Humanizing the avalanche of high-tech capabilities -- including telecommunications -- may become a sub-theme at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Jan. 23-26. The high-profile event is taking place in the midst of a growing "tech-lash" -- a term coined five years ago by The Economist to describe the backlash against technology's dominance in our lives.

Although not necessarily a Luddite attitude, the tech-lash skeptics are warning that the increasingly powerful technology industry is likely to be "demonized" in the same way that the finance and energy sectors have been lambasted because of actions that consumers find repulsive.

Of course, that doesn't necessarily mean that customers eschew all tech, but growing evidence suggests they'll adopt it in new ways that don't necessarily follow the growth patterns that providers expect.

Although major U.S. telecom and media operators are not high on the agenda at the four-day extravaganza, dozens of vendors and many content suppliers will speak and/or mingle with the elite crowd, set to include President Donald Trump and several U.S. Cabinet members; heads of state from France, Germany, Great Britain, Canada, India, Israel and a dozen other countries; and CEOs from Cisco, IBM, Microsoft, Salesforce.com, CBS, BBC and hundreds of other global brands.

Cable, telecom and media companies are well acquainted with consumer dismay; the looming tech-lash may ripple over onto them as allies of so-called Silicon Valley marauders. It is not clear yet how or if antipathy toward tech overload and invasive behaviors will dribble onto telecom providers. But in the fractious confluence of today's media-tech environment, any tech-related company is ripe for public scorn -- or worse.

As The New York Times explained in the Jan. 8 article "Tech Backlash Grows as Investors Press Apple to Act on Children's Use," consumers see technology companies as propagators of countless new problems from "election meddling and hate speech to physical health and internet addiction." Its report on an "open letter to Apple" from a potent investment firm generated even more attention to the role of technology companies in children's health and other social ills.

Humanizing the Impact
At the recent CES, a huge poster looming over the main convention center concourse encouraged attendees to join the Consumer Technology Association's "Let's Go Humans" campaign. The CTA called its efforts the "tech industry's rallying cry for supporting and championing the kinds of emerging technology that betters our world -- and its inhabitants" in categories ranging from health and safety to education and the environment.

The World Economic Forum's official theme is "Creating a Shared Future in a Fractured World." WEF's underlying momentum, though, comes from sessions on how to tame "the transformational impacts of a succession of shocks, from globalization to the proliferation of social media and ... the Fourth Industrial Revolution." The latter term echoes the just-published "Shaping The Fourth Industrial Revolution" by WEF founder and executive chair Klaus Schwab, a follow-up to Schwab's earlier volume with a similar aspirational title.

In a self-reflective description of its plans, WEF acknowledged that sessions during the conference will address "breakdowns in the social contract as a result of failure to protect societies ... [that] have caused a loss of trust in institutions and damaged the relationship between business and society."

Critics have described the entire WEF program as a global corporate party with decreasing relevance to technology and media realities. Yet the organizers are trying to focus on key factors, with sessions on broad issues such as The Digital Economy, eCommerce and especially cyberspace security, plus deeper dives into "How 5G Will Change the World," "Skilling a U.S. Workforce for a Digital Future" and "A New Era of Data Responsibility."

For example, in a pre-conference presentation, WEF pointed out that only 20% of the world’s data is searchable, "which means 80% of the data out there is sitting on private servers."

"The potential value this data holds is immeasurable," the WEF added. "When unleashed by new technology like artificial intelligence, it is helping businesses develop deeper insights, make exponentially better decisions and engage customers as never before."

Yet such expository bravura leads back to public concerns about how providers use such business intelligence. Hence, it is no coincidence that CNBC and The New York Times co-developed a session called "In Technology We Trust?" -- with an emphasis on the final question mark. "Technology can feed our deepest fears, yet also embodies our greatest hopes," according to the WEF description.

A session on "The Weaponization of Culture" will examine "cultural decline and ethnic supremacy" with an eye toward the spread of culture wars. But perhaps the most anticipated session will be one on "Fake News versus Real Politics" (developed by the BBC) featuring executives from Russia Today and the NYT as well as Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales. That panel comes right before an address by German Chancellor Angela Merkel and two days prior to a "Special Address" by President Donald J. Trump in a final-day keynote on Friday, Jan. 26.

No matter what (if anything) the high-profile WEF attendees agree upon, the marketplace will still be primed for decisions on how to embrace technology -- or whether the tech-lash is real.

Photo by Westend61/Getty Images

Mediacom Communications has been selected as the new data service provider for the Missouri Innovation Center, a non-profit business incubator focused on leveraging research & development produced in conjunction with the University of Missouri.

Through the relationship, Mediacom will provide a dedicated fiber connection to the facility and Gigabit data speeds.

In a statement Mediacom Business senior vice president Dan Templin said the agreement with the center is due in part to Mediacom’s Project Open Road, a program to proactively connect more businesses to its network and provide the level of broadband capacity that is critical for commercial and research facilities like the MIC.

