I am tired of the old debate formats on TV. I suggest that we have a twitter debate. Each candidate would be stationed on the stage in a sound proof class cage. The audience (any one in the USA) could send each candidate a tweet question. The candidates would then have one minute to reply. They would be allowed to use any device they liked but all applications other than twitter would be removed. Then the replies from each candidate would be presented to the other candidate for rebuttal. They would have one minute for that as well. After ever five questions, each candidate would have the opportunity to tweet a question to the other candidate. There would be a panel that would be selecting the tweets or maybe we can think of a more representative way of getting the tweets. The answers from each candidate can be “liked” or “unliked”
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The twitter debates for President 2012
April 29, 2012More on Ken Olsen
February 9, 2011I continued to think about Ken Olsen and Digital Equipment. Ken was a trustee and major contributor to Gordon College which is a Christen College. Ken was very religious. I never really engaged with him about that but one day he told me that he wanted computers (he meant what would be come personal computers) that could be used by his minister and by his secretary. I turned that into the phrase “a computer for clerks and clerics”. Gordon College made two videos here and here about Ken that are worth watching.
Some friends have asked me to share a few observations about Ken. I have so many things I could share but here are a few.
Ken loved mechanical things. He would often hang out in the model shop. But his real love was for power supplies.
He also was very interested in cables. He hate the mess of cables that often came out of the back of small computers and word processors. At one time he had a poster made of the back of the Decmate. It was a mess of cables. The caption for the poster was “Marketing or Engineering? “. I came up with my own slogan which was “could you imagine what software would look like if you could see it?”. Ken did not really get the joke. He never really understood software.
He loved to take walks around the mill and of course knew all the secret routes.
It is true that when we got one of the first IBM PC’s, Ken came to my lab and he and I opened it and disassembled it with a screw driver. He looked at how it was constructed and say that if I ever designed a computer like that I would be fired.
He really believed in the power of great engineering and had little respect for marketing. I will never forget one conversation I had with Ken (which really resulted in my deciding to leave Digital). We had launched our low end products, the Professional, the Rainbow and Decmate II (I was responsible for the Pro and much of the hardware for the other two). We were not doing very well (that is an understatement since all the products failed in the market for a number of reasons). I said to Ken, “if we are going to be successful, we will need great marketing and good engineering”. He said no, I was totally wrong that “we needed great engineering and good marketing”. We went back an forth on this for a while and then he said. “You don’t understand. We are not capable of great marketing”.
People sometimes compare Ken and Steve Jobs. I never worked for Jobs but did know him (it has been more than 12 years ago that I had contact with him personally). There are some similarities. Both were visionaries. Ken’s vision was about making computer that did not have to have computer rooms and could be used directly by knowledge works and not by computer experts. But Ken was not autocratic. He was much more Machiavellian. Jobs obviously understands software. But they both created very successful companies that were great reflections of there values and personalities.
There was something seductive and sweet about Ken. Even those my relationship with him did not end in a good way, I always treasure my memory of him. And most importantly that great smile.
Economics: Science or Astrology
October 15, 2010I have been having been thinking a great deal about economics. The market crash of 2008 was my inspiration to understand more, that along with a series of discussion with my son, Asher, who is the Executive Director of the Post Carbon Institute. It was Asher who introduced me to the work of Chris Martenson and in particular his Crash Course on Economics which I highly recommend. The more I learn about economics the less I understand. I have also begone to question the ability of economist to predicate the future (of course some will get things right sometimes but that may be the result of the lows of probabilities). I have more faith in the long term weather reports.
At the same time, I have been giving a lot of thought to the difference between intuition and analysis. Those of you that know me, know that I am governed more by my intuition than my ability to analyze things. I think analysis is great for understanding the past but not the future. You can read about how I used intuition in my business life here. For me intuition really has to do with trusting that part of our mind that is not conscious. It is trusting our ability to see patterns and to solve puzzles. I good example is how one might try to do an actual puzzle. You could try to use analysis to figure out what the puzzle represented or you could try to put the pieces together. And in doing that you would find pieces that fit together starting with the pieces that might be candidates for the corners. As you got clumps together you would try to arrange them. At some point you might think, wisely, that you should just stare at the board and hope that some imagine would appear. Once you saw the imagine, putting together the pieces would happen rapidly.
