Bob Frankston's Writings
Bob Frankston's essays and whatever else
Latest posts
The Importance of Being Nothing
The war on "Null" is part of a larger challenge in understanding abstractions. This essay is also an experiment in that it is the result of a long conversation with Gemini, and then I had it do a summary.
The Age of Telecom and Beyond
The age of telephony began in 1876 with the invention of the telephone by acoustics professor, Alexander Graham Bell. For 100 years it we had the "dumb" endpoints that relied on a provider to ensure the sound waves were kept intact. Today, we are in a very different world, and we must honor Bell by embracing a new world in which intelligence is in our devices and the concept of relying on a…
ESP32 vs ARP
Note this was written by Claude as we worked together to figure out why ping was failing. In the process, we (OK, Claude) wrote @bobfrankston/neoping which goes to the low-level APIs and allows parallel pinging. It addresses a problem with supporting the devices that connect the abstract world with the physical world.
AI: The Wonderful and The Frightening
This is a work-in-progress. AI isn't just in incremental improvement in coding. It fundamentally changes the focus of programming from coding to explaining. It doesn't so much eliminate the need for programmers as it elides functionality. The implications go far deeper than geocentrism to heliocentrism because the tokens have no inherent meaning -- something that has deep phiosophical…
Polemics and Policy
I often found myself confronted by long, seemingly well-thought-out essays, but they often turn out to be polemics with more heat than light.
The Necessity of Diversity
One of the big political issues is the fight against diversity because change is threatening. But without diversity, society becomes stagnant and fades into the past. Diversity is a fundamental mechanism of systems that evolve and improve.
My Dumb House … and City
At Home 2024
I started out 30 years ago with a home control framing. Today, I've moved far beyond and see the real value is in understanding a world in which all devices have IP connectivity. How do we think about the software and applications and let the networking fade into the background?
The Opportunity of Ambient Connectivity™
We are increasingly using software concepts to redefine our world. Rather than using a point-to-point microwave to give a fire engine priority, we use software to define the relationship over any path. This is a software principle that factors out the relationships from the hardware. The Internet itself is a byproduct of such thinking. If we are to achieve the full benefit, we need an articulate…
From Access to Connectivity
When I was at Microsoft in the 1990s, I repurposed broadband to enable always-on connectivity for home networks. Unfortunately, many people missed the point that I repurposed broadband as a means rather than an end in itself. Today, policies focusing on broadband miss the point and limit our ability to take advantage of connectivity. Broadband has become the anti-Internet . We need to understand…
FB: Tesla
Wi-Not – Making Wi-Fi work
FB Discussion on 5G vs The Internet
Escaping the past and embracing the connectivity
This is an attempt at using AI to generate a video. It's a bit over the top but does it work at all? In particular, does the dragon imagery work?
Systems not (just) Networks
We tend to think about networks and the "pipes" between endpoints. We should be thinking about systems as wholes rather than just parts. Networking is just one engineering detail that must be factored out in our designs.
Empowering Cities
An Empowering City is an evolution of the Smart city which empower all the residents rather than just being used to city services. It is a resource for innovation. This is the video of a talk I gave for the IEEE in November 2023.
Home Connectivity and Control
An update on my home control systems as of the end of 2023
Forever URLs
A Forever URL is one that never expires. Such URLs can be implemented using today's DNS as-is with new tooling to assist developers in developing websites. They also support devices and can support email addresses that aren't tied to a provider. They are a resource for the Internet as infrastructure.
Devices as Webhosts
I rewrote my website to take advantage of newer technologies and made it act more like an app. The lessons go beyond what I did for my site. A site is simply a service used by an app. The app is note a web page. It is a program that runs locally and uses remote resources (formerly known as a web server).
Chatting up a Program
LLMs like ChatGPT have changed my approach to programming. They can't be trusted to simply translate intent into a working program, but they can take care of much of the detailed work. More important, then can scour examples and the literature to find examples I haven't through of or would otherwise take too much work to ferret out.
VisiCalc Programming and History
Dan Bricklin and I talked to BLU.ORG about VisiCalc programming and history
Floppy Days Interview
Talking about the old days of VisiCalc as well as a bit about the future. Floppy Days is "A podcast about home computers of the late 70's through the 80's. NEW SPONSORSHIPS! 8-Bit Classics is a great place to get video cables, power supplies and more for a wide variety of vintage computer platforms. Arcade Shopper has a wide variety of hard-to-find items for a large number of platforms."
Internet Concepts
Everything seems to center around the Internet these days, but it's hard to have a meaningful conversation when we have no shared understanding. It's even more difficult when the conversation is framed in the givens of the past, and the Internet is just seen as another phone company or social network or ... ??? This article is a work-in-progress, so I want feedback and questions. It is incomplete…
Connectivity Begins at Home
This is my talk to BLU (Boston Linux and Unix) group. It's as much a conversation as a talk. While traditional home control is framed in an automation meme (Jetsons), I see it as more about managing relationships among peer devices.
Bits of “Intelligence”
The AI engines tap into some powerful mechanisms, as does the Internet - -the idea that meaning comes from context and patterns and is not intrinsic -- a concept that is at odds with most people's reality. It is more revolutionary than Copernicus, who shifted a reference frame.
