Public policy and privacy
Public policy issues such as privacy, technology industry economic development, education to support technology workers, and so on. Privacy in particular, whether or not strictly tied to public policy.
After TechLeb
Well, TechLeb has come and gone. Due to the tremendous effort and talent of the organizers, it achieved its two main goals, which were 1. To have a vehement discussion between the Lebanese tech entrepreneur community and the government, specifically on the subject of telecom prices and 2. To generally pull together stakeholders in the Lebanese tech sector. Minister Azour’s wish that TechLeb prove to have been a watershed event in Lebanon’s history may yet be granted.
My own panel didn’t work out quite so well, because I overoptimistically let the time be divided among five speakers, and furthermore failed to anticipate a variety of interruptions. These ranged from ministerial phone calls (I’ve never seen John Cullinane smile so broadly as when Minister Azour was lambasted by a self-styled “angry entrepreneur”), to an MC who decided to take control of Q&A from me, to a panelist who talked at repeated length about off-topic matters. (Yes, I’m irate about parts of that. No, it shouldn’t affect anybody’s overall highly favorable opinion of the conference.)
Anyhow, there were three talks on my panel in which great, on-topic points were made, by Kevin Carroll (VP of IDA Ireland), Anil Khourana, and John Cullinane. I hope I made a useful observation or two as well. I particularly wish there had been more time for Anil’s talk, as he offered not just the experiences of a huge and hugely important country (India), but also well-analyzed insight into the concerns of developing countries in general. And there were other interesting things to be learned from sessions and private conversations as well. I’ll try to work all this into a series of posts soon.
Technorati Tags: Lebanon, TechLeb
| Categories: Economic development, Public policy and privacy | 4 Comments |
The Talent/Innovation Cycle (Keys, Part 2)
Before the economy got truly global, the role of entrepreneurs in economic development was open to debate. If Henry Ford hadn’t created the automobile mass market, would there have been one anyway? Well, he didn’t sell to Europe, and they had one there too, so the answer is evidently “Yes.” But while certain industries’ growth is almost inevitable, any given company’s success is in no way foreordained. Rather, that success is due in huge part to its leaders and/or engineers, and their ability to just competitively clobber all the other company leaders and engineers striving to succeed in the same markets.
And the success of any particular country or region is, of course, hugely dependent on the success of the largest companies in it. First of all, a single company can make an appreciable difference all by itself. Finland has gone from a reliance on forest products to being a technology industry leader, almost solely because of one huge company: Nokia. Second, successful companies (or particularly interesting failures) spawn others, because of the employees they spin out, the suppliers they help strengthen, and so on. Most famously, this is the Silicon Valley phenomenon.
So what can countries do to improve their chances of technology entrepreneurial success? Read more
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Keys to technology-driven economic development, Part 1
In connection with a forthcoming panel for the TechLeb conference, I posed some basic questions about tech industry economic development, and promised to also take a crack at them myself.
Well, it turns out those basic questions are pretty hard – especially for me, since I’m going to try to generalize based on what I know of several decades of software and other technology industries pretty much around the globe. Truth be told, I don’t really know much detail about the rise or non-rise of the tech industry in any country but the US, and here in the States it’s being going along quite nicely much longer than the quarter-century that I’ve been an industry analyst. And by the way, in the US almost every region has shown the ability to grow a tech industry.
All disclaimers aside, however, I’d like to suggest a framework for thinking about barriers and aids to technology industry growth. Most of the important factors fit into three categories:
- Cost/risk. Obviously, low costs are good, whether you’re creating intellectual property or physical objects. But low risks are even more important.
- Convenience. Being convenient for your customers to deal with is hugely important. This has more ramifications than may immediately be apparent.
- Innovation/talent. Having the right people may not be a sufficient condition for success, if other prerequisites are lacking (economic, legal, physical, etc.) But it is completely necessary. And in the most successful cases, a huge fraction of development can be traced back to a relatively small number of talented, innovative, and lucky entrepreneurs.
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German libel law gets scary
A few days ago I argued that the chilling of online discussion via libel was less of a threat than it might appear. However, it appears that in Germany there’s indeed a problem. A court ruling has held that forum operators are liable for anything illegal posted on their forums. While the actual case referred to an anti-spyware script, the ruling also seems to be regarded as applying to instances of commercial defamation.
Hopefully, this will get overturned on appeal, or else in the German Parliament, and things will end up more in line with US law. But for now, it’s worrisome.
