IVR Deconstructed

There are various myths and legends surrounding Halloween.  Some say it is one of the oldest holidays, originally celebrated to mark the end of the harvest and the beginning of winter.  Others say that it is the time when the physical and metaphysical realms are closest together.  Others find it a day to dress up and go trick-or-treating, which typically results in lots of sweets.

Halloween is indeed celebrated (albeit in different variations) around the world.  Most scholars agree that Halloween’s origins date back over 2,000 years ago to the Celts who used the day to mark the end of summer and the beginning of winter.  They recognized the holiday as a commemoration of the New Year.  In order to ward off the ghosts roaming the Earth for this one night, they would light bonfires and wear costumes.

In the 700s, Pope Gregory declared the first day of November All Saints Day, which became a day to honor all saints and martyrs within Christianity.  Halloween continues to be celebrated in different ways around the world.  In Scotland and Ireland, where the tradition began thousands of years ago, children often dress up in costumes, attend parties, and even have fireworks displays.  Due to migration and immigration to America, many of these traditions were carried over to the “new world”.

North America has perhaps had the biggest influence on the holiday, promulgating traditions like dressing up in costumes, trick-or-treating throughout neighborhoods, and visiting haunted attractions.  Many countries have drawn on the North American influence to shape their own Halloween celebrations that are often times very similar to the ones observed in the United States and Canada.

For people living thousands of years ago, Halloween represented a time of extreme uncertainty due to the long winter months that typically follow.  Instead of planting, growing, and harvesting crops, ancient people had to remain fairly sedentary during the winter months in order to conserve energy and stay warm.  Many animals also hibernate throughout the winter, making hunting prospects slim if at all.  Fear and uncertainty surrounding the winter months is quite understandable for people who maintain a limited food supply and live off the land.

As societies modernized, the fear of starvation, malnutrition, and freezing temperatures became less and less, which some people think facilitated the transition of a harvest-focused holiday to one more in tune with popular culture.  All of Halloween’s scary offerings probably have their root in fears over winter, which then evolved when various modernizations became available.

So can technology, most relevantly interactive voice response technology, aid Halloween celebrators in formulating plans, finding out about parties, buying candy, and having a safe and fun-filled holiday?  Users could merely call in to an IVR that has been set up to take their zip code, ask several simple questions about their needs, and then automatically point customers in the right direction.

Instead of standing around looking for something to do, people can call or text and receive event information immediately.  IVRs could be equipped with both driving and walking directions, general recommendations based primarily on location, report potentially dangerous situations and even check weather reports.

Preparation is, for many, the key to a having a good holiday and Halloween is no exception!  To everyone handing out candy, going to a costume party or trick-or-treating, have a happy and safe Halloween!

One of the things the FCC does is work to ensure that every American has access to the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) for telephone communications.

The FCC considers it a basic right for all Americans. But what about broadband? It seems like the Internet is important enough now that legislators are starting to see it as a basic right too.

Actually, it’s not a novel idea. In July 2010, the government of Finland made it a legal right in that country. Granted, Finland has one of the highest Internet penetration rates of any nation, with 83% of Finns having Internet access (78% of Americans do). And Finland was also the first country to make broadband a legal right.

But it shows where we’re headed. The Finns hope to give everyone in their country a 100Mbps connection by 2015, according to the BBC. (Of course, there are only 5 or so million Finns, but still…it’s progressive thinking.)

Yesterday the FCC overhauled its $4.5 billion Universal Service Fund to help bring broadband to rural areas. The key target areas are American Indian tribal lands, the Appalachians, the Mississippi Delta and Alaska, particularly native Alaskan villages.

According to CBSNews, there are about 9.2 million American households (about 26 million people) without access to wired broadband services. Obviously, the FCC is working to help those households.

Of course, not everyone is a fan of this overhaul…

For one thing, the changes will raise rates for all landlines by as little as 15 cents or as much as 50 cents per month, depending on whom you ask (the FCC is on the low end—no surprise).

