Skype

Talk Is Cheap: Switching to Internet Telephones
by James E. Gaskin
Published 15 Mar 2005

When you can't get satisfaction, especially when dealing with Moneybookers, join many others with similar tales of woe in the Skype Forums. It won't solve your problem, but at least you won't feel alone. Skype does an excellent job using animation on their web site to help new users configure Skype and their computers to support Skype. Go to www.skype.com/help/guides/ to start one of the dozen animations and see for yourself how to handle configuration issues. The primary Skype support forum (forum.skype.com/viewforum.php?f=2) includes thousands of user questions. I can't decide if it's good that so many people go to the source to find solutions, or if it's bad because so many people have trouble. But Skype claims over 20 million registered users, so a few thousand messages in the help forum constitutes a tiny user percentage.

…

When you can't get satisfaction, especially when dealing with Moneybookers, join many others with similar tales of woe in the Skype Forums. It won't solve your problem, but at least you won't feel alone. Skype does an excellent job using animation on their web site to help new users configure Skype and their computers to support Skype. Go to www.skype.com/help/guides/ to start one of the dozen animations and see for yourself how to handle configuration issues. The primary Skype support forum (forum.skype.com/viewforum.php?f=2) includes thousands of user questions. I can't decide if it's good that so many people go to the source to find solutions, or if it's bad because so many people have trouble. But Skype claims over 20 million registered users, so a few thousand messages in the help forum constitutes a tiny user percentage.

…

Many people rely on their cell phone and never subscribe for a traditional telephone line from their local phone company, but that's a better option today than trusting a computer-centric service. 6.3.4.3 Passion Skype wins this category hands down. One goal of Skype founders was to recreate the buzz and "viral marketing" of KaZaA, where a program spreads like a runny nose in an overcrowded preschool. They achieved that goal. Skype users aren't quite as fanatical as early Macintosh users, but they love Skype capabilities and Skype community. The Skype forums are full of people thrilled with Skype. Australian Rotarian groups are signing up en masse. Love blooms, photos are file transferred, meetings happen.

The Year Without Pants: Wordpress.com and the Future of Work
by Scott Berkun
Published 9 Sep 2013

Regardless of the reason, it was refreshing to be cared for so directly by people in important positions. One boring task I did discover was manually entering my coworkers into my Skype. There was no automatic way to add the dozens of employees as contacts. While waiting for Hanni or Barry to do something, I'd go to the list and manually add people. I asked if there was an automated way to do this, as you'd expect in a smart company like this one, but none existed. As this went on, I was interrupted on Skype by Beau, the first of many entertaining Skype chats I'd have with him: Beau Lebens: [Please add me to your contact] Scott Berkun: [Scott Berkun has shared contact details with Beau Lebens] Lebens: Beat you to it!

…

Communication at Automattic was roughly broken down as follows: 1. Blogs (P2): 75 percent 2. IRC: 14 percent 3. Skype: 5 percent 4. E-mail: 1 percent Of course, since Skype and e-mail were private, these are just guesses. Most of the uses of e-mail, as low as it was, were for notifications about new posts or comments on P2s. I'd eventually take to e-mailing people individually on my team once a month to ask deeper questions about their performance and mine. But for day-to-day work, it was all P2, IRC, and Skype. P2s were much more than just for documenting meetings. Brainstorming, bug reports, discussions, rants, and jokes all found their primary home on the more than fifty-six P2s across the company.

…

It was always assumed that people would drop in and out of being online. Since we rarely had short-term deadlines, it was okay for conversations to float over a day or two, whether they were on P2 or Skype. We all had the habit of leaving a note somewhere, often in our IRC channel, if we were going to be offline. I might ping Peatling in Skype with a question, and he'd respond an hour later, and then I'd reply that night. We all respected the need to be online at the same times when needed, but often it wasn't necessary. Skype was the best indicator of who was around at any moment, but even when people were online, it could take minutes or an hour before they'd respond.

Travel While You Work: The Ultimate Guide to Running a Business From Anywhere
by Mish Slade
Published 13 Aug 2015

Here's a list of all the supported countries: www.worktravel.co/skypecountries. Here's how it works (this example is taken from Skype's website): Say you live in London and you want to use Skype To Go to call a client who lives in Boston, USA. Add your Boston client as your Skype To Go contact, and Skype will give you a London phone number. When you want to call your client, simply dial that London number from your phone, and your call will be put straight through to your client on their phone in Boston at Skype's low rates. But what if your client isn't on Skype, or doesn't know how to use it? That's fine: with a Skype To Go number, you also get an "Access Number" that works like a regular calling card number.

…

For outgoing calls, there's also a "web callback" feature that works out cheaper than Skype in most cases. You will need an internet connection for it, but only to kickstart the call; after that it all happens through your phone (so it still comes in handy if you have an unreliable connection that might drop in and out during Skype calls). Aaand done! The Didlogic website is a bit of a mess – and thoroughly useless in helping you get started – so Rob's recorded a quick screencast with an overview of how to set everything up. Register your purchase of this book at www.worktravel.co to get hold of it! Skype To Go Repetition alert! Skype To Go was mentioned briefly in Chapter 4: Be A Productivity Powerhouse.

…

: www.worktravel.co/quora2 Stay focused and filter out distractions Unroll Me (unsubscribe from emails): www.worktravel.co/unroll Gmail "plus sign" trick: www.worktravel.co/plustrick Trello: www.worktravel.co/trello Pomodoro Technique: www.worktravel.co/pomodoro Pomodoto (Pomodoro timer): www.worktravel.co/pomodoto You Can Book Me (appointment-booking software): www.worktravel.co/bookme iDoneThis (track what you've achieved): www.worktravel.co/donethis AskMeEvery (track what you've achieved): www.worktravel.co/askme Kransen headphones: www.worktravel.co/kransen ShareDesk (coworking spaces): www.worktravel.co/sharedesk Coffitivity (concentration app): www.worktravel.co/coffitivity Focus@Will (concentration app): www.worktravel.co/focus Optimise your workspace Roost laptop stand: www.worktravel.co/roost Portable keyboards: www.worktravel.co/keyboard Mini-mouse: www.worktravel.co/mouse ZestDesk (standing desk): www.worktravel.co/zestdesk StandStand (standing desk): www.worktravel.co/standstand Kinivo ZX100 laptop speakers: www.worktravel.co/zx100 Deal with wifi issues Wifi speed test: www.worktravel.co/speedtest Huawei E5330 mobile hotspot: www.worktravel.co/hotspot Didlogic (cheap international calls without internet): www.worktravel.co/didlogic Skype To Go: www.worktravel.co/skypetogo Google Docs Offline: www.worktravel.co/docsoffline CHAPTER 5: FREELANCE FROM ANYWHERE Emailing Boomerang (to delay when an email gets sent): www.worktravel.co/boomerang Scheduling World Time Buddy: www.worktravel.co/worldtimebuddy Doodle: www.worktravel.co/doodle Mixmax: www.worktravel.co/mixmax You Can Book Me: www.worktravel.co/bookme Phone/video calls Buy a Skype Number: www.worktravel.co/skypenumber Zoom (alternative to Skype): www.worktravel.co/zoom GoToMeeting (alternative to Skype): www.worktravel.co/gotomeeting Join Me (alternative to Skype): www.worktravel.co/joinme Didlogic (cheap international calls without internet): www.worktravel.co/didlogic Skype To Go: www.worktravel.co/skypetogo Screen sharing Screenleap: www.worktravel.co/screenleap Document signing HelloSign: www.worktravel.co/hellosign EchoSign: www.worktravel.co/echosign Getting paid PayPal: www.worktravel.co/paypal Stripe: www.worktravel.co/stripe Freshbooks (for information about PayPal Business Payments): www.worktravel.co/freshbooks Harvest (for information about PayPal Business Payments): www.worktravel.co/harvest TransferWise (cross-currency payments): www.worktravel.co/transferwise CHAPTER 6: HIRE LIKE A CHAMP Hire remote contractors Upwork (formerly Elance/oDesk): www.worktravel.co/upwork Guru: www.worktravel.co/guru Freelancer: www.worktravel.co/freelancer Gigster: www.worktravel.co/gigster 99 Designs: www.worktravel.co/99designs Crowdspring: www.worktravel.co/crowdspring Fancy Hands: www.worktravel.co/fancyhands Information about "milestones": www.worktravel.co/milestones Screencast-o-matic (record screencasts): www.worktravel.co/screencast Hire permanent employees Working Mums (UK): www.worktravel.co/workingmums Hire My Mom (US): www.worktravel.co/hiremymom Remotive: www.worktravel.co/remotive Remote OK: www.worktravel.co/remoteok WFH.io: www.worktravel.co/wfh We Work Remotely: www.worktravel.co/wework Authentic Jobs: www.worktravel.co/authentic Upwork: www.worktravel.co/upwork Information about KPIs: www.worktravel.co/kpi Topgrading (hiring tips and resources): www.worktravel.co/topgrading Buffer's 45-day contract period: www.worktravel.co/bootcamp CHAPTER 7: RUN THE BEST BIZ Team chat software Slack: www.worktravel.co/slack HipChat: www.worktravel.co/hipchat Structured meetings and ad-hoc calls Mastering The Rockefeller Habits (book): www.worktravel.co/rockefeller World Time Buddy: www.worktravel.co/worldtimebuddy Google Calendar: www.worktravel.co/calendar Zoom (alternative to Skype): www.worktravel.co/zoom Appear.in (alternative to Skype): www.worktravel.co/appear Screen sharing Screenleap: www.worktravel.co/screenleap Giving tutorials and training Screencast-o-matic: www.worktravel.co/screencast ScreenFlow (Mac): www.worktravel.co/screenflow Camtasia (Windows): www.worktravel.co/camtasia Procedures Google Drive: www.worktravel.co/drive Process Street: www.worktravel.co/process Project management Trello: www.worktravel.co/trello Basecamp: www.worktravel.co/basecamp Asana: www.worktravel.co/asana Teamwork: www.worktravel.co/teamwork Wikipedia's "Comparison of project management software" page: www.worktravel.co/pmtools Cloud storage Dropbox: www.worktravel.co/dropbox OneDrive: www.worktravel.co/onedrive Google Drive: www.worktravel.co/drive Information on Google Drive "offline mode": www.worktravel.co/docsoffline Box: www.worktravel.co/box Amazon Cloud Drive: www.worktravel.co/acd Other useful tools and resources LastPass (password management): www.worktravel.co/lastpass HelloSign (document signing): www.worktravel.co/hellosign EchoSign (document signing): www.worktravel.co/echosign Sqwiggle (video team chat): www.worktravel.co/sqwiggle Zapier (task automation): www.worktravel.co/zapier IFTTT (task automation): www.worktravel.co/ifttt Also by the author… Protect Your Tech: Your geek-free guide to a secure and private digital life If your password for every website is "monkey" or "iloveyou"… you need to read this book.

Black Code: Inside the Battle for Cyberspace
by Ronald J. Deibert
Published 13 May 2013

Faced with this word-soup, most of us just click “I agree.” What we are agreeing to might surprise us. Skype users, for instance, might be alarmed to find out that when they click on “I agree” to the terms of service they are assigning to Skype the right to change these terms at any time, at Skype’s discretion, and without notice. Skype does not inform users about whether and under what conditions it will share user data with law enforcement or other government agencies. Users might not know that while they can stop using Skype, they cannot delete their accounts: Skype does not allow it. The Internet is sometimes described as a massively decentralized and distributed “network of networks,” a virtual place where information from everywhere is concentrated and accessible to all, an egalitarian thing of beauty.

…

McChesney, “No Tolls on the Internet,” Washington Post, June 8, 2006, http​://www​.washing​tonpo​st.c​om​/​wp-dyn​/​cont​ent​/​arti​cle​/​20​06​/​06​/​07​/​AR200​6060​702​10​8.html; and Milton Mueller, Net Neutrality as Global Principle for Internet Governance (Syracuse: Internet Governance Project, 2007). 3 The Chinese version of Skype: The TOM-Skype investigation is documented in Nart Villeneuve, “Breaching Trust: An Analysis of Surveillance and Security Practices on China’s TOM-Skype Platform,” Information Warfare Monitor, September 2009, http​://www.i​nfowar-m​onitor.n​et/​2009​/09​/​breac​hing-trust-an-analy​sis-of-surv​eilla​nce-and-secu​rity-pract​ices-on-chi​na’s-to​m-skype-plat​form/. See also John Markoff, “Surveillance of Skype Messages Found in China,” New York Times, October 1, 2008, http​://w​ww.nyti​mes.com​/​200​8​/​10​/​02​/​techn​ology​/​inte​rnet​/​02sk​ype.h​tml​?

…

faced in China might well be part of doing business in that country, but where should foreign companies draw the line? In 2008, as previously mentioned, the Citizen Lab’s Nart Villeneuve discovered that there was a content filtering system on the Chinese version of Skype. Called “TOM-Skype,” it is a joint venture between Skype (which at the time was owned by eBay, but is now owned by Microsoft) and the Chinese media conglomerate, the TOM Group. The Citizen Lab looked into TOM-Skype’s content filtering mechanism, and found that each time certain keywords were typed into the chat window a hidden connection was made. We followed that hidden electronic trail, apparent only through detailed packet capture analysis, to a server in China which, it turned out, had a directory that was not password protected.

The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations
by Ori Brafman and Rod A. Beckstrom
Published 4 Oct 2006

They had to maintain all of the costly infrastructure associated with handling a call—everything from phone cables to operator facilities. Skype bore none of these costs. Skype capitalized on new technological advances to offer a previously monopolized privilege for free. This spells bad news for the traditional phone companies. It requires only a small amount of software to create a desktop system that works like Skype. The barrier to entry for becoming a long-distance provider, once huge and insurmountable, is quickly disappearing. Anyone with a few million dollars to invest can build a Skype-equivalent. Thus, although Skype may or may not thrive in the long run, it has opened a Pandora's box.

…

Here was Zennstrom's idea: take the lesson from Kazaa—avoid central servers. Zennstrom's new company, Skype, let people connect to each other directly. No servers routing calls, no telephone lines to worry about. As a bonus, this time Zennstrom was going to do it within the confines of the law. Meanwhile, Skype's users were getting a great deal. They got to communicate freely with any other Skype user in the world without ever having to rely on a phone line. All a user had to do was download some free software from Skype and plug a headset into his PC. Everything was done over the Internet. It didn't cost a cent.

…

The pieces were replicated multiple times across computers around the world. The brilliance of this open system was that Skype avoided the costs of storing names on its own servers. The only transactions that ever hit Skype servers were credit card payments. In pushing the cost of calls to zero, Skype rendered the telephone industry's models of generating profits through longdistance charges obsolete. As Michael Powell, then chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), told Forbes in 2004: "I knew it was over when I downloaded Skype, when the inventors of Kazaa are distributing for free a little program that you can use to talk to anybody else, and the quality is fantastic, and it's free—it's over.

The Cryptopians: Idealism, Greed, Lies, and the Making of the First Big Cryptocurrency Craze
by Laura Shin
Published 22 Feb 2022

He and Gavin got in touch, and on Christmas Day, while Gavin was on the couch at the farm and Jeff was at his parents’ house in the woonerf, they Skype-chatted about the white paper’s intricacies. BY THIS POINT, various Ethereum Skype channels were sprouting up. Gav, Jeff, Charles Hoskinson of the Bitcoin Education Project, Anthony Di Iorio of the Bitcoin Alliance of Canada, Mihai, and others began piling in, including Vitalik’s Colored Coins friend Amir Chetrit, whom Vitalik had nicknamed “capitalist Amir,” whereas Amir Taaki was “anarchist Amir.” Capitalist Amir had previously hit it off with Anthony Di Iorio. Another Skype participant was Taylor Gerring, a compact, outgoing Chicago-based developer with an easy, boyish smile and laugh lines around his eyes, as well as a tattoo of the word “love” with a row of hearts under it on his arm.

…

If you have initiated a split and it’s currently open, message @griff. If you don’t know what a split is then don’t worry.” Meanwhile, Christoph, Simon, Vitalik, and the others hopped on Skype calls and created a few Skype groups with all the old faces—Lefteris, Vitalik, Gav, Jeff, Aeron Buchanan, Péter Szilágyi, Christian Reitwießner, Avsa, Taylor Gerring, Fabian Vogelsteller, and so on. They tried to discern the method of attack to be able to counterattack and recover the coins. Several of them jumped into a Skype group with exchange operators, where Vitalik wrote, possible mitigation strategies are: 1. seizing any stolen either that goes through exchanges 2. there is one person who will split within 2 hours if we can contact him then we may be able to copy the attack and recover a large portion of it Vitalik was referring to the fact that the DAO attacker had used a split DAO to perform the attack.

…

They had to be shrewd because they knew if they made any missteps, Charles would have their heads. They first reached out to Mihai. On a late-night Skype call on May 26 with Mihai, Roxana, Taylor Gerring, and Richard Stott, Stephan and Mathias brought up the issue of Charles. Mihai soon agreed that Charles’s behavior represented a real problem. The call was also significant to at least one person in the Spaceship for a separate reason. Taylor recalls that Stephan and Mathias were somewhat drunk and loose-lipped and that Stephan, who as the head of communications was in both the business and dev Skype groups, mentioned that he saw a big political chess match going on. Taylor says Stephan indicated he was convinced that, once the crowdsale money came in, Switzerland and the business guys would lose power and the devs would hold the purse strings.

How to Be the Startup Hero: A Guide and Textbook for Entrepreneurs and Aspiring Entrepreneurs
by Tim Draper
Published 18 Dec 2017

Neither of us knew how big Skype video would become, and how great a communications tool it would be, and how much freer the world would be because of it, but we knew that the world would never be the same. Skype became the largest telecommunications company in the world by most metrics. In 2009, Skype sold out to eBay for $4 billion in cash and eBay shares, and after being briefly held by a private equity firm, was sold to Microsoft for $8.5 billion. There have been more than one billion downloads of Skype, over 300 million daily active users, and users have been on Skype for more than one trillion minutes.

…

Instead of sharing the deal, that first round went exclusively to Dad. The team changed the name to Skype and the peer-to-peer free calls were a hit. The company would give free calls to anyone who had signed up for Skype and charge for calls, both incoming and outgoing, that came from outside the network. The service was taking off. It had over three million users and was running about 100,000 simultaneous audio calls. Skype was now a hot ticket. The company decided to raise more money from venture capitalists, and our partnership was now ready to go in big. It was competitive, because by now many venture capitalists knew about Skype’s newfound ubiquity, but we were lucky that Howard was on our side.

…

Any product that is communications based uses viral marketing. The AT&T Friends and Family marketing program, the LinkedIn network and the Twitter hashtag are some obvious examples. Facebook and Snapchat use viral marketing to share photos. The founders of Skype implemented several viral elements in growing their audio business and even more when Skype video was introduced. The Skype Video Story I was fascinated by the new peer-to-peer technology that allowed people to share files. I met with Napster, Streamcast, and Grokster as I researched the industry. I had gotten the distinct impression that the file-sharing business was pretty much crushed by a powerful and litigious music industry, but I was pretty sure there would be other applications to this revolutionary technology.

Squid Empire: The Rise and Fall of the Cephalopods
by Danna Staaf
Published 14 Apr 2017

A Swimming Revolution 1Christian Klug, Bjoern Kroeger, Wolfgang Kiessling, et al., “The Devonian Nekton Revolution,” Lethaia 43, no. 4 (2010): 465–477. 2Christian Klug, Phone interview with the author, January 15, 2016. 3Christian Klug, Linda Frey, Dieter Korn, et al., “The Oldest Gondwanan Cephalopod Mandibles (Hangenberg Black Shale, Late Devonian) and the Mid Palaeozoic Rise of Jaws,” Palaeontology 59, no. 5 (2016): 611–629. 4Klug, Phone interview with the author, January 15, 2016. 5Jakob Vinther, Skype interview with the author, March 15, 2016. 6Dieter Korn, Skype interview with the author, January 29, 2016. 7Neil H. Landman, William A. Cobban, and Neal L. Larson, “Mode of Life and Habitat of Scaphitid Ammonites,” Geobios 45, no. 1 (2012): 87–98. 8Mark Norman, Cephalopods: A World Guide (ConchBooks, 2000). This guidebook is packed with gorgeous photographs and includes most of the great cephalopod sex stories: “Breeding Nautiluses,” “Giant Cuttlefish Spawning Grounds,” “Cross-Dressing Cuttlefish” (that’s those sneaker males), “Sperm Wars,” “The Night of Love and Death” (about mass spawning and subsequent death in squid), “Giant Squid Sex,” “Eggs, Brooding and Spawning,” and “Weird Sex” (including that of the argonauts). 9Steve Etches, Jane Clarke, and John Callomon, “Ammonite Eggs and Ammonitellae from the Kimmeridge Clay Formation (Upper Jurassic) of Dorset, England,” Lethaia 42, no. 2 (2009): 204–217. 10Royal H.

…

Wignall, and Grzegorz Racki, “Extent and Duration of Marine Anoxia During the Frasnian–Famennian (Late Devonian) Mass Extinction in Poland, Germany, Austria and France,” Geological Magazine 141, no. 2 (2004): 173–193. 18Robert Lemanis, Dieter Korn, Stefan Zachow, et al., “The Evolution and Development of Cephalopod Chambers and Their Shape,” PloS One 11, no. 3 (2016): e0151404. 19Korn, Skype interview with the author, January 29, 2016. 20David P. G. Bond and Paul B. Wignall, “Large Igneous Provinces and Mass Extinctions: An Update,” Geological Society of America Special Papers 505 (2014): SPE505-02. 21Matthew Clapham, Interview with the author, March 24, 2016. 22For more details about scientific studies on current and projected ocean acidification, visit this beautifully readable site maintained by the Smithsonian Museum’s Ocean Portal: http://ocean.si.edu/ocean-acidification (accessed January 28, 2017). 23Korn, Skype interview with the author, January 29, 2016. 4.

…

Chamberlain, “Ammonite Aptychi: Functions and Role in Propulsion,” Geobios 47, no. 1 (2014): 45–55. 27Isabelle Kruta, Skype interview with the author, March 31, 2016. 28Isabelle Kruta, Neil Landman, Isabelle Rouget, et al., “The Role of Ammonites in the Mesozoic Marine Food Web Revealed by Jaw Preservation,” Science 331, no. 6013 (2011): 70–72. 29K. N. Nesis, “On the Feeding and Causes of Extinction of Certain Heteromorph Ammonites,” Paleontological Journal (1986): 5–11. 30Jakob Vinther, Skype interview with the author, March 15, 2016. 5. Sheathing the Shell 1A. Packard, “Operational Convergence Between Cephalopods and Fish: An Exercise in Functional Anatomy,” Archivio Zoologico Italiano 51 (1966): 523–542. 2P.

The Power Law: Venture Capital and the Making of the New Future
by Sebastian Mallaby
Published 1 Feb 2022

Golden was impressed by Skype’s innovation and its exploding popularity. But he soon understood that Skype would be a challenging investment; there was more “hair on the deal” than he had ever seen before, as he wrote in his investment note.[6] Accel was accustomed to backing solid, straight-arrow entrepreneurs, but Skype’s founders had been sued by the entertainment industry over online music theft. Accel favored startups that developed intellectual property that entrenched their market leadership; worryingly, Skype licensed its IP from a separate company and did not actually own it. Finally, Skype’s founders were ruthless and inconstant in the negotiations over the term sheet.

…

Soon after it got going, in September 2009, Andreessen Horowitz plunked down $50 million for a stake in the breakout telephony company Skype, which by now was owned by eBay. The bet amounted to fully one-sixth of a16z’s first fund, yet it had little to do with its promise to coach green technical founders. After all, Skype was already six years old; it had no shortage of sophistication. Instead, the Skype deal had everything to do with Andreessen’s recent exposure to Milner and to his privileged position at the heart of the Valley network. The starting point for a16z’s Skype bet was Andreessen’s presence on the board of eBay. Having bought Skype four years earlier, in 2005, the auction giant was struggling to incorporate telephony into its business.

…

Having bought Skype four years earlier, in 2005, the auction giant was struggling to incorporate telephony into its business. It had fired Skype’s Swedish creators amid a series of management battles, and the Swedes had responded by suing eBay over the ownership of Skype’s core technology. When a private-equity group, Silver Lake, offered to take Skype off eBay’s hands, the Skype founders sued Silver Lake for good measure. As an eBay board member, Andreessen had a front-row seat at each stage of this drama. Being familiar with Milner’s Facebook coup, he saw an opportunity. Playing on his reputation as a software guru, he made contact with the Skype founders. He understood their vision and their technical prowess; in fact, Skype was exactly the type of product that a16z believed in—software that promised to displace hardware.

The Icon Handbook
by Jon Hicks
Published 23 Jun 2011

While having the hands at the sides looks more correct to those in the West, the hands folded in front conveys warmth and sincerity The bow icon from the smallest (20px) to the largest (80px) notice how details like the hands become just straight rectangles on the smallest version I talked to Mark McLaughlin, the design lead for mobile at Skype, about their side of the process: How many Skype users are there worldwide? had 170 million average monthly connected users for the three months ending 30 June 2011. This excludes users connected via our joint venture partners. How long has Skype had its current emoticons, and what was the reason for the change? Emoticons have been in Skype since the earliest versions of our Windows application, the first appearance of which was an internal build from way back in May 2004.

…

Summary Now that we’ve looked at all the ways in which icons can be used beyond simple adornment, we can move on to actually creating them… Chapter references International symbol, icon blunders can be avoided http://www.deseretnews.com/article/705370663/International-symbol-icon-blunders-can-be-avoided.html AIGA icons for the Department of Transport http://www.aiga.org/symbol-signs/ McDonald’s Nutrition Icons: http://www.translationdirectory.com/articles/article1387.php http://www.boxercreative.co.uk/our_work/McDonald’s_nutrition.html Skype http://www.telecompaper.com/news/skype-grows-fy-revenues-20-reaches-663-mln-users http://hicksdesign.co.uk/journal/new-skype-emoticons http://julianfrost.co.nz/things/skype-emoticons/ Chapter 3 Favicons Now we’ll start building up our icon skills, beginning with favicons. Even if you’ve never created any other types of icons before, I’m willing to bet that everyone reading this has at some point made a favicon.

…

They call them emoji (絵文字), a combination of e (絵) ‘picture’ + moji (文字) ‘letter’. They go beyond facial expressions to include objects such as food and hand gestures. It even has a standardised Unicode set of 722 characters. Case study New Skype emoticons With millions of users worldwide, Skype Chat’s emoticons are very widely recognised. Originally designed by Priidu Zilmer when he joined the Skype visual design team in 2004, Hicksdesign and animator Julian Frost were commissioned to update the emoticon set in 2011, and create multiple sizes. As part of the redesign, Zilmer's hidden icon was updated too The original emoticons only existed as 19×19px and, while they had transparent backgrounds, the edges were aliased.

The Art of Invisibility: The World's Most Famous Hacker Teaches You How to Be Safe in the Age of Big Brother and Big Data
by Kevin Mitnick , Mikko Hypponen and Robert Vamosi
Published 14 Feb 2017

Now, analysts will have the complete ‘picture’,” the Guardian wrote.17 In March of 2013, a computer-science graduate student at the University of New Mexico found that TOM-Skype, a Chinese version of Skype created through a collaboration between Microsoft and the Chinese company TOM Group, uploads keyword lists to every Skype user’s machine—because in China there are words and phrases you are not permitted to search for online (including “Tiananmen Square”). TOM-Skype also sends the Chinese government the account holder’s username, the time and date of transmission, and information about whether the message was sent or received by the user.18 Researchers have found that even very high-end videoconferencing systems—the expensive kind, not Skype—can be compromised by man-in-the-middle attacks.

…

Apps such as AIM, BlackBerry Messenger, and Skype all store your messages without encrypting them. That means the service provider can read the content (if it’s stored in the cloud) and use it for advertising. It also means that if law enforcement—or criminal hackers—were to gain access to the physical device, they could also read those messages. Another issue is data retention, which we mentioned above—how long does data at rest stay at rest? If apps such as AIM and Skype archive your messages without encryption, how long do they keep them? Microsoft, which owns Skype, has said that “Skype uses automated scanning within Instant Messages and SMS to (a) identify suspected spam and/or (b) identify URLs that have been previously flagged as spam, fraud, or phishing links.”

…

Tools like these, which detect the full spectrum of potential cellular threats, were once bought largely by the government—but not anymore. As user-friendly as it is, Skype is not the friendliest when it comes to privacy. According to Edward Snowden, whose revelations were first published in the Guardian, Microsoft worked with the NSA to make sure that Skype conversations could be intercepted and monitored. One document boasts that an NSA program known as Prism monitors Skype video, among other communications services. “The audio portions of these sessions have been processed correctly all along, but without the accompanying video.

European Founders at Work
by Pedro Gairifo Santos
Published 7 Nov 2011

Klein: Initially, I was on the board when I joined Skype. It just soon became clear in terms of my role at Skype that I was just so involved and so busy at Skype that it was not practical. We were growing like crazy at Skype: we went from thirty to four hundred people in a year, from two hundred thousand dollars in revenue to sixty million in revenue, from two offices to seventeen locations. I had no time to think about LOVEFiLM, to add value as a board member. Perhaps one of the best experiences I had in terms of the narrative of being a founder, was sitting in one of the first board meetings after Simon had taken over. I was at Skype and just watching the rest of the team present.

…

Aren't I lucky?” Santos: One question about Skype. You passed from a founder's role to a VP role in another company. And at the same time, you have the investor background. It doesn't seem like a very normal move. What convinced you to go to Skype? Which became a huge success, as everyone knows. Klein: Look. I think you have to trust your instincts in all of the important things in life. My wife and I decided to get married after four days of really knowing each other, and eight, nine years later we're very happy with two kids. And that was good instincts. As far as Skype goes, I've never been someone who was hung up on titles.

…

Santos: And you mentioned that you got investments, as you said, from Google, Skype. Was it in the NGO phase or after? Varsavsky: After the NGO. Yeah, obviously, when we said we'll be a NGO, we didn't get any investments. When I decided to turn this into a corporation, that's when I got the investments. Santos: And how did you convince Google and Skype? What was the interest from those companies? Varsavsky: Well, we were the first European investment that Google ever made, the first European company Google ever invested in, and the first European company Sequoia ever invested in. I think Google felt and Skype felt that if there's Wi-Fi everywhere, their products will be more successful.

The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich
by Timothy Ferriss
Published 1 Jan 2007

[Company name] has used this site for a few months to test its usability and has also been tested on multiple computers in Argentina (thanks to my sister testing it out for me while she was in Argentina). *Skype—www.skype.com, Skype is a free software that allows you to talk for free via the Internet. You can also use Skype with regular phones to make calls internationally for a low rate of about .04 cents a minute. Skype also has video chatting capabilities and conference call capabilities for meetings. The setup requires downloading the Skype software free) and buying a headset with microphone ($10) and webcam ($ ranges) for each computer. I have tested this software with my sister and it works well for her in Argentina and for me here.

…

JungleDisk and Mozy—I use the latter—have fewer features and are more specifically designed for automatic backups to their online storage. Free and Low-Cost Internet (IP) Telephones Skype (www.skype.com) Skype is my default for all phone calls. It allows you to call landlines and mobile phones across the globe for an average of 2–5 cents per minute, or connect with other Skype users worldwide for free. For about 40 euros per year, you can get a U.S. number with your home area code and receive calls that forward to a foreign cell phone. This makes your travel invisible. Lounge on the beach in Rio and answer calls to your “office” in California. Nice. Skype Chat, which comes with the service, is also perfect for sharing sensitive log-in and password information with others, as it’s encrypted.

…

eLance (www.elance.com) (877–435–2623) Craigslist (www.craigslist.org) LIFESTYLE DESIGN IN ACTION I’m a U.S. citizen and it was impossible for my friends and relatives to track me down by phone. Enter Skype In. It’s not new but allows you to lease a fixed U.S. (or other country) phone number which then forwards to your Skype account. About $60/year. Within Skype you can then set up call forwarding to ring you at your local number. You pay the rate as if you were calling from the United States to wherever you are. I’ve used this in about 40 countries and it works like a treat. The call quality is usually great and the convenience is amazing. http://www.skype.com/allfeatures/onlinenumber/. A caveat is to always, ALWAYS get a local SIM card for your unlocked GSM phone.

Alpha Girls: The Women Upstarts Who Took on Silicon Valley's Male Culture and Made the Deals of a Lifetime
by Julian Guthrie
Published 15 Nov 2019

In her new role as managing partner, Theresia advised Efrusy on a new company that he was chasing for Accel as a possible investment. The company, offering free phone calls over the Internet, was called Skype. Skype went live for the first time on August 29, 2003, and was an instant hit, attracting close to a million users. Efrusy was one of the first on the team to identify the new peer-to-peer Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) as a possible game changer. “The challenge,” Theresia told him, “is that there are multiple geographies and multiple complications.” For starters, Skype founders Niklas Zennström of Sweden and Janus Friis of Denmark were in hiding somewhere in Europe to avoid being served with court summonses by U.S. lawyers.

…

Golden had discovered that the core peer-to-peer technology behind Skype was licensed via a company that Zennström and Friis partially controlled. This meant that Skype could not entirely control its own destiny and potentially created conflicts of interest. For Skype not to own or fully control its core intellectual property at this stage was highly unusual for this kind of investment. With any deal, Golden needed to see how a company “invented” or innovated in some meaningful way to solve a problem or create an opportunity. Golden also learned that the creators of Skype’s VoIP technology were freelance developers rather than employees where all work was clearly owned by the company.

…

The best founders Theresia knew were those driven to make life richer, better, and fuller. “I am concerned,” Golden finally said of the Skype deal. He wanted to work with “people who will be very focused on doing things the right way and creating durable value for the ecosystem around them.” In the end, after final efforts to find a workable compromise, but facing deal fatigue and far weaker terms than originally negotiated, Golden decided to pull out of the Skype deal. As he did, a dozen other venture firms continued the chase. It was a financial blow for Accel, as Skype went on to become a valuable and important new Internet platform. Golden would have mixed feelings, including regret that he had let his partners down.

Peers Inc: How People and Platforms Are Inventing the Collaborative Economy and Reinventing Capitalism
by Robin Chase
Published 14 May 2015

Fortune 500 in 2014, working their way back to the top and striving for monopoly status again. Today, wireless communication is central to their business: AT&T had 110.4 million wireless customers in 2013, and Verizon had 102.8 million.3 Skype was founded in 2003 and had amassed 633 million users by 2010. In 2013, it had 36 percent of the market in international calling.4 Skype built its company by finding another use for our personal computers, video cameras, and data connections. Making the decision to sign up and join the Skype network takes about two minutes and costs nothing. Listing on Craigslist. The seeds of this list are directly rooted in excess capacity. In the mid-1990s Craig Newmark had been doing a lot of evangelizing about the Internet and “saw a lot of people helping each other out.”

…

WhatsApp also uses your existing phone number and the numbers in your contacts to provide its service, unlike Skype, which requires each person using it to acquire a new, Skype-specific number. WhatsApp lets you send text, photos, and videos for free to your friends—turning all that content into data and avoiding the extortionate fees charged by telecom providers to send messages via SMS. Four years after it launched, 450 million people were active users of the app, with a million more joining each day.4 And unlike any of the other most popular apps (Google Maps, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Skype), WhatsApp is the only one that isn’t free, charging $1 per year starting with the second year.

…

For the first few years, the New York Times was able to enter the online world and learn it at a very low cost, paving the way for the future reality of its dominance as the location for consuming news. Given the changes in the way we read over the last decade, we would now say that the print edition is repurposed copy from the online version. Same content, new outlet, some additional readers. I’m interrupted by the sound of an incoming Skype call. Skype was built on the back of the excess capacity found in my computer (third example), my built-in video camera (fourth example), and my already purchased data plan (fifth example) on the Internet (sixth example). Voice calls (and now video calls) were previously brought to my house by copper cables.

The Future of the Internet: And How to Stop It
by Jonathan Zittrain
Published 27 May 2009

At the Black Hat Europe hacker convention in 2006, two computer scientists gave a presentation on Skype, the wildly popular PC Internet telephony software created by the same duo that invented the KaZaA file-sharing program.101 Skype is, like most proprietary software, a black box. It is not easy to know how it works or what it does except by watching it in action. Skype is installed on millions of computers, and so far works well if not flawlessly. It generates all sorts of network traffic, much of which is unidentifiable even to the user of the machine, and much of which happens even when Skype is not being used to place a call. How does one know that Skype is not doing something untoward, or that its next update might not contain a zombie-creating Trojan horse, placed by either its makers or someone who compromised the update server?

…

Linux, THE REGISTER, Oct. 22, 2004, http://www.theregister.co.uk/security/security_report_windows_vs_linux/; Posting of Triple II to Mostly Linux, 10 Things a New Linux User Needs to Unlearn, http://mostly-linux.blogspot.com/2006/06/10-things-new-linux-user-needs-to.html (June 17, 2006) (“Reboots are not SOP (Standard Operating Procedure).”). 3. See Skype, Can I Call Emergency Numbers in the U.S. and Canada?, http://support.skype.com/index.php?a=knowledgebase&j=questiondetails&i=1034 (last visited June 1, 2007) (“Skype is not a telephone replacement service and emergency numbers cannot be called from Skype.”). 4. Jim Davis, TiVo Launches “Smart TV” Trial, CNET NEWS.COM, Dec. 22, 1998, http://news.com.com/TiVo+launches+smart+TV+trial/2100-1040_3-219409.html. 5. See Richard Shim, TiVo, Gemstar End Lawsuit, Team Up, CNET NEWS.COM, June 9, 2003, http://news.com.com/2100-1041-1014674.html; see also Jennifer 8.

…

Lehr et al., Scenarios for the Network Neutrality Arms Race, 1 INT’LJ. COMMC’NS 607 (2007) (describing “technical and non-technical countermeasures” ranging from letter-writing campaigns to end-to-end encryption that prevents an ISP from discerning the activity in which a user is engaging). 21. See Skype, http://skype.com (last visited May 15, 2007); Wikipedia, Skype, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skype (as of May 15, 2007, 17:45 GMT). 22. Notably, the Nintendo Wii has been configured in this manner. Although its Internet Channel software allows users to browse the entire Internet using the Wii, to date user-configurability of the home page and other features has been limited.

No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S. Surveillance State
by Glenn Greenwald
Published 12 May 2014

At the time of its purchase, Microsoft assured users that “Skype is committed to respecting your privacy and the confidentiality of your personal data, traffic, and communications content.” But in fact, this data, too, was readily available to the government. By early 2013, there were multiple messages on the NSA system celebrating the agency’s steadily improving access to the communications of Skype users: Not only was all this collaboration conducted with no transparency, but it contradicted public statements made by Skype. ACLU technology expert Chris Soghoian said the revelations would surprise many Skype customers. “In the past, Skype made affirmative promises to users about their inability to perform wiretaps,” he said.

…

I went back to my laptop and randomly clicked on the next document, a top secret PowerPoint presentation, entitled “PRISM/US-984XN Overview.” Each page bore the logos of nine of the largest Internet companies, including Google, Facebook, Skype, and Yahoo!. The first slides laid out a program under which the NSA had what it called “collection directly from the servers of these U.S. Service Providers: Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, Paltalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube, Apple.” A graph displayed the dates on which each of these companies had joined the program. Again I became so excited, I had to stop reading. The source also said he was sending me a large file that I would be unable to access until the time was right.

…

But he says he has many, many more. For some reason, he’s in Hong Kong, I have no idea why yet, and he wants me to go there to meet him and get the rest. What he’s given me, what I just looked at, show some pretty shocking—” Gibson interrupted. “How are you calling me?” “By Skype.” “I don’t think we should talk about this on the phone, and definitely not by Skype,” she wisely said, and she proposed that I get on a plane to New York immediately so that we could discuss the story in person. My plan, which I told Laura, was to fly to New York, show the documents to the Guardian, get them excited about the story, and then have them send me to Hong Kong to see the source.

We Are Anonymous: Inside the Hacker World of LulzSec, Anonymous, and the Global Cyber Insurgency
by Parmy Olson
Published 5 Jun 2012

No one could see his amblyopia, and people valued his wit and creativity far more. He became bolder and funnier. There was an equality he had never experienced before, an ease of conversation and a sense of shared identity. When the Internet telephone service Skype came along, he used it to talk to his new friends by voice for the first time. One day on Skype, someone suggested doing a prank call and letting everyone else listen in. Jake jumped at the opportunity. He found the number for a random Walmart outlet in the United States, then told the woman who answered that he was looking for a “fish-shaped RC helicopter.”

…

Brown added a link to one of Barr’s e-mails, saying, “I had a meeting with Bill Wansley over at Booz yesterday.” Over the next few days, Brown kept sending messages to Topiary about HBGary. Topiary soon got the hint that Brown was serious and he invited him into a private Skype group with Gregg Housh and a few others to focus on researching the e-mails more deeply. Topiary kept the Skype group open at all times and found for the next two weeks that he was increasingly being pulled into its conversations, spending at least seven hours a day on the investigation into what Barr had really been working on. Brown gave it a name: Operation Metal Gear, after an old Nintendo game, and its goal, in a nutshell, was to find out how the intelligence community was infiltrating the Internet and social media sites like Facebook and Twitter to spy on American citizens.

…

He could send a hundred thousand people to a YouTube video and grant the account holder a huge increase in views, or he could send the horde to crash a small website or IRC network. LulzSec’s attacks would become a lot more fun. He and Ryan started talking and doing some prank calls on Skype with some of Ryan’s friends as an audience. Then Ryan set them up with a joint Skype Unlimited account so they could call anywhere in the world, dropping eighty dollars in credit without blinking an eye. Topiary had an idea. Instead of making prank calls, what if they got LulzSec’s Twitter followers to call them? Topiary suggested setting up a Google Voice number so that anyone in the world could call LulzSec (or at least himself).

The Infinite Machine: How an Army of Crypto-Hackers Is Building the Next Internet With Ethereum
by Camila Russo
Published 13 Jul 2020

“Let’s dream big,” he would type into the Bitcoin Magazine Skype chat from his home in South Korea as he was trying to rally the team behind publishing a physical magazine. He got some lukewarm support, but Mihai, who was getting ready to return to Romania after registering the business as Bittalk Media Ltd. in the United Kingdom, argued they didn’t have enough money or experience to do something like that. Thinking that was the end of it, he boarded his flight back to Bucharest and by the time he got to a computer, hundreds of messages on the Skype group had popped up. As he scrolled down, trying to understand what was going on, he clicked on a link, and there it was, a press release stating in bold letters, “The First Issue of Bitcoin Magazine Goes to Print.”

…

But nothing happened. He waited a few seconds, then a minute, and still nothing. “There’s something wrong here, the transaction is not being picked up,” he said, but at the other end of the call, there was silence. He was disconnected. Skype was offline. He opened Google. His computer was offline. After trying to turn his modem on and off, with still nothing, he got back on Skype using his phone connection. “Guys my internet is offline! Can someone take over?” “Let me try!” Griff said. While Alex frantically called his internet service provider, Griff connected to the Ethereum blockchain, but he had to wait until he was in sync with the latest block.

…

He contacted the owner of one of the sites he used for downloading poker books to get a better sense of this worldwide community, and that’s when he heard about Bitcoin for the first time. The website’s owner mentioned that many of his clients were paying for goods with a peer-to-peer digital currency that didn’t have to go through banks. It was pseudonymous so, in theory, people behind the transactions were hard to track down. The idea went over Mihai’s head in that Skype call but a few weeks later, lying in bed one afternoon, he remembered that part of the conversation. He started going through all the links Google provided when he searched for more information on this digital cash, and those pages led to more pages, and the search for Bitcoin led to more obscure cryptography terms, and soon he had spent hours reading everything he could.

The Internet of Money
by Andreas M. Antonopoulos
Published 28 Aug 2016

Someone recently asked me, and I get this question a lot, “Can’t tyrannical governments block or ban the transmission of bitcoin transactions?” The answer is no, but I don’t think people quite understand why the answer is no. I’ll give you a couple of theoretical examples to show what I mean. 9.4.1. Transmitting Bitcoin Transactions via Skype as Smileys My first ridiculous example is the encoding of bitcoin transactions as emoticons or smileys in Skype. Skype has a 128-character emoji alphabet which allows you to send various frowny faces, smiley faces, thumbs up, thumbs down, sunny days, beating hearts, birthday cakes—you know, all of those kinds of things. Now, let’s look at that from an information-content perspective.

…

In the script, I can take the hexadecimal representation of a bitcoin transaction and encode it in emoticons. I can then copy that into a Skype window anywhere in the world. As long as the recipient who receives that string smileys types it into a decoder script and then simply injects it into the bitcoin network, that transaction will go through. The recipient could be a robot. The recipient could be an automated listening station that is designed to decode smileys into transactions and transmit them onto the bitcoin network. Now, explain to me how anyone can make that stop, other than by shutting down Skype. If they shut down Skype, I’ll use Facebook. If they shut down Facebook, I’ll use Craigslist.

