We’re on the verge of being virtually connected to every person in the whole world who has a $200 laptop or a $50 smartphone or better.
Private companies Google and Facebook are funneling capital into satellite networks to bring the Internet to millions now utterly without it. Reporters call their competition a “space race.” Google will spend between one and three billion dollars on 180 small low-earth-orbit satellites. Facebook’s game plan entails higher, geosynchronous orbits.
Google estimates that “two thirds of the world have no [Internet] access at all. It’s why we’re so focused on new technologies … that [can] bring hundreds of millions more people online.…”
Instapundit’s Glenn Reynolds thinks that Google’s satellites will also make governmental spying and censorship harder, a suggestion readers hotly dispute. In any case, major cyber-companies have been paying much more attention to plugging security holes in their systems in the wake of the Snowden revelations.
What’s indisputable is that dramatically more widespread Internet access will enable a great many people who currently lack that access to enjoy radical new means of knowledge and trade.
The Internet abets everything from communication to scholarship to publishing to broadcasting to stock trading to finding new customers and even new loves. This cyber wealth will be enriched by the contributions of the new surfers of the web. We can also expect the satellite technology backed by Google and Facebook to give us both higher Internet speeds and lower Internet costs.
Globalization is good.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
9 replies on “The New Space Race”
OT: Why should they be allowed to stay in business?
ZURICH/LONDON June 12 (Reuters) — UBS shares fell on Thursday following a research report which said the Swiss bank could have to pay $8 billion in fines and settlements relating to alleged collusion and price-manipulation in the global currency market.
The report, published on Wednesday by independent research firm Autonomous Research, said foreign exchange settlements could cost banks a total of $35 billion, almost six times more than the total fines paid in the Libor interest rate-rigging scandal.
Shares in UBS, which declined to comment on the figure in the report, were down 1.9 percent at 1200 GMT, a move traders in Zurich attributed to the Autonomous report.
The report estimates that UBS will pay $8 billion, the biggest fine for any single bank and more than the $6 billion total all banks have so far shelled out for Libor.
Next are the world’s two largest foreign exchange trading banks: Deutsche Bank AG with an expected $4.4 billion fine, and Citigroup with $4.3 billion.….….…
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/ubs-falls-8-billion-estimate-122701028.html
The government is basically a “partner in crime” by continuing to merely fine them rather than putting them out of business. This has been going on for YEARS now.
The elimination of the national borders and government control of information and commerce within them I like even better.
Go Google, go Facebook — make the political entity irrelevant!
The real new race to space is encapsulated in this book I published: http://www.amazon.com/StarTram-Race-Space-James-Powell/dp/1493577573/?tag=thecofcoa-20. The question is whether its authors are going to try to wait for the government to give them the okay… or basically defy the state and do it anyway. It’s revolutionary technology and the Old World won’t stand for it. Also, to expect the corporatocracy to ANYTHING useful is, in the immortal words of the great French philosopher, like ‘pissing up a rope.’ 🙂
Commenter Rick is spamming this thread with his “let’s kill all businesses” rhetoric. Take the communism and nihilism elsewhere.
All this means is more porn.
David, perhaps Paul can set up an ignore feature just for you. Or maybe you enjoy getting ripped of by the lobbyist class?
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/justice-department-wants-10-bln-from-citi-mortgage-probe-report-2014 – 06-13?siteid=yhoof2
and btw david, i’ve spent my whole career in private business and owned two of my own businesses along the way. what we have has ceased to be a free market land of opportunity. we have turned, in case you haven’t noticed, into oligarchy.
You left off something else that the internet abets: crime. People on the other side of the world can rob you in a moment. Who needs a gun? All they need is your IP address.
Globalization is good?
Only if you think a race to the bottom is good. We aren’t raising standards around the world. We are leveling them out. That means the US and other developed countries must fall so that others can rise. I have no doubt our president thinks that’s just fine.