Tras meses de incertidumbre, la solución de la ecuación parece ahora más sencilla. Por un lado, están las industrias culturales (cine, televisión, radio, música, videojuegos…), acuciadas por la crisis. Por el otro, una tecnología como la telefonía móvil y el resto de dispositivos portátiles (iPhone, Blackberry y demás), con unas unas tasas de crecimiento prodigiosas en términos de usuarios y rentabilidad económica.

Entonces, ¿podrían estos aparatos, que han entrado a formar parte de la vida del ciudadano común con una facilidad enorme y una rapidez inusitada, aliviar la ansiedad de los empresarios del entretenimiento y la comunicación?

Pues a tenor de lo que se presentará en la edición del 2010 del Mobile World Congress, la principal feria del mundo en el sector, que se celebrará en Barcelona entre el 15 y el 18 de febrero, sí. Y eso que el momento actual se corresponde todavía con la fase inicial de desarrollo.

Según el Observatorio de las Telecomunicaciones y la Sociedad de la Información, los servicios telefónicos con mayor implantación en España siguen siendo las llamadas de voz y los mensajes de texto. No obstante, está aumentando a muy buen ritmo el consumo de aplicaciones relacionadas con el ocio y la información: juegos, ficción, noticias…

Así, pese a la recesión global, el optimismo (moderado) de los productores y distribuidores de contenidos se explica por los elevados índices de penetración de estos terminales – en nuestro país, hay más que habitantes-y por las potencialidades de una tecnología que cada vez incorpora mejores prestaciones de conexión, imagen, sonido…

Quienes comercian con ese material saben que la recepción de sus obras es predominantemente individual y que el tiempo que se les dedica es más bien escaso; por ello, han creado mecanismos para vender contenidos de duración breve y que no requieren una atención sostenida.

La oferta que se verá en la cita de Barcelona revela que el secreto para conseguir beneficios satisfaciendo esa demanda (sobre todo, de jóvenes) consiste en recurrir a sinergias con otras producciones: películas, series o programas de gran audiencia; conciertos y eventos masivos; grupos e intérpretes de moda; videoclips y singles de éxito…

Es frecuente que el catálogo se refresque siguiendo el efecto mediático de valores culturales tan heterogéneos como Harry Potter,Prison Break,Operación Triunfo,el Sónar, Beyoncé o el This is it de Michael Jackson.

Además, proliferan las producciones específicamente pensadas para los móviles, incluyendo los contenidos promocionales, y no sólo en Estados Unidos o Japón, las potencias punteras. El teléfono es la plataforma ideal para los publicitarios, ya que les permite dirigirse a un cliente del que conocen gustos y necesidades concretas y que, en general, vive pendiente de su aparato.

Sin embargo, el encuentro organizado en la capital catalana por la GSM Association demostrará que las series originales se han constituido en uno de los formatos con más predicamento. Son innovaciones deudoras de las técnicas televisivas y cibernéticas, que descansan sobre argumentos con gancho y una estructura narrativa cerrada, con personajes que buscan la complicidad de los destinatarios en unos tres minutos.

Las alianzas entre muchos fabricantes (Samsung, Nokia y demás), bastantes operadoras (Movistar, Vodafone y otras) y algunos proveedores audiovisuales (MTV, Fox y otros) deben interpretarse como el hecho de que los premios Emmy instaurasen en el 2006 una categoría para “programas no convencionales” en la red y los móviles: a la industria le interesa ese mercado. O sea, el ocio es negocio en el celular.

El material generado y difundido por el público está cobrando igualmente importancia. Cuando un instrumento minúsculo que cabe en la palma de la mano se convierte en un ordenador con internet, un televisor, un reproductor de música, una cámara completa, un GPS…, se amplían aún más las variadas posibilidades de las redes sociales: Facebook, MySpace, Twitter…

Del entorno de la Web 2.0 se pasa a la filosofía del Mobile 2.0. El congreso de los próximos días confirmará que las compañías se han abierto a una nueva audiencia.

Siete de los diez sitios más visitados por los cibernautas españoles son de ese tipo, y los dispositivos móviles han dejado de ser únicamente una herramienta a través de la que se accede a ellos para devenir un medio con que abastecerlos.

De ahí la esperanza (relativa) del sector frente a las incógnitas, los problemas y las crisis: los usuarios no tienen por qué ser receptores pasivos o amenazas latentes, se les puede ver también como aliados activos y colaboradores.

I like exclamation marks!!! Not to that extent, but I do. I use them sparingly, to liven up dialogue, signify volume and incredulity, and inject punch. But this, according to certain other writers, is a gross literary misjudgment on a par with ending a sentence with a comma,

“The exclamation mark is the last refuge of the scoundrel!” a writer friend railed (he’ll be railing even more now I’ve defiled the end of his pronouncement). “It’s the literary equivalent of an umbrella – pointy, almost always useless, and gets in the way.”

Another journalist dubbed the mark “pointless”, insisting that “all writing should convey its message without needless embellishment”, while an editor spurned my upturned “i”s with a firm “we don’t use screamers”. I looked the word up, to discover that an exclamation mark can also be termed a gasper, startler and bang (explaining why the punctuation mark “?!” is called an interrobang).

All writers, avid readers and logophiles have at one point sighed in incredulous frustration at some scrawled misdemeanour, from misspelt signs to graffiti ardently declaring “JACK LOVE’S RACHEL”. But those who insist that exclamation marks should overtake semicolons in the least-used punctuation league are misdirecting their wrath: there are far greater textual atrocities being keyed into a mobile phone right now.

The most deviant are abbreviations such as ITLTTUMOW (“I’m too lazy to think up my own words”). OMG, IMHO and the ubiquitous ROFLMAO now litter the world’s inboxes, baffling anyone with the sense not to learn what they mean, and giving false hope to singles everywhere who think LOL stands for “lots of love”. And, like a computer virus, they’re proliferating: in the apocalyptic future, people will be able to write whole emails using these things, communicating like two fax machines and rendering words obsolete.

