Both sides are wrong in the Net Neutrality debate

I've been watching the ongoing shouting-match about Net Neutrality (in the US & Europe) with increasing exasperation. Recently there was a "day of action" by pro-neutrality activists, which raised the temperature yet further.

The problem? Pretty much everyone, on both sides (and on both sides of the Atlantic), is dead wrong a good % of the time. They're not necessarily wrong on the same things, but overall the signal-to-noise ratio on NN is very poor.

There are countless logical fallacies perpetrated by lobbyists and commentators of all stripes: strawman arguments, false dichotomies, tu-quoque, appeals to authority and all the rest. (This is a great list of fallacies, by the way. Everyone should read it). 

Everyone's analogies are useless too - networks aren't pipes, or dumb. Packets don't behave like fluids. Or cars on a road. There are no "senders". It's not like physical distribution or logistics. Even the word "neutrality" is dubious as a metaphor. The worst of all is "level playing field". Anyone using it is being duplicitous, ignorant, or probably both. (See this link).

I receive lots of exhortations from both sides - I get well-considered, but too-narrow network-science commentary & Twitter debates from friend & colleague Martin Geddes. I read detailed and learned regulatory snark and insider stories from John Strand. I see telco/vendor CEOs speaking (OK, grandstanding) at policy conferences. I get reports of egregious telco- and state-based blocking of certain Internet services from Access Now, EFF and elsewhere. I see VCs and investors lining up on both sides, depending on whether they have web interests, or network vendor/processing positions. I watch comments from the FCC, Ofcom, EU Commission, BEREC, TRAI and others - as well as politicians. And I read an absolute ton of skewed & partial soundbites from lobbyists on Twitter or assorted articles/papers.

And I see the same, tired - often fallacious or irrelevant - arguments trotted out again and again. Let me go through some of the common ones:

• Some network purists insist routers & IP itself are (at core) non-neutral, because there are always vagaries & choices in how the internals, such as buffers, are configured. They try to use this to invalidate the whole NN concept, or claim that the Internet is broken/obsolete and needs to be replaced. Other Internet purists insist that the original "end-to-end" principle was to get as close as possible to "equal treatment" for packets, and either don't recognise the maths - or suggest that the qualitative description should be treated as a goal, even if the precise mechanisms involve some fudges. Everyone is wrong.
• In the US, the current mechanism for NN was to incorporate it under the FCC's Title II rules. That was a clunky workaround, after an earlier NN ruling was challenged by Verizon in 2011. In many ways, the original version was a much cleaner way to do it, as it risked less regulatory creep. Everyone is wrong.
• Many people talk about prioritisation of certain traffic (eg movies) and how that could either (a) allow innovative business models, or (b) disenfranchise startups unable to match web giants' payments. Yet the technology doesn't work properly (and won't), it's almost impossible to price/market/sell/manage in practice, and there is no demand. Conspicuously, there have been no lobbyists demanding the right to pay for priority. There is no market for it, and it won't work. It's irrelevant. Everyone is wrong.
• Some people assert that NN will reduce "investment" in networks, as it will preclude innovation. Others assert that NN increases overall investment (on networks plus servers/apps/devices). When I tried to quantify the possible revenues from 25 suggested non-neutral business models (link), I concluded the incremental revenue would barely cover the extra costs of implementation, if that. There are many reasons for investments in networks (eg 4G then 5G deployment cycles), while we also see CapEx being replaced by OpEx or software licences for managed or virtual networks. Drawing meaningful correlations is hard enough, let alone causation from an individual issue out of dozens. Everyone is wrong.
• Most of the debate seems to centre on content - notably video streaming. This ties in with operators wanting to bundle TV and related programming, or Netflix and YouTube seen as dominating Internet traffic and therefore being pivot-points for neutrality. Yet in most markets, IPTV is not delivered via the public Internet anyway, and is considered OK to prioritise as it's a basic service. On the opposite side, upgrades to high-speed consumer broadband is partly driven by the desire for streaming video - revenues would fall if it was blocked, while efforts to charge extra fees to Netflix and co would likely backfire - they'd insist on opposite fees to be carried, like TV channels. Meanwhile, most of the value in the Internet doesn't come from content, but from applications, communications, cloud services and data transmission. However, they are all much techier, so get mostly overlooked by lobbyists and politicians entranced by Hollywood, Netflix or the TV channels. Everyone is wrong.
• Lots of irrelevant comments on all sides about CDNs or paid-peering being examples of prioritisation (or of craven content companies paying for special favours). Fascinating area, but irrelevant to discussion about access-network ISPs. Everyone is wrong.
• Lots of discussion about zero-rating or "sponsored data" paid for by 3rd-parties and whether they are right/wrong/distortions. Lots of debate whether they have to be offered to all music / video streaming services, whether they should just be promotional or can be permanent. And so on. Neither relate to treatment of data transmission by the network - and differential treatment of pricing is, like CDNs, interesting but irrelevant to NN. And sponsored data models don't work technically or commercially, with a handful of minor exceptions. Ignore silly analogies to 1-800 phone numbers - they are totally flawed comparisons (see my 2014 rant here). Upshot: zero-rating isn't an NN issue, and sponsored data (with prioritisation or not) doesn't work (for at least 10 reasons). Everyone is wrong.
• Almost everyone in the US and Europe regulatory scene now agrees that outright blocking of certain services (eg VoIP) or trying to force specific application/web providers to pay an "access" toll fee is both undesirable or unworkable. It would just drive use of VPNs (which ISPs would block at their peril), or amusingly could mean that Telco1.com could legally block the website of Telco2.com, which would make make future marketing campaigns a lot of fun. In other words, it's not going to happen, except maybe for special cases such as childrens' use, or on planes. It's undesirable, regulatorily unacceptable, easy to spot and impossible anyway. Forget about it. Everyone is wrong.
• Lots of discussion about paid-for premium QoS on broadband, and whether or not it should apply to IoT, 5G, NFV/SDN, network-slicing, general developer-facing APIs and therefore allow different classes of service to be created, and winners/losers to be based on economic firepower. Leaving aside enterprise-grade MPLS and VPN services (where this is both permissible and possible), there's a lot of nonsense talked here. For consumer fixed broadband, many of the quality issues relate to in-home wiring and WiFi interference, for which ISP-provided QoS is irrelevant. For mobile, the radio environment is inherently unpredictable (concrete walls, sudden crowds of people, interference etc). Better packet scheduling can tilt the odds a bit, but forget about hard SLAs or even predictability. Coverage is far more a limiting factor. Dealing with 800 ISPs around the world with different systems/pricing is impossible. The whole area is a non-starter: bigger web companies know how much of a minefield this is, and smaller ones don't care. Everyone is wrong.

