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***SNS*** Ten Things We Know
Note: We are looking for FiReStarter companies for FiRe 2009. If you know of a company, whether startup or established, doing world-class innovation that deserves the attention of our global membership, please let us know, by contacting sam@stratnews.com. It’s a great opportunity for the company, and for the rest of us. – mra.
The FiRe Box:
There are few things more fun than putting a new Future in Review conference together, and that is what I have been up to over the last week. Let me share some highlights with members who may want to be part of this next gathering of the minds. First, you now know our new theme:
“Shaping the Rebound: Technology Driving Economics”
You’ve been watching Hewlett-Packard’s gravity-defying performance over the last few months, noticing that Chairman, President, and CEO Mark Hurd not surprisingly spends most of his time at work, which explains these amazing numbers.
If you want to meet and hear Mark Hurd, perhaps the most successful technology CEO at work today, come to FiRe 2009.
But what else will you find?
A new panel on “Cloud 2.0” (our term) and how it will support corporations and consumers over the next few years.
A separate panel on Unleashing the Power of Dynamic Network Infrastructure, looking at the design and performance of Net infrastructure.
A continued series of conversations on Fixing Healthcare, as technology steps in where politicians fear to tread.
A group discussion on wireless broadband, LTE, WiMAX, and other global 4G alternatives. And a separate look at NASA’s wireless broadband technology.
A panel led by a National Medal of Technology laureate, on the real science behind today’s alternative energy solutions.
A closer look at the CarryAlong/mini/netbook form factor: where is it headed, and will this be the best-selling computer of all time?
On-the-ground application of new green energy technologies in Hawaii and China.
1:1 educational computing in new Inkwell pilot programs in Mexico, the U.S., and Africa, opening the door to the greatest computer sales opportunity of the decade.
Supervisualization and the OptIPuter, another series of great demonstrations by Larry Smarr and the “FiRe Lab,” the UCSD’s Calit2.
And much more.
Member Price Alert: Capture our Future in Review interim price of $3900 before January 31, and save $1000 off our $4900 registration fee. We have never offered this price before, so get it now, before it slips away –
Date and Place: May 19-22, 2009, Hotel del Coronado, San Diego. Register here to join us for the best Future in Review yet:
» Ten Things We know
As we enter the New Year, perhaps the overwhelming sense among investors and managers is the long list of what is not known. For most of these people, there has never been a time of greater uncertainty, when literally every parameter is a wild card. Inflation, up or down? Currencies, ditto? Markets? Confidence? Unemployment? Manufacturing?
I thought perhaps at a time like this it might be useful to name some of the important things that we DO know, in guiding our views forward and making plans for the coming year.
Here, without further ado, are some trends I think we can count on, even in these confusing times:
1. Inflation Follows Contraction. I want to make sure our members remember what started all this craziness; even people like Jamie Dimon don’t seem to get it, based on his comments in Seattle a week ago. It isn’t enough to be a bank manager today; you have to see the global picture. These problems were caused by too much global liquidity, which led to asset bubbles of all kinds, all around the world – not just in real estate in the U.S. When we solve the secondary credit contraction problems with the largest stimulus spending bills ever conceived, inflation is going to be waiting there for us, bigger than life. Obama’s team senses this, and talks about the second stage of belt-tightening. Most others don’t get it yet: it is the greatest threat to long-term economic stability.
Study your history, Jamie. And everyone else should make sure the G20 raise central bank rates quickly, once the rebound starts. And yes, Japan, and yes, Dubai and Saudi, this means you.
2. Chips and Software Are the Drivers. I used to say that chips alone were the economic indicators of technology market expansion; in that sense, they were the metrics, although some, by their clever design, were drivers as well (the 086 Intel chipset comes to mind). Today, I think chips are still drivers (look at power reduction in processors and resulting increased battery life in CarryAlong PCs), but software increasingly gets the spotlight.
In the near term, I am looking to software as the primary source of economic growth in the world, coupled with the provision of bandwidth to emerging countries.
3. Moore’s Great Shrink Continues, Metcalfe’s Values Persist. No matter what, devices and gadgets will continue to get smaller, even as their value as part of an expanding network rises. Many members, including Jeb Terry of Aberdeen Investments, recognize the dual power of these M and Ms. These are trends all planners can take to the bank, whether they are following GPS applied to social networks, or something like it.