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An “Apollo Program” for energy
Charles Cooper whined (his word) at length about President Bush’s speech on R&D and energy independence. And he rightly pointed out the hypocrisy of Bush praising DARPA’s track record and then starving it for funds. Finally he called for a “Manhattan Project” for energy-independence technologies; I think this is a good idea, although I’d use the “Space Program” or “War on Cancer” analogies instead (more spinoffs in each case, for one thing, and each led to huge returns even though decades afterward we have neither an effective space program nor a reliable cure for cancer).
But here’s the thing he forgot to add — a lot of the startup technology community is already looking toward sustainable energy and the like. To mention just two names, I’m pretty sure that’s the current career focus of both Jesse Berst and Beryl Hartman; I think you’ll also find it cropping up in classic venture portfolios as well.
With the proper seeding to overcome the obvious massive subsidies given to the traditional energy economy, an alternative energy technology industry could have four huge benefits:
1. Economic growth from the industry itself (including worldwide export)
2. Further economic benefit by lowering the demand for and hence price curve of current fossil fuels.
3. Easing of geopolitical/military pressures associated with competition for and security of oil supplies.
4. (Depending on the technology used) Possibly huge environmental benefits.
Few of you know this, but I spent a fair amount of time working on energy policy during my public policy post-doc, and took a nuclear engineering course even before that. And PaineWebber initially interviewed me as an energy analyst, before hiring me to cover the technology industry of my choice (which turned out to be software). So while I’m hardly an expert, I’m speaking from a little experience when I suggest the following:
A 3 1/2-pronged government initiative focusing on:
A. Synthetic fossil fuels
B. Fission/fusion power
C. To the extent they can contribute, truly clean/renewal energy sources
D. Infrastructure to support electricity-centric transportation, to be ready if and when B&C are successful.
Why synthetic fossil fuels? Because nothing else is sure to work, given the political concerns about fission (including proliferation) and the technical issues remaining with fusion. Why not only synthetic fossil fuels? Because they do nothing to help with global warming (probably they even exacerbate the problem a little bit due to the energy cost of their creation), and otherwise they’re not great environmentally either.
Frankly, I think the right answer for a number of decades is fission power. There should be a very limited number of utterly standard reactor designs, each of which comes complete with a rigorous set of standard site requirements (especially in the areas of geology and security). There should be no pretense for the next 50 years or so about a truly permanent solution for nuclear waste disposal; in the short term it should be processed into a stable, solid, transportable form (“bricks”) and left in a few big toxic brick piles near the processing plants. (Possibly these even need to be part of the standard reactor-compound design.)
That’s if the reactors are to be privately owned, as they are today. A perhaps even more sensible alternative is to have them be Federally owned and operated, just as (say) aircraft carriers are today. That would help a lot with security issues; what’s more, while the government generally isn’t too good at getting the best out of its employees, one area where it (specifically, the military) excels is in training and managing people to do boring, repetitive, somewhat technical, life-and-death-important work.
Where does the “Manhattan/Apollo Program” aspect come in? Well, on the nuclear side, it’s getting those reactors designed and then built ASAP. In synfuels it can be a reverse auction, offering to buy “X” amount of fuel during period “Y” in the future at cost “Z”, with Z being what is bid on (the lower the better). Possibly the auction should be preannounced, only being actually held after environmental regulations and the like are more fully addressed. On the electric transportation side (hydrogen, batteries, whatever), a good point of attack might be trucking. Trucks are regulated, not as fashion/consumer-oriented as passenger cars, not as needful of maximum acceleration as cars, and more tolerant than cars of parts being a bit oversized. Getting the trucking fleet off of fossil fuels is probably achievable in a shorter term than it would be to wean cars from gasoline.
| Categories: Public policy and privacy | 2 Comments |
Online libel — one public policy problem that is LESS bad than it appears
The Register raises concerns about a proliferation of internet-related libel suits. Apparently, these are an outgrowth of heated flame wars. If we let our imaginations go a bit, it isn’t hard to think of all sort of noxious possibilities here, with various kinds of baddies suppressing justified commentary about themselves.
Even so, there’s a simple solution — people just have to learn how to write. Everything you write that’s defamatory or otherwise nasty should clearly indicate your reasoning and/or evidence for the claim. If you claim factual evidence, you can and should be held accountable for libel if the evidence is wrong. If it’s just unsupported (or very lightly supported opinion), and you make the lack of support clear, then it would be very hard to tag you with libel, at least in the US.