In summary - nearly anyone weighing in on Net Neutrality, on either side, is talking nonsense a good % of the time. (And yes, probably me too - I'm sure people will pick holes in a couple of things here).

So what's the answer?

• First, tone down the rhetoric on both sides. The whole thing is a cacaphony of nonsense, mostly from lobbyists representing two opposing cheeks of the same arse. Acknowledge the hyperbole. Get some reputable fact-checkers involved, and maybe sponsored by government and/or crowdsourcing.
• Second, recognise that many of the threatened non-neutral models are either impossible or obviously unprofitable. Arguing about them is sophistry and a waste of everyone's time. There are more important things at stake.
• Thirdly, design and create proper field-trials to try to prove/disprove assertions about innovation, cost structures etc. Select a state, a city or a class of users, or speciallly-licensed ISPs to run prototypes and actually get some proper data. Don't try to change anything on a national or international basis overnight, no matter how many theoretical "studies" have been done. Create a space for operators and developers to try out creating "specialised services", see if they work, and see what happens to everything else. Then develop policy based on evidence - and yes, you'll have to wait a few years. You should have done it sooner instead of arguing. I suspect it'll prove my point 2 above, anyway
• Fourth, consider "inevitabilities" (see this link for discussion). VPNs will get more common. NFV and edge-computing will get more common. Multiple connections will get more common. New networks (eg private cellular, LPWAN) will get more common. Multi-hop connections with WiFi and ZigBee & meshes will get more common. Devices & applications will fragment, cloudify, become "serverless", being componentised with micro-services, and be harder to decode and classify in the network. AI will get more common, to "game" the network policies, as well as help manage the infrastructure. All this changes the landscape for NN over the next couple of years, so we'll end up debating it all again. Think about these things (and others) now.
• Six, try some rules on branding Internet / other access. Maybe allow specialised services, but force them to be sold separately from Internet access, and called something else (Ain'ternet? I Can't Believe it's Not Internet?)
• Seven, get ISP executives (and maybe web/content companies' execs too) to make a public promise about acting in consumers' interests on Internet matters, as I suggested a few years ago - an IPocratic Oath. (link)
• Eight, train and empower the judiciary to be able to understand, collect data and adjudicate quickly on Internet-related issues. It may be that competition law could be applied, or injunctions granted, even in the absence of hard NN laws. Let's get 24x7 overnight Internet courts able to take an initial view on permissibility of traffic management - not wait 2 years and appeals during which time an app-developer slowly dies.
• Nine, let's get more accountability on traffic-management and network configurations, so that neutrality/competition law can be applied at a later date anyway. We already have rules on data-retention for customer calls & access to networks. Let's have all internal network configuration & operational data in ISPs' networks securely captured, encrypted, held in escrow and available to prosecutors if needed, under warrant. A blockchain use-case, perhaps? We're going to need that data anyway, to guarantee that customer data hasn't been tampered with by the network. 
• Ten, ask software (and content and IoT device and cloud) developers what they actually want from the networks. Most seem to be absent from the debate - the forgotten stakeholders. Understand how important "permissionless innovation" actually is. Query whether they care about network QoS, or understand how it links to overall QoS which covers everything from servers to displays to device chipsets to user-interfaces. Find out how they deal with network glitches, dodgy coverage - and whether "fallback" strategies mean that the primary network is getting more or less important. Do they want better networks, are they prepared to pay for them - or would they just rather have better visibility and predictability of when problems are likely to occur?