4. Integration Rules. The hard part isn’t usually inventing the chip or the word processor; it is integrating these features into something that people find useful and intuitive. Even more important: the phase after the second layer of invention, when many inventions are merged into a single product, integrating cleanly what was a “mash” before. This will be the primary area of innovation over the next few years.
5. R and D Is the New Gas. While many companies are cutting back in this critical and vulnerable budget area, companies like Intel are refusing to cut. Craig Barrett, Intel chair, recently noted in a Finland conference that R and D is the differentiating factor that pulls a company through times like these. He is absolutely right: it is a more effective competitive edge in down times than in up.
6. Video Is the New Text. This will be a huge driver of technology, commerce, and socialization over the next decade and beyond. Whether you are using webcams to see your kids, London, the ferry dock, or the crime scene, or you are sending in live phone video of private parties to YouTube, video is the new communications medium. Long reserved for those with money, it is now as common as pencil and paper, and its requirements for capture, display and transmission, and storage and indexing will drive many economic plans forward during the decade.
7. “Laissez Faire” Economics Is a Disaster. So much for ancient French theories. Here is the new question: are we smart enough to self-regulate? Only idiots still believe in no regulation, but how many Nobelists, specializing in market forces and their control, have also failed this test? If we can safely dump the “Hands Free” idea of markets, and find something better, we at least will have a chance at stable growth.
8. Things Will Be Different. Those expecting the world to look the same when we come out of this mess are, I believe, sadly mistaken. And those who most quickly recognize the early faces of the many differences we’ll experience are most likely to strike it rich. Instead of waiting for the old things to get fixed, the game now ought to be inventing new things which work much better. There has never been a greater set of opportunities available, for those with the drive, vision, and energy to provide new, and better, solutions to global problems.
9. Mercantilism Isn’t Free-Market Capitalism. It is time for the West to wake up: Japan and China and Russia are not playing by the same rules as the Western democracies. They just aren’t. And competing with a “trading partner” that has no real intention of buying your goods is deeply stupid. Let’s use real economic terms, describe things as they are, agree on how to go forward, and get with it. If we keep insisting that no policy is good, while our partners all have goals, we are going to continue to see our champion industries appropriated, one by one. (See the last “Ethermail” for more detail on this.)
10. Currency Values Matter. Another aspect of not-free trade that seems to never get discussed. Why hammer China, when all it has done is lock into the dollar? If you want to go after China, complain about its preferential purchase of Chinese goods on the global market (get ready for the 3G auctions, for instance, or the new buy-Chinese airline preferences), or about its working conditions and low pay.
Meanwhile, Japan intervenes in the global currency markets on a regular basis to make sure its companies have an ongoing advantage in exports. True, it’s been unable to fight the river over the last few months, but that insufficiency is set on a much larger stage of decades of intervention. The South Koreans are following the Japanese model, as they always do. Shouldn’t this be a topic of conversation in looking at global trade?
And Number 11, a free extra point that we can now count on going forward:
If you cut taxes and increase spending you will immediately go bust.
The old shameless Laffer ploy of combining the greed of the few with the stupidity of the electorate is, it turns out over and over and over again, a deadly move for all. Reagan proved it. Bush 41 proved it. Bush 43 proved it again. It was also the basis, once more, of the last U.S. election. Let’s hear no more of “trickle down,” and much more of “balance the budget.” And let’s be fully aware that all of the spending done today will have to be supported by revenues tomorrow. A stimulus may be necessary, but the sooner these are in balance, the better for all of us.
Your comments are always welcome. Sincerely,
» Upcoming SNS Events
Our highest appreciation to The Rodel Foundations, returning as the Thunderbird Internship Sponsors of FiRe 2009:
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For inquiries about SNS Events and/or Sponsorship opportunities, please contact Sharon Anderson-Morris (“SAM”), SNS Programs Director, at sam@tapsns.com or 435-649-3645.
» SNS Media
A new library for a new year: here are your favorite books, including who has proposed them, whether they’re fiction or nonfiction, and ready clicks to Amazon:
http://www.tapsns.com/members/books.php
“SNS iNews is a terrific idea.” – Peter Petre, Author and Past Sr. Editor, FORTUNE magazine
Are you an AORTA (Always On RealTime Access) member of SNS? Use SNS iNews™ to stay in touch, in real time, with what your fellow members and FiRe Thought Leaders are achieving – and then help them get there.