Now, I’m obviously a lot better trained in libel-avoidance — and hopefully a much clearer writer anyway! — than most people. But the basic principle applies to everyone:
Be intellectually honest, and you won’t be committing libel.
As for Google, et al., who might be construed as republishers of the libel — give me a break. Give them a break. Maybe web pages will all need routine disclaimer notices renouncing responsibility for their contents, especially the contents of what they link to. But otherwise the big internet players should not, and I’m confident will not, be under serious threat of libel judgments.
| Categories: Public policy and privacy | 20 Comments |
Research on technology economic development – Please help!
I’ve gotten involved in some pro bono research and education, and I’d appreciate whatever help my friends in the industry can provide.
The project is: I want to offer pithy advice to developing countries that seek to strengthen their technology industries. Major subjects include:
• What kind of policies should they adopt (and avoid!) to foster development?
• What sectors should they emphasize or even try to prosper in, given their present starting conditions?
I was inspired to pursue this by – and intend to present preliminary results at– a panel I’m running on May 21 at the TECHLEB|06 conference in Cambridge, MA. So that’s my deadline for finishing Phase 1 of the project.
How you can help
I’d appreciate your thoughts in any format – email, phone call, comment to this blog post, whatever – on questions like these, for any developing country you have familiarity with:
• If the country has had well-run tech companies that failed to prosper, why did they fail?
• If the country has had tech companies that succeeded but probably would have failed in many other developing countries, what were the differences among countries that seem to have allowed success?
• Were there any events or particular developments that seem to have made a big difference in starting or stopping tech industry success? Which government policies, if any, were a big help or hindrance?
• What is the availability of educated people? Academic/technical training? Tech industry experience? In what respects is that adequate/inadequate?
• Same questions – physical and logistical infrastructure.
• What else should I be asking?
In all cases, it would be very helpful to note which sectors(s) of technology you’re talking about, because different countries have succeeded in different ones. For example, India started out with professional services companies, while Taiwan succeeded primarily in electronics manufacturing and assembly. And mainland East Asia’s successes (domestic Chinese companies somewhat excepted) seem to be mainly in branches and satellite operations of large global tech companies. Israel’s tech industry, perhaps even more than the US’, seems driven heavily by defense spinoffs, and is divided across a variety of electronics sectors accordingly.
And if you have insight into biotech or other fast-growing areas, that would be phenomenal too.
I’ll put my own preliminary thoughts in another post. Watch the comments section to this one for a trackback!
| Categories: Economic development, Public policy and privacy | 3 Comments |
An unusually ambitious conference — TECHLEB!06
“We want TECHLEB to be a turning point in Lebanon’s economy. For there to be a time before and a time after TECHLEB.”
H.E. Jihad Azour
Minister of Finance
Lebanon
TECHLEB!06, “Under the Auspices of the Prime Ministry,” is an extremely worthy and ambitious effort. With participation from the Minister of Finance on down, a large fraction of all the stakeholders in Lebanon’s nascent technology industry are convening May 20-21 at MIT. Their goal? Clear away roadblocks and kickstart Lebanon’s tech industry. Indeed, there’s a strong intention to decide upon and announce substantial public policy changes before the close of the conference. The possible payoff? A major engine of prosperity in a wartorn, rebuilding, geopolitically crucial crossroads country.
Mainly, this is a conference of, by, and for the Lebanese. But I’m spearheading an exception — a panel to bring in lessons learned from other countries that have succeeded in improving their lot with the tech industry’s help. We have speakers already committed with expertise in Ireland and the Arab world. We’re still looking to add panelists with knowledge of India and perhaps Eastern Europe. One of the panelists is a name familiar to many of you — John J. Cullinane, founder of Cullinet Software, the leading independent software vendor of the mainframe era. (Companies that succeeded largely because of ex-Cullinet people include, in my opinion, Powersoft, Cognos, Silverstream, and to some extent Lotus — and Oracle copied big parts of the Cullinet strategy.)
My panel is at 9 am on Sunday, May 21. Most of you will have no interest in being there. Even so, I’m going to ask a couple of you for help in recruiting speakers. And I hope you all consider helping me with my research into just what we should advise the Lebanese Minister of Finance to promise to technology entrepreneurs.
