how many people know if and when you can object to handing over your device to the police. In Italy this is only possible in the event of a search, seizure or arrest in flagrante delicto. (so in general you cannot) And in any case you are not required to hand over your PINs/encryption passwords.
4. storing medical information in devices could be a cause of data leak – but data storage in the systems of hospitals and testing laboratories could also.

I would just point out that it is possible to make secure systems that do not disclose information except after a decision by the user. Covidcreds is an interesting system based on the SSI-Self Sovereign Identity paradigm (the blockchain is an implementation choice with advantages and disadvantages).

From the point of view of ethical considerations, this is perhaps less obvious than it might appear; Wikipedia reports two opposite points of view:

Human Rights Watch argues that applying for immunity certificates for work or travel could force people to take tests or risk losing their jobs, create a perverse incentive for people to intentionally become infected to acquire immunity certificates, and risk creating a black market for fake or otherwise forged immunity certificates. By limiting social, civic and economic activities, immunity passports can “exacerbate existing disparities in gender, race, ethnicity and nationality”.

On the other hand, it is argued that [in case of restrictions] it would be disproportionate to deprive immune persons of their fundamental freedoms. This would in fact constitute a case of collective punishment. Consequently, Govind Persad and Ezekiel J. Emanuel stress that an immunity passport would follow the ‘less restrictive alternative’ principle and could also benefit society: the increased security and economic activity allowed by immunity licences would benefit the unlicensed. For example, the preferential employment of immune persons in nursing homes or as home healthcare workers could reduce the spread of the virus in those facilities and better protect those most vulnerable to COVID-19. Friends, relatives and clergy who are immune could visit patients in hospitals and nursing homes.

All the above, to comment on the fact that, without clamor, the fedi di sanità are effectively back among us.

The Italian Minister of Health, Roberto Speranza, has signed an ordinance that provides mandatory swabs for anyone entering Italy from Spain, Greece, Malta and Croatia or, alternatively, a negative serological test done no more than 72 hours before entering our country. In other words: either you take the test when you arrive (and stay indoors until the result), or you take a test beforehand and arrive with a fede di sanità.

We didn’t pay much attention to this, probably because it’s international travel. But what if you are also required a fede di sanità to go from Milan to Ancona ? Or from Turin to San Siro stadium ? And when the vaccines arrive, do we want to limit the immune to go to the cinema or the stadium ? What will the cinema owners think about the possibility of resuming activities after more than a year of paralysis ? will they have to wait for months more until we have achieved herd immunity ?

I believe that in a few months (weeks) the subject will become topical.

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Circa quattro mesi fa avevo sentito la necessità di replicare ad un articolo di Franco Debenedetti dal titolo “Il caso TIM e il bastone tra le reti”. Questa era la replica.

Adesso colgo lo spunto offerto da un suo nuovo articolo sull’Huffington post per dire il mio punto di vista sulla vicenda.

Ecco qui:

La situazione è in un’oggettiva impasse. Nel frattempo che si decide, Open Fiber non può smettere di cablare e a Telecom Italia aspettare fa male.

Open Fiber non può smettere perché, seppur in larga misura per cause esogene, è in ritardo e deve recuperare, altrimenti rischia di dover pagare penali. A TIM aspettare fa male perché man mano che la rete di Open Fiber si estende, la sua rete in rame (che è sempre stata citata dalla stampa come asset di ultima garanzia del debito) si deprezza.

Questo grafico mostra (in Milioni di euro) l’andamento dei ricavi e dei margini (EBITDA) del gruppo Telecom negli ultimi 11 anni in Italia e nel Resto del mondo (ROW). Va detto che il perimetro è cambiato, ovvero sono stati venduti degli asset per ridurre il debito che, come si vede, è calato. Si vede anche che il contributo dal Resto del mondo negli ultimi anni è sostanzialmente stabile.

Quest’altro grafico mostra l’andamento solo per l’Italia di ricavi, margini debito e numero di linee vendute a clienti al dettaglio (non fornite all’ingrosso ad operatori concorrenti; sulla scala di destra milioni di linee)

Premettendo che magari sbaglio e vi invito pertanto a verificare i numeri sul sito di Telecom, a giudicare da questo andamento, se dipendesse da me, anche io cercherei di andare a matrimonio con una giovinetta che promette di essere maggiormente a prova di futuro.

Il fatto è che questa evoluzione non è un fulmine a ciel sereno e IMHO l’operazione andava fatta molti anni fa. Non è avvenuto anche perché il capitale è passato di mano n volte, ciascuna volta per pochi anni. Se l’azionista avesse avuto un respiro di più lungo termine probabilmente non si sarebbe opposto alla separazione servizio/rete, anzi.

Secondo me, una rimonopolizzazione, mettendo assieme TIM ed Open Fiber, difficilmente potrebbe essere autorizzata dall’autorità Antitrust (Europea) senza che ci sia una separazione tra servizi e rete, tra operatore wholesale ed operatore retail. C’è da scommettere che più di un concorrente vi ricorrerebbe opponendosi ad un monopolio integrato e mettere d’accordo tutti gli operatori per evitare un ricorso mi pare francamente poco probabile, a questo punto.

