Competition in the Digital Age
A US Federal Court ordered Apple to work to de-encrypt the iPhone of one of the San Bernardino shooters. Tim Cook has pushed back and vowed to fight the order. One suspects this one is going to end up at the Supreme Court and could be one of the most significant decisions for the digital …
Continue reading "Game Theory and Apple's Encryption Challenge"
An interesting opinion by Sarah Lustbader in the New York Times today. She argues that police body cameras are just a first step towards accountability but the camera data has to reside in a trusted third party to be of real use. But as currently implemented, body camera programs in the United States too often …
Probably not. In the New Yorker, Tim Wu argues for yes. His argument is simple. Facebook make money because they collect data that their users freely give them. For the most valuable innovation at the heart of Facebook was probably not the social network (Friendster thought of that) so much as the creation of a …
If a firm goes bankrupt, do the creditors get to auction off their email list? How about names and addresses of those in a loyalty program? Welcome to the modern privacy economic dilemma. Creditors want as much money as they can get out of assets that will pay only a fraction on the dollar owed. …
The cookie turned 20 just the other day. More than a tasty morsel of technology, two decades of experimentation have created considerable value around its use. The cookie originated with the ninth employee of Netscape, Lou Montulli. Fresh out of college in June 1994, Montulli sought to embed a user’s history in a browser’s functions. …
This week the Australian government announced what seems to be an extraordinary piece of legislation. Spies who leak sensitive information will face tough new penalties of up to 10 years' jail and internet firms could be forced to store customers' data for up to two years under sweeping national security reforms. Prompted in part by …
Continue reading "How did the Snowden revelations impact behaviour?"
I have just finished danah boyd's new book, It's Complicated: The Social Life of Networked Teens. danah was (and still is) a researcher at Microsoft Research when I was there in 2011. I didn't interact with her too much as I was focussed on other matters but it always struck me that her investigations into …
In a fascinating blog post, Adam Ozimek makes the case that we will see much more individualized pricing (which economists call "first degree price discrimination") as more data mining becomes available. For instance, in a new working paper, Ben Shiller is able to use big data to massively improve his ability to predict demand for Netflix subscriptions by any given individual: …
Continue reading "Will Big Data Create a Personalized Pricing Nirvana for Retailers?"
I was at a conference early this week hosted by the Technology Policy Institute. One of the keynote address was by the Chair of the FTC where she talked about big data and privacy. It struck me in listing to the speech that there was insufficient attention being paid as to what might be effective …
Over at Forbes.com recently I have written a few posts that will likely be of interest to readers here. "Can Apps Transform Learning into Games?" Forbes.com, 13th June 2012. "If World Leaders can Misplace Children, What about the Rest of Us?" Forbes.com, 11th June 2012. "Is There Evidence that Free Ranging on Facebook is Bad for Tweens?" Forbes.com, …
Continue reading "A few posts on children, Facebook and learning apps"
Digitopoly 