The programme attempted to show the distinction between the Internet and the World Wide Web but then as the discussion went on the lines became very vague, the two terms used almost interchangeably. I would argue that the distinction is critical and a programme like this should have exercised some rigour in keeping a safe distance between them.

A running theme (contrary to the earlier explanation) was that the Internet/Web was created by a group of pseudo-anarchic libertarians based largely in San Francisco. This is simply not true. ARPANET, the network that was to become known as the Internet, was created to facilitate basic communication between different computer systems, some of which were geographically widespread. Subsequently it was seen as a way to provide some level of protection and redundancy of systems so that ‘the system’ would not fail in the event of a nuclear strike taking out one or more of it’s nodes. It never entered anyone’s mind that it could be a part of some “Great Levelling”.

Once it was in existence, groups of people emerged who used it as a tool for disseminating social, cultural and political information as well as news and opinion, such as The WELL.

The World Wide Web came about some twenty years after the birth of Internet. Despite the global linking of computer systems there was still a problem: (computer) language. There were so many different systems speaking different languages that it was very difficult, if not impossible, to share information in a format that was universally readable. Tim Berners-Lee came up with the idea of using a set of protocols and languages such that one tool – the web browser – could be used to read and link together information on all these disparate platforms. So again, no concept of human democracy, equality and freedom other than the freedom to share information anywhere.

This is where some confusion may arise. Berners-Lee had no intention of profiting from his invention and didn’t want anyone else to profit from it either. Hence he released his idea to the world, unconstrained by copyright, patent or licence. He had defined the rules of the game – and continued to develop them – but everyone was free to join in. Naturally, as his idea grew and became more popular, it was far too much work for one person so he founded the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) to take charge of it. The W3C’s members are businesses, nonprofit organizations, universities, and governmental entities, but not individuals. The idea was to prevent any sector from dominating, although there are plenty of complaints about this happening in practice.

If this had been the target of The Virtual Revolution, I would have had no complaint, but it didn’t even warrant a mention. The programme seemed to focus on the notion that the likes of Google, Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, The Huffington Post and others are so powerful on the Web that they prevent individuals from having a voice, behaving like the editorial departments of the traditional media. They ‘control’ what we see on the Web. They are the elites who have formed a hierarchy, a vertical control structure that is the antithesis of the Web’s (and the Internet’s) supposed desire for a horizontal or flat structure on equality.

Aside from the fallacy of the premise, it is surely clear to everyone that any field of human endeavour (I use the word broadly) needs a control structure. Utopian and anarchic structures cannot survive while humans are genetically programmed the way we are. As a race, we will always have the ambitious, the lazy, the bad, the evil members. Perhaps this is actually necessary for our survival. At any rate, it means there must be law, rules and control. The best we can hope for is that we can trust the control structures, that they don’t become corrupt. I would suggest that they way the Web works – and the Internet for that matter – is about as good as it gets.

How can we judge this? To start with, leaving aside issues of social inequality, anyone can use the Web. Anyone can have a weblog (or blog). Anyone can take part in ’social media’ networks. As for the resources available, search engines, social networks and web sites succeed or fail (in terms of audience) according to their popularity with users. Users are free to move between them when, and as much as, they like. Our movements around the Web are unrestricted. Yes I know there are exceptions. Some bad stuff is blocked. Some bad stuff is not blocked. There are problems in China, Iran etc. (I’m not playing down these problems but they are not created by the Web, they are created by humans). People, by and large, can vote with their mice (mouses?).

My point is that it is not the Web that is the problem, it is humans. The Web can never be immune to the effects and behaviour of people, in the same way that no other aspect of life is protected. The Web remains, as it started, a free*, open, egalitarian communications medium. The Virtual Revolution is shooting at the wrong target.

*When I say free, I don’t means there is no financial cost. Everyone has to pay their bills. If you want a computer, someone has to pay. Similarly if you want electricity, broadband, a web site, a blog or whatever. There are “free” services, but this just means they are paid for by advertising or some other mechanism over which you have little or no control. This is not unreasonable.