Anche si optasse per una separazione wholesale/retail, una operazione del genere, comunque, non è fattibile nell’ordine dei mesi.

Rispetto ad un intervento statale, alla fine, torniamo alla domanda: per fare cosa ? Per motivazioni finanziarie o per dotare il paese di una infrastruttura strategica ? Quale ? Quale obiettivo infrastrutturale avrebbe il neo monopolista pubblico ? E con quali altri azionisti allinearsi per assicurarsi di tradurre l’interesse del Paese in obiettivi aziendali ? Per proteggersi da takeover ostili basta la Golden Share. Per decidere quale grande piano infrastrutturale fare devono essere d’accordo gli azionisti.

Ma quale è il grande piano infrastrutturale che giustifica tutto questo ? Questa è la domanda da cui partire, IMHO.

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This time I side with Trump.

Twitter reminded us that we are all guests on their platform and we follow their rules. They have decided that the enough is enough and from now on they can put warnings, next to twits to inform us that they contain falsehoods. They also decided that although Trump has repeatedly violated the terms of service, he can continue to do so because he is him, and not a generic Mrs. Anna who can quietly disappear from the social network in silence.

This is not a failure by Twitter, but by the laws. The law allows a person to lie and to insult and it makes little difference if she does it at the bar in front of 5 patrons or on a social network in front of 80 million followers. If this falsehood or insult should result in damages, these will be ascertained and possibly sanctioned, in a process’ time, in civil or criminal proceedings. Freedom of expression ends up bordering on the freedom to lie.

By law, platforms enjoy exemption from liability if they merely carry the information and make it available, without altering it. If they alter it, they assume responsibility for it. (with different nuances in Europe and the USA). This follows as a principle from the same rules for which a telephone or postal operator is not responsible for the content transported.

In fact, Twitter has not altered Trump’s message, it has changed the way it is presented. Where does Twitter get its authority to decide who should and should not be subjected to such treatment ? To decide what is true and what is not ?

In an ideal world Twitter should not intervene in any way, if the laws would suffice to promptly and effectively sanction those messages that cause socially undesirable effects.

One problem is that our institutions are analogical, they live in a material dimension that is slow and badly suited to the syncopated times of social networks. The different speed is a problem.

When, in “understanding media”, McLuhann taught us that the medium is itself a message, there were wide audience gaps between the media. Pubs and publishing were (and are) evidently in different categories. And, while ensuring freedom of expression, they had different rules. Pub customers are not required to declare their identity while the publisher is required to declare his identity. In one case the right of rectification is not required while it is in the other. The bartender is not required to be vigilant, which is required of the publisher, etc.

But today this clear separation no longer exists in social networks; now there is a continuum. A person can have a pub or a publisher audience but the rules are the same, and that’s not good. We need a gradual set of rules, with balanced rights and duties, not linked to the medium but linked to the single account (or group of accounts).

Freedom of expression (and with it the right to lie, i.e. to have no verifiable objective evidence) must be protected, but the scale imposes different rules, to be provided for gradually (“regulatory ladder”).

Scale and speed are at the root of our ineffectiveness in regulating social networks.

We are wrongly following traditional models of accountability, as Trump did in response to Twitter in order to impose editorial responsibility by decree, and we do not understand that we have to regulate scale and speed in a graduated way.

In order to regulate speed, we need to introduce a gradual friction: it does not undermine freedom of expression if a message can be redistributed, beyond a certain scale, in hours rather than in real time. Eventually, limiting the mass diffusion in real time to those subjects who fall into a certain category, deriving different rights and duties compared to a generic bystander of the social network.

Regulating scale and speed makes it possible to introduce appropriate weights and counterweights and also allows for the introduction of frictions to make enforcement practicable.

Today, institutions, which do not keep pace with the explosion of social media, delegate to platforms the control functions that are implemented thanks to artificial intelligence (a computer method that structurally produces errors). The platforms, with their own rules, become a new power next to and above the State, with no possibility of appeal, as Trump is discovering at his own expense.

We have learned of Trump, given his notoriety. We will never know, however, how many times a Mrs. Anna is censored as a result of these systems or how many Mrs. Annas have been blocked.

Regulating scale and speed, structurally providing for mechanisms of remedy (“redress by design”) can help to restore the sovereignty of judgment in the institutional seats, ensuring the necessary protection of the parties.

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Premessa: non sono un biologo, nè epidemiologo, nè virologo, quindi le mie sono argomentazioni da bar.

Qualche volta anche qualcuno al bar ci piglia, il più delle volte, no.

