As Henry Blodget explained in his excellent Business Insider column yesterday, “Goldman Sachs Clients Can Invest In Facebook’s IPO — But You Can’t,” America’s increasingly counter-productive accounting, disclosure, and governance regulations are increasingly thwarting the ability of average Americans to invest in the leading capitalist companies of the Digital Age:
in an effort to protect investors from fraud (which is actually not the reason most IPOs fail), the government erected huge new barriers to going public, making it prohibitively expensive for most small companies to IPO. So now small, speculative companies generally don’t IPO. Instead, they stay private. And/or they do what Facebook just did, which was do a “private IPO” with Goldman Sachs. What’s a private IPO? It’s a mechanism in which Goldman’s rich clients can invest in Facebook. But you can’t. Seriously!
As I continue to do research for what will become a chapter-length version of my old essay, “Are You An Internet Optimist or Pessimist? The Great Debate over Technology’s Impact on Society,” I am reading or re-reading some old books that have touched upon these debates through the years. Earlier this week, after an event over at ITIF, my friend Rob Atkinson reminded me that he had discussed some of these issues in his 2004 book, The Past and Future of America’s Economy. Specifically, in Chapter 6, “The New Economy and Its Discontents,” Rob showed how “American history is rife with resistance to change,” as he recounts some of the heated battles over previous industrial / technological revolutions. I really loved this bit on page 201:
This conflict between stability and progress, security and prosperity, dynamism and stasis, has led to the creation of a major political fault line in American politics. On one side are those who welcome the future and look at the New Economy as largely positive. On the other are those who resist change and see only the risks of new technologies and the New Economy. As a result, a political divide is emerging between preservationists who want to hold onto the past and modernizers who recognize that new times require new means.
I like those “Preservationists” vs. “Modernizers” descriptors, and I like the fact that Rob also uses the “dynamism and stasis” paradigm, which he borrowed from Virginia Postrel, who contrasted those conflicting worldviews in her 1998 book, The Future and Its Enemies. As I noted in my essay about “Two Schools of Internet Pessimism,” I think that “dynamist vs. stasis” model — more than anything else I’ve read before or since — best explains the chasm that separates competing schools of thinking about the Internet’s impact on culture, economy, and society. Continue reading →
To hails of derision in some quarters—I’m looking at you, Adam—I have talked about how social media will occupy some of the space being ceded by traditional news reporting, which is struggling to find a business model. Perhaps with validation from an official, vetted, professional, dead-tree news source, it will seem less ridiculous to talk about news reporting being generated spontaneously by people “on the scene” or with the greatest knowledge of facts and conditions in a particular area.
Think of the mental habit that has us calling police and fire personnel “first responders.” They are almost always, in fact, second responders, with first response undertaken by average citizens, who often do a pretty good job of it. Think of the true first responders to recent attempted bombings on transatlantic flights: ordinary citizens who thwarted the underwear and shoe bombers. (I risk painting too heroic a picture . . . .)
Newspaper reporters and photographers are intellectual second responders, who come in after the fact, as generalists, to summarize events and trends for us. Yet these are who we look to as authorities on what happened, and how to think about it? That doesn’t seem to make sense if there are other options for being informed. And now there are.
I’ll take a cue from Adam’s good work in debunking the Internet pessimists who argue that “closed” access and technology models are strangling the open/’generative’ Internet: There’s plenty of room for both—both traditional journalism, as it finds its new niche, and reporting by ordinary people who are on the scene and who have superior knowledge in a particular domain.
I suspect that we’ll find better media and filters than Twitter’s firehose of info-pellets by which to learn about things like the hostage-taking in the D.C. area. There may even be a business model in it. Go to it, technology and markets!
Beginning several years ago, the researchers assembled a dataset of more than 60,000 various crimes, including homicides. Using an algorithm they developed, they found a subset of people much more likely to commit homicide when paroled or probated. Instead of finding one murderer in 100, the UPenn researchers could identify eight future murderers out of 100.
Berk’s software examines roughly two dozen variables, from criminal record to geographic location. The type of crime, and more importantly, the age at which that crime was committed, were two of the most predictive variables.