So here is the problem with economics. The people that practices are trying to be rational. They are using analysis to build models. But the best people at predicting might not even know why they believe that certain things will happen. I know many people that manage money that just go with their “guts” . But they could never really tell someone that. They would have to put together a story the supported their feelings.
It is a shame that we do not trust our own intuition. Maybe we could actually solve some problems if we did.
Audio Post
August 10, 2010
The killer app for the Internet is dying
August 8, 2010There is a very interesting article in Newsweek about the Huffington Post that goes discusses the economics of advertising on the Internet. In 1994, I was going around giving talks about the potential of the i\Internet to become a new medium. Some of those reading this post maybe too young to remember that the Internet was a very different animal at that time. The first browser had just been launched the year before. The residential broadband network we all enjoy was in the very early stages of development. I had just signed up a number of companies like AOL, Intuit and Netscape to participate in the cable modem trails we had launched with Viacom Cable and Comcast. I could see pretty clearly that the high speed communication to the home coupled to PCs and the platform for development and distribution of content represented by the Internet would create this new medium not only for entertainment and information but also for communications, and commerce and education. However, I was struggling about the business model. I did not feel that subscription services like AOL (that is how AOL worked in those days) would be the successful model. I came to the conclusion that it would be advertising. In those days, everyone was asking “what is the killer app for the Internet”. It was generally accepted that the spreadsheet had been the killer app for the PC. I came to the conclusion that it was advertising. Obviously, advertising is not an application. But I felt that the potential of moving advertising dollars to Internet content companies would provide the financial fuel that would allow the development of a vast range of applications. And in general this was correct. But it is no longer working.
I am not an expert on advertising. These days because of technology I get to skip over most ads on TV and rarely look at a add on the net. I think the death of advertising as the source of revenue for Internet companies is the result of simple over abundance of places to put ads coupled with a doubt that they are very effective. But frankly, I am not sure how effective advertising was in the past on TV, magazines and radio. And am pretty sure that their value is declining quickly as we can all skip over ads or get content like pod-casts that do not even contain ads.
So what will replace advertising as a revenue source for content? It is not clear to me yet. I am think the combination of free and premium services for some companies (like Linkedin) will work. I think data mining will work for other. For instance, Google may become primarily a data mining company. Facebook can be one too although I think that Facebook does not have a very compelling future (more about that in a future post).
The days of Whine and Roses
February 4, 2010Just read an article about how unrelevant Microsoft has become. I thought the article made some good points. I certainly understand what the author experienced. I saw that kind of thing first hand when I worked at Digital Equipment Corp. in the early 80s. That that time DEC (as we called it then) was the number two computer company in the world. Eventually it was bought by Compaq a company that did not even exist until about 1982 and which is now part of HP which is the only company that managed the transition from Mini Computers to Personal Computers.
I could not help but to think of those years when Microsoft and Intel were king of the hill. For many years I attended the quarterly meeting of the top executives of both companies. We certainly thought we were masters of the universe (well at least the CEO’s did) . Of course there was the senior Master (Microsoft) and the Junior Master (Intel).
But there was a big problem in the relationship and that is what is now playing out for Microsoft. Since Microsoft was in the software business it, it could make much more money by upgrading its installed base. But that meant making sure things were compatible over a number of generations of hardware products. The skill the Microsoft developed was how to keep people locked in and forcing them to upgrade. They generated amazing profits with this strategy.
Apple did the same thing but also was able to innovate. But since they were also in the hardware business they had an incenstive to make customers upgrade the hardware and the software which let them move forward. They also have very different CEOs. One company had a CEO that wanted to create insanely great products and make money doing that. The other had a CEO that wanted to make insanely great money and make products doing that.