Click here for the current iNews digest: www.snsinews.com
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Mark’s Top Ten Predictions for 2009: http://www.tapsns.com/media/nydinner2008/nydinner2008-predictions.mp3
» China Goes 3G
Anyone wondering about just how important it is to China to have its own IP in a critical (technology) market, even if it requires stealing, can use the 3G auction process as Exhibit A. The same is true for case studies on ethics in business at Siemens (non-existent), the thieves-for-hire in this story.
But the most impressive part of the story is this: China was willing to forego having any form of 3G, the most advanced wireless technology, for years and years and years, in order to finally be able to offer its “own” competitive standard when auctions finally opened up. Longtime members have been watching this slow-mo train wreck in real time, and it has realllllllly taken foreverrrrrrrrr.
What is the opportunity cost of delaying 3G for a decade or so? Kind of tough on your software and content folks, not to mention supply chain members and consumers. Well, that’s how it works, when the stuff you stole still doesn’t work.
Is there some reason why no one else in the media is pointing out this joke-like project? It would be funny, if the ultimate goal were not to deprive the inventors of CDMA of their rightful IP payments, and to launch new domestic Chinese phone and infrastructure global competitors using – did I mention it ? – technology stolen from the West.
C’mon, you business reporters reading SNS: get this story out there. Don’t let the Chinese get away with a multibillion-dollar, and decade-long, holdup.
In other words, China announced this week that 3G auctions would be held shortly. That’s the part you’ll read elsewhere. And China Mobile, winning the restructuring poker game for this very purpose, will, of course, as the largest wireless firm in the world, be running TD-SCDMA, which stands for Too Darn Soon China Dominates Mobile Architectures.
» IPTV: The Next Step
How long will it be until we can just turn on our television sets and get Internet Protocol TV directly? When will we jump the old-highway barriers and roam free in the Net world of content?
As long as one has to attach special boxes, and make wires go from modems to satellite dishes to DVRs to TVs, this kind of solution will remain edgy and reserved for the pre-Chasm influencers.
Fortunately, manufacturers are starting to see the light at the end of the network TV tunnel, and it’s an approaching locomotive.
LG Electronics and Netflix announced a partnership this week, through which new High Definition TVs will come pre-installed with all necessary electronics for viewing Netflix’s 100k titles on the Net; the sets will be sold in the U.S. this spring.
The South Korean manufacturer says there will be four models available, all large screens, in 42-, 47-, 50- and 60-inch screens.
Netflix probably gets the kudos for making this happen, as the California company continues to cast about for ways to re-establish value in its disk-based distribution system. Last year, it worked a deal using Blu-Ray DVRs with LG, as a separate unit.
How long will it be before other TV makers get the message? Not long, I’ll guess; we will see more effort throughout this year to incorporate Net offerings directly into TV, and by Christmas season this should be one of the defining characteristics of new large screens.
» Microsoft to Google: Please, After You
A lot has been made of the battle of the behemoths – NW vs. Silicon Valley – as Google puts forward its various search, search and ad, search and ad and map, search and ad and map and email, and docs, and Android phone OS, and –
It’s the death by a thousand cuts, the way the press is covering it, with none of them very deep.
But I think there is another side to this: even as Microsoft continues to dominate the Operating Systems and Applications landscape, they are doing some things that beg for abuse.
Did you read that right? Sure.
Let’s say that Google will never write any software that beats out Word at word processing, or the MS OSs at providing the millions of drivers for today’s consumer electronics. Fair enough: does that mean the Microsoft franchise is safe? Or is there one way, one single way, for Google to gain share, even in MS’ home turf?
I want to note that Google has used a pretty clever approach in this war; obviously there are some Sun Tzu readers down in the Valley. The company plays to its strengths, and generally avoids head-on competition. In mixed areas, where it has obvious natural advantages in remote computing (cloud), it uses them. For those reasons alone, Google Docs is making headway: last week my kids were circulating versions of docs effortlessly through the cloud, something that would require thousands of dollars and weeks of time in setting up an Exchange Server, in MS-country.
Score a big one for Google.