Nearly as heinous are emoticons, where valid symbols are robbed of their purpose and contorted into “faces”, even by people over 12. “But I need to use smileys so people know when I’m joking,” enthusiasts protest, unwittingly making yet another case for the exclamation mark. If you’re ever tempted to clarify yourself with brackets and colons, just remember: anyone who needs their email illustrated with pictures probably isn’t deserving of your prose.

Then there are the numbers and letters held hostage and trapped in sentences like “C U L8R M8″. To reply with “you’re not my mate any more” would only generate the question “Y?” What started as a way to save time and money at the expense of literacy is now poised to enter the lexicon, as people email one another with “R U ON 4 2NITE?”

“It doesn’t matter how I spell it,” careless emailers shrug nonchalantly, “as long as you know what I mean.”

To which I want to yell: “Yes it does, because you’re using acronyms, single letters, numbers and symbols as substitutes for words, you illiterate degenerate! You are helping to wreak havoc on the English language with every keystroke!”

In contrast, the single exclamation mark is both innocuous and useful. Shakespeare used it to express emotion and heighten drama; if he were alive today, his publisher would probably say, “Will, I’m not sure about these exclamation marks” before pressing “delete all”.

Yes, the gratuitous use of exclamation marks is unnecessary and wrong. Worse, bursts of them often complete sentences full of smileys, acronyms and words with the vowels omitted, tainting the innocent single exclamation mark by association. But if writers stop using it by way of protest, we’ll eventually lose one of the most colourful and lively additions to our language.

Instead, perpetrators of proper crimes against linguistics should be tried, convicted and locked inside a dusty moth-ridden library with a set of dictionaries until they start coming out with proper sentences again. After rehabilitation, an alarm should go off when they touch caps lock, while a colon and bracket pressed in quick succession should delete all the text they’d previously written.

If this action isn’t enforced, in 10 years’ time every email will look like this:

hi arrianne!!!!

i 4got my jckt at ur flat. if u c it dont thrw it away LOL!!!! )))))

thx xxxxx

If I explode with dismay while reading one on the train, and my intestines fly like bloody sausages into the faces of hapless commuters, it’ll be everyone’s fault.

Still, at least I’ll go out with a bang(!)

Afghanistan has been back in the news of late. Recent losses of civilian and military lives and the Taliban’s increasing use of purely terrorist tactics such as kidnappings and bombings have had a negative impact on public perceptions of the country’s progress. But these developments should not overshadow the good news: The government is present in more areas than ever before, health care and education are being delivered to more people, the United Nations last month reported a sharp decline in opium production, and Afghanistan won its first Olympic medal at the Beijing Games. To understand the importance of such achievements, consider how far Afghanistan has come in a short time.

Less than seven years ago, the Taliban ruled Afghanistan with a murderous fist, depriving Afghans of their most basic rights. A key component of the Taliban’s suppression was preventing people from communicating with one another; the country had virtually no telephones and no access to the Internet. To call relatives and friends who lived abroad, Afghans literally had to leave their own country.

Today, Afghanistan bears little resemblance to the nation it was long forced to be. Working together after the Taliban was removed from power, the U.S. and Afghan governments recognized the importance of dramatically increasing access to communications networks and establishing access to the Web. Experts from around the world helped Afghanistan establish a modern ministry of communications, capable of quickly licensing private mobile phone providers, effectively regulating a competitive communications environment and encouraging direct foreign investment into the extremely challenging post-conflict economy.

The United States sent technical advisers to Kabul to assist the new ministry in prioritizing telecommunications needs. These advisers helped the ministry replace state ownership of the old monopoly phone company through policies promoting private-sector competition. They worked with ministry staff on spectrum management and implementing pricing policies to reduce the costs of equipment and Internet access. Importantly, they worked to finalize Afghanistan’s draft telecommunications law and the process for public review.

U.S. industry also contributed, providing world-class training through the Washington-based United States Telecommunications Training Institute and the establishment of educational facilities such as the many Cisco academies located across Afghanistan — some of which are designed specifically to train female engineers.

The results of these joint efforts are remarkable: In 2001, Afghanistan had one of the lowest telephone penetration rates in the world. There were no mobile phones and fewer than 40,000 fixed-line telephones in a country of about 26 million. Today, Afghanistan has almost 6 million telephone subscribers, more than 5.4 million of whom use mobile phones, as well as five national and three highly competitive regional carriers. The amount of private, foreign direct investment in the country associated with telecommunications has exceeded $1 billion. The government’s 2009 revenue from the communications sector alone is expected to top $100 million.

By encouraging private-sector investment and promoting a competitive environment, the benefits of modern communications are being realized across all economic and social classes. In 2002, mobile phones cost $400, and airtime averaged about $2 a minute. Today, mobile phones cost less than $50, and minutes are less than 10 cents. Prices continue to drop. More than 70 percent of Afghanistan’s people — including Afghans in some of the world’s most remote places — now have mobile phone coverage.

Similarly, access to the Web has become commonplace throughout much of the country. Afghanistan has more than 500,000 Internet users and at least 18 Internet service providers. With U.S. government support, an Afghan government project to construct a national fiber-optic network ring as new national highways are built has led to more than 1,000 kilometers of network facilities. This will help broaden telephone and high-speed Internet access, at low cost, and better connect Afghanistan to other countries in Central and South Asia.

Consider, too, the economic impact of these developments: The telecommunications and Internet sectors have created more than 60,000 jobs. They are also contributing to the ability of day laborers, farmers and small-business people to build their businesses.

Improved access to communications and the decreased cost of using these transformative technologies have allowed the Afghan people to explore new ideas and information that counter the monopoly of misinformation and lies used for centuries to oppress women and others. These tools help deliver essential government services, including education and health care, more efficiently and less expensively throughout the country.

