So who decides if someone is a journalist or not?

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Very interesting snippet in Sue Halpern’s thoughtful NYRB review of Laura Poitras’s film about Julian Assange:

The danger of carving off WikiLeaks from the rest of journalism, as the attorney general may attempt to do, is that ultimately it leaves all publications vulnerable to prosecution. Once an exception is made, a rule will be too, and the rule in this case will be that the government can determine what constitutes real journalism and what does not, and which publications, films, writers, editors, and filmmakers are protected under the First Amendment, and which are not.

This is where censorship begins. No matter what one thinks of Julian Assange personally, or of WikiLeaks’s reckless publication practices, like it or not, they have become the litmus test of our commitment to free speech. If the government successfully prosecutes WikiLeaks for publishing classified information, why not, then, “the failed New York Times,” as the president likes to call it, or any news organization or journalist? It’s a slippery slope leading to a sheer cliff. That is the real risk being presented here, though Poitras doesn’t directly address it.

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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