Unlike applying data mining to detection of terrorism planning or preparation, which is exceedingly rare, using tens of thousands of examples of recidivism to discover predictive factors is a good way to focus supervision resources where they are most likely to be effective.
The article describes use of this software for monitoring parolees and probationers. Using data mining to justify anything approaching extra punishment would be a misuse, and many far more difficult issues would arise if it were used on the general population.
The Digital Millenium Copyright Act makes it a crime to circumvent digital rights management technologies but allows the Librarian of Congress to exempt certain classes of works from this prohibition.
The Copyright Office just released a new rulemaking on this issue in which it allows people to “unlock” their cell phones so they can be used on other networks and “jailbreak” closed mobile phone operating systems like the iOS operating system on Apple’s iPhones so that they will run unapproved third-party software.
This is arguably good news for consumers: Those willing to void their warranties so they can teach their phone some newtricks no longer have to fear having their phone confiscated, being sued, or being imprisoned. (The civil and criminal penalties are described in 17 USC 1203 and 17 USC 1204.) Although the new exemption does not protect those who distribute unlocking and/or jailbreaking software (which would be classified under 17 USC 1201(b), and thus outside the exemption of 17 USC 1201(a)), the cases discussed below could mean that jailbreaking phones simply falls outside of the scope of all of the DMCA’s anti-circumvention provisions.
Apple opposed this idea when it was initially proposed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, arguing that legalizing jailbreaking constituted a forced restructuring of its business model that would result in “significant functional problems” for consumers that could include “security holes and malware, as well as possible physical damage.” But who beyond a small number of geeks brave enough to give up their warranties and risk bricking their devices, is really going to attempt jailbreaking? One survey found that only 10% of iPhone users have jailbroken their phones, and the majority are in China, where the iPhone was not available legally until recently. Is it really likely that giving the tinkering minority the legal right to void their product warranties would cause any harm to the non-tinkering majority that will likely choose to instead remain within a manufacturer’s “walled garden“? I don’t think so. If, as a result of this ruling, large numbers of consumers jailbreak their phones and install pirated software, the Copyright Office can easily reconsider the exemption in its next Triennial Rulemaking.
Toy Story 3 offers many pleasures and not a little wisdom. I absorbed them with a shocking output of tears, both the laughing kind and otherwise. At one point, too, I raised my fist in solidarity, moved by the political philosophy voiced by Barbie (brilliantly played by Barbie). I liked Barbie’s quote so much that I put it on a t-shirt:
Nice, huh? Click on the picture to customize the shirt for your build and style.
Don Kellogg, Senior Manager, Research and Insights/Telecom Practice at The Nielsen Company, has a interesting essay up over at the Nielsen Wire about smartphone competition. (“iPhone vs. Android“) It includes some updated quarterly data about the state of the mobile marketplace and, once again, I am just blown away at the continuing degree of operating system (OS)-level competition.
As I have noted herebefore, this war among Apple, Google, Microsoft, RIM (Blackberry), Palm, Symbian, and others has actually forced me to ask if we have “Too Much Platform Competition” in this arena. App developers must now craft their offerings for so many platforms that it has become a significant developmental hassle and expense. But hey, from a consumer perspective, this is great! (For more details, see Berin’s post on “The Fiercely Competitive Mobile OS & Device Markets.”)
Regardless, it’s still more proof that all the hand-wringing here in Washington about the state of wireless innovation is completely unfounded. It is shocking that we have this many developer platforms in play in the smartphone sector and I am still of the belief that things will eventually shake out to just 3 major OSs. So I don’t expect this degree of competition to last. But that’s OK, we can still have plenty of competition and innovation with fewer OSs.
Since Jonathan Zittrain’s ideas about the “generativity” have permeated the intellectual climate of technology policy almost as thoroughly as those of Larry Lessig, scarcely a month passes without a new Chicken Little shouting about how the digital sky is falling in a major publication. The NYT has had not one, but two such articles in the course of a week: first, Brad Stone’s piece about Google, Sure, It’s Big. But Is That Bad? (his answer? an unequivocal yes! as I noted), followed by Virginia Heffernan’s piece “The Death of the Open Web,” which bemoans the growing popularity of smart phone apps—which she analogizes to “white flight” (a stretched analogy that, I suppose, would make Steve Jobs the digital Bull Connor).
