Catallaxy Files

We haven’t had a whack at the NBN in, gee, it must be a couple of weeks.

Gillard’s latest contribution in the OZ today  is a good excuse to get back to it.

“A government-commissioned report by Greenhill Caliburn, released on Monday, warned that the booming growth of wireless broadband could have “significant long-term implications” for the NBN Co’s fibre network, which, it is planned, will connect 93 per cent of the nation.”

No way, says Gillard.

“These are complementary technologies and I believe people can understand that from their own daily lives,” Ms Gillard said yesterday. “There are times when we want to be on the move and have the technology with us. There are times when we’re in our own homes where the quality and speed of downloads is pivotal.”

If she is this good at forecasting technologies and customer use of them over 30 years (or whatever the life of the NBN has to be) she is in the wrong job. She could make squillions in VC. But of course, she isn’t.

It is frightening how ignorant and arrogant our politicians are on matters of technology. Not only Gillard – they all do it.

A simple rule, that just about everyone in business understands  -

When technological change is rapid and the direction uncertain, don’t make decisions that depend on you being able accurately to forecast the future a long way ahead.

There is a fascinating battle going on between Apple and Google. They were once very close – until a year or so ago Google had a couple of people on the Apple board. Now they are arm-wrestling for control of the next generation in consumer electronics.

The new battlefield, where most of the action is happening, is mobile – phones and tablets and whatever else they invent next. (I don’t think Stephen Conroy got the memo about that). Apple has built a walled garden. You can only use the  iOS operating system on an Apple product and you must buy apps for it through the iTunes store. The iTunes store won’t accept apps that compete with its own products.

Google’s mobile OS, Android, is open source. Anyone can put it on a mobile device without charge and modify it. The Google Apps Market will list just about anything.  Android has got the support of most phone manufacturers, other than Nokia and Blackberry. There are now many more phones being sold with Android than with iOS.

Apple has long believed in a walled garden. It is said that Steve Wozniak. who invented the Apple II and was the real technical brain behind Apple at the start, left after a dispute with Steve Jobs over that. When Jobs rejoined Apple in 1997 it had licensed its desktop OS to a few other companies. Jobs quickly bought back those licences.

Tim Wu’s book The Master Switch tells the story of information technology in the US, staring with the Bell system and the telephone. He traces what he calls “the cycle”. A technology starts out open – anyone can get into the business – and eventually one business or a small cartel gets control. This has happened with telephones, radio, TV and films, he says. Those in control fight to keep out competition – capture of regulatory agences often helps – and try to stop any disruptive technology that would change the game. I had not realized that FM radio was developed for RCA but RCA managed to stop it for nearly 20 years because of its near-monopoly in AM.

History never repeats itself exactly but all this is fairly similar to the Apple/Google battle.

I have no idea how it will play out. I used to be an Apple fanboy and still use several of its products. But Google is doing more interesting stuff. I’ve just bought a Google phone (Nexus S) and find it great fun. Not as elegant as my wife’s iPhone but I think it is pushing the technology faster.

The game might change if Jobs’s leave from Apple is permanent. Apple depends on a regular flow of innovative products from its own stable. Google is more a facilitator for other’s innovation. Jobs has been so dominating at Apple that it is quite possible that there is no one with his enterprise to take over. Plants don’t grow under the shadow of large trees and all that stuff.

Another thing I became convinced of after reading The Master Switch is that the government-owned NBN is very dangerous. Governments can rarely resist the temptation to fiddle in markets and with the NBN the government will have a big and very costly monopoly to protect.

If I am right and mobile is the next frontier, what’s the bet that the government won’t be in a hurry to allow LTE? It is already being installed in major cities in the US but is not even close here.

I am doing a book cull – liberating books that I am not likely to read again. I won’t call it a library, just several archive boxes of stuff that narrowly survived the last cull.

Trouble is, I spend time reading or at least glancing through books that I haven’t looked at in years. A bit like those old shoe boxes of family photos.

