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Wednesday, July 30, 2003 |
 Christopher Lydon interviews Doc Searls. "Metablogger Doc Searls votes Liberal, bets Conservative, and in both dimensions picks Howard Dean to win the presidential campaign in 2004. The hyperlinked underdogs are going to subvert the isolated overdogs every time," Doc forecast in our conversation this afternoon. I was talking to some smart people this afternoon in Cambridge about just this very topic. While I appreciate what Dean has been able to do with the Web, my gut is telling me that in five years, Karl Rove and the Republican political machine will turn this same collection of technologies into something to be feared (particularly if they lose to Howard Dean in 2004). Doc is getting the same tingle I am. Remember, all technology can be subverted, it is not an end in itself nor is it inherently good. We have yet to see the real darkside of the Internet and it is my guess that this will be one of its aspects.
9:10:57 PM 
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Business Week: Verizon's big bet. Fiber to the home. NICE! Amazing, it looks like it is finally on its way. With fiber connections in place, the technological advances in optical technology that are rapidly reducing price/performance ratios of bandwidth at the core of the Internet, will be extended to individual users (starting with connections at 10 Mb per second and going up from there). This will allow Verizon and their customers to ride a wave similar to Moore's Law. As one of those customers, I am very happy about this...
Verizon plans to roll out fiber-optic connections to every home and business in its 29-state territory over the next 10 to 15 years, a project that might reasonably be compared with the construction of the Roman aqueducts. It will cost $20 billion to $40 billion, depending on how fast equipment prices fall, and allow the lightning-fast transmission of everything from regular old phone service to high-definition TV.... At the same time, the price of rolling out fiber to homes and offices has dropped by 50% over the past five years, and it will likely decline another 50% over the next few. "This is not a trial. It's a deployment," says Bruce S. Gordon, president of Verizon's consumer division. "The decision has been made, and it will happen. There's no going back."
9:40:40 AM
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Rental trends in SF (thanks Evan) from Craigslist. This kind of information is something that can be packaged and sold.
9:13:56 AM
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Phil Wolff concurs on the Klognet ROI analysis I did yesterday.
8:20:48 AM
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NYTimes. WSJ. New Scientist. White House shuts down an innovative Pentagon Future's Market (to trade terrorism futures via Net Exchange, a Caltech start-up) due to early disclosure by two Dem. Senators. This type of program may actually have provided some very interesting insight if the traders where limited to analysts and operators in the DoD, CIA, NSA, and the State Department (although I wouldn't have spent $8 m on the project). Collective wisdom is very hard to measure and often yields surprising results. We trust market dynamics with our economy, so why not other forms of info? Oh well, its over.
Doc, on the other hand, craps all over the idea (however, I wouldn't use Andrew Orlowski's ill conceived rants as a reference on anything). Even if this system wasn't a good predictor of future events, a game like this could have had the beneficial effect of getting people to think in new ways.
The Pentagon, in initially defending the program, said such futures trading had proven effective in predicting other events like oil prices, elections and movie ticket sales. "Research indicates that markets are extremely efficient, effective and timely aggregators of dispersed and even hidden information," the Defense Department said in a statement. "Futures markets have proven themselves to be good at predicting such things as elections results; they are often better than expert opinions." But it became abundantly clear this morning, at the hearing of Senator Warner's committee, that whatever the logic of the Pentagon's position it had no chance of surviving politically. "I must say this is perhaps the most irresponsible, outrageous and poorly thought-out of anything that I have heard the administration propose to date," said Senator Tom Daschle of South Dakota, the Democratic leader.
7:42:49 AM
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It's a great time to be alive if you are an ancient history buff! There are not one but two films about Alexander the Great in the works (1 and 2). Both of these films have fantastic directors (Oliver Stone and Baz Luhrmann), fantastic actors (Colin Farrell and Leonardo DiCaprio), and massive budgets that can afford lots of CGI (ala Lord of the Rings which means huge armies).
In addition to this embarrassment of riches there are also two Hannibal Barca movies in contention -- a CGI fest led by Vin Diesel and a taut emotional thriller led by Denzel Washington. Could you imagine Denzel, one of the greatest actors of our generation, playing Hannibal raging outside the gates of Rome (which he couldn't breach because he didn't have siege equipment) with his victorious army and finally committing suicide as an old man on the run from Roman police? Finally, there is one on the Trojan war, a Hawaiian conquerer King Kamehameha, the battle of Thermopylae (the 300 Spartans), and King Arthur (more of a historical epic with his fights against the vikings than pure myth). There is even talk of another Roman epic called Gladiator 2. Excellent!! BTW, to keep up on the movie business read both Greg's Previews on Yahoo (a little known but fantastic resource that is somewhat like a weblog) and Ain't it Cool News.
7:11:38 AM
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© Copyright 2004 John Robb.
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