Everything we know about tech we learned from Kraftwerk
At 8:30 p.m. on Tuesday there was no more coveted piece of New York City real estate than standing room in the Museum of Modern Art’s Marron Atrium. And so it shall be for the next seven nights as Kraftwerk, the German electronic outfit from the 1970s, plays to a scant crowd of about 450 lucky souls. That this quartet, which includes just one of its original members, can command a showcase like MoMA – and sell out in a drumbeat – provides a useful lesson into technology’s risk of obsolescence.
It would be easy to dismiss Kraftwerk as a relic from the dawn of the digital age and its ardent fans a weird cult in turtleneck sweaters and 3D glasses. But MoMA’s eight-night retrospective of the band helmed by Ralf Hutter provides surprising insight into why some innovations fade and others flourish. Ultimately, success in technology – as in art – is derived from the expression of big ideas, not simply a mastering of its circuitry. It is an example that businesses, too, can learn from.
Kraftwerk is best known for harnessing new gadgets, primarily synthesizers like the Minimoog, to create industrial rhythms and electronic drumbeats that broke new ground in pop music. Kraftwerk’s sounds have been copied, built upon and sampled by artists from Afrika Bambaataa to Pink Floyd to Jay-Z. Today’s auto-tuned pop stars owe a direct debt to the musical sequencing that Hutter and his former partner Florian Schneider pioneered at their Kling Klang Studios in Dusseldorf four decades ago.
Yet funky sounds alone fail to explain how Kraftwerk’s four musicians – looking more like engineers in Tron-era spandex suits – can rivet the attention of New York’s cultural elite for an entire week. That speaks more to the larger concepts embraced by Kraftwerk, chiefly the power of technology – specifically computing, transportation and communications – to transform human relationships and, particularly in the German context, erase the scars of a dark past with visions of a unified, harmonious Europe.
Take Tuesday’s performance of the 1974 breakthrough Autobahn. The song, with its signature electronically modified vocals, “wir fahr’n fahr’n fahr’n auf der Autobahn,” against a rhythm of padded drumbeats, is sonically unforgettable. But so, too, is the song’s message – enhanced at the MoMA by 3D screens looming behind the stage – of a peaceful Europe where new highways cut through green fields and the edifices of a modern industrial complex compete with church spires in the middle distance. Like the space-agey sounds emanating from Kraftwerk’s instruments of the era, the limited torque of a 1973 Mercedes diesel sedan might seem obsolete to us today. Yet the freedom of the open road remains an eternal longing.
Similarly, the electronic arrangements of 1977’s Trans Europe Express may sound old-fashioned to 2012 ears. But the song’s message, that modern transportation (in this case high-speed rail) offers the possibility of stitching together a continent that just a generation before was at war, is timeless and transcends the music.
Kraftwerk’s biggest ideas, of course, stem from the all-pervasiveness of digital culture in everyday life, best expressed in 1981’s Computer World. While it may sound quaint in the iPhone era, the song suggested that computing itself would change how man viewed “business, numbers, money, people,” and reshape “crime, travel, communication, entertainment.” Kraftwerk couldn’t have been more right on these matters.
Can’t find a socket to charge your phone? IDT’s got a solution.
(Updates with cost details)
Ted Tewksbury wants to get rid your iPhone cable.
The chief executive of San Jose, California-based Integrated Device Technology is pushing a set of microchips he hopes will eventually render “contactless charging” — charging your smartphone by simply placing it on a specific spot — commonplace and eventually make phone-charging cables a thing of the past.
On a recent visit to IDT’s offices, Tewksbury showed me the chips he’s just started selling. They’re IDT”s twist on existing technology, using inductive coupling, which has yet to reach critical mass.
The idea is, instead of plugging your smartphone into the wall when its battery runs low, you toss it onto a wireless charging surface that could be built into your desk, a cup holder in your car, or even the armrest of an airplane seat. And there it would juice up.
If Tewksbury has his way, that sort of inbuilt design will become de rigeur in cars, homes, airports and elsewhere, so people may not even notice when their devices are charging. Competing ”wireless” charging products on the market now require the user to tote around a charging pad that itself must be plugged into a socket, making them less-than-truly mobile and defeating the purpose of going “wireless”.
IDT hopes to grab a slice of a small but potentially sizeable market for wireless smartphone charging chips that he reckons could reach $800 million by 2014.
Sony’s case of iPad 3 launch envy
Sony, in a bout of bad timing, is hosting an event on March 7 in San Francisco for tech reporters at the same time as Apple’s reported iPad 3 unveiling and the Japanese conglomerate wants to make sure it won’t get ditched.
