The Perils Of Extrapolation: Who Knows What The Next Disruptive Innovation Will Be

from the be-quick-to-adapt dept

There are all sorts of "lessons" that you hear concerning entrepreneurship, but the one that has always struck me as being the most reasonable and valuable is:

Be adaptable

People who haven't built a company think that it's "the plan" or "the idea" that matters. That's almost never the case. Look at nearly every successful startup, and their business has little (if anything) to do with their initial plan. Google was going to sell search appliances as the core of its business. YouTube was supposed to be a dating service. Things change -- and the only thing that matters is how well your company adapts and executes. That's why it's silly to be too protective of a plan or idea or to focus on things like patents or NDAs. Most of that doesn't matter. Separately, projecting out more than a year may be a fun exercise, but is generally meaningless.

Clay Shirky had a great Twitter message this past weekend that puts that point into perspective nicely:

Why I ignore all "5 year plans": 5 years ago, YouTube and Twitter didn't exist, and Facebook was only for college kids

If you go back and look at plans or predictions from 2005, of where web content would be in 2010, it's unlikely that "micromessaging" like Twitter or online video like YouTube was considered quite as central. Certainly some folks thought video was on the cusp back then, but they expected it to come from professional offerings like BrightCove, rather than a user-generated setup like YouTube. It's always difficult to predict which innovation is actually going to hit -- and plenty of companies, especially in the media space, have had to change and adjust their strategies due to things like Twitter, YouTube and Facebook -- just like how a decade ago, companies quickly started adjusting their strategy to deal with Google. Five years from now, plenty of startups will be adjusting their strategy for some other service as well... And the only way you can do that is by being adaptable.

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The Battle Over Who Owns Bus Arrival Times

from the questions,-questions,-questions dept

We've had quite a few stories in the past about various public transportation authorities trying to stop others from creating iPhone apps that indicate train/bus schedule information. Often, the transit organizations claim intellectual property over the matter, saying that they want the ability to license the data themselves, or to sell iPhone apps themselves. This strikes many as being incredibly short-sighted. The core business of the transit groups should be to get more people using the trains and buses. Having good iPhone apps out there (often for free) would seem to get more people to use public transportation, and that benefit likely outweighs any money received from selling $5 iPhone apps.

However, a few people have sent in a story from San Francisco, where things are a bit more complex. The basics do seem to be the same, with a guy named Steven Peterson creating an iPhone app called Routesy to tell you when your Muni bus is arriving, only to have it shut down after complaints that it was violating intellectual property. Where it gets a bit more complex, is that it's not the public transit authority, Muni, that's complaining. In fact, Muni claims that it owns the data and says the public is entitled to use it (in fact, it claims to encourage it).

The issue is that Muni teamed up with a private company to put sensors on its buses and trains to note where the buses are and to predict when the buses would arrive. To make things even more confusing, the original company, NextBus, appears to have been separated into two separate companies: NextBus and NextBus Information Systems (I have to admit, the link above is really not at all clear on this). In a separate post, it appears that NBIS (who sent the complaint to Apple and had originally threatened the creator of the Routesy app) is actually claiming that it owns the prediction data.

While this is silly, it is a bit more defensible. NBIS seems to be claiming that since it owns the sensors and the data they produce, and then run it through some sort of algorithm to predict actual arrival times, it owns the predictions. You can't copyright facts... but you could potentially claim copyright over predictions on facts -- and I think that's what NBIS is actually doing here (no one arguing over this seems particularly clear). A big question: is a prediction a "creative expression"? Some could argue that it's not, but that seems to be what the claim hinges on. In theory, Muni could be right that the data on where each bus is can be freely used by the public, but the predictive data may be a bit different. In the end, it probably hinges on what sort of contract Muni signed with NextBus (or NBIS), and then the real question might be why Muni didn't make sure that the predictive data was made to be open to outside developers as well. My guess: when this deal was being done, no one even thought that outside developers would want to do anything like this, so it wasn't even a point of discussion.

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South Korean Economic Blogger Acquitted (For Now)

from the phew dept

Earlier this year, we were quite troubled by news reports out of South Korea, concerning a (formerly) anonymous blogger who had been arrested for his financial commentary online that had been so good that it moved markets. He was charged with "spreading false rumors," when in reality the problem was that the info he was spreading was pretty accurate, and that was the problem. But, the good news is that he's now been acquitted, as the court noted that there was no evidence that the guy intended to spread false information, and that he appears to have believed the content he was writing. Of course, the case may not be over yet, as many expect the government to appeal.

