The note below is published with the kind permission of Chris Bird, one of the two tutors of T182. It outlines the effect that trans-atlantic cable laying has on the local community.  This is a 'hidden' cost which we, who use the interenet, don't tend to see.

Sarah E. Reeve,oufcnt2.open.ac.uk writes:
In fact, the real problem was that there were not enough ships to lay cables across the atlantic.

<rant>

I wish, I wish. And I'll explain as well. I live in Sennen (West Cornwall) where the bulk of the cables coming into SW England are landed, the rest being in Porthcurno a few miles away. For some 8 years we've been plagued by constant transatlantic cable laying - the road dug up 9 times (sometimes simultaneously by two companies quite literally following one another down the road with their own trench), wildlife habitats destroyed, ancient hedges wrecked, sand dunes devastated etc. Any protests were just bulldozed aside. Revenge is sweet though - the number of times the cables are caught up by fishing boats and have to be repaired is quite astounding. The cable companies were advised that the waters were too shallow but they knew best (and it was the cheapest place to land them).

But the irony is, in spite of having more 'bandwidth' within a few hundred metres of my home (in the lane, across the fields behind me etc) than the rest of the UK put together, I can't have broadband - not cost effective in a rural area! Oh, one of the cable companies, as compensation, bought a new slide for the school playground - real generous.

</rant>

But, 'rant' now over, it's probably true what Sarah says - there weren't enough cable-laying vessels available at the time - it just didn't seem like it to us here.

However, with the failure of the dot.coms, there are not as many companies using the available bandwidth, and not as many surfers as anticipated. If this is the case, my advice is use it while it's there, I guarantee that within five years we will be back to the good-old world-wide-wait-that-was.

Another contributing factor to there being more bandwidth available than was anticipated is a change in the technology. Up to a couple of years ago, light transmitted down fibre was just that - light. Now they are able to transmit multiple colours down the same fibre which has increased bandwidth ten-fold. If I recall things correctly, dredging my grey-matter, this new technology was developed by Lucent. It was a contributing factor to why some of the transatlantic cable companies have actually gone out of business (as well as dot.coms) as they could not attract enough traffic to keep them afloat (strange term for a cable that needs to be 'sunk'!).

Incidentally on the subject of dot.coms and legislation as it affects the Internet, can I recommend an excellent book? It's 'Leaving Reality Behind: The battle for the soul of the internet' by Wishart and Boschsler. The cover blurb says: 'It should do for e-commerce what No Logo did for global capitalism'. It is a fascinating story about the battle for domain name registration and trademarks between etoys.com (an online toy company) and etoy.com (a bunch of anarchic artists) and covers many of the issues raised in T182. If you have the time, then try and read it.

Regards, Chris Bird
Technology Tutor and Conference Moderator

The damage to local wildlife, the disruption to the people who live along the roads that the cables are layed through, and the fact that the companies causing this failed to provide any service to the communities which they inconvienced so.  This hidden cost of the internet is rarely seen in such a clear way as this example shows.

I wonder what other damage has been done in the forward thrust to push the world into the so-called information age?  How many other communities have been inconvenienced, or worse still devastated, by the needs of companies to make money for their shareholders.

I understand that companies have a requirement to look out for the needs of the shareholders, but that is rarely what actually happens. In my experience, companies are run for the needs of the people who are running them.  How many out there remember Poly Peck? BCCI? Maxwell? Enron? The list goes on and on.

At this point I wish to state for clarity (and legal reasons) that I am only stating my point of view. I am not looking at any particular company, or company boss. I am not pointing the finger, or claiming that any one person is failing in their duties to the companies they are running, or their shareholders. I have a lot of respect for the vast majority of people who willingly take on that large burden, and do their level best to balance the provision of service to customers with the provision of value to shareholders. I am merely taking a look at the few who fail in this, either by greed, or by lack of vision.