Sony, which some people consider to be the “Apple of the ’80s”, sent out a helpful e-mail on Tuesday informing invited members of the press of the scheduling conflict without mentioning the world’s most valuable tech company.
Another press event invitation went out today which conflicts with the Sony roundtable on March 7. Please confirm if you are still available to join the Sony event.
The Sony event is a breakfast with Sony Electronics president and chief operating officer Phil Molyneux. He helped spearhead Sony’s tablet launch last year, the “S” and the “P”, which are among the many tablets chasing the iPad.
Sony isn’t the first Japanese company to get overshadowed by an iPad launch. Last year, the iPad 2 was revealed at the same time Nintendo President Satoru Iwata was speaking across the street at the Game Developers Conference.
from Paul Smalera:
What real Internet censorship looks like
Lately Internet users in the U.S. have been worried about censorship, copyright legalities and data privacy. Between Twitter’s new censorship policy, the global protests over SOPA/PIPA and ACTA and the outrage over Apple’s iOS allowing apps like Path to access the address book without prior approval, these fears have certainly seemed warranted. But we should also remember that Internet users around the world face far more insidious limitations and intrusions on their Internet usage -- practices, in fact, that would horrify the average American.
Sadly, most of the rest of the world has come to accept censorship as a necessary evil. Although I recently argued that Twitter’s censorship policy at least had the benefit of transparency, it’s still an unfortunate cost of doing global business for a company born and bred with the freedoms of the United States, and founded by tech pioneers whose opportunities and creativity stem directly from our Constitution. Yet by the standards of dictatorial regimes, Internet users in countries like China, Syria and Iran should consider themselves lucky if Twitter’s relatively modest censorship program actually keeps those countries’ governments from shutting down the service. As we are seeing around the world, chances are, unfortunately, it won’t.
Consider the freedoms -- or lack thereof -- Internet users have in Iran. Since this past week, some 30 million Iranian users have been without Internet service thanks to that country’s blocking of the SSL protocol, right at the time of its parliamentary elections. SSL is what turns “http” -- the basic way we access the Web -- into “https”, which Gmail, your bank, your credit card company and thousands of other services use to secure data. SSL provides data encryption so that only each end point -- your browser and the Web server you’re logging into -- can decrypt and access the data contained therein.
By blocking SSL, Iran has crippled Tor, a program that enables Internet users to anonymize not just their content but their physical location as well. Tor is a very common workaround for users in totalitarian regimes to access Twitter, Gmail, Facebook and other services. It’s hard to come up with an apt analogy for Iran’s unprecedented blockage -- it’s not just that the letters you send are read by the Post Office and photocopied for their records, it’s that the Post Roads themselves have been closed off, so you can’t even send a letter in the first place. That’s the net effect of blocking SSL in Iran.
The hacking group Anonymous has brought down all kinds of websites in protest, mostly over copyright, in the U.S. and Europe. I don’t advocate their targeting any country’s servers for retribution, but where is the outrage or public demonstration or media attention over the denials of Iranians’ basic freedoms to communicate, via the Internet?
Unfortunately, it’s still too easy for Internet companies and even the Internet’s founding fathers to dismiss the importance of the tools they created in fostering free and open public dialogue, especially in places like Iran. Recently, legendary engineer and Google Vice-President Vint Cerf published a New York Times op-ed entitled “Internet Access is Not a Human Right,” where he wrote: “Internet access is always just a tool for obtaining something else more important.” How wrong he is. Cerf’s line of thinking eviscerates the Internet -- the wonder of the modern world he helped build. Cerf argues that humans have the right to “lead healthy, meaningful lives,” including having “freedom from torture or freedom of conscience.” Yet, we live in the 21st century: It’s hard to see how, among people whose economies are developed enough to afford them communication devices, Cerf would excuse governments that curtail their citizens’ freedom and right to use the ultimate communications tool -- the global network of the Internet. In fact, in underdeveloped parts of the world, the cost to have a cell phone that connects to the Web can be quite affordable.
I’m not arguing semantics here -- if our society excludes the Internet from the fundamental rights of human communication, we also excuse totalitarian regimes like Iran’s from any repercussions when it comes to blocking that avenue of human contact. It’s a dangerous compromise to make in a world that only gets more digital with each passing day. And it also conveniently excuses the free world from having to do much of anything about it. We wouldn’t forgive Iran if it threw 30 million citizens into solitary confinement -- so why would we ignore it when the Iranian government effectively cuts the entire population off from the outside world, to stifle their voices during a critical electoral cycle?