Many tough decisions lie ahead as durable institutions are built to enable the continued deployment of technologies that create new jobs and spur economic, social and political growth. The initiative and ingenuity of the Afghan people and the leadership of their government will be essential in building the foundation for continued success.

Americans today spend almost as much on bandwidth — the capacity to move information — as we do on energy. A family of four likely spends several hundred dollars a month on cellphones, cable television and Internet connections, which is about what we spend on gas and heating oil.

Just as the industrial revolution depended on oil and other energy sources, the information revolution is fueled by bandwidth. If we aren’t careful, we’re going to repeat the history of the oil industry by creating a bandwidth cartel.

Like energy, bandwidth is an essential economic input. You can’t run an engine without gas, or a cellphone without bandwidth. Both are also resources controlled by a tight group of producers, whether oil companies and Middle Eastern nations or communications companies like AT&T, Comcast and Vodafone. That’s why, as with energy, we need to develop alternative sources of bandwidth.

Wired connections to the home — cable and telephone lines — are the major way that Americans move information. In the United States and in most of the world, a monopoly or duopoly controls the pipes that supply homes with information. These companies, primarily phone and cable companies, have a natural interest in controlling supply to maintain price levels and extract maximum profit from their investments — similar to how OPEC sets production quotas to guarantee high prices.

But just as with oil, there are alternatives. Amsterdam and some cities in Utah have deployed their own fiber to carry bandwidth as a public utility. A future possibility is to buy your own fiber, the way you might buy a solar panel for your home.

Encouraging competition is another path, though not an easy one: most of the much-hyped competitors from earlier this decade, like businesses that would provide broadband Internet over power lines, are dead or moribund. But alternatives are important. Relying on monopoly producers for the transmission of information is a dangerous path.

After physical wires, the other major way to move information is through the airwaves, a natural resource with enormous potential. But that potential is untapped because of a false scarcity created by bad government policy.

Our current approach is a command and control system dating from the 1920s. The federal government dictates exactly what licensees of the airwaves may do with their part of the spectrum. These Soviet-style rules create waste that is worthy of Brezhnev.

Many “owners” of spectrum either hardly use the stuff or use it in highly inefficient ways. At any given moment, more than 90 percent of the nation’s airwaves are empty.

The solution is to relax the overregulation of the airwaves and allow use of the wasted spaces. Anyone, so long as he or she complies with a few basic rules to avoid interference, could try to build a better Wi-Fi and become a broadband billionaire. These wireless entrepreneurs could one day liberate us from wires, cables and rising prices.

Such technologies would not work perfectly right away, but over time clever entrepreneurs would find a way, if we gave them the chance. The Federal Communications Commission promised this kind of reform nearly a decade ago, but it continues to drag its heels.

In an information economy, the supply and price of bandwidth matters, in the way that oil prices matter: not just for gas stations, but for the whole economy.

And that’s why there is a pressing need to explore all alternative supplies of bandwidth before it is too late. Americans are as addicted to bandwidth as they are to oil. The first step is facing the problem.

En la historia iconográfica encontramos imágenes simbólicas de los dedos de la mano que se han sucedido hasta quedar semánticamente fijadas. El índice, por ejemplo, se ha representado casi siempre como un dedo que “habla” (indica) de nosotros y a los otros; de ahí que sea el más apropiado tanto para desatar la controversia, pues se usa al acusar, reprender, negar o imponer silencio, como para entablar el diálogo pacífico: es el dedo que levantan los alumnos entusiastas para responder a una pregunta y el dedo con que sugerimos que alguien se acerque. Es un dedo indudablemente culto (representa el gesto de pensar, el de hojear libros) y comunicativo (con él escribimos palabras en el aire o dibujamos).

Sin embargo, cuando hace dos millones de años la especie Homo descubrió las posibilidades tecnológicas de la capacidad prensil del pulgar, no podía sospecharse que mucho tiempo después este dedo “pinza” sería la estrella de la nueva sociedad de la Red.

Sin duda, en este caso ha sido la función la que ha potenciado el órgano: a partir de aquel primer pulgar prensil, o aquel arbitrario que decidía la vida o la muerte de los gladiadores, hemos descubierto un democrático pulgar tecnológico que comunica, saluda, llama la atención, corteja, seduce, amenaza o decide, pues un movimiento de miles de pulgares sobre el teclado de un teléfono móvil define la suerte de un programa de televisión y, no ha de tardar mucho, los candidatos que nos gobiernen. Entramos en la era de la “generación del pulgar”, como gustan de llamarse los jóvenes tecnológicos menores de 25 años expertos en tecnologías que caben en la palma de la mano.

De entre todos los artilugios tecnológicos modernos sujetos al imperio del pulgar es quizá el teléfono móvil el que ha modificado más radicalmente los modelos de relación social y de comunicación. Vivimos en la llamada sociedad de la información y, sin embargo, esa misma información se ha convertido en un objeto de valor que hay que consumir compulsivamente porque tiene fecha de caducidad. Estar informado significa ahora estar conectado en todo momento, abierto y localizable para todos. No de otra forma han de interpretarse los “toques” con que los adolescentes manifiestan su presencia constante, pero muda. En otras palabras, la función narrativa de sus orígenes (que parece haber quedado relegada al teléfono “fijo”) ha adquirido la fuerza de un imperativo: “hay que estar ahí”.

Por otra parte, el teléfono móvil se ha convertido en una prolongación imprescindible de nuestra imagen social al tiempo que funciona como signo distintivo frente a los demás (“personalizamos” la pantalla, las melodías y hasta la voz del buzón). Curiosamente, aquellos primeros teléfonos celulares que se veían como un signo de ostentación se han convertido en el principal, si no el único, medio de expresión de la juventud. Así pues, el 99% de los jóvenes tiene móvil aunque, ciertamente, cabría mejor decir que dispone de una “navaja suiza tecnológica”, pues sus funciones comunicativas son casi irrelevantes frente a su uso como reproductor de música, máquina de fotos o portal de videojuegos. El hecho de que en términos de mercado los jóvenes sean considerados heavy users (usuarios compulsivos) ha disparado la alarma social hasta el punto de que se tratan ya patologías del adicto tecnológico, figura que coincide con el adolescente “enganchado” a la Red y al móvil.