Now that Twitter is all the rage in the media, or rather Twitter-bashing is all the rage, I can see that over the months I have started to understand it, to the extent that I find it blindingly obvious that much of the coverage is ridiculous, immature and downright inaccurate (no surprise).

Being considered by many commentators as just ‘the latest internet craze’ it is ripe for those commentators to start picking. The internet is evil, it’s full of porn, nazis and paedophiles. It makes our children spend their lives in a sedentary activity, forces them to eat junk food and ruins their health. Oh and it causes cancer. Twitter is on the internet. QED.

Mainstream media organisations have one job, and only one job: selling themselves. By which I mean gaining, keeping and growing their audience; everything else is incidental. Aside from the issue of social media making mainstream media redundant (discuss…), headlines like “Twitter: just another way of talking to people” would not sell many newspapers. There needs to be scandal, depravity, danger &c. And of course there is, because Twitter is just another forum, populated by human beings. So there’s bound to be some of the above. Not much, but some, somewhere, though I haven’t found it yet (of course I’ve not looked ). It’s the old ‘holding a mirror up to society’ thing.

We should forget about arguments over whether it’s any good or not, whether it has any value, whether it’s dangerous or useful. It just is. The point is that it’s a tool, facilitating communication, so we have to decide as individuals whether or not we want to join in.

As a tool it works pretty well. It has had its problems – growing pains you might say – but it does pretty much what it says on the tin. Being like an internet version of SMS, the messages are short, snappy, cleverly crafted (sometimes) and to the point (sometimes). The premise is “What are you doing?” so I assume the main requirement must be speed, in the sense of immediacy. Whatever is posted must be instantly available to all who wish to see it. In my experience, it delivers.

As for the content, that’s up to the users. It has nothing to do with the system. If you say that Twitter is full of rubbish, what you are really saying is that its users are full of rubbish – and I would respectfully suggest that you haven’t seen the output of all 6 million+ users. I haven’t seen the output of all 6 million+ users either, but I’ve seen some of it and I’d bet there are people talking about just about any topic you can think of. So there’s rubbish, inanity, egotism and narcissism of course, and I’ve read that there may even be some imaginative souls using it for sexual shenanigans. Then there’s friendly, helpful, advisory and supportive stuff, intellectual conversation and even a bit of tech talk. So as I said, just like any social forum anywhere, real or virtual.

One of the really interesting parts is the way the system can interact with other systems. For example, when I ‘tweet’, the message automatically appears here on my blog and on my Facebook page. This is a small example of how everything can (and will eventually) be interconnected. Makes me think of Dirk Gently and “the fundamental interconnectedness of everything” but that’s for another day.

On a personal note, I’m not keen on some of the “look how big mine is…” stuff that buzzes around the periphery. It’s usually men (really?) and relates to how often you tweet, how many followers you have, how many times your posts are ‘retweeted’ (re-broadcast with attribution) and so on. And why do people have to say ‘good morning’ and ‘good night’? But I’m getting old, so lots of stuff annoys me now.

If you don’t like it, don’t use it. If you do like it, use it in whatever way suits you. But if all you can do is criticise it, take a good look in the mirror.

Now that it’s all ‘official’ (rather than just decided?) I suppose we can all comment on it. The newspapers are, briefly, full of smiley, posey pictures; all the politicians and aspiring politicians crawl out of the slime to either congratulate the government on another brilliant scheme or berate them for wasting money on another half-baked idea.

As far as the national picture is concerned, looking at the positives, it’s great that the government is prepared to step in and fund the provision of broadband for everybody. On the negative side, the government have surely set the bar too low, in that: less than 2MB cannot really be considered broadband in the 21st century (forget the moans about bandwidth reducing when there are lots of users – all broadband is contended); the target of ‘covering the whole country’ is imprecise – in the UK they are specifying the supply of broadband ‘to every household’, which is quite different.