Also, some people question why the FCC only gave $500 million of the $4.5 billion to mobile broadband, which runs counter to the goal of universal broadband across America.

“Wireless is the most efficient and timely deployment option to meet that goal,” Eric Graham of C Spire Wireless told PCWorld. “Yet the FCC’s inability to untether itself from the wireline monopoly model of the last century deals a tragic blow to our nation’s competitiveness at home and abroad.”

For us in the IVR industry, the rate hike on landlines alone could have a big effect. Fifteen or fifty cents a month may not be a big deal for families, but it could be big for companies with call centers and high volumes of calls every month.

Anyway, it looks as though the U.S. is heading the way of Finland. However we get there, it makes sense to me—broadband is our present and future, so there’s no sense waiting on it.

On October 31^st, something scary is going to happen.  Shockingly, it isn’t related to Halloween either.  According to the United Nations, on October 31, 2011, the world’s population is set to hit 7 billion.  Sometime after midnight on Monday, somewhere in the world, the seven billionth child will be born.  This landmark will be reached far more quickly than expected, in part because life expectancy has increased in many countries, and more children are being born and surviving in the developing world.

If this trend continues as it is now, the population of the world will double by 2100.  14 billion people.  To mark this alarming event, the BBC has posted a calculator online that will tell you exactly where you fit into this whole equation.  For example, based on the day I was born I was the 4,769,330,291^st person alive on Earth.  79,542,778,924 people had lived before me since history began.

The UN Population Division calculated these figures based on global population figures and by using an equation that estimates how many people have been alive since 50,000 B.C.

There have been ebbs and flows in the world’s population from antiquity until now.  The Great Famine in 1315 and the Bubonic Plague in 1350 were responsible for the deaths of millions of people (the Plague alone is estimated to have killed 75 million people).  After these two events, the global population has steadily risen ever since.

The huge population surge the world is experiencing is unsustainable.  Population expansion results in an increased need for resources.  Many of the resources required to sustain human populations are finite (water, arable land, fossil fuels) and are resulting in degradation of the ecosystem, rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide, global warming and pollution.

A large part of reasonably managing population involves practicing varying methods of population control.  Another component of this is technology.  New technologies can be developed that will help reverse, halt or forestall the trajectory of climate change; purify the oceans; give us a way to reuse and recycle garbage waste; and produce vehicles, homes and businesses that run on sustainable energy.

Technology is endlessly changing and tools are developed every day that were virtually unimaginable the day before.  With all the fantastic technology we have swirling around, there is certainly hope that collectively we can create sustainable solutions that will improve both our own lives and the environment.

Living in a globalized world, we have an amazing capacity to share information and ideas instantaneously.  Standing on the corner of basically anywhere we can make a phone call, send an email, snap a photo or shoot a video that can make it halfway around the world in a matter of seconds.  We can video chat immediately with people on other continents that speak different languages and have vastly different experiences than our own.

The challenges that go along with this type of rapid growth are many, but through collaboration and technological cultivation, we can hopefully find a solution that maintains, preserves and even strengthens the environment for our children and our children’s children.

Two things strike me about Amy Winehouse’s toxicology report, which showed extreme blood alcohol levels. One, how it’s a shame. Two, how we all know about it.

First, it’s a tragedy. I won’t say much about that because loads of people have written about it. I’ll just say I think it’s tragic any time someone dies when they’re still young, and it’s hard to keep watching all these talented young artists (musicians, actors, writers, artists) lose their lives from alcohol and drugs.

Second, I’m divided about whether our instant access to information over the Internet is a positive thing or a negative thing. It seems like both.

Positive—

Instant access to news and information from all over the globe is really hard to argue against. And it’s getting more available and more reliable all the time.

