Lizards: Making Money on Internet

Brisbourne is not a naysayer. He does indeed believe in the potential for future applications on a next-generation wireless network layer for M2M, enhancing the capacity for the types of real-world applications that KORE Telematics provides - which, by the way, include cross-country shipping vehicle tracking, mobile payment processing, and industrial equipment monitoring. What he tells us, in this first of a three-part discussion (in which, fair warning, I do share my personal opinion), is that there are certain real-world applications where the Internet analogy does not, and should not, apply.

Alex Brisbourne: It's fair to say there's all sorts of terminology out in the marketplace. "Internet of Things" seems to have caught on a little, and as a result, has got many fathers with regard to who really invented the phrase - [who hail from the realms of] embedded devices, traditional devices, and obviously traditional M2M. But really when we come down to it - whether we're operating at business level or consumer level, whether it's a centralized app, whether it's sitting on a portable device or on a back-end server - we're really doing nothing more than facilitating remote data access, and then turning that into actionable information in some sort of application. So increasingly, we're seeing that the excitement is ultimately [about] how remote data collection is becoming part of mainstream business expectation over the next three, four, five, maybe ten years, as businesses look to differentiate more - clearly to save costs - by becoming more efficient.

I think up until now, a lot of what's happened in M2M has been about saving money. But I think the next generation is all about making money, in terms of inventing new services. Clearly, no matter how sexy the application is, you can't connect [devices] without reliable and broadly-based connectivity. So I think the maturation of cellular, and to a certain extent, satellite networks, to be able to play a part in this - cost-efficiently, easily deployed, and with a reasonably high degree of reliability - will be the thing that gets [M2M] onto everybody's radar screen over the past two to three years... despite the fact that we [KORE] have been doing it for almost ten, I suppose, and watched some of the growing pains that organizations have had to endure.

Scott M. Fulton, III, ReadWriteWeb: Well, you have to credit Google and IBM to some extent, even though they're really not as involved in the business as you are, with trying to popularize the concept and get it into the public conscience. For you and me trying to evangelize folks on this topic through the '80s and '90s, it was like rolling logs uphill. What they've managed to do is popularize the concept by giving it a kind of science fiction theme.

This week the Mystic Valley Regional Charter School in Malden,
Massachusetts, put a highly regarded teacher on paid leave after
the local Fox affiliate
revealed that he has appeared in several pornographic movies.
No one alleges that Kevin Hogan, a crew coach who is also head of
the school's English department, did anything illegal, and he gets
high marks as a teacher. Yet the school is investigating him,
ostensibly for giving an incomplete account of his work experience
prior to taking his current job. When it broke the story on
Tuesday, Fox 25 seemed mostly interested in titillation:

Kevin Hogan is an English teacher and crew coach at a top-rated
Massachusetts public high school, but he brings some unusual
experience to the job: until recently, he was starring in
pornographic movies....

He can also be found on the Internet and in adult entertainment
stores under his screen name: Hytch Cawke.

His movie credits include "Fetish World" and "Just Gone Gay 8,"
and FOX Undercover found his third movie, whose title is not fit to
reveal in a family news outlet, in a local adult store. It features
him answering an ad to have sex for money.

"Hi, I'm Hytch and I just answered the ad and now I'm here to
see what it’s like to be with a guy," he says to the camera.

But Hogan wasn't so talkative when FOX Undercover's camera was
on him.

To provide a fig leaf of legitimate public interest, the TV
station quoted three parents who were disturbed by the news for no
clearly articulated reason, one of whom also said: "The kids really
love him. He's been a great addition to the team." The story also
noted that Hogan had "flawless references."

In a follow-up segment the next day, Fox 25
reported that the initial piece "sparked a flood of responses,
many of them critical of the story. One tweet said 'Kevin Hogan did
not deserve that. He's a good teacher with students supporting
him.'" The headline on a
story posted this morning asks, "Are private lives of teachers
truly private?" Which seems like something Fox 25 should have asked
before ruining this guy's life.

The closest the station has come to an intelligible
justification for its exposé is this
quote from a spokesman for the state Department of Elementary
and Secondary Education, which also is investigating
Hogan: “We expect teachers to hold a very high moral standard.
They are role models for students."

So even if everyone concedes a teacher is good at teaching, he
is disqualified from the job if he behaves immorally off the clock.
Who decides what counts as immoral? Does it have to involve sex?
Promiscuity and adultery too, or just making porn? Does it matter
whether it is gay or straight porn?

Obviously, no one forced Hogan to make those movies. But should
he have taken it for granted that he was throwing away his teaching
career by doing so?

[Thanks to Andrew Friedrich for the tip.]

Lizards

Monday, December 26, 2011

Making Money on Internet

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