The Insurance Industry Protection Act
December 24, 2009The Senate passed the Insurance Industry Protection Act. Glad to know that our insurance industry will be healthy. Now can we start to deal with how to make Americans healthy? And hopefully that can be done without effecting the health of the insurance companies otherwise, it will not happen. After all when the press counts the dead and maimed bodies resulting from the lack of insurance they do not count the number of died or maimed resulting from poor disease prevention, bad diet, lack of exercise etc.- such things have no corporate sponsors (well maybe Nike, I don’t know). Of course, congress just proved that you can be sick and still function if your primary job is your own personal survival.
Americans are very confused. Our problem is not really the insurance companies other than their ability to pay off politicians. Our problem is that health care in the USA is way too expensive and is not effective in preventing disease. The employer basis system of group insurance isolates employees from the true cost. Not taxing health care benefits means that the USA government is paying a large part of the bill for health care but has little influence. Medical malpractice suits causes doctors to order tests that are not required. So much money is wasted on the last year of life. If that money had been spend on medical research and prevention that last year could happen many years in the future.
The way our government has handled the health care issue is a demonstration of how ineffective and corrupt our government has become. It is very sad to say the least.
We need a single payer system because only that way there will be a true economic interest in dealing with the real problems of health care. Insurance companies have no long term interest in our health.
I can’t figure out how the Obama Health Plan will really fix our medical system.
August 22, 2009I can’t figure out how the Obama Health Plan will really fix our medical system. It just deals with a sub set. It is hard to see how private insurance companies can do much to fix the bulk of these problems. While I hate to think of the govermen taking over health care, I think it may be the only way to deal with all these issues.
Here are the problems I see:
American’s live unhealth life styles (bad diet, lack of exercise, not enough sleep)
Preventative health is not promoted or paid for by insurance companies
The health system is almost medival when it comes to IT
Litigation makes doctors order too many tests
Way to much money is spent in the last year of life
Insurance companies are inefficient and treat customers badly
Way to many people have no insurance
Business pay for most insurance which makes them less competitive
Microsoft needs end of life counseling: Bring on the death panel
August 16, 2009Installing Windows 7 on a vista computer seems about as easy as passing health care. Check out this column from Walt Mossberg And guess what, there is no way to upgrade from Windows XP.
I am now into my second day trying to upgrade my Vaio Vista notebook to the windows 7 release candidate. I moved about a year ago from the PC to the MAC. Although it has not been an easy transition it has been well worth it. My reasons for doing this can be read on my post 12 steps program to go from the PC to the MAC. Some of my experiences can be heard on a podcast interview on MacCast. So why am I trying to upgrade my Vista computer? Well, it turns out I have a number of things on the computer that are embedded in programs that do not run on the mac. I have quicken and while there is a version on the mac, it is not compatible with its sister program on the PC (kudos to Intuit!). I use Photo Shop Elements on the PC particularly for organizing my photos. The version on the Mac does not have the organizer. I now use iPhoto but it works in a very different way. I sometimes need to go back to Photo Shop Elements to figure out the tagging on my very old scanned photos. I used Family Tree Maker for my genealogy and but it also does not run on the Mac and I want to be able to make sure I have all the info converted. But most importantly, my home AV system and lighting system can only be programed with a PC. However, I cannot work with Vista it drives me crazy and I did not want to downgrade to Windows XP. So my hope was to use Windows 7 to finally get access real access to my Vaio.
I am on my second day (probably three hours of my actual time). I had to upgrade and correct several problems with the Vista installation before it would agree to do the upgrade. That took a day. Now it is actually doing the upgrade.
Well, it is the next morning and Windows 7 is actually running. I just tried to remove a program that is not compatible with Windows 7 and the systems crashed and is shutting down.
Just got it running with remote connection on my Mac which I could never get done with Vista. I can see it is a lot faster than Vista. It will probably be successful for new computers but the upgrade process is very ugly.
Next month I will upgrade my Mac to SnowLeopard and I would guess it will take less than an hour and work the first time.
It is time to pull the plug on grandma-soft.