Apologies for the length of this piece. I'll happily pay someone 0.0000001c for it to load faster, as long as the transaction cost is less than 5% of that.

Get in touch with me at information AT disruptive-analysis dot com if you'd like to discuss it more, or have a sane discussion about Neutrality and what it really means for broadband, policy, 5G, network slicing, IoT and all the rest.

Why Twitter risks a similar fate as BlackBerry

Twitter's woes are well-known. Its user-base has been stagnating, it's been looking to be acquired, but nobody has stepped up - apparently Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Salesforce and others have looked but walked past. (Personally I'm quite glad - I'd be very upset if either Google or MS bought Twitter as they own this blog's platform and my LinkedIn account respectively, and I don't want any further consolidation of my online presence).
 
Other companies in the "social", "messaging" and "information flow" spaces are out-stripping it in growth and coolness - for example, SnapChat for consumers, with the addition of broadcast media-type streams from celebrities or TV channels.

But I think one important comparison and lesson from history hasn't been well-described: Twitter has some of the characteristics of BlackBerry, c2012-13. In particular, it's very hard to continue growth when your company has very disparate groups of users and use-cases, especially split between consumers and businesses.

BlackBerry had a whole range of tensions stemming from keeping two main groups happy:

• Businesses and government users who wanted secure email, plus some optimised Internet access and maybe a few serious productivity/enterprise mobility apps.
• Teenagers and young consumers, who wanted BlackBerry Messenger (BBM), unfettered Internet access and a wide range of apps from games to social. This was especially true outside the US, where younger prepay customers had to pay per-SMS rather than getting plans/bundles. It also had a separate PIN identity, which appealed where people didn't want to give out a phone number, eg Middle East.
• (Note: both groups liked the keyboard)

The tensions here were very hard to reconcile. One group was interested in security, integration with corporate IT infrastructure and (hopefully) enterprise apps. The other wanted cheaper / cooler devices, support for social networking, and messaging that evolved to compete with Whatsapp and its peers with emoji and stickers etc. 

The consumer team was competing (fruitlessly) against Apple's app support and brand, as well as Android's plummetting device margins. The enterprise team needed systems integration support, and was working against the BYOD tide as employees demanded to be allowed to use iPhones. Microsoft was also spending huge sums to become the #3.

I see something similar as a risk for Twitter. It too has multiple constituencies:

• Consumers are using Twitter to update friends, cross-post pictures from Instagram, follow sport or celebrities or politics, watch realtime news events unfold - and perhaps engage in group activities from finding food trucks to becoming involved in protest movements.
• Brands are using Twitter for some forms of social CRM and advertising - perhaps informing people about airline delays, or fielding complaints and customer-service questions.
• Business users look at Twitter as a discussion platform, a way to promote company news or events, or share news items and analysis. 