To illustrate the second criticism, consider Achill. The island, as far as the NBS is concerned, is split into two parts: one is on the ‘planned’ list, the other is on the ‘not included’ list. Why does one part of the island miss out? Well, there is already a 3 mast which, notionally, covers this part of the island. The reality, as anyone with the slightest experience of cellphone signals will realise, is that in some spots there is a great signal but move around the corner and there is none. Achill is not flat; hills get in the way, leaving ’shadows’ where there is no signal. Then there are walls: most broadband users do not want to sit in the garden surfing the net, at least not in Ireland. So again, some houses and offices are fine, others get nothing. There is no reason to believe that the ‘planned’ part of Achill will fare any better.

Achill is not a special case: this picture will be repeated all over the country. Hence to say that the whole country will be covered by broadband, one way or another, is meaningless. You’ll find the usual ‘haves and have-nots’ thing between wired and wireless areas, and between good and bad signal areas. Let’s not pretend, either, that the proposed satellite coverage for areas where a cellular signal is impractical is the answer. As a satellite ‘broadband’ user for several years, I can attest to the deeply unsatisfactory nature of this ’solution’.

I have no doubt that, if I am one of the lucky ones, I will appreciate the improvements of cellular broadband over satellite broadband, but I will continue to look with envy at those a few miles up the road with their DSL lines.

Let me be clear about this: I’d like to buy an iPhone3G but I don’t really want to lose my current number. It’s not rocket science.

I’ve been an O2 customer for well over 8 years now. In that time I think I’ve had one upgrade, probably about 5 years ago. My monthly bills are small, but I was eligible for a silver upgrade, at least until everything changed in the ‘O2 Upgrade Fiasco’ a couple of weeks ago.

I live in Achill, Mayo so I don’t have much of a choice of O2 shops. Back in July, I put my name down on the waiting list in the Castlebar store. At the time, as I say, I was eligible for an upgrade and of course the only way to keep my number was to buy from a ‘real’ store, where I would be able to ‘upgrade’. I use the term ‘upgrade’ because that’s what O2 call it, but it’s nothing of the sort. There is no discount or other privilege associated with this particular type of ‘upgrade’ (to an iPhone), except that you get to keep your old number.

So, back to my call to customer care. Oh yes, I’m told, I can have one straight away. They are in stock in a lot of places, apparently, just not in my godforsaken backwater. After much ‘checking’ I was asked ‘Are you near a big city?’ No. Dublin is 5 hours. Galway or Sligo are 2.5. OK, no problem, just go online and order one.

Oh but no, I can’t keep my number. And I’m not eligible for an upgrade anymore. I’m out of contract, so I can close my account and buy an iPhone as a new customer, in which case I’ll get a new number. So I’ll have to tell all my friends, family, business associates etc. that my number has changed. I know, it’s hardly the end of the world. But is it really necessary? It’s a small nuisance and I’ll have to learn a new number, but no-one died. O2 will have to close one account and set up another, for the same person, at the same address, with the same bank details. Bit of a waste of time and money really.

Surely, I say to the customer service person, this is a nonsense? Wouldn’t it be more sensible just to give me the ‘upgrade’? Makes no difference to what I pay, I’d still be signing up for 18 months, it saves a few admin euro and saves me some hassle. Oh no, can’t do that. Computer says no. Suddenly I’m in the middle of a ‘Little Britain’ sketch.

Me: Aren’t you a bit embarrassed about this?

Customer Services: What do you mean?

Me: Haven’t there been lots of complaints about this?

CS: Yes, I think there have.

Me: So don’t you feel a bit embarrassed?

CS: Well, yes, I suppose so.

Me: So my only options are to close my account and buy an iPhone as a ‘new’ customer, or go without.

CS: You could wait until you are eligible for an upgrade.

Me: How long would that take?

CS: [checks my account] At your current rate of use it could take a couple of months.

Me: A couple of months? I haven’t used an upgrade in 5 years and I’m not eligible yet, but you think just a couple more months?

CS: Well, maybe a bit longer.

Me: What, like a year? Another 5 years? 10? Maybe I’ll be dead before I’m eligible? Maybe I can have my shiny new iPhone placed in my coffin with me?

CS: [a slight giggle] Probably not that long. You can check your eligibility online.

