The Internet makes trust and insight scarce commodities, and makes newsroom veterans more valuable

Recently I have been looking at the newspaper as a service and as a business (for reasons that will become apparent later). Something is becoming clear. While the Internet makes information plentiful, and this in turn may be a challenge to some aspects of the newspaper business, deep insight and trust remain as scarce as they have ever been. Indeed, the value of deep insight and trustworthy information may have increased in the digital era.

This post, by the way, also appears in the Huffington Post today.

“Commodity news” made up of superficial coverage and parsed press releases is plentiful online. But deep insight remains sufficiently rare that some publications can charge for it. Thus, The Financial Times and The Economist remain essential reading despite the availability of zero cost alternatives. This deep and explanatory journalism can only be built by an expensive newsroom staffed by veteran reporters who have built expertise and relationships with sources over many years. The newspaper that is viable in the digital age must maintain a level of expertise in its newsroom that can not be accessed elsewhere. [read more]

Interview on the history + future of the Net

Jerry Brito, a tech thinker and writer for Time Magazine interviewed me about my recent book, A history of the Internet and the digital future as part of his ‘Surprisingly Free’ podcast series with techies. Jerry has an interesting background: he’s an academic, but he has also lead some interesting projects – see below – and has a interesting take on tech regulation.

• OpenRegs.com, an alternative interface to the federal government’s regulatory docketing system
• Very Local Data, demographic information for every jurisdiction in the country
• Stimulus Watch, crowdsourced accountability for federal stimulus spending

Our conversation jumped from Baran, RAND, ARPA/DARPA, the internet protocols, and then took a turn toward the political. The interview is online here http://surprisinglyfree.com/2011/11/08/johnny-ryan/ and the MP3 is downloadable here Surprisingly Free podcast interview with Johnny Ryan by Jerry Brito

The 3 sided product problem

This post is also on Huffington Post. The first item ever sold on eBay was a broken laser pointer. Startled that someone had bid for the broken item eBay’s founder, Pierre Omidyar, contacted the bidder to ask whether he understood that the laser pointer for which he had bid $14.83 was in fact broken? The bidder responded: ‘Yes, I’m a collector of broken laser pointers’. It was late September 1995. Omidyar realized that he was onto something big. By the end of the next year the value of all goods sold on eBay had reached $7.2 million.

This, however, is a trap for entrepreneurs. The market appears to have a niche for anything – but this is illusory. There is a three sided problem that can derail a product. I spoke last night at a startup event and introduced a few thoughts on what these are. Microphone problems prevented me from making my point as well as I would have liked, so here, in text, are the three sides to the product conundrum.

“Peer-to-Peer Retail”: Social marketing/commerce is not just about ‘likes’

Owjo, the social commerce startup where I worked as evangelist/marketer/product guy, had a big problem. Its offering was so big, and so potentially transformative, that prospective customers couldn’t get a quick grasp of it. Part of my job was to break the product down, so that discrete offerings could be orientated to specific markets. The first fruit of my labour to be released is the concept of “Peer-to-Peer Retail”. It is being introduced in my piece “Peer-to-Peer Retail / The power of sharing” in this coming issue of the quarterly Contagious Magazine (out this week). The concept behind Peer-to-Peer Retail is that social marketing and commerce should not just be about likes, they should be about an entirely new system of retail distribution and customer acquisition, driven by more by the customer than the brand itself. This is not a small idea.

ComScore’s recent report The Power of Like  showed that when a brand succeeds in getting many ‘likes’ on Facebook this translates into sales. The researchers gathered data to show that Starbucks fans and their friends spend more in the cafe than average, and that fans and friends of fans of Southwest Airlines, another surveyed brand, were far more likely to visit its official site than the general internet population. The third brand surveyed, Bing, was used 68 percent more times by fans than non- fans. The message is that getting ‘liked’ by users on Facebook translates to sales. But this is only half of the equation. The idea behind ‘Peer-to-Peer Retail’, and which I saw within Owjo’s technology the first moment I was introduced to it, is that marketing must go beyond what ComScore call ‘The Power of Like’ to

A Moore’s Law for 3D printing? (I need data)

Moore’s Law (transistors per chip) and Hendy’s Law (pixels per dollar) have been useful predictors of where processing power and digital photography were going. Something similar would be really useful for 3D printing. I tried to plot a law for the quality of print per dollar of 3D printers for an article I have been working on for the McKinsey Quarterly, but I don’t have the data. What I want to plot is something along these lines: quality (lower microns etc. + multi-materials) improves at the same cost every X months/years. Plotting this would help people plan for, and benefit from, the disruption of 3D printing.