I fall into this last category of business users. I don't really use @disruptivedean for personal stuff, although occasionally I'll use my follower numbers as a "do you know who I am?" blunt-instrument if I want to make a point, or complain about something (sorry about that!) as I suspect it makes me appear more "influential" and prioritised for action, than a random anonymous egg account.

But that doesn't stop me getting irrelevant notifications like this, from the new Twitter Highlights service:

 I also have screen real-estate wasted with the pointless "explore" tab, mostly giving me suggestions about sports I never watch or as right now - and I'm not making this up - "When Justin Beiber plays at your pub" and "A baby iguana chased by snakes has nation in a frenzy".



Now I recognise that other people are fascinated by this stuff. But the ongoing drift of Twitter to try to compete with SnapChat, Buzzfeed on Facebook and assorted news/media sites detracts from my (and many of my contacts') use-cases. I also need to try to keep as much of Twitter's curation algorithms away from me as possible - I want a raw feed, not what it *thinks* I want to see first, and I don't want mentions or retweets to be filtered.

Personally I try to firewall my personal social stuff (Facebook, Instagram, in the past SnapChat & I might try again) from my business life (Twitter, LinkedIn, this blog, maybe Slack in future). A couple of communications apps like Whatsapp and Skype cross the boundary, but I view Twitter as an important part of my B2B interaction. I don't want to see it getting too consumerised. Incidentally, Twitter makes some money out of me too - I sometimes pay for advertising, for example if I publish a report. (Blatant plug: buy my eSIM study! link)

So the question I have is how Twitter manages to reconcile its B2B, B2C [CRM], B2C [Media] & C2C uses without alienating any of its constituencies. Based on BlackBerry's experiences, I think it's going to struggle - unless perhaps it positions itself more as a platform, or gives users much better filtering tools.
 
Some people may also recall that I used to run a paid (locked) Twitter feed called DApremium (link) about 4-5 years ago. It was a nice idea and generated some revenues for me, but interaction like retweets and multi-party debates was hard because the tweets were protected. I'd definitely be interested in mechanisms to do something similar in future - and would happily do a rev-share with Twitter if it was well-designed.
 
Meanwhile, I'm definitely interested in other options in case Twitter decides against business users as a strategically important group. I am increasingly getting more followers on LinkedIn (it distinguishes contacts from followers if you post articles - some people don't realise), and it's a pretty good platform for discussion in comments. I'm open to other suggestions too. Meanwhile, if you're not already following me, I'm @disruptivedean for now at least! (link) as well as here on LinkedIn.

New Year Rant: 10 Awful Tech-Industry Terms to Stop Using in 2016

In the spirit of the holiday season and New Year, this is another list about 2016. 

But it's from me, so it's a rant, rather than clairvoyancy with a crystal-ball.

There's a bunch of words and concepts used in the technology industry that make you look like a fool, or at least lazy and sloppy. They're often meaningless, duplicitously-used to "misframe" an argument, or just generally cringe-worthy. Some of them I've tackled before, and yes, mea culpa, I've been guilty of some of them before too. But I've learned from the errors of the past, and apologise unreservedly for any historical fluffiness and telcowash.

So let's double-check our terminology in 2016, call out offenders, and make a collective New Year resolution to ditch the telco-industry b*llocks....




1. Digital 

Meaningless drivel. The last time the word "digital" was informative or cool was in the 1970s, or maybe, if you absolutely must, relevant for newer telecoms switches in the 1980s. But apart from retro nods to Casio, it's now just a useful short-cut to determining if someone is ignorant, tech-illiterate, or desperate for a marketing hook - think "digital agency" as cringespeak for advertising, or "digital single market" for the EU's half-witted bureaucrats and their fawning legions of lobbyists. 

And don't get me started on the clueless telco and vendor folk talking about "digital" services. Because hey, we don't want to go back to those awful days of the analogue Internet in the 1990s, do we? I suppose I should be happy that at least some of the politicos have switched over from the similarly-execrable "ICT", but frankly "digital" is even worse. So sneer at the digitalistas with both pride and prejudice – and perhaps a raised middle-digit.


