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

[Richard Bennett]

Heh, I didn’t say the iPhone wasn’t an innovation; I actually said it was the kind of innovation that only a big company could pull off. The prior art that failed in the marketplace more or less reinforces this point. 

The airplane was an innovation regardless of who invented it; I tend to lean toward DaVinci on that question. 

> On Jul 4, 2018, at 4:32 PM, Craig Partridge <craig at tereschau.net> wrote:
> 
> 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 <mailto: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 <mailto: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 <http://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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—
Richard Bennett
High Tech Forum <http://hightechforum.org/> Founder
Ethernet & Wi-Fi standards co-creator

Internet Policy Consultant

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