conflux
HBS Working Knowledge
Why Managing Innovation is Like Theater
"Forging ahead without detailed specifications to guide you obviously requires innovation, new actions. We take this observation one step further by suggesting that knowledge work, which adds value in large part because of its capacity for innovation, can and often should be structured as artists structure their work. Managers should look to collaborative artists rather than to more traditional management models if they want to create economic value in this new century.
We call this approach artful making ."
""Is it innovation if everyone can see that it is?" he asked, drawing a few murmurs of agreement. "Innovation is not obvious at the time."
Such scientific soul-searching pervaded IBM's inaugural Innovation Days, a weeklong stretch in September when the technology giant asked 3,000 researchers at eight labs around the world to take off their goggles and re-examine their jobs."
redux [09.06.02]
"The inferiority complex is one of the more devilish aspects of the human condition. For the business owner, it often rears its head with respect to innovation. You know you have what it takes to start and grow a company. But are you conforming to industry norms or transforming them? Do you dare claim the title of innovator?
In the spring 2001 edition of the Drucker Foundation journal, Leader to Leader, Margaret J. Wheatley published an essay bearing the feel-good title "We Are All Innovators." In it, she asserts that innovation is not an extraterrestrial phenomenon; it's what we mortals do best. She writes: "Scientists keep discovering more species; there may be more than 50 million of them on earth, each the embodiment of an innovation that worked. Yet when we look at our own species, we frequently say we're 'resistant to change.' Could this possibly be true? Are we the only species -- out of 50 million -- that digs in its heels and resists? Or perhaps all those other creatures simply went to better training programs on 'Innovation for Competitive Advantage'?""
redux [05.16.02]
"The management of innovation today is where the Quality Movement was 20 years ago, in that many believe the outcomes of innovation efforts are unpredictable. The raison d'etre of the venture capital industry is belief in the unpredictability of new businesses. A few ventures will succeed; most won't, the VCs say. They therefore place a portfolio of bets, extracting premium prices for their capital in order to earn the high return required to compensate for the risk that unpredictability imposes. I believe, however, that innovation isn't random. Every undesired outcome has a cause. Those outcomes appear to be random when we don't understand all the factors that affect successful innovation. If we could understand and manage these variables, innovation wouldn't be nearly as risky as it appears.
The good news is that recent years have seen considerable progress in identifying important variables that affect the probability of success in innovation."
redux [02.07.02]
"The whole story is about motivation. The leaders in every industry have vast resources at their disposal. If I try to grab a piece of real estate that the established leaders want, where the customers are attractive and the business is attractive, the evidence is overwhelming that the leaders will win. So what I want to do is to craft a strategy that takes advantage of what I would call asymmetry of motivation. That is, a situation where I'm motivated to go after the business of the market leaders, but the piece of their business that I can most naturally go after is the one that they're the least motivated to defend.
Remember that when a new idea emerges in an established company, it needs to get funded. And the only ideas that get funded are those that help the established company make more money. That process favors the ideas that create improved products for existing customers, and tends to reject more innovative, or disruptive, ideas. That is what creates disruptive entrepreneurial opportunities."
redux [01.21.02]
"The path to success involves staying a little ahead of the competition but close enough that customers can still understand your product and incorporate it into their lives and businesses. I recently conducted a survey of 785 tech company executives to find out why some succeeded and others did not. I found that newer companies (started after 1980) were much more likely than larger, established companies to cite marketplace barriers -- with customers that were not receptive or ready -- as a primary obstacle. Human behavior is much slower to change than technology.
Years of research shows that the innovations most likely to take hold are those that don't demand excessive change from the customer. Incrementalism -- represented by the following eight characteristics -- is key."
redux [01.08.01]
"The problem isn't figuring out how to get people to become more "innovative"; it's figuring out how to get people to accept and apply innovations more productively. The glut of new ideas has paradoxically created a critical shortage of the human ingredients that determine just how quickly and cost effectively they get used.
So instead of celebrating the "heroic brilliance" of innovators, this column will explore innovation from a different and more important perspective. After all, it is customers and clients--not innovators--who determine how great ideas become successful innovations."
redux [05.03.01]
"In many ways, the Smartphone's evolution is a classic story of high-tech innovation within a big company. It starts with a small team of engineers at Qualcomm Inc. in San Diego, who were given a hazy but intriguing mandate. Gradually, they came to believe that they could produce a breakthrough product -- even if outsiders were dubious. Repeated crises erupted along the way, including a near-death experience in February 2000 when their division was sold to the San Diego subsidiary of Japan's Kyocera International Inc. For a while, it appeared that no one wanted the Smartphone project to continue. Yet the engineers pressed on in skunk-works fashion, improvising solutions as needed, until they emerged with a product that attracted enthusiastic mobs at trade shows, media events -- and even the passenger lounge at Chicago's O'Hare airport."
"Does history repeat itself when companies seek ways to innovate? Are there patterns among the business strategies chosen by successful companies from one decade to the next?