…

Perhaps it’s a fancy phone/fax, perhaps a multifunctional printer/fax/phone. It’s very fancy. So, the phone companies look at this and say, "Oh, it’s a fancy phone. We can do this." They were wrong, fortunately. Otherwise, every time I went on a Skype call, there would be a little slot on the side of my computer, and I would have to deposit quarters every three seconds to make a Skype call. Fortunately, the phone companies didn’t get to write the rules. They couldn’t possibly predict the outcomes we saw on the internet, because most of the interesting things were not incremental improvements or extensions of the things before.

iPad: The Missing Manual, Fifth Edition
by J.D. Biersdorfer
Published 21 Nov 2012

Best of all, you can get Skype for free in the App Store. To use Skype, you need to set up an account with the service. It’s sort of like setting up an instant-messaging program. During the process, you pick a user name and password. Your name appears in Skype’s Contacts list, along with the names of other Skypers you can make calls with. To make a call from Skype, just tap the name of a person (who needs to be online) in your Contacts list. To call a regular phone line, tap the telephone-keypad icon in the toolbar (circled), punch in the numbers, and hit the green Call button. Skype calls are free if they go from computer or iPad to computer or iPad, but Skype charges a bit of coin to jump off the Internet and call a real phone number.

…

Skype calls are free if they go from computer or iPad to computer or iPad, but Skype charges a bit of coin to jump off the Internet and call a real phone number. The rates are low compared to standard phone services, and it’s a popular way to make cheap overseas calls. For instance, with a $9 monthly subscription, you can make unlimited calls to landlines in Europe (you can choose from more than 20 countries). Check out the prices for Skype’s various calling plans at www.skype.com. Skype can be a great way to keep up with the folks back in the Old Country on the cheap, but call quality can vary. The Internet can be a very busy network, which can affect the fidelity of the voice signals.

…

, Set Up an Email Account (or Two), POP3 and IMAP Accounts on the iPad, Syncing With iTunes, Sync and Organize Apps in iTunes, Sync and Organize Apps in iTunes, Sync and Organize Apps in iTunes, Adjust App Preferences, Sync Books Using iTunes, Manually Sync to Your iPad, Sync Music, Audiobooks, and Podcasts, Getting Videos Into iTunes apps, Sync and Organize Apps in iTunes email, POP3 and IMAP Accounts on the iPad manually, Manually Sync to Your iPad Music, Sync Music, Audiobooks, and Podcasts Notes, Syncing With iTunes organizing apps in, Sync and Organize Apps in iTunes, Sync and Organize Apps in iTunes, Adjust App Preferences transferring videos from, Getting Videos Into iTunes with email, Set Up an Email Account (or Two) with iBooks, Sync Books Using iTunes with iPad, Sync Your iPad with iTunes, Sync Your iPad with iTunes Notes, Cut, Copy, Paste, and Replace Text Reminders, Use Reminders T T-Mobile hotspots, Use Public WiFi Hotspots tabbed browsing, Use Browser Tabs in Safari–Use Browser Tabs in Safari, Use Browser Tabs in Safari tethering, Use the iPad as a Personal Hotspot text messages, Send Messages–Send Messages, Send Messages, Send Messages The Internet Archive, Get Music from Other Online Stores The New York Times, Find Newspaper and Magazine Apps thumbnails and finger gestures, View Pictures on Your iPad Timer, Timer Top Charts (iBooks), Browse and Search for Books transferring photos, Transfer Photos with iTunes–Transfer Photos with iPad Camera Adapters, Automatically Download Photos with Photo Stream, Transfer Photos with iPad Camera Adapters transitions between photos, Play Slideshows on Your iPad, Turn the iPad into a Picture Frame troubleshooting, Troubleshoot Apps–Troubleshoot Apps, Troubleshoot Apps, Troubleshoot Games, Troubleshooting iWork Files–Getting Help with iWork, Getting Help with iWork, Getting Help with iWork, Troubleshoot Syncing Problems, Troubleshooting Basics, Troubleshooting Basics, Troubleshooting Basics, Download iTunes and iTunes Updates, and Reinstall iTunes–Download iTunes and iTunes Updates, and Reinstall iTunes, Download iTunes and iTunes Updates, and Reinstall iTunes, Download iTunes and iTunes Updates, and Reinstall iTunes, Use iPad Backup Files, Start Over: Restore Your iPad’s Software apps, Troubleshoot Apps–Troubleshoot Apps, Troubleshoot Apps backup files, Use iPad Backup Files battery level, Troubleshooting Basics games, Troubleshoot Games iTunes, downloading and reinstalling, Download iTunes and iTunes Updates, and Reinstall iTunes–Download iTunes and iTunes Updates, and Reinstall iTunes, Download iTunes and iTunes Updates, and Reinstall iTunes, Download iTunes and iTunes Updates, and Reinstall iTunes iWork, Troubleshooting iWork Files–Getting Help with iWork, Getting Help with iWork, Getting Help with iWork syncing problems, Troubleshoot Syncing Problems TV, The iTunes Window, Play iPad Videos on Your TV–Play iPad Videos on Your TV, Play iPad Videos on Your TV, Play iPad Videos on Your TV, Play iPad Videos on Your TV, Play Slideshows on Your TV–Play Slideshows on Your TV, Play Slideshows on Your TV, Play Slideshows on Your TV, Photo Stream for Windows Users cables, Play iPad Videos on Your TV connecting iPad to, Play Slideshows on Your TV finding and playing videos, Play iPad Videos on Your TV–Play iPad Videos on Your TV, Play iPad Videos on Your TV, Play iPad Videos on Your TV libraries, The iTunes Window Photo Stream, Photo Stream for Windows Users playing slideshows on, Play Slideshows on Your TV–Play Slideshows on Your TV, Play Slideshows on Your TV Twitter, Take a Safari Tour, Use the Safari Action Menu, Social Networking on Your iPad, Social Networking on Your iPad, Use Twitter, iTunes and Social Media, Twitter U Ultraviolet, Video Formats That Work on the iPad Universal Access, Tour iTunes Update Genius (iTunes), Make a Genius Playlist in iTunes updating software, Update Your iPad’s Software Upgrade to iTunes Media organization, Where iTunes Stores Your Files USA Today, Find Newspaper and Magazine Apps USB, Sync Your iPad with iTunes syncing iTunes, Sync Your iPad with iTunes Use Side Switch, Use the Mute/Lock and Volume Buttons, General V VCF files (Contacts file standard), File Attachments Verizon, Cellular: 4G LTE, 4G, and 3G Networks, Use Public WiFi Hotspots, Sign Up for Cellular Data Service, Use a Mobile Broadband Hotspot, Use the iPad as a Personal Hotspot data calculator, Sign Up for Cellular Data Service hotspots, Use Public WiFi Hotspots mobile hotspots, Use a Mobile Broadband Hotspot using iPad as personal hotspot, Use the iPad as a Personal Hotspot video calls, Make Video Calls with FaceTime–Use Skype to Make Internet Calls, Adjust Your FaceTime Settings, Use Skype to Make Internet Calls, Use Skype to Make Internet Calls video mirroring, Beam Games to an Apple TV, Video Mirroring videos, Your Home Screen Apps, Make Video Calls with FaceTime, Stream Web Audio and Video–Stream Web Audio and Video, Stream Web Audio and Video, Stream Web Audio and Video, The iTunes Window, Watch, Create, and Edit Videos–Delete Videos, Watch, Create, and Edit Videos, Get Video Onto Your iPad, Get Video Onto Your iPad, Get Video Onto Your iPad, Transfer Video from iTunes to iPad, Transfer Video from iTunes to iPad, Getting Videos Into iTunes, Find and Play Videos on Your iPad, Find and Play Videos on Your iPad, Find and Play Videos on Your iPad, Find and Play Videos on Your iPad, Find and Play Videos on Your iPad, Find and Play Videos on Your iPad, Find and Play Videos on Your iPad, Find and Play Videos on Your iPad, Play iPad Videos on Your TV, Play iPad Videos on Your TV, Shoot Your Own Videos, Share Your Video Clips, Share Your Video Clips, Share Your Video Clips, Edit Videos on the iPad, Edit Videos on the iPad, Edit Videos on the iPad, Edit Videos on the iPad, Edit Videos on the iPad, Edit Videos with iMovie, Edit Videos with iMovie, Edit Videos with iMovie, Edit Videos with iMovie, Video Formats That Work on the iPad, Video Formats That Work on the iPad, Video Formats That Work on the iPad, Video Formats That Work on the iPad, Video Formats That Work on the iPad, Delete Videos, Videos Aneesoft iPad Video Converter, Video Formats That Work on the iPad deleting, Edit Videos on the iPad from Camera Roll, Edit Videos on the iPad Done button, Find and Play Videos on Your iPad editing, Edit Videos on the iPad, Edit Videos on the iPad, Edit Videos with iMovie, Edit Videos with iMovie on iPad, Edit Videos on the iPad, Edit Videos on the iPad with iMovie, Edit Videos with iMovie, Edit Videos with iMovie FaceTime, Make Video Calls with FaceTime formats, Video Formats That Work on the iPad getting into iTunes, Getting Videos Into iTunes HandBrake, Video Formats That Work on the iPad iMessage, Share Your Video Clips iTunes Store, Get Video Onto Your iPad library’s contents, The iTunes Window movie trailers, Stream Web Audio and Video–Stream Web Audio and Video, Stream Web Audio and Video, Stream Web Audio and Video movies, Watch, Create, and Edit Videos HD, Watch, Create, and Edit Videos Play/Pause, Find and Play Videos on Your iPad Previous, Next, Find and Play Videos on Your iPad scroll slider, Find and Play Videos on Your iPad settings, Videos sharing, Share Your Video Clips streaming apps and websites, Get Video Onto Your iPad transferring to computer, Transfer Video from iTunes to iPad volume, Find and Play Videos on Your iPad Widescreen/Full Screen, Find and Play Videos on Your iPad Wondershare iPad Video Converter, Video Formats That Work on the iPad Zoom/Unzoom, Find and Play Videos on Your iPad VIP Mailbox, Set Up a VIP Mailbox virtual private network (VPN), General Vlingo, Dictation Options for Older iPads voice commands, Enter Text By Voice–Using Dictation on the iPad, Using Dictation on the iPad, Using Dictation on the iPad Voice Memos, Connect Through iPad Jacks and Ports VoiceOver feature, General VoIP, Use Skype to Make Internet Calls volume, Use the Mute/Lock and Volume Buttons, Control the Now Playing Screen Now Playing screen, Control the Now Playing Screen Volume Limit (iPod), Music W Wake, Turn the iPad On and Off Wall Street Journal, Find Newspaper and Magazine Apps wallpaper, View Pictures on Your iPad, Change the iPad’s Wallpaper, Brightness & Wallpaper WAV files, Stream Web Audio and Video, Change Import Settings for Better Audio Quality Web, iPad Keyboard Shortcuts, Surf the Web–Use Other Web Browsers, Take a Safari Tour, Take a Safari Tour, Use Browser Tabs in Safari, Use Browser Tabs in Safari, Zoom and Scroll Through Web Pages, Zoom and Scroll Through Web Pages, Use Safari Reader, Use Safari’s Reading List, Jump to Other Web Pages, Use Autofill to Save Time, Use Autofill to Save Time, Add New Bookmarks on the iPad, Call Up Your History List, Edit and Organize Bookmarks and Folders, Edit and Organize Bookmarks and Folders, Save and Mail Images from the Web, Save and Mail Images from the Web, Stream Web Audio and Video, Stream Web Audio and Video, Work with Online Apps, Use iCloud Tabs, Use the Safari Action Menu, Social Networking on Your iPad, Social Networking on Your iPad, Surf Securely, Surf Securely, Surf Securely, Use Other Web Browsers, Use Other Web Browsers addresses, iPad Keyboard Shortcuts Autofill, Use Autofill to Save Time saving and emailing images, Save and Mail Images from the Web security, Surf Securely streaming, Stream Web Audio and Video WebDAV server, iWork by Online Server Website Data, Safari Wi-Fi Plus Cellular switch, Cellular Data (Wi-Fi + 4G/3G iPads Only) Wi-Fi Sync (iTunes), Sync Your iPad with iTunes, Connect Through iPad Jacks and Ports, Sync Bookmarks, Set Up an Email Account (or Two), Sync Your Personal Info to the iPad, Set Up Your Calendars, Maintain Contacts, Take Notes, Sync and Organize Apps in iTunes, Sync Books Using iTunes, Troubleshoot Syncing Problems, General maintaining contacts, Maintain Contacts organizing apps, Sync and Organize Apps in iTunes syncing bookmarks, Sync Bookmarks syncing books, Sync Books Using iTunes syncing calendars, Set Up Your Calendars syncing email, Set Up an Email Account (or Two) syncing notes, Take Notes Widescreen (videos), Find and Play Videos on Your iPad WiFi, Activate and Set Up Your iPad Over WiFi, Activate and Set Up Your iPad Over WiFi, Get Your WiFi Connection, Use Public WiFi Hotspots, Use a Cellular Data Network, WiFi activating and setting up, Activate and Set Up Your iPad Over WiFi choosing network, Activate and Set Up Your iPad Over WiFi connection, Get Your WiFi Connection hotspots, Use Public WiFi Hotspots settings, WiFi Windows Address Book, Maintain Contacts Windows Contacts, Maintain Contacts WMV files and iTunes, Video Formats That Work on the iPad Wondershare, Video Formats That Work on the iPad World Clock, Track Time With the iPad’s Clock X Xbox 360 gaming console, Control Your Xbox Game Console Y Yelp reviews service, Find Your Way with Maps YouTube, Your Home Screen Apps, Stream Web Audio and Video–Stream Web Audio and Video, Stream Web Audio and Video, Stream Web Audio and Video, Share Your Video Clips movie trailers, Stream Web Audio and Video–Stream Web Audio and Video, Stream Web Audio and Video, Stream Web Audio and Video Z Zinio Magazine Newsstand, Find Newspaper and Magazine Apps Zoho, Work with Online Apps Zoom/Unzoom, Zoom and Scroll Through Web Pages–Zoom and Scroll Through Web Pages, Zoom and Scroll Through Web Pages, Zoom and Scroll Through Web Pages, Find Your Way with Maps–Find Your Way with Maps, Find Your Way with Maps, Meet iWork, Create Presentations in Keynote, Shoot Your Own Videos, Take Photos With the iPad’s Camera, View Pictures on Your iPad, Picture Frame iWork, Meet iWork Maps, Find Your Way with Maps–Find Your Way with Maps, Find Your Way with Maps photos, Take Photos With the iPad’s Camera, View Pictures on Your iPad Picture Frame, Picture Frame presentations, Create Presentations in Keynote videos, Shoot Your Own Videos web pages, Zoom and Scroll Through Web Pages–Zoom and Scroll Through Web Pages, Zoom and Scroll Through Web Pages, Zoom and Scroll Through Web Pages About the Author J.D.

What's Mine Is Yours: How Collaborative Consumption Is Changing the Way We Live
by Rachel Botsman and Roo Rogers
Published 2 Jan 2010

Hundreds of thousands of early users spread the brand through discussing a new service called VoIP, whereby you could call people anywhere in the world for free on blogs, Facebook, and forums. Skype made it easy for the brand to go viral by providing users with items they could easily share, such as Skype buttons for personal Web sites. Within a couple of years, the verb “to Skype” was being used almost as often as “to Google.” The network effect was in play. Given that any Skype user can call any other Skype user, it was in the early adopters’ self-interest to get their friends and relatives to sign up to Skype, not Vonage or Go2Call or any other VoIP service. But awareness of Skype grew at a rapid rate primarily because people felt that they made a discovery of something new and valuable and immediately wanted to talk it up.

…

The role of brand is far from dead in the world of Collaborative Consumption, but the way brands are built, managed, and spread has changed. The path that many emerging brands of Collaborative Consumption follow is similar to well-known Web 2.0 household names such as Flickr, Skype, and Facebook. They are based on empowering communities (often using the Internet as a platform to give consumers a voice) and embracing that it takes a community, not a campaign, to create a brand. Skype went live in August 2003. Within two years there were more than 100 million user accounts. By the end of 2008, Skype had hit 405 million users and people made more than 2.6 billion minutes of SkypeOut calls.6 Not a dollar had been spent on traditional, expensive advertising campaigns.

…

“The Consumer Decides: Nike Focuses Competitive Strategy on Customization and Creating Personal Consumer Experiences” (February 26, 2007), http://mass-customization.blogs.com/mass_customization_open_i/2007/02/the_consumer_de.html. 5. “Nike + Community = Leadership,” blog post on Go Big Always (April 30, 2008), http://gobigalways.com/nike. 6. “Skype Fast Facts,” press release (Q4 2008), http://ebayinkblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/skype-fast-facts-q4-08.pdf. 7. Geoffrey Heal and Howard Kunreuther, “Social Reinforcement: Cascades, Entrapment and Tipping,” Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania (December 2008), http://opim.wharton.upenn.edu/risk/library/WP2009-03-09_GH,HK_SocReinf.pdf. 8.

Alone Together
by Sherry Turkle
Published 11 Jan 2011

Once a week, she would call her grandmother in Philadelphia using Skype, an Internet service that functions as a telephone with a Web camera. Before Skype, Ellen’s calls to her grandmother were costly and brief. With Skype, the calls are free and give the compelling sense that the other person is present—Skype is an almost real-time video link. Ellen could now call more frequently: “Twice a week and I stay on the call for an hour,” she told me. It should have been rewarding; instead, when I met her, Ellen was unhappy. She knew that her grandmother was unaware that Skype allows surreptitious multitasking. Her grandmother could see Ellen’s face on the screen but not her hands.

…

They begin with an affirmation of the value of technology: mothers insist that they are more frequently in touch with their daughters than, as one puts it, “I would have ever dared hope.” Mothers detail the texts and the Skype calls. A few, only a few, say they get an occasional e-mail. Since Skype has video as well as voice, mothers say they can tell if their daughters are looking well. Everyone is vigilant, worried about swine flu. Several hate that their daughters can see them. The mothers are in their late forties through early sixties, and they are not all happy to be closely observed. “I stopped putting on makeup for Skype,” one says. “It was getting ridiculous.” Another insists that putting on makeup for Skype is important: “I want her to see me at my best, able to cope.

…

But even with the constant updates, I don’t have much of a sense of what is really happening. How she really feels.” For another, “Texting makes it easy to lie. You never know where they really are. You never know if they are home. They can be anyplace and text you. Or Skype you on their iPhone. With a landline, you knew they were actually where they were supposed to be.” One mother shares my feeling that conversations on Skype are inexplicably superficial. Unlike me, she attributes it to the technical limitations of her Internet connection: “It’s like we are shouting at each other in order to be heard. The signal cuts off. I’m shouting at the computer.”

Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World
by Adam Grant
Published 2 Feb 2016

The leader’s message provides an overarching vision to start the car, and the user’s story offers an emotional appeal that steps on the accelerator. At Skype, Josh Silverman knew the best way to activate the go system wasn’t through his words alone. After talking about how Skype enabled his own children to have a deep personal relationship with their grandparents despite living eight time zones apart, he breathed life into the vision by giving the floor to Skype users as a regular feature of his all-hands meetings. A married couple shared how they survived a yearlong separation during their engagement “only thanks to daily talks on Skype.” A serviceman spoke about how Skype had allowed him to maintain a close relationship with his children while serving in Iraq; they even opened Christmas presents together.

…

“It helped employees see what a difference we could make in the world.” As they grasped that Skype was about connecting people, the team’s anxiety gave way to excitement. Inspired to build a video feature that would enable more meaningful conversations, they shipped Skype 4.0 on schedule with high-quality, full-screen video calls. Soon, Skype was adding about 380,000 users per day; by the end of the last quarter of the year, more than a third of the 36.1 billion computer-to-computer minutes spent on Skype were video calls. Less than three years after Silverman shared his vision and brought in users to inspire the team, Microsoft bought Skype for $8.5 billion, a 300 percent climb in value.

…

His first step mirrors how a technology leader dealt with fear among his employees. Outsourcing Inspiration When Josh Silverman took the reins of Skype in February 2008, the company was facing significant challenges. Employee morale was plummeting as the company was failing to maintain the explosive growth that Skype had experienced after pioneering free computer-to-computer calls and cheap long-distance calls between phones and computers. Silverman decided to make a big bet on an original feature: full-screen video calls. In April, he announced a moon-shot goal to release Skype 4.0 with the video feature by the end of the year. “The emotion among many employees was passionately negative.

The Jobs to Be Done Playbook: Align Your Markets, Organization, and Strategy Around Customer Needs
by Jim Kalbach
Published 6 Apr 2020

Why should the big players care? Then in 2011, Microsoft acquired Skype for $8.5 billion. Skype’s market share of all international calls nearly tripled that next year. And a few years later, Microsoft launched Skype for Business. Now, Skype was on equal footing with other premium services. Even telephone providers were feeling the effect, with the per-minute cost of international calls being commoditized to near zero. Skype also changed the playing field in terms of security, technical architecture, and capabilities, such as a rise in video calls. Skype’s rise is an example of what’s called “disruption,” a concept formalized by Clayton Christensen in his 1997 book The Innovator’s Dilemma.

…

CHAPTER 7 (Re)Developing Value IN THIS CHAPTER, YOU WILL LEARN ABOUT THESE PLAYS: • Ways to survive disruption using JTBD • How to create a jobs-based strategy • How to organize around JTBD • How to expand your business through aspirations When Skype first launched in 2003, it had limited functions, and the quality of the calls was poor, but it was free. Users just had to sign up, and they could speak with each other around the world. Incumbent web conferencing providers, such as WebEx and GoToMeeting, largely ignored the service. “We’re suited for business customers. Skype is for college kids to chat with one another,” they’d say or something similar. Established telecommunication companies thought nothing of Skype either. After all, it was a free service that targeted the lower end of the market.

…

But it moved to a dominant strategy with UberX, and then to a disruptive strategy with Uber Pool. Or a product may start out with a disruptive strategy—getting the job done worse but at a lower price. Then, over time, as the offering improves, it may start to get the job done better, reaching a dominant strategy, such as with Skype. Any analysis done with the matrix is dynamic and reflects a point in time. If JTBD is a core factor that explains market disruption, basing your offering strategy on JTBD helps give predictability into disruption and overall long-term success. Although present here in a few simple steps, using the growth strategy matrix requires rigor and mastery of both JTBD and strategy.

The Website Investor: The Guide to Buying an Online Website Business for Passive Income
by Jeff Hunt
Published 17 Nov 2014

I include my full name and contact information so that the seller will have confidence early on that I am a serious buyer. As the auction progresses and I get more serious about bidding or buying, I naturally have more questions. Often the answers are complex and need more explanation than is comfortable in an email or private message. I suggest having a conversation over the phone or on Skype. Skype calls, TeamViewer, or other chat systems are effective because the seller can share his screen and show you the website while answering your questions. It’s a good idea to record your own screen while he shares his so that you can review the information later on. You will want him to walk you through proof of sales, proof of traffic, and anything that the public can’t access (like behind the scenes administrative panels and tracking systems).

…

Plans started developing in mind to keep more of the profits by managing my own network of magicians and eventually cutting the broker out. Shoot, I might even learn a few tricks myself. The seller provided access to all kinds of information. He showed me phone logs, invoices, and emails. He gave me access to traffic statistics and showed me his PayPal account over a Skype screen-sharing session. I spent about three hours on the phone with him over the course of the auction. I was becoming very confident that this was going to be a winner. Then came the red flag. While the magician was sharing his screen, we were looking at his Google Webmaster Tools account. The bad news came in the form of a message from Google that said they had levied a manual action against the entire website due to “unnatural links.”

…

Some sellers take a screen-capture movie that shows themselves logging into their Analytics, PayPalPayPal, Bank, or other accounts to prove the website statistics. These videos can also be faked, but it is much more difficult. A common technique is to ask the seller to share his screen with you over Skype or Teamviewer and show you exactly what you want to see, in real time, on the seller’s PC. “Sometimes your best investments are the ones you don’t make.” —Donald Trump Some kinds of accounts, like Google Analytics, will allow for the creation of a “read only” guest account. Most honest sellers are happy to add your gmail account to their Analytics accounts so that you can browse the historical and current statistics at your leisure.

The Globotics Upheaval: Globalisation, Robotics and the Future of Work
by Richard Baldwin
Published 10 Jan 2019

YouTube has instant machine translation for many foreign-language YouTube videos. You just go to the settings “gear,” click on captions, and choose “auto-caption.” Instant, free spoken translation is also possible with the add-on option Skype Translator. This will allow you to understand foreign-language speakers you are Skyping with. It is not perfect, but being able to Skype freely with someone who doesn’t speak your language is nothing short of marvelous. Microsoft and Amazon have entered the race as well. Microsoft is using its digital assistant, Cortana, to allow users to speak in any of twenty languages and have the results appear as text in up to sixty different languages.

…

Think of standard telepresence as extremely good Skype—but so much better that it becomes a new experience. Telepresence makes it almost seem like people are in the same place even when they are not. I used it in spring 2017 to present my book, The Great Convergence, to the Norwegian sovereign wealth fund, Norges Bank Investment Management (NBIM). I was in London with a couple of analysts and connected via telepresence with another group of NBIM economists located in New York City and with yet a third group in Oslo. At first it seemed like nothing more than Skype with a really good screen. But that soon changed.

…

We cannot know what new jobs will be, but by studying the competitive advantage of AI and RI, we can say quite a bit about what sheltered jobs will look like in the future. By taking a close look at what RI does well, it is clear that the jobs that survive competition from telemigrants will be those that require face-to-face interactions. Psychologists have studied why in-person meetings are so different than email, phone, or Skype. The “secret sauce” for why real face time is so much more valuable is complex, and based on evolutionary forces that shaped our brains over millions of years. While digitech is creating ever better substitutes for being there, it seems that for many years, “being there” will still matter for some types of work-place tasks.

Don't Trust, Don't Fear, Don't Beg: The Extraordinary Story of the Arctic 30
by Ben Stewart
Published 4 May 2015

‘Illegal drugs. That’s what they’re saying.’ Seconds later the BBC’s Moscow correspondent tweets the news. The Skype groups explode with messages. Aaron Gray-Block: Daniel Sandford @BBCDanielS Russia’s Investigative Committee now saying ‘poppy straw’ and ‘morphine’ found on the @gp_sunrise ‘Jesus Christ,’ Mads Christensen mumbles to himself, staring at his screen. ‘This is bad. This is very bad.’ He unmutes the video link to London and taps the microphone. Eight heads look up. ‘You lot seeing Skype? The Russians are saying they’ve found drugs on board the Sunrise. They’re saying they found morphine and poppy straw.’

…

Nobody is saying much. Then a Skype message lands from St Petersburg. Jan Beránek: IMP UPDATE from Katya’s hearing: Prosecutor said he is NOT against a bail in case of Ekaterina. The judge interrupted the hearing so that she can prepare the decision. Katya Zaspa is the ship’s 37-year-old doctor from Moscow. Jan Beránek: UNCONFIRMED: Katya’s lawyer got information that her bail will be accepted. But we still need to wait for judge to pronounce her decision. Mads Christensen unmutes the video link from Copenhagen. ‘Did you guys just see that? Ben Ayliffe looks up. ‘Jan’s Skype message?’ ‘He says Katya’s lawyer’s been told she’ll get bail.’

…

The lies come from all corners of the Russian establishment – from journalists, ministers, the security services, and from the state-owned oil company, Gazprom.5 In Amsterdam – where Greenpeace International is based – the organisation’s digital campaign team is looking to mobilise global public opinion. A conversation on Skype sees the first use of a phrase that will soon become the name of an international drive for the crew’s freedom. James Sadri: we want to go for a big push on #freethesunrise30 as a hashtag to mobilise people Andrew Davies: #savethearctic Andrew Davies: It keeps arctic in the frame James Sadri: #freethearctic30 Andrew Davies: #FreeTheArctic30 James Sadri: nice Meanwhile, Greenpeace legal chief Jasper Teulings is working with Moscow to assemble a team of lawyers for Murmansk.

The Hostage's Daughter
by Sulome Anderson
Published 24 Aug 2016

It’s an interesting scenario, and others seem to find it plausible as well. When asked during a Skype conversation, my dad’s fellow hostage Terry Waite agrees that it makes sense to separate the Islamic Jihad from Hezbollah when discussing the IJO’s acts of terrorism—at least to some extent. “I think it’s very plausible that each unit, like Hezbollah on the one hand, and this splinter group [the IJO] on the other, had their own modus operandi, and therefore they didn’t necessarily overinterfere with each other,” Waite tells me via Skype. “It could well be that what Hezbollah says is true, and they didn’t have direct responsibility for the abductions, but didn’t do a whole lot to prevent them.”

…

She used to be my mother’s best friend, although they’ve lost touch now, the consequence of some decades-old fight—my mother nurses her grudges with great care and attention—which is sad because she was a sort of aunt to me growing up. I’ve known her since I was a toddler in Cyprus, and her stories of what a cute but stubborn child I was are as much a part of my understanding of those years as the ones my family tells. In a Skype conversation from Iran, she shares how she remembers that day while I sit rapt at my computer in the living room of our house in Fanar, Lebanon. It’s highly uncomfortable because my mother, in one of her characteristic bouts of stubbornness, refused to get air-conditioning in the house when she had it built.

…

I’m not sure when the U.S. government first heard of him, but two of my father’s friends would see his name scrawled on a napkin in a Cyprus bar, and soon after, it became clear that this man was a key player in the Islamic Jihad’s twisted game. All of Dad’s circle of friends were reporters. They had their own sources, and after he was abducted, they all worked their connections as hard as they could, trying to find information on his whereabouts and condition. During my first Skype conversation with Shazi, as I sit sweating at my dining room table in Fanar, she tells me about how she and Robert Fisk began their quest to find my father. “I had a very good source in Tehran,” she begins. “We used to call him Annie so that nobody would know who we were talking about, but it was a man.

The End of Jobs: Money, Meaning and Freedom Without the 9-To-5
by Taylor Pearson
Published 27 Jun 2015

They don’t need to spend decades developing management theories or new products—they just need to read the book, or more often, photo copy it. Improving Communication Technology: From $20 Phone Cards to Skype Recalling a trip to Europe less than twenty years ago, a friend of mine remembered squeezing into a phone booth and scratching the code off of a ten dollar phone card to make a thirty-minute call back to the U.S. On a recent trip to Asia, he made the same call over Skype using free wifi in a cafe while he was having lunch. The shift moving jobs overseas is also being driven by communication technology which makes it easier to find, hire, and manage remote workers.

…

Not only have education standards improved, but the communication technology to reach and work with people around the world has improved in lockstep. Two decades ago, trying to call someone on another continent involved prepaid phone cards in cramped telephone booths. Hardly the way to run a company or manage a team. Today, a $40 internet connection and a free Skype account gives anyone access to the greatest talent pool in history. Instead of competing against the labor pool of a few hundred thousand or a few million people in the area near you for your job, you’re competing against seven billion people around the world. The same technologies, machines, and globalization that have increased your competition in the job market have been a boon to entrepreneurs.

…

There were plenty of individuals that were talented editors, looking for work, and knew about craft beer ten years ago, yet it was hard to find them. Today, you can search for them and find a specific person that has “editor” and “craft beer” in their profile. The same improvements in technology that have made hiring easier also made managing and working with remote teams easier. Online video conferencing has become ubiquitous. Skype pioneered free video calls after launching in 2003 and other software like Google Hangouts and GoToMeeting have followed, making it possible to see and talk with anyone with an internet connection and a smartphone. Which, as of 2015, was 1.75 billion people and rising fast. Other companies have exploded around remote communication and management.

Traction: How Any Startup Can Achieve Explosive Customer Growth
by Gabriel Weinberg and Justin Mares
Published 5 Oct 2015

If you have a subscription product, ask them to upgrade to annual billing, which guarantees they will not cancel within the next year. Similarly, if you run a scaled pricing business (e.g., you pay $9/month for five users, $20/month for ten users, and so on), you can set up special emails for customers nearing their plan limits and ask them to upgrade. When you’re about to run out of Skype credits, Skype will email you asking you to re-up or upgrade to a subscription service. EMAIL MARKETING FOR REFERRALS Due to the personal nature of email, it is also excellent for generating customer referrals. If a friend emails you to tell you about a new product she is enjoying, you’re far more likely to try it than if you saw her mention it briefly on Facebook.

…

Word of mouth also causes many movies, books, diets, and TV shows to take off. Inherent virality occurs when you can get value from a product only by inviting other customers. For example, if your friends don’t have Skype, the application is worthless. Apps like Snapchat and WhatsApp also fall into this category. This type of virality comes with the advantage of “network effects,” where the value of the network increases as more people get on it. That is, the more people who are on Skype, the more valuable it becomes. Other products grow by encouraging collaboration. In this case, the product is still valuable on its own, but becomes more so as you invite others.

…

We’ve built some pretty cool tech to make this happen smoothly, and it works with your existing layout (iPad layout only activated when the blog is accessed from an iPad). Okay, I’ll shut up now and you can check out the demo links/feature pages below, which are much more interesting than my pitch. PS—Would also be happy to do giveaways to TC readers. Thanks again and feel free to reach out if you have any more questions (Skype, phone, etc. listed below). Video Demo: http://vimeo.com/13487300 Live demo site (if you’re on an iPad): jasonlbaptiste.com Feature overviews: http://padpressed.com/features Jason Kincaid warned against having your pitch come across as a “wall of text,” something busy reporters who receive hundreds of emails get tired of seeing.

Welcome to Britain: Fixing Our Broken Immigration System
by Colin Yeo;
Published 15 Feb 2020

Overall, around 40 per cent of British citizens working full- or part-time do not earn enough to be able to sponsor a foreign partner.3 And all this has consequences. In 2015, the Children’s Commissioner estimated that there were, after only three years of the new system, already as many as 15,000 children growing up in ‘Skype families’, where one of the parents was ineligible to live in the UK and instead had to stay in touch via Skype or similar technology.4 The number can only have grown since then and a simple extrapolation of the Children’s Commissioner estimate would suggest around 40,000 children affected by 2020. The Home Office’s own advance prediction of the number of couples affected was in the range of 108,000 to 142,000 by 2020.5 And in 2018, the expert number-crunchers at Oxford University’s Migration Observatory looked at whether it was possible to calculate the number of affected families, concluding that it was likely to be ‘in the tens of thousands’.6 Imagine you are British and, like any number of people, you met your partner at a university or college in the UK, where they were attending as a foreign student.

…

It may be that the civil servants who use the copy-and-pasted phrase in their refusals really believe what they say. Maybe they think that a toddler and their father can meaningfully engage on Skype, tell each other about how their day has been and tenderly articulate their love for one another. More likely, it is a fig leaf for a refusal that everyone knows will split the family apart. It is a lie that officials use to insulate themselves from the real-world impact of the rules they must enforce as part of their job. As one family law judge noted, rather more realistically, ‘You can’t hug Skype.’8 The Home Office will say that affected families are not ‘forced’ apart because they can always go and live in another country.

…

For my clients CONTENTS Title Page Dedication Note on Terminology Introduction Chapter 1 Welcome to Britain Chapter 2 Net Migration: The Accidental Target Chapter 3 Hostile Environment: Papers, Please Chapter 4 Complexity and Cost: No Way to Run a Whelk Store Chapter 5 Families and Friends: You Cannot Hug Skype Chapter 6 Asylum: Sandbanks and Crocodiles Chapter 7 Economic Migration: Points Mean Prizes Chapter 8 Students: Awesome or Bogus? Chapter 9 Free Movement: Auf Wiedersehen, Pet Chapter 10 Deportation, Exile and Modern Transportation Chapter 11 Immigration Detention: Enforcing Control Chapter 12 Citizenship, Nationality and Integration Conclusion: What Now?

Hit Refresh: The Quest to Rediscover Microsoft's Soul and Imagine a Better Future for Everyone
by Satya Nadella , Greg Shaw and Jill Tracie Nichols
Published 25 Sep 2017

See also specific products Seattle Children’s Hospital, 8, 41–42 Seattle Seahawks, 4 security, 169–80, 191–94, 202, 205, 224, 227–28, 238 senior leadership team (SLT), 2–6, 10–11, 81–82 sensors, 13, 79, 147–48, 150 September 11, 2001 attacks, 172 Serling, Rod, 159 server and tools business (STB), 53–59 servers, 2, 45, 139 edge of cloud and, 89 private vs. cloud-based, 57 privacy and security and, 173, 176 service sector, 240 Shaikh, Saqib, 200 Snapchat Spectacles, 145 Shaw, Frank, 98, 99 Shenzhen, 229 Shin, Jong-Kyon (J.K.), 133 Shum, Harry, 3, 51–52, 82 Sikhs, 19 silicon photonics, 228 Silicon Valley, 12, 21, 24, 26–27 silos, 57, 102 Sinclair ZX Spectrum kit, 21 Siri, 201 Sirosh, Joseph, 59 skills development, 226–27, 240 Skype, 64, 121, 155, 164, 171 Skype Translator, 59 small firms, 217 smartphones, 45, 66, 73, 132–34. See also mobile phones; and specific products Smith, Brad, 3, 131, 170–71, 173, 189 SMS, 216 Snapchat, 193 Snapdeal, 33 Snow Crash (Stephenson), 143 Snowden, Edward, 172–73, 179–80 Social Connector, 137 social contract, 239 socioeconomic change, 12–13 software design, 27, 49 software engineering, 74 solar, wind, and tidal power, 43, 228 Sony, 28 Sony Pictures Entertainment, 169–70, 177, 179, 189 Soul of a New Machine, The (Kidder), 68 South Zone, 37, 115 sovereignty, 170 space exploration, 145–46 Spain, 215 spam filters, 158 speech recognition, 76, 89, 142, 150–51, 164 Spencer, Phil, 106–7 sports franchises, 15 spreadsheets, 143 SQL (structured query language), 26 SQL Server, 53, 55 Stallone, Sylvester, 44 Stanford University, 64 One Hundred Year Study, 208 Start-up of You, The (Hoffman), 233 Station Q, 162–63, 166 Stephenson, Neal, 143 string theory, 164 Studio D, 65–66 success leadership, 120 Sun Microsystems, 26–29, 54 Super Bowl, 4 supercomputers, 161 superconducting, 162–65 supply-chain operations, 103 Surface, 2, 129 Surface Hub, 89, 137 Surface Pro 3, 85 Surface Studio, 137 Svore, Krysta, 164–65 Sway, 121 Sweden, 44 Swisher, Kara, 138 Sydney Opera House, 98 symbiotic intelligence, 204 Synopsys, 25 Syria, 218 tablets, 45, 85, 134, 141.

…

One of the early decisions I made was to differentiate Azure with our data and AI capabilities. Raghu and team designed and built the data platform that could help store and process exabyte-scale data. Microsoft was developing machine learning and AI capability as part of our products such as Bing, Xbox Kinect, and Skype Translator. I wanted us to make this capability available to third-party developers as part of Azure. A key hire for Azure was Joseph Sirosh, who I recruited from Amazon. Joseph had been passionately working in ML for all his professional career, and he brought that passion to his new role at Microsoft.

…

We were already running at-scale services such as Bing, Office 365, and Xbox Live. But with Azure we were now powering thousands of other businesses every minute of every day. Our team had to learn to embrace what I called “live site first” culture. The operational culture was as important as any key technology breakthrough. We would have on a single Skype call dozens of engineers plus our customer-facing field teams, all of whom would swarm together to coordinate and fix any problem. And every such incident would lead to rigorous root-cause analysis so that we could continuously learn and improve. I would, from time to time, join these calls to see our engineers in action.

Eat People: And Other Unapologetic Rules for Game-Changing Entrepreneurs
by Andy Kessler
Published 1 Feb 2011

Index it, package it, slice and dice it, write opinions on it, just don’t be in the business of selling it. I like the expression: because they can. Someone will give a zero margin cost product or service away—because they can! This is true of content like music and movies, but it’s also true of many services. Voice calls can be free, so Skype and others made them free, only charging when they have to touch the old antiquated phone system. Skype was lucky that AT&T still charged for phone calls so they could undercut them and still charge for something. Same for classified ads and what Craigslist did to newspapers. Classifieds could be done for free so they were, with just a $75 fee added for job listings, creating enough revenue for Craigslist to cover all their costs, and then some.

…

But for inexplicable reasons, eBay made a habit of raising prices every year instead of lowering them. For a good six or seven years it didn’t matter; the company grew and their stock kept going up. But eventually the higher prices caught up with them and now they’re just another company looking to acquire businesses like PayPal and Skype for growth. On the other hand, some things get cheaper but don’t Scale. Drugs for irritable bowel syndrome don’t scale. Cigarettes don’t scale. Twinkies don’t scale. Coffee doesn’t scale. And I’m not quite sure energy scales anymore. If a leukemia drug got cheaper every year, I don’t think any more doses would be sold.

…

It sounds odd, but a partnership between two profitdriven enterprises is usually more manageable and productive than the relationship between two divisions of a large company, each of whose VP wants to be CEO someday. Vertical phone company giants like AT&T saw their growth taken away by horizontals like Level 3 and Skype; the PC business all over again. ON THE SURFACE, a horizontal structure is counterintuitive. For instance, one good reason to integrate vertically is supply. When there are long, slow supply lines, or unsure supplies of key inputs, it makes sense to integrate vertically to make up for the lack of certainty.

Data and Goliath: The Hidden Battles to Collect Your Data and Control Your World
by Bruce Schneier
Published 2 Mar 2015

Michael Isikoff (13 Aug 2013), “Lavabit.com owner: ‘I could be arrested’ for resisting surveillance order,” NBC News, http://www.nbcnews.com/news/other/lavabit-com-owner-i-could-be-arrested-resisting-surveillance-order-f6C10908072. US government convinced Skype: Serge Malenkovich (21 Mar 2013), “Does Big Brother watch your Skype?” Kaspersky Lab Daily, http://blog.kaspersky.com/skype-government-surveillance. James Risen and Nick Wingfield (20 Jun 2013), “Silicon Valley and spy agency bound by strengthening web,” New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/20/technology/silicon-valley-and-spy-agency-bound-by-strengthening-web.html. We don’t know what the changes were: Microsoft Corporation (13 Oct 2011), “Microsoft officially welcomes Skype,” Microsoft News Center, http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/press/2011/oct11/10-13skypepr.aspx.

…

monitors physical spaces: Calum MacLeod (3 Jan 2013), “China surveillance targets crime—and dissent,” USA Today, http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2013/01/03/china-security/1802177. Messages containing words: Vernon Silver (8 Mar 2013), “Cracking China’s Skype surveillance software,” Bloomberg Business Week, http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-03-08/skypes-been-hijacked-in-china-and-microsoft-is-o-dot-k-dot-with-it. 30,000 Internet police: John Markoff (1 Oct 2008), “Surveillance of Skype messages found in China,” New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/02/technology/internet/02skype.html. India: John Ribeiro (13 Jan 2011), “RIM allows India access to consumer BlackBerry messaging,” CIO, http://www.cio.com/article/654438/RIM_Allows_India_Access_to_Consumer_BlackBerry_Messaging.

…

Larger, more beholden companies would never do that. We must assume that every other computer company that received a similar demand has eventually complied. For example, we know that the US government convinced Skype—through bribery, coercion, threat, or legal compulsion—to make changes in how the program operates, to facilitate eavesdropping. We don’t know what the changes were, whether they happened before or after Microsoft bought Skype in 2011, or how they satisfied whatever the government demanded, but we know they happened. In 2008, the US government secretly threatened Yahoo with a $250,000-per-day fine, with the daily amount increasing rapidly if it didn’t join the NSA’s PRISM program and provide it with user data.

Bank 3.0: Why Banking Is No Longer Somewhere You Go but Something You Do
by Brett King
Published 26 Dec 2012

The problem is that the teams that manage the Twitter channel are generally totally disconnected from traditional contact centres and often still refer customers back to the call centre after an initial contact. Siri, Lola, Skype and VoIP We are also seeing more use of technologies such as web-chat and Skype. These are hardly universal, but a few banks have experimented with context-sensitive web-chat and integrating Skype into the web/tablet experience. In fact, when UBank launched as NAB’s online direct banking brand experiment back in 2009, it deliberately integrated Skype into the customer onboarding and support mechanisms. UBank states on its website: “You can ‘Skype™ us’ from anywhere in the world for free (excluding ISP costs). UBank is the first Australian bank to enable Skype™ calls directly into our 24×7 Australian-based Direct Banking Centre.”