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Is Technology On The Verge Of Killing Copyright Dead?

from the doubtful,-but-worth-watching dept

While I have significant problems with copyright law, and believe that it's been stretched and twisted to a breaking point, even I find it surprising to see a researchers' prediction that technology will basically make copyright completely obsolete by some time next year. While the timeline may be a bit accelerated, the points raised are quite interesting. Basically, the researchers note a few different factors that are contributing -- from the rapid rise in social communications online to increasingly sophisticated file sharing systems to note that it won't be long at all until basically everyone will be able to easily and secretly share whatever content they want, with little chance of big copyright holders figuring it out. Obviously, some are already taking part in such things, but it hasn't reached the average consumer... yet.

Of course, this won't really represent the end of copyright, per se, but it will be a turning point. The old guard will continue to whine and scream about how "something must be done," but I'd bet that an increasing number of smarter more understanding content creators will finally begin to regularly embrace the opportunities this creates. As an increasing number of content creators begin to recognize that they can do quite well (in fact, better than before) without relying on the crutch of copyright, the entire purpose for copyright will begin to lose meaning and it will start to fade away. Alternatives may pop up and even prosper -- but traditional copyright will finally have to adjust to match with the times, rather than trying to adjust the times to match with the past.

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More Civil Liberties Concerns Over Jailed Korean Blogger

from the freedom-of-speech dept

We've covered the story of the South Korean blogger who went by the name Minerva, and who was arrested for "spreading false rumors." The whole episode seemed troubling to us. It seemed as though the blogger was just posting his thoughts online, and the government didn't like what he was saying. Now even more information is coming to light, including reports that what he said (about the Korean gov't telling banks not to buy US dollars) wasn't quite as false as the government claimed. Apparently it wasn't an official order -- but banks were urged to avoid dollars. This has plenty of people up in arms over what seems like a clear politically motivated arrest of a guy for telling the truth that the government didn't want people to know about, rather than any sort of "false information."

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Lesson From Jailed South Korean Blogger: Don't Be Too Good With Your Predictions

from the it'll-come-back-to-bite-you dept

There's been a fascinating story coming out of Korea over the past few months, concerning the (formerly) anonymous online commentator who went by the name Minerva. He accurately forecasted some of the early days of the financial collapse last fall, and suddenly the press talked him up and everyone wanted to know who he was. Then he claimed that the Korean government had told companies to stop buying US dollars -- forcing the government to put out a statement denying this was true. Then, following a few weeks of searching, he was arrested for spreading false information and (a week later) his identity was revealed (along with a background that shows he wasn't particularly well connected or knowledgeable -- he likely made some lucky guesses).

But, it does raise questions about the fine line between making predictions and spreading false information. Because he had been so accurate with his earlier predictions, many started to assume that he was well-connected, and any future predictions he made would also be equally accurate. It seems that, once again, the old saw that "past results is no guarantee of future performance" was ignored. Now, there may be a difference in terms of how the information was presented -- in terms of whether he specifically claimed to know for certain that the Korean government had done what he said, as opposed to just predicting that it was about to happen -- but it seems like the line between a prediction and "spreading false information" gets pretty thin once everyone thinks you know what's going on better than anyone else.

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How GM Plans To Dominate The Electric Vehicle Market... In The 1980s

from the flashback dept

There's an awful lot of talk these days about efforts by both startups and big automakers to bring electric vehicles to the market, with the widespread expectation that they'll be commonly available in the near future. In fact, GM is apparently rushing the production of its Chevy Volt to get it to market faster than expected. That may actually be the case, but Chris Maresca writes in to point out that this all sounds mighty familiar. He was flipping through a 1980 copy of Car and Driver magazine and found the following:

The media are making all kinds of noise lately to the effect that electric cars are coming, that they’re going to help us kick our imported-oil habit, and that you’ll be able to drive them for pennies a day.

A company that can develop a non-petroleum-fueled car palatable to the masses stands to make a pretty good buck. That’s why GM will shell out some undisclosed number of billions on electric vehicle development during the next five or so years.

It’s a tall order, but GM is already well on the way to pulling it off. Whether the buyers will be there, however, is a question GM is still struggling to answer.

A study commissioned by Gulf & Western predicts that we’ll have something like 34 million EVs - about one quarter of the national fleet - on the road by the year 2000. GM ... has publicly committed itself to mass-producing electric cars by the mid-to-late 1980s – probably 100,000 per year or more.

It's good to remember that these sorts of plans don't always work out as announced.

