Security

I used to love flying. I used to love airports. Well, the cost and increasing inconvenience have taken the fun out of flying in America. Only when flying overseas does my former love of flying come out because overseas the security is more sensible, the flights more comfortable, and the personnel more friendly.

What are we getting for our inconvenience and increasing costs? Supposedly increased security, but does it really make sense to force parents to pour out their child's milk or juice or to prevent parents from taking aquafor onto planes? Does this really make us safer?

A friend of mine in California flew back from a trip to Europe recently. She flew from her European destination through Paris, to a stopover in America and then home to Los Angeles. In her carryon was an unopened jar of Nutella. For those who don't know about this, it is a hazelnut spread that some Europeans love on toast. Obviously a threat to our national security.

My friend got on her plane in Europe without anyone caring about her jar of Nutella. She then went through the Paris airport without anyone caring about her jar of Nutella. Then she reached America and she was told that she could not take her unopened jar of Nutella on her next flight. The security agent took this VERY seriously, was stern and even threatening.

Now, my friend managed to convince the person to let her take it using methods I will not reveal...suffice it to say age and gender can be used to advantage. But what struck me was that an item that is completely harmless was not viewed with suspicion in Europe but was considered a major concen by security in the US.

This little cranial wander around the digital neighborhood started when I shared the little tidbit about the FOX crew parent NewsCorp announcing they were starting a new channel. In what I think is no accident, the name will be My Network TV which I believe is a further capitalization on the "My" brand acquired by Fox two summers ago.

I made a rather broad sweep of a statement to the effect that Tom and Rupert had an opportunity to do what the folks at CNN/Time/Warner couldn't do when they joined AOL at the hip. We all know Ted Turner and the other Time Warner shareholders took it in another portion of the lower anatomy, not the hip.

As I've contemplated how to make my point, in order to explain why I think this is important, I decided to make my case by explaining the many ways the power of the packet has engrained itself into nearly every facet of our day-to-day life.

What happened as I gathered my thoughts and reviewed my material, and decided how to do justice to the TRANSFORMATIONAL opportunity MySpace and My Network might be, I decided to break this conversation into component parts and play with it one step at a time.

For starters it was fascinating for me to learn not long ago that the very same communication protocols that allow Client / Server networks to run in our closed Intranets of the workplace, are exactly the same communication protocols that make the Internet work. TCP/IP and Ethernet and packets are the defacto world wide standard for networked data. Nearly universal, I suppose we can still count the analog landlines but their days are limited.