…

Always banking, never at a bank™ The core function of the branch in the 21st century Branch innovations built to engage What happens when they don’t visit anymore? Branch improvements today Chapter 4: Onboard and Engaged—The Ecosystem for Customer Support The need for better support Siri, Lola, Skype and VoIP When a consumer wants to become a customer Customer-centred means organisational change Responsive architecture Conclusions: Tactical channel improvement Chapter 5: Web—Why Revenue Is Still So Hard To Find . . . Why aren’t we buying more online? What sells online? Screen (web/tablet/mobile) first Cross-sell to existing customers Internet channel improvement today Chapter 6: Mobile Banking—Already Huge and It’s Just Getting Started The greatest device ever sold The landscape Bringing banking to the unbanked What does the future hold?

…

On every product or transaction page on your website, list the specific call centre number for that type of product/service. This can direct customers to an Interactive Voice Response menu specifically designed for that query, which will reduce call centre load and ensure CSR (customer service representatives) are appropriately equipped to answer specific questions. Even better, put a Skype calling button on the website where they can contact someone from the bank as they have a question, rather than waiting for them to find the correct number and call you separately. UBank™ in Australia used this methodology with great success. Customers are already coming to your website to find the solution, so why not put a list of the most frequent call types, issues or questions in the same area of the site where customers look up the telephone number?

How to Build a Billion Dollar App: Discover the Secrets of the Most Successful Entrepreneurs of Our Time
by George Berkowski
Published 3 Sep 2014

From the very get-go, your company – and especially the product-and-development teams – should be fostering a culture of openness, inviting real people to use your app, and then inviting feedback that can be shared throughout the company to drive improvements. One great example is Skype’s mobile app. In 2013 it had more than 300 million active users across a number of mobile platforms. Jonathan Moore was in charge of mobile product there (until Hailo headhunted him to join its product team) and he introduced a great practice: get out there in front of users every single Friday and get real-world feedback. Granted, Skype has a usability lab with dedicated people working just on that (what a luxury!). As a result Skype continually tested all kinds of changes and improvements. This led to a culture of experimentation, and great improvements in not only user-satisfaction levels but also app-related revenues.

…

If Snapchat can disrupt the market, then clearly so can others. VOICE-CALL-RELATED, 22 TIMES PER DAY: Mobile carriers still carry the vast majority of calls over non-data networks, but plenty of apps have come to eat more of their pie. Skype is a leader in voice calls with its mobile app (200 million active users and $200 million in annual revenue), as is the Viber app, which amassed 300 million active users by early 2014.8 Like Skype, it uses instant messaging and a voice-over-Internet protocol (VOIP). Google has its own Hangouts app, and Apple has its Facetime app built right into the iOS platform. As mobile carriers realise that their future lies in data, they have offered unlimited national calling packages, removing revenue opportunities for apps that want to compete.

…

There’s clearly a huge amount to learn from them, not only from the way that they have adapted to the mobile world, but also because they are great examples of modern companies that have grown from ideas to billion-dollar powerhouses by developing better products, great leadership, constant innovation – and, above all, superb execution. Companies such as Google, Facebook, Skype, PayPal, eBay, Amazon, Pandora, Dropbox, Box, Groupon and Evernote fall into this category. Concrete steps The world of mobile technology is exciting – and daunting. The mobile landscape is constantly changing: every week seems to herald the arrival of a new mobile device – from smartphones to smart watches, to tablets, to phablets (that’s a combination of phone and tablet).

Home Sweet Anywhere: How We Sold Our House, Created a New Life, and Saw the World
by Lynne Martin
Published 14 Apr 2014

• Say “Yes”: When someone offers you an opportunity to go somewhere, see something, do something new, say “Yes” whenever possible. Your best stories will come from things you never expected, but tried! Postpone nothing! • Keep in Touch: Use your Internet connection to speak with friends and family via Skype or FaceTime. A thirty-minute chat can feel like a visit home and be a great tonic to you and the ones you love and miss. Best of all, Skype to Skype calls are free! • Shop Green: Don’t be shy. Charity shop browsing is considered chic in most countries. When seasons change, you can supplement your wardrobe without going broke, then recycle your purchases and enjoy the bonus of feeling righteous!

…

Tim had nabbed a hot baguette on the way home from the Metro, we had some gorgeous pâté, so we were all set. This gave us a good opportunity to call home. We manage to speak with our daughters and friends often and have learned to compensate for the nine-hour time difference between Europe and California. They’re having coffee while I’m toasting them on Facebook or Skype with my first lovely Côtes du Rhône of the day. That day we fired up Skype on our computer and indulged in a long chat with Amandah, Tim’s daughter in Florida. We got to see four-year-old Sean paddling around in the pool! We miss our family deeply, and longing for them is the only part of our experience that makes us sad. It’s dreadful to miss many family events, and we know that whole dramas come and go in our absence.

…

We considered yelling down to the store to get help, but we knew we couldn’t explain ourselves to the Turkish-speaking fellow who was on duty. Besides, it would be embarrassing to shout our stupidity from the rooftops, so we waited some more. After sitting in silence for about fifteen minutes, inching our chairs ever closer to the wall to escape the hot sun, Tim said, “Hey, you have Skype on your phone. Try calling him.” The owner answered immediately. I explained our problem and he said he’d send Kubilay and a locksmith as soon as possible. We offered to pay for the mistake, but he said he wouldn’t hear of it. He told us it had happened before, which eased our humiliation. Somewhat.

The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom
by Evgeny Morozov
Published 16 Nov 2010

This is particularly true when it comes to voice communications. While it was relatively easy to bug a phone line, this is not such an easy option with voice-over-the-Internet technology like Skype. (The inability to eavesdrop on Skype conversations bothers Western governments, too: In early 2009 the U.S. National Security Agency was reported to have offered a sizeable cash bounty to anyone who could help them break Skype’s encrypted communications; to date no winners have been announced.) Second, there is so much data being produced online that authorities cannot possibly process and analyze all of it.

…

Meet Pro-Putin Activist Maria Sergeyeva, Russia’s Rising Political Star.” New York Daily News, March 9, 2009. Osipovich, Alexander. “NoizeMC, aka Ivan Alexeyev, and Russian Rap Inspire a Movement.” Wall Street Journal, July 24, 2010. Page, Lewis. “NSA Offering ‘Billions’ for Skype Eavesdrop Solution.” Register, February 12, 2009. www.theregister.co.uk/2009/02/12/nsa_offers_billions_for_skype_pwnage/. Podger, Corinne. “China Marshalls Army of Bloggers.” Connect Asia. Radio Australia, August 21, 2008. Pretel, Enrique Andres. “Twitter’s Heady Rise Has Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez in Spin.” Reuters, March 30, 2010. “Prjamaja Rech.” Prilozhenie Telekom, Kommersant, November 16, 2006. www.kommersant.ru/doc.aspx?

…

“Data Mining 101: Finding Subversives with Amazon Wishlists.” Applefritter, January 4, 2006. www.applefritter.com/bannedbooks. “P2P Comes to the Aid of Audiovisual Search.” PhysOrg.com. November 18, 2009.www.physorg.com/news177780052.html. Page, Lewis. “NSA Offering ‘Billions’ for Skype Eavesdrop Solution.” Register, February 12, 2009. www.theregister.co.uk/2009/02/12/nsa_offers_billions_for_skype_pwnage/. Palmer, Maija. “Face Recognition Software Gaining a Broader Canvas.” Financial Times, May 22, 2010. ———. “Google Debates Face Recognition Technology After Privacy Blunders.” Financial Times, May 20, 2010. Pankavec, Zmіcer. “KDB Verbue Praz vkontakte.ru.”

Blockchain: Blueprint for a New Economy
by Melanie Swan
Published 22 Jan 2014

“The NSA Can Listen to Skype Calls (Thanks to Microsoft).” The Mac Observer, July 11, 2013. http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/the-nsa-can-listen-to-skype-calls-thanks-to-microsoft; Goodin, D. Encrypted or Not, Skype Communications Prove ‘Vital’ to NSA Surveillance.” Ars Technica, May 13, 2014. http://arstechnica.com/security/2014/05/encrypted-or-not-skype-communications-prove-vital-to-nsa-surveillance/. 85 Brin, D. The Transparent Society: Will Technology Force Us to Choose Between Privacy and Freedom? Cambridge, MA: Perseus Books Group, 1999. 86 Chaffin, B. “The NSA Can Listen to Skype Calls (Thanks to Microsoft).”

…

This method captures tweets that might be censored out later by takedown requests.82 Florincoin’s key enabling feature for this is transaction comments, a 528-character field for the recording of both metadata and tweet content.83 The expanded commenting functionality could be used more broadly for many kinds of blockchain applications, such as providing metadata and secure pointers to genomic sequences or X-ray files. Another freedom-oriented application is Ostel’s free encrypted Voice over IP (VoIP) telephony service, because the United States National Security Agency (NSA) can listen in on other services like Skype.84 Ostel is a nice example of David Brin’s bottom-up souveillance counterweight85 to top-down NSA surveillance (of both traditional telephone calls and Skype86). Decentralized DNS Functionality Beyond Free Speech: Digital Identity Beyond its genesis motivation to enable free speech and provide a countermeasure to the centralized control of the Internet, there are other important uses of decentralized DNS functionality in the developing Blockchain 3.0 ecosystem.

…

“The NSA Can Listen to Skype Calls (Thanks to Microsoft).” The Mac Observer, July 11, 2013. http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/the-nsa-can-listen-to-skype-calls-thanks-to-microsoft. 87 Dourado, E. “Can Namecoin Obsolete ICANN (and More)?” The Ümlaut, February 5, 2014. http://theumlaut.com/2014/02/05/namecoin-icann/. 88 Rizzo, P. “How OneName Makes Bitcoin Payments as Simple as Facebook Sharing.” CoinDesk, March 27, 2014. http://www.coindesk.com/onename-makes-bitcoin-payments-simple-facebook-sharing/. 89 Higgins, S. “Authentication Protocol BitID Lets Users ‘Connect with Bitcoin.’” CoinDesk, May 7, 2014. http://www.coindesk.com/authentication-protocol-bitid-lets-users-connect-bitcoin/. 90 Rohan, M.

Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy
by Lawrence Lessig
Published 2 Jan 2009

If this is a sharing economy, it is a thin sharing economy. • Think of the “Voice Over IP” service called Skype. With Skype, you can make free Internet calls, and very cheap Internet-to-regular-phone calls (and vice versa). But Skype is designed to use, or “share,” the resources of the computers connected to this VOIP network. When you’re on the Skype phone, Skype is using your computer to make its network work better.46 This is like AT&T drawing electricity from your house when you use the telephone, as a way to keep its electricity costs down. I don’t mean to criticize Skype for this: it certainly helps make the service better. But when someone participates in this “sharing economy” of computer resources, what is the most salient motivation?

…

Fourth and finally, he notes that contributors may be motivated by their attachment or commitment to a particular open source project or group. In other words, the good of the group enters into the utility equation of the individual contributor. (Ibid., 927.) 46. Or so the terms of service for Skype say. See “Skype End User License Agreement—Article 4 Utilization of Your Computer,” Skype, available at link #69 (last visited July 31, 2007). 47. Daniel H. Pink, “The Book Stops Here,” Wired, March 2005, available at link #70. 48. All quotes from Jimmy Wales taken from an in-person interview conducted May 4, 2007. 49. Seth Anthony, “Contribution Patterns Among Active Wikipedians: Finding and Keeping Content Creators,” Wikimania Proceedings SA1 (2006), as summarized at link #71 (last visited August 20, 2007). 50.

…

But when someone participates in this “sharing economy” of computer resources, what is the most salient motivation? Is it to advance the cause of Skype? Or is it simply a by-product of people’s desire for cheap calls? I suggest the latter, making this too a thin sharing economy. • Think finally of AOL’s IM network. The value of that network increases for everyone. This is a consequence of network effects: the more who join, the more valuable the resource is for everyone. There are many contexts in which this network effect is true. Think, for example, about the English language. Every time someone in China struggles to learn English or a school in India continues to push English as a primary language, all of us English speakers benefit.

Why Startups Fail: A New Roadmap for Entrepreneurial Success
by Tom Eisenmann
Published 29 Mar 2021

A product that facilitates interactions between its users has network effects if adding users makes the product more valuable to every user, by providing more potential partners for interactions. For example, the first Skype user couldn’t do anything with the product until a second user came on board. The subsequent arrival of each new Skype user made the product a little bit more valuable for every existing user, by offering yet another potential conversation partner. For the same reason, Skype’s growing user base made the service more attractive to nonusers, by boosting the odds that someone with whom they wanted to speak already had Skype. With network effects, users beget more users. And the stronger the preference for additional interaction partners, the stronger the network effect.

…

For example, credit card companies serve cardholders and merchants, recruiting websites match job seekers and corporate employers, and videogame consoles connect gamers with game developers. By contrast, one-sided networks have just one type of user. Although every Skype call has a sender and a receiver, these roles are transient: Most Skype users make and receive calls at different times. In a two-sided network, members on each side generally prefer having access to more users on the other side; these are positive cross-side network effects. For example, signing up more merchants makes a credit card more attractive to consumers—and vice versa.

…

Assuming a 50 percent chance of a good outcome for any given challenge, the probability of getting five out of five good outcomes is the same as the odds of picking the winning number in roulette: 3 percent. To win such a gamble, these entrepreneurs were betting on Cascading Miracles. Some late-stage startups that followed the Cascading Miracles pattern were legendary flops, including Iridium, Segway, and Webvan. More recent examples include Joost, a YouTube competitor from Skype’s founders; numerous Initial Coin Offerings; and a venture I’ll profile, Better Place, whose charging stations for electric cars used robots to rapidly swap depleted batteries with fully charged replacements. Such ventures are often launched by charismatic founders who seduce employees, investors, and strategic partners with an opportunity to help usher in a dazzling future.

They Don't Represent Us: Reclaiming Our Democracy
by Lawrence Lessig
Published 5 Nov 2019

For a fantastic analysis of the antitrust problem raised by “free” data, see Dirk Bergemann and Alessandro Bonatti, “The Economics of Social Data” (working paper, January 15, 2019) (while identifying a competitive problem, the authors have no clear remedy beyond data portability). 94.Steven Levy, In the Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011), 172–73. 95.Microsoft acquired Skype for $8.5 billion on May 10, 2011. “Microsoft Officially Welcomes Skype,” Microsoft, October 13, 2011, available at link #124. Microsoft revealed its speech recognition capabilities through an announcement that demonstrated Star Trek–like technology (the “universal translator”). “Skype Translator Preview—An Exciting Journey to a New Chapter in Communication,” Skype, December 15, 2014, available at link #125. Microsoft assures users that no personally identifiable data is gathered from Skype and that the data is not used for advertising. “Skype Translator Privacy FAQ,” Skype, available at link #126. 96.Andrew C.

…

And while there is a potential for abuse—and that potential should be regulated—there is all the difference in the world between my neighbor (or the Stasi) reading my mail and Google “reading” my emails. The same is true about Microsoft and Skype: When the public wondered why Microsoft was willing to pay $8.5 billion to buy Skype, it was quickly revealed that the company would use the Skype calls to train voice recognition algorithms.95 “So wait, Microsoft is listening to my Skype-based telephone calls?” Yes, in a sense, but not in the sense that the FBI might be listening to your telephone calls. That again is not to say that we shouldn’t be concerned about abuse, or even about the potential for abuse, given the architecture as it has developed.

In the Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives
by Steven Levy
Published 12 Apr 2011

Halfway through the development cycle, an opportunity arose that Google’s leaders felt compelled to consider: Skype was available. It was a onetime chance to grab hundreds of millions of Internet voice customers, merging them with Google Voice to create an instant powerhouse. Wesley Chan believed that this was a bad move. Skype relied on a technology called peer to peer, which moved information cheaply and quickly through a decentralized network that emerged through the connections of users. But Google didn’t need that system because it had its own efficient infrastructure. In addition, there was a question whether eBay, the owner of Skype, had claim to all the patents to the underlying technology, so it was unclear what rights Google would have as it tried to embellish and improve the peer-to-peer protocols.

…

“Salar is like the secret president of Google,” says Chan, who laid out the reasons why a Skype acquisition would be a disaster. Kamangar agreed. Then the two of them talked to Sergey and won him over as well. With those allies on board, Chan devised a plan to kill the Skype purchase. As he later described it, his scheme involved “laying grenades” at the executive meeting where the purchase was up for approval. Chan tricked the business development executive who was pushing the acquisition into thinking that he was in favor of the deal: he had even prepared a PowerPoint presentation with all the reasons Google should buy Skype. Chan says that halfway through the presentation, though, the trap sprang.

…

A lawyer said it might take months to get approval. Finally, Brin looked at Chan and asked why Google would want to take the risk to begin with. Chan dropped his defense entirely and began explaining why Google had no need for Skype. “At that point,” recalls Chan, “Sergey gets up and says, ‘This is the dumbest shit I’ve ever seen.’ And Eric gets up and walks out of the room. The deal’s off.” Not long after, eBay sold Skype to a group of investors, taking a loss from its original purchase price. In March 2009, Google Voice made its debut with a thunderclap. In addition to all the services GrandCentral offered, such as one number for life, the company had added others, including integration with Gmail and Google Calendar.

The Triumph of Injustice: How the Rich Dodge Taxes and How to Make Them Pay
by Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman
Published 14 Oct 2019

In 2004, a few months after Google transferred its intellectual property to Bermuda, Skype—a company founded by a Swede and a Dane—moved most of its voice-over-IP technology to a subsidiary incorporated in Ireland. What’s interesting in the case of Skype is that thanks to “LuxLeaks”—a trove of confidential documents leaked in 2014 from PricewaterhouseCoopers—we know the details of this transaction. According to PwC, how much was the groundbreaking technology that was going to disrupt the telecommunications market worth? A grand total of 25,000 euros.8 In September 2005, a few months after this transaction, Skype was bought by eBay for $2.6 billion.

…

A grand total of 25,000 euros.8 In September 2005, a few months after this transaction, Skype was bought by eBay for $2.6 billion. It’s not a coincidence that Google and Skype sold their intellectual property at the same time to shell companies located somewhere between Ireland and Bermuda. Around 2003–2004, this was the dodge of choice for the tax-avoidance industry. Skype, like Google, was given the same advice: move fast, before being listed as public companies or bought back by another firm. Why? Because it’s harder to pretend your core technology is nearly worthless when the market values you in the billions. With these examples, we can see that corporate tax dodging, whatever may be said about it, is quite simple.

…

These states sell a key ingredient, a vital input without which the scams peddled by the Big Four would be of little use: their own sovereignty.16 Since the 1980s, the governments of tax havens have engaged in a new sort of commerce. They’ve sold multinationals the right to decide for themselves their rate of taxation, regulatory constraints, and legal obligations. Everything is negotiable. Apple asks for a low tax rate to locate some of its companies in Ireland? Dublin obliges. Skype is worried that the taxman might one day contest the price at which it sold its intellectual property to its Irish subsidiary? Not to worry, the Grand Duchy sells insurance, in the form of what are known as advanced pricing agreements—contracts that rubber-stamp the transfer prices used by multinationals ahead of time.

The Creative Curve: How to Develop the Right Idea, at the Right Time
by Allen Gannett
Published 11 Jun 2018

By night, I’ve done everything possible to answer the question of whether there is a pattern to creative success. I’ve spent the last two years interviewing some of the world’s most successful creators. From culinary titans to bestselling novelists and even top YouTube Creators, I sat down, ate, chatted, and Skyped with some of the leading so-called creative geniuses of our time. In addition, I spoke to the most distinguished academics in the studies of creativity, genius, and neuroscience. What did I find? It turns out that the mythology around creativity is just that, myth. You do not have to be born with some X-Men-like superpower to achieve great artistic or entrepreneurial heights.

…

I tackled the problem by going right to the source. I spoke with people who had reached the pinnacle of creative and commercial achievement. I wanted to uncover what the world’s most successful people did to unlock their potential, even if they couldn’t put exact words to it. Flying around the world to meet painters and chefs, Skyping with rock stars and entrepreneurs, I interviewed dozens of creative geniuses on their process, asking about their childhoods, their brainstorming process, and even the layouts of their workspaces. I wanted to see if I could find any dots that would connect. I met these people through a variety of circumstances.

…

I asked these people questions about their childhoods, how they conceived of new ideas, how they turned those ideas into reality, and how they promoted them once they were done. I often felt like a shrink, especially since I conducted a lot of interviews on couches. People invited me into their homes, their offices, and their favorite restaurants. When we couldn’t meet in person, we would chat over the phone or Skype. In the end, it turned out that many of the stories I heard were similar. Ultimately I discovered four patterns that creators use to come up with ideas that are optimized for commercial success. These methods were also supported by a variety of sciences ranging from psychology to sociology to neuroscience.

The Launch Pad: Inside Y Combinator, Silicon Valley's Most Exclusive School for Startups
by Randall Stross
Published 4 Sep 2013

The “idea”—the product or service that the startup will offer—often mutates between the time the applicants submit their application and the time of their interview. This is the case here. The idea that the Kalvins had submitted a few weeks earlier was encapsulated as “past memories sent to your in-box.” In a preinterview via Skype with a YC partner the week before, they had been encouraged to think of something else. “We pivoted the idea a little bit,” says one Kalvin—Jason Shen in this case, but in the eyes of the YC partners, the finalists are a blurry succession of faces without individual names. “We’re going to be the Mint.com for photo books.

…

A two-person team from Ireland—the older member is twenty-three but the younger one is eighteen and still in high school—has been invited for an interview. When the time arrives, Livingston brings in David Dolphin, the older one, but Patrick O’Doherty is not with him—he remains in Dublin. Dolphin sets his laptop on the table, allowing O’Doherty to be heard via a Skype voice call. Graham does not regard this to be a satisfactory substitute for physical presence. Y Combinator, through its investments, has made online communication services more robust and varied. But in its own operations, face-to-face communication, without electronic mediation, is deemed indispensable.

…

Graham believes having the founders gather once a week, in person, prods them to work harder because of the power of shame avoidance: they would not want to embarrass themselves by having little progress to report to their peers at the weekly get-together. Graham and his YC partners insist that the founders be physically present for the consultations. When one founder asks if he could use Skype to have a video chat in place of coming over to YC for a conversation in the flesh, Graham says he’d permit it but then frowns. “It doesn’t work as well,” he says. “It turns out that startups are so hard, you kind of have to talk about them face-to-face.” To organize those face-to-face conversations, YC has adopted another academic practice: office hours.

The Driver in the Driverless Car: How Our Technology Choices Will Create the Future
by Vivek Wadhwa and Alex Salkever
Published 2 Apr 2017

When the professional humans’ role of broadcasting becomes one of guiding, the guides will be able to work with far more pupils, and to do it remotely, too. In fact, parts of this have been happening for years. British grandmothers have been teaching Indian kids using Skype. A number of Skype-based language and teaching businesses are operating right now. (Not surprisingly, this also works in reverse: Skype connects foreign teachers to American students to provide more affordable lessons and tutoring, giving the foreign teachers a good income by local standards.) There will always be benefits to physical presence, to being in the same room with fellow students and a teacher.

…

In 2010, Uber had no market share in providing rides to the U.S. Congress and their staffs. By 2014, despite the service’s continuing illegality in many of the constituencies of these political leaders, Uber’s market share among Congress was a stunning 60 percent.1 Talk about regulatory capture. Companies such as Uber, Airbnb, and Skype play a bottom-up game to make it nearly impossible for legacy-entrenched interests and players to dislodge or outlaw newer ways of doing things. In fact, most of the smartphone-based healthcare applications and attachments that are on the market today are, in some manner, circumventing the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s cumbersome approval process.

…

And testing equipment is far away: trips to better-equipped clinics can require a full day’s travel or even a plane ride. For U.S. women trapped in the maw of urban poverty, getting top-notch medical care requires navigating a horrific bureaucracy. Medical devices such as HealthCube Pro will enable doctors to diagnose otherwise inaccessible patients remotely via Skype and FaceTime. Telemedicine is a fast-growing field, but doctors practicing it usually lack the diagnostic information that their nurses collect during office visits. The ability of patients to take regular tests in the comfort of their homes and upload data to shared servers will make it possible to dramatically increase the quality, and lower the cost, of the health care they receive.

Cancel Cable: How Internet Pirates Get Free Stuff
by Chris Fehily
Published 1 Feb 2011

To set the maximum upload rate automatically (OS X): Quit all programs that access the internet, including browsers, mail/chat clients, antimalware, Skype, iTunes, and backup tools. Open uTorrent. Choose uTorrent > Preferences or press Command+, (comma). In the Preferences window, click Bandwidth, and then turn on “Limit upload rate automatically.” To set the maximum upload rate manually (Windows or OS X): Quit all programs that access the internet, including browsers, mail/chat clients, antimalware, Skype, iTunes, and backup tools. Open your browser and go to a website that can test broadband speeds. I use speedtest.net or dslreports.com/speedtest, but you can find others by searching the web for speed test, bandwidth test, internet connection speed, or a similar phrase.

…

Because too much outbound traffic can choke your download speed, you must throttle, or limit, uTorrent’s maximum upload speed. In general, you don’t have to throttle download speed. You can throttle upload rates automatically or manually. To set the maximum upload rate automatically (Windows): Quit all programs that access the internet, including browsers, mail/chat clients, antimalware, Skype, iTunes, and backup tools. Open uTorrent and choose Options > Setup Guide or press Ctrl+G. In the uTorrent Setup Guide, choose the location closest to you from the Bandwidth drop-down list. If a somewhat nearby place isn’t listed, skip the remaining steps and set the upload rate manually, as described later in this section.

…

In OS X, choose uTorrent > Preferences (Command+,) > Bandwidth, turn off “Limit upload rate automatically,” turn on “Limit upload rate manually to,” and then set the limit to the number that you calculated in the preceding step (rounded to the nearest whole number). Close Preferences. Other Settings Though uTorrent’s default configuration settings work fine in most cases, you can adjust them to suit you. Limit download rates. If uTorrent is hogging bandwidth and slowing your browser, Skype calls, or other internet applications, you can do any of the following: Shut down uTorrent for a while. Limit the download rate. In Windows, choose Options > Preferences (Ctrl+P) > Bandwidth (in the left pane) and set “Maximum download rate (kB/s).” In OS X, choose uTorrent > Preferences (Command+,) > Bandwidth, turn on “Limit download rate to,” and then set the download limit.

Bitcoin Billionaires: A True Story of Genius, Betrayal, and Redemption
by Ben Mezrich
Published 20 May 2019

Charlie had been telling the online audience about BitInstant, how none of the investors he’d approached understood Bitcoin and would fund him, how he just needed a little financing to make it work. Four hours after he was off the show, he’d received a Skype from a famous Bitcoin enthusiast named Roger Ver. Ver, known in the Bitcoin community as “Bitcoin Jesus” because of his proselytizing and the many investments he’d made in the industry, had begun the brief Skype conversation by asking Charlie how much money he needed; when Charlie had thrown out a number, almost off the cuff, Ver had instantly agreed. And just like that, without ever meeting in person, they’d struck a deal; Ver had wired Charlie $120,000 for a 15 percent ownership of BitInstant.

…

But despite these mostly successful blinkered rabbinical strategies, which had kept the Syrian Jewish community intact—all of Charlie’s cousins, uncles and aunts, grandparents, and family going back generations lived within a quarter mile of his house—and are firmly lodged in the Brooklyn landscape—the SYs had simultaneously managed to extend themselves outward in financial empires, in areas including real estate, retail, electronics, and, more often now, technology. Charlie reached the desk and dropped into his chair, yanking out the earbuds and resting his phone next to the keyboard. Then he powered up his computer, heading right for his Skype account. It took less than a minute for his business partner to appear in the lower left corner, shrunk down so that Charlie could talk while simultaneously monitoring the computer code that was now free-flowing like a river down the center of his screen. “You’re late,” his business partner croaked through the internal microphone of Charlie’s computer.

…

But Gareth was certainly excited now: this was something big, important. Revolutionary. Over the ensuing years, Charlie had realized that the Welshman was right. He moved his face closer to the screen as the last few lines of code flowed upward. He was totally in the zone, barely listening as Gareth offered comments from his Skype corner, as the EDM music still leaked, in tinny twists, out of the earbuds on the desk by Charlie’s cell phone, as footsteps reverberated through the basement ceiling above him: his mom, working on that brisket. Almost three years after reading Satoshi’s white paper, Charlie was certain: it was going to change everything.

Experience on Demand: What Virtual Reality Is, How It Works, and What It Can Do
by Jeremy Bailenson
Published 30 Jan 2018

They won’t look like cartoons—they will be super high-resolution models, with perfect lighting effects for shadows and reflections. They will dwarf the fidelity of the networked faces you see on Skype, Facetime, or other videoplatform conferences, which need to keep the realism level suppressed in order to prevent latency. The visual quality of the networked Faceshift avatar simply blew me away. It was the “realest” face I had ever seen networked. Another unanticipated benefit became clear within minutes of using the system. I often Skype with my mom, who lives across the country, and she is typically holding a tablet while we talk. It’s massively challenging for her to hold the tablet in a way that keeps her face in the center of the frame.

…

Perhaps an article one is reading online will have VR content attached, your brother will send a VR video of your nephew’s graduation ceremony, or you’ll decide you want to watch highlights from the NBA finals as if you were sitting in a courtside seat—you’ll just put on the VR headset for 15 minutes or so. It’s true that the idea of using the Internet with goggles on seems outlandish today, but then, a few years ago, so did a world in which everyone was staring at iPhone screens, or Skyping, or walking around city streets wearing massive, noise-canceling headphones. Once people get a taste of the experiences VR can bring them, the strangeness of the HMD will go away. And what all this means is that intense virtual experiences will, sooner than many expect, be available to a massive consumer audience.

…

The pairs had to perform a task together using maps. Two results emerged—first, participants in the delay condition made more mistakes in the task. The lag in conversation actually made productivity suffer. Second, the speakers interrupted one another more often during high latency. Most of us have had this experience during bad cell phone or Skype conversations. Delay harms the “flow” of the conversation, or in Kendon’s words, the synchrony.10 Since Kendon’s landmark work in the late ’60s, dozens of studies have examined the effect of interactional synchrony on outcomes. A study from the late 1970s looked at about a dozen college classrooms over time, and demonstrated that students and teachers with high nonverbal synchrony in posture had better relationships than those with low synchrony.

Neutrino Hunters: The Thrilling Chase for a Ghostly Particle to Unlock the Secrets of the Universe
by Ray Jayawardhana
Published 10 Dec 2013

id=2554. 3 centenary of Amundsen: There are many excellent books on Antarctic exploration, and The New York Times published an article titled “Amazing Race to the Bottom of the World” by John Noble Wilford on December 12, 2011, to mark the centenary. 4 I went to Antarctica: See my article “The Meteorite Hunters” in the November/December 2011 issue of Muse magazine (Chicago: Carus Publishing Company; www.musemagkids.com). 6 small flags that: Francis Halzen kindly sent me photographs taken by his colleagues so that I could see what IceCube looked like on the Amundsen centennial. 6 IceCube: Description of IceCube is based, in part, on a telephone interview with Francis Halzen conducted by the author on December 12, 2011, and on material on the project website at http://icecube.wisc.edu/. 6 phototubes: Though I have used the term “phototube” for simplicity, in fact these are photomultiplier tubes (PMTs for short); incident light generates an electric current in the PMT, which is then amplified up to tens of millions of times to make the detection easier. 8 “If you’re trying”: This Janet Conrad quote is from a telephone interview conducted by the author on March 4, 2013. 8 Boris Kayser: Quotes are from a telephone interview conducted by the author on August 9, 2012. 9 Hitoshi Murayama: Quotes are from a Skype interview with the author on March 28, 2012. 10 Klaatu: Lyrics of their song “Little Neutrino” are available at www.klaatu.org/lyrics/347est_lyrics.html. 10 popular sitcom: Quotes are from the fourth episode, titled “The Griffin Equivalency,” of the second season of The Big Bang Theory. 11 OPERA: The initial CERN press release and the subsequent updates are available at http://press.web.cern.ch/press-releases/2011/09/opera-experiment-reports-anomaly-flight-time-neutrinos-cern-gran-sasso. 11 “If the Europeans”: Quoted from Michael D.

…

Description of the early days of the AMANDA experiment and the quotes “Learned immediately appreciated,” “To have your career,” and “a nearly meaningless blur” are from Halzen’s essay “Antarctic Dreams,” first published in The Sciences (March–April 1999): 19–24. For additional background on Halzen’s scientific interests and the development of AMANDA, see Halzen’s essay “Ice Fishing for Neutrinos” at http://icecube.berkeley.edu/amanda/ice-fishing.html. 17 John Learned: Biographical information and quotes are from a Skype interview conducted by the author on March 6, 2013. 22 “PeV events”: See Aya Ishihara, “Ultra-High Energy Neutrinos with IceCube,” Nuclear Physics B Proceedings Supplement (2012), available at www.ppl.phys.chiba-u.jp/research/IceCube/ThePeVNeutrinoDetection/IceCubeEHE2012_v6.pdf; and “High-energy (PeV) neutrinos observed!

…

COSMIC CHAMELEONS 97 Three physicists: Leon Lederman, Melvin Schwartz, and Jack Steinberger received the 1988 physics Nobel Prize for the discovery of the muon neutrino: www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1988/. 97 tau particle: Fermilab press release, July 20, 2000 announcing the discovery of the tau neutrino: www.fnal.gov/pub/presspass/press_releases/donut.html. 98 neutrinos oscillating: Gribov and Pontecorvo published their paper, “Neutrino Astronomy and Lepton Charge,” in Physics Letters B 28, no. 7 (1969): 493–96. 100 MSW effect: Also known as the “matter effect.” 100 “The MSW effect is a beautiful idea”: This Bahcall quote is from Johnson, “Elusive Particles Continue to Puzzle Theorists of the Sun,” The New York Times, June 9, 1998. 101 atmospheric neutrinos: See Edward Kearns, Takaaki Kajita, and Yoji Totsuka, “Detecting Massive Neutrinos,” Scientific American, August 1999, pp. 64–71. 101 “That was the smoking gun”: From an interview with Ed Kearns conducted by the author in person at Boston University on January 27, 2012. 102 Sudbury Neutrino Observatory: The official SNOLAB website is www.snolab.ca/. Other sources include an interview with Art McDonald conducted by the author via Skype on January 27, 2012; Nick Jelley, Arthur B. McDonald, and R.G. Hamish Robertson, “The Sudbury Neutrino Observatory,” Annual Review of Nuclear and Particle Science 59 (2009): 431–65; and Arthur B. McDonald, Joshua R. Klein, and David L. Wark, “Solving the Solar Neutrino Problem,” Scientific American, April 2003, pp. 40–49. 106 “We’ve solved”: This Art McDonald quote is from Kenneth Chang, “Sun’s Missing Neutrinos: Hidden in Plain Sight,” by The New York Times, June 19, 2001. 106 “We now have high confidence”: As quoted in a SNO press release issued on June 18, 2001 (www.sno.phy.queensu.ca/sno/first_results/). 106 “Super-K told us”: From the author’s interview with Kearns. 107 he felt like dancing: As quoted in Chang, “Sun’s Missing Neutrinos: Hidden in Plain Sight.” 107 “For three decades”: This John Bahcall quote is from the Nova television documentary “The Ghost Particle,” PBS, February 21, 2006.

The Kickstarter Handbook: Real-Life Success Stories of Artists, Inventors, and Entrepreneurs
by Steinberg, Don
Published 14 Aug 2012

Nathaniel Hansen, a Boston filmmaker who has been involved with more than a dozen Kickstarter projects, has advised taking an even more severe policy toward the hassles and costs of shipping: “I try not to put anything in the mail for under $50.” To that somewhat mercenary rule-of-thumb, allow us to add another caveat: Don’t offer any individually customized reward for under $100. Haughey offers the important reminder that your time is valuable, too. “I’ve seen people offer ‘a Skype conversation with me,’ and then twenty or thirty people choose that! The person then has like six hours of Skype conversations to do.” Sometimes Kickstarter campaigners have been happily surprised by the number of high-end rewards their most passionate backers go in for. Yehuda Berlinger, founder of the board-game website Purple Pawn, wrote in a summary of his Kickstarter research that “early-adopting gamers—the ones you are trying to court—are loyal, fervent, communicative, know a lot about what makes a good game, and have cash to spend but don’t want to be cheated.

…

Kickstarter Award Ideas by Creative Category Category Entry-Level Reward Midlevel Reward High-End Reward Film digital download of film, DVD, name in “thank you” crawl in credits, behind-the-scenes photos, soundtrack music, T-shirts, mugs “producer” credit, movie poster, autographed script or photo, screening or party invitation appear as an extra in the movie, spend the day as director’s assistant, phone or Skype call with director or actors, iPad with the movie preloaded on it, personal screening Music digital download of the music, CD, T-shirt, poster signed CDs, name in CD liner notes, handwritten lyrics, release party invitation, admission to invitation-only performance name on the tour van, customized song for the backer, music or vocal lesson, DJ’d party at your house, private concert Design product accessories, actual product (low cost) actual product (midcost), multiple products, product with accessory package, product with color or feature selection actual product (high cost), multiple products, highly customized or limited editions, personal visit to install or set up product Art digital version of artwork, physical artwork (very small), art on T-shirt, mug, postcards, poker chips, calendar artwork (small to medium), art book, print or giclée of original painting, backers-only gallery opening Large art piece, custom made art, art lesson, day with the artist, portrait of backer by the artist, exclusive opening or reception, personal visit/exhibition from artist (large/mobile installations) Publishing e-books, paperbacks, magazine issues, subscriptions, T-shirts, mugs hardcover edition, autographed copies, poster, hoodie conference workshop passes, launch party invitations, time or chat with book author, chance to guest-edit or contribute content to magazine Technology project-related T-shirts, stickers, decals, product accessories midpriced product produced in the project high-end product produced by the Kickstarter campaign, assembled version of DIY kit, customized versions Theater CD or DVD, show program, poster tickets to rehearsal or performance invitation to party or reception, behind-the-scenes access to production, acting class Games copy of game (digital apps), listing in credits, game accessories, T-shirts copy of board game or computer/video game, USB thumb drive containing game rules custom or original artwork, access to closed beta test, backer name or image in the game, naming rights to objects in the game, “our products for life” Food recipes, food, foodie implements and accessories cookbook, more food, cooking class, restaurant meal offer to plan meal/choose wine for backer, create custom food item, prepare and serve a meal on location, personal cooking lesson Photography digital images, inkjet prints, images on T-shirts, photo book (inexpensive) framed and unframed photo prints, high-end or signed photo book photography lesson, personal photo shoot, exclusive gallery opening or reception invitation Comics stickers, decals, T-shirts and other items with comic art, digital comics, or special Web access, backer thanks in graphic novels hardcopy books, USB thumb drive containing digital versions, signed posters original artwork, personalized illustration by artist, your character drawn into the comic Fashion print, T-shirt, tote bag, mug related to garment designs midpriced garment created by the Kickstarter project high-end garment, custom-fit garment, garment named after the backer Dance credit in performance literature or on website, tote bag, T-shirt, poster, digital video DVD of performance, rehearsal admission, entry to group dance class, garment or prop used in performance private dance lesson, consultation with a show seamstress, exclusive performance tickets, choreography of backer’s event, personal dance performance We do it all for you: Some personalized rewards Because you can never have too many ideas for cool rewards, here are some specific, highly personalized ones offered by real-life Kickstarter creators.

…

her updates included taking requests for a show, soliciting album title ideas and fan votes, and offering many video and text updates from her studio. In one update, she offered to do a phone call with the person whose pledge pushed her past her $2,000 goal (she ended up raising $7,711). She followed that with an update containing an entertaining video of the Skype call she made to Melbourne, Australia, to chat with the backer who made the victory-clinching pledge. Updates can continue well after a campaign has been successful. After Weiss’s first project ended in triumph in early August of 2009, she continued to send updates for another nine months, through December of that year.

Dark Mirror: Edward Snowden and the Surveillance State
by Barton Gellman
Published 20 May 2020

See Tony Scott’s classic Enemy of the State (Touchstone Pictures, 1998). My friend Barry Eisler, a CIA officer turned thriller writer, takes some liberties along these lines in The God’s Eye View (Seattle: Thomas & Mercer, 2016). For the record, the NSA does not have death squads and does not control live video feeds from space. the project’s Skype interface: The “User’s Guide for Skype PRISM Collection,” dated August 2012, is on file with author. In 2014, Der Spiegel published the guide with light redactions at www.spiegel.de/media/media-35530.pdf [inactive]. Analysts could ask for instant notifications: The presentation alluded to these as RTN, which stands for “real-time notification.”

…

Conveniently for U.S. intelligence, an outsized share of global communications traversed the United States. A call or email from Barcelona to Bogotá might well pass through Miami. PRISM, or S35333, was another kind of access for the eagle folk. Here the special sources were the American-based internet giants: Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Microsoft, AOL, Skype, YouTube, and Apple. Also a service called Paltalk, which I had not heard of but that presumably hosted accounts of attractive targets. The great thing about those companies, from an intelligence collector’s point of view, was that they did much more than push data through pipes. Unlike AT&T and other common carriers, they stored the content their users sent and received.

…

Its peers in the PRISM collection system, along with Dropbox and other soon-to-be-added partners, dominated the global marketplace for search, messaging, video, email, and cloud storage. The NSA, in concert with the FBI, dipped into this treasure trove under a secret interpretation of the legal authority that Congress granted in 2007 and 2008. Until then, the government could not search a Skype or AOL account without a warrant from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. Each warrant required probable cause to believe that a specific account belonged to an agent of a foreign power. The court nearly always granted those warrants, but it did perform an individual review. After Congress passed the Protect America Act and the FISA Amendments Act, Justice Department lawyers persuaded the court that it could authorize surveillance of an unlimited number of accounts with a single order.

How to Fix the Future: Staying Human in the Digital Age
by Andrew Keen
Published 1 Mar 2018

On the privacy front, officials in many European countries, including France, Spain, Holland, Belgium, and Germany, are conducting long-running investigations into Facebook’s frustratingly opaque relationship with its users’ data.42 The EU is also clamping down on US messaging apps like the Facebook-owned WhatsApp and Jaan Tallinn’s Skype, now owned by Microsoft. In August 2016 the EU announced its intention to extend the privacy rules covering traditional telecom services to apps like WhatsApp and Skype.43 The following month, the German government ordered Facebook to stop collecting data on Germany’s roughly twenty-five million WhatsApp users.44 In 2010, Max Schrems, an Austrian graduate student, while researching a thesis on European privacy law, asked Facebook to send him all the data it had attached to his account.

…

To borrow some language from the Berlin venture firm BlueYard Capital, Borthwick wants to “encode” the “value” of openness into the architecture of the internet. It’s a kind of network neutrality for the AI age. And his model for this is the World Wide Web, the open platform so generously donated to the tech community by Tim Berners-Lee in 1989, on which innovative first-generation internet companies like Skype, Amazon, and Borthwick’s own Ada Web flourished. And that’s why, Borthwick tells me, he is advising the nonprofit Knight Foundation on its “Ethics and Governance of Artificial Intelligence Fund”—a $27 million fund announced in 2017 that is dedicated to researching artificial intelligence for the public interest.1 But as Borthwick acknowledges, for every public-spirited Berners-Lee or Knight Foundation, there is a private corporation seeking to dominate the market through its complete control of the technology stack.

…

But rather than learning about the hottest new Estonian start-up, I am here to hear about the end of the world. I have come to listen to a speech on the existential risks of digital technology given by Jaan Tallinn, a cofounder of Estonia’s two greatest digital success stories—the internet communications platform Skype and the peer-to-peer music-sharing website Kazaa. I am here to learn about what one of Europe’s foremost technologists believes might be the darkest threat to the human species in its two-hundred-thousand-year history. Tallinn is speaking at “Machine Learning Estonia,” an informal conference about artificial intelligence.

The Best Interface Is No Interface: The Simple Path to Brilliant Technology (Voices That Matter)
by Golden Krishna
Published 10 Feb 2015

Products Generated in the Municipal Waste Stream, 1960 To 2012,” Municipal Solid Waste Generation, Recycling, and Disposal in the United States Tables and Figures for 2012, February 2014. http://www.epa.gov/epawaste/nonhaz/municipal/pubs/2012_msw_dat_tbls.pdf 3 Anna Quindlen, “About New York,” New York Times, May 5, 1982. http://www.nytimes.com/1982/05/05/nyregion/about-new-york.html 4 “Paperback Best Sellers; Mass Market,” New York Times, January 25, 1981. http://www.nytimes.com/1981/01/25/books/paperback-best-sellers-mass-market.html 5 “The Office of the Future,” Businessweek, June 30, 1975. http://www.businessweek.com/stories/1975-06-30/the-office-of-the-futurebusinessweek-business-news-stock-market-and-financial-advice 6 “Founded in 2003 and headquartered in Luxembourg, Skype is a division of Microsoft Corp.” “About Skype - What is Skype,” Microsoft, Last accessed August 2014. http://www.skype.com/en/about/ 7 “Business Brief,” The Economist, December 27, 1980: p.3. 8 “This is CRYPTOLOG—a new vehicle for the interchange of ideas on technical subjects in Operations.” Herbert E. Wolff, “A letter of introduction,” Cryptolog, August 1974. https://www.nsa.gov/public_info/_files/cryptologs/cryptolog_01.pdf 9 “. . . everyone knows that traffic analysts are clear-eyed, clean-limbed people who draw meticulously neat—if arcane—squares and circles on paper, and that cryppies are two-headed people who tend to twitch.

