USC - the too low bar

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Peter Cochrane comes up trumps again. If you haven't read his latest post about the need for high bandwidth, make it the one thing you do today. This blog post can be read at http://5tth.blogspot.com

Whilst the majority of the post could be read as relating to business benefits, you can also substitute personal and individual benefits to every point. You could spend hours imagining what the world would be like with more bandwidth....here's a few f'r instances.

1. Outputs can be as simple as kids developing their own video series (probably not for mass consumption, but you never know!) during the school holidays when one is in Spain and the other in the UK. "I've got this video I made to start us off.I should be able to upload it over the next few hours whilst you go to the water park, get distracted and forget the original idea entirely...."

2. Whether this is travel to a family event, a hospital appointment from your armchair, or a simple video conference showing your daughter how to make Yorkshire puddings now she has left home...."No, not like that!"

3. Team working happens in every family and community, and between communities - look at how successful town twinning has been in developing relationships, both personal and commercial. The limitations are always the geography and communication tools e.g. the need to visit somewhere and see for yourself what they might mean when describing a particular opportunity.

4. "What do you mean you couldn't find the answers for your homework?" "I've uploaded all the Parish videos, photos and cine film for the last 40 years this morning." "Your X-Rays are in your inbox - now, if you look here you can see..."

5. Thin clients instead of complex computers that people can't use, software expenses dramatically reduced, walled gardens for non-competent user protection, etc. Tornado/flood approaching? Pick up your laptop, move to somewhere safer and all is still there in the cloud. Green data centres for localised content storage not requiring expensive Internet transit.

6. As Peter says, we can't even begin to guess what this will bring, and it will all become as second nature to us in the next few years - virtual naturality.

7. Communities will have access to data to mash up for their locality to better understand what impact certain decisions will have, based on modelling, best practice and lessons leaned elsewhere.

8. Rapid prototyping and manufacture - "I've made this out of plasticine, 2 margarine tubs and a stick of rock, but I need the gearing out of metal and then it will make rope for my Action Man's climbing expedition." "The village clock needs mending, but the quote was so expensive, we'd never afford it. But John designed the required part in the pub last night with Jimmy and it should be ready tomorrow."

9. Add in all the user, rather than just the Hollywood/Murdoch created content, and this becomes oh so exciting. Citizentube Live, oh wow!

10. See previous post about FiWi!

What Peter has done has taken everyone beyond 'broadband' into the world of what is easily achieveable when you remove the scarcity model. All the USC is doing is attempting to restrict us entrance into that world for much longer.