Yesterday I came across a yellowing paperback copy of Ehrlich’s Population Bomb. The Prologue opens with the chilling words “The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s and 1980s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death…”

The first chapter – The Problem – describes how Ehrlich came to understand it emotionally. He tells of a  taxi ride in Delhi: the slums, the crowds, the smell, “people defecating and urinating”. The shock of a first visit to India is perfectly understandable, but is probably not a good basis for a book about a coming world crisis. Those who know India know that despite the chaos it works and in fact there was then and is now  little starvation.

The book outlines three comic book scenarios: first, a thermonuclear  war brought about because of the US’s use of a dangerous pesticide, second, a plague that kills 1.2 billion people and third a famine following the failure of the Green Revolution. The author summarises with “This last scenario has considerably more appeal, even though it presumes the death by starvation of as many as a billion people…” and he challenges the reader to create a scenario more optimistic than the last.

In discussing what is being done (not much) Ehrlich notes with approval that Japan has reduced its birth rate dramatically, largely through abortion. He does not say that the main reason for the high abortion rate was that the contraceptive pill was not available in Japan until 1999 and is still not greatly used. Abortions are very profitable to the medical profession, which has a lot of political power. Japan is now facing a pretty desperate situation with an ageing population, brought about by the low birth rate and a reluctance to allow immigration. I mention Japan because it shows how careless Ehrlich was with his facts and how poor his powers of foresight were.

The striking thing about the book is the almost complete lack of evidence for his doomsday predictions. He looks at population growth, and says it will continue at the same rate, and asserts that food production will not grow and the world will get more and more polluted. He throws around a few anecdotes – such as the one about his visit to Delhi – but that’s about all. There are 55 endnotes, citing sources such as Scientific American, Time, New York Times Magazine as well as books by other scare mongers and himself. Nothing resembling a peer reviewed paper or any other piece of scholarly research.

The final chapter is headed “What if I am wrong?”. Ehrlich notes this is highly unlikely and proposes an analogue to Pascal’s wager, which suggested that you should believe in God because if you were wrong no harm was done and if you are right you end up in heaven. So if, “after the famines”, the population stabilises at two billion and then it is decided that the world can support more, well, it’s easy enough to increase population again.

Before I re-read the book, I thought that it simply contained forecasts that turned out to be pessimistic and wrong. I now see what a poor and careless piece of work it was at the time. In just about any other field, someone writing stuff like this would fade from public sight when the predictions turned out to be nonsense. But Erhlich is still professor of population studies at Stanford and is still apparently being taken seriously. He says now the the Population Bomb was “way too optimistic”. He was on ABC Late Night Live some time ago.

Some say that Erhlich was right, he just got the timing wrong. The truth is that demographers (those who really study this stuff) don’t worry about overpopulation much these days. World population will top at around 2050 at about 9 billion (the UN estimate, which has always been on the high side) or around 8.5 billion (most demographers’ estimate). A lot of people, but within our power to feed. Demographers are more worried about ageing populations and skewed demographics in places like Japan. If you look look at conferences of bodies such as the International Union for the Scientific Study of Population, you will find no discussion of overpopulation. Even the UN Population Division, in the past one of the biggest worriers, is more interested in issues such as fertility, reproductive health, adoption and HIV/AIDS.

But if you want to do something about it, there is always the VHMET which suggests ” voluntary human extinction is unlikely, but it is the moral thing to do”. They even have T Shirts, bumperstickers and suggestions for tattoos.

Next up: Chris Gilbey – How to Survive the Y2K Crisis in Australia.

I am an early adopter or, as my family puts it, a sucker for new techie toys.

I am currently using an iPod (well, several), an iPad and a Kindle. I don’t have an iPhone, mostly because I don’t like phones much, but am thinking of the Nexus S using the latest version of Google’s Android operating system.

