In May 2006, I interviewed Mike Ryan, founder of the Creative and Innovative Economy Center. He argues that countries with developing economies should adopt strong intellectual property laws, or they’ll be left behind in the world economy. This didn’t run in Diamond Weekly until the fall.
Andrew Lo, an MIT economist, thinks that markets don’t behave efficiently, but rather adapt, meaning they should be viewed using a Darwinian model. I interviewed him for Diamond Weekly back in April 2006. A sample:
It may well be the case that natural selection will occur in the next 100 years not through biological means but through financial means. Just imagine it’s possible for us to create a cure for cancer and the cost of such as cure becomes prohibitive. It really will be literally survival of the richest.
In April 2006 I interviewed Clyde Prestowitz for Shukan Daiyamondo. The Japanese hold Prestowitz in high regard, though I’m not sure his ideas of integrating the Japanese and U.S. economies, right down to merging the currencies, are any more mainstream there than they are here. Certainly his gloomy outlook on our economy and our society don’t fit in with the mainstream.
Prestowitz Q&A
My latest Prototype column in the NYT. It looks at the social networks of bacteria, which is fascinating to think about. But it also provides an excellent example of how long it can take an idea to become commonplace.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/25/business/yourmoney/25proto.html
(registration required, and after a certain period, it’s no longer free to access).
Mudge, a security researcher who was the most visible member of the old hacker thinktank the L0pht, invited me to a reception for former cybersecurity czar and White House national security advisor Richard Clarke. Clarke was at the Charles Hotel in Cambridge tonight, shaking hands and signing his new thriller, “Breakpoint.” Clarke, who grew up in the area in Dorchester, drew an eclectic crowd that looked like people who knew him when, people who’ve known him since, people who’ve taken the course he teaches at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, and a few security types.
He got laughs when he noted that this is his third book and his second work of fiction, unless you ask the Bush Administration, which would say it’s his third work of fiction. In fact, Breakpoint is not so much fiction as a policy brief for 2012, when Ray Kurzweil’s techno utopian vision for the future smacks headlong into Bill Joy’s dystopian counter-vision. Joy is a character in the novel (he’s called William Gaudium); most of the heroes, meanwhile, buy into Kurzweil’s techno-utopian vision. Thinly disguised versions of Microsoft and Cisco are in it, as well. Clarke got knowing laughs for his disclaimer that the book was pure fiction and not based on real people or companies, after which he introduced Mudge as someone who is not the character Soxster from the novel.
The most important pages in the book are his appendix, which discuss about a dozen technologies under development, largely for military purposes. If Clarke is correct, the U.S. will have significantly boosted its technological lead over the rest of the world in five years, and its only real threat will come from within, as the rate of technological progress sparks serious social unrest. We’ll check back with Clarke in 2012.
The evidence is that companies don’t rely on (patent laws) much. The basic underlying principle is that you shouldn’t be given a monopoly unless you get something for it, in other words if an innovator would innovate anyway, you shouldn’t give them a monopoly. In lots of areas basically 30 years of studies say they’ll innovate anyway.
So said Eric von Hippel, a prophet of user-driven innovation (what Wired cleverly called ‘Crowdsourcing’ in its June 2006 issue). I interviewed him in March 2006 for Diamond Weekly. The full interview as I submitted it is
Since February of 2006, I’ve contributed interviews for the World Voice column in Shukan Daiyamondo (Diamond Weekly), a large Japanese business magazine. Diamond’s Web site is both registration-only and in Japanese, a language I do not read. I’ve been reluctant to post on my site the files I send to my editor at Diamond, since they’ll inevitably be different from what I send. But on this journal I can be a little less formal, and in the interest of populating this site, I’m going to post one or two World Voice interviews a day until I catch up.
The first one I did was with education entrepreneur Chris Whittle, who runs Edison Schools, a for-profit manager of public schools. His book “Crash Course” was recently out. The document is here: whittle-qa.doc
A sample: If you study a chart of percentage of GDP allocated to different sectors, number one is healthcare and number two is education. So it’s a big world. And business is going to be in it in a very serious way.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/11/business/yourmoney/11proto.html (registration required).
My initial Prototype column for the New York Times. What interested me most on this topic is the most important applications from the personal computer era, the word processor and spreadsheet, do not have widely used Web versions. But that might be about to change.
I wrote this piece about Steve Bigari, who is rethinking the systemic issues that affect America’s working poor.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/04/business/yourmoney/04bigari.html (It’s New York Times, so subscription required. For more on Bigari, his foundation is here: http://www.amfol.com).