The Problem Of 5G Hype
We're in yet another cycle of 5G hype so I need to explain the problem with 5G without getting into all the technical details.
The Posters Dilemma
This is my experiment with posts intended for discussions with copies on other sites.
GPT Ignores Major Risks of AI
In response to a post on LinkedIn, I asked GPT about the risks of AI, and it's very telling that it omitted key risks of BS (blithely providing misinformation with authority) and its use for impersonation. the threats to provide by interpolation that we can't control. etc.
Forever URLs
A Forever URL is one that never expires. Such URLs can be implemented using today's DNS as-is with new tooling to assist developers in developing websites. They also support devices and can support email addresses that aren't tied to a provider. They are a resource for the Internet as infrastructure.
Trust and Insecurity
We need to be wary about perimeter security and firewalls. While they seem to provide protection, they a vulnerable to the slightest breach. More problematic is that they prevent unanticipated innovation and make it difficult to try out new ideas. You can’t know all the second-guessers in the path.
Distributed Cooperation
I use my home as a living laboratory for connected systems. One of the goals is to avoid single points of failure by having direct relationship between endpoints.
The Public Packet Infrastructure
The Internet isn't just a way to access the web, it is fundamental infrastructure -- the Public Packet Infrastructure. The infrastructure has seemingly unlimited capacity because we can innovate and take advantage of opportunities instead of negotiating for passage. We need to bring public policy and public perception into alignment with this new realty. This is also available on CircleID
The Impact of Open Connectivity
The Internet hints at the much larger possibilities of open connectivity in enabling discoveries such as the web but for the physical world. The ideas themselves go to a deeper level of thinking about how we build systems and how we can enable the future.
The Internet as a Public Good
Why do we work so hard to promulgate the idea that being held incommunicado is the norm and we have to pay to communicate? The ability to communicate and connect is a right not a privilege.
Realizing the Long-Term Value of Connectivity
Open community infrastructure can provide enormous societal value by enabling services that we haven't dreamed of. Tesla has shown how a car you by can get features undreamed of at the time of purchase thanks to software updates. Open infrastructures enables innovation and discovery. Written for Broadband Communities Magazine (BBC)
Voice over IP–An inflection Point
Voice over IP (VoIP) represents a sharp break from the traditional telephony. Unlike traditional telephony (digital or otherwise), VoIP doesn't depend on a provider's reserved path. Understanding how VoIP works is key to liberating ourselves from depending on providers'. Without that dependency we are free to innovate and take advantage of a Public Packet Infrastructure own by the local community.
Empowering People … and Their Things
There is no separate "Internet of Things". There is the big idea of best-efforts connectivity which allows us to create the opportunity for innovation in how we build systems of things and services.
The Public Packet Infrastructure
The Internet isn't just a way to access the web, it is fundamental infrastructure -- the Public Packet Infrastructure. The infrastructure has seemingly unlimited capacity because we can innovate and take advantage of opportunities instead of negotiating for passage. We need to bring public policy and public perception into alignment with this new realty. This is also available as my IEEE Column
Living the Beta Life
It feels like all the devices and software I use are in beta, waiting for me to find bugs. I'd have it no other way -- I don't need to predict the future if I can live it. Alas, products are still in beta even if they are official shipping because I go beyond the typical use case and don't handwave away failures that I know are not necessary.
The Age of Software: An Introduction
The combination of digital representation and software has transformed the world and our understanding of the world. The Internet as just one byproduct of this fundamental conceptual shift from meaning being intrinsic to meaning being defined by software with multiple interpretations co-existing.
Connectivity Starts at Home
Today's Internet is just one application of the powerful idea of best-efforts connectivity. The home router (NAT) decouples the connectivity within the home from the larger internet, enabling innovation that leverages the Internet without being limited by it.
My Turn: Broadband opportunities — internet as infrastructure
This is my letter to the editor in the Greenfield recorder explaining why towns can implement their own infrastructure. It is in response to a claim by cable PR saying that only a cable TV company can provide infrastructure.
My Turn: Broadband opportunities — internet as infrastructure
Letter to the Editor of the Greenfield-Recording responding to claims that only Comcast (or other providers) to provide broadband.
Consumer Technology vs. 5G
5G is often heralded as the future of communications technology. It's actually the antithesis. It is the anti-Internet clawing intelligence back into the network and limiting innovation. With 5G consumers would once again be limited to a choice of offerings and a new generation would rediscover the busy signal. Also available on CircleID .
TV is Over – Long Live Content
We are now in the age of "content" with Television (and movies) now available for view online just like books rather than being experiences you had to tune into on a broadcaster's schedule. We haven't cut the cord, we just forgot about it and moved on.
The JavaScript Ecosystem
JavaScript started out as a simple extension for the browser but has become so much more. In part this is true on building on rich concepts going back to Lisp. Along the way it has challenged the givens of programming and given us a high-performance flexible language along with rich libraries and rich tools. We're just beginning to discover the possibilities. (Also on CirlceID )
A piece of living history explains 5G without hype
A conversion about the hype surrounding #5G. Also on Facebook
Broadband Breakfast Live Online on July 22, 2020 — Champions of Broadband: Bob Frankston
My conversation with Drew Clark about the Internet as infrastructure.
Age of Software and the Public Packet Infrastructure
This is a recording of the talk I gave online to the World Talent Economy Forum.