I am not sure about the Kindle. It is a neat piece of technology . It uses a process called e-ink which results in a screen much easier to read text on than the iPad or any other similar product I have seen. It handles text very well, but only in grayscale and it does not do pictures or graphics well. I understand a colour e-ink is coming. You order books or magazines for the Kindle through the Amazon store. They arrive through the 3G network (Telstra, I think) and the delivery cost in included in the price of the book. The price is, at this stage, not too different to the hard copy price, though that will surely change. Cross subsidizing the printing and distribution costs of books from the price of e-books won’t work for long. It is very neat to order a book online and have it turn up on your Kindle within seconds.

Still, I find I don’t read from the Kindle all that much. Perhaps I’m just not comfortable with the format yet – I still prefer a paperback.

The iPad is a different kettle of technology. I am still not sure what it is for – what it does that nothing else can do for me. It connects to the net via wifi and (some models) 3G so it is a mobile device. It does email very well – the only drawback being the virtual keyboard which touch-typers don’t like much. It has a browser – Safari – though Apple is betting on apps which you download through the iTunes store. Some are free, other cost a few dollars. Apps include games, news, weather, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and so on. If you have young kids around, I recommend Itsy Bitsy Spider. MOMA (New York) has a wonderful app through which they will make their whole collection available. Most things that you might normally access through a browser have an app. But I suspect we ain’t seen nothing yet – thousands of developers are out their writing apps. Although Apple is technologically a walled garden (that is the big battle building between them and Google) they recognise that a decentralized network of developers can create much greater innovation than a central department.

The screen of the iPad is beaut. Photos (you can store your photo album on the iPad) are spectacular. Some magazines with a lot of graphics look better than in the dead tree version. New Yorker, Wired, Travel and Leisure are especially good.  Strangely, you can’t subscribe to a magazine, you have to buy each issue separately. It does, by the way, have a Kindle app which I have not seriously investigated.

So, so far, my conclusion about the iPad is that it is a beaut product but I’m not sure that many people will find they can’t live without it. I don’t think I will travel with it alone. The fact that the iPad is selling like gangbusters shows the trust people have in Apple and its products. I can’t think of  another business with that degree of trust.

But of all these, it is the iPod that I use most often. I have three: the Classic with a fair chunk of my music collection onboard, an iPod Touch and an iPod Nano (the model before the latest).

I use the Classic to listen to stuff on long flights and to carry music to the beach house. It has a 160GB harddrive and I use it really as a portable storage device. There is talk of the Classic disappearing as the solid state storage on the Touch increases. The Touch is an interesting machine. It’s like an iPhone without the phone. It stores Music, photos, calender, address book and all that stuff as well as many apps designed for the iPhone. It connects to the internet  by wifi so you can use Skype or iChat for phone or video calls. On a bike trip we did in Spain and Portugal a while back, I used my Touch through the hotels’ wifi to investigate and book the next hotel through Tripadvisor . You can do that with the iPhone (I was the only one of the four in the team that did not have one) but the iPhone roaming charges are horrendous.

Finally, the iPhone Nano. I use it most of all. On it I have lots of podcasts and several audiobooks, bought from audible.com. I listen to these on long walks, at the gym and on flights. In other words, in situations that might otherwise be very boring. So far, an audiobook is just about my favourite way of reading, partly, I think, because I can do something else at the same time.

At the moment I am listening to Tim Wu’s The Master Switch, a book about technology I recommend highly.

I have been playing with online stuff since before the internet opened to the public. I still have no idea where it will lead and which products will prove indispensable.  Most predictions have proved to be empty. We can be pretty sure, though, that it is a disruptive technology  that will bring about much creative destruction (two ideas discussed in Tim Wu’s book). And unless we work for one of those industries that will die, it will all be a lot of fun.

New Year is very important in Japan. Businessmen are expected to visit their customers as soon as possible in the New Year to wish them akemashite omedeto. So far as I could work out, this means “congratulations on your opening” or something.Visiting customers takes a long time because the traffic gets tied up with people driving around to see their customers. You don’t actually meet your customer because he is tied up in the traffic jam visiting his customers.

At New Year, it is customary to eat mochi – a very sticky pounded rice cake. It is common for old people to choke on mochi. So far this year six have died and five others are in a serious condition. If you have someone you would like to make mochi for, you can do it at home.

