Bigger Picture Research

HugeTube

There's welcome tech news from Wired: according to commercial research company TeleGeography, and contrary to recent speculation, the Internet is not in any immediate danger of becoming too congested with digital flotsam and jetsam.

Ryan Singel writes: 'over the last 12 months, international net bandwidth in backbone grew 62 percent, while internet traffic grew only 53 percent and filled only 43 percent of the tubes' capacity at peak times.'

In layman's terms: 'the internet's tubes are growing faster than even YouTube videos can fill them, and they're in no danger of filling up anytime soon.' That's got to be good news for anyone backing online movie distribution, which needs (among other things) big fat pipes to keep consumers regularly streaming and downloading.

But a word of caution is necessary, because guess what: commercial research companies are not infallible! According to Singel, TeleGeography's figures should be taken with a pinch of salt:

'Data on the net's size, capacity and even links are difficult to come by, since almost all of the infrastructure is privately owned, and there's little incentive and few requirements to share data with governments or scientists. Without open internet data or even data about the data, there is no science.'

With that caveat in mind, an executive summary of the TeleGeography data is available here.

Smokescreen

It has been said that statistics are rather like a lamppost to a drunk: used more for support than illumination. And here’s a case in point: the British Medical Association has just published a review of evidence looking at the depiction of smoking in the media and its effect on young viewers.

There’s no doubting the authors' good intentions, but their conclusions and recommendations are unwarranted and unworkable, with far reaching implications for filmmakers, audiences and regulators.