I’ve been hesitant to comment on the FCC’s proposed Net Neutrality rules until I could read them. You’ll recall the actual rules weren’t released at the time of the vote a couple weeks ago, just characterized this way and that for the press pending the eventual release of the actual order. Well they finally published the rules last week and I’ve since made my way through all 400+ pages (no executive summary commenting for me). And while there are no big surprises — much less smoking guns — in the FCC report, I think that taken along with this week’s Wall Street Journal story […]
Net Neutrality, Apple, and the future of TV
Reporter’s Notebook: Yahoo, IBM, IEEE and me
I haven’t been writing as much lately. This has been for several reasons, some of which may surprise you. It’s true I’ve had to spend a lot of time fending-off attacks from IBM corporate (more on that below) but I’ve mainly been at work on two secret projects. One is a new documentary series for PBS and the other a new technology startup I’m doing with a partner. The PBS series will be announced when PBS decides to announce it but most of the shooting is already done. The startup has taken the traditional VC route and looks, surprisingly, like it will actually be funded. Evidently if your idea is wild enough and […]
2015 Will Be the Year When Nothing Happened
This was supposed to be time for my technology predictions for 2015, which I’ll get to yet, I promise, but first I want to explain the major trend I see, that 2015 will become known as The Year When Nothing Happened. Of course things will happen in 2015, but I think the year of truly revolutionary change will be 2016, not 2015. It takes time for trends to develop and revolutionary products to hit the market. I’d say the trends are clear, it’s the products and their manufacturers who aren’t yet identifiable. So here are three areas where I’ll disagree with most of my peers and say I don’t expect to see much […]
TV 3.0 is already here
Ethernet inventor Bob Metcalfe, when I worked for him 20 years ago, taught me that we tend to over-estimate change in the short term and under-estimate it in the long term. So it can be pretty obvious what is coming but not at all obvious when. And what we know about the when of it is that making money from new technologies is often a matter of investing right before that bend upward in the hockey stick of exponential change.
We all know television is bound to enter a new era sooner or later. Heck, I’ve written dozens of columns on the subject over my 17 years in this job. But this is the first time […]
Refresh mobile hits the desktop
I’ve been away on a secret mission, which must remain secret for awhile longer.
Somehow this summer my so-called career had a revival of sorts. My earnest and heartfelt book, The Decline and Fall of IBM, is doing well and will shortly appear in a number of foreign language editions coming from actual book publishers. In a week or two I’ll publish here a general IBM update that’s mainly material to bring those foreign editions up to the present. The short version is it still sucks being Big Blue.
But wait, there’s more! Suddenly I have four (four!) television projects in the works, two of them literally back […]