Just in case you are interested in this stuff, Japanese say there is no man in the moon. What we see is actually a rabbit pounding rice cakes.

Anyway, I wish everyone here – including rog, THR and FDB -a great 2011.

This post puts in writing something I have been thinking about for much of the year.

People on the right – in particular those who believe in classical liberalism – are simply nicer people than those on the left. I am talking averages here and would not claim that every liberal is a nicer person than every social democrat.

I think it probably comes from the belief among liberals that people are fundamentally OK and can be trusted to make their own decisions. Social democrats are inclined to believe that people are not very bright and need to be lead – to be told how to spend their money and to live their lives.

Take politicians – who would you rather have dinner with, Gillard or Abbott? No contest really, Abbott is lively, interesting and has a good sense of fun. Or Howard v Keating? Howard is good company – well, not always the life of the party but a good conversationalist – but with Keating you never know when he is likely to explode and spread colourful character assessments around the table. How would you like your dinner guests to be called a “mangy maggots” because they had some reservations about the design of Barangaroo? Entertaining for some perhaps, but not my idea of an enjoyable meal. By the way, I do not think of  Howard as a true liberal, but he is more or less sitting towards that end of the spectrum. Unlike Fraser who nowadays is some kind of conservative social democrat. I suspect he has had some bad luck in his life to embitter him so.

On a different level, Rupert Murdoch or Al Gore to come round for pizza? See what I mean?  You would not hesitate for one second. Gore would want to bring his slides…

You can see much the same difference among bloggers. Sure, JC does get impatient with those whose arguments are weak and then sometimes does become a bit abusive. But so far as I can see, he only bursts out when sorely provoked. And the rest of us at Catallaxy are (usually) models of reasonableness and all-round nice people.

Among the social democratic blogs there is an air of what you can only call nastiness. Any intruder with a different opinion is jumped on and beaten to the ground. As Deltoid cycles through his three subjects: climate change, DDT and deaths in Iraq he occasionally picks up someone who wants to say “Yes, but…” They never finish the second word before the violence begins. I think he must have DDT on a watch list – just wait a minute, he will probably appear here with his trademark character assassination.

JQ is not as bad. He personally gets a bit snarky at times but generally leaves the rough stuff to his acolytes. And they do get rough. I used to try to inject a slightly different view of the world and have the bruises to prove it. No more. Unless he says something really dopey and then I feel a sense of obligation.

I have remarked already about the split personality between Harry Clarke and his nom de keyboard hc. In his own blog he is thoughtful, insightful and usually worth reading. When, as hc, he appears to comment here and in other blogs he becomes, well, pretty unpleasant, like most social democrat bloggers. Very strange. I am not sure that Harry is a social democrat but as they say, if he walks like a duck…

So, as well as a more accurate view of the world and much better prescriptions of how to (with a very light hand) manage it, we liberals are just nicer people.

I do think the difference comes from our greater respect for our fellow humans’ ability  to make decisions for themselves. Some might call this a zombie belief. I would prefer to call it faith in my fellow members of the human race.

Alexander Pope said that. Dick Smith disagrees.

Take away their passports,” he half jokes, “if I was dictator, I’d say, if you’re going to be wealthy, there’s an absolute obligation that you’re a philanthropist, you don’t do it secretly and if you don’t give a decent amount away, we don’t want you in this country or we’ll take your passport away so you can’t travel…

The things some people will say to get their name in the paper.

I suggest that we should start to collect notable sayings from public figures that deserve to be recorded for future reflection.

My nomination is from Heather Ridout of the Australian Industry Group which seems to be the last unreconstructed trade association from the days of the IR Club, assistance to and protection of industry.

The chief executive of the Australian Industry Group, Heather Ridout, said that to make sure businesses got the most out of the network, the government should fund a program to help companies engage with the full potential of the NBN.

”To make the most of the possibilities offered by the NBN, business will need to learn more about potential applications of the NBN,” she said.

Read the rest here.