…

Spiegel said something that really stuck out to me: “The biggest constraint of the next 100 years of computing is the idea of metaphors,” he said. “For Snapchat, the closer we can get to ‘I want to talk to you’—that emotion of wanting to see you and then seeing you — the better and better our product and our view of the world will be.” Instead of allowing you to ring friends for a video chat, as with FaceTime or Skype, Snapchat forces both users to be present inside a chat window before video can begin. So, instead of texting someone to set up a FaceTime call, you can simply chat them on Snapchat, and if they log on, you can start a video chat when you’re both in the same conversation. The “Hey, want to chat?” text replaces the ring entirely.

…

I don’t know how much hard copy [printed paper] I’ll want in this world.”5 In 1980, the Economist printed its own take with “Towards the Paperless Office,” and a business brief with a section about the “Death Sentence for Paper Shufflers.” From the imaginative latter, written twenty-three years before Skype:6 “He checks his mail by displaying it on the screen—President Clive Greaves in the New York office regrets he will not be able to attend the video teleconferencing session at 2pm (GMT) but will fax his revised forecasts beforehand.”7 They looked past the trends of the day and imagined something better.

Remote: Office Not Required
by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson
Published 29 Oct 2013

This is especially important if your company is remote, since you see people less often and remote cultures are trickier to manage. Check out Know Your Company at http://knowyourcompany.com. Skype. The old standby is still kicking for a reason—it’s damn good! Excellent for international calling, conference calls, video conferences, and even basic screen sharing, it’s hard to go wrong with Skype when you need to talk to people who aren’t nearby. Extremely reliable, and widely adopted, and available for just about every platform under the sun. Check it out at http://skype.com. Instant Messaging. For quick text-based chats with one other person, it’s hard to beat Instant Messaging.

…

Questions that could have been answered in a few minutes via email or the phone turn into forty-five minute in-person conversations. Once in a while these gabfests are fine, but when they become the norm—when they’re abundant—you’ve got a problem. This is where remote working shines. When most conversations happen virtually—on the phone, via email, in Basecamp, over instant message, or in a Skype video chat—people actually look forward to these special opportunities for a face-to-face. The scarcity of such face time in remote working situations makes it seem that much more valuable. And as a result, something interesting happens: people don’t waste the time. An awareness of scarcity makes them use it wisely.

Digital Disconnect: How Capitalism Is Turning the Internet Against Democracy
by Robert W. McChesney
Published 5 Mar 2013

Left to their own devices, ad tracking firms will eventually be able to connect your various data selves. And then they will break down the name wall, if they are allowed to.”131 A month after Microsoft purchased Skype in 2011, Microsoft patented a “legal intercept” technology that could “silently copy” every communication done on VOiP services like Skype. Microsoft refuses to say whether the technology is integrated into Skype’s architecture.132 Viktor Mayer-Schönberger regards this as nothing less than a “redistribution of information power from the powerless to the powerful.”133 The greatest fear of Schneier’s—arguably the leading global expert on computer security—is not cyberterrorism, cybercrime, identity theft, WikiLeaks, or illegal downloads of music and Hollywood films.

…

Emily Steel and Julie Angwin, “The Web’s Cutting Edge: Anonymity in Name Only,” Wall Street Journal, Aug. 3, 2010. 130. Cited in Heather Brooke, The Revolution Will Be Digitised: Dispatches from the Information War (London: Heinemann, 2011), 133. 131. Madrigal, “I’m Being Followed.” 132. Ryan Gallagher, “Skype Won’t Say Whether It Can Eavesdrop on Your Conversations,” Slate, July 20, 2012, slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2012/07/20/skype_won_t_comment_on_whether_it_can_now_eavesdrop_on_conversations_.html. 133. Quoted in Pariser, Filter Bubble, 147. 134. Sengupta, “Trust.” For elaboration, see Bruce Schneier, Liars and Outliers: Enabling the Trust That Society Needs to Thrive (Indianapolis: John Wiley & Sons, 2012). 135.

…

“Anybody who gets that powerful can push people around, and Amazon pushes people around.”57 This is nothing new; Joseph Stiglitz describes how Microsoft used its “monopoly power” to crush Netscape in the 1990s.58 Bill Keller writes about how Facebook disabled the game Critter Island in its system in 2010, and Critter Island went from 14 million users to zero in 48 hours.59 What’s the point of being a monopolist if you don’t let everyone know who’s boss? The empires each spend many billions to purchase digital upstarts and midsize firms. Many familiar brand names on the Internet—from PayPal and YouTube to Skype and Hotmail—are owned by a giant. In 2011 alone, Google, for example, spent $14 billion to make eighty acquisitions.60 Sometimes the firms are willing to overpay to lock in the potential of a new industry or to prevent another empire from getting the jump on them. As The Economist acknowledges, one of the benefits of being a cash-flush giant is that you are “rich enough to buy up potential rivals.”61 The fortunes being generated online go not only to the owners of the empires, but also to the owners of the upstarts that are sold to the empires.

The Village Effect: How Face-To-Face Contact Can Make Us Healthier, Happier, and Smarter
by Susan Pinker
Published 30 Sep 2013

“Internet use does not pull people away from public places, but rather is associated with frequent visits to places such as parks, cafes, and restaurants,” write Wellman and Rainie.27 But as the Boston Globe columnist Ellen Goodman reminds us, “Go into Starbucks and a third of the customers are having coffee dates with their laptops.”28 Not that there’s anything wrong with that. But it can hardly be viewed as an intimate connection. Still, talking to our friends and loved ones by landline, mobile phone, or Skype is the next best thing to being there, as Ma Bell presciently put it. I’m certainly a convert. We recently Skyped the son of a close neighborhood friend into our Passover seder. He was serving in the military at the time, but we set a place at the table for the Ethan laptop. Another friend who used to live across the street joined us at Chinese New Year celebrations via her father’s iPad, which was passed around from guest to guest like a wedding videographer’s microphone so everyone could greet her.

…

During her years at home with small children, my mother’s fully extended nine-foot-long kitchen phone cord kept her attached—in more ways than one—to her social circle. Now it’s my turn. If I can’t see my friends and loved ones in person, I use a combination of cordless, cellphone, email, text, and Skype to keep up with my social network, which, graphed out, looks something like this: My sociogram: the bold dots indicate people profiled in this book. The circles are female, the triangles are male. (image credit itr.1) A Pew Internet study confirms that cellphone users have larger personal networks—12 percent larger, to be precise—than the small fraction of people who shun them.29 But in a different set of studies, the same group of scientists showed that avid users of social networking sites have more diverse electronic networks, but know fewer of their neighbors and are less integrated into their local communities than those who rarely use social media.30 “A man must be clothed with society, or we shall feel a certain bareness and poverty,” Emerson wrote in 1857.

…

When Alex Perchov, the comic antihero of Jonathan Safran Foer’s novel Everything Is Illuminated, strives to leave Ukraine for the United States, he’s trying to escape Soviet-era privations and provincialism, to be sure, but also his mother, who tells him, “One day you will do things for me that you hate. That is what it means to be family.”28 The no-strings-attached Western ideal creates gaps in intimacy that, despite the miracle of Skype, are not being bridged by technology. In the United States, more than sixty-two million people—equal to the entire population of the United Kingdom—say they are socially isolated and unhappy about it. More than half of them (thirty-two million) live alone, the highest proportion in the nation’s history.

Predictably Irrational, Revised and Expanded Edition: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions
by Dan Ariely
Published 19 Feb 2007

Would this kid have taken cash from my wallet, even if he knew for sure that no one would ever catch him? Maybe, but I imagine that the answer is no. Instead, I suspect that there were some aspects of Skype and of how my account was set up that “helped” this person engage in this activity and not feel morally reprehensible: First, he stole calling time, not money. Next, he did not gain anything tangible from the transaction. Third, he stole from Skype rather than directly from me. Fourth, he might have imagined that at the end of the day Skype, not I, would cover the cost. Fifth, the cost of the calls was charged automatically to me via PayPal. So here we had another step in the process—and another level of fuzziness in terms of who would eventually pay for the calls.

…

None of this makes logical sense, but when the medium of exchange is nonmonetary, our ability to rationalize increases by leaps and bounds. I HAD MY own experience with dishonesty a few years ago. Someone broke into my Skype account (very cool online telephone software) and charged my PayPal account (an online payment system) a few hundred dollars for the service. I don’t think the person who did this was a hardened criminal. From a criminal’s perspective, breaking into my account would most likely be a waste of time and talent because if this person was sufficiently smart to hack into Skype, he could probably have hacked into Amazon, Dell, or maybe even a credit card account, and gotten much more value for his time.

…

Was this person stealing from me? Sure, but there were so many things that made the theft fuzzy that I really don’t think he thought of himself as a dishonest guy. No cash was taken, right? And was anyone really hurt? This kind of thinking is worrisome. If my problem with Skype was indeed due to the nonmonetary nature of the transactions on Skype, this would mean that there is much more at risk here, including a wide range of online services, and perhaps even credit and debit cards. All these electronic transactions, with no physical exchange of money from hand to hand, might make it easier for people to be dishonest—without ever questioning or fully acknowledging the immorality of their actions.

Fluent Forever: How to Learn Any Language Fast and Never Forget It
by Gabriel Wyner
Published 4 Aug 2014

If you really hit it off, you can exchange contact information and chat later using a video-chat service like Skype (Skype.com). LiveMocha.com is one of many language exchange websites. Other notables are Busuu.com, MyLanguageExchange.com, and Language-Exchanges.org. They resemble dating websites for language learners. You put up a profile—I’m an English-speaking tax attorney, seeking a like-minded Russian speaker for video chatting—search through other users’ profiles, and try to make friends. Once you find a few interesting people, you set up video-chat dates (usually via Skype), where you chat and alternate languages until you decide to stop.

…

In exchange, you’ll record someone else’s English text. The service is lovely, but be aware that it can occasionally take several days to get a response. Rhinospike.com SELF-DIRECTED WRITING See Output. SKYPE A computer program that facilitates free phone calls and video chats across the Internet. For the purposes of language learning, it’s the program you’ll use to connect with language exchange partners and private tutors on the Internet. Skype.com SPACED REPETITION An extraordinarily efficient learning method whereby you learn something and then wait a few days to review it. If you still remember, then you wait even longer before your next review.

…

italki.com LANG-8 A free language exchange community devoted to providing writing corrections. You sign up, submit some writing, correct someone else’s writing, and get a correction of your own, usually in less than a day. Lang-8.com LANGUAGE EXCHANGE A language-learning arrangement between you and a speaker of your target language. You’ll meet up, typically via Skype video chat, and talk for a predetermined time in your language and for the same amount of time in your partner’s language. LANGUAGE EXCHANGE WEBSITES Websites that are designed to help you find language exchange partners. Livemocha.com, Busuu.com, MyLanguageExchange.com, italki.com, and Language-Exchanges.org are some of the better-known language exchange websites.

The Zero Marginal Cost Society: The Internet of Things, the Collaborative Commons, and the Eclipse of Capitalism
by Jeremy Rifkin
Published 31 Mar 2014

“Mahatma Gandhi’s Views,” TinyTech Plants, http://www.tinytechindia.com/gandhi4.htm (accessed June 14, 2013). 56. Prarelal, Mahatma Gandhi: Poornahuti, vol. 10: The Last Phase, part 2 (Ahmedabad, India: Navajivan Trust, 1956), 522. Chapter 7 1. “Skype in the Classroom,” Skype, 2013, https://education.skype.com/ (accessed November 6, 2013); Sarah Kessler, “Skype CEO: Our Goal Is to Connect 1 Million Classrooms,” Mashable, September 21, 2011, http://mashable.com/2011/09/21/skype-in-the-classroom-tony-bates/ (accessed November 12, 2013). 2. “Curriki at a Glance,” Curriki homepage, April 2012, http://www.curriki.org/welcome/wp -content/uploads/2012/06/Curriki-At-a-Glance-04.04.12-update.pdf (accessed April 23, 2013). 3.

…

The educational models are designed to free students from the private space of the traditional enclosed classroom and allow them to learn in multiple open Commons, in virtual space, the public square, and in the biosphere. Classrooms around the world are connecting in real time, via Skype and other programs, and collaborating on joint assignments. Students separated by thousands of miles pair off in virtual-cohort teams, study together, make presentations, debate with one another, and even get graded together. The global collaborative classroom is quickly becoming a reality. Skype in the Classroom, a free online community, has already registered 60,447 teachers in its global classroom project and has set a goal of connecting 1 million classrooms across the world.1 Collaborative Classrooms, another Internet learning environment, allows thousands of teachers to cocreate curricula online and share the best lesson plans with one another—for free—in a global education Commons.

…

It’s when she checked into the online class forum that she experienced her “being-blown-away moment.” She writes: The traffic is astonishing. There are thousands of people asking—and answering—questions about dominant mutations and recombination. And study groups had spontaneously grown up: a Colombian one, a Brazilian one, a Russian one. There’s one on Skype, and some even in real life too. And they’re so diligent! Cadwalladr says, “If you are a vaguely disillusioned teacher, or know one, send them to Coursera: these are people who just want to learn.”16 While student enthusiasm for MOOCs is running high, educators find that the number of participants that actually complete the courses and pass the tests is often substantially less than students in brick-and-mortar classrooms.

Startup CEO: A Field Guide to Scaling Up Your Business, + Website
by Matt Blumberg
Published 13 Aug 2013

We’re frugal in a number of areas—offices, travel, and so on—but generous on things that mean a lot to individuals, like cell phones or gym memberships. Communication patterns. Are you meeting-centric? Email-centric? Are you even going to have phones? Or will you rely on people’s cell phones? Because we’ve always had multiple locations, we’re very email- and IM-centric at Return Path. (More recently, Skype and Cisco videophones have become a big part of our corporate communications.) Historically, we’ve had phones everywhere, though a number of our employees (especially engineers) hardly ever use them. Recently, we acquired an engineering office that never had phones on every desk—so we’re experimenting with that.

…

I interview a lot of people: I probably interviewed 60 people last year and will interview at least that many this year. Until the year we hired over 100 people for the first time (which brought our team to about 275), I interviewed everybody. Not just direct reports—or even reports of reports—but every last intern. Usually, these were on the phone or Skype. In most cases, they lasted for only 15 to 30 minutes. For the most part, I only wanted to meet what were almost certain to be new employees and validate my managers’ decisions. It was only in extremely rare cases that I overrode a hiring manager’s decision and dinged a recruit. In those cases, it was clear that the manager was rushing the process to fill a seat—which didn’t happen often and needed to be stopped when it did.

…

We advise remote employees to set up an adequate work space with all the necessary equipment and supplies. Work areas should be quiet and free of distractions, ideally with a door so there’s a clear separation of “work” and “home.” We also insist that remote employees have enough bandwidth to support high-intensity business applications, including Skype or a videophone. Expenses. We allow remote employees to expense a fixed amount each month to cover supplies and incremental bandwidth charges. Remote employees who want to use a co-working space need to get that approved since it usually costs more than supplying a home office, but we encourage it whenever it makes sense.

Culture & Empire: Digital Revolution
by Pieter Hintjens
Published 11 Mar 2013

Nonetheless, most of us learned to use our PCs as thin clients, especially by 2005 or so, when web applications became powerful enough to replace desktop applications. Today, PCs are rarely used for anything intensive except high-end gaming. There were some very successful mesh-like applications up until 2005 or so, including Skype (before Microsoft changed Skype to use centralized servers). However even pre-Microsoft Skype and infamous P2P file sharing protocols like BitTorrent all worked through the broadband connection, allowing the ISPs to see all the traffic, filter it, log it, and so on. The Internet was based on a promise of a smart edge (computers) connected over a dumb fabric (TCP/IP), and then the Web turned that inside out, giving us a dumb edge (thin clients) talking to a smart center (websites).

…

They will just silently turn on the microphones and cameras in our laptops, or hack into the "always on" cameras on our entertainment systems and smart TVs. As Sean Hollister asks in the Verge, "Will the NSA use the Xbox One to spy on your family?" noting that despite denying it was even technically possible, "Microsoft gave government agencies access to private Skype video and audio calls, perhaps even going so far as to integrate Skype into the NSA's controversial PRISM surveillance system." The change could come when they convince us that they need to "protect the children" or "provide security services to the elderly." It could start with some vulnerable section of the population such as criminals who are on parole, or drug users in rehabilitation.

…

Flickr and YouTube, launched in 2004 and 2005, mixed the pretty new Ajax technologies with community and self-created content to create massive hits. The Internet has continued its explosive takeover of technical, social, economic, and political life. Pretty much every person on the planet is connected -- if not directly, then by immediate proxy. We amplify our lives through Facebook, Twitter, massive multiplayer games, email, chat, Skype. The only people who are not on line fairly regularly with a diverse network of contacts are too poor, too old, too young, or (and I'm speculating here) young men who are so socially isolated as to present a "lone wolf" threat. Digital political activism has never been more aggressive, confident, and successful as it confronts abusive cults, authoritarian governments, and dictators, and spreads its philosophical anarchist vision of the future.

Ghost Work: How to Stop Silicon Valley From Building a New Global Underclass
by Mary L. Gray and Siddharth Suri
Published 6 May 2019

All new hires start out on a 90-day trial, but if they make it through the first 90 days, keep up their requirements by logging in and staying connected to teams for at least 20 hours a week, and make it to their shifts on time, they get an automatic bump of 8 percent in their hourly pay. In exchange for a 20-hour commitment, workers must provide their own computer and internet connection, be able to work with office software like Microsoft Word, Excel, and Google Docs, and be comfortable using instant-message and voice-chat software, like Skype. Zaffar works on a laptop he bought himself. He likes to move to different parts of his house, to break up his work shift, rather than sit anchored to the desktop computer that he set up in the foyer that serves as his home office. Like Zaffar, 85 percent of workers on LeadGenius are between the ages of 18 and 37.27 Slightly more than 70 percent of LeadGenius’s ghost workforce—called researchers—have at least a bachelor’s degree.

…

This is the flip side of workers being hypervigilant, as constantly being alert for good work also results in requesters getting flooded with applicants, which makes picking a worker hard. Another marketing manager said, “Especially when you’re getting responses from around the globe, sifting through all those people can be painful.” Vetting workers was a time-consuming, manual process that often involved a phone or Skype call. A VP of communications at a startup discussed the importance of getting the vetting done right: “A lot of the workers have good technical skills but poor communication skills, so you have to really vet for this. I’ve also had situations where the website they created might look good, but then you have another person come in later to do work on it and they find dirty code and unfinished code.

…

So, to understand the scale and structure of this effort to collaborate, we asked MTurk workers to help us map their entire communication network. Our HIT was a “Facebook-Lite” for MTurk workers in that it allowed them to anonymously report the online nickname of who they communicate with and the medium they use to communicate, such as email, SMS, Skype, or one of the many online forums workers use.6 Workers could see a variety of information about their connections, such as why the worker started working on MTurk and how they stay motivated, along with whatever demographic information that worker felt comfortable sharing. The network consists of 10,354 workers and 5,268 connections between them.

The Great Fragmentation: And Why the Future of All Business Is Small
by Steve Sammartino
Published 25 Jun 2014

He finally connected with Esther (he found her email via other means) and she answered his email, but decided not to invest. He didn’t give up. In fact, he told me he had sent the same Skype request to more than 100 other investors and technology pundits before I accepted. Digital tenacity I quickly learned that Raul doesn’t give up easily. After others declined to invest, Raul started asking me to back his project. I told him I was small fry in the world of venture capital and technology, but he just wouldn’t go away. Every day, the moment I logged in online I’d hear that little sound Skype makes when you receive a message — ‘whooooop’ — mere seconds after I was connected. It was as though he was waiting for me or had some kind of alert already set up.

…

Mind you, this would be around midnight in Romania. So we started chatting on Skype every other day. I quickly learned that he’d already done some projects that proved his technical capabilities, if not tenacity. He’d already built a small jet engine in his backyard, a steam engine from a bicycle pump, and he’d learned to fly a plane. He could get stuff done. He was starting to turn me into a believer, not because of what he said, but because of what he’d already done. He showed me the proof via the live video chat over Skype and his YouTube videos. A few short years ago, none of these tools existed so he would have had no way of proving himself.

…

What’s more interesting is that his business employs more people in Moldova than the original startup we worked on ever did here in Melbourne. And his development team now works in every form of coding/language/mobile device you can think of. When Vasilii was in town, it was like hanging out with a long-lost relative. He’s just like the guy I used to speak to every day on Skype, a strange thing to say now that we know the virtual world is the real world. It’s also a great reminder that the online and real worlds should only ever be preambles to each other and in some ways seamlessly interchangeable. While the tools this digital revolution has provided are amazing, it’s the human connections that are creating a truly Sans nation state economy.

The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race
by Walter Isaacson
Published 9 Mar 2021

CHAPTER 17 CRISPR-Cas9 Success When Doudna returned to Berkeley, she and Jinek began a series of Skype calls with Charpentier in Umeå and Chylinski in Vienna to plot a strategy for figuring out the mechanisms of CRISPR-Cas9. The collaboration was like a model United Nations: a Berkeley professor from Hawaii, her postdoc from the Czech Republic, a Parisian professor working in Sweden, and her Polish-born postdoc working in Vienna. “It became a twenty-four-hour operation,” Jinek recalls. “I would do an experiment at the end of my day, I would send an email to Vienna, and Krzysztof would read it as soon as he got up in the morning.” Then there would be a Skype call, and they would decide what the next step should be.

…

“Krzysztof would execute that experiment during the day and send me the results while I was asleep, so that when I woke up and opened my inbox there would be an update.”1 At first, Charpentier and Doudna would join the Skype calls only once or twice a month. But the pace picked up in July 2011, when Charpentier and Chylinski flew to Berkeley for the fast-growing annual CRISPR conference. Even though they had bonded over Skype, it was the first time that Jinek had personally met Chylinski, a lanky researcher with an affable personality and an eagerness to be involved in turning basic research into a tool.2 Emmanuelle Charpentier, Jennifer Doudna, Martin Jinek, and Krzysztof Chylinski at Berkeley in 2012 In-person meetings can produce ideas in ways that conference calls and Zoom meetings can’t.

…

David Ishee is a ponytailed rural Mississippi dog breeder who uses CRISPR to edit the genes of Dalmatians and mastiffs to try to make them healthier, stronger, and in one offbeat experiment glow in the dark. He joined by Skype from a wooden shed in his backyard crammed with lab equipment. When Zayner said that they would be streaming their experiments for the next two months, Ishee took a sip of a Monster energy drink and interjected in his languid honeysuckle-scented drawl, “Or at least until the authorities come for us.” Also Skyping in was Dariia Dantseva, a student in Dnipro, Ukraine, who created her country’s first biohacking lab. “Ukraine is pretty easy about regulating biohacking, because the state literally does not exist,” she says.

Choked: Life and Breath in the Age of Air Pollution
by Beth Gardiner
Published 18 Apr 2019

Today, Fields lives with her family in the suburbs east of Los Angeles, an area known for its terrible air, where the city’s smog sits against the Santa Ana Mountains. The baby she had as a teenager is now a young man, and his sinuses act up just like his mom’s. Her youngest son, an energetic grade schooler who climbs on the back of her chair as we speak on Skype, has asthma. The attacks don’t happen often, but they’re frightening when they do. It started suddenly, when he was a toddler. “He just kept vomiting and vomiting and got very lethargic, and panting like a puppy, and I could not understand what was going on,” she tells me. It’s never been quite that bad again, but “it’s like he can’t get a full breath of air in, so in trying to breathe in he’s coughing.”

…

And indeed, the Harvard researchers found in 2009 that death rates had fallen along with pollution levels in all their study cities, even the cleaner ones.28 * * * In chunky black glasses and a patterned scarf, her dark hair pulled back, Beate Ritz still looks more the sophisticated European than the casual Californian, even after decades in America. Sunshine streams through a window into her home in the Santa Monica Mountains, above Los Angeles, as we speak on Skype, and she pours herself a cup of tea. Ritz is an epidemiologist at UCLA, and she knows it can be nearly impossible to link one individual’s health problem to a specific environmental cause. But the work that would shape her career began with a nagging, personal worry. The smog blanketing L.A. came as a foul shock when she arrived from her native Germany.

…

Traffic exhaust is just one of many sources of Delhi’s pollution, but the long hours many ordinary people spend on and beside the streets each day are a big reason for the disparate impact. A few miles from Paharpur, on busy Mathura Road in south Delhi, a woman’s smiling face beams down from a huge billboard advertising free Skype calls. “Green Delhi Clean Delhi,” boasts a dirty white banner that bends around the corner just beneath it. Although it’s Sunday, traffic is near a standstill. Sleek SUVs and packed buses inch along, drivers leaning into their horns. Beside the billboard, a vendor carries a pile of wooden recorders in a bundle tied to a pole, and the high-pitched whistle he blows adds to the ear-splitting noise.

War Doctor: Surgery on the Front Line
by David Nott
Published 21 Feb 2019

The day before the operation we had one last Skype conversation and it was confirmed that they had two units of blood available for the procedure. As it happened, I had been asked about the situation in Aleppo by BBC Two’s Newsnight programme and told them I was about to oversee a challenging operation there via Skype. They agreed to record the procedure, and share with the world the remarkable courage of Aleppo’s besieged doctors. So there I was in London, looking at a large television screen. The patient was asleep on the operating table at M10 in Aleppo. We set up the Skype call and someone in the operating theatre put an iPhone on a selfie stick that was held over the table, so I could see everything that was going on during the operation.

…

I embarked upon a media offensive as well, appearing on the radio and television whenever I could to talk about what was happening, and the risk the doctors were facing – a risk which was brought home horribly in early October, just a few weeks after the successful Skype operation. I was sent a WhatsApp video of a bunker-busting bomb dropping directly onto the operating theatre in M10. The target was so precise that the co-ordinates of the theatre must have been known. I could only think, to my horror, that somebody must have hacked the Skype call and somehow deduced M10’s location. In the minutes after the bunker bomb fell, a further three barrel bombs and two cluster bombs were dropped on M10. At the time, the hospital’s intensive care unit was full, the wards were full and the recovery unit was full.

…

There was also a small arterial blood-gas machine to measure the oxygenation of the blood. How was it possible that such a high-tech environment could be run by a solitary nurse? The nurse smiled and gestured to two cameras pointing at each patient – one to monitor the patient himself, the other to observe the charts. The nurse told us that these were fed by Skype directly into the intensive care unit in one of the hospitals in Washington DC, where there was a Syrian–American ICU specialist looking at the monitors twenty-four hours a day, and adjusting the patient’s medication and ventilation based on the clinical parameters. Not just at our hospital, either.

Talk to Me: How Voice Computing Will Transform the Way We Live, Work, and Think
by James Vlahos
Published 1 Mar 2019

And the company hoped that at least some developers would make chatbots for Skype, the platform that Microsoft owned. Google, in turn, now had Allo, where people could message with each other, bots, and the Assistant. For companies beyond the world of tech, the expanding array of conversational options for reaching customers was both exciting and confusing. Forward-looking executives could see that they needed to embrace new ways to digitally represent themselves just as they had with websites and apps in the past; to not do so was to risk becoming digitally dead. But how? With chatbots, on Messenger or Skype? With voice applications, known as “actions” on the Assistant platform and “skills” on Alexa?

…

Developers would have the option to let users speak via Siri to apps in six categories: messaging, audio and video calling, payments, photos, exercise, and ride booking. With access tightly controlled by Apple, this was hardly Cheyer’s doors-wide-open approach. But it was a start. Siri could now help users book an Uber, make a Skype call, PayPal a friend, track a run, and more. But you could argue that the biggest Siri-related news of the spring didn’t happen at Apple. Three of her original creators—Cheyer and Kittlaus, plus a computer scientist named Chris Brigham, who had been part of the team ever since the SRI days—revealed that they had launched a company and created a new virtual assistant.

…

And she highlights what makes the friendship application both fascinating and ethically complicated. Four years before Barbie’s incarnation as a perky cyborg, a seven-year-old girl named Toby sat on the floor of her family’s toy room with her father. She was chatting with her grandmother using the Skype app on an iPhone. After the call, Toby gazed across the room at her favorite stuffed animal, a fuzzy rabbit she called Tutu, which sat atop a bookshelf. Then Toby looked back at the phone in her hand. “Daddy, can I use this to talk to Tutu?” she asked. Her father, a technology entrepreneur named Oren Jacob, laughed at what struck him as a flippant question.

Designing for Emotion
by Aarron Walter
Published 4 Oct 2011

Do the emotional design methods I’m using interfere with the base layers of the user’s hierarchy of needs (making the site less functional, reliable, usable)? You may have a hard time answering these questions honestly, in which case you might conduct simple user research and usability tests to evaluate your assumptions. Do you have access to people in your target audience? Round up three to six people to meet in person or via Skype (http://skype.com) or GoToMeeting (http://gotomeeting.com). Ask your users open-ended questions that will give you the insights you seek. You might ask things like: Describe your initial reactions to the website. How does the website make you feel? If this website were a person, who would it be and why?

…

q=%22Guess+I+could+have+waited+for+today+if+all%22&in=81&type=contents&view=posts&search=true&button_search.x=54&button_search.y=-106&button_search=true 13 http://www.alistapart.com/articles/understandingprogressiveenhancement/ 14 http://google.com/websiteoptimizer Resources 15 http://amzn.com/1592535879 16 http://getmentalnotes.com/ 17 http://amzn.com/0465051367 18 http://amzn.com/0393334775 19 http://amzn.com/014303622X 20 http://amzn.com/030746086X 21 http://amzn.com/0979777747 22 http://amzn.com/0321607376 23 http://uxmag.com/design/beyond-frustration-three-levels-of-happy-design 24 http://uxmag.com/design/the-psychologists-view-of-ux-design 25 http://uxmag.com/design/organized-approach-to-emotional-response-testing 26 http://boxesandarrows.com/view/emotional-design Index 37Signals 8-10 A Able Design 88 aesthetic-usability effect 27-28 A List Apart 90 Apple 7, 27 anticipation 54-58, 87 apathy 75 Arts and Crafts movement 2, 94 B baby-face bias 18-20, 28, 32 Basecamp 8-10, 70 Betabrand 13-16, 75 Blue Sky Resumes 88-90, 93 bible 31-33 Biological Homage to Mickey Mouse, A 19 Bowman, Doug 21, 55-56 Brain Rules 12 Breathing Status LED Indicator 27 Bringhurst, Robert 20 Brizzly 19-20 C calligraphy 31 Carbonmade 40, 42-45 Clippy 60 CoffeeCup Software 85-87, 90 Cornelius, J. 86 contrast 22-25, 28, 44 Convertbot 40-41 D Damasio, Antonio 67 Darwin, Charles 17-18 design persona 35-40, 48, 91, 92 Don’t Make Me Think 77 dot-com bubble 3 Dribbble 55-56, 59 Dropbox 72-74 E Etsy 2 Elements of Content Strategy, The 75 Elements of Typographic Style, The 20 Emotional Design 27 Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animal, The 17 F Facebook 3, 7, 54, 59, 74, 86-87 face-ism ratio design principle 46 fail whale 7 Fletcher, Louise 90 Flickr 3, 51, 54, 79-82, 93 Freddie Von Chippenheimer IV 37, 60-65 G Getting Real 8 GigaOm 56 Gmail 70 golden ratio 20-21, 27 Google Site Optimizer 93 GoToMeeting 76 Gould, Stephen Jay 19 Gorum, Dave 44 Groupon 62 Gruber, John 42 Gupta, Amit 51-52 Gutenberg, Johannes 31-33 gut instinct 67-68 H Hale, Kevin 11 Happy Cog 46 Hick’s Law 24, 28 hierarchy of needs 5-6, 35 Hipmunk 7 Hodgman, John 33, 36 Housing Works 40, 45-46, 75, 93 HTML 3 Human-Computer Interaction 29 I iPhone 40 iPod 20 industrial revolution 1 iTunes 7 Ping 7 Pink Panther 15-16 Putorti, Jason 69, 71 priming 59-65, 76 progressive enhancement 90-91 Pythagoras 20, 27 J Jobs, Steve 27 Jardine, Mark 41-42 K Kickstarter 2 Kissane, Erin 75 Krug, Steve 77 L Lindland, Chris 13-16 Long, Justin 33, 36 M Mac 33, 36 Mall, Dan 46 MailChimp 20, 36-40, 60-65, 91 Mashable 56 Maslow, Abraham 5-6 Medina, John 12 memory 11-13, 49, 82 messagefirst 33-35 Mestre, Ricardo 25-26 Microsoft Office 60 Mint 69-72, 93 N Norman, Donald 27, 82-83 O open system 54 Oprah Magazine 90 P Parthenon 20 party pooper 91 persona 33-40 Photojojo 49-52, 59, 65 Q Quicken 72 R rosy effect 82 S Scoutmob 62 Shakespeare 10 Silverback 77 Sims 54 Skype 76 Smith, Matthew 88-89 StickyBits 20 Squared Eye 88 Super Mario Brothers 54 surprise 49-54 T Tapbots 40-42 Tumblr 23-24 Trammell, Mark 55 Twitter 3, 7, 20-21, 54, 55-59, 74, 86-87 V variable rewards 62, 87 velvet rope 57, 87 Volkswagen Beetle 32 W WALL•E 41-42 Warfel, Todd Zaki 33 Weightbot 40-41 Wilson, Rainn 4 Wufoo 9-11, 13, 52-54, 93 Y YouTube 37, 60 About A Book Apart Web design is about multi-disciplinary mastery and laser focus, and that’s the thinking behind our brief books for people who make websites.

What Would Google Do?
by Jeff Jarvis
Published 15 Feb 2009

Across the table sat Tom Evslin, the unsung hero of the web who made the internet explode when, as head of AT&T Worldnet, he set pricing for unlimited internet access at a flat $19.95 per month, turning off the ticking clock on internet usage, lowering the cost for users, and addicting us all to the web. Evslin gave a confounding lesson on networks. Explosive web companies—Skype, eBay, craigslist, Facebook, Amazon, YouTube, Twitter, Flickr, and Google itself—don’t charge users as much as the market will bear. They charge as little as they can bear. That is how they maximize growth and value for everyone in the network. Evslin used an ad network to illustrate the value of building scale in this manner.

…

To sum up Evslin’s law of networks: Extract the minimum value from the network so it will grow to maximum size and value—enabling its members to charge more—while keeping costs and margins low to block competitors. That’s not how many old networks operate. Cable companies wrap their wires around us to squeeze maximum fees out. Ditto for phone companies, newspapers, and retailers. Charging what the market would bear made perfect sense for them. But now they face competition from next-generation networks. Skype—which at the end of 2007 had 276 million accounts in 28 languages—exploded as a free service before it added paid features that drastically undercut old phone companies. Its founders pulled value out of the business when eBay bought it. eBay itself had created a new retail marketplace by extracting little from each sale.

…

Amazon helps us organize communities of consumer opinion around every product offered there. Facebook and other services like it—LinkedIn (big in business), Bebo (big in Europe), Google’s Orkut (big in Brazil and India), and StudieVZ (big in Germany)—help us to organize our friends and colleagues. Skype, AOL, and Yahoo give us the tools to collaborate through chat, phone, and video, organizing our communication. Flickr lets us organize our photos and also communities of interest around them. del.icio.us does the same for our bookmarks and web recommendations. Daylife organizes the world’s news. BlogAds lets bloggers organize ad networks.

Drugs 2.0: The Web Revolution That's Changing How the World Gets High
by Mike Power
Published 1 May 2013

A happy consequence for the government of its targeting of this straw man folk devil will be unfettered access to all our private thoughts and conversations. You can never be sure a conversation is private without encryption, John Callas, an American computer security expert who co-founded PGP Corp with Zimmermann, tells me. The German government broke Skype’s encryption models by releasing malware and viruses into the wild that can easily unscramble voice calls across the network, allowing it to eavesdrop at will, he tells me – across a Skype line. ‘In the old days, hundreds of years ago people could speak privately by going out and taking a walk around the green and talking among themselves and there was no way people could listen in,’ he told me.

…

You’d never guess that this elderly gentleman, with his tidy beard, plain spectacles and owlish manner, is responsible for getting thousands of people incapably stoned. On a mild spring afternoon in 2012, Huffman was kind enough to speak to me while relaxing after a recent bout of painful surgery. The professor chuckled down the Skype line mellifluously, sometimes gazing at the nearby Smokey Mountains, as I asked him how the Spice story happened. Between 1984 and 2011, Huffman and his colleagues had created over 400 synthetic cannabinoid compounds while studying the structure-activity relationship between a series of compounds that resembled tetrahydrocannabinol, the active constituent of marijuana, and the human brain.

…

They created thousands of threads in which they discussed openly the price for bulk import and export of chemicals that most American judges would, in a heartbeat, class as illegal analogues of banned substances. It was only a matter of time before the axe fell. The site’s founder, Justin Steven Scroggins, known as w00t, was arrested on 10 April 2012. Undercover federal agents had infiltrated his site – not a hard task, since registration was open – and had eavesdropped on his Skype calls with a laboratory in the Jiangsu province of China that is still operating today. At the time of the investigation, this laboratory sold only seventeen products, all of them considered analogues of banned Schedule 1 substances in the US, according to the indictment. Scroggins was charged with the importation of just over two kilos of cathinones, none of which was specifically illegal at the time, but all were considered analogues of methcathinone and other banned substances.

Modern Monopolies: What It Takes to Dominate the 21st Century Economy
by Alex Moazed and Nicholas L. Johnson
Published 30 May 2016

The value of a producer’s matching intention can vary depending on the type of interaction involved. But for exchange platforms, that matching intention always has a limited, discrete value. Expressed as a ratio, a producer’s matching intention on an exchange platform is 1:1 or at most 1:few. A three-way Skype conversation is an example where the matching intention of the person making a call would be 1:2. However, the matching intention of a person making a Skype call still is limited by the number of people he or she feasibly can communicate with at a given time. Maker platforms don’t have this same limitation. The matching intention for a producer on a maker platform is, theoretically, infinite.

…

Plenty of companies improved their margins and streamlined their supply chains by using software and connecting their businesses to the Internet. Andreessen named a few in his op-ed, including FedEx and Walmart. But he also named a litany of companies he saw as leading the charge of the new software economy. The list included Apple, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google, Microsoft, Foursquare, Skype, Amazon, Flickr, Square, and PayPal. Yet Andreessen missed the opportunity to explain how different these companies were from the old-line businesses he named. Yes, each of these companies was built around the Internet. But more important, they are all platforms. Rather than merely squeezing a little more efficiency out of an existing business, these companies operate on a completely different model that truly capitalizes on the Internet’s potential.

…

Any number of people can consume the same YouTube video, download and use the same app, or read the same article on Medium. The producer publishes an app or a piece of content and broadcasts it to an audience. In these cases, the matching intention is 1:∞, or at least 1:Many. Contrast a live stream on Twitch (a content platform where you can watch other users play video games) with the Skype example. The person broadcasting to an audience on Twitch doesn’t communicate in a 1:1 manner with every person watching the stream. Rather the person is broadcasting out to a large group of people who are viewing the stream. Another way to think about this dynamic is that exchange platforms have limited inventory—only a certain number of people can consume the platform’s available inventory at a given time—while maker platforms do not.

Thinking Machines: The Inside Story of Artificial Intelligence and Our Race to Build the Future
by Luke Dormehl
Published 10 Aug 2016

‘What I was thinking was that this could be a great way of letting you collect and curate your digital footprint throughout your life,’ he says. ‘The avatar would be an interface for accessing that information.’ He pitched the idea to the group as ‘Skyping with dead people’, and hurried to note that a lot of the AI technology needed to bring such a project to life already existed in various labs around the world. Despite the group receiving a total of 130 ideas – of which Ursache acknowledges his was the oddest – ‘Skyping with dead people’ was accepted as a project worth pursuing. Ursache had his reservations, however. ‘I knew that it would have to do something more than just simulating a conversation with a dead person,’ he says.

…

Unlike the artisans of the Industrial Revolution, though, today’s workers in the artisan economy can use technology to augment, rather than replace, their employment opportunities. Scaling a business to reach millions, or even billions of people, is possible in a way that it never was before the digital age. In 2014, a story appeared on Business Insider about an SAT tutor who charges $1,500 for ninety minutes of one-on-one tutoring – carried out via Skype. Even in an age of educational apps and online learning tools, the tutor was able to command incredibly high prices due to his proven ability to raise test results. Another example of the artisan economy at work is Etsy, the online marketplace where people can sell handmade or vintage products. Having launched in 2005, Etsy currently offers more than 29 million different pieces of handmade jewellery, pottery, clothing and assorted other objets d’art.

…

And people in the future could actually interact with your memories, stories and ideas, almost as if they were talking to you? Eterni.me collects your thoughts, stories and memories, curates them and creates an intelligent avatar that looks like you. This avatar will live forever and allow other people in the future to access your memories.’ Currently the technology doesn’t exist to allow us to ‘Skype with dead people’ as Ursache would eventually like. While his team work on the machine-learning tools that will make the technology a reality, Eterni.me instead focuses on collecting the users’ data that will one day give its avatars their digital lifeblood. He doesn’t think Eterni.me’s 30,269 early adopters are going to be waiting forever, though.

The System: Who Owns the Internet, and How It Owns Us
by James Ball
Published 19 Aug 2020

There is a twist worth noting at this stage, though, which is that VCs aren’t quite as much of a bubble as they can seem. It’s easy to think of VC as its own world with its own (arguably toxic) culture, and in many ways it is: most of the top VCs are the internet entrepreneurs of the last generation. Marc Andreessen was a co-founder of Netscape, then became a top VC funding Facebook, Skype, Twitter, and more. Peter Thiel co-founded PayPal, then became Facebook’s first outside investor, and now funds much more. There are many others we could name. But they are not only investing their own money – they might well be investing yours, as Brian O’Kelley, an advertising tech executive and investor (who speaks at length next chapter), notes.

…

In the twenty-first century, it mostly meant something else: tracking the internet – and in that US-dominated network of networks, where people from across the world would use US companies, US servers and US cables to communicate. In the old days, it would have been entirely legal for the NSA to monitor a telephone call of interest between someone in Iran and someone in Syria – so why should it suddenly become different if they’re now both using Gmail and its US servers, or Skype, and so US networks? Developing the USA’s online capabilities while staying on the right side of the Constitution was maybe the thorniest problem in US intelligence. Alexander (whose PR representatives declined an interview for this book) was widely seen as being on one side of that debate: collect it all, expand it all, and worry about the legal niceties when the time came for analysts to look at the material that was collected.

…

If it detects your traffic is from Facebook, Twitter and Snapchat, it could offer you a ‘social package’ with unlimited social networking for just an extra £2.99. This could go further. Let’s imagine your telecoms provider is also the company which provides your internet. Would it really want to let you use services like Skype or Facetime, rather than using your minutes, or paying as you go? Without a principle enforcing net neutrality – in essence forcing the pipework behind the network just to be ‘dumb pipes’ that send and receive whatever they get – this would be legally possible. Beyond that still, activist groups warn that if the infrastructure needed to analyse each packet as it travelled and looking into its contents became normal, tyrannical governments could easily make use of it to restrict access to content, control the internet and tighten their hold on power.

Growth Hacking Techniques, Disruptive Technology - How 40 Companies Made It BIG – Online Growth Hacker Marketing Strategy
by Robert Peters
Published 18 May 2014

Most critics agree that two actions in particular damaged the highly successful company during these years, the purchase of Internet telephone service Skype in September 2005 for $3.1 billion and a failed attempt to enter the China market. Whitman retired from the company in 2008 and was succeeded by Jack Donahoe who was faced with re-growing an already successful, but then floundering company. One of the primary fundamentals of growth hacking is constant reassessment and redesign, which is exactly what Donahoe did. He saw Skype as a distraction that brought no added value to the company, so he sold a 70% stake in the service to a private equity firm for $2.75 billion.