And Gmail seems to be winning, too, with lots of new video and gadget attachments that make it the darling of the younger set.
What could possibly tip the balance, in a struggle like this? How about shipping versions of your flagship products that are full of problems, if not bugs, and that your own customers clearly don’t like?
Start with Vista. The most hated OS in history? Thank you, said Apple, and Google, whose Android phone OS was recast as a normal personal computer OS this week, with “about three hours’ work,” according to the duo responsible.
Move on to Explorer 8 beta, which, in my humble opinion, should not have been put out there, even under the “beta” title. It continues to crash, hang, not load sites, and generally misbehave, even as the built-in advertising features I really don’t care about load it down.
With share already shifting toward Mozilla’s Firefox and Apple’s Safari (and with Google’s Chrome not ready for prime time, but no doubt eager), get ready for an acceleration of this shift as MS ships its next IE product.
And then we need come back to email, the most important communications product of the last 50 years. Why do I still long for cc:mail, which MS bought over a decade ago, and why do I still use Eudora instead of Hotmail or Outlook Express? OK, this is complicated, but I’m going to give it a try:
Folders.
I know this is asking a lot for the world’s greatest programming team, but providing folders and filtering, so we can organize email according to task, would be – well, it’s a feature that was so obvious to the pioneers in email, that they all included it, maybe 20 years ago. Check out the now-open-systems Eudora, and see what you can do.
I think the point is simple: what Google cannot taketh away, Microsoft can giveth, by shipping poor critical product upgrades.
Why and how would this happen? Someone else can write that book, but I’ll wager we have many MS members who will privately agree that this is happening, and who wish it could be fixed. Right now, the war is swinging toward Google, many thanks to Microsoft.
SNS TakeOut Window
Here is a quick look at post-Christmas online e-commerce stock performance:
Amazon.com Inc. 1 Month:
Blue Nile Inc. 1 Month:
eBay Inc. 1 Month:
Overstock.com Inc. 1 Month:
Executive Postings
Our Newest Offering:
SNS members are encouraged to share postings that would be of interest to fellow members. This might include vacation rentals, job postings, jobs sought, business opportunities, funds needed for startups or expansion (no priced solicitations), and other categories. There is currently no charge for posting, and we reserve the right to veto offerings deemed unsuitable. We hope this will afford members yet another way of communicating and benefiting from their membership.
– mra.
For Rent: Luxury Home, Winter Wonderland
Enjoy 7,000 ft. altitude “Wow!” views from this Winter Wonderland Luxury Home for rent in Park City, Utah.
$600/night prior to the Sundance Film Festival (January 15th-25th) $1000/night during the Sundance Film Festival
Quotes of the Week
“If they (users) find content that is contrary to Chinese law, they can report it to Google. And if we find it’s truly illegal, we’ll deal with it according to the law.” Cui Jin, a Google public relations officer in Beijing, commenting on the report of China’s crackdown on sites and search engines, ostensibly over pornography.
“Hard times often come hand in hand with opportunities. For healthy Japanese companies, this is truly an excellent chance to plant the seeds for the future.” Teruo Asada, president and CEO of Marubeni, Japan’s fifth largest trading company.
“This is the first time I’ve seen this story. But I must say that I’m really happy to have read it. I am very glad to see that people are following what I did, and have succeeded in beating me. I would say that the other youngsters should follow suit, thereby convincing the people to take us kids seriously. Our generation is very talented, and so should be promoted.” Arfa Karim, Pakistan, the first 9-year-old Microsoft certified professional, on others her age also getting certified.
“There are skeptics of carbon neutrality who will say, ‘That’s kind of bogus.’ Instead of using that as an excuse for inaction, we’ve said, ‘There’s a lot you can do.’” Dane Parker, Dell director of environment, health, and safety.
“[The Wii] dominated the top sellers in video games and hardware, including the Wii console, the Wii remote controller, and the Wii Nunchuk controller.” Amazon spokesperson.
“To an endocrinologist, the most vague statement you can ever make is the term ‘hormone imbalance.’” Clay Semenkovich, endocrinologist at Washington University, St. Louis; on Steve Jobs’ disclosure of the condition as a health problem.
“[China will provide] strong support” to China’s homegrown 3G technology, known as TD-SCDMA, which is being adopted by China’s largest carrier, China Mobile Ltd. From the Wall Street Journal, last week.
