[ih] Review: Yasha Levine's "Surveillance Valley"

[Richard Bennett]

With the iPod, Apple sold people on carrying a highly portable computer around with them everywhere they went. It had a screen, a UI, and an earpiece and the ability to run a very limited set of programs. It also had a rudimentary networking capability, limited to short periods of connection via USB. 

iPod became iPhone with the addition of a microphone, a radio, and a somewhat more capable operating system. With the expansion of iTunes to include apps, you got the whole banana.

The iPhone was therefore an incremental enhancement of two of Apple’s existing products, a portable one and a network-based feeder system. It’s hard to see two dudes in a garage pulling something like this off. 

RB

> On Jul 3, 2018, at 9:29 PM, Dave Crocker <dhc2 at dcrocker.net> wrote:
> 
> 
>> The research on innovation very clearly shows that significant, game 
>> changing inventions almost always come from big companies. The myth of 
>> two dudes in a garage ignores the fact that it takes big money to take 
>> big risks.
>> 
>> Apple succeeded with the iPhone while Handspring and Nokia failed in 
>> large part because of the music infrastructure the company had built 
>> around the iPod, another second or third mover that succeeded where more 
>> ad hoc MP3 players had failed.
> 
> 
> This casts things as either or, which is in line with how the thread has 
> gone, but probably misses a basic distinction, namely basic innovation 
> from what I'll call scaling innovation.
> 
> Creation of the basic capability versus delivering a version of the 
> capability that gains widespread success.  The latter is not a 'mere'.
> 
> Being able to get the balance of features, costs, marketing and sales 
> choices just right is, obviously, not obvious.  But it is quite 
> different from what we often call 'technological breakthrough'.
> 
> d/
> -- 
> Dave Crocker
> Brandenburg InternetWorking
> bbiw.net
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—
Richard Bennett
High Tech Forum <http://hightechforum.org/> Founder
Ethernet & Wi-Fi standards co-creator

Internet Policy Consultant

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