The conversation goes on: there is no facility to just add an upgrade to my account. No, a supervisor could not do it. No, none of the managers could do it either. Could Danuta Gray do it? Well, maybe, they don’t know. Don’t you think it’s just a bit mad? Well, yes, but that’s the way it works.

What a great system. O2 would rather close an account and open a new one, for no extra revenue, inconveniencing both parties. I’d love to meet the brains behind this idea.

I don’t think I need to go on. Naturally I’m disappointed, but hey ho, there’s nothing to be done. I’ll still get an iPhone, but maybe I’ll wait for the 3rd generation model? Watch this space!

Living a long way from anywhere has some fabulous advantages, but one of them is not connectivity. We knew this when we moved here, but we did dream of a time when even this remote spot would be connected electronically to the rest of the world by something more than the string and chewing gum that was Telecom Eireann’s rural network circa 2000.

Technology moves on at such high speed that it wasn’t long before we could realistically expect some kind of reasonable service and, following a bit of a local campaign (I won’t bore you with the details, well maybe another time) we managed to get a ‘village’ wireless scheme with a satellite link to the internet.

It’s been a long and frustrating story, and it goes on. Last Thursday some people from Digiweb, the ISP, arrived. They needed to point our satellite dish at a different satellite so they removed the dish from its concrete plinth and bolted it back in a different position. Then they couldn’t find the satellite. So ended Thursday.

On Friday they came back and, after several hours, managed to establish a connection. It was very slow, but we’ve found that’s often the case after it’s been messed with and it usually speeds up after a couple of hours.

Not on this occasion. Between Friday and the time of writing my speed tests have ranged from a low of 2KB/s to a blistering 7.5KB/s (we should be seeing between 64KB/s and 256KB/s). The support people at Digiweb are very nice and are working as hard as they can, which is nice. But we’re still in some kind of techno-limbo.

Rumour has it that 3 Ireland have cellphone coverage here now, though it’s not indicated on their coverage maps. If Digiweb don’t sort us out soon I may have to buy one of 3’s data modems and see if we can share the connection on our network.

I’ve also said to friends that I’m at that age where I have to be convinced that the product is right and the time is right. As you may know I’m a huge Apple fan and until the iPhone no other smartphone had really attracted me. Having the latest/smartest gadget doesn’t do it for me, but that’s a personal thing. I need to see real utility and ways in which my life will be made easier, even if the product design is dreamy.

I decided not to pre-order the 3G at the beginning of July. Why? Well, I’ve never been an “early adopter,” preferring to follow on in the second wave. Also, there was a lot of discussion on the O2 forum about the inadequacy of the data cap (1GB per month) and the forum moderator had agreed to raise the issue with O2 “management” to see if it could be raised. I felt that if there was a big demand for the handset at the pre-order stage it would undermine our argument for raising the cap.

[I'd like to say that, with hindsight, I now believe that there was never any chance of the data cap being raised, or of any of the other requests on the forum leading to a more generous tariff. Looking back at the launch of the 2G iPhone and what happened over the next few months it is clear that O2 Ireland feel there is enough demand at the existing prices, so the scalping continues. Compare this with O2 UK - chalk and cheese. Maybe O2 Ireland will prove me wrong - that would be nice - but I won't hold my breath. It's a shame that the Irish consumer has simply capitulated. We should take a leaf out of the Canadians' book.]

A short time after pre-orders “sold out” it became clear that this “system” was based more on the concept of “a wing and a prayer” rather than careful planning. So it proved to be, with launch day bringing many stories of pre-orders being unfulfilled, and some very unhappy customers to boot.

As if to add insult to injury, we then had the “activation debacle” – nothing to do with O2, purely Apple’s problem. I have no wish to defend O2 but I think a number of users have been rather unfair, saying O2 should have insisted that Apple had an adequate system in place. Let’s be frank, O2 have as much sway over Apple as I do over George Bush.

I am not proud of it but I must admit to considerable schadenfreude. I’m glad that I’m not one to rush into these things.

