Joshua Gans, professor of Strategic Management at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management and author of the new book Information Wants to be Shared, discusses modern media economics, including how books, movies, music, and news will be supported in the future.
Gans argues that sharing enhances most information’s value. He also explains that the business models of traditional media companies, gatekeepers who have relied on scarcity and control, have collapsed in the face of new technologies. Equally important, he argues that sharing can revive moribund, threatened industries even as he examines platforms that have, almost accidentally, thrived in this new environment.
The project is looking at the emerging ecosystem for innovation based on disruptive technologies. It expands on work we have done separately and now together over the last fifteen years.
Our chief finding is that the nature of innovation has changed dramatically, calling into question much of the conventional wisdom on business strategy and competition, especially in information-intensive industries–which is to say, these days, every industry.
The drivers of this new ecosystem are ever-cheaper, faster, and smaller computing devices, cloud-based virtualization, crowdsourced financing, collaborative development and marketing, and the proliferation of mobile everything. There will soon be more smartphones sold than there are people in the world. And before long, each of over one trillion items in commerce will be added to the network.
The result is that new innovations now enter the market cheaper, better, and more customizable than products and services they challenge. (For example, smartphone-based navigation apps versus standalone GPS devices.) In the strategy literature, such innovation would be characterized as thoroughly “undiscplined.” It shouldn’t succeed. But it does. Continue reading →
For some time now I’ve been trying to teach myself how to program. I’m proficient in HTML and CSS, and and I could always tinker around the edges of PHP, but I really couldn’t code something from scratch to save my life. Well, there’s no better way to learn than by doing, at least when it comes to programming, so I gave myself a project to complete and, by golly, I did it. It’s called TechWire. It’s a tech policy news aggregator and I’m making it available on the web because I think it might be useful to other tech policy nerds.
Quite simply it’s a semi-curated reverse-chronological list of the most recent tech policy news with links to the original sources. And it’s not just news stories. You’ll also see opinion columns, posts from the various policy shops around town, new scholarly papers, and new books on tech policy. And you can also drill down into just one of these categories to see just the latest news, or just the latest opinions, or just the latest papers. Leave the page open in a tab and the site auto-refreshes as new items come in. Alternatively there is a Twitter feed at @TechWireFTW to get the latest.
Other features include the ability to look up the news for a particular day in the past, as well as clicking on a story to see what other stories are related. That’s especially useful if you want to see how different outlets are covering the same issue or if you want to see how an issue has developed over time. Just click on the linked timestamp at the end of a story to see related posts.
I hope TechWire (at http://techwireftw.com/) is as useful to you as it was fun for me to code. I’d like to thank some folks who really helped me along the way: Pete Snyder and Eli Dourado for putting up with my dumb questions, Cord Blomquist for great hosting and serene patience, Adam Thierer for being the best QA department I could wish for, and my wife Kathleen for putting up with me staring at the computer for hours.
Christopher Steiner, author of Automate This: How Algorithms Came to Rule the World, discusses his new book. Steiner originally set about studying the prevalence of algorithms in Wall Street stock trading but soon found they were everywhere. Stock traders were the first to use algorithms as a substitute for human judgment to make trades automatically, allowing for much faster trading. But now algorithms are used to diagnose illnesses, interpret legal documents, analyze foreign policy, and write newspaper articles. Algorithms have even been used to look at how people form sentences to determine that person’s personality and mental state so that customer service agents can deal with upset customers better. Steiner discusses the benefits–and risks–of algorithmic automation and how it will change the world.
Psychologists Daniel Simons and Christopher Chabris had an interesting editorial in The Wall Street Journal this weekendasking, “Do Our Gadgets Really Threaten Planes?” They conducted an online survey of 492 American adults who have flown in the past year and found that “40% said they did not turn their phones off completely during takeoff and landing on their most recent flight; more than 7% left their phones on, with the Wi-Fi and cellular communications functions active. And 2% pulled a full Baldwin, actively using their phones when they weren’t supposed to.”
Despite the widespread prevalence of such law-breaking activity, planes aren’t falling from the sky and yet the Federal Aviation Administration continues to enforce the rule prohibiting the use of digital gadgets during certain times during flight. “Why has the regulation remained in force for so long despite the lack of solid evidence to support it?” Simons and Chabris ask. They note:
Human minds are notoriously overzealous “cause detectors.” When two events occur close in time, and one plausibly might have caused the other, we tend to assume it did. There is no reason to doubt the anecdotes told by airline personnel about glitches that have occurred on flights when they also have discovered someone illicitly using a device. But when thinking about these anecdotes, we don’t consider that glitches also occur in the absence of illicit gadget use. More important, we don’t consider how often gadgets have been in use when flights have been completed without a hitch. Our survey strongly suggests that there are multiple gadget violators on almost every flight.