Conviene recordar, sin embargo, que en un principio, en la década de los noventa, los mensajes SMS (Short Messages Service) no formaban parte de la planificación tecnológica de los móviles, pues habían sido diseñados para cumplir una función similar a la del teléfono, pero con las ventajas de Internet. El inesperado éxito que tuvo la opción “mensajes” sorprendió a todas las operadoras, que se vieron obligadas a modificar sus servicios sin sospechar la revolución lingüística que se iba a desatar en los límites de las pantallas.

Desde luego, hoy más que nunca el medio es el mensaje. Es cierto que el teclado condiciona la cantidad de información que puede escribirse y el tamaño de la pantalla la cantidad de información que puede leerse. Esta limitación técnica explicaría que los usuarios condensen sus mensajes porque disponen de poco espacio y, además, el exceso informativo cuesta dinero, como en los antiguos telegramas. Pero las limitaciones tipográficas sólo explican una mínima parte de la configuración de los SMS, pues no suelen utilizarse más de 70 caracteres de los 160 permitidos.

La razón es mucho más profunda y deriva del nuevo concepto de “comunicación” basado en la inmediatez y en la constante disponibilidad que ha impuesto la era de la imagen: desde luego, es menos costoso “ver” el mundo como sucesión de imágenes que “interpretarlo” verbalmente. En consecuencia, los mensajes son fugaces porque la información caduca y debe ser tan condensada como rápida y eficaz.

Por eso, y a pesar de su condición escrita, los SMS nunca serán depósitos de la memoria, pues su función se limita a responder a la urgencia impuesta, a la intrascendencia de un lenguaje inmediato “aquí y ahora” entre iguales que juegan a subvertir códigos sin la conciencia de que sus divertimentos, alharacas revolucionarias, son parte de la esencia misma del lenguaje. Desde luego, es más rápido escribir sin vocales cuando se tiene la certeza de que podrán ser adivinadas y recuperadas por el sonido de la consonante, sólo que esta moderna economía ya la practicaron los primeros alfabetos fenicios hace 3.000 años; de la misma forma, la reutilización de algunos números o signos matemáticos que pueden ser leídos por su valor o por su sonido (sl2 >saludos; d+ >demás) ya se encuentra en el principio jeroglífico de los primeros silabarios del siglo XV a.C. Y las abreviaturas (tk >te quiero) y amalgamas léxicas (APS >amigas para siempre) son tan antiguas como la escritura misma.

Ahora bien, estas tendencias fonético-ortográficas no han de convertirse en norma en ningún caso, pese a la proliferación de diccionarios SMS en la Red, porque este proceso unificador significaría que el lenguaje SMS ha alcanzado la categoría de código convencional. Pero tampoco ha de permitirse que salga fuera del medio para el que fue pensado porque en ningún caso la eficacia compensaría la pérdida de contenido o resolvería las ambigüedades. Por otra parte, está por ver hasta qué punto afectará a nuestra capacidad para procesar el mundo si el lenguaje se reduce tan drásticamente.

Aún así, es innegable que está surgiendo un cuarto medio de comunicación a medio camino entre lo oral, lo escrito y lo gestual. Y, aunque es muy improbable que este cuarto medio suplante a los ya existentes, parece fuera de discusión que se producirán cada vez con mayor frecuencia situaciones mixtas que modificarán, a su vez, los límites -ya de por sí inestables- entre los medios. Esta situación no debería desencadenar la crítica exacerbada, pues ya contamos con ejemplos similares de hibridación de códigos.

Es mucho más preocupante la actitud de quienes defienden que -aunque sea en la pantalla y burdamente- cada vez leemos y escribimos más. El hecho de que la inmediatez que gobierna la composición de estos mensajes se refleje en una escritura minimizada de contenido superficial es una cuestión que no debe justificar en absoluto su uso fuera de este medio ni por razones de expresividad. El pulgar es poco apto para novelas, diarios o canciones. En estos casos, más nos valgan 10 dedos y, acaso, no nos sobren letras sino que nos falten palabras.

Regular readers of this column will know that I am suspicious of cyberspace innovations — from Facebook to MySpace to Second Life– that substitute the accumulation of “friends” for actual friendship and exhibitionism for genuine intimacy. So the related phenomenon of “texting” (a word officially recognized by the Oxford English Dictionary as of June 15, 2006, but still unknown to my spell-checker) would seem to deserve the harsh glare of conservative moral scrutiny.

Texting, for those stubborn few who still use their cellphones for talking, is a form of immediate, shorthand communication that has broken out among the young with the speed and resilience of acne. More than 1 billion text messages are exchanged in America each day — and the parents of teenagers I know can be forgiven for imagining that this represents just their own cellphone bill.

The language of texting involves short, direct sentences; abbreviations such as “laff” for “laugh”; language puzzles such as “2l8″ for “too late”; and something called emoticons such as “:-(#)” for “wearing braces.” It’s a social language, designed for brief, private communication. “POS,” I’m told, means “parent over shoulder”; “gnblfy” is “got nothing but love for you.” More disturbing, “TDTM” translates as “talk dirty to me.”

As usual, this new form of language communicates the range of human experience. A poll of young Canadians found that 50 percent had flirted via text message and 25 percent approve of “text sex.” At the other extreme, a new service allows prayers to be texted to Israel, which are then printed out and inserted into the Western Wall. I suspect that both these experiences lose something in the technological translation.