To find out, we studied nearly 200 business strategies, most from the past 20 years, but some from a century ago. From this research we identified 10 essential "innovation themes," which are repeated and proven over time."
redux [03.06.01]
"A whole literature has grown up around the apparently intractable hostility between innovation and bureaucracy, between those who create and those who control. Smart and speedy start-ups blindside mature companies with their inventiveness then grow up into mature companies and are outsmarted in their turn. The only way for innovation to survive in mature companies is to isolate the creators from the managers in protected enclaves. If this is true, it means that it is virtually impossible for sustained innovation to be built into the everyday operation of mature companies; it can only ever be an intermittent aberration."
redux [11.07.00]
"This chapter summarizes the history of the disk drive industry in all its complexity. Some readers will be interested in it for the sake of history itself. But the value of understanding this history is that out of its complexity emerge a few stunningly simple and consistent factors that have repeatedly determined the success and failure of the industry's best firms. Simply put, when the best firms succeeded, they did so because they listened responsively to their customers and invested aggressively in the technology, products, and manufacturing capabilities that satisfied their customers' next-generation needs. But, paradoxically, when the best firms subsequently failed, it was for the same reasons--they listened responsively to their customers and invested aggressively in the technology, products, and manufacturing capabilities that satisfied their customers' next-generation needs. This is one of the innovator's dilemmas: Blindly following the maxim that good managers should keep close to their customers can sometimes be a fatal mistake.
The history of the disk drive industry provides a framework for understanding when "keeping close to your customers" is good advice--and when it is not."
5:40 PM 0 comments
CIO Magazine
Why
More Is Less
"BUSINESS CONDITIONS are so universally dismal that the corporate slogan for most American companies might as well be "We Do More with Less." That places a heavy burden on employees who are often stretched to their limits. Consequently, multitasking--both in the sense of doing more than one task at a time as well as switching among tasks--has taken on an added importance at companies that have experienced either layoffs or hiring freezes or both (usually both). Since these companies are now chronically understaffed, conventional wisdom decrees that those still on the job be as efficient as possible. Hence the need to juggle as many jobs as one can.
But there's a problem with multitasking. Not only does it take a personal toll on employees, it also doesn't work. "
redux [07.09.03]
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""It's magnetic," said Edward M. Hallowell, a psychiatry instructor at Harvard. "It's like a tar baby: the more you touch it, the more you have to."
Dr. Hallowell and John Ratey, an associate professor at Harvard and a psychiatrist with an expertise in attention deficit disorder, are among a growing number of physicians and sociologists who are assessing how technology affects attention span, creativity and focus. Though many people regard multitasking as a social annoyance, these two and others are asking whether it is counterproductive, and even addicting."
redux [08.06.01]
""To do two things at once," said the Roman sage Publilius Syrus, "is to do neither." And this was 2,000 years ago, long before people tried to drive while talking on their cellphones and digging for tollbooth change and yelling at the kids and (ahem) listening to the radio.
Syrus may have overstated the case, but a new study concludes that performance does drop off when people try to accomplish more than one task at a time. Another sage -- William Shakespeare this time -- called procrastination "the thief of time." But it looks like multitasking is giving procrastination a run for its money."
"What are you doing right now as you read this article? Ordering supplies for the office from your distribution warehouse? Monitoring a screen for production equipment performance? Getting an e-mail back to your colleagues in the Denver office? Carrying on Instant Message conversations with three co-workers? Writing up a report in Word for the meeting on Wednesday? Eating the lunch you never have time to leave the desk for? Opening and reading traditional mail? Filing an in-house memo to Tech Services because your browser is acting up? Making a list of the clients you're expect to reach by close-of-business today? Trying to resize the fonts in the company newsletter so it fits on one page?"
"It's my assumption -- and I think it's as self-evident as human stuff gets -- that when we pay attention to something, we do so with certain affective qualities. That is, when we pay attention to the [Nazi Philosoper Heidegger pretending he Cares] cake that's now burning (because we were paying too much attention to the radio's description of Clinton's oral techniques or the shape of his member or his budget proposal's impact on macroeconomics or Hillary's oral techniques), we do so with some emotion, mood, or evaluation. And this is because attention isn't a dry and abstract or cognitive relation to the world. It's a relationship of caring. (Gosh, did Heidegger think of this before me? Damn! Wait, maybe I if I give it a made-up name I'll be able to trademark and claim it as my own thought. I've got it! Let's call it "e-careTM"!)"
"If this is true -- and you can take it from my sincere look and deep tone of voice that it is -- then it proves that humans can't multitask, at least not always. If attention were nothing but cognition, if it were like a flashlight sweeping over a dark world, then maybe we could multitask by wagging our attention back and forth. But if paying attention to two objects also means switching our emotions, feelings, preferences, mood and valuations, then, well, our souls just aren't enough like my sister Kate (who can shake them like jelly on a plate, for those of you who missed the Dave Van Ronk years of the folkie movement) to manage even rapid time slicing...except when dealing with matters that we don't really care much about."
