Competition in the Digital Age
The FTC and Google settled their differences last week, putting the final touches on an agreement. Commentators began carping from all sides as soon as the announcement came. The most biting criticisms have accused the FTC of going too easy on Google. Frankly, I think the commentators are only half right. Yes, it appears as …
Continue reading "The FTC and Google: What did Larry Learn?"
It is time to end this year by giving out technology awards! This post contains a baker’s dozen. They go to firms and managers who took notable actions in technology markets in 2012. There are no fixed categories of awards. Some categories are recycled from last year's awards, but some are new. Just like last …
Talk to the management at leading technology firms in the same market, and the similarities in opinions are striking. Most hold roughly the same set of opinions, beliefs, and ideas about how specific actions lead to successful business outcomes. For lack of a better phrase, I call this the “prevailing view.” The prevailing view is …
Does the clothesline paradox apply to information technology? There is a relationship between the clothesline paradox and digital dark matter, but there is also a subtle and important difference. It is important to keep those differences straight. It makes a difference to several contemporary policy debates. That will take some explaining. There are some terms …
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For those of you with an interest in frontier infrastructure, check out this article from Stacey Higginbotham at Gigaom. She wanted to see what *really* high speed fiber looks like in practice, so she went to Chattanooga, which has been running an experiment at the frontier. This quote will give you a feel for the …
Here is an insightful article about the changing economics of privacy. It comes from Jeff John Roberts, one of the more insightful online reporters and commentators in tech today. Here is a quote: "It has become cheap and easy to pry into the lives of others at the same time that protecting our own lives …
Tom Edsall does a nice job summarizing the increasing hollowing out of the job market in his New York Times column today. The employment/population ratio has fallen drastically since 1999 even as Real GDP hit an all time high this month. Edsall quotes Andy McAfee and me arguing that technological progress is part of the …
Kellogg Insight's Editor, Tim De Chant, and I sat down to discuss tiered pricing for broadband. It was a pretty interesting conversation, and Tim distilled it into a blog post. If you are curious to see the original post and other posts by Tim, see his blog, Expertly Wrapped. With Tim's permission, here is a …
The other day, the Wall Street Journal reported on the various ways eBook providers were gathering information on reader behavior. This is not really a surprise but as I have noted before, the notion that publishers may learn more about what readers want has generated undue alarm in some circles. This latest discussion is on …
Continue reading "Can analytics on reader behavior improve publishing?"
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 