But the main controversy has come when texting collides with English instruction. Some trendy educational institutions have attempted to accommodate the phenomenon. In late 2006, the Scottish Qualifications Authority decreed that texting abbreviations would be accepted in school examinations. Prince Charles has disapprovingly noted, “It [has] been suggested in some quarters that people be asked to discuss the use of texting and instant messaging and whether such developments require a significant change to the teaching of English” — demonstrating that his English might benefit from some brevity and directness.

Teachers I know are generally intolerant of the use of textisms, especially in exams and papers. They believe it undermines proper spelling and syntax. And as an opponent of most linguistic innovations since the King James Bible was first printed, I was initially inclined to agree.

But the (admittedly thin) research on this topic leads to different conclusions. A 2006 study by two professors at Coventry University in Britain found that 11-year-olds who used the most textisms were actually better at spelling and writing. A command of texting seems to indicate a broader facility for language. And these students seem to switch easily between text messaging and standard English.

Unfortunately for teachers, the research also suggests that many students who use texting in their schoolwork are disdainful of the alternative. They are intentionally showing disrespect — as in, “I don’t give a darn about your outdated rules of grammar and spelling, and you won’t even understand my protest.” Or incomprehensible abbreviations to that effect.

A teenager of my generation — growing up in the 1970s and ’80s — might have wasted hours each night on the telephone. Now teens waste hours throughout the day tapping out thousands of words on tiny keyboards (much as a columnist does). The Internet, and texting in particular, has led to the return of writing. Not the elegant letter writing of Sullivan Ballou during the Civil War — but writing nonetheless.

This form of communication has its drawbacks. The Internet, in all its forms, encourages the hasty expression of anger or amorousness — the kind of words that are quickly regretted but can never be withdrawn. And texting does not expose children to the graceful subtleties of literary prose — though it is hard to imagine that teenagers would be reading John Donne if they weren’t writing to their friends.

But the rules of language — a flexible, changing instrument of communication — should not be confused with the changeless rules of morality. Challenging the dogmas of grammar and spelling — if done consistently and broadly enough — creates new dogmas, which are challenged in turn.

Noah Webster, of dictionary fame, is said to have criticized “even well-bred people and scholars for surrendering their right of private judgment to literary governors.” With 1 billion texts a day, those governors have their hands full.

The Internet and the cellphone are on a collision course.

In the future, the cellphone and similar wireless devices, not the personal computer, will be the primary interface to the cloud of information services that we now call the Internet. The demand for Internet-style applications on the phone — e-mail, maps, photo and video sharing, social networking and even Internet telephony — is exploding.

Meanwhile, cracks are appearing in the control that cellular carriers have long held over their networks. Verizon announced last month that it will open its network to “any application and any device” by the end of next year.

But while Verizon’s pledge sounds promising, the language in which it is couched makes me wonder whether Verizon understands what a true open platform looks like. The announcement states that “the company will publish the technical standards the development community will need to design products to interface with the Verizon Wireless network,” and that “devices will be tested and approved in a $20 million state-of-the-art testing lab.” It’s not yet clear what standards developers will need to follow to write applications that work with both the device and the network, and who will control those standards.

This is not “open.” It’s just a little less closed. A true open platform like the Internet doesn’t have certification of trusted devices or applications. Developers get to do anything they want, with the marketplace as their only judge and jury.

Both the personal computer and the Internet flourished in an environment of free-market competition. Tim Berners-Lee did not have to submit his idea for the World Wide Web in 1991 to a “state-of-the-art testing lab.” All that he needed to unleash a revolution was a single other user willing to install his new Web server software. And the Web spread organically from there.

There’s a lesson here for Verizon and other cellphone companies. Like the open architecture of the personal computer, the open architecture of the Internet didn’t mean the end of competitive advantage. What we learn from the history of both is that open platforms engender “winner takes all” network effects. Once a company gets a first-mover advantage, the mass of users adopting the company’s application or platform makes that product more attractive to the next user.

The free-for-all that I.B.M. started in 1981 when it published the specifications for a personal computer that anyone could build ended up with Microsoft as the dominant software provider for the PC. The online free-for-all of the ’90s and early ’00s is leading us in the direction of dominance by a few huge companies that have learned the new rules of the Internet economy.

For the current generation of Internet applications, sometimes referred to as “Web 2.0,” the data collected from users is the true source of competitive advantage. And the first movers, the companies that understand and apply this insight, have services that get better fast enough that their competition never catches up.

The power of a social network like MySpace or Facebook isn’t in its software or its control over which applications get on its platform. It is in the critical mass of participating users. Ditto for eBay, Skype or YouTube. Even less obvious cases like Amazon, where user annotation makes for the best product catalog in the world, and Google, whose search index and ad auction are both driven by user participation, show the power that comes from harnessing the collective activity of everyone who uses the service.

Cellular carriers need to embrace this insight. Winner-take-all profits can be achieved by opening up their networks and then harnessing community contributions (including the contributions of software developers) to improve — or invent — new services. Google is trying this with its new Open Handset Alliance, which combines an open-source phone platform with an Internet-style application development model.

Imagine, for a moment, that Verizon were to think like Google or Amazon. It could give you access to your entire call history, every phone call you have sent or received, not just your last 10 phone calls. It might build an address book for you based on everyone you had ever talked to, with top results for the numbers you call most often.

And what if this phone company opened up its databases to developers of software applications? We could soon see mash-ups of your call history with the address books from your personal computer, your telephone and your social network. Now imagine a user community turned loose to annotate that data.

Consumers would flock to the best software, made by independent developers that a cellular network would enable by building a true Internet-style open platform. Goodbye to user-unfriendly service contracts as a way to keep customers captive. Who would switch carriers when so much knowledge about your social network resided on your phone company’s servers?

In short, the race is on for competitive advantage in the truly open cellular phone network of the future. Verizon hasn’t moved far enough — yet. If the cellular carriers don’t act, Google and its partners will beat them to the prize.