"We turn now to the limitations that arise when people attempt to perform two different tasks at the same time. While there is a large literature on relatively complex and continuous dual-task performance, the focus here will be on discrete tasks. The reason for this is that with more continuous tasks interference and switching are easily disguised for reasons that will emerge clearly below. Not surprisingly, limitations on simultaneous mental operations evidently arise at various different functional loci. Perceptual analysis of multiple stimuli can often take place in parallel, but when perceptual demands exceed a certain threshold, capacity limitations can become evident (Pashler, 1997) although non-perceptual factors (such as statistical noise in search designs) often masquerade as capacity limitations (Palmer, 1995). These limitations appear largely, but probably not entirely, modality-specific (Treisman & Davies, 1973; Duncan, Mertens & Ward,1997). Similarly, response conflicts arise when responses must be produced close together in time. These perceptual limitations are often most acute when similar or linked effectors are used, such as the two hands (Heuer, 1985)."
6:14 PM 0 comments
Wired News
California Takes on PC Waste
"Californians, it's time to clean out the basements, garages and closets: The state will soon provide a safe place to ditch ancient computers and televisions."
"The [Electronic Waste Recycling Act of 2003] charges retailers and manufacturers a small fee, ranging from $6 to $10 depending on the product, to fund a statewide recycling infrastructure. The money, collected at the point of purchase, will be distributed to local governments and electronic waste recyclers to set up collection points and drop-off sites where consumers can unload their useless machines."
redux [07.07.03]
"Most people viewing the carcass of an abandoned motherboard would see a useless collection of plastic shards and mangled wires.
Hewlett-Packard's Chris Altobell sees silver and gold.
Altobell is the marketing manager of HP's Product Recycling Solutions unit in Roseville, Calif., which processes 3 million pounds of used computer machinery each month, transforming giant corporate printers and cast-off 386 consumer machines into materials that can be spun into precious metals and plastic containers."
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"Responding to concerns from both customers and environmental advocates, Dell Computer announced yesterday that it would no longer rely on prisons to supply workers for its computer recycling program.
Dell, the world's largest seller of PC's, said it had canceled its contract with Unicor, a branch of the Federal Bureau of Prisons that employs prisoners for electronics recycling and other industries."
redux [06.27.03]
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"The nation's two largest personal computer makers, Dell and Hewlett-Packard, handle recycling of the waste from computer products in remarkably different ways, according to a report by environmentalists released today.
The report was prepared by the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition, a group that also focuses on health issues, and the Computer Take Back Campaign. It commended Hewlett-Packard for using "state of the art" practices in partnership with an expanding commercial recycling industry, while criticizing Dell for using low-cost prison labor in association with Unicor, an industrial prison system within the Justice Department."
redux [06.04.03]
"Every year, 1.5 million old, but working, computers are buried in landfill sites. Now, an impending EU directive could mean these discarded machines, and many others, enjoy a more useful life.
The Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (Weee) Directive makes electronics firms responsible for what happens to the gadgets and devices they produce once people have done with them."
redux [02.25.03]
"This is the end of the road for the toxic end-product of the computer age.
In towns such as this one on China's south-eastern coast, vast quantities of obsolete electronics shipped in from the United States, Europe and Japan are piled in mountains of waste."
"The real costs are being borne by the people on the receiving end of the 'e-waste'. In towns along China's coast as well as in India and Pakistan, adults and children work for about US$1.20 (S$2.08) a day in unregulated and unsafe conditions."
redux [02.05.03]
"The computer maker is testing a program that gives those who recycle their old computers, monitors, printers or other gear a coupon worth up to $50 for any purchase of $60 or more on HP's online store. Under a program announced nearly two years ago, HP charges anywhere from $17 to $31 to recycle products. The company says the coupon will offset the amount customers must pay for the service, which ensures none of the gear ends up in landfills.
The need for recycling is growing, particularly as nonprofit agencies become less willing to accept older gear, said Renee St. Denis, manager of HP's recycling effort. The problem of what to do with all this aging equipment has become a major issue facing the tech industry."
redux [01.26.03]
"So what are the environmental impacts of producing and using a 32-megabyte DRAM computer chip that weighs a mere 2 grams? The UNU team found that to make every one of the millions manufactured each year requires 32 kg of water, 1.6 kg of fossil fuels, 700 grams of elemental gases (mainly nitrogen), and 72 grams of chemicals (hundreds are used, including lethal arsine gas and corrosive hydrogen fluoride).
To make matters worse, Williams believes his findings are conservative. "We think the real numbers may be twice that," he said, adding that rapid advances in technology aggravate the problem. "The fact that a chip has such a short lifespan, because the technology turns over so quickly, exacerbates the environmental impact.""
redux [01.10.03]
""The leadership continues to be by and large the Japanese companies, and the U.S. companies tend to be far behind," Smith said.
"A lot of (U.S. manufacturers') initiatives are piecemeal and not really designed to address the vast majority of consumer concerns," he added. "There is still an enormous amount of computer waste being exported to China.""
"The report also criticizes Dell's use of federal prison labor to recycle old computers, which it says exposes inmates to toxic chemicals without the same health and safety protections as workers at other facilities."
redux [12.03.02]
"In a shift that will change how toxic electronic waste is recycled in California and possibly nationwide, Hewlett-Packard has said it will support state legislation to require PC manufacturers to bear the cost of computer disposal.