…

Although this success was not sufficient to achieve the desired levels of growth, it did prove the concept and created an initial pool of users. This was enough to raise $1 million in seed money and allowed the finders to keep the ship afloat as they worked on recruiting experts, experienced academics, and authors to become instructors. This involved hours of one-on-one meetings via Skype, but no real exciting content was forthcoming until the Udemy founders hit on the idea of filming a series of meetings with their own investors. The “Raising Capital for Startups” course took off and led to the creation of two more offerings in the same format. Each one earned $30,000 to $50,000 and gave Udemy real traction with potential instructors.

The New Digital Age: Transforming Nations, Businesses, and Our Lives
by Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen
Published 22 Apr 2013

Some governments will consider it too risky to have thousands of anonymous, untraceable and unverified citizens—“hidden people”; they’ll want to know who is associated with each online account, and will require verification, at a state level, in order to exert control over the virtual world. Your online identity in the future is unlikely to be a simple Facebook page; instead it will be a constellation of profiles, from every online activity, that will be verified and perhaps even regulated by the government. Imagine all of your accounts—Facebook, Twitter, Skype, Google+, Netflix, New York Times subscription—linked to an “official profile.” Within search results, information tied to verified online profiles will be ranked higher than content without such verification, which will result in most users naturally clicking on the top (verified) results. The true cost of remaining anonymous, then, might be irrelevance; even the most fascinating content, if tied to an anonymous profile, simply won’t be seen because of its excessively low ranking.

…

And, unfortunately, not even P2P communications are a perfect shield against infiltration and monitoring. If authorities (or criminal organizations) can identify one side of a conversation they can usually find the other party as well. This is true for messaging, voice-over-Internet-protocol (VoIP) calls—meaning phone calls over the Internet (e.g., Google Voice and Skype) and video chats. Users assume they are safe, but unless the exchange is encrypted, anyone with access to intermediate parts of the network can listen in. For instance, the owner of a Wi-Fi hot spot can listen to any unencrypted conversations of users connected to the hot spot. One of the most insidious forms of cyber attack that P2P users can encounter is known as a “man-in-the-middle” attack, a form of active eavesdropping.

…

Man-in-the-middle attacks occur in all protocols, not just peer-to-peer, yet they seem all the more malicious in P2P communications simply because people using those platforms believe they are secure. And even the protection that encryption offers isn’t a sure bet, especially given some of the checks that will still exist in the physical realm. In the United States, the FBI and some lawmakers have already hinted at introducing bills that would force communications services like BlackBerry and Skype to comply with wiretap orders from law-enforcement officials, introducing message-interception capabilities or providing keys that enable authorities to unscramble encrypted messages. P2P networking has a history of challenging governments, especially around copyright issues for democracies (e.g., Napster, Pirate Bay) and political dissent for autocracies (e.g., Tor).

Cybersecurity: What Everyone Needs to Know
by P. W. Singer and Allan Friedman
Published 3 Jan 2014

As the censors seek to find ways to block access to the network, Tor tries to circumvent each new technique. For instance, one innovative effort to keep Tor open for users behind the “Great Firewall of China” piggybacks Tor traffic inside a Skype video conference connection. This technique is innovative not only because it successfully hides Tor traffic within another protocol, but also because if the Chinese authorities were to shut it down, they would be forced to shut down all Skype traffic in the country, an impossible task given Skype’s importance to multinational firms communicating with branch offices. Censorship then comes with a real monetary cost. Tor illustrates the tension that can emerge between cyber freedom and security.

…

But, in turn, several of the SHAC hactivists were convicted for various crimes, including Internet stalking and using their websites to incite violence. But no one should think that hactivism is solely antibusiness. Recently, private firms have grown more involved in various hacktivist endeavors. For example, during the 2011 “Arab Spring” popular uprisings, firms like Google, Twitter, and Skype provided technical support to protesters and various workarounds to the government Internet censorship. When the Egyptian government tried to shut down Internet access during the mass protests, the firms provided a service called “Speak to Tweet,” whereby voicemail messages left by phone were converted to text tweets and downloadable audio files, so that news could still get out.

…

Tor built in The Tor Project, Inc., “Tor Browser Bundle,” https://www.torproject.org/projects/torbrowser.html.en, accessed March 17, 2013. circumvent each new technique “How China Blocks the Tor Anonymity Network,” The Physics arXiv (blog), MIT Technology Review, April 4, 2012, http://www.technology-review.com/view/427413/how-china-blocks-the-tor-anonymity-network/. Skype’s importance Hooman Mohajeri Moghaddam, Baiyu Li, Mohammad Derakhshani, et al., Skypemorph: Protocol Obfuscation for Tor Bridges (Waterloo, ON: University of Waterloo, 2010), http://cacr.uwaterloo.ca/techreports/2012/cacr2012-08.pdf. WHO ARE PATRIOTIC HACKERS? “Russia is attacking Estonia” “Statement by the Foreign Minister Urmas Paet,” Estonian Foreign Ministry statement, May 1, 2007, http://www.epl.ee/news/eesti/statement-by-the-foreign-minister-urmas-paet.d?

The Disappearing Act
by Florence de Changy
Published 24 Dec 2020

If you are ready to really get involved, and not to relay the misinformation, which today is Australian, I will be happy to talk to you, but I am in Paris now. We can Skype, and Saturday would be ideal for me (would that be possible for you, it would be Saturday afternoon). Best regards, Ghyslain Wattrelos That’s what you call speaking your mind. From the outset. And he sounded determined. I could see why the TV channels liked him; from a journalist’s viewpoint, he was a straight talker who came over well on television. We made a date to Skype on Saturday, 27 September. But the date and time of our first live contact proved ill-fated. I spend part of that Saturday near the Hong Kong parliament building, where a large gathering of students and high school pupils had formed.

…

This was the birth – in the midst of tears and clouds of white smoke – of the Umbrella Movement, which ended up lasting 79 days. With this sudden whirlwind of events in my local area, all further attempts to Skype fell by the wayside. Finally, I had to put the MH370 investigation on hold for the time being. Wattrelos replied, saying that he understood. One and a half months later, on 8 November, when the movement briefly quietened down, Skype contact was finally established. I sensed that this was someone who was angry, impatient and determined to obtain ‘the whole truth’. His message was unwavering: ‘It’s all untrue, we have been lied to from the outset.’

…

‘We tracked and recorded [in the South China Sea] for nearly a year after the event and tried repeatedly to send them to search the sea around the North East coast of Vietnam but they refused point blank to go there. The evidence is shocking. Survivors were left to their fate,’ he wrote to me in an initial email. I followed up with a long Skype interview that I recorded. He then told me that, among the hundreds of images which, according to him, show very discernible parts of plane, he spotted ‘two ships recovering debris and one day we spotted a large ship with debris at the back’. As we Skyped, he showed me on his screen a debris with what he said was a Y with the exact squarish shape of the Malaysian writing on the hull of the plane. He then brought up the picture of a very swollen body washed ashore that he thought was coming from MH370.

The Second Curve: Thoughts on Reinventing Society
by Charles Handy
Published 12 Mar 2015

How then will the institutions engage with such people, given that they will still need their talents? How should society prepare these young people for self-sufficiency in such a world? Can schools, as institutions themselves, prepare people to live outside institutions? Will families remain the bedrock of society or will they, too, increasingly fragment into looser associations? Can emails and Skype, Facebook and Twitter compensate for physical connection? Can you indeed ever trust someone that you have never met, may never meet? The questions rumble on. What will hold a society together? Will we dissolve into ghettos of religion and race or will we find something better than war or economic success to build a united country?

…

Now that the technology exists to warn people when they are going into heart failure, to measure their heart rate and respiration, even how fast and far they walk or how obese they are, the responsibility falls back on the individuals to take the necessary remedial actions or to contact their doctor, probably through Skype or an app on their phone. The downside of all DIY is that being in control also means being responsible. When things go wrong it is most likely to be your fault. As I suggested in the Introduction, self-responsibility will be a feature of the emerging society. That will be uncomfortable for many who have grown up in a society that has assumed ever more responsibility for our personal safety and well-being, to the extent that we are tempted to assume that anything that goes wrong must be the fault of someone or something else.

…

Other large organisations, my old oil company included, are gradually going federal although they don’t necessarily call it that, aiming to be big where it matters and small where they can in order to keep it human and flexible. They look for a requisite variety of shape and size and style, while keeping it all connected by company websites, emails, Skype, messaging and even the old-fashioned telephone turned smartphone. The new fashion for this virtual connectivity means that our laptops are effectively our offices and, of course, they need not reveal to anyone where we physically are. Convenient though that is, it also means that I can never leave my office.

Average Is Over: Powering America Beyond the Age of the Great Stagnation
by Tyler Cowen
Published 11 Sep 2013

This proliferation of questions may force real people out of the business of asking and answering questions, because they will be swamped by a kind of conversational spam. That in turn will create even more space and opportunities for the bots. “Face time” will become all the more important as a signal of actual interest and caring, because “computer time” will be too easy to replicate through the bots. Maybe you’ll use Skype to prove it is really you, and that will work for as long as bots cannot replicate your facial expressions and voice patterns through a streamed image. These days, we’re even finding computer programs that can pass aesthetic Turing tests, so to speak. Computers are composing music, and it’s not always easy to tell which tune comes out of a human and which comes out of a computer.

…

If it’s a thirty-year-old instructor of chess or anything else teaching a ten-year-old novice, that teacher is first and foremost a role model and a motivator and to some extent an entertainer. He is a flesh-and-blood exemplar. He shows that success is possible. He exudes enthusiasm for the pursuit of knowledge, or he is not going to make a very good teacher, no matter what his level of expertise. For all these reasons, chess lessons on Skype, as you might commission from India, have not become popular, even though they are cheaper than face-to-face instruction. The programs have forced chess instruction to evolve, in largely beneficial ways, and—here is a key point—in ways that make the job harder to outsource. The instructor who teaches human qualities like conscientiousness and who motivates his student needs to be there.

…

It will become harder to live in the nice parts of Los Angeles or Orange County—or even in the less nice parts, such as the still-expensive Anaheim. The need to move to a much cheaper area will grow. Meanwhile, the internet makes it more possible for at least some people to work at a greater distance, or to chat with their grandkids over Skype. Income polarization, by the way, will have some more severe consequences for financial net worth than people might expect at first. By the time people get old, they are often not living off their income but living off their wealth. For a given difference in lifetime income, between two groups of people, the eventual difference in wealth is usually much greater.

Live Work Work Work Die: A Journey Into the Savage Heart of Silicon Valley
by Corey Pein
Published 23 Apr 2018

I couldn’t talk to my wife on Skype without someone eavesdropping. It was as though I was being subjected to a cruel psychological experiment in which I was released each day to forage and prowl on the streets and then returned to the cage each night, only to discover that someone had moved my things while I was out. A few days on this zero-privacy regimen put me on a permanent hair trigger. * * * I returned to Hacker Condo to find a new guy on the couch. He was tall and blond and engrossed in his laptop. I said hello and asked where he was from. “I’m Norwegian. I’m in the middle of a Skype conversation,” he said.

…

* * * I found Corey Ferreira through his website, makefiverrmoney.com, which was a marketing vehicle for his e-book, Fiverr Success: $4000 a Month. 8 Hours of Work a Week. The e-book cost $17. For $50 more, Corey would throw in one hundred free gig ideas, thirty prerecorded video lessons, an audiobook, and an audio recording of a “webinar.” Betting on the empathic bond of our common forename, I emailed Corey to request a Skype chat. He agreed. Then I persuaded him to reveal his secrets for free. Corey, a Toronto native in his late twenties, had been making money online since the age of sixteen, when he built a website for a friend of his father’s and earned $100. Fiverr offered dramatically lower rates, but he saw the service as an opportunity to land more clients.

…

The Zuckerberg-backed group also lobbied for an expansion of the existing H-1B specialty workers visa, the lucky winners of which live in perpetual uncertainty and are exploited mercilessly by tech industry labor brokers known as body shops. Schulte shared the stage with one such labor broker, whose company played “matchmaker” for San Francisco startups seeking “high-talent workers” from abroad. “Kick-ass policy changes … that’s what my man Todd is working on,” she said. Another panelist, a former Skype executive and Andreessen-Horowitz “entrepreneur in residence” from Estonia, now leading an immigration startup in Palo Alto, had grandiose designs that went far beyond ass kicking. “We want to make every single government in the world compete for every single citizen,” the entrepreneur, Sten Tamkivi, said.

Cultureshock Paris
by Cultureshock Staff
Published 6 Oct 2010

Customer service tel:1014 Toll-free English-speaking help line: 08.00.36.47.75 English-speaking line from abroad: (33).1.55.78.60.56 Website:http://www.orange.fr Inquire about all their pricing plans before subscribing and check out telephone companies that offer competitive prices for telephone, Internet, and television packages. http://www.skype.com (in English) and http://www.skype. com/intl/fr (in French). In effect, you’d be making phone calls using your computer or—depending on how you configure it—your iPhone, iTouch or other smart phones that support VoIP software. Domestic and international calls to other Skype customers are always free, and those to other landlines and mobiles are reasonably priced. It’s important to know about VoIP, for this is the current wave, and if Skype has hit France, other providers will surely follow. Check out, too, several services that offer cheap international calling without a subscription plan:  Minutes Direct; website:www.lesminutesdirect.com.

…

Internet providers are also offering these services at extremely competitive prices, so you should make sure to check out all the options before subscribing to a plan:  Free: website: http://www.free.fr  Budget Télécom: website: http://www.sfr.fr Other Options There are yet other options for inexpensive calling. Just taking hold in France, for example, is Skype, which uses the technology called Voice Over Internet Protocal (VoIP). If you have broadband cable internet service (see Numericable on page 104) or DSL, which divides the phone line into voice and data, you should investigate Skype: 146 CultureShock! Paris FRANCE TELECOM Remains the major telephone provider for landlines. Customer service tel:1014 Toll-free English-speaking help line: 08.00.36.47.75 English-speaking line from abroad: (33).1.55.78.60.56 Website:http://www.orange.fr Inquire about all their pricing plans before subscribing and check out telephone companies that offer competitive prices for telephone, Internet, and television packages.

Custodians of the Internet: Platforms, Content Moderation, and the Hidden Decisions That Shape Social Media
by Tarleton Gillespie
Published 25 Jun 2018

Harassment is a broad category of problematic behaviors, and has grown both as we investigate its nuances and as harassers continue to innovate.18 It can encompass anything from trash talk to insults to bullying to unwanted attention to threats to stalking to abuse that spills out into real-world consequences. Exactly what crosses the line as harassment varies across platforms. Foursquare draws a wide circle when it prohibits “negativity directed at another person.” Skype even used to prohibit embarrassment, though I suspect this was one of those rules it did not try to enforce: “Don’t . . . harass, threaten, embarrass, or do anything else to another Skype user that is unwanted.” Periscope emphasizes intention: “Do not engage in dialogue or behavior that intends only to incite or engage in the targeted harassment of others.” DeviantArt justifies its prohibition as avoidance of a slippery slope: “Discouraged commentary is typically considered to have the potential to escalate into an aggressive or abusive situation.”

…

And there are also plenty of social media sites that are long dead, or nearly so—Friendster, MySpace, Orkut, Revver, Veoh, Chatroulette, Ping, Delicious, Xanga, Airtime, Diaspora, Vine, Yik Yak—that also faced the challenges of moderation, and can still be illuminating examples. I did not include messaging services, which are hugely popular competitors to the platforms mentioned above. Millions regularly use WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, QZone, WeChat, Kik, Line, Google Hangout, and Skype to communicate and congregate online. Because they are generally person-to-person or group-to-group, and overwhelmingly between known contacts, they sidestep many of the problems that plague platforms that offer public visibility and contact with strangers. But they too engage in their own forms of moderation.

…

The other sort of preamble, now more common, justifies platforms as community keepers: the platform makes possible a diverse but fragile community, one that must be guarded so as to survive. This frame shows up in the statements from Facebook, Flickr, Foursquare, Instagram, Last.fm, Nextdoor, Secret, Skype, Vimeo, and YouTube; here’s Soundcloud’s version: “We want SoundCloud to be a community where everyone feels respected. It’s up to all of us to make that happen. This page includes important information about our expectations of you while using SoundCloud. Please take the time to carefully read through this information; we take these guidelines seriously and expect you to do the same.”

Blockchain Revolution: How the Technology Behind Bitcoin Is Changing Money, Business, and the World
by Don Tapscott and Alex Tapscott
Published 9 May 2016

Why do those people wait in line to send money via a physical point of sale using decades-old technology instead of what they have at their fingertips? Dollars are a lot less data intensive than HD video. In fact, according to Skype, video calling consumes 500 kilobits per second.43 Sending one bitcoin takes about 500 bits, or roughly one one-thousandth the data consumption of one second of video Skype! By disintermediating traditional third parties and radically simplifying processes, blockchain can finally enable instant, frictionless payments, so that people don’t wait in line for an hour or more, travel great distances, or risk life and limb venturing into dangerous neighborhoods at night just to send money.

…

“Aid and Remittances from Canada to Select Countries,” Canadian International Development Platform, http://cidpnsi.ca/blog/portfolio/aid-and-remittances-from-canada/. 41. World Bank Remittance Price Index, https://remittanceprices.worldbank.org/en. 42. 2011 National Household Survey Highlights, Canadian Census Bureau, www.fin.gov.on.ca/en/economy/demographics/census/nhshi11-1.html. 43. https://support.skype.com/en/faq/FA1417/how-much-bandwidth-does-skype-need. 44. Interview with Eric Piscini, July 13, 2015. 45. http://corporate.westernunion.com/Corporate_Fact_Sheet.html. 46. At the time of writing, Abra had not opened its doors in Canada. However, we were able to test Abra’s technology with Analie and her mother successfully with Abra’s help. 47.

…

You need only to transmit the signed transaction to any of the bitcoin network nodes from anywhere using any medium. Said Antonopoulos, “People could shut down the Internet, and I could still transmit that transaction over shortwave radio with Morse code. A government agency could try to censor my communication, and I could still transmit that transaction as a series of smiley emoticons over Skype. As long as someone on the other end could decode the transaction and record it in the blockchain, I could effect the [smart contract]. So we’ve converted something that, in law, is almost impossible to guarantee into something that has verifiable mathematical certainty.”44 Consider property rights, both real and intellectual: “Ownership is just a recognition by a government or an agency that you own something and they will defend your claims on that ownership,” said Stephen Pair, CEO of BitPay.

Lean Analytics: Use Data to Build a Better Startup Faster
by Alistair Croll and Benjamin Yoskovitz
Published 1 Mar 2013

Done right, it’s one of your unfair advantages. It’s also critical to distinguish between artificial virality and inherent virality. If your service is inherently viral—meaning that use of the product naturally involves inviting outsiders, as it does with products like Skype or Uberconf—the newly invited users have a legitimate reason to use the product. A Skype user you invite will join in order to get on a call with you. Users who join in this way will be more engaged than those invited in other, less intrinsic ways (for example, through a word-of-mouth mention). On the other hand, if your virality is forced—for example, if you let people into a beta once they invite five friends, or reward people with extra features for tweeting something—you won’t see as much stickiness from the invited users.

…

For intrapreneurs, this means applying Lean methods to new product development, rather than starting an entirely new company. More people means adding users, ideally through virality or word of mouth, but also through paid advertising. The best way to add users is when it’s an integral part of product use—such as Dropbox, Skype, or a project management tool that invites outside users outsiders—since this happens automatically and implies an endorsement from the inviting user. More often means stickiness (so people come back), reduced churn (so they don’t leave), and repeated use (so they use it more frequently). Early on, stickiness tends to be a key knob on which to focus, because until your core early adopters find your product superb, it’s unlikely you can achieve good viral marketing.

…

Finding the best mix of these tiers and prices is a constant challenge, and SaaS companies invest considerable effort in finding ways to upsell a user to higher, more lucrative tiers. Because the incremental cost of adding another customer to a SaaS service is negligible—think of how little it costs Skype to add a new user—many SaaS providers use a freemium model of customer acquisition.[29] Customers can start using a free version of the service that’s constrained, in the hopes that they’ll consume all the free capacity and pay for more. Dropbox, for example, gives subscribers a few gigabytes of storage for free, then does everything it can—including encouraging sharing and photo uploads—to make sure users consume that capacity.

The Happiness Effect: How Social Media Is Driving a Generation to Appear Perfect at Any Cost
by Donna Freitas
Published 13 Jan 2017

Usually they date frequently enough that it’s not that weird.” Also, Dinah explains, there is the miracle of Skype. If the couple lives far enough away, they may have Skype dates—approved and chaperoned—but not the traditionalists, she says. They don’t even allow people from different towns to date. “So if you’re dating an out-of-town boy, chances are your family isn’t going to really object to Skype dating. But then Skype dates are like regular dates. You don’t just decide, ‘Oh, I want to talk to him, let’s Skype him.’ You make an appointment, and you talk about dating-type stuff, for say two or three hours, and then you hang up.

…

Ephraim says this last bit with a smirk on his face followed up by a roll of his eyes. Ephraim and his Orthodox Jewish guy friends are also allowed smartphones, and one of the consequences is that they can explore sex in ways that girls are barred from doing. He starts telling me about how, for a while, they were all obsessed with ChatRoulette—a Skype-type platform that connects people randomly via video—you never know who you are going to get. I wonder if going on ChatRoulette is an example of the “wild times” Ephraim told me about earlier on in our interview, when he mentioned living in that basement with lots of other guys. Ephraim refers to it as part of “the underbelly” of the online world.

…

See also Snapchat age-appropriateness of, 204–5 attachment style and, 325n3 ethics of, 193–5 by minors, 11, 303n5, 325n3 negative views on, 207–8 nude photos, 202, 204, 325n3 within relationships, 203, 206 religious lifestyle restrictions and, 116 riskiness of, 208 views on responsible manner of, 205–7, 208 sexual assaults, 9 sexual orientation, and social media, 146, 180–4, 200 sexual selfies, 96 shame, and comparison trap, 32, 41 shaming. See bullying/cyberbullying shares. See comparison trap, and likes/retweets Skype dates, 185 sleep, and smartphones, 327n2 smartphones, 209–30 addiction to, 208, 215–7, 219–21, 223 always “on call,” 213, 218–9 camera capabilities, 92, 204 classroom bans on, 61, 271 as distraction from responsibilities, 215, 327n1 effects on sleep, 327n2 examples of unplugging, 210–8 female sense of safety and, 225 gender differences and, 121 as necessity, 9 remembering life before, 221–5 summary conclusion, 228–30 unplugging forever, 226–8 use of relational language for, 223 Smith, Christian, 277 Snapchat, 8 authenticity/inauthenticity, 132–4, 258 as catharsis, 134 comparison to Facebook, 132–4 disappearing posts on, 131–5 My Story feature, 35, 133 as outlet for play, 263 ranking of friends, 280–1 selfies on, 85, 86 sense of control on, 150 sexting on, 203–4, 206 social issues.

The Thank You Economy
by Gary Vaynerchuk
Published 1 Jan 2010

This is where I see an opportunity to both build the ecosystem and, ultimately, help myself…I am a firm believer in ‘doing it right.’” He adds, “Today, this ecosystem is dependent on social media and connectivity. The founders I work with live and breathe Twitter and Skype, so I live and breathe Twitter and Skype. I work when they work—even if that means doing a Skype video conference at 11:30 at night so we can talk to the team member in Hyderabad.” Culture + Intent = Word of Mouth Heyming insists that it does not take a lot of time to offer fledgling startups his services, and his investment is quickly paid off once the companies get financing and he can start charging them like regular clients.

…

CHAPTER THIRTEEN Hank Heyming: A Brief Example of Well-Executed Culture and Intent What do you call a lawyer who tweets? Smart. Heyming is an attorney who has used social media tools to build his practice within a global law firm, grow his personal brand, and communicate with his clients and the startup community. There might be many blogging, tweeting, skyping, Quora-contributing lawyers practicing on either coast, but in Richmond, Virginia, Heyming stands out as an example of how implementing and acting upon proper culture and intent can reap great rewards in the Thank You Economy. Taking Advantage of the Culture Culture has a lot to do with Heyming’s success.

Kitten Clone: Inside Alcatel-Lucent
by Douglas Coupland
Published 29 Sep 2014

Steiner has degrees from the University of Mannheim and Télécom Paris Tech, but has also served as a paratrooper in the German Army’s Special Operations Division. He is an expert in peer-to-peer file sharing or, in more generic terms, “What happens to information when there’s no central command.” He describes his work over the years as being “proto-cloud,” useful in advancing mobile Internet use and services like Skype. I ask him the question all scientists dread: “We should be able to see what’s next, and yet we don’t. Why is it so hard to see what’s next?” Moritz reflects, “Instead of asking ‘What’s next?’ we instead need to ask, ‘What do people want?’ Maybe that’s as close as you can get to an answer for that question.”

…

“When firms are developing a new product, and doing market surveys, they always ask people whether they think their new gadget is ‘cool’ or not. But they also have to ask whether people would actually pay to have this new thing in their life. There’s a huge difference.” In 1962 AT&T and Bell Labs forgot to ask people that question when they premiered the picture phone at the Seattle World’s Fair, and lost billions as a result. Skype arrived four decades later, and most people remain ambivalent about having their day-to-day face blasting out into the universe for other people to not only see, but also take screen snaps of, so that later, at their leisure, they can go in and count the blackheads from the day’s conversations. < br > Next I meet Shawn Brennan, a customer support engineer, whose cubicle is tumbleweed empty, except that on his screens are vibrant high-res images of tropical fish and lagoons—which is an apt reminder that what you see on the outside of a person is not necessarily a reflection of what’s on the inside.

…

It’s like making a Rolls Royce and then using it only as a shopping cart. “Another ad shows a female executive using a touch-tone phone booth in a crowded railway terminus. On the screen above the phone, a baby appears. ‘Have you ever tucked your baby in … from a phone booth?’ The commercial gets Skype and video chat right, but it’s happening at a payphone booth. So the rule of futurology really is: Always make it more extreme. This was Steve Jobs’ genius. He would never have allowed a payphone to appear in a commercial about the future.” (Later that night I go to view more of the commercials in my hotel room.

Digital Gold: Bitcoin and the Inside Story of the Misfits and Millionaires Trying to Reinvent Money
by Nathaniel Popper
Published 18 May 2015

Gox administrative account by either guessing the password with the brute force of a computer program or by gaming the system that allowed users to create new passwords. In the end, Mark calculated that the site had lost only a few thousand Bitcoins, which he promised to reimburse with the company’s money. Mark then moved on to rewriting the Mt. Gox code so that he could reopen the site. Two days after the crash, he appeared briefly, via Skype, on The Bitcoin Show, a relatively new online production created by an enthusiast in New York. Mark took the opportunity to blame the code he inherited from Jed McCaleb, which he said had “a lot of problems.” “The new system was written from scratch with absolutely no code from the old system,” he said.

…

Roger had first seen Charlie talking about his company, BitInstant, on Bruce Wagner’s The Bitcoin Show. A small, cherubic twenty-two-year-old, with a Brillo Pad of curly hair and a slight Brooklyn accent, Charlie pitched BitInstant as the easy way to get money into and out of Bitcoin without wiring funds internationally to Mt. Gox’s bank account in Japan. Roger quickly reached out to Charlie by Skype, and asked how much money he needed. Charlie offered him 10 percent of the company for $100,000. Roger sent over a wire payment for $120,000. THE YOUNG MAN Roger had invested in was, outwardly, an unlikely candidate to become the entrepreneurial leader in a futuristic global movement like Bitcoin.

…

Wences drew the group in with an explanation of the basic notion of a new kind of network that could allow people to move money anywhere in the world, instantaneously—something that these financiers, who were frequently moving millions between banks in different countries, could surely appreciate. “You can call someone in Jakarta on Skype,” Wences told them. “You can see them and you can hear them and there’s a synchronous connection with a lot of bandwidth. There’s a ton of magic happening, which is incredible. And you hang up and you want to send them one cent and that’s not possible. That’s ridiculous. It should be a lot easier to send a cent than to see video and audio.”

The Upstarts: How Uber, Airbnb, and the Killer Companies of the New Silicon Valley Are Changing the World
by Brad Stone
Published 30 Jan 2017

Mott, “Watch Our PandoMonthly Interview.” Chapter 2: Jam Sessions 1. “Uber Happy Hour,” Vimeo, February 2, 2011, https://vimeo.com/19508742. 2. M. G. Siegler, “StumbleUpon Beats Skype in Escaping eBay’s Clutches,” TechCrunch, April 13, 2009, http://techcrunch.com/2009/04/13/ebay-unacquires-stumbleupon/. 3. “Travis Kalanick, Uber and Loic Le Meur, Co-Founder, LeWeb,” YouTube video, December 13, 2013, https://youtu.be/vnkvNQ2V6Og. 4. Siegler, “StumbleUpon Beats Skype.” 5. Erin Biba, “Inside the GPS Revolution: 10 Applications That Make the Most of Location,” Wired.com, January 19, 2009, http://www.wired.com/2009/01/lp-10coolapps/. 6.

…

Andreessen Horowitz would rectify the oversight the following year and lead the Series B, a less lucrative but still hugely profitable investment. Another venture capitalist that passed was across Sand Hill Road at a firm called August Capital. Howard Hartenbaum, an investor in the online video-calling service Skype, met with Chesky repeatedly that fall and took the founders to dinner at Alexander’s Steakhouse near the new office in San Francisco. Chesky impressed Hartenbaum; he seemed to have poise, intelligence, and a fierce determination to succeed. But Hartenbaum couldn’t wrap his head around the numbers.

…

Launching in Paris required accepting foreign credit cards, converting euros to dollars, and translating the app into French, among other tasks. Kalanick simply directed his team to work harder. “Never ask the question ‘Can it be done?’” he was fond of saying at the time, recalls one employee. “Only question how it can be done.” Kalanick left for LeWeb but stayed in touch from his hotel room over Skype video chat, his disembodied head still a loud, demanding presence in the office. Everyone was working around the clock, on little sleep and ebbing patience. “Someone turn Travis off!” yelled the new chief of product, a former Google manager named Mina Radhakrishnan, when Kalanick berated them for not having the service ready in Paris on time.

Money Men: A Hot Startup, a Billion Dollar Fraud, a Fight for the Truth
by Dan McCrum
Published 15 Jun 2022

Maybe there was something more there? The trio resolved to pool their resources from that point on. Earl was the master of internet sleuthing, and everywhere he looked there was more material; rabbit holes in which to disappear. They were soon spending their evenings online together, sitting with a Skype chat or call open as they pieced together a picture of Wirecard and its various associates, partners and former executives. Every new discovery was an endorphin hit, another brick in the wall of their growing confidence, and the investigation soon had the character of an obsession. Revisiting the Schutt case led them to a company called Bluetool, set up by Simon Dowson’s paperwork factory in Consett.

…

He’d identified the true support of the country for leaving Europe with the help of Dave the IT guy who, Perring claimed, was a master of advanced techniques to mine sentiment revealed from comments on Facebook. Yet as autumn arrived, Perring and Earl fell out over money. One day Perring popped up on a Skype chat claiming Earl owed him about £100,000 for research costs. Earl was nonplussed. So far as he was concerned, he had done the bulk of the research, Roddy had contributed much of the rest and anyway most of the company filings he’d found were free. The expenses he could think of didn’t come close to a five-figure sum, let alone six figures.

…

Photos of each man were published on Twitter, above the ominous title ‘Zatarra RIP’. Perring’s photo was from Facebook, but Earl’s was a hidden camera snap from his doorstep months before, judging by the bloom of his cherished geraniums. The photos of emails we’d seen in November were there, along with a collection of text messages, emails and Skype conversations confected into a grand conspiracy: ‘Zatarra is a story of greed, of self-pity and frustration, of men full of ambition but little ability to build, only to destroy. It is the story of men who could not accept that they were mistaken and that what they were doing was wrong. But Zatarra is also a story of corrupt journalists eager to make a name for themselves, eager to make some money on the side, disappointed with their lives and desperate for any story, no matter whether true or not.’

The Metaverse: And How It Will Revolutionize Everything
by Matthew Ball
Published 18 Jul 2022

In the 2000s, these services were surpassed by those focused on live audio, such as Skype, which also connected to traditional and offline phone systems. The mobile era saw a new crop of leaders such as WhatsApp, Snapchat, and Slack. These players didn’t just focus on offering Skype but were made for mobile devices. They built services predicated upon different usage behaviors, needs, and even communication styles. WhatsApp, for example, is intended for nearly constant use—not scheduled or occasional calls, as was the case with Skype—and it is a forum where emojis articulate more than typed words. Whereas Skype was originally built around the ability to make low-to-no-cost calls to the traditional “Public Switched Telephone Network” (i.e., telephones connected to telephone lines), WhatsApp skipped this feature altogether.

…

With iOS 7, Apple ditched these legacy design principles for those native to the mobile era. It was during Apple’s skeuomorphic era that many of today’s leading consumer digital companies were founded. Companies such as Instagram, Snap, and Slack reimagined what digital communications would be—not using IP to call a landline (Skype) nor text (BlackBerry Messenger), but to reinvent how we communicate, why, and what about. Spotify didn’t try to rebroadcast the radio over the internet (Broadcast.com), nor produce internet-only radio (Pandora), but instead changed how we accessed and discovered music. For the foreseeable future, “Metaverse apps” will be stuck in the early stage of development—a videoconference, but in 3D and situated in a simulated corporate boardroom; Netflix, but inside a virtual theater.

…

on, 11, 31, 43, 111 generational change and, 247, 249 independence of, 275–77 initial public offering (IPO) of, xii interoperability and, 37, 299–300 payments rails in, 191–93 Roblox Premium subscription, 128 virtual goods in, 127–8 Rocket League, 137 Rockstar Games, 112 Roosevelt, Franklin D., ix–x Royal Dutch Shell, 166 Rube Goldberg machines, 56–57, 190, 253 Rumble Pak for the Nintendo 64, 151–52 Russia, 11, 156n, 170 Safari web browser, 194–96, 209 Samsung, 25, 61n, 137, 148, 150, 213, 243 Sandbox, The, 115 Saudi Arabia, 11 Save the Children, 9 Schaldemose, Christel, xiv “Science, the Endless Frontier,” x Scott, Travis, 12, 54–55, 77, 139, 280 Second Life, 9–10, 22, 45, 110, 247, 276 Security Times, xiii, xivn Sega, 173 Sesame Street, 26 SETI@HOME, 101 shared experiences, 48–49, 51 Shopify, 217 Silicon Snake Oil: Second Thoughts on the Information Highway, 308 skeuomorphism, 47, 307 Skybound Entertainment, 260 Skype, 61, 308 Slack, 61, 135, 308 “smart contracts,” 226–30, 300 smart gloves, 151 smart lenses, 154, 205 smartphones, 148–51, 158–62, 188. See also specific models and manufacturers Smilegate RPG, 277 Snap game, 115 Snap, Inc., 144, 307–8 Snapchat, 61, 92, 116, 298–300 Snapchat Stories, 24, 298–99 Spectacles AR glasses, 144–46, 147, 150, 159 Snow Crash, 3–5, 8, 21–22, 46, 66, 68, 305 social graph features, 47, 135, 215–16 social media/social networks, xi, 12, 34, 116 advertising and marketing, 263–65 blockchain avatars on, 293–94 dangers of, 291–92 as driver of change, 249 Metcalfe’s Law and, 16 toxicity in, 129, 229 see also specific social networks software development kits (SDKs), 142, 175, 203, 309 Somnium Space, 115 Sony anime streaming services, 280 Decima game engine, 117 Dreams, 281 God of War, 139, 280 Hawk-Eye system and sports officiating, 280 investment in NFTs, 201 “strategic partnership” with Microsoft, 281n see also PlayStation; PlayStation Network Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE), 280 Sony Music, 201, 280 South China Morning Post, 128 South Korea, xii–xiii, 203, 296, 303.

Most Likely to Succeed: Preparing Our Kids for the Innovation Era
by Tony Wagner and Ted Dintersmith
Published 17 Aug 2015

Help the student attain true conversational fluency. Look for opportunities to speak frequently in the language—through travel if possible, Skype sessions with students in foreign countries, or field trips to immigrant communities in surrounding areas to learn about their culture and speak with them. And, above all, make it fun. Read books the students care about. Have entertaining discussions in class in the language. Watch movies in the language. Find a partner class or student in a foreign country and use tools like Skype to really learn about life there. But don’t require our kids to spend several years on something of no long-term value just to check off a thoughtless graduation requirement.

…

They work in teams on the following question: “Why do you think the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution gained overwhelming support?” Each team presents its views to classmates and responds to questions. Students can use any available resource to support their work (we observe kids doing these types of challenges who resourcefully find people or classes all over the world and interview subjects via Skype as part of their research). They then explore whether the Gulf of Tonkin vote should have imparted lessons to our legislators in 2002 when the overwhelming majority of U.S. senators voted to authorize the invasion of Iraq. In these case studies, the first class spends a week largely memorizing facts—any of which can be readily looked up.

…

Today, adults need to work across national boundaries, understanding other cultures and how to collaborate on important problems and achieve results. Our global innovation economy spans cultures and languages. Imagine a customer service leadership team of a global company having a regular meeting—one based in the United States, one in Singapore, one in India—all on Skype or GoToMeeting. It is scheduled for 9 p.m. to best span the time zones. How do these teams work together, given their differences in cultures? Who speaks first? When is it okay to disagree? How do you disagree? Managers and team members must pay attention to these cultural differences to ensure they achieve the desired goals.

Disrupted: My Misadventure in the Start-Up Bubble
by Dan Lyons
Published 4 Apr 2016

In 2009, during Andreessen’s tenure on the board, eBay decided to sell Skype, the messaging service, which it had acquired in 2005; eBay paid $2.6 billion for Skype and sold it four years later in a deal that valued the company at $2.75 billion, not much of a gain. The investors who bought Skype included a private equity firm called Silver Lake Partners—and Andreessen Horowitz. As with Instagram and Oculus, Andreessen found himself on both sides of a deal, working as both buyer and seller. Eighteen months after buying Skype, Andreessen and his partners sold the company to Microsoft for $8.5 billion—three times what they paid.

…

To some, Andreessen’s role as both an eBay director and an investor acquiring an asset from eBay seemed like a problem. “Andreessen, he’s screwed more people than Casanova, for Christ’s sake, and yet he goes and takes this attitude that he’s on the high moral ground,” activist investor Carl Icahn said on CNBC. Icahn complained that eBay had sold Skype for less than what it was worth and that eBay’s investors had been shortchanged. Andreessen said Icahn was “making up a fake conspiracy theory out of thin air.” The tech press sided with Andreessen. The story went nowhere. Andreessen is relentlessly optimistic and pounds away on the same message, which is that no matter how high the valuations of start-ups might go, this all makes sense.

The Perfect Police State: An Undercover Odyssey Into China's Terrifying Surveillance Dystopia of the Future
by Geoffrey Cain
Published 28 Jun 2021

No matter how many times they tried, the computer scientists at Microsoft Research Asia, and other emerging companies, were hitting a wall. AI developers in China and Silicon Valley told me in 2012 that building a neural network would be a gold mine for Microsoft. Microsoft had acquired Skype, the popular visual calling and conferencing software used worldwide, for $8.5 billion in May 2011—its largest acquisition up to that time.6 If Skype or Microsoft Windows could secure the ability to recognize speech and faces, it would be a breakthrough. It would form the basis for real-time translation abilities and cybersecurity that depended on facial recognition. In 2011, I had met a group of young Chinese researchers in Beijing who, enduring late nights and weekends, toiled away at a gnawing set of problems.

…

“Notes from the AI Frontier: Applications and Value of Deep Learning,” McKinsey Global Institute, April 17, 2018, https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/artificial-intelligence/notes-from-the-ai-frontier-applications-and-value-of-deep-learning#. 6. Andrew Ross Sorkin and Steve Lohr, “Microsoft to Buy Skype for $8.5 Billion,” New York Times, May 10, 2011, https://dealbook.nytimes.com/2011/05/10/microsoft-to-buy-skype-for-8-5-billion/. 7. The World Bank, “Individuals Using the Internet (% of Population)—China,” https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/IT.NET.USER.ZS?locations=CN. 8. China Internet Network Information Center, “The Internet Timeline of China (2011),” February 19, 2013, https://cnnic.com.cn/IDR/hlwfzdsj/201302/t20130219_38709.htm. 9.

…

.… I have relied only on pen and paper to diplomatically request the human rights, legal rights, and autonomous regional rights for the Uyghurs.… However, I have never pursued a violent route and I have never joined a group that utilized violence.9 After Jewher settled in Indiana, she began talking with her father on Skype every day. Sometimes three times or more a day. “One day, all of a sudden, he asked me to write down the names and phone numbers of journalists and American diplomats he knew,” she said. “Why are you doing this?” Jewher asked, worried. “I have a bad feeling,” he said. “You study hard. You need to get into college as soon as possible.

Life After Google: The Fall of Big Data and the Rise of the Blockchain Economy
by George Gilder
Published 16 Jul 2018

Once a YWCA camp, and still without televisions or landlines in its guest rooms, this retreat is separated by an eighty-mile drive from Silicon Valley. Here in early January 2017 many of the leading researchers and luminaries of the information age secretly gathered under the auspices of the Foundational Questions Institute, directed by the MIT physicist Max Tegmark and supported by tens of millions of dollars from Elon Musk and Skype’s co-founder Jaan Tallinn. The most prominent participants were the bright lights of Google: Larry Page, Eric Schmidt, Ray Kurzweil, Demis Hassabis, and Peter Norvig, along with former Googler Andrew Ng, later of Baidu and Stanford. Also there was Facebook’s Yann LeCun, an innovator in deep-learning math and a protégé of Google’s Geoffrey Hinton.

…

Layers three and four tend to be a bastion of central powers, where governments and their intelligence arms chase down domain names and addresses, entities such as ICANN and even the UN’s ITU. When they discover a Silk Road or perhaps an Alpha Bay, they track it down over layer three. Above layer four is layer five—the all-important session layer—which governs a particular two-way communication from beginning to end, whether a video stream, a Skype call, a Session Initiation Protocol conference, a messaging exchange, an email post, or even—and this would prove fateful—a transaction. Layers six and seven are the schemes for presentations and applications—user interfaces, windows, formats, operating systems, and so on. These are summed up in the ingenious schemes of hyperlinks (click on a word and go to a new page) and universal resource locators (URLs) addresses.

…

The Startup Cities Institute has its home there, part of a movement Mark Klugmann conceived of, at least in part, as a vessel for digital currencies—recalling Ayau’s vision, nearly half a century ago, of a community engaged in discovering “the probable shape of the future.” “Who is holding the bag?” • • • Tuur Demeester’s disdainful voice flared over the Skype link from Belgium to the classroom in Guatemala. The wide screen showed a young man with a conservative haircut and a studious, collegiate appearance. I had presumed to suggest that perhaps his precious bitcoin currencies might prove to be a Ponzi scheme, with the bellwether “miners” getting rich and the latecomers getting fleeced.

Mastering the VC Game: A Venture Capital Insider Reveals How to Get From Start-Up to IPO on Your Terms
by Jeffrey Bussgang
Published 31 Mar 2010

This has happened on only rare occasions, but the prudent entrepreneur nonetheless should be careful about the downside of divulging too much about their business to an EIR. On the other hand, EIRs can be great entry points into the VC firm if they become enthusiastic sponsors of your idea. Nitzan Shaer, who had been an executive with eBay and Skype, joined Flybridge as an EIR in 2007. “The idea of becoming an EIR was introduced to me after I started considering my next steps at Skype,” Nitzan wrote on my blog, Seeing Both Sides.7 “I had three options on the table: join an early-stage start-up, start a company of my own, or become an EIR. Honestly, there was no start-up I found that excited me, but there were a bunch of ideas that I wanted to pursue—not all of them in my direct area of expertise, so I knew I would need time and advice.”

…

His grandfather was General William Draper, Jr., who became the first professional West Coast venture capitalist after serving in the Truman administration as an implementer of the Marshall Plan. His father, Bill Draper, is one of Silicon Valley’s legendary venture capitalists and still invests out of his own firm. Tim has created a legacy of his own by investing in early-stage companies, including Skype, Hotmail, and Baidu, the Chinese-based search company that is profiled later in Chapter 7. DFJ is based in Menlo Park, California, but starting in 2005 began to aggressively expand outside of the United States, with affiliated funds in Israel, Europe, India, China, Vietnam, and others. The model DFJ has taken is analogous to the McDonald’s franchise model.