“The worst has not come yet. The problem is three times worse than anybody thinks.” Terry Gou, CEO of Hon Hai Precision Industry Company, Taiwan, the world’s largest contractor of consumer electronics.
“They’re incredibly scared of this. They don’t know how to operate in this environment.” Yevgeny Gontmakher, economic advisor to the Kremlin. Quoted in the Wall Street Journal.
“We’re strapped for cash, and by the end of March or early April we may not have enough money to pay for payroll.” Hector De La Rosa, Rio Vista City Manager, California.
“California’s fiscal house is burning down.” Bill Lockyer, state treasurer, California.
“I know the laptop project for looked after children is already proving a success and I am thrilled that we are able to roll it out in this way.” Rosalie Monbiot, council cabinet member of Children’s Services, Norfolk County Council, U.K.; upon the U.K. Department for Children, Schools, and Families giving them 310k pounds for free laptops for K-12 students.
Once again, super reporting and analysis. There’s more than a year’s worth of information in this one issue.
To your point about the time it took to achieve some of the product innovations you’ve described in your Top 10, I wrote about this challenge last year in an agency white paper – I called it “The Year of Stitching It Together.” As an old channels guy, for me, it always comes down to the integration process…these really hard computer science problems are multi-variate. So the complexity is almost logarithmic – the bigger the problem to be solved, the more moving parts that have to be stitched together. And it just takes time – usually way more time than anyone estimated in the beginning. Even the most vertically integrated companies are beholden to somebody, somewhere, sometime in the process. I remember, regretfully, when I was writing in 1984 about The Year of the LAN. I do have to own up….
Again, great predictions and very thoughtful stuff. Have a great holiday.
Cheers
Phil Missimore Senior Vice President Waggener Edstrom Worldwide San Francisco, CA
Mark,
Backing up Jim Peoples’ “Factory Music” idea: there’s a precedent in ancient China. I understand that when China’s first emperor unified weights and measures across the country, storage vessels were graded (and presumably shaped) according to the note they made when struck; different notes of course indicated different volumes of container. This made it easy to check your grain merchant’s legitimacy; just give his serving container a whack with a stick.
Maybe this is what the Chinese mean when they say they value harmony...
Chris Worth CEO Redpump Ltd. London
Chris,
Most physicists and biochemists I know are oblivious to this discovery by Einstein, but I stumbled upon it during my first year in graduate studies at the University of British Columbia:
I was looking for a way to measure the process of dynamic biochemical reactions, and I decided that it might be useful to create a flow tube along which the reaction was occurring. Then I could, I thought, inject sound in some way, and measure the absorption change of the sound as it passed through the liquid/metabolite mix. The more metabolite, the greater the change, depending on frequency.
This is not so different from tapping vessels, except perhaps a little more complex –
Imagine my surprise when I turned up a little-known piece of theory by the Great Man himself, predicting this effect.
Who knows? Perhaps one of our members will make something of all this talk about acoustical measurement. Since acoustics can be used for many things, it may fit into that ultimate dream of machines without any moving parts, all sound and light.
Mark Anderson
Mark,
I think that Ofcom has done a good job of forcing BT to turn from an incumbent-turned-monopolist to a competitor, but it’s disappointing that the C21 project is so far behind target; and if our broadband was that good, it wouldn’t need the Ofcom oversight. But I think there’s a fundamental difference in the approach to building out the network between the UK and the US. We were talking recently to Chris Stening, the MD of Sky’s broadband arm (who now runs the ISP Simon once set up, UK Online) and he doesn’t see insurmountable traffic problems in the future, just the need to keep investing and scaling the network – and finding a way to make a profit doing it. The feeling I get from the US networks is that they see bandwidth as a scarcity and I don’t know if there’s more than a philosophical difference behind it.
I don’t think facial input would be as simplistic as switching windows purely on eye tracking; but it would be an element in a contextually aware system that looked at your calendar, the weather, the traffic patterns, whether you are where you said you’d be, whether you were actively reading documents or idly scanning photos to decide how to notify you about things. Check out what Eric Horvitz of MSR is doing as part of his “considerate computing” development (and compare and contrast the sensor and location platform in Windows 7 for a better way to make context information available).