""The combined HP-Compaq company is the single largest manufacturer of PCs in the world. They are the linchpin for producer responsibility,'' said Smith, whose group helped expose the primitive recycling industry in China. ``The fact that they have changed their position vastly improves the likelihood we'll get a very good e-waste bill in the new session.""
redux [11.13.02]
"If we all had to lug around the true environmental weights of the microchips in our iPods, cellphones or laptops, most of those portable gadgets would never make it off their docking stations, much less out the front door.
It takes 3.7 pounds of fossil fuels and other chemicals and 70.5 pounds of water to produce a single two-gram microchip, according to a forthcoming study in the Dec. 15 issue of Environmental Science & Technology, a publication of the American Chemical Society."
redux [05.22.02]
"California high-tech manufacturing companies are degrading the environment in developing countries, a new research report confirms.
Case studies done in Taiwan, Malaysia, India, Thailand, and Costa Rica by the California Global Corporate Accountability Project document water pollution and inadquate waste management resulting from component production."
redux [04.06.02]
"Americans will throw out about 10 million old computers this year. About two-thirds of these will be shipped to Asia for dismantling by rural villagers. The computers all contain mercury and lead, and the resulting toxic waste has become a threat to villagers' health and environment.
"A coalition of activists and lawmakers has been working to improve the situation, and in recent weeks they've gotten a signed pledge from electronic manufacturers in the United States to consider a new solution."
"Workers in Silicon Valley's semiconductor plants toil in head-to-toe protective clothing designed to keep impurities from contaminating the microchips. But Mother Jones magazine reports that the growing incidence of health problems among these workers suggests that it is they who need protection. At least 250 workers have filed lawsuits against high-tech companies, charging that the toxic soup of chemicals in production areas has triggered high rates of miscarriages, birth defects, and cancer."
redux [05.04.00]
"Behind the well-paid geeks in cubicles and the sharp-dressed entrepreneurs is an industry that consumes as many resources, uses as many lethal chemicals, and generates as much toxic waste as some of the worst culprits of the pre-Internet age. And both industry workers and the people who live near the plants are feeling the effects: the toxins damage aquatic life in the bay, poison drinking water, and, increasing evidence suggests, kill high-tech industry workers.
While the federal government, local agencies, and hundreds of thousands of Bay Area residents and company workers are dealing with the computer industry's mess here in America, the same (or worse) problems are spreading worldwide."
10:16 AM 0 comments
News.Com
Librarians to P2P critics: Shhh!
"The five major U.S. library associations are planning to file a legal brief Friday siding with Streamcast Networks and Grokster in the California suit, brought by the major record labels and Hollywood studios. The development could complicate the Recording Industry Association of America's efforts to portray file-swapping services as rife with spam and illegal pornography
According to an attorney who has seen the document, the brief argues that Streamcast--distributor of the Morpheus software--and Grokster should not be shut down."
redux [04.08.03]
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""It used to be a librarian would be pictured with a book," said Ms. Snider, the branch manager, slightly exasperated as she hunched over the wastebasket. "Now it is a librarian with a shredder.""
""The basic strategy now is to keep as little historical information as possible," said Anne M. Turner, director of the library system.
The move was part of a campaign by the Santa Cruz libraries to demonstrate their opposition to the Patriot Act, the law passed in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks that broadened the federal authorities' powers in fighting terrorism."
redux [01.27.03]
"A federal law aimed at catching terrorists has raised the hackles of many of the nation's librarians, who say it goes too far by allowing law enforcement agencies to watch what some people are reading."
"Some 10,000 librarians from around the world were expected in Philadelphia for the association's midwinter meeting, which began Friday. The group will discuss the Patriot Act at a forum Sunday and is likely to draft a resolution condemning sections of the law that open library records to police inspection, Freedman said."
redux [01.17.03]
"The survey of 906 libraries by the Library Research Center at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign found that in the year following the Sept. 11 attacks, federal and local law enforcement agents visited at least 545 libraries to inquire after patrons' records.
When asked to voluntarily forfeit patrons' records, roughly half the librarians cooperated with investigators without demanding a subpoena or court order, the study found."
redux [01.01.03]
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"As pinup calendars go, it has many of the standard features: models in black leather perched on beefy motorcycles. But the men and women on display here aren't exactly firefighters, or the Girls of "Baywatch," or any other known species of cheesecake or beefcake."
""We wanted to show people we've changed," said Nancy Dowd, the head of public relations for the library system, who snapped the photos with her Olympus C-3000, a digital camera. "People's ideas of librarians is conservative, and this just blew it out of the water.""
redux [06.17.02]
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"When Internet song-sharing services created digital jukeboxes of free music, book publishers raced to bolt the door to their own archives of copyrighted works.
Many librarians, on the other hand, thought the idea was pretty exciting.
Now, new technologies are igniting a similar battle closer to home. Librarians have seized on the potential of digital technology and offered users free online access to the contents of books from their homes, and they are squaring off with publishers who fear that free remote access costs them book sales."
redux [03.25.02]
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"This morning in a Philadelphia courtroom, a coalition of libraries, Web sites and library patrons will begin nine days of hearings in which they will ask three federal judges to help decide a seemingly simple question: What is a library for?"