I need help to do this: I have setup a Google spreadsheet that anybody can contribute data points to at https://spreadsheets.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AvV-pHeoX7ZYdG1OQkVNRVFnTEZLd3NoVUdHMTBIS2c&hl=en_US. The data I need are the following:

3D printing – Johnny Ryan talks with Vyomesh Joshi, EVP of HP’s printing business

HP are interesting because they are the first major manufacturer to enter the 3D printing space, partnering last year with Stratasys to offer 3D printers directly to designers and architects at the sub $20,000 range. So I questioned Vyomesh Joshi, Executive Vice President of HP’s Imaging and Printing Group, about where HP is going.

Johnny Ryan: HP is unusual among leading consumer technology suppliers in having entered the 3D printer market, which seems to be crowded with specialist firms. What was the thinking on this, and on entering the 3D printer space?

Vyomesh Joshi: We see the 3D printer space as an attractive market opportunity and a logical extension of our longstanding printing and graphics market leadership, particularly in large-format printing. As product design and engineering is evolving from 2D to 3D, customers are looking for a compelling way to demonstrate their 3D mechanical

Owjo may be about to save Jaron Lanier’s “lost generation” of musicians, and put Kevin Kelly’s 1,000 True Fans in charge of distribution

Something big is about to happen to music. “Peer-to-Peer” is about to become a good word for the music industry.

In the next month, Owjo, the company I work with, will launch a platform in cooperation with a major music label. This launch will mark the beginning of an experiment that will answer whether musicians can make money from the ‘long tail‘. Put simply, can a musician gather enough paying fans online to engage in a life of music-making without having to keep touring far in to his retirement years?

Principles, Norms, and Constraints: building a new national approach to digital issues

Discussion document for the new IIEA National Digital Principles Group: We are present at a unique moment in time when the shape and character of the emerging digital area is becoming clear. To grasp the opportunity, consider as historical precedents the decades following Gutenberg’s Press, or early decades of the Industrial Age. Strategic and inventive thought is critical at this moment because now is the time when the gains of smart action, and the costs of poorly conceived action, may be greatest.

Piece in Wired: “Dublin Web Summit highlights the under-reported successes of Irish tech”

Following on from my previous piece in Wired UK on the optimism at the Pub Summit, this piece takes a macro snapshot of the Dublin startup scene during last week’s Web Summit. See  Web Summit story on Wired UK here, or read on below..

Last Friday was a big tech day for Dublin. Web game giant Zynga kicked things off by launching its European HQ in Dublin, and disclosed plans to build the city into its biggest operations centre. Across town the sixth Dublin Web Summit opened its doors to 1,000 young developers, serial entrepreneurs, marketers, and investors.

Paddy Cosgrave, who organises the Summit, reckons that Dublin beats London for density of entrepreneurial tech activity per capita. The Dublin Web Summit is now one of the bigger

Frederick Taylor, DEC, and Zynga: how does “idea fuel” filter to the top of perpetual beta organisations?

I broke bread with the speakers after the Dublin Web Summit on Friday (see my coverage of the Summit for Wired UK), and sat opposite Marcus Segal, Zynga’s Chief Operating Officer for Games. Segal is faced with a hell of a problem: Zynga is growing like a super nova, and the model it uses relies on trying out new ideas all the time. It needs idea fuel.

Zynga needs a good flow of idea fuel particularly badly because it embraces the “perpetual beta” approach, keeping its products in a stage of change and development at all time and testing new ideas on a weekly basis. (on perpetual beta – see chap. 10 of  A history of the Internet and the digital future). So the question is, when you have a big, rapidly growing company, how do you get the brain juice to flow upward from all levels of staff – and how do you filter the quality?

When Frederick Taylor, the father of management consulting

The “Android Paradox” – Google’s bright future at both ends of the market

Update 9 June 2011: What a mess. My original “Google’s bright future at both ends of the market” appeared in Business & Economy as “Android apps will be of low quality”. This is absolutely not what my line of reasoning was in the piece. I have asked B&E to change the title to something more reflective of the content, such as “The Android Paradox” as soon as possible. Since the other articles in this cover story also have negative titles, maybe B&E are gunning for Google? Who knows. Anyway, my original text is blow…
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Following on my piece on the new rules of the Mobile OS ecosystem for Business & Economy, Steven Philip Warner, a Senior Editor with Planman Media, interviewed me about the future of Android. Our discussion appears in the current issue of Business & Economy (link on the way…)

Steven Philip Warner: According to new data (released in February 2011) by research firm IHS, the Android Market saw revenue grow by 861.5% year-over-year from 2009 to 2010, but the actual dollar figures are tiny compared to all the other major app stores. For instance, revenue grew from $11 million in 2009 to $102 million in 2010

My piece in Wired UK – “Optimism in Dublin’s start-up scene: Pub Summit 2011 report”

My piece for Wired UK on the start up scene in Ireland, and the Pub Summit last night, is copied below. See article on Wired.

