A question that has cropped up in conversation this evening is “Why is the BBC’s Senior Technologist, Internet Standards job important?”.
Well, I think that’s a question that cropped up. There was some frivolity and possibly talking at cross-purposes. Such is life where each part of an exchange is compressed to one hundred and forty characters.
Even so. Here goes. This is the longish answer.
The BBC exists because of standards. Not just Internet standards, of course. While broadcasting standards haven’t always been identical the world over (to a certain extent because electricity standards haven’t been the world over), they have all shared the common properties of being non-discrimatory as much as possible. Who didn’t build a radio when they were growing up?
Okay, who out of the geeks and the engineers didn’t build a radio when they were growing up? I suspect there were periods in days gone by when significant chunks of the BBC’s listeners were counted amongst its audience solely on the basis of self-built radios (I have no idea if this still applies to the World Service listenership; it wouldn’t surprise me if it did).
Anyway, the point is: fundamental to public-service broadcasting is the principle of being indiscriminate. This isn’t some airy-fairy piece of doctrine. Rather, it’s the reason for the BBC’s existence, and sits shoulder-to-shoulder with the BBC’s independence from meddling governments.
To put it another way, the BBC has a duty to approach the public with open arms. It’s not feasible to cater to everybody’s individual requirements one-by-one. Conversely, the BBC can’t opt for a single manufacturer (or cartel) and require anybody who wants to tune in to buy their equipment: as the BBC is a publicly-funded broadcaster, it amounts to state aid for the manufacturer in question and potentially breaks all manner of rules. Just imagine if only Sony TVs could receive BBC TV. It would get even crazier when you brought other broadcasters into the mix. Philips TVs support ITV, Panasonic support ITV and Channel Four. You get the idea.
Instead, a set of common — vendor neutral — standards are adhered to. Anybody with the technical skills and access to the right components and manufacturing setup can create a receiver. This applied to radio (where “manufacturing setup” meant “a screwdriver and a soldering iron or a breadboard”), and it applied to TV, although the manufacturing requirements were higher.
As the Internet becomes an ever-increasing part of the BBC’s operations, there’s no sensible way for the same not to apply here too. While it’s true that the Internet is “different” to TV and radio, when you get down to the nitty-gritty of “how we and the BBC communicate with one another”, the need to be speaking the same language in a technical sense is the same.
In a very real sense, for the BBC’s approach to standards on the Internet to be anything less than embracing in all but the shortest of terms — given the steadily-increasingly importance of “the Internet” to it — is as ridiculous an idea as the coalition Government seizing direct control of the corporation and giving Cameron and Clegg a prime-time Saturday night talk show, and ultimately would be just as damaging to the survival of the BBC.
The big question is: why has it taken so long? Perhaps there’s been a longstanding refusal amongst certain quarters to recognise that the Internet is actually a Big Deal. Perhaps it’s been recognised that the Internet is a Big Deal, but it’s been viewed as an opportunity not just to connect and engage with audiences more effectively, but to use new technology to alter the relationship between the two parties in a way which puts the public at a disadvantage. Perhaps it’s overcompensation for the mooted “great levelling” effect of that the Internet has. I don’t know.
But, it’s fair to say that you don’t need to have read the job spec to know that the BBC desperately needs people on the inside promoting and advocating the old-fashioned way of doing things: common standards and open access. Coincidentally, for much of the Internet, this is both the old-fashioned and the new-fangled way of doing things.
It’s not a one-way street, of course. The BBC has traditionally (and does to this day) participated in standards bodies. Where it’s been particular quiet is the W3C, WHATWG, and IETF arenas. When’s the last time you saw an Internet Draft released by the BBC? (It was quite some time ago). Hell, even Apple churns them out (some of them are quite interesting, by the way). Or activity on the HTML WG mailing lists from people @bbc.co.uk? Is Atom working for the BBC? What about RDF? What problems does it have with Multicast? IPv6? RTSP? If it’s not using technologies, is it telling anybody why not, and collaborating with other experts outside of the corporation on solutions? Just as it has in the past in other areas, doing this serves everybody’s interests.
The bottom line: this is an extremely difficult, but absolutely vital, job. It’s a job which needs somebody who believes in the BBC — and why it is what it is. In fact, Internet standards at the BBC could be rephrased as The BBC’s principles and values where we make use of the Internet.