"They argue that a law passed by Congress in December 2000 requiring schools and libraries to use Internet filtering software changes the nature of libraries from being places that provide information to places that unconstitutionally restrict it."
"And who, you might be wondering, is giving Schroeder and her publishers such a fright?
Librarians, of course.
No joke. Of all the dangerous and dot-complex problems that American publishers face in the near future -- economic downturns, competition for leisure time, piracy -- perhaps the most explosive one could be libraries. Publishers and librarians are squaring off for a battle royal over the way electronic books and journals are lent out from libraries and over what constitutes fair use of written material."
redux [08.23.01]
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""It's time for us to work on advocating for libraries to change the image," said one of the "21st Century Librarians," Veronda Pitchford, an African-American librarian in Chicago who wears dreadlocks, enjoys in-line skating, practices yoga and listens to eclectic music. "I want little kids to know that this is an option. I want little girls to see me."
Ms. Pitchford, 30, said that even in an age when computers may be leading children to forget the human touch of a librarian, there is no substitute.
"When I say that we're the ultimate search engine," she said, "I'm not joking.""
redux [07.12.01]
"Gone are the days when a librarian's worst offense was hushing patrons one too many times."
In this digital age, the custodians of published works are at the center of a global copyright controversy that casts them as villains simply for doing their job: letting people borrow books for free."
redux [04.09.00]
"HEROES OF FREEDOM: They are champions of some vital principles, "the unsung heroes of the fight for free expression, intellectual freedom and access to the Internet"
"Librarians help us find things. They help us read. They help us learn. And lately they've been fighting the good fight for their patrons' right to have access to the unfiltered resources of the newest information resource -- the Internet."
8:44 PM 0 comments
News.Com
House
vote stymies TIA spy plan
"The U.S. House of Representatives has approved a spending bill that eliminates money for the Terrorism Information Awareness project, effectively putting an end to the controversial Pentagon antiterrorism plan, which sought to assemble computerized dossiers on Americans."
"Sen. Ron Wyden, the Oregon Democrat who led opposition to the TIA project on Capitol Hill, said in a telephone interview that the "program that would have been the biggest and most intrusive surveillance program in the history of the United States will be no more. The lights are going out at the office.""
"While privacy worries are frustrating the Pentagon's plans for a far-reaching database to combat terrorism, a similar project is quietly taking shape with the participation of more than a dozen states -- and $12 million in federal funds."
"Dubbed "Matrix," the database has been in use for 18 months in Florida, where police praise the crime-fighting tool as exhaustive. It cross-references the state's driving records and restricted police files with billions of pieces of public and private data, including credit and property records."
redux [07.14.03]
"The controversial Terrorism Information Awareness program, which would troll Americans' personal records to find terrorists before they strike, may soon face the same fate Congress meted out to John Ashcroft in his attempt to create a corps of volunteer domestic spies: death by legislation.
The Senate's $368 billion version of the 2004 defense appropriations bill, released from committee to the full Senate on Wednesday, contains a provision that would deny all funds to, and thus would effectively kill, the Terrorism Information Awareness program, formerly known as Total Information Awareness."
redux [03.25.03]
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"As the government gears up its domestic security program, the chief executive of a venture capital firm founded by the Central Intelligence Agency warned today of the danger of amassing a large, unified database that would be available to government investigators -- as some technology executives have advocated.
"I think it's very dangerous to give the government total access," said Gilman Louie, chief executive of In-Q-Tel, a venture fund established by the C.I.A. in 1999."
redux [02.12.03]
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"House and Senate negotiators have agreed that a Pentagon project intended to detect terrorists by monitoring Internet e-mail and commercial databases for health, financial and travel information cannot be used against Americans."
"One important factor in the breadth of the opposition is the fact that the research project is headed by Adm. John M. Poindexter. Several members of Congress have said that the admiral was an unwelcome symbol because he had been convicted of lying to Congress about weapons sales to Iran and illegal aid to Nicaraguan rebels, an issue with constitutional ramifications, the Iran-contra affair."
"If we are to defeat terrorists and their supporters, a wide range of organizations must work together. I am committed to the closest possible cooperation with the Intelligence Community and other government agencies. Accordingly, I strongly support the President's initiative to establish a Terrorist Threat Integration Center (TTIC) that will merge and analyze terrorist-related information collected domestically and abroad. This initiative will be crucially important to the success of our mission in the FBI, and it will take us to the next level in being able to prevent another terrorist attack on our nation."
redux [01.29.03]
"A forthcoming government database will compile information from all federal agencies and the private sector on people deemed possible terrorist threats, President Bush said Tuesday evening."
" The White House offered few details about how TTIC will evolve, but critics of an existing data-mining program under development by the U.S. government were quick to draw comparisons to the controversial Total Information Awareness (TIA) project."
"The Justice Department did not immediately respond to questions on Wednesday about what information on Americans would be accessible to the TTIC. One government official with knowledge of the center, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said it was not designed to supplant Poindexter's efforts but was instead "an effort by the president to bring together elements of agencies that are focused on terrorism.""
