HMG wakes up to the potential of blockchain technology

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This morning’s Observer column:

There are not many occasions when one can give an unqualified thumbs-up to something the government does, but this is one such occasion. Last week, Sir Mark Walport, the government’s chief scientific adviser, published a report with the forbidding title Distributed Ledger Technology: Beyond Block Chain. The report sets out the findings of an official study that explores how the aforementioned technology “can revolutionise services, both in government and the private sector”. Since this is the kind of talk one normally hears from loopy startup founders pitching to venture capitalists rather than from sober Whitehall mandarins, it made this columnist choke on his muesli – especially given that, in so far as Joe Public thinks about distributed ledgers at all, it is in the context of Bitcoin, money laundering and online drug dealing. So what, one is tempted to ask, has the chief scientific adviser been smoking?

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They’re Democrats, Hilary, but not as you know them…

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This morning’s Observer column:

Good news for Hillary Clinton: there are very few Republican voters in Silicon Valley. Bad news: the Democrats there are not Democrats as you know them. They detest trade unions, for example, and they’re very keen on immigration – so long as the immigrants have PhDs from elite Indian or Chinese universities. They are in favour of government, so long as it’s “smart” government. And they believe that all change is good – especially in the long term.

We know this courtesy of a fascinating piece of opinion polling by Gregory Ferenstein, the guy who runs TechCrunch’s policy channel…

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Ad nauseam

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Now here’s an interesting idea — a browser plug-in that silently clicks on every ad that appears on a web-page, thereby swamping — and confusing — the trackers, who have to make sense of what they’re getting back.

Quote of the Day

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“The stock market has predicted nine of the last five recessions”.

Paul Samuelson, writing 50 years ago, quoted by Larry Summers in yesterday’s Financial Times.

The ad-blocking quandary

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Interesting Forbes column by Lewis DVorkin:

It was my first day of class as a first-time Skype instructor, so I got right to it: “How many of you pay for content?” I asked a dozen or so University of Iowa journalism students as the fall semester got under way at my alma mater. Two, maybe three, gently raised an arm. Then came my follow-up question: “How many of you use ad blockers?” Nearly everyone put a hand straight up, proudly admitting to installing software that snuffs out display ads from their daily Web browsing experience. “That’s wonderful,” I said. “You don’t want to pay for content and you don’t want to see the ads that fund the content you don’t want to pay for. You might want to consider another profession.”

He goes on to describe how Forbes tackled the problem.

Since Dec. 17, 2015, a small percentage of those with ad blockers received this message:

Thanks for coming to Forbes. Please turn off your ad blocker in order to continue. To thank you for doing so, we’re happy to present you with an ad-light experience.

The remainder of visitors using ad blockers became the control group. They didn’t receive a message and continued to have full access to the site.

And the results?

1) From Dec. 17 to Jan. 3, 2.1 million visitors using ad blockers were asked turn them off in exchange for an ad-light experience.

2) 903,000, or 42.4%, of those visitors turned off the blockers and received a thank you message.

3) We monetized 15 million ad impressions that would otherwise have been blocked.

As important, the ad-light experience has focused our attention on faster delivery of our digital screens to consumers.

Interesting. And resourceful.