When the Internet was still young, there was a lot of information on it, but most of that information was fodder (most of it still is, but there’s more good information now). Remember Wikipedia when it first came out and how unreliable it was? It’s kind of a microcosm of the whole thing…

While I wouldn’t say that Wikipedia is now an academic-level resource, it’s a whole lot more legit than it used to be. In fact, Google’s algorithm gives it a really high domain authority these days.

Negative—

Do we really need every college kid in America reading about Amy Winehouse’s blood alcohol level and using that as a gauge for their own drinking?

“Dude, you can get way more wasted than .08. Amy Winehouse was like .4 or something ridiculous.”

In fact, Winehouse’s blood alcohol level was .416, according to the BBC. It’s an astounding figure, actually—the pathologist who performed her post-mortem told the BBC that .350 could have killed her. Supposedly, there were three empty bottles of vodka in her apartment.

Looking back at my own college days, I remember thinking it was romantic or something when I saw The Doors and how Jim Morrison had supposedly died in the bathtub of an apartment in Paris.

Stupid but true. And I imagine I would have thought Amy Winehouse’s death was somehow tragically romantic. And I might have even stopped worrying about drinking too much, knowing it would take a ton (.350, or like 17 drinks) to really hurt me. Again, stupid.

Of course, when I was still in school, we didn’t have the Internet really, so I would have had to read a newspaper to hear about Winehouse’s toxicology report. When I was still in high school or younger, I probably wouldn’t have heard about it at all.

Not so now. Every kid in the world with Internet access knows exactly how much alcohol it took to take Amy Winehouse’s life. That’s just our world today, good or bad. Or good and bad.

Quarterly Akamai, an Internet performance management company, releases reports detailing worldwide Internet connection statistics. Akamai gathers data over a global server network and releases country-by-country statistics based on variables like peak connection speed, high and low broadband adoption, average connection speed, and statistics on possible Internet attacks.

I have written about the geographic distribution of Internet speed, both nationally and internationally before (Link to http://www.plumvoice.com/blog/the-internet-worldwide), but the figures just released update the previous data and show some sweeping changes from just a little over a month ago.

Akamai tracked web traffic originating from 192 unique countries around the world. According to ReadWrite Web, Taiwan was the top attack traffic source with about 10% of total attack traffic originating from the country. Burma (Myanmar) and the United States held the second and third places.

How about the places most rapidly acquiring high-speed broadband connections? Last time around South Korea won the title, but this time The Netherlands comes in first in terms of high-speed broadband connectivity per capita. Interestingly enough Hong Kong, South Korea, Belgium, Latvia, Japan, Czech Republic, Romania, Denmark, and Switzerland round out the top ten countries claiming the highest percentage and frequency of high-speed broadband connections. For everyone wondering, the US places thirteenth on the list.

In the US, Rhode Island usurped the fastest connection speed title from Delaware to become number one. Delaware came in second followed by DC, Utah, Vermont, California, New Hampshire, Virginia, Washington, and New York. Aside from Utah, whose connectivity increased on both the quarter and the year, the highest Internet speeds are primarily found on the coasts. In terms of city by city breakdown, 6 of the top 10 cities with the fastest connection speeds are in California, and more than that, in Northern California.

In terms of global connectivity worldwide, the US doesn’t even crack the top ten cities. A majority of the top ten are Japanese cities punctuated by an occasional South Korean city. A huge number of cities with the fastest connectivity are in Asia, and the US’s first mention comes in at 29^th with San Jose, CA. However, the inclusion of San Jose might be skewed owing to the fact that the city is located smack dab in the middle of Silicon Valley and much of the connectivity in the city is due to a network of pipelines powering large tech companies as opposed to personal high speed Internet connections.

Much like the last report, this report on the global status of the Internet shows that the Asian and European countries have managed to establish the highest functioning, reliable wireless networks as part of their infrastructure countrywide. This could be because they occupy a smaller amount of physical surface area, making connectivity by proximity much easier to achieve, but it also shows that the U S is lagging when it comes to establishing tech infrastructure, and has room for improvement in terms of technology distribution.