2. OTT 

This one I've tackled before, but it bears repetition. "OTT" just means "bits of the Internet we don't like". It's arbitrary, divisive and hypocritical (all telcos have websites & Internet apps). It’s also a form of telecom industry self-harm, as the "O" for "over" conjures images of a vertical hierarchy, with content/apps/comms being at the top (and therefore implicitly better) than everything "beneath". Along with “dumb pipe” the false-dichotomy of ISP vs. OTT is at the base of many of the industry’s current woes, as it re-frames a simple reality in a deliberately antagonistic way. Telecoms industry regulators and lobbyists who use “OTT” are especially unfit-for-purpose, and should be fired for incompetence.

There is an exemption for anyone saying “OTT” if they also refer to networks as “UTF” (Under the Floor) providers, as that’s where the plumbing goes.


3. Transformation 

I have a little bit more tolerance of this word, as it is slightly better than some of the industry’s other gibberish. Elements of the industry are undergoing profound change, yes… but that’s mostly being forced by events, with grudging acceptance, rather than true enthusiasm. Even where networks are genuinely being “transformed”, it is rare that the culture, process and business model is following suit. More generally, it’s important to note that telcos, and their networks and services, have been in a state of constant flux for the last century, often with discontinuities in technology.

Either way, the only meaningful use of the word "transform" I've heard this year was by my Haitian guide when I visited in July - to describe a voodoo curse which he reckoned was turning him into a cow. To listen to some of the snake-oil merchants in the telecoms industry, you'd think we were watching something similarly magical occurring, rather than just mythology.


4. Seamless 

Another one I’ve taken aim at before – seams are important. Seams are borders, where important things happen. Pretending that they don’t exist denies their significance – and can lead to mistakes or complacency, in terms of user perception, technical capabilities, pricing, security and more. A prime example is the combination of WiFi and cellular connectivity for smartphones, where two very different domains exist, and blending them needs to be done with care and humility. Creating frictionless shifts between one and the other is important – much like real-world borders. But the premise of “seamlessness” removes visibility and agency from end-users and other market participants – and often presupposes (wrongly) that network operators are the only/most-important actors involved. Seamless transitions allow inertia and lock-in to be perpetuated, rather than allowing users or app-developers scope to make “wrong” decisions.

5. Carrier-grade 

This is another term which exemplifies the telecom industry’s arrogance and self-absorption. It imbues certain bits of infrastructure – or engineering practices – with a magical aura of uniqueness and competence. And while many examples are indeed praise-worthy, they are far from the only purveyors of excellent network engineering. Corporate-grade networks are often just as secure, resilient and cost-effective – but also often more flexible. Military-grade networks are often more secure. Consumer-grade networks or various ad-hoc networks are often more democratic and market-responsive. Internet-grade networks such as Google/Facebook data-centres or Akamai’s CDNs are often cleverer. 

Telecoms carriers are not “special flowers” nor sit in “ivory towers”. Continually using terms like “carrier-grade” perpetuates the arbitrary distinctions between telecom and Internet worlds, and fosters harmful distinctions that inhibit service-providers from making pragmatic, market-aware decisions.


6. Engagement 

This is not limited to the telecoms industry, but is a general example of horrific marketing-industry and social-networking semantics and practice that needs to be stamped out. “Engagement” usually involves forcing people to “interact” when they’d often rather not, or measuring social-network actions in a cringe-worthy fashion. My recent example of WiFi “monetisation” charlatans bragging of “engaging” users for 45 seconds highlights the misanthropy present in this way of thinking. The whole area of “click-bait” posts, or those stupid list-based websites that force you to find the “next page” button, or click an invisible “x” on an intrusive floating advert are others.

This is not to say that it’s a bad thing to allow people to interact with you. Yes, they should be able to comment or share if they choose. But that’s the point: they are choosing to interact. They have agency, and take action. They should not be encouraged or forced to “engage”. It’s the coercivity that is wrong.


7. Content (& especially content-marketing)

“Content” is just one-directional application data, which flows from a “publisher” to a “consumer”. Despite some commentators’ and legislators’ ignorant comments, it does not constitute the whole Internet. While the likes of Netflix and the BBC are clearly important, so too are Amazon, Twitter, Skype, SAP, email, backups to iCloud, downloaded virus definitions and innumerable enterprise applications and services. The latter are communications, transactions, applications and raw data – not “content”. Yet too many laws and structures are designed with an historical “media” mindset, rather than an IT or Internet-native one. For example, the majority of the Net Neutrality discussion was centred on “content” and “content provdiers” – although to be fair, some regulators have talked about “edge providers”, which is a slightly more generic term.