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Overly Optimistic: Analysts Predict Cellular Broadband To Surpass Copper Broadband By 2010

from the yeah,-right dept

There's just something about new wireless technologies that seems to make analysts over-estimate their impact. I still remember when people were talking about how GPRS was going to be a real DSL replacement. GPRS, of course, was an incredibly unreliable and ridiculously slow update on GSM wireless technology. Yet, before it was used, there were stories predicting how it would be a wireless revolution. And then people started using it. And pretty much the same thing has happened with each advance in cellular technology. I remember people saying that EDGE, EV-DO, and HSDPA (all network upgrades) were going to be good enough to replace DSL or cable modems. Yet, even though EV-DO and HSDPA get decent speeds (still much slower than your average DSL or cable), the real problem is how these networks simply don't have the capacity to be a real home broadband replacement. That's why all of the contracts have ridiculous limits, suggesting you can't do very much with them, and often placing exceptionally low usage caps on the services.

Of course, don't tell that to the analysts, who can't resist making the same exact prediction about cellular broadband replacing home broadband. The latest such report is focused on the UK, and says that cellular based broadband for computers will surpass DSL or cable as the primary connection for users by 2010. That's not very far in the future. Now, certainly, mobile technology has improved greatly over the years, and there's still plenty more to come. However, the only really consistency in the mobile world is that many analysts over-estimate both the speed with which these new networks are adopted and the quality of these mobile networks. It would certainly be great, if true, but consider me skeptical.

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Will VoIP Finally Get Hacked?

from the we-shall-see... dept

Ever since VoIP first came on the scene, there were fear mongering reports saying that you shouldn't use VoIP because it will get hacked. However, in all these years, we've yet to hear a serious report of VoIP getting hacked -- and, even the scary warnings about VoIP hackers have quieted down. Yet, here we are, with a security company now claiming that 2008 will be the year that VoIP gets hacked. Of course, that security company is also selling a solution to prevent VoIP systems from getting hacked, so perhaps you should take the prediction with a rather large grain of salt. So which is it: is hacking VoIP networks not that easy? Is the fear overblown? Or have we just been lucky?

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If You Need A 2008 Prediction... How About: The Fact Checker Is Dead... Long Live The Fact Checker

from the bah-who-needs-it? dept

I've been writing Techdirt since the summer of 1997 (yeah, we let the 10 year anniversary slip by without notice), and every year I've resisted calls to do "predictions" for the following year. They always seem like lame filler content that rarely adds much value. And, with predictions articles and posts showing up left and right, you'd reasonably expect some ridiculously lame ones. However, it is a bit surprising to see how ridiculous The Economist's 2008 predictions are this year, as ripped apart by Marc Andreessen. Andreessen does a fine job pointing out how whoever wrote up the piece (damn those byline-less Economist stories!) clearly has no clue what he's talking about.

It gets facts wrong and draws some dubious conclusions out of those incorrect facts. It starts out with a pet peeve favorite: the ever popular claim that the internet is about to run into trouble handling traffic growth. Amusingly, the article claims to support this prediction with "some certainty" even though the most recently debunked telco-backed report didn't even think we'd see any troubles until at least 2010. The prediction makes the huge error of stating that 90% of all internet traffic is spam email -- which is probably based on some (questionable) reports claiming that 90% of all email is spam -- but email hardly represents a significant segment of internet traffic. You would think that it would mention things like BitTorrent or file sharing as the usual culprits -- but somehow the Economist reporter thinks it's spam that will destroy the internet. And, as Andreessen notes, the only actual proof the article presents is that sales of networking traffic are way up -- which indicates that any problem is being solved, not that it's getting worse. One thing that's become clear in all these reports about the internet breaking: it's almost always made by someone who doesn't understand technology. Whenever the technologists have their say, they'll note that there's not much to worry about and technology should be able to contain any problems.

What may be more interesting, however, is this tiny point noting how fact checking has gone out of style in the press -- but it doesn't much matter when you have folks like Marc Andreessen willing to fact check for you, with the only price (okay, perhaps it's not cheap) being the mocking you get and the hit to your reputation as a top of the line publication. Perhaps it would have been cheaper to actually check the facts -- especially on things as easy as the amount of internet traffic that's spam, as well as whether or not Google has already bid on the 700 MHz auction (as the article claims) despite the fact that said auction hasn't happened yet. And, of course, this doesn't even get into the fact that a predictions article can be done with plenty of time to spare, meaning it should have had plenty of time for fact checking. Meanwhile, Andreessen only takes on the first two of The Economist's predictions, but the third one is equally ridiculous, claiming (again, incorrectly) that thanks to the bankruptcy of SCO, Linux is now "popular in small businesses and the home." It may be gaining in popularity, but it has little to do with the SCO case, and any popularity from Ubuntu came about long before SCO's bankruptcy -- and it would still be a stretch to call it "popular" outside of a small core audience. It's as if whoever wrote the piece is living in an alternate reality.

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