What really ticks me off about these arguments (besides the fact that Apple critics like Zittrain use iPhones themselves without a hint of bourgeois irony) is Heffernan’s suggestion that, “By choosing machines that come to life only when tricked out with apps from the App Store, users of Apple’s radical mobile devices increasingly commit themselves to a more remote and inevitably antagonistic relationship with the Web.” To hear people like Heffernan (and others who have complained about Apple’s policies for its app store) talk, you might think that modern smart phones don’t come with a web browser at all, or that browser software is next to useless, so the fact that browsers can access any content on the web (subject to certain specific technical limitations, such as sites that use Flash) is irrelevant, and users are simply at the mercy of the “gatekeepers” that control access to app stores.
In fact, the iPhone and Android mobile browsers are amazingly agile, generally rendering pages originally designed for desktop reading in a way that makes them very easy to read on the phone—such as by wrapping text into a single column maximized to fit either the landscape or portrait view of the phone, depending on which way it’s pointed. In fact, I do most of my news reading on my Droid, and using its browser rather than through any app—although there are a few good news apps to choose from. In fact, I probably spend about 10 times as much time using my phone’s browser as I spend using all other 3rd party apps (i.e., not counting the phone, e-mail, calendar, camera and map “native” apps). So I can get any content I want using the phone’s browser, I certainly don’t lose any sleep at night over what I can or can’t do in apps I get through the app store. I’d love to see actual statistics on the percent of time that smartphone users spend using their mobile browser, as compared to third-party apps. Do they exist?
But however high that percentage might be, the important thing is that the smartphone browser offers an uncontrolled tool for accessing content, even if apps on that mobile OS do not. Continue reading →
Every once an awhile I like to post something about my favorite tech toys, apps, and services to highlight what I think are spectacular innovations in the field. I usually do so at the end of the year, like this. But I there’s no reason to wait for end of the year lists. So here are a few things that are currently making my life better. [Note to pesky FTC before they send the Blog Police to my door… I didn’t get paid for any of these “endorsements”!]
NewsRoom RSS Reader: After months of searching fruitlessly for a decent RSS reader for Android, I finally stumbled upon NewsRoom last month. Wow, what a life-changer. It has become my primary RSS reader largely taking over for Bloglines on my PC (which is an app desperately in need of a makeover). NewsRoom’s slick interface is the most friendly finger-swiping app I’ve ever touched. I can quickly flip (left and right) through headlines for each feed and then easily pull up full text of any particular post with a quick flip of the thumb up. The only downside is the limited number of feeds you can have on the main pages. But that actually helped me go back and sort through my feeds to determine which ones I needed to be reading on a daily basis vs those that I can just monitor every couple days or weekly via my PC. I love this app.
TweetDeck (v.34): I have no idea how the folks at TweetDeck make any money, but they produce one the most spectacular pieces of freeware on the planet. It makes Twittering a real joy by making it a cinch to follow multiple hashtag topics in addition to your primary friends and mentions. And reTweeting is super simple. And version 32 just raises the bar even higher with new features like scheduled Tweets, maps, Buzz and Foresquare integration, and much more. I would gladly pay a few bucks a month for TweetDeck, but this amazing app remains free to the public. Apparently they are booking revenue, but I can’t figure out how. (Seriously, how do they do it?!) Regardless, keep up the great work guys… and hurry up and get the Android version out! I played with TweetDeck for the iPhone and it is outstanding. I’m pretty happy with TwiDroid, but I think I’d prefer TweetDeck for my Droid. Continue reading →
According to the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press' First Amendment Handbook, twelve states forbid the recording of private conversations without the consent of all parties. Maryland is one of them.
And now a guy who was recording his own antics on a motorcycle is facing a felony charge because he continued recording during a traffic stop. David Rittgers has more on the Cato@Liberty blog.
Laws that ban all surreptitious recording to get at wrongful recording are overbroad and damaging. Laws that prevent the recording of police officers are particularly wrongheaded. Maryland needs some technology liberation.
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.