For almost two years, the country has debated whether the Bush administration acted properly and lawfully in undertaking emergency surveillance operations of suspected foreign terrorists on presidential authorization in the wake of 9/11. For several months, we have been debating bills that seek to modernize the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court statute.

There are many complex and difficult issues associated with these debates, but whether to terminate the huge lawsuits that have been filed against the nation’s major telecommunications carriers accused of cooperating with classified counterterrorism programs is not one of them. Whatever one feels about the underlying intelligence activities or the legal basis on which they were initially established, it would be unfair and contrary to the interests of the United States to allow litigation that tries to hold private telecommunications companies liable for them.

At the outset, it is critical to understand what the immunity provisions the administration and Congress have negotiated actually do. This is not “blanket immunity,” as it is sometimes caricatured by its opponents. The Senate bill would confer immunity in only two limited circumstances: if the carrier did not do what the plaintiffs claim; or if the carrier did do what the plaintiffs claim but based on explicit assurances from the highest levels of the government that the activities in question were authorized by the president and determined to be lawful.

Longstanding principles of law hold that an American corporation is entitled to rely on assurances of legality from officials responsible for government activities. The public officials in question might be right or wrong about the advisability or legality of what they are doing, but it is their responsibility, not the company’s, to deal with the consequences if they are wrong.

To deny immunity under these circumstances would be extraordinarily unfair to any cooperating carriers. By what principle of justice should anyone face potentially ruinous liability for cooperating with intelligence activities that are authorized by the president and whose legality has been reviewed and approved by our most senior legal officials?

As a practical matter, in circumstances involving classified intelligence activities, a corporation will typically not know enough about the underlying circumstances and operations to make informed judgments about legality. Moreover, for an initiative like the terrorist surveillance program — which the Office of Legal Counsel made clear was based on the Congressional authorization for the use of military force and the president’s war powers under the Constitution — a telephone company simply has no expertise in the relevant legal issues.

If the attorney general of the United States says that an intelligence-gathering operation has been determined to be lawful, a company should be able to rely on that determination. Indeed, contrary to the assertion of Senator Russell Feingold, Democrat of Wisconsin, no company can realistically be expected to contradict such judgments by the attorney general, as they will simply not have the facts at hand to do so.

Even more important than the inherent unfairness of requiring companies to second-guess executive-branch legal judgments are the acute dangers to which it would expose the country. One of our nation’s most important comparative advantages over our adversaries is the creativity and robustness of the private sector. To cut ourselves off from that advantage would amount to a form of unilateral disarmament.

Yet if we allow the litigation to continue, that is precisely what we will do. The message that will be sent to American companies is that they can be exposed to crippling lawsuits for helping the government with national security activities that they are explicitly assured are legal. The only rational response would be for companies to adopt an attitude of extreme wariness, even in the most urgent or clear-cut situations. To put the matter plainly, this puts American lives at risk.

The lawsuits also risk the disclosure of national security secrets that must be kept from public view if our intelligence agencies are to be able to protect us effectively. When critics of immunity are being honest, they will admit that the main reason they want the litigation to continue is the hope that it will force disclosure of information about the underlying programs — information they hope will advance their own political or ideological disputes with the administration. But that is a bad consequence, not a good one.

Although the lawsuits are couched in the language of accountability and the public’s right to know, they would really have the effect of showing the world and our enemies sensitive secrets about how our national security agencies do their work. For domestic purposes, proper accountability already exists — through the people’s elected representatives on the House and Senate Intelligence Committees. It is through the legislature, not lawsuits, that we as a nation have tried to balance the need to let our intelligence agencies operate in secret, as they must if they are to be effective, and the need to ensure that they do so lawfully.

Members of both political parties in both houses of Congress have already been briefed extensively about the activities underlying the current lawsuits. Obviously, not all 535 members of Congress can have equal access to such sensitive information; the risk that the information will be compromised is simply too high. But the intelligence committees are recognized authorities on these issues and proper repositories of these secrets.

The Senate Intelligence Committee has voted 13-2 to grant immunity to telecommunication carriers that have been sued for helping the country after 9/11. Unlike most everyone else, this committee had the necessary and relevant facts when it rendered judgment. Members of both parties came together in a rare consensus on the proposition that the lawsuits against the telecommunications carriers must stop.

Assuming that the country’s communications companies helped the National Security Agency track Qaeda operatives and other terrorists after being assured that their conduct was lawful, they acted as patriots, not privacy violators. The Senate Intelligence Committee acted wisely. The full Congress should follow its lead.

In the immediate aftermath of Sept. 11, the Bush administration had a choice: Aggressively pursue potential terrorists using existing laws or devise new, secret intelligence programs in uncharted legal waters.

Unfortunately, President Bush often chose the latter, and the legitimacy and effectiveness of our efforts to fight terrorism were dramatically undermined.

The president’s warrantless surveillance program and his decision to go it alone — without input from Congress or the courts — have had devastating consequences. One is that private companies, which would normally comply with legitimate national security requests, now have incentive to say no.

Here’s why. Within weeks of the 2001 attacks, communications companies received written requests and directives for assistance with intelligence activities authorized by the president. These companies were assured that their cooperation was not only legal but also necessary because of their unique technical capabilities. They were also told it was their patriotic duty to help protect the country after the devastating attacks on our homeland.

Today there is significant debate about whether the underlying program — the president’s warrantless surveillance plan — was legal or violated constitutional rights. That is an important debate, and those questions must be answered.

In the meantime, however, these companies are being sued, which is unfair and unwise. As the operational details of the program remain highly classified, the companies are prevented from defending themselves in court. And if we require them to face a mountain of lawsuits, we risk losing their support in the future.

