San Francisco’s Cultural Divide
The failure of Google Fiber to connect America’s cities to ultra-fast gigabit networks took a bizarre turn this week: San Francisco, the incubator of the apps economy, is seriously considering…
Senate Internet Hearings
As a technical matter, it is the case that the Internet is more like cable TV than the telephone network. While the Internet does support interpersonal communication, its primary role is publishing audio, video, pictures, and text. And like cable TV, it’s a platform in which advertising is a very important source of revenue.
Google Grows Up: Innovation WITH Permission
When a company as large as Google that aims to hire the best and brightest fails to prove its value by making money, it’s not uncommon to see the course correction we’re seeing now. Between Netflix, Amazon, AT&T, Apple, and YouTube it appears the tech sector is remaking Hollywood in its own image. This is going to make a great show.
Animating Rural Broadband
Subsidies aren’t going to alleviate rural America’s broadband woes all by themselves, but with a little planning and some new technology we can do a lot with a little.
Chairman Pai’s FCC Challenge
In this podcast, Shane Tews and Richard discuss key issues likely to grab the FCC’s attention this year, the impact of Chairman Pai, and whether the FCC needs to be reorganized. Beyond the issues themselves, Chairman Pai is likely to invest a lot of effort in changing the tone at the agency. Rather than forcing questionable issues through the agenda, expect him to work for consensus solutions that will outlast his tenure.
Is Net Neutrality Doomed?
Net neutrality is doomed by history and technology regardless of who sits atop the FCC. Neutrality is forced modularity, a losing proposition in every long run. Our reverence for for forced modularity comes from a fluke of history.
The Year of Augmented Reality
AR leap-frogged VR on the strength of Pokèmon Go, the app that showed millions what it’s all about. Rather than VR paving the way for AR, they’re both going to develop in parallel. Here are some devices and apps.
DirecTV Now Too Good to be Legal
AT&T’s Monday announcement of the DirecTV Now streaming service drew nearly unanimous applause from tech pundits. This is a new business model for cable TV that harnesses some of the power of the broadband networks to provide personalized sports, entertainment, and news packages to TV viewers. But some are critical, albeit for strange reasons.
Trump Administration Telecom Program
The Trump Administration is going to chart its own course through the tech policy issues we discuss here, as AEI’s Jeff Eisenach explained on the Communicators last Friday. The Trump Administration…
Modularity vs. Integration in Entertainment Design
Last time I discussed the high points of modularity and integration in personal computer design, in particular the benefits that Microsoft hopes to gain by integrating personal computer hardware of…