Text of the article below:

Despite the rain, and economic collapse, Dublin seems to be the place to be at the moment. A long line of entrepreneurs and investors queued in the rain to get into last night’s heaving Pub Summit 2011. Inside, the focus was on B2B and social business, and the people spoke about the latest and greatest startups.

Optimism in Ireland

Last night at the Pub Summit I spoke to Eoghan Jennings, ex-CFO of Xing, and the man behind the new Bootcamp accelerator that will be launching in 2012. I was struck by his optimism, and he gave me 12 reasons why Ireland is a good place for startups (credit to Colm Rafferty from Maples & Caulder who gave Eoghan input on the list). I was covering the event for Wired UK and didnt have space to put the list into the full Wired piece.  I think his reasons are interesting and worth sharing here.

My overview of 3D printing in Fortune Magazine

My basic overview of 3D printing appears in the current (Fortune 500) issue of Fortune.

This piece lays out some rudimentary basics, but I am currently working on a more detailed piece – on what I call the “crowd manufacturing cycle” (short note on this idea in previous post titled “Objects 2.0″). Also, see a more recent post with my discussion with John Kawola, CEO of Z Corporation. Text on the Fortune / CNN Money website, or scanned printed version with images below.

Mobile OS Wars – the new rules of the mobile ecology

I wrote a piece for India’s Business & Economy on the mobile OS war. Draft text below… (online version article available here)

The eco system is key. The mobile OS giants have one guiding principle: the OS with the best selection of software applications available for its users will be most attractive to consumers, and will therefore attract yet more developers to create further software applications for them. The more devices that are sold, the more widely purchased and used apps are likely to be, which attracts more developers to write apps for the device, which makes the device more useful, which finally results in more devices being sold. The platform functions like an ecology in which the platform owner, software developer, and user all play a part. Except, the rules seem to have changed – the old rules may not be true any more.

Plastic information, niche audiences, extruded media, and network governance

De Filosoof (The Philosopher), a journal edited by graduate students and faculty at the University of Utrecht, asked me to respond to some searching questions. Three are copied below [note: this is unedited draft text]…

From the very beginning Internet has challenged social, intellectual and political hierarchies. RFC 3, released in April 1969, ‘established the principle that no text should be considered authoritative, that there [is] no final edit.’ (H.I. 99) This hacker-style ethos has dominated Internet ever since and is a threat to human society. People are simply not critical enough to deal with this manyfold of available knowledge.

Johnny Ryan: Information has become “plastic”. We are children of that anomalous era that extends from the popularization of the Gutenberg Press to the AJAX technologies that power the Web 2.0 generation of web sites and services. Before the printing press information was transmitted orally, or using technologies that mitigated against rapid or reliable duplication. After AJAX information became plastic again, subject to the interventions of the crowd, who comment, rank, and remix information in a manner impossible during the ink age.

This plasticity is a repetition of an earlier moment of change in the communication of ideas, from the bardic tradition of memorised learning to the written tradition of written learning. Harold Innis, in Empire and Communications, quotes Socrates in Phaedrus, who reports a conversation between the Egyptian god Thoth, the inventor of letters, and the god Amon. Amon accuses Thoth of creating forgetfulness in mens’ souls:

“this discovery of yours will create forgetfulness in the learners’ souls, because they will not use their memories; they will trust to the external written characters and not remember of themselves. The specific you have discovered is an aid not to memory, but to reminiscence, and you give your disciples not truth but only the semblance of truth; they will be hearers of many things and will have learned nothing; they will appear to omniscient and will generally know nothing; they will be tiresome company, having the show of wisdom without the reality.”[1]

Q&A about the history of the Internet with the Epoch Times

The Epoch Times published a Q&A here with me about the book. We covered the idea behind the book and politics. Text below…

The Internet has integrated itself into nearly every aspect of modern life, following users on the cell phone, at work, and at home. While the Web grows, however, its history and future remain a mystery to the common user.

Author Johnny Ryan hopes to change this with his new book, “A History of the Internet and the Digital Future.” The book is the first to tell the story of the Internet from its inception up to the present. The Epoch Times had the pleasure of speaking with Ryan about his work via e-mail.