Hopefully the rise of ever more non-content mobile apps, plus also IoT devices and traffic, will make more people (especially regulators and politicians) aware that networks are used for much more than lumps of video entertainment, media websites and music. 

To be honest, “content” is mostly another sleazy, marketing-inspired word anyway – often used with a hidden meaning of “that stuff we can embed advertising in”. That also gives rise to the most repugnant use of the term – in “content marketing”, which is basically just “long-form spam”, often masquerading as journalism or analysis. The technology industry is widely infested with dodgy “content marketing” – particularly corporate blogs masquerading as independent sources of news or analysis. You know the type: one-sided puff-pieces which laud a particular type of technology or product or brand. “Why WiFi-calling is transformational & will change telecoms for ever and allow operators to fight back against the OTTs with new digital services and improved customer engagement” (posted on WiFiCallingForEver.com, with a tiny note at the bottom that it’s sponsored by VendorX.com). The worst content-marketing of all is that derived from fake, quasi-corrupt, pay-for-play industry “awards”, where marketing companies offer “sponsors” a full package of PR and churnalism “content” in exchange for a “submission fee”.


8. Rich 

Obviously exemplified by the ludicrous RCS of zombie fame, the word “rich” also crops up in various other telecom and Internet contexts as well. It usually means “we didn’t have any proper designers involved, so we just threw in as many random features as we could, hoping that people would muddle through and ignore the incoherent clutter”. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Apple use the word – or even Facebook. I’m scared to look, but it wouldn’t surprise me if Yahoo or LinkedIn have used it, though. Rich services or apps don’t even have the redeeming benefits of rich food – they’re unpalatable as well, as bad for you.

Applications should be right not rich.


9. End-to-end

Whenever you see anyone in the telecom talking about “end-to-end” capabilities – especially QoS – you should laugh and dismiss them and their products/services immediately. In almost every case, the so-called “ends” just refer to arbitrary points over which they have some modicum of visibility and control. They are never the actual ends where a service is generated or consumed, just points on an architecture diagram where somebody else takes over responsibility. So for a streamed video, there are origination servers (perhaps even the production, editing and encoding process) and the end-device, with screen and associated processors and memory. Quality of experience ends at the retina, the eardrum – and maybe even the cortex of the brain. A great example of the end-to-end fallacy is around VoIP, where much of the quality and performance is gated by the device’s silicon and its microphone and speakers, as well as the various processing algorithms used. The network is important – and bits of it may indeed be well-managed. But they’re not “ends”. 

I’m writing this in an airport, where BA takes responsibility for getting me from gate to gate. It conspicuously doesn’t refer to my journey “end-to-end”. The handful of airlines which offer limo-service  to and from your home and hotel would have a better claim – but even they can’t control the traffic on the roads outside Heathrow, just the seat you sit in. 


10. Ecosystem

This is the term beloved of people who used to say “value chain”, especially as it allows a temporary warm & fuzzy feeling from its environmental and natural background. But for that very reason, it’s a lousy analogy. Ecosystems aren’t “built”, they evolve. It means a group of interacting organisms AND their (physical) environment and resources. It implies co-dependency – if one part of an ecosystem gets removed, damaged or destroyed, it has an impact on everything else. It’s not just a convenient term for a software or web company’s developer and partner programme.

While real ecosystems might have some symbiosis, they also typically have an apex predator, plus lots of unfortunate other creatures and plants that get eaten, or just manage to scratch a living, before rotting after their death with the help of microbes and parasites. Hmm, maybe it is a decent analogy after all. I’ll leave it to the reader to identify the parasites in the mobile “ecosystem”.

Summary

So let’s have a collective New Year’s resolution to avoid telecoms-sector “trigger words” and acknowledge what we actually mean in 2016. Let’s get rid of:

• Digital
• OTT
• Transformation
• Seamless
• Carrier-Grade
• Engagement
• Content
• Rich
• End-to-End
• Ecosystem

And, I’m sad to admit, there’s also probably a number 11 that’s past it’s sell-by: “Disruptive”. But yeah, let’s forget about that one, given that I was disruptive before it went mainstream. I reckon I can claim some form of retro-irony exemption…

Rant over. 

Happy New Year!