Over the past year, the Senate intelligence committee has examined this issue, along with the need to bring the warrantless surveillance program within the law. We closely studied the facts, the documents and the alternatives to liability for the companies. Ultimately, we concluded that if we subject companies to lawsuits when doing so is patently unfair, we will forfeit industry as a crucial tool in our national defense. So we crafted legislation to do two important things: modernize the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act so the program is monitored by the courts with proper checks and balances, and keep the focus over legality where it belongs — on the government.

Unfortunately, immunity for communications companies has become a cause celebre for opponents of the surveillance program as a whole, and that has led to widespread confusion.

Let’s be clear. First, there is no automatic amnesty. All Americans, including corporate citizens, must follow the law and be held accountable for their actions. The bill authorizes case-by-case review in the courts only when the attorney general certifies that a company’s actions were based on assurances of legality, and the court is specifically required to determine whether the attorney general abused his discretion before immunity can be granted.

Second, lawsuits against the government can go forward. There is little doubt that the government was operating in, at best, a legal gray area. If administration officials abused their power or improperly violated the privacy of innocent people, they must be held accountable. That is exactly why we rejected the White House’s year-long push for blanket immunity covering government officials.

Third, immunity is the only procedural mechanism that works. We decided against “substitution” (putting the government in the shoes of the companies) and “indemnification” (making the government cover all costs) because both still mistakenly place the onus on the companies rather than on the government. And we recognized that this could expose too much about our intelligence capabilities, jeopardizing collection that targets foreign threats.

The fact is, private industry must remain an essential partner in law enforcement and national security. We face an enemy that uses every tool and technology of 21st-century life, and we must do the same.

If American business — airlines, banks, utilities and many others — were to decide that it would be too risky to comply with legally certified requests, or to insist on verifying every request in court, our intelligence collection could come to a screeching halt. The impact would be devastating to the intelligence community, the Justice Department and military officials who are hunting down our enemies.

The passions stirred by this case are understandable. The president’s secret programs have generated intense anger and resentment, and, as someone who has challenged this misuse of power from the beginning, I share those sentiments.

But this president is only going to be in office for another year or so, while the fight against terrorism will go on, perhaps for decades. Even as we hold government officials accountable for mistakes or wrongdoing — through the courts, congressional investigations and the electoral process — we must preserve the cooperation of private industry for the next president, and for every one who follows.

If I were an iPhone owner, I’d be hopping mad. I’d be iRate.

Just 10 weeks ago, otherwise sane individuals were camping overnight in long lines for the privilege of paying $599 for a mobile phone. These people were fully aware that most wireless companies will give you a basic phone for free, but the object of their ardor was anything but basic. It was a lifestyle choice. It was an advertisement for oneself. It was a shiny little slice of the future, a thin slab of cool. So what if it cost, gulp, 600 bucks? How could anyone get hung up over anything so prosaic as the price?

But when chief executive Steve Jobs announced Wednesday that Apple was slashing the iPhone’s price by a third — meaning that owning a slice of the future now sets you back only $399 — the iPhone Internet forums lit up with buyers who felt they’d been taken for chumps.

On the everythingiPhone forum, someone with the screen name “Silverado” posted: “So much for a consumer-oriented company. This was my first Apple product and it will be my last.” And on the macrumors site, “mac17″ wrote that he intended to e-mail Jobs a harangue that begins, “As a loyal Apple customer I feel like I and other iPhone customers are being treated like dirt.”

Jobs didn’t go out of his way to make them feel any better. “That’s technology,” he told USA Today. “If they bought it this morning, they should go back to where they bought it and talk to them. If they bought it a month ago, well, that’s what happens in technology.” Stung by the reaction, he did offer Thursday to give early buyers a $100 store credit — but no cash refund.

Still, you’ve got to hand it to the man for knowing his customer base. Better than anyone else in the silicon-based industries, Jobs understands that people adopt new technology not so much because of what it does but because of what it promises. And he understands that as long as you promise something that no iWhatever can possibly deliver — a changed life, basically — then you can keep the customers coming back.

What the iPhone does is package a lot of functions into one sleek device — telephone, music, e-mail, Web browsing, photos. What it promises is that it will simplify and unclutter your life. We go through each day being bombarded with inputs from every direction; we’re always having to come up with data — phone numbers, e-mail addresses — that we’ve left somewhere else, on some other machine; we leave the laptop home and wish we’d taken it, or we lug it around all day without using it. Here, according to the promise, is an elegant little machine that can serve as portal, organizer, window on the world. Here, we’re promised, is control.

The few people I know who own iPhones seem to love them, but they haven’t reported a marked improvement in the quality of their lives. They still have too much work to do and too little time; they still can’t quite find that one piece of information they need right now. But, hey, maybe the next-generation iPhone will do the trick — and you know that Jobs has one on the drawing board.

The fact is that in terms of miniaturization and number of features, some gadgets are already reaching their practical limits. I have big fingers; there is no way I could possibly thumb out an e-mail on a keyboard smaller than the one on my BlackBerry. The same physical limitation applies to cellphone keypads. And a 10-megapixel digital camera is no better for taking family snapshots than one that shoots a mere six megapixels.

Occasionally, there’s a real breakthrough. But mostly what we’re getting from the purveyors of electronic devices are incremental advances and improved packaging. Jobs was quick to realize that you have to sell image along with the gizmo.

This time, though, he has failed to live up to one clause in his implied contract with iPhone buyers. The sky-high price was supposed to guarantee a decent period of exclusivity. For a time, if you bought an iPhone, you were supposed to be the envy of your friends. The ability to show off all the neat things it could do was your compensation for the fact that the iPhone didn’t really change your life.

Eventually, you understood, everybody would have one — as happened with the iPod. But after spending $599 for a cellphone, the aura of supercool should have lasted longer than a couple of months.

Sorry if you feel cheated. As the man said, that’s technology.

YOU’RE a teacher in the New York City public school system. It’s September, and you’re lecturing the class on the structure of an essay. Your students need to know this information to pass your class and the Regents exam, and you, of course, hope that one day your talented students will dazzle and amaze English professors all over the country.