"The threat integration center will analyze intelligence and ensure the information is shared throughout the federal government as well as with state and local authorities. It also will have the authority to set requirements for all intelligence agencies and assign collection operations to the CIA, the Pentagon, the FBI and, through Homeland Security, to state and local law enforcement authorities.
"This will be the first time in our history that all of these elements come together," the official said."
"The new terrorist information center would be headed by a senior government official reporting to the director of the CIA, which raises the question of how much control over intelligence operations the FBI is being given, even in light of its expanding mission."
"Treverton added that the new intelligence structure probably reflects some battling over turf among intelligence agencies. The CIA director, George Tenet, will not cede any of his authority over intelligence collection and analysis under the new plan, nor will his access to the president decrease. Quite the opposite, Anderson said. "It will probably strengthen his role and his visibility.""
7:28 PM 0 comments
The New York Times
A New Kind of Revolution in the Dorms of Dartmouth
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""As far as I know, no one has done a wireless voice-over-I.P. network this large before," said David Kotz, a computer science professor at Dartmouth."
"The roll out of voice over Internet protocol is closely coupled with Dartmouth's recent decision to stop charging students, faculty and staff for long-distance phone calls. The college made that decision when administrators discovered that the billing function was costing more than the calls themselves."
"Reading interviews with the KaZaA founders and looking at their new web site, Skype we think that their second revolution has a chance of being even bigger than their first. Perhaps it's called Skype to rhyme with Hype.
The idea is to use peer-to-peer networks to give free voice over IP telephone calls to the masses, and not just calls to a special instant messenger-like registry of friends, but to virtually anyone."
redux [08.25.03]
"A cheap, Internet-based alternative to traditional telephone service is facing a sudden regulatory backlash that could slow adoption of the fast-growing technology, raise prices and put financially shaky start-ups out of business.
Two weeks ago, Minnesota drew first blood. It ordered so-called VoIP (voice over IP) provider Vonage Holdings to file for a telephone operator's license. Many see the move, the first attempt by a state public utilities commission to regulate an Internet telephony provider, as the beginning of a new regulatory framework for Internet telephone operators in the state."
redux [05.22.03]
"Both sides agreed on one point: Nobody has any idea how to turn Wi-Fi into a profitable business.
Of all the talk, Babbio's prickly attack on MCI -- along with his lukewarm comments about Wi-Fi -- perhaps best reflected the painful disputes consuming the troubled telecom industry. While studies show broadband Internet access has reached nearly a third of American homes, it remains unclear what kind of pricing, quality and add-on services consumers should expect from their beleaguered suppliers."
"Think of it as the love child of the two hottest developments in telecom: voice over IP and wireless broadband. There are more than 3.5 million VoIP phones in the US - mostly at work - up from practically none five years ago. Meanwhile, the number of commercial Wi-Fi hot spots in the US exploded from 2,000 to 12,000 last year. Combine the two and any gadget - laptop, PDA, tablet PC, whatever - can become a voice communication device."
"For big providers like AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile, voice over Wi-Fi isn't pretty. Those companies blew billions on licenses for next-gen cellular networks. Now they may find themselves undercut by the same grassroots groups bringing free, unregulated Wi-Fi to the urban masses."
redux [12.16.02]
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"After all, telecommunications and technology companies lost $7.6 billion in global market value from March 2000 to September 2002, as the industry was gripped by stunning collapses, financial scandals and an effort to absorb excess capacity on globe-spanning communications systems.
But alongside the industry's search for its direction after such turmoil are trends that threaten to destabilize global telecommunications further in 2003. These trends could be described as the start of a cannibalization of established services by disruptive new technologies."
redux [08.07.02]
"Of course The Economist is not alone in this fundamental error but "Crash" story is a useful foil for addressing this misunderstanding.
It is a tragic misunderstanding since the woes of the Telecom industry are seen as representing the state of the economy rather than the collapsing of a facade of a Potemkin industry. In 1900's there was a real telecommunications industry just like in the 1800's when there was a thriving business in transporting ice from frozen lakes to warmer climes. Just as refrigeration put an end to the need for buying ice, the Internet has put an end to the need to buy telecommunications services from others. We just need commodity connectivity."
redux [07.22.02]
"The telecoms bust is some ten times bigger than the better-known dotcom crash: the rise and fall of telecoms may indeed qualify as the largest bubble in history. Telecoms firms have run up total debts of around $1 trillion. And as if this were not enough, the industry has also disgraced itself by using fraudulent accounting tricks in an attempt to conceal the scale of the disaster."
"The danger is that the traumatic scale of the telecoms crisis will cause the pendulum to swing back too far in favour of the former monopolies. In the short term, they are likely to attract investment, to pick up the assets of bankrupt rivals, and to lead the way in consolidating the industry."
redux [06.18.02]
[requires 'free' registration]
"The turmoil continues in telecommunications, making the long-awaited turnaround increasingly difficult to call. Indeed, in light of a wave of bad news last week and through the weekend, some analysts say the industry's problems could actually become worse before they become better."