The example of Iran is well taken in this article, but I would like to add one: I lived and taught in Zhuhai, China, from August 2007 to July 2009. As an expatriate, I didn’t seem to have my computer monitored and censored very much, but my students at United International College surely did.
We take our freedoms for granted. I don’t any more. I know what it is like to live in a country where “freedom of expression” is a sham. We shouldn’t let that happen here, which doesn’t mean condoning criminal activities on the net, but it does mean a conscious guarding of freedom of speech.
Tech wrap: Apple teases “Mountain Lion”
Apple released details on the successor to its “Lion” operating system for Mac computers, due out late this summer. OS X 10.8, dubbed “Mountain Lion,” will inherit features already running on iPhones and iPads such as iMessage, Notification Center and AirPlay mirroring, according to an Apple press release. Game Center will give Mac users the opportunity to square off against gamers on iOS devices as well as other Mac users. A new feature called “Gatekeeper” is meant to give OS X users more control over what apps can be downloaded onto their Macs, further distinguishing Apple-approved apps from third-party ones. The plan to introduce more iOS functions to Apple’s desktop and laptop OS comes as Microsoft prepares to make its desktop applications more mobile with a rumored fall release of Windows 8.
Four months after one of Japan’s biggest corporate scandals, police and prosecutors arrested seven men, including the former president of Olympus and ex-bankers, over their role in a $1.7 billion accounting fraud at the medical equipment and camera maker. Three former executives arrested, ex-President Tsuyoshi Kikukawa, former Executive Vice President Hisashi Mori and former auditor Hideo Yamada, had been identified by an investigative panel, commissioned by Olympus, as the main culprits in the fraud, seeking to delay the reckoning from risky investments made in the late-1980′s bubble economy.
Groupon CEO Andrew Mason said that the company’s location-based service Groupon NOW will likely not be a material contributor to results in the next one or two quarters. Mason said customers of the company’s daily deals are using Groupon NOW too. However, he stressed that the new service will likely take time to grow. Groupon NOW is a relatively new service that differs from Groupon’s main daily deal business. Groupon subscribers can check on nearby deals that are happening in the next one or two hours, based on their location.
Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood proposed voluntary steps for automakers that would establish new safety criteria for hands-free calling, navigation, and entertainment systems that have become common in new cars and trucks. The guidelines introduced recommend that automakers adopt technology to disable distracting electronic systems that are accessible to the driver — but not passengers — when a car is moving. The latest government figures show that roughly 10 percent of U.S. traffic deaths in 2010, or 3,092 people, were linked to distracted driving.
Corporate co-dependence: when good partnerships go bad
One of the biggest surprises in Facebook’s IPO filing was that it depended on game-maker Zynga for 12 percent of its sales last year.
In 2010, the online game company famous for “FarmVille” and “Words With Friends” nearly declared war with the social network over a change in Facebook’s policy involving credits — the currency Zynga players use to buy virtual goods. Facebook wanted to take a 30 percent cut of transactions.
Bing Gordon, a video game veteran, Zynga board member and partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, described the standoff during the TechCrunch Disrupt conference in May as a Silicon Valley version of the Cuban Missile crisis, where Zynga was at one point prepared to walk away from Facebook.
Now that the importance of their relationship is out in the open, it is clear that it is the best interest of both companies to work together when it strikes a new agreement in 2015.
Zynga and Facebook are not the first mutually dependent companies which sometimes come to blows. Here’s a look at some famously antagonistic business pairings starring the likes of Microsoft and Intel, SAP and Oracle and Netflix and Hollywood.
(Click on the photo above for the slideshow)
Microsoft-Intel:
from Paul Smalera:
Twitter’s censorship is a gray box of shame, but not for Twitter
Twitter’s announcement this week that it was going to enable country-specific censorship of posts is arousing fury around the Internet. Commentators, activists, protesters and netizens have said it’s “very bad news” and claim to be “#outraged”. Bianca Jagger, for one, asked how to go about boycotting Twitter, on Twitter, according to the New York Times. (Step one might be... well, never mind.) The critics have settled on #TwitterBlackout: all day on Saturday the 28th, they promised to not tweet, as a show of protest and solidarity with those who might be censored.
Here’s the thing: Like Twitter itself, it’s time for the Internet, and its chirping classes, to grow up. Twitter’s policy and its transparency pledge with the censorship watchdog Chilling Effects is the most thoughtful, honest and realistic policy to come out of a technology company in a long time. Even an unsympathetic reading of the new censorship policy bears that out.