I’ll post a formal panel description when I have one. It will be linked in the trackback/comment section to this post.
| Categories: Economic development, Public policy and privacy | 3 Comments |
Flash drives and security — a modest proposal
I’ve argued that Flash-based “diskless” PCs would offer major improvements in security. On the other hand, evidence from US military installations in the Middle East suggests than Flash drives are actually a major security hole.
Can these views be reconciled? I think so. The answer, simply, is that Flash drives need embedded RFID chips (or some substitute technology) so that their movements can be detected and controlled.
“But wait!”, you cry. “Doesn’t that mean anybody who legitimately carries a secure Flash drive around can have her movements nefariously tracked?” Well yes, it does, but that genie is out of the bottle anyway. We just have to deal with it on another level.
Technorati Tags: Flash, security, privacy, RFID
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How to beat Chinese Censorship — Operation Peking Duck
I argued in a previous post that, as individuals and webpage publishers in the West, we have the solution to Chinese censorship in our own hands. While I can’t have been the first person to think of this, a quick search isn’t turning up other references to the idea. So here is the outline of what I’ll call “Operation Peking Duck.”
(The name comes from my favorite Chinese dish, which unlike other most Chinese dishes is made by wrapping several disparate things up in the same tortilla-like flatbread. It’s also a bit of wordplay on “peek” and/or “duck.”)
The problem is not that Chinese residents are cut off from most outside information. Rather, they’re cut off from information on selected topics, commonly associated with keywords such as “democracy,” “Taiwan,” “Tibet,” etc. Thus, things would be much improved if a fairly limited and slowly-growing set of documents were freely available in China, presenting news about and balanced views of these subjects. 10 gigabytes of reference plus a 1 gigabyte/year of new material doesn’t sound like a lot, but if it were text-only that would actually be a great deal of material to start with. Even a much smaller amount would be highly worthwhile.
The plan (and this is just an idea, but I’m confident that the technological parts are straightforward) would be this:
1. For coordination, there would be a central repository of material to get to the Chinese people. It should be kept somewhere that is pretty well secured against denial-of-service attacks and the like, since the Chinese can play hardball.
2. Ideally, material would be donated by news services and the like. Otherwise, it would have to be written by volunteers.
3. Large numbers of volunteers would each embed some of the material in web pages, at least those being served to Chinese IP addresses. It would be cloaked in a way that makes it hard to filter.
Obviously, any site serving this material is a prime candidate for winding up on a Chinese blocklist. So to make all this work, there are four hurdles to overcome:
- Technically, defeat censorware filters. This should be almost straightforward. The general idea is to encode the text in a way that in can be decoded by a VERY simple browser plug-in, and rely on the Chinese to write and circulate such plug-ins themselves. The simpler it is, the harder it would actually be for antivirus and other filtering software to stop the internal distribution of such plug-ins. Directly delivering the plug-in is of course a bit more problematic, because it’s easier for the “antivirus” software to target. I would be very interested in any discussion of the best implementation strategies for this part of the plan.
- Technically, defeat the blocklist. Unfortunately, while it should be possible to keep the Chinese government from filtering out the “offending” additions to webpages, they probably can create a unreliable filter (i.e., one with too many false positives) that flags a high fraction of all Peking Duck pages served for manual review. So they’ll get onto a blocklist fast. Thus, they need to be disposable pages. That aspect is easy, many minor sites now have 500,000 pages plus via the magic of automatic page generation. What’s more, they need to be on domains that China can’t afford to block in their entirety.
- Socially, get enough participants, especially participants of the right kinds. So a necessary condition for the success of Operation Peking Duck would be, it seems, significant participation from sites that China can’t afford to block. The list of such sites probably starts and ends with major universities. The good news is that universities are (at least in theory) committed to intellectual freedom, and to not being intimidated by retaliation for the expression of intellectual ideas. On the bad news side, they generally have a ton of static URLs, but not many dynamic ones. So getting around the blocklist would be a nontrivial effort for them. Whoops; this is an area in which some work needs to be done.
- Socially, get enough content. Whatever the obstacles here, this is not a dealbreaker. Why? Because even a little bit would be hugely beneficial. Indeed, a small amount would actually be easier to circulate (or at least circulate pointers to) in-country.
At this point Operation Peking Duck is just a personal brainstorm of mine. So before I get serious about trying to promote it — does anybody have thoughts about its feasibility? Specific ideas? Links to sites where these ideas have already been exhaustively discussed?
If so — thank you!!