So will I get an iPhone 3G (once they are back in stock)? To recap what I said about the 2G model:
- memory: I’d prefer to have 32GB (my iTunes collection – all legal – currently runs to over 17GB with a couple of short videos). But 16GB is still the maximum. How long will it be until the memory is increased? I’d say minimum 6 months, possibly a year. of course I could load just a subset of my music; 3 or 4GB is still a lot of music. Applications from the App Store seem to be quite slim so a couple of GB for them should be plenty. Contacts and calendars can’t take up that much room, surely? And I’m unlikely to want to store my emails on the phone. OK, 16GB is probably enough.
- 3G: tick
- O2 tariffs: unchanged. This was my main complaint last time round, and I still think they are very mean. I also suspect they won’t change in the foreseeable future.
- Software: now that 2.0 and the SDK are here, and the App Store, this shouldn’t be a problem.

I know there are still a few holes in the spec but to be honest I don’t think many, if any, will trouble me too much. MMS I can do without and a 2MP camera is adequate. Many of the issues are software related, which will be resolved in due course.

GPS is a bonus, and it may even be useful occasionally. It is kind of crippled by the small antenna, so true turn-by-turn navigation is off the menu, and this is a great shame. Half a GPS is just a toy really. Perhaps TomTom or Garmin will produce a plug-in antenna for it?

Anyway, back to my decision. Memory size and tariffs are unchanged, but we have 3G and the SDK. Is it enough? I’m betting that the next hardware iteration is a year away and, as I often say, if you keep waiting for the “perfect” product you will never buy anything.

So it’s a yes from me. I will buy a 3G iPhone, next week if I can. I’m not into queuing and I’m more or less an hour from the nearest store, so I’m not going to burst a blood-vessel getting it, but get it I will.

Thanks for listening!

The brainboxes in the tech industry are making it even easier to do this by merging our iPods with our mobile phones – one less gadget to carry, one less charger, so much smarter.

Except that I was shocked at the announcement on a recent flight to the effect that, although iPods etc could be used once airborne, mobile phones must remain switched off even if they have a flight safety mode and you just want to use them to listen to a bit of Bach.

Oh dear. So much for convergence.

So have I bought one? No. Why? O2 Ireland. OK, so there are several minor issues: I’d like to have more memory (32GB minimum) and maybe 3G, and clearly the software is going to develop very, very quickly over the next few months; but no, it’s the incredibly mean package from O2 that is making me wait.

I don’t mind the 499 euro price tag – it’s worth every cent – although it’s nearly 80 euro cheaper in the UK. I don’t mind the 45 euro per month for 18 months, but I want some value for that. In the UK, for about the same money, I’d get 600 minutes, more texts than I could dream of using, unlimited data (subject to fair usage) and 7,500+ free hotspots. In Ireland I’d get 175 minutes, plenty of texts (I’m not a big texter), 1GB data (OK, probably plenty but it’s the principle) and no free hotspots! OK, so I spend most of my time at home, so the hotspots are not such a big deal. It’s the minutes. O2 Ireland are not just taking the proverbial, they are profiteering.

I don’t expect a deal to match that in the US – Europe is always more expensive and we’ve learnt to live with that – but I do expect to be rather closer to the UK deal. O2 Ireland say their deal is similar to those in France and Germany, which may be true (kind of, the packages vary but on balance there may be an approximate equivalence) but I say that the French and Germans are also being ripped off!

So for me, right now, something has to give. I’m not sure what it will be that brings me to my tipping point, but I’ll know when it happens. In the meantime I’ll continue to lust after it!

Whenever we start to feel smug, however, Mother Nature is ready to put us back in our place! A really bad storm on Sunday night – gale force winds, hail, thunder and lightning – left us without power between 12:30am and 11:15am Monday. Not too bad you might think, and you should be right. Unfortunately we’ve found that whenever the power goes, so does our broadband. It’s never a simple matter of restoring power. Something dark and mysterious has to be done by our broadband provider to restore our connection. Happily I can report that just over 24 hours after the power came back we are online once again.

[NB this doesn't affect the website, only our ability to access it.]