Edited by author 07-11-2002 01:51 PM
I always feel awkwardly compelled to play Devil's Advocate when I see another post on the radio wonderland that True Believers think someday will be cognitive radio. There are problems with the way the FCC allocates spectrum now, sure, but Reed's plan creates a potentially much more dire situation than we already have.

For instance, it seems that for this technology to work, receivers are going to have to be independently addressable, broadcasting your listening or viewing choices to the public. It's not a far stretch to imagine a world where criminal profiling now includes the station you're listening to. How's that grab you?

Add to this the fact that by transmitting digitally, you double the royalties that broadcasters have to pay to organizations like the RIAA. Web stations like SOMA are out of business thanks to the DMCA, CARP and friends -- do we want to do the same to our hometown radio stations, too?

The technology is fascinating, of course. I'd love to see a separate band created to experiment with it. (Why not, say, half of the UHF band? It's hardly being used.) But as a rule, it shouldn't replace AM/FM radio. I think that'd be a disaster.

I appreciate the civil liberties interest in having individuated, addresses streams for all media, Dan, but here's my question for you: how is this different from the Internet? And why wouldn't Internet-like anonymizing strategies work just as well in Cognitive Radio scenaria?

He doesn't address the issue of people in rural areas very well. 802.11b sounds like a good idea until you hit some parts of West Texas where the population density is less than .25 per square mile. The transmission wattages would be approaching those of Mexican radio stations in order to get good two-way communication.

Hey, Cory. By way of disclaimer, I think it's too early to say anything solid about Reed's plan -- I'm only venting the obvious ideas that bubble to the surface as I read about it.

 As for how it's different than the Internet? Well, it's part of the nature of broadcasting that it's not anonymous -- signal strength is stronger closer to the broadcaster. So even assuming your new radio is broadcasting your listening data anonymously, I can still "see" that it's you broadcasting. It's easy to imagine a roadside cop reading the radio stations of people driving by, letting the ones listening to Christian stations go while he follows the ones listening to rap.

If you meant, "The Internet is already non-anonymous, and we're not so badly off," then I guess I'd just disagree.

The Internet is a fun toy, and a useful technology, but I hate to think of a world where all our information necessarily has a data chain from sender to receiver. It's bad for freedom to know too much about everyone. Analog media have some profound virtues in that regard, and I hope we recognize them and keep them for it. We'll miss them when they're gone.

Dan, these are all great points. I hadn't thought about the broadcast-triangulation issue, but it's a very good one.