You turn your back to write the definition of “thesis” on the chalk board. It takes about 15 seconds. You turn around to the class expecting to see 25 students scribbling the concept in their notebook. Instead, you see a group of students who have sprung appendages of technology.

Jose has grown an earphone. Maria’s thumbs have sprouted a two-way. Man Keung, recently arrived from China, is texting away on a cellphone connected to his wrist. And Christina appears to be playing Mine Sweeper on a Pocket PC on her lap.

Come the end of the term, a handful will fail the class. A number will never pass the Regents. As we all know, far too many will drop out of school. And I can tell you with no hint of pride that it isn’t the teacher’s fault. As much as any other problem plaguing our schools, the onus for failure should be placed on distractions in the classroom, specifically the cellphone.

Though electronic devices have been banned in public schools for years, the issue came to the forefront last month when Chancellor Joel Klein announced the random placement of metal detectors in schools. The result: more than 800 cellphones have been confiscated.

Students and their parents, who say they rely on cellphones for safety reasons, are outraged. There’s even talk of a lawsuit arguing that the rule should be struck down.

But as a former New York City public school teacher, I can tell you that cellphones don’t belong in the classroom. A student with a cellphone is an uninterested student, one with a short attention span who cares more about his social life than education.

Parents think of cellphones as a connection to their children in an emergency. I have a few questions for those parents: First, when was the last situation that genuinely called for immediate interaction with your child? In most cases, the hospital or the police would seem more urgent. Second, is phoning the main office and having it patch you through to your child not quick enough? And third, do you know why your children really want to take cellphones to school?

Because just like the new Jordans and Rocawear they desire, cellphones are status symbols. Because when their cellphone rings while the teacher is talking, everyone laughs. Because playing video games on their cell makes them look cool. Because text messaging their friend in the next room is more fun than learning about the topic sentence. So is listening to the new Three 6 Mafia song they just downloaded onto their cell.

And saying students can store their phones in the locker is a joke. If they have cellphones, they’re going to bring them into class.

There are legitimate causes that parents should be taking on. Rally against crowding in the classroom. Fight against the oppressive and culturally biased Regents tests. But you’re wrong on this cellphone issue. In this case, you are part of the problem, not the solution.

The Qualifications and Curriculum Authority’s (QCA) annual report, released on Friday, found that more than 1,000 pupils were disqualified in last year’s public exams for taking mobile phones into the exam hall.While this is a fairly small percentage of those taking examinations, it is indicative of a much larger trend. The report concluded that many of the miscreants were penalised simply for having the phones in their pockets, having brought them in unintentionally. This highlights the fact that for today’s teenager, the mobile is so much an essential item, that it is unthinkable not to have it available at all times.

The Department for Education and Skills (DfES) responded to the QCA’s findings by pointing out that there is no place for mobiles in the classroom, let alone the exam room, and the chief executive of the QCA, Ken Boston, has written to all schools and colleges to stress that mobile phones are not allowed in exam locations.

But with the mobile phone becoming such an essential part of youth culture, we must question whether it is realistic to expect school pupils to leave their mobiles at home for an entire school day. A recent study by analysts Future Laboratory found that mobile technology is changing communication habits, and creating new social trends.

The introduction of video messaging, camera phones, high-speed data transfer and digital content on mobiles, have all led to a revolution in the way young people use mobiles, and increased the importance of phones in the social life of their users. More and more, teens are relying on their mobiles to hold together their social networks, as well as for much of their entertainment.

The DfES must see that with mobiles holding this kind of position in the life of a teenager, it is unlikely that schools will be able to persuade pupils to leave at home what they see as a crucial part of daily life.

Given the crucial status of the mobile, parents and teachers must look at the alternatives to trying to prise teens away from their phones. Undoubtedly phones interrupt studying, and of course should not be taken into exams because of the potential for cheating, but they remain an important accessory for many.

Recent research into teenagers’ use of mobiles found that 48% of UK teens admitted to texting friends during school hours. UK teens were twice as likely as German teens to play video games on their mobile while in school (20% compared with 10%) and three times as likely (30%) as German teens (9%) to talk to their friends on their mobiles while in school.

The online survey, carried out by Itracks on behalf of ACE*COMM, polled 2,000 teenagers and found that those in the UK are far more likely to use their mobiles in ways their parents would deem inappropriate, compared with teenagers in Germany and the United States.

Parents increasingly expect to be able to contact their children at all times, especially in the light of fears of terrorist attacks and growing concerns about protecting children from abuse and harassment. As the age at which children are given mobile phones is decreasing all the time, it is obvious that parents are keen on the safety aspect mobiles provide, as well as the convenience for coordinating busy schedules.

So, if schools are concerned about children bringing their mobiles into lessons and exams, they need to work with parents to find a suitable solution that allows teens still to use mobiles for the social networking that they need outside lesson times, and for parents to be able to contact their children in emergencies.

If children cannot be trusted to use their phones appropriately, a more effective way of preventing inappropriate use during school hours is for parents to sign up to services that allow them to monitor their children’s phone use and block outgoing calls and messages during lesson times.

These kinds of services are available in America, and allow individual and flexible policies to be applied such as no messaging during particular hours, certain numbers to be blocked at all times, or certain numbers, such as parents’ emergency contact numbers, to be always allowed.

Service providers in the UK need to wake up to the demand that parents and teachers would have for this kind of service. The QCA’s findings highlight the fact that there is a need for schools to be able to manage children’s reliance on mobiles, and that parents should take on the responsibility for instilling the necessary values about appropriate behaviour concerning mobiles.

A flexible parental monitoring service that allows limits to be placed on phone use during lesson (and exam) time would reassure parents that they can still contact their children in an emergency, while still allowing pupils to use their phones during breaks and free time, causing less uproar than an outright ban on mobiles in schools.