Imagining the 100Mbps Gardens in Eden-net

(warning: I’m quite badly read in biblical text not being a Christian myself, so please forgive me for the misquotes if any. On the other hand, I like stories, old stories.)

Garden of Eden

Welcome, to the new Gardens of Eden-net (yes, plural). Much like the original Garden of Eden in ancient times, it’s location is unknown, perhaps floating in the Internet. And the time has come, where the many more derivative sin from the original sin is about to be committed, in the watchful eyes of the creators (and venture capitals).

Eden-net (commonly known as Internet), the creation of the world within the creation of the world, is not as perfect as the original world, but nevertheless delighted the world with its coming. A heavenly kingdom with bountiful trees like Sequoia and fruits like Apple, this was where God had Adam and Eve live until the famous expulsion with fear and shame.

Fairly little is known about the original Garden of Eden, except God created Adam, asked him to tend the garden, warned against eating from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, but the Serpent lured Eve to eat the fruit anyway and then Adam also ate the fruit anyway and God punished them for knowing the difference between Good and Evil (or like He’s not happy with naughty man and woman). Something like that.

But as the descendants of Adam and Eve created their own Eden and allowed various Gardens of Eden to be created (e.g. geo-locked high speed connectivity, invested by a combination of Tree of Life like pension funds and tax payer’s money), new Trees of Knowledge about Good and Evil were planted. The Adams and Eves in the digital era are again tempted by Serpents of today to eat those fruits. Some call it “disruption”, “draconian”, others regard them as steps towards “salvation”…

Ok, enough of dabbling in biblical stories. I only wanted it as a backdrop to the following scenarios:

1. Network structural / operational separation

Governments, such as Singapore, put in such contractual clauses on their new Gardens of Edens to ensure that the network operators don’t have a hand in selling services, so that the network operators will not know the “difference between good and evil”, i.e. treat every customer the same. In Singapore’s case, Adam gets a role and Eve gets another role, and if things carry on as planned, this would be a vibrant garden full of trees (RSPs) and fruits (ASPs).

Things has hardly gotten started, and the Serpent is already lurking at the corner. Yes the separation was clean and regulatory-wise kosher, but it doesn’t help address the fact that Adam and Eve will be hungry, and a hungry man can often be misled. Behind each “beautiful” walled garden of Eden, behind each living tree and fruit in the garden, is a fierce battle for survival, of stronger plants and stronger genes.

Thus, if we imagine into the future where 100Mbps is the minimum bandwidth, we could see a more complex picture arising, perhaps not only involving Adam and Eve, but other players as well eager to get a piece of the Eden-net. Contractual clauses will then serve at best a blunt tool to keep them in their place, but once the Governments are not looking, the Serpents will be out on full force to find opportunities to influence to their end. But being governments, the direction is clear – to be the key Eden-net garden with limited resources, one has to commit to a strategy, to protect and yet to encourage vibrancy.

2. Cloud Computing or My Software

A similar story is unfolding in the application space as well. Pushed by some architectural mantra, more and more business are looking at hosted models of their software and services. A combination of factors have made this meaningful. First there’s the 100Mbps network thing. In a garden where 100Mbps is the minimum bandwidth anywhere, it make no sense to keep kilobytes in your pocket and risk losing it. Then there’s a chorus getting more and more in tune, ranging from Government sponsored Grid computing initiatives, platform providers singing to the same tune (each to their platform), data providers trying to cash in from selling data that can be integrated etc.

And here comes our wall garden story again. Salesforce, Facebook, iPhone, you name it. With the creation of each garden in Eden-net, the Adams (developers) and Eves (prosumers) are constantly told to conform, to live a happy eternal life, and don’t touch the fruit or we’ll kick you out of the application submission queue. What you used to be able to do if you had everything with you is gradually reduced to something you are “supposed to do”, everything from the simple upload big pictures but only can download small pictures unless you pay in photo sharing sites, can create huge amounts of data in social networks but only integrate and export a subset, subjecting to sometimes manual and eccentric notions of which application can be sold on application marketplaces (like don’t build voice services…), etc.

Thus, again, if we imagine into the future where 100Mbps is the minimum bandwidth, we see that the gain in access capabilities and beautiful platforms will eventually be traded with less flexibility to behave freely online. With the whole world tending towards using a few huge dominant gardens, people will behave and confirm more and more to the wishes of each garden. The Serpents are going to have a hard time convincing the Adams and the Eves to disobey.

* *

No one knows what happened to the original Garden of Eden after Adam and Eve were expelled, but we know earth is still a beautiful place for our dwelling. Perhaps, it deteriorates precisely because Adam and Eve weren’t helping God take care of it.

Citizens of Eden-net, what do you think?

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