On the sound of a factory: there are some really interesting developments in what you can do with sound analysis. Am I allowed to quote myself? “Monitoring in a French nuclear power station based not on pressure, temperature or radiation but vibration and sound. It’s not safety monitoring as such, but it’s aimed at avoiding unplanned maintenance… A high quality camera costs ten times as much a high quality microphone and interpreting video footage means analysing the entire image, but you can filter out known noises like air conditioning or the normal sound of machinery – Paris Smaragdis of Mitsubishi’s research lab has been working on how to use this for several years.
It’s easier to tell the difference between a phone ringing and a door squeaking than it is to tell whether someone is saying “four candles” or “fork handles” and even a mobile phone has enough processing power to recognise sounds like footsteps in an empty room. You can use that to tell the security camera where to point – or to tell the security guard which of fifty cameras have a picture worth checking out. You could tell which conference room is always full of people talking, which is nearly always empty and which gets used by people typing away getting some real work done – which helps you know if you need to plan for more conference rooms or give people real offices instead of cubicles.
Mitsubishi already has a PVR and DVD player that uses crowd noise to tell you which bit of the game you recorded is likely to have a goal – or something else worth watching. The Motion Smoothly 3 software on the FOMA D903i mobile phone picks out video highlights using the same techniques. The MPEG-7 standard includes sound indexing that can detect speech, singing, environmental noises, animal sounds, musical instruments and musical genres – imagine getting a playlist of audiobooks or relaxing music without having to tag everything by hand.
Smaragdis has just finished a project in Kentucky, using the microphones in cameras pointed at a dangerous intersection to listen for horns blaring, tires squealing, bumpers crunching and the typical sounds of an accident. The camera has a recording buffer of a few seconds and the audio analyser works fast enough that it can tell the camera to save that footage, turn on and catch the whole incident on tape – the emergency services know when there’s a problem and you don’t have hours or days of footage to check through when you want to find out why the intersection is so dangerous. The system can also detect sirens from an ambulance or fire engine and switch the traffic lights to let it through.
http://www.itpro.co.uk/blogs/maryb/2007/10/18/the-sound-of-safety/
All the best and Happy Christmas!
Mary Branscombe Technology journalism & consultancy London
Mary,
The bandwidth attitude in the U.S. is indeed different, and comes, I am fairly sure, from the DNA of the telecoms as monopolists: why should I invest and build more, when I can make more money by depriving you and charging higher rates?
This is the story of bandwidth in the U.S., at least until now.
I love your sound bites. I bet there are plenty more examples where sound clues could be used to enhance visual or analytic inputs.
Mark Anderson
Mark,
[Here is a] dramatic illustration of your concept of how speech recognition will work -- the “smarts” are centralized, input and output are distributed. Once again, events develop as you predicted they would. Add this to your list of 3-4 years in advance calls.
http://www.technologyreview.com/communications/21696/?a=f
Director of Technology Sagamore Institute for Policy Review Indianapolis, Indiana
Rollie,
The Internet Assistant really is about to arrive. Between Google, vlingo, and Nuance, we will have an appropriate voice front end; and between Google, Amazon, and Microsoft, we’ll have the server farms necessary to do the heavy lifting for untrained continuous voice (always a horsepower story), plus the back-end services integration.
Add learning over time, and you’re there. Well, that only took about seven years.
Mark Anderson
Re: SNS Special Alert: Steve Jobs Out: Of What? Mark,
I really appreciate these “flash” updates.
We’ve been trying to work with Apple for months and know the reputation Steve has for being the highly controlling decision maker on all issues so we’ve been approaching it that way. I tend to agree with you, if Steve ends up out of the picture (our best thoughts are with him), it’s hard for us to know how to even work with Apple – who will fill the vacuum? Not a great deal we can do about it, but helps to know what we might be dealing with.
Best for the Holidays,
Dave Grannan President and CEO vlingo Cambridge, MA
Mark,
Did you notice that Novell has also cancelled BrainShare? And judging by the tumbling hotel prices, CES will be quieter than in some years. Perhaps the cost of events is uneconomic and Apple was just ahead of the curve? Of course, perhaps not...
All the best Mary Branscombe London
Mark,
I most certainly agree with you. I hope Steve does not leave us over this holiday. I’m not certain that Apple can ever be the same without Jobs.