" "I foresee a near total collapse as the endgame," said Susan Kalla, a senior telecommunications analyst at Friedman, Billings & Ramsey. "I've become more reactionary in the last month as it becomes clear that almost nothing is working in the industry's favor.""
redux [02.08.02]
""Some of the more highly leveraged companies are really struggling. They don't have the cash flow to make their payments," says James Glen, a telecom economist with Economy.com."
Worse, Baby Bells such as Verizon (VZ ) and SBC (SBC ) continue to eat away at consumer long-distance monopoly of AT&T, Sprint, and WorldCom. That's on top of the woes the big three already face in operating backbone undersea and land-based networks, which they resell to other operators in some places. While Sprint, WorldCom, and AT&T don't face the type of imminent cash crunch as Global Crossing does, a consolidation among even the major long-distance providers is now a possibility."
"The fundamental health of the [telecom] sector is likely to get worse before it gets better . . . The combination of: the sector's anemic growth outlook, the cannibalizing competitive mega-trends of wireless substitution, voice to data migration, Bell entry into long distance combined with local competition, and the bubble-induced excesses in debt and over-capacity, all create a powerful wealth destroying dynamic. Telecom's 'debt spiral' has gotten so bad that even the relatively strongest players who are still able to raise significant capital (VZ, SBC, and BLS) don't want to assume any more liabilities or business risk. Consequently, Precursor is reversing its long held view that consolidation can help improve the sector from excess capacity and debt any time soon."
"Despite the darkened outlook, new communications capabilities are within reach that will make the current Internet look like tin cans and string. The technical know-how exists. Radically simplified technologies can blast bits a million times faster than the current network at a millionth of the cost. These are sitting in laboratories undeveloped, in warehouses undeployed, and in the field underutilized.
It's not even that the communications revolution has been derailed by inept or self-aggrandizing behavior by incumbent telephone companies and their government regulators. Something more fundamental is at work."
11:24 PM 0 comments
Wired News
Army Admits Using JetBlue Data
""This looks and feels like the data Valdez," said Lee Tien of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
"Look at how we found out about this, only because one company was foolish enough to speak publicly about it," Tien added. "We should put the brakes on all these data-mining programs, and have a serious national conversation, because travel data is just one example of the many kinds of data every data-mining operation wants to suck in from private businesses.""
[requires 'free' registration]
"Two federal agencies announced today that they had opened investigations into JetBlue Airways in response to the airline's admission that it had provided travel records on more than a million passengers to a Pentagon contractor, violating its own privacy rules.
The moves by the Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Trade Commission came as JetBlue disclosed that it had hired Deloitte & Touche, the accounting firm, to review the company's privacy policies and determine if they needed to be revamped."
redux [09.18.03]
"JetBlue Airways confirmed on Thursday that in September 2002, it provided 5 million passenger itineraries to a defense contractor for proof-of-concept testing of a Pentagon project unrelated to airline security -- with help from the Transportation Security Administration.
The contractor, Torch Concepts, then augmented that data with Social Security numbers and other sensitive personal information, including income level, to develop what looks to be a study of whether passenger-profiling systems such as CAPPS II are feasible."
"Bill Scannell, a privacy advocate who boycotted Delta Airlines earlier this year for its reported participation in testing, said his sources confirm that JetBlue will be replacing Delta Airlines as the "guinea pig for CAPPS II testing."
"JetBlue has no respect for its customers or the constitution of the United States," Scannell said. "JetBlue is clearly code red.""
""People have used irresponsible scare tactics to stop the testing of CAPPS II," [TSA's Turmail] said. "The American people have the right to know whether this system will work. We should have a dialogue based on fact and not innuendo.""
redux [09.09.03]
"In the most aggressive -- and, some say, invasive -- step yet to protect air travelers, the federal government and the airlines will phase in a computer system next year to measure the risk posed by every passenger on every flight in the United States.
The new Transportation Security Administration system seeks to probe deeper into each passenger's identity than is currently possible, comparing personal information against criminal records and intelligence information. Passengers will be assigned a color code -- green, yellow or red -- based in part on their city of departure, destination, traveling companions and date of ticket purchase."
redux [04.16.03]
"The former privacy officer of Internet advertising giant DoubleClick will be the Department of Homeland Security's first privacy czar, Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge announced today."
"The "Total Information Awareness" program would have created a database of consumer financial transactions combined with other publicly available data. Congress said it will suspend funding for the Defense Department project unless the administration can demonstrate that it will not violate constitutional privacy rights. The White House's report is due next month."
"Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge on Wednesday told a congressional panel that the government will not implement a pilot version of a controversial program for screening airline passengers until a privacy expert examines it.
"It is my intention to have this be [examined] by the privacy officer," Ridge said, responding to a question by Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., on why CAPPS appeared scheduled to be implemented before a privacy officer has been named."
redux [03.17.03]
"Federal officials commission a new air-passenger screening system to identify people linked to terrorism. The Transportation Security Administration says commercial databases will be used to check the authenticity of passengers' names. Privacy advocates worry about the extent of the data search. NPR's John McChesney reports."
redux [06.06.02]
"Let me emphasize again: Without some privacy, we couldn't stay human. But we'll be better equipped to defend a core of essential privacy if our overall civilization is open enough to let us catch the Peeping Toms and power abusers.