There is a saying, power corrupts (absolut power has a higher alcohol percentage). The people who are put in charge of these big companies after a while seem to loose track of what happens when they issue orders.  Say they decide to run a marketing campaign. I've been on the hard end of something like this. It means a lot of work for the poor souls who have to produce the literature itself. But the real cost comes in the paper. Did you know that one of the major causes of deforestation is to produce paper. Everytime you print something on your laser printer on non-recycled paper, you are eating away at the trees which scientists argue provide the oxygen you are breathing.  Or say they suggest that they cut their prices on product X to make people buy product Y as well. This undercuts everyone else who sells product X anywhere near one of their outlets. Which can and does lead to small businesses going out of business, as they just can't get the same prices as the big boys do, because they are dealing in such smaller numbers.

So, we end up with large superstores, and a few small shops trying to hold on despite the changes. Well, that means we all end up with cheaper prices, don't we.  Yes we do. If we are only trying to buy what the superstores decide to stock that is. In the road which I live on, two of the currently four small shops have closed down recently. One of them is indeed offering a similar product to the big stores (kitchen installation). The other is a craft shop. I like doing craft work. It is getting harder and harder to get supplies and products to do however, because it is not something which the big chains want to carry. I know how to knit and crochet, and enjoy sewing. Do you know somewhere I can get hold of a knitting pattern?  Simply because it is not a big market, the big chains won't touch it, so because they decide to cut costs on some things, they put out of business the shops which I rely on to get my supplies.

How about having to cut costs. I remember the newscasts when I was younger, which would state how many people had been made redundant in various parts of the country because the companies were cutting costs. Hands up if you too remember the winter of discontent. So, there is a need to cut costs because they are loosing money. They look around, and find that most of their money is being spent on wages. Therefore to cut costs, you make some people redundant. Or close down a factory or so. But closing down that factory also hits all its suppliers, and their suppliers. So now we have entire cities in the UK where generations of men are out of work, with no hope of getting a job, because the skill that they have is out of date. Marriage break-ups. Children brought up in an atmosphere of desparation. Simply because the company needs to cut costs.

So, what is my alternative?  Well, I'm not sure that I have one. I do recognise that there does come a time when you have to choose between cutting costs or puting your entire workforce out of a job. But there are alternatives sometimes. How about job sharing? Or looking to see if you can cut costs elsewhere?  I know of one company which was going through a large cost cutting measure, but still insisted that their pads for internal use had their letterhead on them, along with their internal mail envelops, and the paper that they bought for laser printing came in a wrapping with their logo printed on.  I am well aware that this would not be much of a saving, but it might have been enough to save one person's job. And how about instead of having a stationary department, allowing people to purchase stationary from a local Rymans on an account system. It has been proved that this can save a lot of money in certain circumstances. There are always alternative ways of saving money. However, sometimes those alternatives may be worse for the business.

Ghandi had an interesting idea on economics. It was part of his overall philosophy for home rule as opposed to rule by the British Empire. He suggested that instead of buying goods from the Empire, buy goods from your local neighbourhood, spend the money at home.  The modern aspect of that for me would be Buy British (a total opposite to what Ghandi said, but in the same spirit). However it is increasingly harder for me to do so in the society which I live in. If you think it is easy, just try shopping for English apples in a Tesco store.

If, however, we all insisted on buying local produce, and shopping at your local store rather than visiting the superstores, then we would soon find that we were living in the sort of thriving community which our grandparents told us about. Yes, we may not be as rich in monetary terms as we are today, but our quality of life would be different. We might not be able to purchase bananas all year round, but we would know that what we did purchase was local, fresh, and as we may actually know the producer, we would have a better knowedge of its quality. And as the shops we were buying from were smaller, there would be less pressure on the proprieters to make money from their customers for their shareholders. If instead the local community were joint shareholders in the local shops, then the pressure to make money would be gone totally. No, I'm not advocating total communism. Marx made a lot of mistakes, and total central control of local communities causes trouble. I advocating local control of local communities. Shops owned and run by the local community, buying local goods and selling them to the community as a whole. They would be able to have lower prices than the big chains (as they didn't have to make that much of a profit), and they would be providing both opportunities to buy local goods, as well as markets to sell them.

From transatlantic cables to local shops. An interesting rant, I suppose.  If you want to make any comments on this, or any of my other essays here, please feel free to drop me a note.