Hope all is well with you.
Have a wonderful holiday season.
Sincerely,
Hank Coleman CEO and Director Open Labs Austin, TX
Dave, Mary, and Hank,
The news today and yesterday has been full of Steve’s “disclosure” that he has a “hormone imbalance” which has been “robbing me of the proteins I need.”
Really?
For some reason, he still refuses to explain the real causes of his condition, an arrogance that amazes me. It is, after all, shareholder money, and not his money, for which he is the fiduciary.
In this disclosure, he says that he only just recently found out the cause for his weight loss. This leaves guessing room that he did not have whatever data he now has before the company canceled his Macworld appearance, and all future Macworlds.
I am glad I sounded the warning, and hope that he really has found something recently, and hope that it really does work, and hope that it really isn’t a relapse or something else. I expect we’ll know a little if he puts on weight.
I hate being in this guessing game about something so important; but so, I would guess, does The Magician.
Mark Anderson
Mark,
I wish you and the entire SNS Team a relaxing and joyous holiday season.
With SNS stretching its tentacles into different methods of communication, I feel that your hard work dedication and tenacity over the past twelve years is beginning to pay off in terms of improved media visibility and personal recognition. Of course it helps that many of your predictions are dead on the mark, too! For subscribers, I feel that under your mentorship a “brotherhood,” rather than just another community, has emerged. Your way of developing ideas across scientific and social boundaries has, perhaps, changed how SNSers view each other, how they approach issues, and even how they think.
Good job.
Best wishes,
CEO Enterprise of the Future NYC
P.s. Thank you for the insight on Apple and Steve’s health. While, and I must say sadly, I would agree that Apple’s posturing pre Macworld looks like a black cloud, what do you think about the chance that Steve is really doing well, and wants to use the drama around Macworld to “surprise” everyone with a spectacular appearance?
I note your pessimism about Apple after Jobs. This implies a major impact on media, CE, and life of millions of Apple Addicts (including me). Perhaps it would make sense to have a “Why/Why Not” newsletter or a web discussion with input from you and others at SNS? The industry without Apple? That’s a big prediction.
Best regards,
Tom
Thomas, I personally don’t see an Apple without Steve; if that is the question, the debate would be interesting, but ultimately without much use.
Thank you for your interesting and kind comments about our “brotherhood.” I had not thought of it in that terminology, although it has always been clear to me, since our first Future in Review meeting, that our group was more than just another community.
I don’t think there is another community like it. If you go to any other shows, no matter what kind, you may find card-swapping, or old friends re-uniting over a beer, but you don’t ever find the sense of shared world view, optimism, and activism that permeates our group.
We have something to share, to be proud of, and to make use of, and I think we are all still learning how it works. I certainly don’t know what to call it.
Mark Anderson
Mark,
Subject: Planned EU tax could kill mobile TV: chip maker Reuters, Tuesday December 23 2008
* EU’s planned 14 percent tax could kill mobile TV market * Tax could deter handset makers, consumers * Global mobile TV market forecast at $10.9 bln in 2013.
By Tarmo Virki
HELSINKI, Dec 23 (Reuters) - European Commission plans to introduce a 14 percent tax on cellphones with TV receivers would kill the potentially lucrative market before it ever takes off, a senior official at the world’s top mobile TV chip maker said.
On Dec. 10 the Commission sent member states a formal proposal to reclassify some phones as “multi-functional devices”, which would trigger additional taxes on phones with TV receivers.
“It’s crazy. This would definitely be a killer,” said Azzedine Boubguira, head of marketing at Paris-based DiBcom.
CEO TECSA Diss, UK and LeTouque, FR
Tim,
You know what they say:
If it moves, tax it.
As a U.S. citizen, I am glad to hear that the Euro folk are acting almost as dumbly as we have been with the advent of new media. We need a few years of this so we can catch up, from where we are at 23rd place or so –
I will note that we will be having a thread on fixed wireless and broadband wireless at FiRe 2009, with participants from Qualcomm and (I think) Clearwire. Chetan Sharma is also putting a discussion together. If you would like to be a speaker on this subject, please contact me.
Mark Anderson
Re: SNS Holiday Best Book List Mark,
Thanks for pulling this together, Mark. Great idea and I’m already on a buying binge!
