Stories by: Johna Till Johnson

Not long ago, the powers-that-be detected an impending crisis. To resolve it, they rushed into action crafting a proposal that represented an unprecedented upheaval of existing infrastructure. On the grounds that "something needed to be done" to avert the crisis, they brushed aside objections that the upheaval was too convulsive and might nonetheless fail to address the underlying issues that had created the crisis in the first place.

You've got to hand it to the Canadians. Not only do they come up with great hockey, outstanding comedians and my friend Dave Keck (an up-and-coming science fiction writer) they've also generated one of the most innovative ideas ever for last-mile connectivity.

Practically every company I talk with is consolidating data centers, constructing new ones, or both. These aren't the old "glass house" models of the 1980s and 1990s: They're next-generation designs with racks of blade servers, virtualized clusters and storage-area networks.

A while back, I wrote about the concept of social networking. The upshot: Although the wisdom of crowds may be overhyped, the phenomenon of social networking isn't.

Verizon's proposed US$28 billion acquisition of privately held Alltel signals the start of hurricane season for wireless providers. And this season might just include the perfect storm: Technology shifts, consolidation and business-model changes are combining to reconfigure the world of wireless.

Many of my clients are getting serious about the Internet. Let me explain: No, they're not Rip Van Winkles who've slept through the technology innovations of the past 20 years. But they are thinking about how they can use Internet services to augment -- or even replace -- their WANs.

Back in the day, wireless data was a neatly self-contained niche technology used by folks such as field force workers and logistics companies, but virtually ignored by everyone else.

I've seen the future of the Internet, and it's recursive -- in more ways than one.

Elections aren't the only things in chaos in Pakistan these days. The country recently decided to censor YouTube. Unfortunately, Pakistan botched the technology: It issued BGP routes that leaked, causing a worldwide reroute of all YouTube requests to a black hole in Pakistan -- taking YouTube off the global Internet for a couple of hours.

Forget the Super Bowl. Ignore the presidential primaries. For network geeks, the really big news recently was the cable outages in the Mediterranean, which disrupted Internet connections to Europe and the Middle East. The outages have raised a host of questions about the vulnerability of the Internet and the action plans enterprises should have in place to protect themselves from the consequences. Here are some frequently asked questions -- and the answers.

Radiohead recently rocked the music industry by making its latest album downloadable for free, or more accurately, for "whatever fans wanted to pay." The band was lauded for ushering in a new business model that disintermediated record companies and created a closer, more authentic bond between artists and fans.