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

[Craig Partridge]

I'm sorry, but my immediate reaction is that by this logic, the airplane
was not an innovation because, when the Wright brothers invented it, they
created a device that, using modest horsepower, could move a single human
being a short distance and since they already sold bicycles (which achieve
similar goals), they hadn't innovated.  That said, thank you for the
pointers -- I'll go do some reading and see if I'm converted to your point
of view.

Craig

On Wed, Jul 4, 2018 at 1:23 PM, Richard Bennett <richard at bennett.com> wrote:

> 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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>


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