Steve Vandegrift Founder SRV Holdings Austin, TX
Steve,
Very glad to be of assistance, at least in gathering members’ favorites. I personally love seeing this list, each time we do it. Members can see it again, clicking off of the home page at www.stratnews.com.
Mark Anderson
Mark,
Subject: Interesting Read Here are some interesting blog posts and excellent reader commentary. Very timely given soon to be passed, yet to be announced, stimulus package. Also touches on some of your recent beefs about exporting production capacity overseas, giving away hard earned R&D, long term vs. short term, etc.
Perhaps the Euro is rapidly becoming the world’s new reserve currency followed probably a decade later by the Yuan.
But the broader implications of the issues discussed are staggering. The end of an empire.....
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2009/01/willem-buiter-calls-for-less-us.html
Regards,
Alex Baluta [Analyst] Toronto, Canada
Alex,
Thanks for pointing out this piece by Buiter et al. to us; it focuses, for once, on what economists don’t know, so much larger an area than what they do.
There are many people at this turning of the year who, quite legitimately, wonder if anyone, anywhere, has the science to provide a light for where economic structures go next. What was the “dismal science” looks a lot sorrier, and a great deal less scientific, today than it did a few months ago.
Increasingly, this seems like my old view of an economic trade war, fought behind the backs of the unwitting public. The EU was the start, and then NAFTA, solidifying for the U.S. the same access to low-cost capital and resources that each other trading bloc had gained. Today’s currency manipulations, conducted daily (or so it seems) by Japan and, more recently, South Korea, with Europe next up on the list, seems to underline your question.
Is it a currency war? Certainly currencies are key to export domination, which itself is the key goal of mercantilism. Many people think that Japan quit this fight years ago, when its bubble popped: what foolishness. It is just refining the model, and doing all it can to stay out of our sights, once we (the U.S.) showed the willingness to use tariffs (Super301) against it.
And China, long considered by Americans to be some kind of hotbed of capitalism, seems nothing more to me than a refined copy of Japan’s mercantilism: it took the best, left the rest, and added the Communist Party where the LDP and various keiretsu had maintained top-down control.
Today, (EU President) Sarkozy increasingly wants “dirigisme,” or top-down control, as his colleagues will hear in the next few days during their meeting on fixing the global economic systems.
And Putin, as of Wednesday, has again shut off gas to not only the Ukraine, but perhaps 12 other countries, in the midst of winter. Don’t forget, this ultimate top-down dictator is apparently behind killing his own people during the apartment bombings, in order to get a political lift against the target Chechens.
Where are global free trade and markets in all this? In the dustbin. And the sooner members realize it, the sooner they will be dealing with the world as it is, and not as we all wish it to be.
Mark Anderson
I would like to welcome, among others, these new members to the SNS family: David Lahaie, President, Evergreen Recycling Inc., Seattle, WA; Maggie Overfelt, Editor and Technology Reporter, Forbes Small Business Magazine, New York, NY; Amir Amirani, documentary filmmaker, London, U.K.; Lance Michalson, Principal, Michalsons, Cape Town, WP; David Ruberg, CEO, Interxion, The Netherlands; and many more.
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Where’s Mark?
On January 16th, Mark will give his traditional 2009 Predictions speech to the TAG section of the Washington Technology Industry Association, in Bellingham, WA, 12pm at the Syre Auditorium, Whatcom Community College. On January 22nd, he will be hosting speaker and past SmithKline Beecham CEO Henry Wendt at the Spring Street Discovery Speaker Series in Friday Harbor, San Juan Island, at Friday Harbor House. February 13th-16th, he will be participating in the Aspen Institute Socrates series led by Judy Estrin, and March 26th-27th, he will be keynoting a special guest CEO meeting hosted by Orange Wireless in London. On March 31st, he will keynote the 2009 CRIM (Centre de recherche informatique de Montral) Crystal Ball Conference, at the Palais de congres de Montreal. On April 29th, he will be the opening keynote speaker for Accenture in Vancouver, B.C. Later that week, he will be speaking at the Family Circle conference in Heidelberg, Germany.
In between times, he will be listening to Swedish classical music, wondering how the musical culture of a whole country or region could have been so long invisible, and so quickly and easily discovered. Like unexpected treasures within a walled city: are there many more of these?
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