…

See Negotiating deal Primack, Dan Principals, role of Protective provisions Quan Zhou background information entrepreneurs, assessing Home Inn IDG-Accel China, development of MySpace China Ravikant, Naval Recruitersrole as Redpoint Ventures References, of VC firm, checking Ries, Eric Risk, presenting to VC Rock fetch Rohaly, Janos Rosenbloom, Micah pitch to VC selling Brontes 3D 3M, role at Roving Software Sabet, Bijan Sarbanes-Oxley Act Schmidt, Eric Scott, David Meerman Selling business Brontes 3D example decision-making considerations following IPO time to discuss timing, importance of Sequoia Capital development of Series A financing Shaer, Nitzan, as entrepreneur in residence (EIR) Shah, Dharmesh Sharp, Philip Shong, Hugo Sideways scenario Siemens Sim, Ed Sinclair, Dr. A. David Sirtris Pharmaceuticals development of GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) purchase IPO/sale process See also Westphal, Dr. Christoph Six Apart Skok, David Skype Social media tools impact on VC LinkedIn Socialnet Sohl, Jeffrey Starbucks Start-up advice, seeking by CEO and board of directors CEO failure scenario complexity of conflict avoidance tips 80/20 rule, following as ensemble founder/outside CEO conflict initial public offering (IPO) phases of selling business VC abandonment Stock option pool participation feature Stone, Biz Strategistsrole as S2S Medical Publishing Sun Microsystems Surowiecki, James Suster, Mark Swensen, Dave Swisher, Kara Syndication Taylor, Bill Term sheet control elements detail, level of elements of exploding term sheet protective provisions rescinding offer See also Negotiating deal Thiel, Peter 3M, Brontes 3D, purchase of Trinity Ventures Truth Teller, board member as Twitter investors in as networking tool See also Dorsey, Jack TypePad Union Square Ventures.

So You've Been Publicly Shamed
by Jon Ronson
Published 9 Mar 2015

On the Sunday night - the night before publication - he’d been giving a keynote at the 2012 Meeting Professionals International’s World Education conference in St Louis. The subject of his talk had been the importance of human interaction. During it - according to a tweet posted by an audience member, the journalist Sarah Braley - he revealed that since the invention of Skype, attendances at meetings had actually gone up by 30 per cent. After he left the stage she found him and asked where that implausible statistic had come from. ‘A conversation with a Harvard professor,’ he replied. But when she requested the professor’s name he mysteriously refused to divulge it. ‘I’d have to ask him if it’s all right to tell you,’ he explained.

…

‘A lot of people move around in life chronically ashamed of how they look, or how they feel, or what they said, or what they did. It’s like a permanent adolescent concern. Adolescence is when you’re permanently concerned about what other people think of you.’ It was a few months earlier and Brad Blanton and I were talking on Skype. He was telling me about how, as a psychotherapist, he had come to understand how so many of us ‘live our lives constantly in fear of being exposed, or being judged as immoral or not good enough’. But Brad had invented a way for us to eradicate those feelings, he told me. His method was called ‘Radical Honesty’.

…

They’re all assigned physical tasks. Then there are workshops - on sex abuse, domestic violence, anger management, then lunch, then in the afternoon they focus in on job training, housing. There are books. There’s cake. There’s the library. Then the mothers can read bedtime nursery rhymes to their children over Skype.’ There were glimpses of a summer day through the windows and as a corrections officer let us in she said that tensions were high because warm days are when a person really feels incarcerated. Jim gathered the women into a circle for a group meeting. I wasn’t allowed to record it and so I managed only to scribble down fragments of conversations like: ‘… I come from a small town so everyone knows where I am and that tears me up inside …’ and ‘… most people know why Raquel is in here …’ At that a few women glanced over at the woman I took to be Raquel.

The Last Black Unicorn
by Tiffany Haddish
Published 5 Dec 2017

Ex-Husband: “Yeah, I’ll never be a Jehovah’s Witness, but you should be one, because they know how to be submissive. They’re submissive to their men. They do whatever their men tell them to do, so that’s what you should do.” The Jehovah’s Witnesses do Bible study on Skype. When I got back to my hotel room at nine in the morning, they hit me up on Skype for our regular Bible study. JW: “What happened to you?” I hadn’t even looked at myself, and when I saw myself on the Skype . . . I saw there was a knot on my forehead, there were all these welt marks across my throat. Tiffany: “Oh man. My husband came out here, we got into it, he choked me.” Jehovah’s Witnesses do not believe in divorce.

…

Jehovah’s Witnesses do not believe in divorce. Not for any reason. They were all like: JW: “You need to get a divorce. You have to get out of this.” Then the lady leading the Bible study calls her husband. Her husband’s an elder, but she gets him on Skype right away. JW: “Look at Tiffany. Look at her. She needs to get a divorce. Don’t you think?” He is an elder, he is big-time. At first, he started off with the normal lines: Elder: “Nobody gets divorced. We could talk through this. You could work it out.” JW: “LOOK AT HER FACE!” He got real quiet. Then he said in a solemn voice: Elder: “You have to get a divorce.

Right of Way: Race, Class, and the Silent Epidemic of Pedestrian Deaths in America
by Angie Schmitt
Published 26 Aug 2020

National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, Traffic Safety Facts, “Critical Reasons for Crashes Investigated in the National Motor Vehicle Crash Causation Survey,” February 2015, https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/812115. 29. Center for Active Design, “Vision Zero: Learning from Sweden’s Successes,” accessed March 29, 2020, https://centerforactivedesign.org/visionzero. 30. Daniel Firth, Skype interview, December 4, 2019. 31. Firth, Skype interview. 32. Lisa Groeger, “Unsafe at Many Speeds,” ProPublica, May 25, 2016, https://www.propublica.org/article/unsafe-at-many-speeds. 33. Bo Bjerre et al., “A Swedish Alcohol Ignition Interlock Programme for Drink-Drivers: Effects on Hospital Care Utilization and Sick Leave,” Addiction 102, no. 4 (March 12, 2007), https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1360-0443.2006.01726.x. 34.

…

International Transport Forum/OECD, Road Safety Data, “Road Safety Annual Report 2019: Sweden,” October 7, 2019, https://www.itf-oecd.org/sites/default/files/sweden-road-safety.pdf. 52. Xinhua, “Norway Best in World in Traffic Safety: Report,” Global Times, June 27, 2018, http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1108618.shtml. 53. Firth, Skype interview. 54. Laura Nelson, “L.A. Backs Venice Boulevard’s Controversial ‘Road Diet’ as Activists Threaten to Sue,” Los Angeles Times, March 8, 2019, https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-venice-mar-vista-bike-lane-20190308-story.html. 55. Angie Schmitt, “Are We Starting to See Progress toward Vision Zero?

…

Angie Schmitt, “Are We Starting to See Progress toward Vision Zero?,” Streetsblog USA, May 22, 2019, https://usa.streetsblog.org/2019/05/22/are-we-starting-to-see-progress-toward-vision-zero/. 56. Transport for London and Mayor of London, “Vision Zero Action Plan,” July 24, 2018, http://content.tfl.gov.uk/vision-zero-action-plan.pdf. 57. Firth, Skype interview. Chapter 7. A Hard Right Turn 1. Safe Routes to School North Carolina, “Walk to School Day Participation in North Carolina Skyrockets,” 2015, https://www.eatsmartmovemorenc.com/News/Texts/North_Carolina_Walk_to_School_Day_Report_2015.pdf. 2. Safe Routes to School Guide, “The Decline of Walking and Bicycling,” accessed March 30, 2020, http://guide.saferoutesinfo.org/introduction/the_decline_of_walking_and_bicycling.cfm. 3.

Data Science for Business: What You Need to Know About Data Mining and Data-Analytic Thinking
by Foster Provost and Tom Fawcett
Published 30 Jun 2013

Consider this more complex sample document: Microsoft Corp and Skype Global today announced that they have entered into a definitive agreement under which Microsoft will acquire Skype, the leading Internet communications company, for $8.5 billion in cash from the investor group led by Silver Lake. The agreement has been approved by the boards of directors of both Microsoft and Skype. Table 10-3 shows a reduction of this document to a term frequency representation. Table 10-3. Terms after normalization and stemming, ordered by frequency Term Count Term Count Term Count Term Count skype 3 microsoft 3 agreement 2 global 1 approv 1 announc 1 acquir 1 lead 1 definit 1 lake 1 communic 1 internet 1 board 1 led 1 director 1 corp 1 compani 1 investor 1 silver 1 billion 1 To create this table from the sample document, the following steps have been performed: First, the case has been normalized: every term is in lowercase.

…

Terms after normalization and stemming, ordered by frequency Term Count Term Count Term Count Term Count skype 3 microsoft 3 agreement 2 global 1 approv 1 announc 1 acquir 1 lead 1 definit 1 lake 1 communic 1 internet 1 board 1 led 1 director 1 corp 1 compani 1 investor 1 silver 1 billion 1 To create this table from the sample document, the following steps have been performed: First, the case has been normalized: every term is in lowercase. This is so that words like Skype and SKYPE are counted as the same thing. Case variations are so common (consider iPhone, iphone, and IPHONE) that case normalization is usually necessary. Second, many words have been stemmed: their suffixes removed, so that verbs like announces, announced and announcing are all reduced to the term announc.

…

O., What Data Can’t Do: Humans in the Loop, Revisited R Ra, Sun, Example: Jazz Musicians ranking cases, classifying vs., Visualizing Model Performance–Example: Performance Analytics for Churn Modeling ranking variables, Supervised Segmentation reasoning, Similarity, Neighbors, and Clusters Recall metric, Costs and benefits Receiver Operating Characteristics (ROC) graphs, ROC Graphs and Curves–ROC Graphs and Curves area under ROC curves (AUC), The Area Under the ROC Curve (AUC) in KDD Cup churn problem, Example: Performance Analytics for Churn Modeling–Example: Performance Analytics for Churn Modeling recommendations, Similarity, Neighbors, and Clusters Reddit, Why Text Is Important regional distribution centers, grouping/associations and, Co-occurrences and Associations: Finding Items That Go Together regression, From Business Problems to Data Mining Tasks, From Business Problems to Data Mining Tasks, Similarity, Neighbors, and Clusters building models for, Business Understanding classification and, From Business Problems to Data Mining Tasks ensemble methods and, Bias, Variance, and Ensemble Methods least squares, Regression via Mathematical Functions logistic, Example: Overfitting Linear Functions ridge, * Avoiding Overfitting for Parameter Optimization supervised data mining and, Supervised Versus Unsupervised Methods supervised segmentation and, Selecting Informative Attributes regression modeling, Generalizing Beyond Classification regression trees, Supervised Segmentation with Tree-Structured Models, Bias, Variance, and Ensemble Methods regularization, * Avoiding Overfitting for Parameter Optimization, Summary removing missing values, Data Preparation repetition, Data Science, Engineering, and Data-Driven Decision Making requirements, Data Preparation responders, likely vs. not likely, Using Expected Value to Frame Classifier Use retrieving, Similarity, Neighbors, and Clusters retrieving neighbors, Regression Reuters news agency, Example: Clustering Business News Stories ridge regression, * Avoiding Overfitting for Parameter Optimization root-mean-squared error, Generalizing Beyond Classification S Saint Magdalene single malt scotch, * Using Supervised Learning to Generate Cluster Descriptions Scapa single malt scotch, Understanding the Results of Clustering Schwartz, Henry, Stepping Back: Solving a Business Problem Versus Data Exploration scoring, From Business Problems to Data Mining Tasks search advertising, display vs., Example: Targeting Online Consumers With Advertisements search engines, Why Text Is Important second-layer models, Nonlinear Functions, Support Vector Machines, and Neural Networks segmentation creating the best, Selecting Informative Attributes supervised, Clustering unsupervised, Stepping Back: Solving a Business Problem Versus Data Exploration selecting attributes, Introduction to Predictive Modeling: From Correlation to Supervised Segmentation informative variables, Supervised Segmentation variables, Introduction to Predictive Modeling: From Correlation to Supervised Segmentation selection bias, A Brief Digression on Selection Bias–A Brief Digression on Selection Bias semantic similarity, syntactic vs., The news story clusters separating classes, Example: Overfitting Linear Functions sequential backward elimination, A General Method for Avoiding Overfitting sequential forward selection (SFS), A General Method for Avoiding Overfitting service usage, From Business Problems to Data Mining Tasks sets, Bag of Words Shannon, Claude, Selecting Informative Attributes Sheldon Cooper (fictional character), Example: Evidence Lifts from Facebook “Likes” sign consistency, in cost-benefit matrix, Costs and benefits Signet Bank, Data and Data Science Capability as a Strategic Asset, From an Expected Value Decomposition to a Data Science Solution Silver Lake, Term Frequency Silver, Nate, Evaluation, Baseline Performance, and Implications for Investments in Data similarity, Similarity, Neighbors, and Clusters–* Using Supervised Learning to Generate Cluster Descriptions applying, Example: Whiskey Analytics calculating, The Fundamental Concepts of Data Science clustering, Clustering–The news story clusters cosine, * Other Distance Functions data exploration vs. business problems and, Stepping Back: Solving a Business Problem Versus Data Exploration–Stepping Back: Solving a Business Problem Versus Data Exploration distance and, Similarity and Distance–Similarity and Distance heterogeneous attributes and, Heterogeneous Attributes link recommendation and, Link Prediction and Social Recommendation measuring, Similarity and Distance nearest-neighbor reasoning, Nearest-Neighbor Reasoning–* Combining Functions: Calculating Scores from Neighbors similarity matching, From Business Problems to Data Mining Tasks similarity-moderated classification (equation), * Combining Functions: Calculating Scores from Neighbors similarity-moderated regression (equation), * Combining Functions: Calculating Scores from Neighbors similarity-moderated scoring (equation), * Combining Functions: Calculating Scores from Neighbors Simone, Nina, Example: Jazz Musicians skew, Problems with Unbalanced Classes Skype Global, Term Frequency smoothing, Probability Estimation social recommendations, Link Prediction and Social Recommendation–Link Prediction and Social Recommendation soft clustering, Profiling: Finding Typical Behavior software development, Implications for Managing the Data Science Team software engineering, data science vs., A Firm’s Data Science Maturity software skills, analytic skills vs., Implications for Managing the Data Science Team Solove, Daniel, Privacy, Ethics, and Mining Data About Individuals solution paths, changing, Data Understanding spam (target class), Example: Targeting Online Consumers With Advertisements spam detection systems, Example: Targeting Online Consumers With Advertisements specified class value, Supervised Versus Unsupervised Methods specified target value, Supervised Versus Unsupervised Methods speech recognition systems, Thinking Data-Analytically, Redux speeding up neighbor retrieval, Computational efficiency Spirited Away, Example: Evidence Lifts from Facebook “Likes” spreadsheet, implementation of Naive Bayes with, Evidence in Action: Targeting Consumers with Ads spurious correlations, * Example: Why Is Overfitting Bad?

The Cosmopolites: The Coming of the Global Citizen
by Atossa Araxia Abrahamian
Published 14 Jul 2015

Comorian lawmakers and Comoro Gulf Holding employees all pointed to established citizenship- and residence-by-investment programs in other countries as a sort of basis, or justification, for the Comorian law. “Thank God there’s this opportunity,” Adnan Tarabishy, a Syrian media executive and acquaintance of Kiwan’s, explained over Skype in February 2015. Tarabishy said he was in the process of applying for a passport from the island of Dominica to compensate for the inconvenience of being Syrian. “Market access is like a nightmare, so we consider this as part of our business investment,” he told me. There’s a late-capitalist logic to the scheme.

…

“We were living the project, seeing Corniche billboards, crater lake billboards, investments in telecom, mini ports . . . see[ing] that happening in a country like that and [being] involved in everything and controlling everything gave me a high sense of achievement and satisfaction which I haven’t found anywhere else.” Elie Wakim, a close friend and associate of Kiwan’s who says he helped pitch the Comoros proposal to the Emirati government in a closed-door meeting, came to embrace the initiative. “I understand very well that people might be shocked by this principle,” he said over Skype. “But these are people who have no country, who are spread out over the Arab world, who can’t travel or have an identity or hold certain jobs without facing discrimination.” “It’s an idea that’s developing, and there are societies that can help,” he added, citing, as an example, “I can have a St.

…

After spending a night in the hotel, Khaleq moved into an apartment, where he stayed for almost two months. A neighbor, it turns out, was legitimately from the Comoros. They would run into each other in the lobby and talk about their shared country. “I said, you are the original, I am the duplicate.” He spoke to his family on Skype and felt another new emotion: homesickness. Over the summer, Khaleq obtained his asylum approval and was assigned to emigrate to London, Ontario, a Canadian city not far from Detroit. On September 11, he flew to Toronto via Hong Kong, then boarded a bus that took him to London. The Cross Cultural Learner Centre a non-profit that helps refugees integrate into their new communities, helped him find an apartment, sign up for English lessons, and get his precious library card.

Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy: The Story of Anonymous
by Gabriella Coleman
Published 4 Nov 2014

They had become so close, in fact, that everyone knew, roughly, where everyone else was logging in from (real names were never shared) Most were headquartered in or around the UK, except Sabu. Some had even foolishly spoken over Skype, which is how Topiary had determined that Cleary’s voice was “annoying”. OpSec, short for Operational Security, is the art of protecting your group’s human and digital interactions. One of the foundations of good OpSec is the knowledge that one’s computer is secure. Depending on proprietary software packages—opaque in both source code and business practices—can compromise that knowledge. The use of free software, such as GNU/Linux, and the avoidance of tools like Skype (commonly understood to have government backdoors) are necessary measures in the never-ending journey of vigilant OpSec.

…

Quickly the excitement faded as I contemplated the ruinous reality this could bring down upon me if I got on the wrong side of these notorious trolls; I remembered that I had already decided to focus on the activism of Anonymous and not its trolling heyday for a very good reason. In the end, I hoped weev would ignore the email from me sitting in his inbox. But, when he emailed me back, I realized there was nothing to do but commit. We finally connected via Skype chat. His handle was “dirk diggler,” after the porn star protagonist of the 1997 film Boogie Nights. Later, when we switched to IRC, he used “weev”: dirk diggler: how are you? biella: good and you? dirk diggler: coming down off of some vile substance biella: you are up early dirk diggler: methylenedioxypyrovalorone i think it was called dirk diggler: its late, technically dirk diggler: as i havent slept biella: i woke up at 3 am but that is not all that usual for me dirk diggler: i am working on my latest shitstorm right now dirk diggler: disruptive technological developments are gr8 biella: you are pretty adept at that as well dirk diggler: yes i am switching from the mdpv to the coffee dirk diggler: i am hoping this will smooth the downward spiral long enough for me to ship this motherfucker live today biella: no chance you will be in nyc in the near future, is there?

…

The only thing you are able to judge a post by is its content and nothing else. This elimination of the persona, and by extension everything associated with it, such as leadership, representation, and status, is the primary ideal of Anonymous. (emphasis added) This “Anon,” who was lecturing anonymously on Skype to my ten enraptured students, immediately offered a series of astute qualifications about this “primary ideal.”: the self-effacement of the individual. When Anonymous left 4chan in pursuit of activist goals in 2008, he explained, this ideal failed, often spectacularly; once individuals interacted pseudonymously or met in person, status-seeking behaviors reasserted themselves.

Utopias: A Brief History From Ancient Writings to Virtual Communities
by Howard P. Segal
Published 20 May 2012

Meanwhile, prominent psychologist Sherry Turkle’s Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other (2011) paints a predominantly negative portrait of social media as leading many of us away from the solitude and intimacy that, she claims, we actually seek. No less importantly, the communications company Skype has also become exceedingly popular as a generally free (as of 2011) means of consumers using computers as telephones to communicate across long distances. “Skype me” is now a favorite phrase. The company began in 2003 as an online alternative to conventional telephone companies, with their usually high rates.15 Recent and Contemporary Utopian Communities Before we look at cyberspace communities, it is important to recognize the persistence of “conventional” utopian communities into the late-twentieth- and early-twenty-first centuries.

…

More generally, according to countless newspapers and magazines, television and radio programs, opinion surveys, and, not least, websites and Internet discussions, much of the world has for years now been experiencing “techno-mania” of an unprecedented intensity. Not only are endless high-tech advances all the rage, but those advances—especially computers, the Internet, the Web, cell phones, Skype, iPods, iPhones, and, most recently, iPads—are rapidly transforming the world, and generally for the better. By the time of his death in 2011, Apple Computer co-founder Steve Jobs had become the foremost promoter of “techno-mania,” though hardly the only one.2 We are given to believe that Americans have never seen so much scientific and technological change in so short a time and have rarely been so optimistic about the future.

…

See also “Texting is not Talking,” Boston Globe, Editorial, June 16, 2009, A14; and Matt Richtel, “In The Resurgence of Utopianism 16 17 18 19 20 Study, Texting Lifts Crash Risk by Wide Margin,” New York Times, July 28, 2009, A1, A15. See also Verne Kopytoff, “To Match Profit with Popularity, Skype Looks to New Markets,” New York Times, December 22, 2010, B1, B2. This paragraph and its quotations are adapted from The Center for Land Use Interpretation, “Drop City Site,” http://ludb.clui.org/ex/i/ CO3134. See also Timothy Miller, “Roots of Communal Revival, 1962–1966,” http://www.thefarm.org/lifestyle/root2.html.

The New Kingmakers
by Stephen O'Grady
Published 14 Mar 2013

In addition to the hard output—potentially useful software—this offers soft gains in goodwill, talent identification, and recruitment that usually more than offset the costs. Ultimately, developers are going to use open source whether you like it not. If you want to create a developer friendly atmosphere, then, you must create an open source friendly atmosphere. Go Global with Your Hiring Before tools like distributed version control, instant messaging, and Skype existed, working from home was a synonym for taking a day off. Attitudes toward remote workers have shifted over the past decade, even within some of the largest employers in the world. Still, skepticism remains—and with good reason. As Zack Urlocker, COO at Zendesk, puts it: “Distributed development is not cheaper, much harder, but worth it.”

…

As Marc Andreessen noted in his Wall Street Journal op-ed “Why Software is Eating the World,” the world’s largest bookseller (Amazon), largest video service by number of subscribers (Netflix), most-dominant music companies (Apple, Spotify, and Pandora), fastest-growing entertainment companies (Rovio, Zynga), fastest-growing telecom company (Skype), largest direct marketing company (Google), and best new movie production company (Pixar) are all fundamentally software companies. It should be no surprise that even traditional businesses like Sears are trying to become software enabled via APIs. Those that aren’t following suit should be. The alternative isn’t keeping things the way they are now—it’s watching developers help build and extend your competitors’ business.

Tools of Titans: The Tactics, Routines, and Habits of Billionaires, Icons, and World-Class Performers
by Timothy Ferriss
Published 6 Dec 2016

In my limited experience, if anything is going to go wrong (and undetected until too late), it’ll be a loose fitting on one of these. Bluecell 5-pack of microphone windscreen foam covers: These minimize the clicks, pops, and other noises picked up from vocals, as well as background noises and actual wind. Brand doesn’t matter much here. Phone/Skype Interviews * * * Ecamm Call Recorder for Skype: This is used for recording “phoners” via Skype. I haven’t found any software that blows me away, but this gets the job done. I’ve used it for more than 50% of my podcast interviews. Zencastr also gets good reviews but sometimes requires a lot of hard drive space on the part of your interviewee.

…

When I was interviewing athletes and coaches from 2008 to 2010, digging up non-obvious tactics for The 4-Hour Body, I sent different combinations of the following questions to dozens of experts. These can be modified for any skill or topic, not just sports. Just replace [SPORT] with what you want to learn, and track down your mentors. You can often find past gold and silver medalists willing to answer these via Skype for $50 to $100 per hour, which is an incredible steal and could save you years of wasted effort. Who is good at [SPORT] despite being poorly built for it? Who’s good at this who shouldn’t be? Who are the most controversial or unorthodox athletes or trainers in [SPORT]? Why? What do you think of them?

…

In his words, but condensed for space, here are some examples of the types of lists James makes: 10 old ideas I can make new 10 ridiculous things I would invent (e.g., the smart toilet) 10 books I can write (The Choose Yourself Guide to an Alternative Education, etc). 10 business ideas for Google/Amazon/Twitter/etc. 10 people I can send ideas to 10 podcast ideas or videos I can shoot (e.g., Lunch with James, a video podcast where I just have lunch with people over Skype and we chat) 10 industries where I can remove the middleman 10 things I disagree with that everyone else assumes is religion (college, home ownership, voting, doctors, etc.) 10 ways to take old posts of mine and make books out of them 10 people I want to be friends with (then figure out the first step to contact them) 10 things I learned yesterday 10 things I can do differently today 10 ways I can save time 10 things I learned from X, where X is someone I’ve recently spoken with or read a book by or about.

Shipping Greatness
by Chris Vander Mey
Published 23 Aug 2012

For example, when I worked on Google Talk, I had a mission: “Allow anyone to communicate with anyone else, anywhere, on any device.” I looked at the competitive landscape for unified communications, video conferencing, and VoIP. I looked at Google’s unique assets. One unique and durable differentiator was that unlike Skype or other video conferencing providers, we could use Google’s massive cloud infrastructure to provide video conferencing through a switching technology, rather than through the older and much more expensive encode-decode-mix-encode-decode process. Typically, multiway video systems like that cost tens of thousands of dollars and worked poorly because the hardware added so much latency.

…

When I looked at our millions of Google Apps customers and industry trends, I saw an emerging market segment composed of workers who were increasingly distributed and working from home. On top of that, the conference-calling space was huge, and we had powerful assets in Google Voice that we could offer to users. Given this data, I argued that we should try to lead the market in low-cost unified communications for businesses. This strategy would enable us to leapfrog Skype’s older technology and undercut Microsoft’s more expensive systems in the SMB and Midmarket segments. Ultimately, you can see that Google didn’t follow this strategy, choosing instead to emphasize its social efforts and Google+ Hangouts. But you get the point. As you think about your company, customers, and competition, pay special attention to how your product will serve your customers better than the competition’s product in the long term.

…

If you’re based in California, for example, New York will only assume something was miscommunicated, get on a plane, fly to California, and complain loudly. Even the best engineering teams in Sydney and India, on the other hand, straight-up panic. They’re so far away from the States that they assume they’re misunderstood, underappreciated, and kept out of the loop. The best thing you can do to ameliorate these feelings is to overcommunicate. Use Skype, Google+ Hangouts, WebEx, and generally anything you can get your hands on to increase the quality of your communication with your remote teams. Because developers hate using telephones, reducing initiation friction is really important. One team I had at Google was split between Seattle and Mountain View.

The $100 Startup: Reinvent the Way You Make a Living, Do What You Love, and Create a New Future
by Chris Guillebeau
Published 7 May 2012

During an unconventional book tour, I traveled to sixty-three cities in the United States and Canada (and eventually more than fifteen additional countries), meeting with people who had made the switch from working for The Man to working for themselves. I then worked with a small team to create a comprehensive, multiyear study involving more than a hundred interview subjects. Combing through reams of data (more than four thousand pages of written survey answers in addition to hundreds of phone calls, Skype sessions, and back-and-forth emails), I compiled the most important lessons, which are offered here for your review and action. This blueprint to freedom is fully customizable and highly actionable. At many points along the way, you’ll have a chance to pause and work on your own plan before continuing to learn more about what other people have done.

…

How did Lisa do it … and what lessons could we learn from her? Each case study subject completed several detailed surveys about his or her business, including financial data and demographics, in addition to dozens of open-ended questions. The group surveys were followed up with further individual questions in hundreds of emails, phone calls, Skype video calls, and in-person meetings in fifteen cities around the world. My goal was to create a narrative by finding common themes among a diverse group. The collected data would be enough for several thick books by itself, but I’ve tried to present only the most important information here. You can learn more about the methodology for the study, including survey data and specific interviews, at 100startup.com.

…

The change came in the form of a 25 percent raise, something he was initially afraid to do, but he was greatly relieved after it was done. “The simple act of raising my rates by 25 percent allowed me to either work seven hours less a week or make a significant increase in my monthly income,” he told me on a Skype call from Belfast. “The other, unexpected benefit was that it gave me much more confidence. Until I upped the rates, I didn’t make the connection that I was worth more than I had been charging.” Andy’s story was repeated in various forms by other service providers and a few product-based businesses too.

The Snowden Files: The Inside Story of the World's Most Wanted Man
by Luke Harding
Published 7 Feb 2014

Let off the legal leash and urged to make America safe, the NSA and its British junior partner, the Government Communications Headquarters, GCHQ (secretly allied with the internet and telecommunications giants who control the hardware), have used all their technical skills to ‘master the internet’. That is their phrase, not ours. Democratic control has been vague, smothered in secrecy and plainly inadequate. The result has been a world that is spied on. The technologies that the west has trumpeted as forces for individual freedom and democracy – Google, Skype, mobile phones, GPS, YouTube, Tor, e-commerce, internet banking and all the rest – are turning into machines for surveillance that would have astonished George Orwell, the author of 1984. The Guardian was, I am glad to say, first among the free press to publish Snowden’s revelations. We saw it as our duty to break the taboos of secrecy, with due regard, as Snowden himself wanted, to the safety of individuals and the protection of genuinely sensitive intelligence material.

…

This is indeed a lot of data – more than 21 petabytes a day – and the equivalent of sending all the information in the British Library 192 times every 24 hours. Yet inside GCHQ there is still anxiety that the organisation will fall behind. One of the team responsible for managing TEMPORA sets out how the agency’s ‘mission role’ grew. New techniques had given GCHQ access to huge amount of new data or ‘light’ – emails, phone calls and Skype conversations. ‘Over the last five years, GCHQ’s access to “light” [has] increased by 7,000 per cent.’ The amount of material being analysed and processed had increased by 3,000 per cent, he said – an astonishing figure. The agency was ‘breaking new ground’ but also struggling to keep up. ‘The complexity of our mission has evolved to the point where existing management capability is no longer fit for purpose.’

…

One slide emphasised the dates when Silicon Valley’s technology companies apparently signed up and become corporate partners of the spy agency. The first to provide PRISM material was Microsoft. The date was 11 September 2007. This was six years after 9/11. Next came Yahoo (March 2008) and Google (January 2009). Then Facebook (June 2009), PalTalk (December 2009), YouTube (September 2010), Skype (February 2011) and AOL (March 2011). For reasons unknown, Apple held out for five years. It was the last major tech company to sign up. It joined in October 2012 – exactly a year after Jobs’s death. The top-secret PRISM program allows the US intelligence community to gain access to a large amount of digital information – emails, Facebook posts and instant messages.

Humans Are Underrated: What High Achievers Know That Brilliant Machines Never Will
by Geoff Colvin
Published 3 Aug 2015

A broad description of the disappointing progress of artificial intelligence in translating languages, playing chess, and performing other tasks as of 1972 can be found in Hubert L. Dreyfus, What Computers Can’t Do: A Critique of Artificial Reason (Harper & Row, 1972). Now Google translates written language for free . . . See https://translate.google.com/. Regarding Skype, see “Skype Update Translates English and Spanish in Real Time,” Christian Science Monitor, 15 December 2014. Economists Frank Levy and Richard J. Murnane . . . Levy and Murnane, The New Division of Labor: How Computers Are Creating the Next Job Market (Princeton University Press, 2004). Steven Pinker observed in 2007 . . .

…

While it seems like common sense that the skills computers can’t acquire will be valuable, the lesson of history is that it’s dangerous to claim there are any skills that computers cannot eventually acquire. The trail of embarrassing predictions goes way back. Early researchers in computer translation of languages were highly pessimistic that the field could ever progress beyond its nearly useless state as of the mid-1960s; now Google translates written language for free, and Skype translates spoken language in real time, for free. Hubert Dreyfus of MIT, in a 1972 book called What Computers Can’t Do, saw little hope that computers could make significant further progress in playing chess beyond the mediocre level then achieved; but a computer beat the world champion, Garry Kasparov, in 1997.

…

K., 165 Ryder Cup, 117–20, 124 Saddam Hussein, 148, 149 Saloner, Garth, 196 Sartre, Jean-Paul, 170, 171 scanning vs. focusing, 184–86 Schank, Roger, 155 Schmidt, Eric, 203 See’s Candy, 171 senses, 59–60 September 11 attacks, 134, 138 sex, 153 sexually violent persons (SVPs), 33–36, 43 Shapiro, Johanna, 85 Shenk, Joshua Wolf, 170–71 Shy, John, 106 Simmel, Marianne, 150, 153 Skype, 40 sleep, 80–81 Smith, Adam, 64, 172 social abilities and sensitivity, 125, 132, 135, 178, 191 developing, 195–96, 199, 209–10 of women, 125, 178–83, 186–89, 210 social interactions and relationships, 36–40, 71, 129 bonding in, 63–64, 153 brain and, 36–40, 57, 64–66 and downside of social media, 61–64, 82 emotions in, see emotions empathy in, see empathy in groups, 125–29, 134–35, 138, 140 innovation and, 167–69 in-person, 56–58, 63–66, 129–31 jobs and, 44–45, 47–49 military and, 49–53 mimicry in, 77–78, 187 phones and, 61–63, 67, 82, 173, 174 physical proximity and, 171–74 Southwest Airlines and, 193–94, 210 spoken conversations, 61 technology and, 55–68, 82 testosterone and, 181, 187–88, 190, 195 texting, 56, 61, 63, 67, 82, 83 touch and, 59–60 sociometric badges, 126–28, 164, 169, 170 Sony, 5, 164 Southwest Airlines, 193–94, 210 Stanford University, 197–98 status competition, 188–89 stories, 141–60 authenticity of, 146–47 brain and, 147, 157 DARPA’s study of, 156–57 Denning and, 141–47 happy endings in, 155–56 in-person telling of, 146, 147, 152, 158–60 memory and, 155, 158–60 motivation and causality in, 148–51 neural coupling and, 151–52 oxytocin and, 153–54 power of, 145, 148, 151, 154, 158–60 structure of, 153–55 technology and, 145–48 Strategic Air Command, 139 Strategic Social Interaction Modules, 202–3 stress, 29 Stricker, Steve, 119–20 submarine commanders, 98 Sullivan, John, 168 Summers, Lawrence H., 12–15 Sunday Times (London), 165 surgery, 139–40 survival, 78–79, 136, 140 Symantec, 17 systemizers vs. empathizers, 182–84, 191 System 1 and System 2, 149 taker cultures, 133 Taleb, Nassim Nicholas, 148 teams and groups, 116, 117–40, 191 at Apple, 138 at Bank of America, 128 cognitive vs. social, 134–35 conformity and, 135–36 creativity in, 169, 170, 176–77 effectiveness of, 125–29, 131–35, 137, 138 engagement in, 169–71, 74 exploration in, 169, 171 groupthink and, 168–69 happiness and, 136–37 human interaction in, 125–29, 134–35, 138, 140 importance of, 120–22 IQ of, 122–25, 178–80, 188–89 online interaction and, 129–31, 79–80 physical distance and, 173–74 piloting, 138–39, 140 rowing, 136–37 Ryder Cup, 117–20, 124 social sensitivity in, 125, 132, 135, 178 status competition in, 188–89 surgical, 139–40 time needed in, 137–39 of two, 170–71 women in, 125, 178–80, 188–89 technology, 88–89, 160, 171–72, 175, 191, 192, 199, 210, 212 brain and, 59 business models and, 58 fear of, 10–11 gender differences and, 181, 183 groups and, 129–31 information, 6, 16–18, 48, 49, 53, 54, 72, 121, 184, 199–203 jobs eliminated by, 3–4, 10–14, 45 social interaction and, 55–68, 82 stories and, 145–48 turning points in, 15–17 see also computers television, 82 Terminator movies, 42 terrorists and insurgents, 156–58 testosterone, 181, 187–88, 190, 195 texting, 56, 61, 63, 67, 82, 83 Thatcher, Margaret, 186 Thinking, Fast and Slow (Kahneman), 133 thinking modes, System 1 and System 2, 149 Think Like a Commander, 200 Thomas, Elizabeth Marshall, 38–39 Thrun, Sebastian, 197–98 Tichy, Noel, 205 Tolkien, J.

To Be a Machine: Adventures Among Cyborgs, Utopians, Hackers, and the Futurists Solving the Modest Problem of Death
by Mark O'Connell
Published 28 Feb 2017

“I wouldn’t describe myself these days as a transhumanist,” Nick told me one evening over dinner at an Indian restaurant near the Future of Humanity Institute. Though he was married, his wife and young son were based in Canada, and he lived alone in Oxford. The arrangement involved frequent transatlantic flights, and regular Skype check-ins; regrettable though it was from a work-life balance point of view, it allowed him to focus on his research to a degree that would not otherwise have been possible. (He ate at this particular restaurant so frequently that the waiter had brought him a chicken curry without his having to make any explicit request for same.)

…

It seemed to me odd, though not especially surprising, that a hypothetical danger arising from a still nonexistent technology would, for these billionaire entrepreneurs, be more worthy of investment than, say, clean water in the developing world or the problem of grotesque income inequality in their own country. It was, I learned, a question of return on investment—of time, and money, and effort. The person I learned this from was Viktoriya Krakovna, the Harvard mathematics PhD student who had cofounded—along with the MIT cosmologist Max Tegmark and Skype founder Jann Tallinn—the Future of Life Institute, which earlier that year had received an endowment of $10 million from Musk in order to establish a global research initiative aimed at averting AI catastrophe. “It is about how much bang you get for your buck,” she said, the American idiom rendered strange by her Ukrainian accent, with its percussive plosives, its throttled vowels.

…

When I thought of DARPA, I thought, among other things, of its administration of the so-called Information Awareness Office, exposed by the former CIA employee Edward Snowden as a mass surveillance operation organized around a database for the collection and storage of the personal information (emails, telephone records, social networking messages, credit card and banking transactions) of every single resident of the United States, along with those of many other countries, all of which was accomplished by tapping into the user data of marquee-name tech companies like Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, Skype, Google—the corporate proprietors of the sum of things that might be factually and usefully said about you, your information. “Look at him go!” said Prabhakar now, as the robot rounded the second safety barrier, bringing the car over a line in the sand, and gently to a halt in front of the door through which the industrial disaster zone stage set was to be accessed by means of knob-turning.

Brilliant, Crazy, Cocky: How the Top 1% of Entrepreneurs Profit From Global Chaos
by Sarah Lacy
Published 6 Jan 2011

According to Dow Jones Venture Source, from 2001 to 2008, venture capitalists invested a whopping $10 bil ion in Israel, but those investments returned a paltry $860 mil ion in IPOs and acquisitions over the same period. Meanwhile, Europe—a place long considered too stodgy and risk-adverse for venture capital investing—returned $6.3 bil ion to venture investors over the same period. Sure, two-thirds of that was eBay’s acquisition of Skype, but that’s exactly the point: Israel had no big, single multibil ion homerun of the last 10 years, just a bunch of singles and misses. To be fair, the numbers probably don’t count al of Israel’s exits over the last decade. For one thing, many companies move their headquarters from Israel to the United States after raising money, so they may get counted as Israeli when they take funding and American by the time they get bought or go public.

…

There is no way to sugarcoat that, and LPs are hurting from that.” Saul Klein, an investor from London-based Index Ventures, is another concerned believer in Israel. While Israel has declined, Index has had a hugely successful decade investing in stodgy old London, a place far less known for taking entrepreneurial risk. Among Index’s hits are Skype, MySQL, and last.fm, which netted nearly $3 bil ion in returns between them. Klein puts it best when he says, “Israel is in serious danger of being a one-decade wonder.” The keys to both the mystery of Israel’s great run in the 1990s and the mystery of why its returns crumbled a decade later are found by looking at a few factors: the unique nothing-to-lose chutzpah of Israeli entrepreneurs, several smart policy moves by the Israeli government that played to the country’s endemic strengths, and some stel ar market timing.

…

See Emerging markets Digg Digital Equipment Corporation Digu Discovery Channel Disney, Walt Disney video Djalal, Dino Patti Domino’s Pizza, Brazil Dot-com crash (2000) Dow Jones Venture Source Dubai, as investor Duke University eBay: censorship issues as competitor founder of as Internet power PayPal purchase Skype purchase as tech giant Economic issues: Brazil China India Indonesia Israel Rwanda U.S. Economic Policy Institute Edison, Leontinus Eisenberg, Michael Eko India Financial Services eLance El ison, Larry Emerging markets. See also specific countries advantages of entrepreneurship in new world order vis-à-vis U.S.

Scotland’s Jesus: The Only Officially Non-Racist Comedian
by Frankie Boyle
Published 23 Oct 2013

They’ve stayed together through thick and thin – or Jack and Kelly, as they’re otherwise known. They wanted to inject something new into the show so they’ve brought back Sharon – who, of course, has had so many new things injected into her you could bounce a coin off her face. Sharon’s set to do X Factor mentoring by Skype. Is Skyping right for an X Factor judge? Maybe I’m tiring of the show but the way I’d most like to see them giving advice is via an Ouija board. Contestants mustn’t worry, as they can ask Simon’s advice at any point, just by writing their question in urine dribbled from an upturned crucifix, then throwing it into the fire.

…

All these kooky shows about not being able to relate to your dad performed by people as indifferent to the fate of the Earth as a Dr Who villain. It’s bizarre in an age in which we are increasingly connected that we willingly choke our planet by taking unnecessary journeys. Flights and trains are packed with business arseholes going to meet people they could Skype, who spend the whole journey calling, texting, emailing home. The ultimate aspiration is to be ‘jet set’, jumping on planes to be away from our families, with headphones on to be away from ourselves. How much bleaker do things need to get for these guys? Extreme weather events are becoming more powerful and more frequent.

…

No human contact for three months now. Just dildos. Surviving on the moisture that condenses on their cold plastic shafts. Send help. Please don’t send dildos. I confess I’ve just bought my son an iPad. With the help of a Stanley knife I’ve wedged it in the face of his favourite teddy bear so I can Skype him when I’m on tour. I confess I forgot to account for the cooling ventilation holes at the back. Lucky he’s still a bit of a bed wetter, though I suspect there could be a few problems in later life caused by having to urinate on a burning fluffy bear with the face of his father. There’s actually a new mobile phone aimed at four-year-olds.

The Future of the Professions: How Technology Will Transform the Work of Human Experts
by Richard Susskind and Daniel Susskind
Published 24 Aug 2015

In a fairly primitive way, this is already happening via Skype. Doctors, for example, use telemedicine to consult with their patients, employing traditional methods but from a distance; while religious leaders use online platforms to preach and proselytize without meeting their congregants and possible converts in person. In Chapter 2 there are many other illustrations. Future systems, using ‘telepresence’ techniques (for example, high definition desktop-to-desktop video-conferencing), will provide an experience for both provider and recipient that is greatly superior to current video-conferencing systems. We think of telepresence as ‘Skype on steroids’.

…

In other words, this is the inability of a sceptic, because of the shortcomings of current technology, to concede that future systems may be radically more powerful than those of today. Thus, senior doctors and lawyers might reject the idea of conducting a consultation by video-conference because of, say, a poor recent experience of a Skype call with a grandchild. A variation of this myopia is the inability to imagine that a modest user base of today might extend from a small group of early adopters to mainstream use. Technological myopia is a cousin of the phenomenon of ‘retrospective modernism’, as identified by Frederick Maitland, the legal historian.90 He was referring to the limitations of viewing and evaluating historical events through the lens of today.

…

Instead, what we have here is the relocation of jobs and tasks to similarly qualified (or even better credentialed) individuals who undertake work at lower cost than traditional professionals, employed in expensive buildings, in expensive cities, in countries where wages are high. In our research, we were told, for instance, of architects in Kenya who draw up plans for international clients, and of teachers in India who provide tutorials to British students by Skype—at far lower rates than in the United Kingdom and United States. There are two broad approaches here. The first is ‘offshoring’, when an organization transfers work packages to one of its lower-cost centres, for example, in Malaysia. On this model, the work is still undertaken within the boundaries of the organization, but is done in places where overheads, and especially wages, are lower.

Is the Internet Changing the Way You Think?: The Net's Impact on Our Minds and Future
by John Brockman
Published 18 Jan 2011

For the Internet is currently both the oxygen of a truly open society and of spectacular transnational terrorism. Here are two snippets that illustrate this duality: “On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog,” says the cunning canine in Peter Steiner’s 1993 New Yorker cartoon; and on the Internet, any two communicators can believe they are the world. “The media is [sic] coming!” Skyped the Lashkar-e-Taiba handler to the killers for God at the Taj Hotel in Mumbai, signaling to them that now was the best timing for their martyrdom. Around the Shi’ite holiday of Ashura—December 28, 2009—I received an e-mail from a friend in Tehran who said how helpless he felt to stop the merciless beating of a young woman by government thugs, but he went on to say, “We will win this thing if the West does nothing but help us keep the lines of communication open with satellite Internet.”

…

No, the Internet is changing the way I think because its whole is greater than the sum of its parts—because of its massive connectivity and the resulting emergent phenomena. When I was a child, they said we would be living on the moon, that we would have antigravity jet packs and videophones. They lied about everything but the videophones. Via private blogs, Skype, and a $40 webcam, I can collaborate with my colleagues, write equations on my blackboard, and build networks of thought that stagger me with their effectiveness. My students and I work together so well through the Internet that its always-on library dominates our discussions and helps us find the sharp questions that drive our research and thinking infinitely faster than before.