To understand why, let’s unpack the policy a bit: First, Twitter has strongly implied it will not remove content under this policy. If that doesn’t sound like a crucial distinction from outright censorship, it is. Taking the new policy with existing ones, the only time Twitter says it will ever remove a tweet altogether is in response to a DMCA request. The DMCA may have its own flaws, but it is a form of censorship that lives separately from the process Twitter has outlined in this recent announcement. Where the DMCA process demands a deletion of copyright-infringing content, Twitter’s censorship policy promises no such takedown: it promises instead only to withhold censored content from the country where the content has been censored. Nothing else.
To be sure, that’s censorship of a kind, but compared to the industry censorship even Americans have long lived with -- take the Motion Picture Association of America, which still censors films based on dubious standards of taste and morality -- it’s positively enlightened. And it never permanently destroys or pre-empts content, the way the MPAA does.
Further, for a country to censor content, it has to make a “valid and properly scoped request from an authorized entity” to Twitter, which will then decide what to do with the request. Twitter will also make an effort to notify users whose content is censored about what happened and why, and even give them a method to challenge the request. According to Twitter’s post, a record of the action will also be filed to the Chilling Effects website. The end result of a successful request is that the tweet or user in question is replaced by a gray box that notifies other readers inside the censoring country that the Tweet has been censored:
disagree with your reasoning if the end result of a successful censorship request is (quote) “that the tweet or user in question is replaced by a gray box that notifies other readers inside the censoring country that the Tweet has been censored…. it’s instead a bright signal to a country’s online citizens that their government is limiting their free speech.”
condoms for tweets and safe social intercourse
timid walter mitty comes to mind … ‘bright signals’ and all
@ iq160 – finding alternatives to restrictive laws are the jouissance of internetting
Tech wrap: Is Samsung buying RIM?
Shares of Research in Motion jumped 10 percent on Tuesday after a tech blog (The Boy Genius Report) said the BlackBerry maker was actively seeking to sell itself to South Korean smartphone rival Samsung Electronics.
This fall New York will open The Academy for Software Engineering, the city’s first public high school that will train kids to develop software, reports Mashable.
In protest of the Stop Online Piracy Act, popular Web sites such as Reddit, Boing Boing, and Wikipedia will go dark Wednesday, displaying only a message about their opposition to the controversial bill, reports The Washington Post.
Facebook and Google told the Delhi High Court Monday they cannot block offensive content that appears on their services, ZDNet reports. The two Internet giants are among 21 companies that have been asked to develop a mechanism to block objectionable material in India, and the Indian government has given the green light for their prosecution.
Tech wrap: Amazon concerns hit shares
Amazon.com shares fell to their lowest level since late March on Thursday on concern about sales growth during the online retailer’s crucial fourth quarter.
Free Wi-Fi is on its way to some Japanese vending machines, reports gizmag. Much like a mobile hotspot at a local coffee shop, people near the machines would be able to connect to the internet for 30 minutes at a time and surf the web.
Just when you thought you’d never hear the words HP TouchPad ever again, the miniature version of the tablet computer that caused a frenzy when it went on sale for $99 has emerged: the HP TouchPad Go, reports the International Business Times.
Next year will see one more regional Internet registry run out of IPv4 addresses, but networking experts say 2012 will be more of a year to prepare for the inevitable shift to IPv6 than an Internet doomsday, IDG News Service reports.
As 2011′s mediocre stock market returns become final, technology investors would be wise to keep an eye on these U.S. initial public offerings of technology companies for 2012, International Business Times predicts.
