The Great Debate UK
Remembering how to forget in the Web 2.0 era
Amid ongoing debates over the hazards of excessive digital exposure through such Web 2.0 social networking platforms as Facebook and Twitter, a new book by Viktor Mayer-Schonberger extols the virtues of forgetfulness.
Since the emergence of digital technology and global networks, forgetting has become an exception, Mayer-Schonberger writes in “Delete”.
“Forgetting plays a central role in human decision-making,” he argues. “It lets us act in time, cognizant of, but not shackled by, past events.”
Mayer-Schonberger shared his theory on how to fight back against the digital panopticon with Reuters before giving a lecture at the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce in London.
from Commentaries:
Gut feeling: How Google CEO valued YouTube deal
Let the second-guessing, the mock horror, the disbelief, the crowing begin.
Google CEO Eric Schmidt has acknowledged he realized upfront that he was overpaying to acquire YouTube, to the tune of $1 billion, judged by any conventional measures.
The many critics of Google's $1.65 billion deal to acquire the video-sharing site three years ago will claim this confirms everything they have always said about the deal. Not quite.
In fact, not really at all.
Schmidt came clean in a deposition by lawyers in the Viacom copyright lawsuit that there was very little revenue coming into YouTube to justify the price his company paid.
No surprises here. There were intangibles to consider:
1. YouTube's popularity was sky-rocketing, making it the runaway market leader among video-sharing sites. 2. It was crushing his company's own site, Google Video. 3. YouTube was up for auction and would be sold to a competitor unless Google jumped first. 4. Google overbid to ensure YouTube didn't fall into rival hands.
Yet, the author fails to mention perhaps the most important reason Google bought YouTube– to defend online content.
If Google’s objective is eyeballs– and we can all agree that it is– then it would benefit Google to have Internet users across the world being able to infringe copyright, i.e. upload copyrighted movies, tv shows, and clips.
At the time of Google’s purchase, the number one threat to YouTube’s success were lawsuits from copyright holders.
Without having the resources and clout of a serious parent company (i.e. Google, Microsoft, Newscorp, or maybe Yahoo at the time) YouTube would have been sued, and subsequently lost in the courts, therefore, setting a precedent that would have been much more detrimental to online video, and Google’s business, than overpaying for YouTube. Even at a price of more than $1.5 billion.
Don’t be fooled, Google knew exactly what it was doing when it agreed to pay more than 1 billion extra than it had “valued” YouTube, which was, reducing a threat to its business- which isn’t search, but rather attention. skh
from Commentaries:
Twitter backlash foretold
Technology market research firm Gartner Inc has published the 2009 "Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies," its effort to chart out what's hot or not at the cutting edge of hi-tech jargon. It's just one of an annual phalanx of reports that handicap some 1,650 technologies or trends in 79 different categories for how likely the terms are to make it into mainstream corporate parlance.
Jackie Fenn, the report's lead analyst and author of the 2008 book "Mastering the Hype Cycle," delivers the main verdict:
Technologies at the Peak of Inflated Expectations during 2009 include cloud computing, e-books (such as from Amazon and Sony) and internet TV (for example, Hulu), while social software and microblogging sites (such as Twitter) have tipped over the peak and will soon experience disillusionment among corporate users.
What's most interesting in the report, now in its 14th year, is what the corporate research firm says is a long way off from the mainstream.
It will take up to five years for many of today's trendy technologies to become mainstream, including Web 2.0, cloud computing, Internet TV, virtual worlds, and a true corporate mouthful, service-oriented architecture (SOA).
Funny how long hype cycles take to pay out. Three years ago, in its 2006 Hype Cycle Report, Gartner predicted Web 2.0 would go mainstream within just two years.
I, and many of my contemporaries in the IT field, do not believe a word of what Gartner and other so-called “analysts” have to say about technology trends. They and their ilk have been pitching Web 2.0 and other technologies for years, and have missed the mark time after time. It amazes me that there’s a lucrative cottage industry in making these “predictions”…
If you owned a business, and wanted to bet on what technologies are going to succeed, you would be better off going to Vegas and betting on roulette…
Interesting concept, even though I dont quite agree that “forgetting” is a virtue.
Since it’s easy to find information as and when we want it through Internet, that means we do not have to try our best to memorize. We can free our brain cells to focus on application of information, rather than memorizing the information.
This does not imply “forgetting”. It just means that we utilize our brain cells in other way.