…

Lesser minds would come to pay homage and, let’s be honest, use the famous library, since that was the only way of knowing what was known and who knew it. The centers ruled and knew it. Darkness is falling when I see the light on in the lab and stop by to see who else is working late. There’s a conversation going on over Skype. It’s totally incomprehensible. Even its sounds are unfamiliar. There’s no Rosetta Stone software for the language my two students are learning from their correspondent, who sits in a café in a wretched oiltown on the edge of the rain forest in Ecuador. It’s spoken only by a few hundred Indians. All but their children were born as nomads, in a forest that has the luck to be sitting on billions of barrels of oil.

Babel No More: The Search for the World's Most Extraordinary Language Learners
by Michael Erard
Published 10 Jan 2012

No, these methods probably weren’t so special, actually. Is this a credible beginning for a hyperpolyglot? A modern person would think, To communicate, one must communicate. To talk meaningfully, one must have explicit lessons in doing so, you might suppose. But Mezzofanti did no role plays, no skits; had no phone apps; didn’t Skype with his native-speaking tutor. The language lab was an invention two hundred years away. As I later found, hyperpolyglots tend to succeed no matter the type of specific teaching methods. Some are devoted autodidacts; others happily study in classrooms; others learn what they need from other speakers.

…

An email address and a phone number appeared in his post. One by one, forum members reported that they’d spoken with Fazah in Russian, or Cantonese, or Mandarin, or Spanish, claiming that he speaks with an accent in those languages, but he’s a nice guy and clearly passionate about languages. Someone said they were going to hire him to teach via Skype. I watched all this unfold with bemusement—Fazah hadn’t shied from public performances in the past. Why wasn’t he defending himself now? In this vacuum, his reputation took its final, fatal dive. In 1997, he’d appeared on a Chilean TV show, Viva el lunes. As with the tournament that Pope Gregory XVI had arranged for Mezzofanti, so much depended upon a single spectacle.

…

The only solution was to interrogate a live person. Thinking I would meet a pop culture polyglot, I found instead Alexander, a man who practices the polyglottish lifestyle that he preaches. Alexander doesn’t pursue oral communication, though he could say a lot of things in his languages. Once, to humor me, he logged on to Skype with a fellow language aficionado and had a conversation that switched from English to Russian to Korean to Arabic. Mostly, he reads. He criticizes the modern language-learning paradigm of shopping, migration, and tourism that artist Rainer Ganahl identifies as characteristic of our era. Instead, he longs to learn languages for the reasons that drove monks and philologists centuries ago, a semimystical desire to touch the origins of literary texts.

American Kingpin: The Epic Hunt for the Criminal Mastermind Behind the Silk Road
by Nick Bilton
Published 15 Mar 2017

Given that there was nowhere for Ross to sit that adhered to that protocol, he turned around and walked back outside. He had a lot on his mind, as always. He had made plans with Julia to video chat that evening. “Can we skype tonight?” she had asked over e-mail. “Sure, what time?” “Is 8 my time good?” “Sure, see you then,” he wrote, following up with a “:)” as he knew exactly what kind of Skyping they’d be doing. The air was calm as Ross contemplated where to go next. He needed Wi-Fi but didn’t have many options at 3:00 p.m. in this sleepy corner of the city. He looked to his left, in the direction he had just come from, and knew Cup Coffee Bar had closed an hour earlier.

…

It had been difficult for Tyrus to be away from his dad so much, but Jared had explained that this was all temporary, and the travel was important because “I’m trying to catch a pirate who is doing bad things.” (Tyrus, hearing this, accepted his father’s quest. Pirates, after all, were bad characters in the storybooks he read, and needed to be caught.) But Tyrus had one request, that Jared Skype with him each night before bed. “Of course,” Jared replied as they both curled up on the couch and fell asleep. The next morning Jared woke up and left for work again. As he pulled his car into the parking lot of the HSI offices in Chicago and it chugged to a stop, his phone rang with a New York phone number.

…

To top it all off, his poison oak rash hadn’t gone away. But there were things to be grateful for. Ross was soon going to Austin, where he would see Julia. She had told him in an e-mail she would pick him up from the airport, and he could stay with her. Just like old times. They had been having romantic Skype sessions a lot too and sending long, dirty e-mails back and forth about what they would do to each other in person. Ross had also had an epiphany over the weekend. After the bonfire and the fireworks on Ocean Beach, he had written in his diary (alongside his travails on the Silk Road and an explanation for how he got the poison oak rash) that he needed to “eat well, get good sleep, and meditate so I can stay positive.” 12:15 p.m.

Trees on Mars: Our Obsession With the Future
by Hal Niedzviecki
Published 15 Mar 2015

Half the students had words we tangentially associate with the elderly—words, for instance, like Florida (which became the name of the study). All the students were then asked to walk down the hall to another room. The students who had been given the Florida grouping of words walked down the hall at a noticeably slower pace. They were subconsciously influenced by the set of words they had read.34 Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Twitter, Skype, Google. These companies are not just the new middlemen, the monopolistic cultural arbitrators of their day, the new judges, the new Hollywood, the new record company A&R. They are also our touchstones, verbs, and identities. They are the twenty-first century. And they are not just offering us momentary fame and fortune decided on by the whims of boardroom executives.

…

What we see when we look at the XPrize is, again, the philosophy of future first embodied in real life, and altering our institutions on the most elemental level. If institutions ranging from colleges to governments can’t get us to the future fast enough, then we need to replace them with newer, better institutions. Or maybe, we don’t need institutions at all. ° ° ° ° ° ° To learn more about the XPrize philosophy, I reach Mark Winter via Skype. Winter is the senior director of the Qualcomm Tricorder XPrize Challenge. He has had a thirty-year-plus career in Silicon Valley working for companies including Adobe and Apple. Most recently he was a founder and executive vice president of a company providing wireless monitoring of blood glucose levels for people with diabetes.

…

Novak is a self-described amateur historian and futurist best known for his popular and often very funny blog Paleofuture, which lived on the website of the Smithsonian Institute and now resides on Gizmodo.com.28 Paleofuture chronicles what people in the recent past thought about the future. Novak blogs about advertisements, commercials, TV shows—The Jetsons!—newspaper articles, 1960s time capsules, letters to the year 2000, and so much more. I reach Matt Novak via Skype in his hometown of Los Angeles. He listens attentively to my theory about the move to a different conception of future in which individuals are empowered and even required to pursue the time to come. But he’s not convinced. He warns me about making blanket statements about a certain generation and their conception of the future.

We Are All Fast-Food Workers Now: The Global Uprising Against Poverty Wages
by Annelise Orleck
Published 27 Feb 2018

With photographer Elizabeth Cooke, I conducted interviews in windowless worker dormitories, union offices, and on the streets, at protest marches, in city council hearing rooms, in brightly lit restaurants and shaded back rooms, in elegantly shabby colonial hotels, at factory gates, by phone and via Skype. I interviewed in English, my native tongue, and with interpreters, in Spanish, Khmer, Tagalog, Visayan languages, Bangla, Mixtec, and Zapotec. Oxnard translator Yessica Ramirez navigated the distinct dialects spoken by indigenous Oaxacans. In Manila, Joanna Bernice Coronacion deftly switched back and forth between Tagalog and English, and Jamaia Montenegro translated from the Visayan languages spoken in the southern Philippines.

…

Interview with Tep Saroeung, Phnom Penh, November 29, 2015. 2. Chhay Channyda and Vincent MacIsaac, “Beer Girl Allies Target Carslberg,” Phnom Penh Post, August 9, 2011. 3. “CFSWF Response to the Carlsberg Statement Issued on February 9, 2016,” March 4, 2016, https://sarmorablog.wordpress.com. CHAPTER 5—HOTEL HOUSEKEEPERS GO NORMA RAE 1. Skype interview with Massimo Frattini, October 20, 2015. 2. “The Law of Hotel Housekeeper Occupational Health & Safety,” Transnational Development Clinic at Yale Law School, February 25, 2014, http://www.iuf.org/w/sites/default/files/TheLawofHotelHousekeepers.pdf. 3. Interview with Chhim Sitthar and Pao Chhumony, Phnom Penh, November 26, 2015. 4.

…

Interview with Chhim Sitthar, Phnom Penh, November 27, 2015; e-mail correspondence with Em Atienza, June 22, 2016; Rishi Iyengar, “The Killing Time: Inside Rodrigo Duterte’s War on Drugs,” Time, August 25, 2016. 6. Interview with Maria Elena Durazo, Los Angeles, September 11, 2015; interview with Josua Mata, Manila, November 22, 2015. 7. Skype interview with Moshrefa Mishu, October 10, 2015. 8. Kim Scipes, KMU: Building Genuine Trade Unionism in the Philippines, 1980–1994 (Quezon City: New Day Books, 1996). 9. Iain Boal, “Up from the Bottom,” in First World, Ha Ha Ha! The Zapatista Challenge, ed. Elaine Katzenberger (San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1995). 10.

Future Crimes: Everything Is Connected, Everyone Is Vulnerable and What We Can Do About It
by Marc Goodman
Published 24 Feb 2015

The majority of mid- and high-range televisions today are IoT compatible and come preloaded with apps such as Netflix, Skype, Facebook, and Hulu, not to mention embedded cameras, microphones, and USB ports. Worldwide nearly ninety million smart TVs were sold in 2013, and soon legacy “dumb” TV sets will be hard to find, a potentially troubling trend for those who value privacy and security. Many brands have been found to contain security vulnerabilities, such as Samsung Smart TVs, which allowed hackers to remotely turn on the built-in camera meant for Skype calls and surreptitiously snap photographs and watch viewers in their living rooms and bedrooms.

…

The fact is that each of us has private special moments in our lives, made exceptional by limiting with whom we share such intimacies. For those who believe the fallacy of nothing to hide, perhaps a lesson in something to fear might be appropriate, for all of us have details in our lives we would rather not share. For example, Google Voice, Skype, your mobile phone carrier, and any number of government agencies have records of anyone who has ever phoned an abortion clinic, a suicide hotline, or a local chapter of Alcoholics Anonymous. Data aggregators know who has searched for “slutty cheerleaders,” “Viagra,” or “Prozac” across any of their electronic devices.

…

When the attackers set out to sea from Pakistan under cover of darkness, they wore night-vision goggles and navigated to Mumbai using GPS handsets. They carried BlackBerrys containing PDF files of the hotel floor plans and used Google Earth to explore 3-D models of target venues to determine optimal entry and exit points. During the melee, LeT assassins used satellite phones, GSM handsets, and Skype to coordinate with their Pakistan-based command center, which monitored broadcast news, the Internet, and social media to provide real-time tactical direction to its ground assault team. When a bystander tweeted a photograph of police commandos rappelling from a helicopter onto the roof of the besieged Jewish community building, the terrorist ops center intercepted the photograph, alerted its attackers, and directed them to a stairwell leading to the roof.

How to Be Human: An Autistic Man's Guide to Life
by Jory Fleming
Published 19 Apr 2021

Plus one sentiment that stopped me cold: “Because no human-generated space is going to be a safe space for me forever.” And most of all, how to capture that in a book? The answer: let Jory speak for himself. To that end, I sat with hundreds of transcript pages from conversations, many conducted over Skype, but some had on walks through the British university city of Oxford or seated on park benches, overlooking quaint English gardens, surrounded by the twitter of birds. We would often circle back to the same topic weeks or even months apart, so I took the liberty of grouping related material in one place.

…

When you have some level of trust, then people share something that they would not have shared otherwise. It’s tied into vulnerability or real thoughts. Anytime you can get to real thoughts, as opposed to small talk, or trust, or create a shared value, that is always worth it. It only happens in person too. You can maybe do it over video calling or Skype, but really in person is where you get those things, at least as I’ve found it. I don’t really form first impressions. The picture is always going to start off really bad because it takes me a while. I can carry on a conversation with almost anyone, but as far as feeling like I know that person, well, to get from that basic level to anything else, it probably takes about seven or eight separate interactions of at least twenty to thirty minutes, and only after a few months will I know some stuff about them.

…

I could do none of this without the wonderful Grecia Carattini, thank you. And extra thanks to sweet Cree, who never left my side or lap as I typed. I knew this story was something extraordinary when my two teenage boys would come home from school, silently set down their backpacks, tiptoe into the room, and listen as Jory and I Skyped. At the end of each conversation, they would say, “That was really interesting, especially the part about…” The greatest blessing and honor in my life is to be Nathaniel and BC’s mom. Thank you and love you with all of my head and all of my heart. —Lyric W. Winik More in Personal Memoirs The Glass Castle Shoe Dog The Girl with the Lower Back Tattoo Year of Yes An Invisible Thread Primates of Park Avenue About the Authors © RYAN DAWKINS JORY FLEMING recently completed a Master of Philosophy in environmental change and management at the University of Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar.

Curation Nation
by Rosenbaum, Steven
Published 27 Jan 2011

Many of those interviews were conducted in person, and rather than take notes, the conversations were recorded and then transcribed. The rest of the interviews were conducted via Skype, and those too were transcribed. In both cases the transcriptions were turned around almost magically by a team of online workers known as Turkers, who are members of an Amazon service called Mechanical Turk. I talk more about Mechanical Turk in chapter 6, so I won’t repeat the details here. Suffice it to say that the ability to have a Skype interview at 5 p.m. and have a transcript in your in box at 9 a.m. the next morning is for this author an awe-inspiring experience.

…

I feel and I see things that are just literally in front of me, not necessarily in front of anybody else. It’s been like that forever.” From ham radio, Pulver saw the early day of voice-as-software and was able to help shape and grow the Voice over Internet Protocol movement (VoIP), the shift from old-fashioned landlines to the often-free calls you can now make on Skype. He built a series of companies, including Vonage, and time and time again knew how to bet early and get out when the time was right. So when Pulver saw Twitter, he knew there was a need for a community, a conference, and a brand name: the 140 Conference (since 140 characters is the maximum you can use in a Twitter message).

…

Rosen, Jay Rosenblatt, Richard RSS feeds Rubel, Steve Rueter, Joseph Safe harbor protection Sambrook, Richard SB Nation Schlatter, Elizabeth Schmidt, Eric Scime, Erin Scoble, Robert scobleizer.com Scordato, Alexa Scott, Jason Scraping Search engine optimization (SEO) Seave, Ava SEED SEMRush 7 Days in September (film) Sexting ShareASale Sharp Hi8 Viewcams Shearer, Harry Shirky, Clay ShoeDazzle Shopkeepers, in Curation Nation Showtime Silberman, Michael Simpson, O. J. Sirulnick, Dave Skype Slate Sling Social media accidental curation and content strategy and as curation mechanism Flickr Flipboard Foursquare Magnify.net need for human filters (See also Facebook; MySpace; Twitter) SocialMediaToday.com Society of American Magicians Sohn, David Solis, Brian Soylent Green (film) Sponsorships Sports NBA Entertainment SB Nation Squidoo Srinivasan, Vasu Stanton, Louis L.

The End of Big: How the Internet Makes David the New Goliath
by Nicco Mele
Published 14 Apr 2013

But who wants to write in zeros and ones? Imagine if instead of typing E you typed the letter in zeros and ones, or binary code. It would look like this—01000101. That seems silly and inefficient, but in another sense, it is simply amazing. Every thing you do on your computer—every YouTube video you watch, every Skype call you make, every e-mail you send—is broken down into its requisite zeros and ones and then reassembled somewhere else. As Arthur C. Clarke says, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”22 Software was created in part to offer an abstraction of “electricity–no electricity,” so that you could use a mouse or type Shift + e to get E.

…

The most common platforms are Microsoft Windows, Apple’s Mac OS (operating system), and Linux (the open-source option common on Web servers). As a software platform, Microsoft Windows worries about communicating with the keyboard, the monitor, the mouse, and the printer—so that applications like Microsoft Word, Skype, Firefox, and Photoshop don’t have to. The platform provides efficiencies between the hardware and the applications, smoothing the user interface (so you don’t have to worry about the zeros and ones) and making the applications more efficient and able to specialize on what they do best—like word processing or Web browsing or any one of a number of things.

…

The message jumps to your phone and checks to see if you’re my mother’s phone. You’re not, so it jumps to the next phone. Is this my mother’s phone? And on and on—like the classic children’s book, Are You My Mother?—until the message finds my mother’s phone and is delivered. This is actually pretty similar to how Skype works right now in making voice phone calls. Mesh networking only functions well if a large number of devices are participating in the network. But it’s not a remote or new technology. It’s been around a while, and it is continuing to improve and change. The One Laptop per Child project out of MIT’s Media Lab saw mesh networking early on as a way to provide network connectivity in remote parts of the world lacking traditional network infrastructure.

Stuffocation
by James Wallman
Published 6 Dec 2013

A work of non-fiction may only have one name on the cover, but in truth it is the work of many people. There are a huge number of people without whom the book you are holding in your hands would not exist. More than 100 people gave up their time to discuss the idea with me over tea, coffee, lunch, dinner, beer, wine, Skype, Skype video call, telephone, and email. There are the people, especially on America’s West Coast and in Australia, who got up early or stayed up late so that the timings worked for them and me. There are the people whose work I have drawn on, both directly and indirectly. (I have tried to credit all those in the Endnotes.

…

In the past, Deborah Richmond in Berkshire in the UK, for instance, would have quit her corporate marketing job and become a hippy. But instead, she launched a business consultancy that means more to her called BrandYoga. And Olga Sasplugas might have just had a job as a dance therapist. But, thanks to her computer, the internet, and Skype, she chases debts, deals with distribution, runs spreadsheets – and everything else her New York-based business requires. But she does not do this from there, or even a regular office. She does it from Barcelona or Bali or India, or wherever she happens to be. “This way of life feels so normal and fun, and it’s so easy to do it,” she will tell you.

…

Your dedication to discovery, and to challenging the status quo and the conventional wisdom, is exactly the sort of thing that raises the fog a bit more, so that people like me can have a better view of the direction the world is turning. Thank you for that, and also, among other things: for your suggestions of more avenues to explore, for challenging and inspiring me over lunch and email and phone and Skype, for responding to far more fact-checking emails than strictly necessary, for patiently explaining how you do what you do, and for pushing me to re-examine whether I believed in what I believe – and whether I really was reading the data right. So, thank you: Richard Thaler, Oliver James, Barry Schwartz, Stuart Ewen, Robert Fogel, Chris Goodall, Michael Schrage, Ron Inglehart, Ryan Howell, Jeanne Arnold, Darby Saxbe, Travis Carter, Leaf van Boven, Tom Gilovich, Brian Wansink, Geoffrey Miller, Danny Miller, Rupert Pennant-Rea, Garson O’Toole, Daniel Franklin, John Andrews, Rob Hyndman, Corinne Shefner-Rogers, Jim Dearing, Juliet Schor, Anna Coote, Benjamin Kline Hunnicutt, Pippa Norris, Trudi Toyne, Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, Avner Offer, Peter Stearns, Joe Pine, Jim Gilmore, Grant McCracken, Blake Mycoskie, Rob Symington, Alice Marwick, Harry Parr, Sam Bompas, Jules Evans, Bob Cummins, Bernice Steinhardt, Chris Hoenig, Mark Tungate, Ann Mack, Albert Cañigueral, Anna-Maren Ashford, James O’Shaughnessy, Joe Goodman, Alastair Humphreys, Richard Layard, Tim Kasser, Vicki Robin, Gabriel Rossman, Janice Rutherford, and Eve Fisher.

This Chair Rocks: A Manifiesto Against Ageism
by Ashton Applewhite
Published 10 Feb 2016

Inexpensive video technology and storage sites like YouTube give people a new way to tell their story and get feedback, and not just from the grandchildren. My father worked with Buckminster Fuller and enjoyed tracking the work of his acolytes online. It deeply engaged him and ensured a steady trickle of geeky visitors dropping in to talk about the remarkable inventor. Ruth, my partner’s mom, and a bookseller, Skypes prospective customers on her iPad to show them her wares, making her unusually wired for a nonagenarian. I’ve resisted her entreaties to join Words With Friends, but she’s got six or eight games going at any time with no help from me. Asked on her seventieth wedding anniversary what was the most remarkable invention she’d witnessed during her lifetime, she answered, “My iPhone.”

…

There’s plenty of internalized ageism in the assumption on the part of older people that they’re too old to learn how to maneuver in a wired world, or don’t want to bother. My mom, who typed hundreds of long and entertaining letters over the years, claimed she couldn’t get the hang of e-mail. Pia Louise hosts a radio show called Living Portraits, and requires her guests to participate via Skype or Google Hangout. “I feel people my age, fifty-plus, should keep up with technology. Instead I find they respond that ‘they have no need for it,’” she wrote. “Yikes! What do you think?” Here’s my response on my Q&A blog, Yo, Is This Ageist? Because it applies to all guests, your policy isn’t ageist.

…

Editor Nancy Peske increasingly relies on her teenager and his best friend for help with certain skills she doesn’t have time to acquire, “and they’re more visual than I am,” she notes. “But I teach them big-picture things with tech and information they otherwise wouldn’t learn for years, so it’s an even exchange.” Getting together online is no substitute for actual “face time,” of course, although Apple’s or Skype’s simulacrum is a great way to check in on faraway friends or family, especially when moving around is difficult or travel expensive. The important thing is to sustain existing connections, be open to new ones—especially across generations—and to actively solicit them. Mix it up with friends of all ages In the US, nonfamily relationships tend to be age-homogenous.

The Slow Fix: Solve Problems, Work Smarter, and Live Better in a World Addicted to Speed
by Carl Honore
Published 29 Jan 2013

In the early 2000s a trio of software whizzes in Estonia wrote some code that made it easy to make telephone calls over the Internet. Result: the birth of one of the fastest-growing companies of the 21st century. A decade later the Skype headquarters in Tallinn, the capital of Estonia, remains a shrine to start-up chic, with bare brick walls, bean bags and funky art. Everywhere you look, multinational hipsters are sipping mineral water or fiddling with iPads. On a landing near the room where I meet Andres Kütt, Skype’s young, goateed business evangelist, stands a whiteboard covered in squiggles from the last brainstorming session. Even in this iconoclastic bear pit, the wrong fix can win stubborn defenders.

…

Even in this iconoclastic bear pit, the wrong fix can win stubborn defenders. At 36, Kütt is already a seasoned problem-solver. He helped pioneer Internet banking and spearheaded efforts to get Estonians to file their tax returns online. He worries that, by growing old enough and big enough to have vested interests, Skype has lost some of its problem-solving mojo. “Legacy is now a big problem for us, too,” he says. “You make a massive investment to solve a problem and suddenly the problem is surrounded by a huge number of people and systems that want to justify their existence. You end up with a scenario where the original source of the problem is hidden and hard to reach.”

Picnic Comma Lightning: In Search of a New Reality
by Laurence Scott
Published 11 Jul 2018

Today, our private and public realities, our inner and outer worlds, coexist in a way particular to these times. The horror movie2 Unfriended (2015) is about a girl who kills herself after some humiliating drunken footage of her is circulated online. The girl’s ghost wreaks revenge on a group of friends, one by one, while they chat on a group Skype call. The webcam view onto a scene of paranormal torture is suddenly obscured by the latest victim’s Skype-profile picture. One moment there are screams of anguish or spurting blood, the next we cut to a frozen picture of the same terrorised teen in happier times: wearing a woollen hat with animal ears, or full of youthful vanity, flexing biceps. This collision of the real and the mediated is a macabre version of a common experience.

…

We can of course communicate aspects of bereavement online, but these platforms often make it difficult to capture the rawness of shock, or to bear relation to the unending, quiet No behind the ‘Nooooooo!!!’ And yet, the opposite is also true. One of our emerging problems, which will require careful legislation, is the horrific proximity of online death. Suicides and murders make news whenever they are live-streamed on Skype or Facebook. The vlogging millionaire Logan Paul was recently ‘punished’1 by YouTube for his video from Japan’s ‘haunted’ Aokigahara forest. The place is a notorious suicide spot, and in the video Paul is filmed beside the body of a dead man. In his Twitter apology he describes being ‘misguided by shock and awe’, but nonetheless YouTube demoted him from their lucrative ‘Google Preferred’ programme, which allow stars such as Paul to receive the largest cuts from the brands advertising on his channel.

…

Herzog, quoted in Nik Papageorgiou, ‘How the brain produces consciousness in “time slices”’, EPFL News, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, April 2016; ‘ball of clichés …’, Jenny Diski, ‘A Diagnosis’, The London Review of Books, 11th September 2014. Backstage Pass 1 ‘Obscenity is always …’, Ludwig Marcuse, Obscene: The History of an Indignation, trans. Karen Gershon (London: Macgibbon & Kee, 1965). 2 ‘The horror movie …’, the commentary on Unfriended first appeared in my essay ‘Death by Skype’ for the Financial Times, 1st May 2015. Thanks to John Sunyer for commissioning and editing this piece. 3 ‘either apologizing, or …’, Tom Rachman, ‘Leakzilla’, in Basket of Deplorables (Hastings-on-Hudson, NY: Riverrun, 2017). 4 ‘The archetypal choice …’, a version of this description of the ‘selfie’ expression first appeared in my essay ‘A Sentimental Portrait’, Emotional Supply Chains (London: Zabludowicz Collection, 2015).

Super Founders: What Data Reveals About Billion-Dollar Startups
by Ali Tamaseb
Published 14 Sep 2021

He hated those rides—“detested” them, to be exact—and spent the trips dreaming about being able to visit her without having to travel. Even today, Eric travels a lot less than other CEOs; he prefers using Zoom, of course. Video communication has been around for more than twenty years, and when Zoom was getting started it had several fierce competitors, including Skype, Polycom, and Cisco’s WebEx. In fact, Cisco controlled close to 50 percent of the market back in 2011. Skype, which offered a free service, had just been acquired by Microsoft, an incumbent with decades of experience selling to enterprises. Given these challenges, Zoom still emerged as the winner. This is because Eric knew exactly what shortcomings he needed to fix—he was working at a company he would soon be competing against.

…

Pedro had a similar background: he started coding as a kid and became pretty well known after he was the first person in the world to jailbreak the iPhone 3G. When he was fourteen, Brazil’s largest payments company hired him to rebuild their app and make it secure against hackers. We met at the end of 2012 on Twitter, basically fighting over which text editor was best. We later moved the conversation to Skype and became good friends. We wanted to build something like PayPal or Stripe, but for Brazil. It turned out to be fairly complicated because it wasn’t just software; it was a financial business, directly regulated by the Central Bank of Brazil. We had 150 employees at one point. We ran that business for two and a half years, until Pedro and I were twenty years old.

…

• Competition is good, or at least not an extinction risk; over half of billion-dollar startups competed with large incumbents at the time of founding. It’s good to compete with incumbents or compete in fragmented markets; they are easier to beat than a highly funded startup with the same idea. Remember Zoom’s founder telling the story of competing against incumbents like Cisco and Skype by focusing on the quality of the product and attention to customers. Billion-dollar companies created defensibility through engineering—the expertise and amount of time and work needed to build a product—but also through network effects, scale, brand, and intellectual property. Those with network effects were more likely to become billion-dollar companies

Radicals Chasing Utopia: Inside the Rogue Movements Trying to Change the World
by Jamie Bartlett
Published 12 Jun 2017

But he could not do it as a candidate of the Transhumanist Party. This distinction is extremely important. Under electoral law, it is forbidden to claim to have a political party if you do not or to receive donations as a representative of a political party that does not exist. Zoltan had been doing both. I Skyped Zoltan shortly after and asked him whether there was such a thing as the Transhumanist Party. Barely missing a beat, Zoltan fired back. ‘My critics may have a technical point. But they are forgetting that everything that succeeds is a revolutionary party. So is the Transhumanist Party!’38 Yes, he admitted, he’d been breaking the FEC laws all this time.

…

Everyone was also part of a larger ‘neighbourhood’, which would come together in plenary meetings to make decisions. Each neighborhood sent a spokesperson to a General Assembly, where all major decisions were taken. ‘It was unbelievable,’ John Jordan, one of those involved in setting it all up, told me via Skype from France (where he was occupying a large site trying to prevent a new airport being built). ‘An enormous, functioning community, without hierarchies. And it worked.’ Activists came to see climate change as the inevitable by-product of a capitalist system that promotes endless consumption, the pursuit of profit and corporate interests.

…

‘Good morning ladies and gentlemen, ministers, ambassadors and friends of liberty, it’s my great honour to moderate this conference for you,’ said Martin Panek, a timid, slightly awkward man in his early thirties in a suit. ‘It was supposed to be moderated by the president, but, er, he called me Thursday to say he was denied entry by Croatia.’ Vit’s four-foot-high smiling face was projected on the wall in front of us, beamed in via Skype, from his ‘exile’ in the Anne Caffe Hotel in Bezdan, twenty kilometres away in Serbia. Vit is an unassuming man, who looks younger than his thirty-two years. He wears a short goatee beard, which matches his strawberry blond hair, and has a Greek wrestler’s build. He is also blessed with that rare condition of a face that rests on a smile.

Designing Social Interfaces
by Christian Crumlish and Erin Malone
Published 30 Sep 2009

Download at WoweBook.Com Activity Streams 135 Why Real-time communications and the buddy list to support them add an immediate and real-life component to what are often asynchronous online experiences. Related patterns “Adding Friends” on page 361 “Many Publics” on page 228 “Private Conversation” on page 298 As seen on Adium (http://adium.im/) AIM (http://www.aim.com/) Skype (http://www.skype.com/) Yahoo! Messenger (http://messenger.yahoo.com/) Activity Streams When status updates first emerged in the context of instant messenger programs, they were inherently fleeting, temporally tied to the immediate moment and then discarded. It really doesn’t make that much sense to keep an infinite log of Available, Busy, Idle, Offline, and so on for the life of the user or the application.

…

. • Consider promoting or featuring interesting group discussions. Download at WoweBook.Com 304 Chapter 11: Watson, Come Quick! Related patterns “Groups” on page 376 “Private Conversation” on page 298 “Public Conversation” on page 296 As seen on Acrobat Connect (http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobatconnect/) AIM (http://www.aim.com) Skype (http://www.skype.com/) WebEx (http://www.webex.com/) Yahoo! Instant Messenger (http://messenger.yahoo.com) Yuuguu (http://www.yuuguu.com/) Arguments Flame Wars Flame wars break out when a person responds in a volatile manner to a negative, hostile, or otherwise personal attack against him by another person (usually a troll, a person trolling for a reaction).

…

Many-to-many communications—message boards and forums, listservs, chat—allow multiple people to discuss multiple topics, usually bound by a parent topic. Anyone can start a conversation, and everyone can read it and participate. These are often public, but listservs generally require membership to participate. One-to-one communication—instant messages, Twitter direct messages, Skype—provides communication between two people (or a small group), usually in real time and often in private. Download at WoweBook.Com 290 Chapter 11: Watson, Come Quick! Meaning-Making Machines Grandma Powazek once told me why she stopped making cucumber salad. She’d been chopping cucumbers when her hands started to hurt.

The End of Power: From Boardrooms to Battlefields and Churches to States, Why Being in Charge Isn’t What It Used to Be
by Moises Naim
Published 5 Mar 2013

That number rose to 30 percent of the population worldwide in 2010 (and to more than 73 percent in developed countries).22 By 2012, eight-year-old Facebook was on its way to having more than 1 billion users (with more than half of them accessing it via their mobile phones and tablets), Twitter (launched in 2006) had 140 million active users, and Skype—the voice-over-Internet service created in 2003—boasted almost 700 million regular users.23 The Twitter and Facebook revolutions in the Middle East and the impact of social media on politics are much discussed, and we examine their role in the decay of power. But in terms of this initial discussion of the Mobility revolution, we should also consider the impact of another tool that does not get the credit it deserves for changing the world: the prepaid phone card.

…

Moreover, corporations that used to be household names have disappeared—no more “Kodak moments,” to name just one storied brand that in 2012 ended up on the ash heap of history. The list of companies at the top now routinely includes new names, including many hailing from places not known for spawning world-class businesses—Estonia (Skype), India (Mittal Steel), Brazil (Embraer), and Galicia in Spain (Zara) among them. And whether newcomers or not, those at the top are no longer assured as lengthy a stay among the leaders as in the past. We are not talking about the displacement of one behemoth by another. More often than not, the space once controlled by old leaders has been filled by a different set of players that rely on new rules, sources of power, and competitive strategies.

…

IBM, for example, has recast itself from a maker of PCs, disk drives, and other computer equipment into a tech visionary that uses brainy consultants and analytics software to solve thorny global problems—an effort captured in its 2012 “Smarter Planets” ad campaign. But even brand advantage has grown slippery. Some of the most dynamic brands whose contribution to the total value of their firms has grown the fastest in recent years are upstarts like Skype (now owned by Microsoft). Just as brands have surpassed physical assets as a component of company value, the brand advantage itself is becoming harder to hold on to as new players establish their name. Access to Capital Few obstacles to enterprise are as crippling as the lack of access to capital.

Machine Translation
by Thierry Poibeau
Published 14 Sep 2017

Today, the techniques used for automatic subtitling coupled with machine translation allow for the production of subtitles in various languages, live and without additional cost. The quality of the result, however, remains a problem, and applicable solutions are not yet deployed on a large scale. Direct Translation in Multilingual Dialogue Automatic speech translation is seen as a major opportunity by most information technology companies. Skype, for example, owned by Microsoft, developed a prototype that was incorporated into its communication platform. The trend is now widespread: the mobile messaging application WeChat has also announced the integration of a machine translation system. WeChat is first and foremost an interactive service of written messages, but it also allows for exchanging voice messages: these will be automatically translated in the same ways once the quality of the system is considered sufficient.

…

They need to be first on the technological front and propose new features that may be an important source of revenue in the future. The future will likely see the integration of machine translation modules in new kinds of appliances, as seen in chapter 14. Microsoft has already presented live demonstrations of multilingual conversations, integrating speech translation into Skype. Google, Samsung, and Apple are creating similar applications for mobile phones, and even for “smart” eyeglasses. While it is not yet clear whether these gadgets will really be used in everyday life, they are interesting for specific professional contexts, such as the maintenance of complex systems in the aeronautic or nuclear industry, where technicians must be able to communicate while keeping their hands free.

…

See also Bilingual dictionary; Lexical resource Semantics, 36, 58, 67, 124, 156, 159–161, 174–179, 206 Sentence alignment, 101–108, 163 representation, 19, 24–32, 63, 115–116, 160, 176–179, 185–187, 189 structure, 12, 14, 23, 27, 30, 70, 115–116, 117, 122, 140, 152, 156–160, 164, 183, 187, 189, 191, 255 Sentence-by-sentence translation, 14 Shallow semantic analysis, 115. See also Semantics Shannon, Claude, 52, 55, 76 Siemens, 87 Silence, 157, 158 Skype, 240, 250 Slavic languages, 214 Smart glasses, 242–243, 250 Smart watch, 242–243 Smirnov-Trojanskij, Petr Petrovitch, 46–48, 51, 246, 269 Social network, 221, 229, 248 Sparck Jones, Karen, 66, 270 Speech-to-speech application, 241–242. See also Speech translation Speech transcription, 126, 226, 239–241 Speech translation, 22, 126, 227, 236, 239–241, 250 Statistical machine translation, 121–146 Stemming, 51 Stratificational grammar, 65 Style (of a text), 10–13, 15, 46, 55, 92, 208–209 Suffix, 18, 264.

Startupland: How Three Guys Risked Everything to Turn an Idea Into a Global Business
by Mikkel Svane and Carlye Adler
Published 13 Nov 2014

If you want to be good at it, you need to: • Have a proper home office that both you and your family consider more “office” than “home.” • Let go of the fact that the garage needs to be cleaned up, even though you look at it all day. It’s harder than you think. 34 Page 34 Svane c02.tex V3 - 10/24/2014 8:23 P.M. The Salad Days • Make Skype your friend. You have to check in with your team members, peers, and boss all the time. Out of sight, out of mind. It’s remarkable that we live in a time when we can work from anywhere. But the bigger challenge is whether or not you have the personality to be productive at it. I could never do it again.

…

Luckily, our move West attracted some of the people who previously worked with us and knew exactly what we needed—like Mick, a great engineer who had worked in Copenhagen as a contractor three days a week. He had wanted to come to the United States to pursue his American dream, but he had had no interest in moving to Boston, complaining that it was “boring and colder than Denmark.” Now Morten and Alex Skyped him from San Francisco: “Guess where we are,” they taunted. And then, “Want to come?” “Absolutely,” Mick replied. He sold his house—none of us had done that—packed up his family in time for the kids to start school at the beginning of the year, and was in our office ready to take on our scaling challenges.

…

Page 199 Index day of, 175–177 determining how much you’re worth, 173–175 postponing, 168–169 preparing for, 158–160 road show, 169–171 surviving an IPO road show, 171–173 Zendesk’s IPO experience, 167–178 iterating, 53–55, 187 J Janz, Christoph, 65–67, 106 K Kleha, Amanda, 134–135, 181 L Latkiewicz, Matthew, 100–102, 181 Laughing Squid, 48 Law of Jante, 125 LiveUniverse, 65 logo design, 41–42 Lund, Morten, 34 M Malik, Om, 68 Marooney, Caryn, 170 Materna, 17–20 McDermott, Adrian, 136–138 media companies, 14 Mentor, 42 Mick, 124, 181–182 Musk, Elon, 25 N naming the company, 39–42 No Meeting Wednesdays, 34 Nygaard, Toke, 41–42 O office space, 115–119, 154–158 OneLogin, 180 OpenDNS, 130 P Pageflakes, 65 Pedersen, Thomas, 73–74, 90, 103, 180 personalized emails, 104 Pisoni, Adam, 130 Playdom, 129 pricing, 143–150 Primdahl, Morten, 1–2, 17–18 as chief technology officer, 26 early days at Zendesk, 31, 33 epilogue, 179, 180 fear of complacency, 165 financial struggles, 36–37, 39 handling the growth of the business, 122–123 and the inception of Zendesk, 20 Project Eisenhut, 40 R reaching scale, 74 real estate lessons learned, 118–119 refunds, 139 relationships, 150, 185–188 relocating to America hiring employees, 124–129 hiring first employees, 100–102 legal and tax challenges of relocating to America, 92–93 moving the company to Boston, 87–88, 90–91 personal issues surrounding, 97–99 settling in in Boston’s Leather District, 99–100 relocating to San Francisco finding office space, 115–119 making the decision to move, 112–114 Rigoli, Rick, 99–100, 108, 109, 112–113, 158–160 epilogue, 181 Riviera Partners, 136 Ruby on Rails, 14, 26, 28 199 Svane samind.tex V1 - 10/28/2014 12:18 A.M. Page 200 INDEX S SaaS. See Software-as-a-Service Salesforce.com, 27 Scribd, 53 second chances, 16–19 self-service sales, 45–47 Series A rounds, 83–84 shifting strategy, 152–154 Skype, 35 Software-as-a-Service, 47 Square, 24 Startupland, 3 stereograms, 8–9 strategy shift, 152–154 T Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, 46 TechCrunch, 42–45, 53, 68, 129, 144 Capital Summer Party, 69–71 Tesla, 164 Thank You Machine, 40, 73 37signals, 14, 28 3D Magic Eye books, 8 Twitter, 53, 91, 122, 124 U Uber, 124 V value-added resellers, 14 VARs.

CIOs at Work
by Ed Yourdon
Published 19 Jul 2011

So, eventually, I think the economy is going to break that down, the same way it has broken down barriers in terms of dealing with China, trading with China. It’s going to break down the telecommunication barriers also because we’re going to have to communicate to be in business, and if that’s the case, if it’s too expensive, it won’t get done. And Skype is in business; you’re doing this on Skype. Skype is in business because they found a way to get business done and in a cheaper way. Yourdon: Good point, good point. Temares: And economics kills everything. Yourdon: Yeah. Temares: And it changes things. Yourdon: Let me move on to another category. You hear a lot of talk these days about IT being a strategic weapon to enhance the business.

…

Of course, in many cases the cell phone communications infrastructure is the most affected by an earthquake or something of that sort. Was that true in Japan? Gupta: I don’t have data points, to be honest. I do know that there was disruption to the communications infrastructure. You could see it on the broadcasts on BBC, there were a lot of people communicating over Skype and all sorts of other things when they were doing interviews with broadcasters. But the extent to which they—well, clearly, in the towns and cities that had pretty much disappeared, the masts went with them, without a doubt. Yourdon: Ahh, okay. Gupta: I don’t know if there was a big amount of disruption to the mobile communications network in Tokyo and other parts because of the earthquake.