Better, more intrusive technology is going to limit our [ability to stay anonymous]. In 5 or 10 years, you'll have eyeglasses that scan any face on the street, look it up on the Internet, and provide captions as you walk by. This will be a return to the village of our ancestors, where they recognized everyone they saw. No one will be a total stranger."
redux [06.28.00]
"It's unlikely that in the future everyone will choose total online anonymity. But the new privacy technologies have implications that go beyond the short-term questions of law enforcement and marketing.
"The real dimension here isn't the choice between privacy and disclosure," says Paul Saffo, director of the Institute for the Future in Menlo Park, Calif. "The real story is the impact it has on our sense of identity. The fact that we can selectively disclose things on the Internet is changing the nature of social interactions. If you can change your persona at will in cyberspace, that begins affecting what you think of your own identity and who you think you are.""
redux [04.30.00]
[requires 'free' registration]
"A liberal state should respect the distinction between public and private speech because it recognizes that the ability to expose in some contexts aspects of our identity that we conceal in other contexts is indispensable to freedom, friendship, even love. Friendship and romantic love can't be achieved without intimacy, and intimacy, in turn, depends upon the selective and voluntary disclosure of personal information that we don't share with everyone else. Moreover...privacy is also necessary for the development of human individuality. Any writer will understand the importance of reflective solitude in refining arguments and making unexpected connections: in an odd but widely shared experience, many of us seem to have our best ideas when we are in the shower. Indeed, studies of creativity show that it's during periods of daydreaming and seclusion that the most creative thought takes place, as individuals allow ideas and impressions to run freely through their minds without fear that their untested thoughts will be exposed and taken out of context."
"We are trained in this country to think of all concealment as a form of hypocrisy. But perhaps we are about to learn how much may be lost in a culture of transparency -- the capacity for creativity and eccentricity, for the development of self and soul, for understanding, friendship and even love. There is nothing inevitable about the erosion of privacy in cyberspace, just as there is nothing inevitable about its reconstruction. We have the ability to rebuild some of the private spaces we have lost. What we need now is the will."
"Neal Stephenson, a writer with a cultlike following among the technologically minded and author of the classic "Snowcrash," has given an over-long, hugely digressive -- and brilliant -- speech. After many, many turns and a deep stack of points and stories, Stephenson gets around to saying that the best defense for one's privacy and personal integrity turns out to be not cryptography but, what do you know, "social structures." He is not explicit about the exact nature of these structures, but from the slides that follow, we get a sense of every sort of social relationship from neighborly friendliness to political parties. The slides show drawings of small circles representing areas of social trust. The circles widen and merge, to create a field of autonomy, a trusted space.
Stephenson is making a point about code: Without a sociopolitical context, cryptography is not going to protect you. He singles out PGP for criticism, saying that relying on the encryption scheme is like trying to protect your house with a fence consisting of a single, very tall picket. A slide shows the lone picket rising into the sky, a bird considering it with bulging eyes."
redux [02.15.01]
"The debate over these questions illustrates one irreducible truth: privacy is not so much a legal or technical concept as a social one. "The dominant feature of the current privacy debate," Fred Cate told me when I asked him to try to sum things up, "is its irrationality. The drivers are emotional." I think he's right. The crucial question about privacy today is the same it has always been?namely, whom should you trust?
A lot of people instinctively don't trust technology, especially in the hands of businesses, to protect privacy. But, as Robert Ellis Smith and others have pointed out, contemporary notions of privacy have in many cases evolved not despite new technology but because of it. "Privacy," the influential journalist and editor E. L. Godkin famously wrote, in Scribner's magazine in 1890, "is a distinctly modern product, one of the luxuries of civilization." Phil Agre made a related point to me, a bit more bluntly. "The idea that technology and privacy are intrinsically opposed," he said, "is false.""
10:34 PM 0 comments
Salon
U.S.: Troops acted within rules in Reuters camerman case
"Lt. Col. George Krivo, a military spokesman, said an official investigation concluded that "although a regrettable incident," the soldiers "acted within the rules of engagement."
The U.S. Army has never publicly announced those rules, citing security of its soldiers, who face near-daily attack by insurgents opposed to the American military occupation."
redux [08.18.03]
"Dana's driver, however, thought the cameraman, 43, had been deliberately shot outside the U.S.-run jail. Journalists had gathered there after the U.S. Army announced that a mortar attack on Saturday evening had killed at least six Iraqi prisoners and wounded scores.
"There were many journalists around. They knew we were journalists," said Munzer Abbas. "This was not an accident.""
"Reuters quoted Dana's soundman Nael Shyioukhi as saying that prior to the incident both he and Dana had asked for and received permission from U.S. troops in the area to film the prison from a nearby bridge."
"While we recognize the dangers faced by U.S. forces in Iraq, the preliminary accounts of yesterday's shooting raise serious questions about the conduct of U.S. troops and their rules of engagement. From the eyewitness accounts, it appears that Dana was fired on without warning. He was filming in an area where no hostilities were taking place, raising questions about whether U.S. troops acted recklessly in targeting him."