Un po’ di considerazioni sparse, come premesse:

Il posto al mondo dove hanno la minore diffusione del contagio è il giappone. Nessun lockdown, nessuna misura “innovativa”. Una mania per la pulizia e contatti sociali non intimi (niente baci e abbracci, strette di mano, appena uno ha un minimo cenno di raffreddore si mette la mascherina, dispenser di igienizzanti in ogni dove, se uno usa un fazzoletto e se lo mette in tasca ti guardaanao schifato, niente scarpe in casa…) Alcuni di questi tratti sono comuni con altri paesi asiatici, in misura minore. Se possono sembrare poche cose, mi dice un epidemiologo che fanno una bella differenza.

Ecco una prima proposta: per la prossima, o per la prossima ondata, più diventiamo giapponesi e meglio è.

Ci sono diversi fattori che contribuiranno (spero) a farci riprendere: dall’aumento della temperatura per la primavera, alla disponibilità di qualche farmaco (ce ne sono diversi che apparentemente si stanno giudicando utili) per abbreviare di molto la presenza in terapia intesiva, di fatto moltiplicando la disponibilità di possibilità di trattamento e la gestione di pazienti in reparto (o a casa). Arriveranno metodiche di testing diverse, per consentire di fare test su grandi numeri (oggi siamo a meno di 20k test/die, dobbiamo fare almeno 10x) ed identificare i sani e gli immuni.

Il virus colpisce perlopiù persone fragili, anziani e malati (i decessi hanno una media di 3,4 patologie) e perlopiù maschi (3/4).

Condivido l’idea del mio amico Udi Shapiro del Weizmann Institute per uscirne appena arriviamo al plateau della diffusione grazie al lockdown (e sperando ci sia un test sierologico disponibile): anzichè tenere tutti in lockdown ed isolati, vi restino solo le persone a rischio e facciamo in modo che non restino isolati e che ricevano supporto da immuni, evitando di contagiarli. In pratica, creiamo uno scudo tra le persone a rischio e le persone non a rischio mediante delle persone immuni. Potremmo chiamarlo “shielding”.

Questo richiederà un sistema di certificazione e di coordinamento. Potrebbe essere un braccialetto come dice qualche epidemiologo, o forse meglio un’app, gestendo opportunamente i necessari aspetti di anonimato con meccanismi a doppio cieco, che può diventare uno strumento di coordinamento e di supporto per le persone che ricevono aiuto e per quelle che lo forniscono. E magari usiamo quest’app come “antenna” per registrare i contatti a breve raggio (usando il bluetooth e sempre con adeguate garanzie di anonimizzazione, come fa quest’app), per un eventuale rimbalzo in autunno, se epidemiologi e virologi riterranno che possa essere una cosa utile.

Adesso sono un po’ di fretta, mi riservo di aggiornare qs. post anche sulla base dei vs. commenti

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Ricevo un gustoso articolo nella mailing di Franco Debenedetti dal titolo “Il caso TIM e il bastone tra le reti”.

Franco scrive benissimo, ma l’articolo mi pare veramente molto denso di imprecisioni (Per la verità, di alcune di queste ne avevo già parlato con lui molti mesi fa).

Dulcis in fundo, quando si parla di fare una rete unica, si parla di “scorporo della rete”, intendendo che tra servizi e infrastruttura (che hanno due profili di profittabilità, di investimenti e di tempi di ritorno diversi) si pensa a Telecom come “ciò che resta dopo lo scorporo della rete”.

E se invece ragionassimo al contrario ? Se pensassimo che si scorporano i servizi e pensassimo a Telecom come ciò che resta dopo lo scorporo dei servizi ? Avrebbe un grande futuro, da grande compagnia con un monopolio naturale e margini stabiliti dall’autorità, in grado di remunerare gli investimenti (su rete e data centre della SDN).

Questo anche perchè in realtà c’è un disallineamento (ovvio) tra obiettivi aziendali ed obiettivi del paese. Il paese ha come obiettivo avere una rete in fibra in ogni angolo del paese (si vede quanto serve adesso, con questa epidemia). L’azienda ha l’obiettivo di fare profitto. Sarà una mancanza mia, ma non ho ancora visto UN amministratore delegato di un incumbent che avesse nei propri obbiettivi la massimizzazione della copertura in fibra, ma per tutti ci sono dividendi e prezzo dell’azione.

Mi viene in mente quel convegno del 2012 organizzato dal Financial Times in cui gli AD di 11 telco europee (incumbent) chiedevano deregolamentazione per “Meeting the investment and growth challenges ahead”.
11 Amministratori delegati che nell’anno precedente avevano distribuito dividendi per oltre 20 miliardi di euro. Tre miliardi quell’anno, tre miliardi l’anno dopo, sai in 9 anni quanta rete in fibra si sarebbe fatta in Italia ?

PS. era molto tempo che non rispondevo più ad articoli sul tema, ma mi pare che il dibattito sulla rete sia ripreso e, forse complice un po’ la stanchezza dopo un decennio e più di discussioni, mi pare che qualche concetto fondamentale si sia un po’ annacquato…

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