Strategies for the music industry – I’m featured in India’s ‘Business & Economy’

The current edition of Business & Economy (apparently “India’s most influential business and economy magazine”) features a piece on “Global music industry: is this the end or a new beginning? A musical paradox”. The upshot is that declining sales of albums and slowing digital downloads mean that it must embrace innovative business models or go under, and I’m quoted offering solutions on what these innovative business models might be…

Cory Doctorow / BoingBoing plugged my book

Cory Doctorow was kind enough to put a plug of the book on BoingBoing yesterday. Said he:

an engrossing, well-written account of the Internet’s founding and the backstory of the underlying protocols and plumbing, which draws on that rich history to make predictions about the net’s future.

Good man! (see the full piece below,  or over at BoingBoing Lively and insightful technical history of the Internet)

2nd extract of my book in Ars Technica — The essence of the ‘Net

Chapter 3 of my book A History of the Internet and the Digital Future has just been published by Ars Technica. This is one of the 3 chapters (of the 13 in the book) that are being published for free. Here it is, or read at Ars.

Johnny Ryan’s A History of the Internet and the Digital Future has just been released and is already drawing rave reviews. Ars Technica is proud to present three chapters from the book, condensed and adapted for our readers. You can find Chapter 1 here. The current installment is adapted from Chapter 3, “The Essence of the Internet,” and it tells the story of the development of some of the fundamental technologies and protocols that underlie the Internet.

I CAN HAS INTERNET?

I just published the first chapter of my book for free via Ars Technica. Full text over at Ars

Johnny Ryan’s A History of the Internet and the Digital Future has just been released and is already drawing rave reviews. Ars Technica is proud to present three chapters from the book, condensed and adapted for our readers. This first installment is adapted from Chapter 1, “A Concept Born in the Shadow of the Nuke,” and it looks at the role that the prospect of nuclear war played in the technical and policy decisions that gave rise to the Internet.

3D printing – Johnny Ryan talks with John Kawola, CEO of Z Corporation

I’ve been thinking allot about what I call “Objects 2.0″ and the impact we will see from 3D printing. I had opportunity to speak recently with John Kawola, the CEO of Z Corporation, one of the leading manufacturers of 3D printers. (I’ve spoken to the heads of 3D Systems, Objet, Makerbot, etc., and may post those conversations too.) I asked him about where he saw the technology going over the next decade and a half, what does he think the technological limits are, the hurdles, and the market opportunity (print on demand and professional print versus print at the home). Here is our exchange…

Johnny Ryan: Where do you see the future of the industry (in terms of growth, application, and impact over the next 5, 10 and 15 years)?

John Kawola: We’re excited by the rapid growth in software applications generating printable 3D data, and expect the trend to accelerate. New professional

Reformcard event (Dublin city centre) Monday 21st

Come meet Reformcard on Monday 21st! Just four days before the Irish General Election, come and meet political representatives and hear them explain their plans for reform. Reformcard has teamed up with Transparency International Ireland to host a free public forum on Reform. The Facebook event page is: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=198142726878511

Social Music Remix

Based on some ideas in my book, and a piece I wrote with Dr Allegre Hadida in BusinessWeek (“One way to save the music industry“) in July last year, we have submitted to the ReThink Music business model competition.

Allegre is an academic at the Judge School of Business in Cambridge. ReThink Music is run by Harvard Business School and the Berklee School of Music.

Call for Civic Hackists!

There is a strong community element to the Political Reform Scorecard idea because the weighting of the importance of different areas of reform will – or should be – determined by crowd voting. Also, the ongoing tracking of implementation and performance will rely on a flow of government data. We’re looking to build a site to support this – in parallel to other angles we’re working to get the political science angle and funding (to pay for publicity). Can you think of civic hacktivists, people who would get fired up enough about Irish political reform to help us build the site?

proposal for a Political Reform Scorecard

A colleague of mine, Joseph Curtin, came up with a simple idea: why not rank, and then track, optimal political reform measures? Building on that core I elaborated a second stage that would begin after the election of a new government, at which point the system would become a way for people to engage with monitoring the progress of governmental implementation of reforms.

Objects 2.0

This is an initial note on something I have been thinking about for a while, and which I am now writing on: “Objects 2.0″ and the “crowd manufacturing cycle”.

3D printing, and the cycle of iterative remixing of physical design that will come with it, are going to dramatically disrupt manufacturing. It promises adjustment challenges to physical industry that have hitherto been largely confined to the music and movie industry. At the same time it will dramatically accelerate innovation.