“The Missouri Innovation Center is currently sharing a University of Missouri fiber feed with other university users, limiting bandwidth to incubator residents who are in need of higher capacity to power their business applications,” Templin said in a statement. “Mediacom Business’ Gigabit+ Fiber Solutions will provide the 1-Gig internet speeds to power next-level technology like precision agriculture, live augmented reality and other cloud-based services. Our network will deliver the dedicated, fast and private connection to the public internet that is critical for incubator residents.”
One beneficiary of the high-speed data connection is StoryUP, an incubator company that uses virtual reality technology to immerse users in stories and experiences that can produce specific brainwave patterns.

Stacey Button, Director of Economic Development for the City of Columbia, Missouri, and President of Regional Economic Development Inc., said in a statement the partnership between Mediacom Business and the Missouri Innovation Center will help entrepreneurs translate their new business ideas into high-growth businesses. “Mediacom Business has the high-capacity broadband tools that the MIC needs to help businesses grow and be successful, all for the benefit of this region and the state,” she added.

Google spent a record $16.83 million on lobbying last year, barely edging out Comcast's $16.8 million, in efforts to influence policy decisions, based on records filed with the Clerk of the House, according to the nonpartisan public interest group Consumer Watchdog.

Google and Comcast topped the list of the 15 technology and communications companies that spent the most money on lobbying efforts, Consumer Watchdog said. Facebook, Apple and Amazon also spent record amounts last year. Taken together, the top 15 spent a total of $116.62 million on lobbying in 2014, a 3% decrease from 2013's total of  $120.28 million.

While six of the companies increased spending from 2013 levels -- Facebook (up 45% to $9.34 million from $6.43 million), Amazon (up 35% to $4.74 million from $3.46 million), Apple (up 22% to $4.11 million from $3.37 million), Google (up 20% from $14.06 million), Sprint (up 9% to $2.99 million from $2.75 million) and Yahoo (up 6% to $2.94 million from $2.78 million) -- the other nine companies showed decreased outlays, according to the Clerk of the House’s Lobbying Disclosure database, Consumer Watchdog said.

Notably, Comcast and Time Warner Cable were among those with decreased spending, despite waiting on approval for their pending merger. Comcast's $16.8 million expenditure was down 10% from 2013's $18.71 million, while TWC's $7.83 million was down 6% from its $8.29 million in 2013.

Rounding out the top 15 spenders in the tech/communications sector were AT&T ($14.56 million), Verizon ($11.22 million), Microsoft ($8.33 million), Oracle ($5.83 million), IBM ($4.95 million), Intel ($3.8 million) and Cisco ($2.35 million).

“It’s important to understand just how much money these companies are throwing around in Washington to buy the policies they want,” John M. Simpson, Consumer Watchdog’s Privacy Project director, said. “Policymaking is now all about big bucks, not big ideas.”

Over Labor Day weekend, an email exchange unfolded with a former cable guy, Dave Archer, who now heads Nevada’s Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology in Reno.

The gist: He’d been contacted by a reporter who was wondering if Reno was less attractive to high-tech companies because it doesn’t have Gigabit broadband services.

“At some point in the conversation, I told him that wanting fiber to your home was like wanting a 747 to go to the grocery store,” he wrote. He added, “Then I realized I’d used that same analogy — in 1980.”

Archer asked for some links to prior columns on the topic, so I sent him five or so, plus some basics on “how to do the math” of estimating household bandwidth usage. It seems useful to pass that along.

Know going in that there’s a big caveat in any discussion involving the relative “weight” when shipping video over broadband: Compression engines. They keep getting better, which changes the math. Regularly.

Let’s say, for purposes of this discussion, that HD video compressed with MPEG-4 weighs about 3 Megabits per second, and that the same video compressed with MPEG-2 weighs 5 Mbps. (Expect violent disagreement on these numbers, should you choose to use them. Consider them a starting point. You’ll still win!)

Tablets, smartphones, laptops, PCs and their ilk use MPEG-4 compression. It’s newer than MPEG-2. There’s another one coming, “HEVC,” for High Efficiency Video Codec. It’s the capacity antidote to 4K/Ultra HD video.

TVs connected via a set-top box use MPEG-2 compression, as well as a completely different distribution path. But let’s throw them into the mix anyway, because we still won’t get anywhere near a Gig!

Picture a big, broadband-slurping house. In it are five HDTVs, all streaming live video via set-top boxes. That’s 25 Mbps.

Add five laptops, also streaming HD video, for another 15 Mbps.

Lots of people in this house! Add 10 tablets, all streaming video, for 30 Mbps.

What the heck. Let’s pile on more laptops. Ten more, all streaming video. Add another 30 Mbps.

We’re up to 100 Mbps. A Gigabit is 1,000 Mbps. That’s an order of magnitude difference, literally, by this math.

Does Reno need a Gig to be sexy enough for high tech? Probably, but not for any reasons of logic. Perception is reality, and the reason the reporter called in the first place is proof of that.

Still, wanting a Gigabit per second is like wanting a jet ski. For the kiddie pool.

Stumped by gibberish? Visit Leslie Ellis attranslation-please.comormultichannel.com/blog.