A concerned friend,
I never noticed how many Amazon sellers whose accounts have been suspended until this happened to someone I’ve known for years. This friend had sold on Amazon with a history of 100% feedback, until last Christmas. I know they’ve always attempt to bend over backwards to work all buyers, even if a buyer was rude and sometimes ridiculous. I’ve seen communication from customers, most are nice and professional, but I’ve also seen some that are very nasty and have displayed highly unprofessional, with bad attitudes. I would be reluctant to respond with as much kindness in the face of a downright nasty buyer message, I’ve witnessed my friend had to respond to. Sometimes one has to swallow their pride, while writing with politeness in response. I don’t believe anything my friend could have done was so wrong to have their account harshly suspended by Amazon. In my opinion, after lessening to the story, this was not something they could have avoided, or could have remedied by handling it any better than they did. After this happened to them I stared researching online and came across a surprisingly large number of anti-Amazon sites, with many seller horror stories, including a blog that was ironically being hosted on the Amazon website itself. Of course, everyone has their own story to tell, but what really became so crystal clear was how many of the growing number of suspended sellers whom where once devote Amazon customers (buyers) are now looking for alternative places to patronize, both to buy and sell. It seems, in an effort to enforce Amazons own very harsh pro-buyer polices; they’ve inadvertently alienated a very large number of their best customers with an ever growing number of suspended accounts. If true, I’ve read some very frivolous and poorly investigated reasons that Amazon has decided to invoke account suspension! Amazon is shooting its own foot so to speak, by quickly (without good reason) suspending seller accounts and also at the same time loosing a large number of its supporters and customers in the process. These disillusioned/disenchanted and seemingly upset former Amazon sellers/customers, whom before having been treated so badly and shabbily by Amazon where actually once their biggest fans and supporters. Theses now shunned Amazonians whom have contributed to Amazons success, by bringing them new business and increasing profits over time are now up in arms. Also, a growing number of websites bashing Amazon also seem to be growing all the time… The few buyers who are complaining on these sites are mostly upset about less serious issues. These complaints from a few buyers are complaints such as slow shipping times, although, most sellers are claiming a large number of the shipping problems are because of the shipping companies whom may sometimes be slow, or have in some cases mishandle their orders, which the seller cannot control, yet Amazon will still hold the seller fully responsible if a buyer leaves negative feedback and complains. Additionally, I’ve noticed over time, more and more angry sellers are now complaining about more serious concerns of scams and bad behavior from a growing number of bad seeds on Amazon. There are Amazon sellers who are saying that a growing number of Amazon buyers whom are seeking to obtain free product by taking advantage of Amazon’s very one sided pro-buyer policies and are working the system. I’ve seen online claims of extortion attempts being made from fraudulent Amazon buyers, who some sellers say will leave, or threaten to leave, negative feedback if they don’t issue an immediate refund by making a false claim, knowing that the distressed Amazon seller will be in fear of their account being suspended, if their feedback ratings sink. One shunned Christian book seller had posted a very sad story, stating after having a history of high feedback over the years had inadvertently discovered that one of his supposed dissatisfied buyer who had caused his account to be suspended by Amazon was in reality a shill hostel competing seller, posing as a buyer, with the intent to eliminate the competition on Amazon. Other stories of suspended sellers posted online told very heart wrenching stories with many victims of unfair or indifferent (canned) responses from Amazon, by notifying them their seller account was being suspended. One blog told about a self-employed military serviceman who was being re-deployed overseas and was relying on his alone at home pregnant wife to keep their small home based business functioning while serving his country; according to the post, there sellers account was wrongly suspended, with no remorse or concern from Amazon. The stories are many, some including the long-time unemployed who are seeking to make a few bucks so they can put food on the table for their families. If only a fraction of these stories are true this really shows a concerning pattern of cold hearted indifference and heartlessness on the part of Amazon, for not taking better care and responsibility in it’s investigating these very serious allegations with more care and much more concern for their sellers as well as their buyers. It seem Amazon should take heed and take the individual sellers particular circumstances into consideration with further investigation before suspending their accounts willy-nilly, as most posts seem to claim. More and more sellers are saying that Amazon buyers are making false claims and are quick to file A-Z claims, without first contacting the seller (as outlined by Amazon policy) with an attempt to get the product for FREE while trying to get their money back from Amazon and keep the item. (larceny). If this is the case, who the heck would want to risk selling on Amazon if they are going to give your stuff away to a scam buyers for FREE! As a believer in second chances and learning from ones own mistakes perhaps Amazon is simply a victim of its own success. Although policies are created with the intent to do the right thing, they sometime can be bad or overbroad, and do more harm than good. Only time will tell, but let’s hope Amazon does not become a victim of its own indifference or self-importance. Those who have been harmed by Amazon, please be strong!
Tech wrap: Apps are iTV’s secret weapon
The iTV might be the most anticipated product Apple will ever launch, and it seems everyone has an opinion about it, writes Gigaom’s Ryan Lawler. Apple will win in TV the same way it won with the iPhone — by having a compelling platform for app developers, he says.
Microsoft’s Windows Phone OS “hasn’t made much of a splash in 2011″, says ex-Windows Phone evangelist Charlie Kindel. “Microsoft’s approach with WP7 has a impedance mismatch with the carriers and device manufacturers while Google’s approach reduces friction with carriers and device manufacturers at the expense of end users,” his blog says.
Netflix and the Gap were among the worst performers in customer satisfaction among the largest online retailers this holiday season, according to a survey released on Wednesday.
Meanwhile, U.S. consumers spent more than $35 billion online this holiday season, up 15 percent from the same period last year, comScore estimated on Tuesday.
It’s official: Here are Jason Hirschhorn and Paul Carr’s top fourteen worst media/tech headline clichés of 2011.
