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Produced and hosted by Jon Gordon, Future Tense brings you the latest technology topics in daily five-minute capsules. From electronic privacy and digital democracy to spam and computer worms, Future Tense keeps you up to date on the rapidly changing world of technology.
Future Tense is heard in the United States during broadcasts of the CBC's As It Happens.
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A new report from the United States Department of Agriculture says broadband Internet leads to more and higher-paying jobs in rural areas.
Guest: Matthew Lasar, Ars Technica
At a congressional hearing last week, Rep. Rick Boucher (D-VA) wondered aloud whether a technology called deep packet inspection needs to be outlawed. Deep packet inspection allows Internet service providers to examine in great detail an individual's activity on the Internet - from email to Web surfing habits.
Guest: Nate Anderson, Ars Technica
On today's show, freelance technology journalist Glenn Fleishman provides an update of Wifi on U.S. air carriers.
Fleishman wrote an extensive piece on the topic for Ars Technica.
As federal agencies decide how to spend $7 billion dollars allocated for high speed Internet deployment from the recently-passed stimulus package, a new report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture attempts to quantify the extent of the digital divide between urban and rural America. The USDA says 72.6 percent of urban dwellers use the Internet somewhere, compared to 63.3 percent of rural residents. Internet penetration is lowest in the rural south.
The city-country gap is much bigger when it comes to broadband deployment.
Advocacy group Free Press, which campaigns for universal broadband, has just released a report called Five Days On the Digital Dirt Road which attempts to put a human face on the digital divide.
Despite numerous reports that the U.S. has fallen behind many countries in deployment of high speed Internet, it's apparently the model country when it comes to turning information technology like broadband, software and computer networks into economic productivity. The 2009 Connectivity Scorecard has the U.S. atop the rest of the world.
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has awarded about $7 million in grants for faster Internet connections at public libraries in seven states. The grants are seed money to help libraries attract long-term financial support for high-speed access.
Delta Airlines is now offering wireless Internet service on board some flights between Washington D.C., New York and Boston. Delta says it will expand the Wi-Fi service to its entire fleet -- including planes operated by its Northwest subsidiary -- by next summer.
Earlier this year American Airlines and Virgin America began selling in-flight Wi-Fi.
The Federal Communications Commission this week decided to free up the little-used "white space" spectrum between television channels. That spectrum slice will no longer be needed when the U.S. ditches analog TV broadcasts early next year.
Backers of the move believe it could usher in the age of a faster, universal wireless Internet. Broadcasters and mobile phone carriers have opposed the move, arguing new devices running in the white space could cause interference.
Guest: Stacey Higginbotham, GigaOm
Today we feature an interview with Jonathan Taplin of the USC Annenberg School for Communication, who recently analyzed the tech policy platforms of the presidential candidates. We talked about President-elect Barack Obama's positions on broadband, net neutrality, and electronic privacy.
Today, we feature part two of our interview on broadband caps with Stacey Higginbotham, lead writer on technology blog GigaOm.
Increasingly, some Internet service providers are placing limits on their broadband services. Comcast, for example, forbids customers from transferring more than 250 gigabytes of data per month. Customers who go over the limit risk getting dumped. Time Warner is experimenting with a tiered service, charging extra to customers who go over their monthly data limit.
Why do Internet service providers cap the amount of bandwidth consumers can use? I put that question to Stacey Higginbotham, lead writer on GigaOm.
