The most accurate predictive letter in computing and telecommunications,
read by industry leaders worldwide.

 

 

 

In This Issue     Feature: What Is China? Part II: Members Respond     Quotes of the Week   Ethermail   SNS Takeout Window   The End of Print Journalism? The New Dell Slate, in Concept Form Members Seeking Opportunities   In Other House News…   New Member Welcome How to Subscribe May I Share This Newsletter? About SNS About the Publisher Where’s Mark?

“While I was at Hewlett-Packard, we did a search to see who were the top ‘influencers’ in technology. Mark came up No. 2.” – Bob Sherbin, now VP, Corporate Communications, NVIDIA.

 

Obviously, this has to be fixed.

 

 

Save $1,500 on Future in Review 2010 by signing up before January 31: www.tapsns.com/fire/registration.php

 

Suggested resolutions for 2010:

 

1. Join global thought leaders for Year Eight of “the best technology conference in the world” (The Economist).
2. Capture the FiRe 2010 Early Bird rate by January 31.
3. Come to Terranea, the most beautiful resort in California, May 11-14.

 

And meet NVIDIA CEO Jen-Hsun Huang, subject of our Centerpiece Conversation, where he will explain how his GPU chips are replacing Intel’s CPUs at every level of computing;

 

and SNS Member Paul Jacobs, CEO of QUALCOMM, for our Day 2 Centerpiece Conversation on Smartbooks, Snapdragon chips, and the future of wireless.

 

Other themes we’ll be addressing:

 

Netbooks: Since we invented them, FiRe is a great place to learn about how the fastest-growing form factor in computing will expand over the next three years.

 

Cloud Computing: Last year, FiRe was the launch pad for the Infrastructure 2.0 Working Group, fixing until-then unknown “broken” aspects in Cloud design. Come to FiRe to learn how to “fix the Cloud.”

 

You also might want to:

 

Talk to Steve Jobs’ personal advisor, in person.

 

Learn more about Sweden’s Sustainable Cities, catch up on how you can be part of the Australian Miracle, and find out about Japan’s plans for fuel cells.

 

See Qualcomm’s Smartbooks and Snapdragon chips.

 

Hear what’s next for Google’s Android platform and applications.

 

Approach Fixing Healthcare by re-connecting patient to doctor.

 

And, of course, catch our now world-famous CTO Design Challenge, with Larry Smarr and David Brin.

 

 

   “The best technology conference in the world.”

      – The Economist

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

» What Is China? Part II: Members Respond

 

Two weeks ago, we published the issue “What Is China?” Since then, we have gotten the largest response wave in the history of SNS. At the request of SNS members, we allowed extended distribution of the issue, and later put it up on our blog, “A Bright Fire,” where it also created the largest response rate we’ve seen.

 

Given this level of interest and response, I thought the best service I could provide our membership this week would be to share member responses. To the best of my knowledge, this issue contains all of the letters we have received on the subject. If responses seem (almost) universally positive, please be aware that this is not the result of any selection process. It is the view of the membership.

 

I would like to make a few comments as an introduction to this week’s collection of letters and thoughts. First, I have kept my comments out of the body; the letters speak for themselves as responses to the earlier issue. I have added a few thoughts at the end.

 

Second, the Web posting, insofar as it has allowed anonymous comments, virtually invites nastiness and, perhaps, paid agents, to come in. We received a fairly obvious nationalistic piece within 10 minutes of posting, for example, and we expect that person is probably somehow tasked by the Chinese government with writing just such responses; a later comment seems to confirm this.

 

SNS members know that the original “What Is China?” was written and posted before the big Google complaint vs. China, which I only mention here for new readers who may not know that. What, for members, may have seemed like a lone voice on publication day has now been eclipsed by hundreds or thousands of articles on the same basic subject. One writer even wonders aloud if the SNS piece encouraged Google to go public; as usual, we have no direct way of knowing, although we know that top management at Google are SNS members.

 

Whatever the etymology, I think it is healthy to have these issues out in public for discussion; I dedicated our blog posting to Sergey Brin for having the courage to do the same. (Isn’t it interesting that the first American corporate leader, other than from SNS, to stand up and question the Chinese model is someone born and raised in the Soviet Union? Most of his competitors are still trading money for ethics.)

 

Here are your own thoughts about China, and about our “What Is China?” issue of January 6th.