October 3rd, 2008, 9 Comments »
I’m no economist. In fact, I don’t deserve to live in the same town as the guy who hands out the ‘economist’ name tags. With that in mind, I have two ill-informed reactions to today’s signing of the US $700 million billion (whoops, wishing thinking) bailout bill into law:
- For many, many years, Wall Street demanded and received decreased regulation. They repeatedly called for less and less government intervention into the free market. Now, having royally screwed the pooch in this unregulated atmosphere, they get saved by what? Government intervention. Does anybody else find this repellent?
- I have yet to hear a clearly articulated explanation of the alternative outcome–no bailout–for the average American (not to mention the average Canadian). Yes, it’ll be bad news, but I have no sense of how bad. And, you know, I’ve been paying attention.
It must be pretty weird to live in the US these days. On top of impending (and possibly averted) economic disaster, you’re living through one of the weirdest presidential elections in history. I watched some of the US vice-presidential debate last night (and some of the Canadian leadership debate and some of the hockey game), and I continue to be shocked that Governor Palin might one day run this country. If Americans put Senator McCain and Governor Palin in the Whitehouse, they get the governance they deserve.
Here are two tangential links that political junkies have probably already seen: the Sarah Palin debate flow chart, and the hilarious earmarks and pork attached to the bailout bill.
Do we do this–attach all sorts of irrelevant extras to legislation–in Canada? I’m embarrassed that I don’t know.
9 Comments »
April 23rd, 2008, 2 Comments »
The following are my somewhat random notes from Bill Tim (heh) O’Reilly’s talk at Web 2.0 Expo:
- We’ve been whipsawed by negative economic news.
- What are the deep trends that are driving Web 2.0?
- The internet is becoming a global platform, a tool for harnessing collective intelligence. “We are building a platform to make the world smarter…an amazing revolution in human augmentation”.
- Software has climbed above the level of a single device.
- Areas of opportunity: Web 2.0 and the enterprise, web as platform in cloud computing, web has become ubiquitous thanks to mobile devices and sensors.
- Collective intelligence - applications that get better, the more people that use them.
- Web 2.0 is about finding meaning in user-generated data. Google PageRank was the beginning of the Web 2.0 era–a link was a vote.
- Similarly there’s hidden meaning in enterprise data. O’Reilly cites Wesabe as an example–aggregating the collective intelligence from bank account data.
- A personal computer is really just a device connected to the global computer–the cloud computer that is the web. “The computer is every computer”. Where’d I put that red pill…
- See also Amazon, Google App Engine and Engine Yard.
- Facebook radically outvalues WordPress. Why? The marketing values centralization. Fear a return to the monopoly that was Microsoft.
- Open networks and interoperability thus matter more and more.
- Mobility matters. Also think about new types of display surfaces and new interaction paradigms. Check out The Dash, an internet-connected GPS.
- Ambient computing - “We’re in a soup of computing. Web 2.0 will be all around us”.
- The web is built on “big, hairy audacious goals”.
- Big projects that need more attention: Change Congress, EveryBlock and InSTEDD.
- Finishes with a lovely poem by Rilke and a painting by Delacroix. O’Reilly offers a terrific reading. Here’s an excerpt:
What we choose to fight is so tiny!
What fights us is so great!
If only we would let ourselves be dominated
as things do by some immense storm,
we would become strong too, and not need names.
When we win it’s with small things,
and the triumph itself makes us small.
What is extraordinary and eternal
does not want to be bent by us.
UPDATE: Here’s another set of notes from the talk.
2 Comments »
