Monthly Archives: June 2017

Tyler Cowen on the iPhone

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Like many others, I’ve been reflecting on the tenth anniversary of the iPhone. The Computer History Museum ran a fascinating two-hour show in which John Markoff talked to some of the people who designed and built the first phone. Tyler Cowen also devoted his latest Bloomberg column to it and, as usual, he’s come up with an angle that I hadn’t thought about much:

First, we’ve learned that, even in this age of bits and bytes, materials innovation still matters. The iPhone is behind the scenes a triumph of mining science, with a wide variety of raw materials and about 34 billion kilograms (75 billion pounds) of mined rock as an input to date, as discussed by Brian Merchant in his new and excellent book “The One Device: The Secret History of the iPhone”. A single iPhone has behind it the production of 34 kilos of gold ore, with 20.5 grams (0.72 ounces) of cyanide used to extract the most valuable parts of the gold.

Especially impressive as a material is the smooth touch-screen, and the user’s ability to make things happen by sliding, swiping, zooming and pinching it — the “multitouch” function. That advance relied upon particular materials, as the screen is chemically strengthened, made scrape-resistant and embedded with sensitive sensors. Multitouch wasn’t new, but Apple understood how to build it into a highly useful product.

Imagine putting together a production system that could make 1.2 billion of these devices.

Ten years on

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Infographic: 1.2 Billion iPhones in 10 Years | Statista You will find more statistics at Statista

Ten years ago today, the first iPhone went on sale. Is it the most successful product of all time? Probably not. But it’s definitely one of the most influential, in that it was the first real smartphone and thereby kicked off the technology that has shaped the way the Internet — and society — has evolved ever since. And of course it also made Apple the most valuable company in the world.

Today was the day!

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“Yes” is the answer to the question below. But the fine — $2.4B — is much bigger than anyone expected. So who, one wonders, was managing whose expectations?

Ironic, too, the the UK is planning to leave the only organisation in the world that appears to be capable of taking on the tech giants.

Is today the day?

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There’s lots of media speculation that the European Commission will today fine Google $1.2B for abusing its monopoly of search in Europe. But, in a way, the fine is the easy bit. The harder question, says the New York Times, is how to ensure that the company complies with the ruling.

“The issue they’re facing is, how does the European Commission solve the underlying problem” of Google’s suspected antitrust abuse, said Christian Bergqvist, an associate professor of competition law at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark. “It will be very difficult to structure any remedy.”

As part of her decision, which is likely on Tuesday but may be delayed, Margrethe Vestager, Europe’s competition chief, is expected to call for Google to change how it ranks some of its search products to give its rivals — a collection of mostly small European and American tech companies — greater prominence when people search online.

How Google responds to these demands will be left to the company, which must provide the region’s authorities with potential technical solutions to counter its perceived antitrust abuse. Officials can ask for more changes if they are not satisfied with Google’s initial proposals.

The nub of it is that implementing the ruling would require greater oversight of Google’s products — possibly with independent monitoring of its search algorithms in Europe to guarantee that it continues to comply with the antitrust ruling. Since those algorithms are the company’s crown jewels, I can’t see it surrendering without a fight.

This one will run and run, in other words.

Amazon and the long game

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This morning’s Observer column:

The news that Amazon had acquired Whole Foods Market for $13.7bn sent shivers down the spine of every retailer in America. Shares in Walmart fell 7%, and rival Kroger by 17%. Amazon’s market capitalisation, in contrast, went up by $11bn. So why the fuss? At first sight it seemed straightforward: Amazon wanted to get into food sales, and it fancied having a network of 400 urban stores; and Whole Foods (which some of my American friends call “whole wallet” because of the cost of its products) was ailing. There was also a small political angle: John Mackey, co-founder of Whole Foods, had been enmeshed in a row with an activist investor that threatened to drive him from power; by selling to Amazon, he gets to keep his job. So: small earthquake in food retailing, not many dead?

Er, not quite, and only if you avoid taking the long view. And, with Amazon, the long view is the only one that makes sense…

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Russian hacking — what’s getting lost in the fuss about Trump

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Good Editorial in the NYT.

So let’s take a moment to recall the sheer scope and audacity of the Russian efforts.

Under direct orders from President Vladimir Putin, hackers connected to Russian military intelligence broke into the email accounts of senior officials at the Democratic National Committee and of Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager, John Podesta. They passed tens of thousands of emails to the website WikiLeaks, which posted them throughout the last months of the campaign in an attempt to damage the Clinton campaign.

Even more disturbing, hackers sought access to voter databases in at least 39 states, and in some cases tried to alter or delete voter data. They also appear to have tried to take over the computers of more than 100 local election officials in the days before the Nov. 8 vote.

But the only part of this that appears to interest Trump is the threat it poses to the perceived legitimacy of his electoral win. He’s a narcissist, remember.

Nothing to hide? But you may still have something to fear.

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This morning’s Observer column:

When Edward Snowden first revealed the extent of government surveillance of our online lives, the then foreign secretary, William (now Lord) Hague, immediately trotted out the old chestnut: “If you have nothing to hide, then you have nothing to fear.” This prompted replies along the lines of: “Well then, foreign secretary, can we have that photograph of you shaving while naked?”, which made us laugh, perhaps, but rather diverted us from pondering the absurdity of Hague’s remark. Most people have nothing to hide, but that doesn’t give the state the right to see them as fair game for intrusive surveillance.

During the hoo-ha, one of the spooks with whom I discussed Snowden’s revelations waxed indignant about our coverage of the story. What bugged him (pardon the pun) was the unfairness of having state agencies pilloried, while firms such as Google and Facebook, which, in his opinion, conducted much more intensive surveillance than the NSA or GCHQ, got off scot free. His argument was that he and his colleagues were at least subject to some degree of democratic oversight, but the companies, whose business model is essentially “surveillance capitalism”, were entirely unregulated.

He was right…

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