That’s all certain true, but what actually motivated this ban — and has ensured its continuation despite a lack of evidence it is needed to diminish technological risk — is the precautionary principle. As the authors correct note: Continue reading →
The National Transportation Safety Board recommended yesterday that states ban all non-emergency use of portable electronic devices while driving, except for devices that assist the driver in driving (such as GPS). The recommendation followed the NTSB’s investigation of a tragic accident in Missouri triggered by a driver who was texting.
Personally I don’t see how someone can pay attention to the road while texting. (I’m having a hard enough time paying attention to a conference presentation while I’m typing this!) But the National Transportation Safety Board’s recommendation is a classic example of regulatory overreach based on anecdote. The NTSB wants to use one tired driver’s indefensible and extreme texting (which led to horrific results) as an excuse to ban all use of portable electronic devices while driving – including hands-free phone conversations. Before states act on this recommendation, they should carefully examine systematic evidence – not just anecdotes — to determine whether different uses of handheld devices pose different risks. They should also consider whether bans on some uses would expose drivers to risks greater than the risk the ban would prevent.
I’ve reviewed many tech policy books here over the years, but have only found myself in agreement with a couple of titles. One of my favorites is “The Laws of Disruption” by fellow TLF co-blogger Larry Downes. [My short review is here] Larry does a terrific job documenting the technological forces (or “laws” as he calls them) that our reshaping the modern economy.
The fundamental law of disruption he identifies is: “Technology changes exponentially, but social, economic, and legal systems change incrementally.” Downes says this law is “a simple but unavoidable principle of modern life” and that it will have profound implications for the way businesses, government, and culture evolve going forward. “As the gap between the old world and the new gets wider,” he argues, “conflicts between social, economic, political, and legal systems” will intensify and “nothing can stop the chaos that will follow.” He’s exactly right and I’ll be elaborating on that “law” in more detail in a new paper with Jerry Brito as well as in my next book, which I’m finishing up currently.
Anyway, with Larry’s “law” in mind, I couldn’t help but laugh out loud when I was reading this Reuter‘s summary of a recent editorial from the People’s Daily, the main newspaper of China’s ruling Communist Party. The commentary lambasted the Internet, social networking technologies, and online culture. It contained this gem of quote that proves the Chinese government has a firm grasp of the Law of Disruption: “We have failed to take into sufficient account just how much the Internet is a double-edged sword, and have a problem of allowing technology to advance while administration and regulation lag.” Continue reading →
Have you heard about 3D printing yet? Bre Pettis, founder of Makerbot, a company that sells a $1300 home 3D printer, was Wednesday night’s guest on the The Colbert Report. And back in April, Public Knowledge kicked off what’s sure to be a long public debate over the legal and policy questions raised by 3D printing with a half-day conference here in D.C.
Also called “additive manufacturing,” 3D printing is the process of “printing” a three-dimensional object layer-by-layer with equipment that’s not much different from ink-jet printers. Combine 3D printing with 3D scanning and you’ve got the first real step towards something that seems at first like total science fiction: A Star Trek replicator.
Last week’s blockbuster LinkedIn IPO valued the company at nearly $9 billion, surprising many investors, especially given the company’s initial valuation of about $4 billion. While some analysts have pointed to LinkedIn’s valuation as evidence that we may be headed into another tech bubble (a la 2000), it’s important to remember that major tech IPOs remain far less frequent in comparison to their heyday in the dot com boom. While there are many good reasons behind the recent reduction in IPO frequency, ill-conceived public policies have distorted the decision-making process of thriving startups.
Silicon Valley is teeming with budding startups whose user bases and valuations are skyrocketing. As these companies seek breathing room to grow, they will face a tough decision: stay private, seek out a buyer or go public.
Making this complex choice all the more challenging is government uncertainty. Filing for an initial public offering is harder than ever due to the onerous regulations and burdensome laws Washington has handed down over the past decade. Microsoft’s $8.5 billion purchase of Skype surprised analysts, many of whom had predicted Skype would seek an IPO or a deal with Facebook or Google.
Meanwhile, Facebook has kept quiet in face of speculation over whether it might file for an IPO. So far, the social networking giant has focused on raising capital privately. Given the risks of going public in this environment, Facebook’s decision is understandable.
While some tech firms — including LinkedIn, Kayak and Demand Media — have gone public or filed for IPOs in the past year, many others — including Hulu, Zynga, and Twitter — are reportedly leaning against going public this year. Some of these may be acquired, as happened with AdMob, a mobile advertising startup rumored to be pondering an IPO until Google bought it for $750 million in 2009.
Why do tech companies appear more reluctant to go public today than they were during the tech sector’s heyday of the early 2000s?
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology. Learn more about TLF →
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.