It’s now possible to turn on a light with your thoughts. Depending on how you look at it, this is an interesting technology trick, a possible aid to paraplegics or another way that the virtual and physical worlds are becoming indistinguishable. The device is a combination of Google Glass and a commercially available electroencephalograph, or EEG, which reads brain activity by monitoring electrical impulses on the scalp.
[Commentary] Nokia was once the world’s biggest cell phone manufacturer, having introduced the first mass-market mobile handset. It sold its devices division to Microsoft for $7.2 billion — a fraction of the $250 billion it was worth at the turn of the century. The natural question becomes: What went wrong?
It wasn’t disruption. Instead, like so many first movers before it, the Finnish company clung to the source of its greatest success, and couldn’t adapt when the competition moved beyond it. But there was another path for Nokia: Leveraging its talent and its importance to the Finnish economy to move into parallel industries, like other kinds of electronics, so that falling behind in one of them wouldn’t doom it to be sold for scrap. In that counterfactual future, the example of Samsung is instructive.
The members of President Barack Obama’s panel reviewing the National Security Agency's controversial surveillance programs will meet with privacy advocates and officials from technology companies in two separate meetings, The Hill has learned. The officials plan to meet at an unclassified conference center that is part of the White House compound but not actually in the White House. Caitlin Hayden, a White House spokeswoman, emphasized that the meeting is not a "White House meeting" or a "meeting with the White House." The list of privacy activists and technology officials who will attend the meetings has not been made public.
The worldwide mobile phone market is expected to grow 7.3 percent year over year in 2013 — a big jump from last year’s stagnant numbers. Overall, vendors are expected to distribute 1.8 billion smartphones this year.
[Commentary] When President Barack Obama speaks about the National Security Agency’s (NSA) controversial electronic surveillance program, he leaves the impression that its existing privacy protections are sufficient, if only we knew enough to appreciate them. That hardly instills confidence.
If the President is serious about fixing the enormous overreach of US surveillance, he should take these steps:
[Roth is executive director of Human Rights Watch]
Gov Terry Branstad (R-IA) launched a new initiative dubbed “Connect Every Iowan” that aims to improve broadband adoption and availability in the state. Gov Branstad said that broadband “is going to be critically important to economic progress and we want to make sure that we don’t have people left out.” He called for an advisory committee to develop recommendations for Iowa lawmakers about how to expand broadband in the state by December 1.
The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) jointly challenged a group of over 80 top innovators from around the country to come up with ways to improve disaster response and recovery efforts. This diverse group of stakeholders, consisting of representatives from Zappos, Airbnb, Marriott International, the Parsons School of Design, AOL/Huffington Post’s Social Impact, The Weather Channel, Twitter, Topix.com, Twilio, New York City, Google and the Red Cross, to name a few, spent an entire day at the White House collaborating on ideas for tools, products, services, programs, and apps that can assist disaster survivors and communities.
[Commentary] The massive $130 billion Verizon/Vodafone deal is a boon for Wall Street, reportedly netting some $600 million in fees for the legions of bankers, attorneys, and accountants who worked (and continue to work) tirelessly to make the deal a reality. But instead of celebrating, there appears to be grave concern on the Street as to whether or not they will ever see a dime of the money they have been promised.
That's because the market is worried that Vodafone may end up backing out of the megadeal if it is forced to pay high taxes on its capital gains. Vodafone confirmed that it would pay $5 billion to the US government but didn't say how much it would pay the UK. This appears to explain why Vodafone's stock fell by as much as 5%, despite the UK wireless provider making off like a bandit in the deal. But it looks like investors and bankers may be worrying too much. A little known provision in the UK tax code could actually end up shielding Vodafone from paying any tax at all. Indeed, the UK Financial Act of 2002 stipulates that corporations selling off subsidiaries don't have to pay any tax on the sale -- zero. As such, Vodafone is saving as much as $15 billion on the sale.
[Commentary] Sen. Catherine Pugh's commentary, "Municipal broadband's false promise" (Aug. 16), is flawed by many serious errors and omissions. Whoever is advising her on this issue is doing her and the people of Baltimore a disservice.
Senator Pugh claims that municipalities "keep building expensive networks that fail to attract customers." In fact, the national average take rate of public fiber networks (39 percent) is virtually indistinguishable from that of companies such as Verizon and AT&T (40 percent). She also contends that a "long pantheon" of municipal projects have failed. I don't agree with her. While the private sector is now making low-bandwidth broadband services more widely available, municipalities today are focusing on high-end networks that can simultaneously support robust economic development, lifetime educational and occupational opportunities, affordable access to modern health care, intelligent transportation systems, and much more. Yes, this is more challenging, but it also offers tremendous opportunities both for communities and for America's global competitiveness.
[The writer is president of the Baller Herbst Law Group and has been involved in more than 50 fiber projects across the United States.]
[Commentary] In early 2012, Congress authorized the Federal Communications Commission to conduct new auctions for radio frequencies (or “spectrum”) urgently needed to expand mobile networks. The auctions are aimed at solving capacity constraints already causing regular headaches for many mobile broadband consumers, a problem the agency’s former chairman, Julius Genachowski, first referred to in 2009 as the “spectrum crisis.”
The FCC’s deliberative pace has proven an irresistible lure for some who see the auctions as a chance to make a fast buck. Industry representatives and their proxies are flooding the FCC with proposals to rig the auctions in their own favor, claiming vaguely and implausibly that doing so will benefit US consumers. Self-serving statements from the carriers aside, there is utterly no evidence that crippling spectrum auctions in the name of competition would accomplish any of the Obama administration’s admirable policy objectives for universal broadband. The real risks of tampering with auction design are palpable. According to a recent analysis of past auctions sponsored by the trade group Mobile Future, restrictive and preferential auction rules have consistently translated to losses, not gains, for mobile users. According to some lawmakers and legal scholars, limiting auction participation would also be illegal. At the very least, the proposed restrictions will generate lawsuits aplenty, and with them even more delays. At worst, the FCC will be forced to start over again. Open the auctions to everyone, and let the spectrum go to the highest bidder.
[Downes is a consultant on developing business strategies in an age of constant technological disruption]
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