…

Index A AdKnow ledge, Inc., 87 Agile development methodology, 62 Amazon, 314, 319 America COMPETES Act, 304 American Airlines, 47, 72 American Defense Department, 84 American Marketing Society, 113 American Production Inventory Control Society, 211 Ames, 320 AMR Corp, 47 Android, 43 Annapolis, 340 Apple, 97, 101, 217, 242, 295 Computer, 35 Genius Bar, 8 Archipelago Holdings Inc., 87 Arizona Public Service (APS) Company, 66, 211, 223 Arizona State University, 227 ARPANET, 19, 117, 135 Art of Computer Programming, 2 Atlanta-based Southern Company, 191 AT&T, 191, 249 B Ballmer, Steve, 39 Bank of Boston, 47 Baylor-Grapevine Board of Trustees, 47 Bedrock foundation, 249 Bell Atlantic Mobile, 231 Bell Labs, 2, 249 BlackBerry, 60, 96, 116, 121, 171, 184, 246, 261, 296, 317 Blalock, Becky, 182, 191, 215 adaptability, 192 Air Force brat, 191, 192 Atlanta-based Southern Company, 191 banking industry, 203 Boucher, Marie, 196 brainstorm, 202 24/7 business, 199 business intelligence, 204 cloud computing, 205 cognitive surplus, 206 cognitive time, 206 Coker, Dave, 196 communication and education, 200 Community and Economic Development, 194 consumer market, 202 cybersecurity, 207, 209 data analytics, 204, 205 disaster recovery, 209 distributed generation, 204 distribution organization, 201 Egypt revolution, 198 farming technology, 206 finance backgrounds/marketing, 200, 209 Franklin, Alan, 193 Georgia Power, 191 Georgia Power Management Council, 193 global society, 206 Google, 198 incredible technology, 195 Industrial Age, 206 Information Age, 206 InformationWeek's, 196 infrastructure, 202 intellectual property, 196 intelligence and redundancy, 207 Internet, 198, 206 leapfrog innovations, 205 mainframe system, 207 marketing and customer service, 193, 200 MBA, finance, 192 microfiche, 207 microwave tower, 207 mobile devices, 203 mobility and business analytics, 205 Moore's Law, 205 new generation digital natives, 197 flexible and adaptable, 199 innovation and creativity, 199 superficial fashion, 198 Olympic sponsor, 193 out pushing technology, 202 reinforcement, 201 sense of integrity, 200 Southern Company, 194, 198, 201, 207 teamwork survey, 201 technology lab, 202 undergraduate degree, marketing, 192 virtualization, 205 VRU, 203 Ward, Eileen, 196 wire business, 201 world-class customer service, 203 Bohlen, Ken, 211 American Production Inventory Control Society, 211 Apple, 217 APS, 211, 223 ASU, 227 benchmarking company, 216 chief innovation officer, 229 Citrix, 217 cloud computing, 218, 219 cognitive surplus, 220 DECnet, 212 Department of Defense, 222 distributed computing, 217 energy industry, 214 gizmo/whiz-bang show, 216 GoodLink, 217 hard-line manufacturing, 218 home computing, 219 home entertainment, 219 Honeywell, 219 HR generalists, 215 information technology department, 211 Intel machines, 217 John Deere, 213 just say yes program, 223 Lean Six Sigma improvement process, 211 Linux, 220 MBA program, 214 mentors, 213 national alerts, 224 North American universities, 228 paradigm shifts, 218, 220 PDP minicomputers, 212 Peopleware, 226 prefigurative culture, 221 R&D companies, 218 Rhode Island, 226 role models, 213 San Diego Fire Department, 224 security/privacy issues, 217 skip levels, 223 smart home concepts, 219 smartphone, 217 social media, 225 Stead, Jerry, 214 Stevie Award, 211 Storefront engineering, 212 traditional management, 219, 226 Twitter, 224 vocabulary, 221 Waterloo operations, 213 Web 2.0 companies, 227 Web infrastructure, 215 wikipedia, 220 Y2K, 222 Botnets, 23 Brian's and Rob Pike's, 2 Bristol-Myers Squibb, 33 Broadband networks, 241 Brown, 227 Bryant, 227 BT Global Services, 253 BT Innovate & Design (BTI&D), 253 Bumblebee tuna, 130 C Career writing technology, 67 CASE tools, 232 Cash, Jim, 50 Christensen, Clyde, 212 Chrome, 14, 18 Chrysler Corporation, 175 Citibank, 337 Citicorp, 313 Citrix, 217 Client-server-type applications, 59 Cloud computing, 218, 219, 239, 240, 261, 262, 310, 311, 313 Cloud technology, 62 CNN, 54 COBOL, 250 Cognitive surplus, 20, 79, 206, 291 College of Engineering, University of Miami, 113 Columbia University, 1 Community and Economic Development, 194 Computer Sciences Corporation, 35 Computerworld magazine, 196 Consumer-oriented technology, 22 Content management system, 133 Corporate information management (CIM) program, 309 Corporate Management Information Systems, 87 Corvus disk drive, 36 Customer Advisory Boards of Oracle, 191 Customer-relationship management (CRM), 56 Cutter Business Technology Council, 173 D Dallas Children's Medical Center Development Board, 48 DARPA, 19 DDoS attacks and security, 81 DECnet, 212 Dell Platinum Council, 113 DeMarco, Tom, 16, 226 Department of Defense, 222, 329, 332 Detroit Energy, 252 Digital books, 30 Digital Equipment, 48 Distributed computing, 217 Dodge, 189 Dogfooding, 11, 37, 38, 236 DTE Energy, 173 DuPont Dow Elastomers, 151 E Educational Testing Service (ETS), 151 E-government, 282, 285 Electrical distribution grid, 182 Elementary and Secondary Education Strategic Business Unit, 151 Elements of Programming Style, 2 Ellyn, Lynne, 173 advanced technology software planning, 175 Amazon, 184 artificial intelligence group, 175 Association for Women in Computing, 173 benchmark, 180, 181 BlackBerries, 184 Burns, Ursula, 175 Chrysler, 176 Cisco, 186 cloud computing, 183, 184 component-based architecture, 186 corporate communications customer service, 185 Crain's Detroit Business, 173 cyber security threats, 177 degree of competence, 187 diversity and sophistication, 182 DTE Energy, 173 energy trading, 176 engineering and science programs, 188 enterprise business systems policy, 186 executive MBA program, 176 Facebook, 185 fresh-out-of-the-university, 187 General Electric, 174 Google, 184 Grace Hopper, 174 grid re-automation, 182 Henry Ford Hospital, 174 internal social media, 185 International Coaching Federation, 178 iPads, 184 IP electrical grids, 182 iPod applications, 182 IT budgets, 186 IT responsibilities, 176 Java, 186 level of sophistication, 179 lobbying efforts, 181 medical computing, 175 Miller, Joan, 174 Mulcahey, Anne, 175 Netscape, 175 neuroscience leadership, 189 object-oriented programming, 186 Oracle, 186 peer-level people, 179 people system, 177 policies and strategies, 180 Radio Shack, 180 remote access capacity, 189 security tool and patch, 183 sense of community, 180 Shipley, Jim, 174 smart grid, 177, 182 smart meters, 182 smart phone applications, 183 swarming, 179 technical competence, 178, 179 Thomas, Marlo, 174 Twitter, 185 UNITE, 181 vendor community, 186 virtualization, 183, 184 Xerox, 175 E-mail, 9 Employee-relationship management (ERM), 56 Encyclopedia, 115 Encyclopedia Britannica, 292 ERP, 123 F Facebook, 244 Ellyn, Lynne, 185 Sridhara, Mittu, 73, 84 Temares, Lewis, 116, 121, 131 Wakeman, Dan, 169 Federal information technology investments, 299 Flex, 236 Ford, 102 Ford, Monte, 47 agile computing, 59 agile development, 62, 66 airplanes, 51 American Airlines, 47 Arizona Public Services, 66 Bank of Boston, 47 Baylor-Grapevine Board of Trustees, 47 BlackBerry, 60 board of Chubb, 51 board of Tandy, 51 business organizations, 63 business school, dean, 50 career writing technology, 67 client-server-type applications, 59 cloud technology, 62 CNN, 54 common-sense functionality, 49 consumer-based technology, 60 CRM, 56 Dallas Children's Medical Center Development Board, 48 Digital Equipment, 48 ERM, 56 financial expert, 69 frequent-flier program, 57 frontal lobotomy, 57 Harvard Business Review, 50 HR policies, 65 IBM, 48 information technology, 47, 52 Internet, 54 Internet-based protocol, 59 iPhone, 52 IT stuff, 58 Knight Ridder, 51 legacy apps, 59 mainframe-like applications, 59 management training program, 64 marketing and technical jobs, 48 Maynard, Massachusetts mill, 48 MBA program, 50 mentors, 49 Microsoft, 50 mobile computing, 62 New York Times, 53 operations center, 54 PDP-5, 49 PDP-6, 49 Radio Shack, 51 revenue management, 57 role models, 49 security paradigms, 62 self-service machine, 57 Silicon Valley companies, 68 smartphones, 54 social networking, 51, 53, 56, 58 stateful applications, 59 techie department, 48 The Associates First Capital Corporation, 47 transmission and distribution companies, 47 wireless network, 59 YouTube, 65 Fort Worth, 226 Free software foundation, 19 Fried, Benjamin, 1, 241 agile development, 25 agile methodologies, 26 Apple Genius Bar, 8 ARPANET, 19 Art of Computer Programming, 2 Bell Labs, 2 books and records, accuracy, 25 botnets, 23 Brian's and Rob Pike's, 2 cash-like principles, 29 CFO, 4 check writers, 18 chrome, 14, 18 classic computer science text, 1 cognitive surplus, 20 Columbia University, 1 compensation management, 7 competitive advantage, 9, 18 computer science degree, 1 computer scientists, 6 consumer-driven computing, 12 consumer-driven software-as-a-service offerings, 12 consumer-driven technology, 12 consumer-oriented technology, 14, 22 corporate leadership, 25 cost centers, 4 DARPA, 19 decision makers, 17 decision making, 13 360-degree performance management, 7 detroit energy, 30 digital books, 30 document workbench, 2 dogfooding, 11 e-books, 29 Elements of Programming Style, 2 e-mail, 9 end-user support, 7 engineering executive group, 4 European vendors, 6 file servers and print servers, 17 Folger Library editions, 30 free software foundation, 19 German company, 13 German engineering, 13 Gmail, 15 Godot, 26 Google, 1 books, 29 products, 5, 10 software engineers, 6 hiring managers, 6 HR processes and technologies, 6 IBM model, 13 instant messaging, 9 Internet age, 6 interviewers, training, 6 iPad, 29 iPhone, 29 IPO, 3 IT, engineering and computer science parts, 4 Knuth's books, 2 Linux machine, 8 Linux software, 19 machine running Windows, 8 Macintosh, 8 Mac OS, 9 macro factors, 11 Managing Director, 1 mentors, 1 microcomputers, 18 Microsoft, 5 Minds for Sale, 20 Morgan Stanley, 1–3, 5, 16 nonacademic UNIX license, 2 nontechnical skills, 5 oil exploration office, 17 open-source phone operating system, 20 outlook, 15 PARC, 19 performance review cycles, 7 personal computer equipment, 15 post-Sarbanes-Oxley world, 25 project manager, 13 quants, 24 rapid-release cycle, 26 R&D cycle, 24 regression testing, 27 role models, 1 shrink-wrapped software, 14 signature-based anti-virus, 22 smartphone, 20, 27 social contract, 8 society trails technology, 21 software engineering tool, 13 software installation, 14 supply chain and inventory and asset management, 10 SVP, 4 telephony, 17 ten things, 13 TMRC, 19 TROFF, 2 typesetter workbench, 2 UI designer, 14 university computing center, 28 videoconferencing, 12 Visicalc, 24 Wall Street, 23 Walmart, 6 waterfall approach, 25 XYZ widget company, 5 YouTube video, 20 G Gates, Bill, 39, 50 General Electric, 134 General Foods, 309, 326–328 General Motors, 33, 321, 329, 332 George Mason School of Information Technology, 309 Georgia Power Company, 191–193, 196 Georgia Power Management Council, 193 German company, 13 German engineering, 13 German manufacturing company, 232 Gizmo/whiz-bang show, 216 Gmail, 15 GoodLink, 217 Google, 1, 84, 85, 117, 217, 219, 220, 222, 235, 241, 263, 302, 319 apps, 314 books, 29 commercial products, 10 model, 293 Government Accountability Office (GAO), 305 4G program, 250 4G smartphone, 235 GTE, 231 Gupta, Ashish aspiration, organization, 256 bandwidth and network infrastructure, 267 BlackBerry, 261 business and customer outcomes, 274 capital investment forums, 269 career progression, 255 cloud-based shared infrastructure model, 263 cloud computing, 261, 262 collaboration, 272 communications infrastructure, 258 compute-utility-based model, 262 control and integrity, 268 core competency, 255 core network infrastructure, 267 core strengths, 256 cost per unit of bandwidth, 267 customer demands, 268 data protection, 261, 262 decision-making bodies, 269 demographics, 272, 273 device convergence, 263 dogfooding, 259 employee flexibility, 260, 264 engagement and governance, 269 enterprise market segment, 261 equipment management, 260 executive MBA, 256 fourth-generation LTE networks, 267 functional service departments, 270 Global Services, distributed organization, 257 Google, 263, 275 Google Apps, 266 handheld devices, 265 hastily formed networks, 258 IMF, 266 innovation and application development, 265 iPad, 257, 260, 261, 266,267 iPhone, 266 Japan, 257, 258 London Business School, 253 management functions, 257 management sales functions, 257 market segments, 259 MBA, General Management, 253 measurements, 271 messaging with voice capability, 264 mini-microcomputer model, 261 mobile communications network, 258 mobile-enabling voice, 259 mobile phone network, 260 mobile traffic explosion, 265 network infrastructures, 265 network IT services, 254 network quality, 257 new generation digital natives, 271 disadvantages, 273 Google, 273 opportunities, 273 Olympics, 263 opportunities, 275 organizational construct, 272 outsourced network IT services, 259 outsourcing, 271 per-use-based model, 262 portfolio and business alignment, 274 Portfolio & Service Design (P&SD), 253 primary marketing thrust, 264 product development thrust, 264 product management team, 259 project and program management, 255 resource balance, 270 scalability, 262 security, 262 Selley, Clive, 254, 255 service delivery organization, 254 single-device model, 264 smart devices, 267 smart phones, 266 telecommunications capability, 259 upward-based apps, 264 virtualization, 261 voice-over-IP connections, 258 Windows platform, 261 Gurnani, Roger, 231 accounting/finance department, 233 analog cellular networks, 250 AT&T, 249 bedrock foundation, 249 Bell Atlantic Mobile, 231 Bell Labs, 249 blogs, 244 broadband networks, 241 business benefits, 237 business device, 240 business executives, 238 business leaders, 248, 249 business relationship management, 248 buzzword, 239 CASE tools, 232 cloud computing, 239, 240 COBOL, 250 consumer and business products, 231 consumer electronics devices, 241 consumer telecom business, 233 customer-engagement channel, 244 customer forums, 244 customer support operations, 251 customer-touching channels, 236 degree of control, 246 distribution channel, 250 dogfooding, 236 ecosystem, 243, 249 enterprise business, 233 ERP systems, 236 face-to-face communications, 244 FiOS product, 235 flex, 236 "follow the sun" model, 239 German manufacturing company, 232 4G program, 250 4G smartphone, 235 hardware/software vendors, 247 information assets, 245 information technology strategy, 231 intellectual property rights, 244 Internet, 235, 239 iPhone, 243 Ivan, 232 Lowell, 232 LTE technology-based smartphone, 235 marketing, 251 MIT, 246 mobile technology, 234 Moore's law, 242 MP3 file, 235 network-based services, 240 Nynex Mobile, 233 P&L responsibility, 251 PDA, 238 personal computing, 235 product development, 234, 251 role models, 232 sales channels, 251 smartphones, 238 state-level regulatory issues, 251 state-of-the-art networks, 243 telecom career, 232 telephone company, Phoenix, 234 Verizon Communication, 231, 232 virtual corporations, 241 Web 2.0, 244 Williams Companies, 232, 233 WillTell, 233 wireless business, 233 H Hackers, 19 Harmon, Jay, 213 Harvard Business Review, 50 Harvard Business School, 331 Heller, Martha, 171 Henry Ford Hospital, 174 Hewlett-Packard piece, 129 Home computing, 219 Honda, 102 Honeywell, 219 Houghton Mifflin, 134, 136 I IBM, 48, 250 manpower, 311 model, 13 Indian IT outsourcing company, 255 Information technology, 52 Intel machines, 217 International Coaching Federation, 178 Internet, 9, 44, 54, 117, 235, 239, 316, 322 Internet-based protocol, 59 Interoperability, 341 iPads, 2, 94, 97, 184, 257, 260, 264, 267, 288, 289, 295, 296 IP electrical grids, 182 iPhones, 43, 52, 96, 101, 170, 181, 260, 264,296 iPod, 101 IT lifecycle management process, 37 Ivan, 232 J John Deere, 213 K Kansas, 226 Kernigan, Brian, 2 Knight Ridder, 51 Knuth, Donald, 2, 29 Kraft Foods Inc, 309 Krist, Nicholas, 28 Kundra, Vivek Clever Commute, 305 cognitive surplus, 303 command and control systems, 301 consumerization, 302 consumption-based model, 300 cyber-warfare, 301 Darwinian pressure, 302 desktop core configuration, 306 digital-borne content, 301 digital oil, 300, 307 digital public square, 304 enterprise software, 303 entrepreneurial startup model, 306 frugal engineering, 306 Google, 302 government business, 302 innovator's dilemma, 307 iPad, 302 IT dashboard, 302 leapfrog technology, 306 massive consumerization, 301 megatrends, 301 parameter security, 302 Patent Office, 305 pharmaceutical industry, 304 phishing attacks, 301 policy and strategic planning, 299 security and privacy, 301 server utilization, 300 social media and technology, 300, 306 storage utilization, 300 Trademark Office, 305 Wikipedia, 303 L LAN, 259 Lean Six Sigma improvement process, 211 Levy, Steven (Hackers), 19 Linux, 220 machine, 8 open-source software, 19 Lister, Tim, 226 London Business School, 73, 253, 256 Long-term evolution (LTE), 235 Lowell, 232 M MacArthur's intelligence officer, 327 Macintosh, 8 Mainframe computers, 118 Mainframe-like applications, 59 Marriott's Great America, 35 McDade, 327 McGraw-Hill Education, 133, 147, 150 Mead, Margaret, 221 Mendel, 311 Microcomputers, 18 Microsoft Corporation, 5, 11, 33, 36, 38, 41, 44, 46, 50, 156, 217, 223, 236, 250, 293 Microsoft Higher Education Advisory Group, 113 Microsoft's operational enterprise risk management, 33 Middlesex University, 189 Miller, Joan Apple products, 295 authority and accuracy, 292 award-winning ICT programs and services, 277 back locked-down information, 289 big-scale text issues, 294 big-time computing, 279 BlackBerry, 296 business management training, 281 business skills, 281 central government, 283 cognitive surplus, 291 community care project, 278 community development programs, 277, 278 computers, constituency office, 294 confidential information, 284 data management, 281 decision making, 286 democratic process, 288 economics degree, 278 e-government, 282, 285 electronic communication, 289 electronic-enabled public voice, 286 electronic information, 288 electronic media, 286 electronic records, 280, 284 electronic services, 294 e-mail, 289, 290, 295 forgiving technology, 296 front-office service, 282, 283 Google, 292 Google's cloud service, 290 Government 2, 287 Health and Social Care, 284 House business, 294 House of Lords, 288 ICT strategy, 289, 290 information management, 278 insurance company, 278 Internet information, 285 iPad, 288, 289, 296 IT data management, 279 management principle, 280 local government, 283 mainframe environment, 289 member-led activity, 287 messages, 289 Microsoft, 293 Microsoft's cloud service, 290 mobile electronic information, 284 mobile technology, 289 national organization, 284 network perimeters, 290 official government information, 285 on-the-job training, 281 organizational planning, 278 Parliamentary ICT, 277 project management, 279 public sector, 282 public transportation, 285 quango-type organizations, 283 representational democracy, 286 security, 290, 291 social care organization, 279 social care services, Essex, 278 social care systems, 284 social networking, 285 sovereignty, 291 sustainability and growth, 293 technical language, 294 technology skills, 281 transactional services, 285 transferability, 291 Web-based services, 285 Wikipedia, 291, 292 X-factor, 286 Minds for Sale, 20 Mitchell & Co, 333 MIT Media Labs, 149 Mobile computing, 62 Mobile technology, 234 Mooney, Mark, 133 artificial intelligence, 134 back-office legacy, 136 balancing standpoint, 145 BBC, 140 Bermuda Triangle, 135 BlackBerry shop, 142 Bureau of National Standards, 136 business model, 140 career spectrum, 144 cloud computing, 148 competitive intelligence and knowledge, 143 Connect, 141 customer-facing and product development, 135 customer-facing product space, 137 customer space and product development, 136 digital products development, 144 digital space and product, 146 educational and reference content, 139 educational products, 141 entrepreneur, 150 General Electric, 134 GradeGuru, 140 handheld devices, 142 hard-core technical standpoint, 146 hardware servers, 142 Houghton Mifflin, 134, 136 HTML, 138 industrial-strength product, 141 intellectual content, 148 Internet, 148 iPad, 138, 139, 142 iPhone, 142, 143 iTunes, 138 Klein, Joel, 147 learning management systems, 137 long-term production system, 141 Marine Corps, 134 McGraw-Hill Education, 133, 147 media development, 144 media space, 138, 142 mobile computing, 139 MOUSE, 150 online technology, 138 open-source capabilities, 142 Oracle quota-management system, 143 people's roles and responsibilities, 137 Phoenix, 149 product development, 149 publishing companies, 142 publishing systems, 137 Reed Elsevier, 133, 136 Salesforce.com, 144, 149 scalability testing, 145 senior business leaders, 146 social network, 148 soft discipline guidelines, 141 solar energy, 149 Strassmann, Paul, 135 technical skill set, 143, 144 testing systems integration, 145 The Shallows, 139 transactional systems, 142 trust and integrity, 145 TTS, QuickPro, and ACL, 144 Vivendi Universal, 134 War and Peace today, 139 Moore's law, 242 Morgan Stanley, 2, 3, 16 N NASA, 309, 333, 334 National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), 173 Naval Postgraduate School, 134 Netscape, 175 New Brunswick model, 282 News Corp., 147 New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), 87, 116, 223, 278 New York Times, 53 North American universities, 228 NSA/CIA software, 134 Nynex Mobile, 233 O Oil exploration office, 17 Open-source phone operating system, 20 Outlook, 15 P Pacer Software, 135 Paradigm shifts, 218, 220 Parks and Recreation Department, 126 PDP minicomputers, 212 Peopleware, 226 Personal computing, 235 Personal digital assistant (PDA), 238 Petri dish, 44 Phoenix, 211 Plauger, Bill, 2 Q Quants, 24 R Radio Shack, 51 Reed Elsevier, 133, 136 Reed, John, 335 Rubinow, Steve, 87 AdKnowledge, Inc., 87 agile development, 110 Agile Manifesto, 110 Archipelago Holdings Inc., 87 attributes, 108 capital market community, 91 cash/actual trading business, 88 channel marketing departments, 92 cloud computing, 97 CNBC, 89 collaborative technology, 95 collective intelligence, 95 communication skills, 102, 106 conference organizations, 99 consumer marketplace, 94 data center, 90 decision making, 105, 108 economy standpoint, 100 e-mail, 100 Fidelity Investments, 105 financial services, 92 IEEE, 101 innovative impression, 94 Internet, 98 iPad, 97 iPod device, 91 labor laws, 110 listening skills, 106 logical progression, 104 Mac, 96 mainframe, 104 management and leadership, 104, 105 market data system, 89 micro-second response time, 89 mobile applications, 94 multidisciplinary approach, 103 multimedia, 97 multi-national projects, 110 multiprocessing options, 99 network operating system, 103 NYSE Euronext, 87 open outside system, 88 parallel programming models, 99 personal satisfaction, 109 PR function, 106 proclaimed workaholic, 109 real estate business, 88 regulatory and security standpoint, 96 Rolodex, 94 Rubin, Howard, 99 server department, 97 software development, 89 sophisticated technology, 101 technology business, 88 technology integration, 91 trading engines, 90 typewriter ribbon, 94 virtualization, 98 Windows 7, 96 younger generation video games, 93 visual interfaces, 93 Rumsfeld, Donald, 222 S San Diego Fire Department, 224 Santa Clara University, 36 SAS programs, 131 Scott, Tony, 10, 33, 236 Android, 43 Apple Computer, 35 architectural flaw, 44 BASIC and Pascal, 35 Bristol-Myers Squibb, 33 Bunch, Rick (role model), 34 business groups, 42 COO, 39 Corporate Vice President, 33 Corvus disk drive, 36 CSC, 35 Defense department, 45 dogfooding, 37, 38 games and arcades, 35 General Motors, 33 IBM's role, 37 information systems management, 36 integrity factor, 40 Internet, 44 iPhone, 43 IT lifecycle management process, 37 leadership capability, 40 leisure studies, 34 macro-architectural threats, 44 Marriott's Great America, 35 math models, 36 Microsoft Corporation, 33, 36, 38, 41, 44, 46 Microsoft's operational enterprise risk management, 33 parks and recreation, 34 Petri dish, 44 playground leader, 42 product groups, 42 quality and business excellence team, 33 Santa Clara University, 36 Senior Vice President, 33 smartphone, 43 social computing, 38 Sun Microsystems, 36 theme park industry, 35 University of Illinois, 34 University of San Francisco, 36 value-added business, 33 Walt Disney Company, 33 Senior Leadership Technology and Product Marketing, 71 Shakespeare, 30 Shirky, Clay, 220 Sierra Ventures, 191 Silicon Valley companies, 68 Silicon Valley software factories, 323 Skype, 118 Smart Grid Advisory Committee, 177 Smartphones, 20, 27, 43, 54, 217, 238 Social care computer electronic record system, 279 Social computing, 38, 320 Social networking, 51, 53, 56, 58 Society trails technology, 21 SPSS programs, 131 Sridhara, Mittu, 71 Amazon, 76 American Airlines, 72 back-end computation and presentation, 80 banking, 77 B2B and B2C, 85 business/product departments, 82 business work context, 74 buzzword, 77 career aspiration, 73 career spans, 73 coders, 72 cognitive surplus, 79 competitive differentiation, 74 computing power, 78 contribution and energy, 85 convergence, 75 CPU cycles, 78 cross-channel digital business, 71 cultural and geographic implementation, 72 customer experience, 84, 85 customer profile, 76 data visualization, 79, 80 DDoS protection, 81 economies of scale, 77 elements of technology, 72 encryption, 82 end customer, 83 entertainment, 75 ERP system, 72 Facebook, 84 finance and accounting, 73 foster innovation and open culture, 81 friends/mentors/role models, 74 FSA, 76 gambling acts, 81 games, 79 gaming machines, 80 GDS, 72 global organization, 71 Google, 75, 84, 85 Group CIO, Ladbrokes PLC, 71 industry-standard technologies, 77 integrity and competence, 83 IT, 74, 82 KickOff app, 71 land-based casinos, 79 live streaming, 78 London Business School, 73 mobile computing, 78 multimedia, 84 new generation, 84 on-the-job training, 73 open-source computing, 79 opportunity, 80, 83 PCA-compliant, 81 personalization, 76 real-time systems, 74 re-evaluation, 81 reliability and availability, 77 security threats, 80 smart mobile device, 75 technology-intense customer, 85 top-line revenue, 74 trader apps, 82 true context, 73 underpinning business process, 76 virtualization, 78 Visa/MasterCard transactions, 78 Web 3.0 business, 76 web-emerging web channel, 76 Wikipedia, 79, 85 Word documents and e-mail, 82 work-life balance, 84 young body with high miles, 72 Zuckerberg, Mark, 73 Stead, Jerry, 214 Storefront engineering, 212 Strassmann, Paul, 228, 309 agile development, 340 Amazon EC2, 314 America information processors, 322 Annapolis, 340 AT&T, 332 backstabbing culture, 339 BlackBerry, 317 block houses, 319 CFO/CEO position, 337 CIM program, 309 Citibank, 337 Citicorp, 313, 339 cloud computing, 310, 311, 313 coding infrastructure, 341 communication infrastructure, 341 corporate information management, 329 Corporate Information Officer, 309 counterintelligence, 320 cyber-operations, 338 Dell server, 314 Department of Defense, 329, 332 Director of Defense Information, 309 employee-owned technology, 316 enterprise architecture, 316 exfiltration, 313 financial organizations, 320 firewalls and antiviruses, 312 General Foods, 309, 326–328 General Motors, 321, 329, 332 George Mason School of Information Technology, 309 Google apps, 314 government-supported activities, 326 Harvard Business School, 331 HR-related issues, 331 IBM manpower, 311 infiltration, 313 Internet, 316, 322 interoperability, 315, 317, 341 Kraft Foods Inc, 309 MacArthur's intelligence officer, 327 Machiavellian view, 327 mash-up, 316 military service, 331 NASA, 309, 333, 334 police department, economics, 312 powerpoint slides, 324 Radio Shack, 319 senior executive position, 334 service-oriented architecture, 316 Silicon Valley software factories, 323 social computing, 320 Strassmann's concentration camp, 318 structured methodologies, 342 U.S.

Thank You for Being Late: An Optimist's Guide to Thriving in the Age of Accelerations
by Thomas L. Friedman
Published 22 Nov 2016

That’s right—when I was running around in 2004 declaring that the world was flat, Facebook didn’t even exist yet, Twitter was still a sound, the cloud was still in the sky, 4G was a parking space, “applications” were what you sent to college, LinkedIn was barely known and most people thought it was a prison, Big Data was a good name for a rap star, and Skype, for most people, was a typographical error. All of those technologies blossomed after I wrote The World Is Flat—most of them around 2007. So a few years later, I began updating in earnest my view of how the Machine worked. A crucial impetus was a book I read in 2014 by two MIT business school professors—Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee—entitled The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies.

…

This type of integration is called “seamless,” explains Mundie, “since the user never notices when software functions are handed from one underlying Web service to another … APIs, layer by layer, hide the complexity of what is being run inside an individual computer—and the transport protocols and messaging formats hide the complexity of melding all of this together horizontally into a network.” And this vertical stack and these horizontal interconnections create the experiences you enjoy every day on your computer, tablet, or phone. Microsoft’s cloud, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, not to mention the services of Facebook, Twitter, Google, Uber, Airbnb, Skype, Amazon, TripAdvisor, Yelp, Tinder, or NYTimes.com—they are all the product of thousands of vertical and horizontal APIs and protocols running on millions of machines talking back and forth across the network. Software production is accelerating even faster now not only because tools for writing software are improving at an exponential rate.

…

The Designers It is fun to be around really, really creative makers in the second half of the chessboard, to see what they can do, as individuals, with all of the empowering tools that have been enabled by the supernova. I met Tom Wujec in San Francisco at an event at the Exploratorium. We thought we had a lot in common and agreed to follow up on a Skype call. Wujec is a fellow at Autodesk and a global leader in 3-D design, engineering, and entertainment software. While his title sounds like a guy designing hubcaps for an auto parts company, the truth is that Autodesk is another of those really important companies few people know about—it builds the software that architects, auto and game designers, and film studios use to imagine and design buildings, cars, and movies on their computers.

May We Be Forgiven
by A. M. Homes
Published 14 Jun 2012

“And I can see you too,” I say into the phone. “We can hang up the phones,” he says. And I do. “Can you hear me?” I can. A video camera mounted in the computer—it’s terrifying. What if someone has been watching me? “What do you call this?” “Facetime, iChat, or Skype,” he says. “It just depends on the program—the end result is pretty much the same thing.” “Skype,” he says, and all I can think of is Ella Fitzgerald singing skat. “What can you see?” I ask Nate, wondering how fine the resolution is. “I see Dad’s whole office, his bookcases, his prizes. Everything that’s behind you. I don’t know why I didn’t think of this before—we could have been talking face to face this whole time.…” “Yes, we could have been talking like this all along,” I say, all the while obsessing about my earlier encounter, wondering if there’s any evidence left behind on the bookshelf—some missed bit of something.… Video chat is like talking NASA-style; there’s an ever-so-slight delay to the sound and images that reminds me of pictures sent from outer space, pixelated, like some weird postmodern animation.

…

Nate asks as I’m walking out of the room. “No,” I say. By morning, Sakhile has e-mailed back several times, wondering when we can talk—anytime is good for him. Wondering how much money is coming their way and when they might get it. We schedule a village meeting via Skype, and I leave it to Nate to tell them about the Web site and the donations. “How much?” Sakhile asks excitedly via Skype. Nate smoothly defers a direct answer. “Quite a bit,” he says. “Enough to make a difference.” And quickly the conversation becomes about want. From South Africa we hear that the village should have a car or a bus that would run back and forth to the bigger cities.

…

“While I have you on the phone—do you want an update on your father?” “No,” says Nate. “Okay,” I say. I’m not going to force it on him, but I don’t exactly like being the only one sitting with information. “So—can we plan a conference call with Ash to talk about the trip?” Nate asks. “Of course. Should we Skype with Ash?” I ask, more softly. “Can’t,” Nate says. “Her school doesn’t allow video chat—they’re worried about predators and stuff.” “Okay, then, we’ll set up a regular call for later this week.” A few nights later, with both kids on the phone, I begin by saying, “The purpose of this call is to come up with a plan for the holidays.”

Creatures of a Day: And Other Tales of Psychotherapy
by Irvin D. Yalom
Published 24 Feb 2015

“You say I knew all this? You give me far, far too much credit.” “I don’t think so. I’m just siding with the part of you where wisdom dwells.” We both looked at the clock. We had run over several minutes. As Natasha rose and collected her things, she said, “May I get back to you by email or Skype if I have more questions?” “Of course. But remember: I’m aging. So don’t wait too long.” ~ 4 ~ Thank You, Molly A few months ago I attended an outdoor funeral service for Molly, my long-term bookkeeper and Jane-of-all-trades who had worked for me for decades and had been both a godsend and a major thorn in my side.

…

If I get too friendly with one, then she’ll be looking for me at every meal and every activity. If you get involved with one, there’s no chance you can date another without hell to pay.” “How about people you knew before you went into the retirement community?” “I have a son. He’s a banker living in London, and he phones or, lately, Skypes every Sunday morning. Good kid. Two grandchildren—a boy and a girl. And that’s about it. Lost touch with everyone else from my former life. My wife and I had a lively social life, but she was the hub. She organized everything, and I just went along.” “It’s curious, isn’t it? You say you’re lonely, yet you have such good social skills, and you’re surrounded by people whom you try to avoid.”

…

We’re just starting out, I know, but you’ve laid out a lot of your personal life already, and I have a hunch that’s uncommon for you.” “Very uncommon. But you’re making it minimally painful. I do open myself up to two good friends, Connie and Jackie, friends from college days. We live in different parts of the country, but we stay in contact by Skype or phone at least once a week. Connie’s folks have a great vacation home on Lake Michigan, and we have a reunion every summer.” “And they’re close confidants?” Justine nodded, “Yep, they know almost everything. Even about my son. They’re my only confidants.” “Aside from me?” “Right.

The Power of Pull: How Small Moves, Smartly Made, Can Set Big Things in Motion
by John Hagel Iii and John Seely Brown
Published 12 Apr 2010

More than just bits and bytes, this digital infrastructure consists of the institutions, practices, and protocols that together organize and deliver the increasing power of digital technology to business and society. And new products and services are cascading out of this digital infrastructure at a dizzying rate. Taking communications technology as an example, think of Skype, the iPhone, Android, and Google Voice as just a few of the breakthroughs that have been made in recent years. These products have changed the way we communicate. Those who have figured out how to use the new communication tools to best advantage have a leg up on the competition. Yet many of us—especially those who have achieved success—tend to believe that the approaches we used in the past will continue to work in the future.

…

They were discussing business ideas and blog postings about the events in Iran when Sean told Joi about Dan’s intentions to release the script—any minute now—in a tweet. Joi reacted with concern. Wasn’t the Iranian government actively monitoring Twitter streams? Surely the government would be quickly alerted to the existence of this script. Agreeing that this was a big risk, Sean reached out to Dan and within fifteen minutes had set up a three-way Skype call bringing the three of them together. It turned out that Dan’s hack was amazing and robust—and the Iranian government might never have been able to crack it—but Joi wanted to buy as much time as possible to support the free expression of the protesters. Dan quickly agreed to pursue a better way of getting the script into the hands of the right people—a way that would not alert the Iranian government to its existence.

…

As for Sean Bonner, his website proudly proclaims: “It’s rather difficult to say what Sean Bonner does exactly.” Let’s just say that Sean is a well-known web publisher and cultural curator as well as an inveterate Internet troublemaker. With his deep technology background, Joi knew there had to be a better way to disseminate this script. Within minutes of the Skype chat with Dan and Sean, he began reaching out to select people in his network through a combination of cellphone text messages, e-mails, and tweets. He quickly found relevant people at Human Rights Watch, WITNESS, Global Voices, Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center, and other organizations—people he knew shared a common concern over the deteriorating situation in Iran and a passion for preserving human rights and free speech in a country that was moving quickly to suppress them.

Nothing but Net: 10 Timeless Stock-Picking Lessons From One of Wall Street’s Top Tech Analysts
by Mark Mahaney
Published 9 Nov 2021

TABLE 4.1 The Fundamentals Behind the eBay Rocketship Then things began to change. In late 2005, eBay announced the surprise acquisition of Skype, an Internet communications company, for approximately $3 billion. Synergies at the time of the deal were unclear, and they became less clear over time, with eBay forced to take a $1.4 billion write-down of the Skype asset only two years later. Only later did the interpretation start to gain credence that Skype may have been something of a Hail Mary acquisition by a company increasingly concerned by a potential material deceleration in its core business.

…

, 87–90 Reverse stock splits, 28 Reyes, George, 145 Robust earnings, companies with, 232–235 Rogan, Joe, 128 Rohan, Jordan, 157 ROI (return on investment), 147–148 Roku, 261t Rule of 72, 260 Salzberg, Matt, 18, 20 Saturday Night Live (SNL), 121, 187–188, 207 Saudi Arabian Oil Company, 305 Savored, 31 Scale: benefits of, 132–133, 168–170 and profitability, 250–251 Schlumberger, 5 Schmidt, Eric, 9, 157, 219 Schumer, Amy, 128 Seattle Times, 180 Securities and Exchange Commission, 201 Selling, of dislocated high-quality stocks, 282–290, 292 Sell-offs, 35–53, 294 Amazon, 48–52 Facebook, 36–41 Google, 45–48 and lockup expirations, 73 Netflix, 41–45 as universal events, 50–51 Semel, Terry, 311 7 Now, 163 SFIX (see Stitch Fix [SFIX]) Shareholder letters, 214–216, 216t–217t Shatner, William, 90 Shopify (SHOP): as competitor, 310 and Covid-19 pandemic, 17 during Covid-19 pandemic, 303 fundamentals at, 261t management teams of, 203–204, 204t, 220t revenue of, 79 as tech stock, 3 Short-term investments, 55–59 Short-term volatility, 52, 56–59, 311 Shutterstock (SSTK), 289, 290f Singh, Sumit, 69 SiriusXM, 132 Skype, 84 Smartphones: and apps, 165–167, 168t as disruption, 172 and Google, 155 Snap (Snapchat; SNAP) AWS used by, 118 Snap (Snapchat; SNAP) during Covid-19 pandemic, 17 as downloaded app, 168t earnings outlook and valuation of, 234 fundamentals at, 138t, 261t as long-term investment, 59–65 market cap of, 247t marketing potential on, 137 and network effects, 170 product innovation, 137–139 profitability of, 248–250, 249t revenue and stock price, 283, 283f share price, 64f as tech stock, 3 SNL (Saturday Night Live), 121, 187–188, 207 The Social Dilemma (film), 269 The Social Network (film), 210, 269 Spectacles (smart glasses), 60, 62 Spiegel, Evan, 60–62, 138 Spotify (SPOT): as disruption, 172 fundamentals at, 261t market cap of, 7, 247t and pricing power flywheel, 197 product innovation, 128–133 share prices, 130f total addressable markets, 163–167, 166t, 296 Square, 139 Squier, George O., 212 SSTK (Shutterstock), 289, 290f Stanley Morgan, 83 Step-fixed costs, 169 “Still So Much to Like,” 232 Stitch Fix (SFIX): fundamentals at, 126t product innovation, 114, 124–128 share price, 124f Stock market: after Covid-19 pandemic, 106 taking losses in, 33, 35 Stock-picking, fundamentals of, 15–18 Stocks: driven by fundamentals, 76, 110 growth rates of, 229t, 230t reverse stock splits, 28 when to sell, 282–290, 292 (See also Bad stocks) Stone, Biz, 134 Stone, Brad, 206 Story stock, 254 Streaming services, 119–123 Streep, Meryl, 135 Subscription businesses, 41–43, 101, 237, 270 Sun Basket, 20 Szkutak, Tom, 192 Taleb, Nassim Nicholas, 18 TAMs (see Total addressable markets [TAMs]) Tarrant, Brenton, 36–37 Tech stocks: cost of, 227–232 and Covid-19 pandemic, 17 growth rates of, 229t, 230t importance of fundamentals for, 110 mindset for investing in, 79 performance of, 2–3 Telegram, 168t Tenacity, 218 Ten-baggers, 1–2 Tencent: growth of, 305 management teams of, 203–204, 204t, 220t market cap of, 7 net income of, 5, 6, 6t Tesla (TSLA): as founder-led company, 209–210 management teams of, 203–204, 204t, 220t product innovation at, 114, 139 on S&P 500, 87, 247 Ticket Monster, 30 TicketMaster, 31 TikTok, 3, 168t, 170, 310 Time Warner, 7, 8 Total addressable markets (TAMs), 143–172, 296 Amazon vs. eBay, 180 and benefits of scale, 132–133, 168–170 and Blue Apron, 19 DoorDash, 161–163 of Facebook, 268 Google, 145–157 Netflix, 98, 122–123 of Netflix, 273 Priceline, 93–94 Spotify, 132–133, 163–167 Uber, 158–161, 275 understanding your, 63 The Trade Desk (TTD), 3, 261t, 288 Trading: around quarters, 74 investing vs., 55–59, 302 Travelocity, 90 TREE (Lending Tree), 1 Tripadvisor (TRIP), 284–286, 285f TrueCar (TRUE), 287–288, 288f Trump, Donald, 51, 135 TSLA (see Tesla [TSLA]) TTD (The Trade Desk), 3, 261t, 288 20% revenue “rule,” 107–109, 109t Twitter (TWTR): fundamentals at, 138t, 261t growth of, 5 net income of, 6t product innovation, 133–139 profitability of, 248–250, 249t revenue and stock price, 284, 284f share price, 133f as tech stock, 3 Uber (UBER): during Covid-19 pandemic, 17, 303 dislocation periods of, 274–276 fundamentals at, 261t as long-term investment, 71–73 market cap of, 247t and network effects, 170 profitability of, 252–253, 253t share price, 72f, 277f as tech stock, 3 total addressable markets, 158–161, 158f, 171, 296 and valuation, 226–227, 244–246, 245t volatility of, 311 Uber Eats, 159, 160, 162, 185f, 253 Uber Freight, 159, 160 Uber Rides, 253 UGC (user-generated content) companies, 248–249 Unit economics advantages, 169 USA Today, 69 User-generated content (UGC) companies, 248–249 Vadon, Mark, 23–24, 68 Valuation, 225–258, 298–299 companies with minimal earnings, 235–242 companies with no earnings, 242–254 companies with robust earnings, 232–235 cost of tech/growth stocks, 227–232 long-term outlook in, 102 and precision trap, 254–255 Priceline, 93 and revenue, 78–79, 78f Uber, 160 Venn diagram challenge, 21–22 Verizon, 8, 88 Vogel, Paul, 131 Volatility, short-term, 52, 56–59, 311 Vollero, Drew, 61 Wal-Mart Stores, 6, 10, 49 Wanamaker, John, 149 Wayfair, 303, 310 Waymo, 208 Wehner, David, 39 WFH (work-from-home) companies, 303 WhatsApp, 168t Whitman, Meg, 8 Whole Foods, 80 Wikipedia, 168 Williams, Evan, 134 Williams, Rich, 31 Wing, 208 Wix, 3, 247t Work-from-home (WFH) companies, 303 Yahoo!

Duty of Care: One NHS Doctor's Story of the Covid-19 Crisis
by Dr Dominic Pimenta
Published 2 Sep 2020

My phone felt hot and caustic in my hand by the end of the day, and the cool leather of the Bible felt like a balm. I started to read the New Testament each night in small segments. I found it calming and familiar, and having to concentrate to follow the text helped me switch off from everything else. I told my dad about it the next weekend over Skype. He started crying. There was no less division, but at least we had more to talk about. • • • That weekend I had taken on some extra shifts again, this time covering two peripheral hospitals, which I needed to drive between. Both sites had ward rounds to do and new patients to see – it was tough work to get everything done in the morning and get to the next site to start over in the afternoon.

…

Dilsan lays it out: “Your dad is very high-risk, from the kids and possibly from Beck. It probably isn’t COVID but do you want to risk it?” I don’t. It’s a little heartbreaking. Mum takes it in her stride, although I can hear the hurt in her voice. Beck understands, but she is really upset. So we Skype Mum and Dad instead. We chat about religion and Dad is more engaged over the webcam than ever. I reflect on how lucky we are to have this technology, which even just a few years ago was not capable of enabling a human interaction like it can do now. I can’t get hold of Beck for the rest of the day, and when we finally catch up, she’s crushingly disappointed.

…

Dilsan stays serious and tries to pull the conversation around to the gravity of the situation, to warn the group of what is likely coming. Her cousins listen, but the tone is light, and before long Dilsan is laughing at the decades-old private jokes only families have. It’s good for her to connect. I think of my own family and promise myself to call Mum and Dad tomorrow, to Skype with my brother Paul and his girls more. I also try and check in on our elderly neighbours. As if on cue, an email lands in my inbox from my Aunt Judy. She has been planning her 80th birthday party for the end of the month, 26 March. A big family get-together is quite a rare and special occasion and this one has been in the works for nearly a year.

Broad Band: The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the Internet
by Claire L. Evans
Published 6 Mar 2018

Like Sherry, she spent her days on the phone: checking in on San Francisco’s social workers, suicide-prevention hotlines, homeless shelters, senior centers, community groups, and Switchboards. “It really felt to me like putting the tools to exactly what they were meant to be used for, to serve the needs of people,” she tells me, a cat perched on her shoulder, when I reach her over Skype. “They figured out a way to put technology to use in a way that really touched people’s lives, and that just seemed completely appropriate and cool.” To keep the directory accurate, the women made dozens of phone calls a day and collated pages by manually laying them on the floor in alphabetized piles.

…

And like programming a generation before, it was where the women were. MICROCOSM To understand hypertext, I’ve turned to one of the brightest computer scientists in the world. Dame Wendy Hall is a garrulous, strawberry blonde Brit with a disarmingly warm manner and a busy calendar. We’re talking over Skype, nine hours apart. Wendy, who was appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire—the female equivalent of being knighted—in 2009 for her contributions to computer science, is in a hotel room in London, dressed for dinner. I’m in my pajamas, drinking coffee, surrounded by index cards, in my office in Los Angeles.

…

And while linkbases and constructive hypertext were easily maintained in relatively contained research and classroom environments, or on small networks of computers all running the same operating system, they would have quickly become unmanageable on a global scale. Today, we accept 404 Errors as the cost of doing business, and the Web runs the world. MULTICOSM The second time I talk to Wendy Hall, she’s finishing up a long day with the department she now chairs at Southampton, the Web Science Institute. As I reach her on Skype, she’s just saying good-bye to the last students trailing out of the conference room where they’ve been meeting. “Claire’s writing a book about me,” she says, laughing, to someone I can’t see, gesturing at my head on the screen. “Or people like me, anyway.” Wendy will be the first to tell you that she’s a very social person.

Wild Ride: Inside Uber's Quest for World Domination
by Adam Lashinsky
Published 31 Mar 2017

Among the most prominent was Andreessen Horowitz, then a two-year-old firm helmed by Marc Andreessen, a cofounder of Netscape. Andreessen Horowitz was media savvy and aggressively self-promotional. It also found early success with an unusual deal. It had been part of an investment group that bought the Internet calling service Skype from eBay—a private-equity transaction rather than a VC play—and quickly flipped the company to Microsoft for a gain of $5 billion for the group. Andreessen’s marquee name appealed to Kalanick. Having the backing of such investors conferred legitimacy on start-ups, particularly attractive to an entrepreneur who had toiled in obscurity for as long as Kalanick had.

…

He asked each candidate for a city general manager job to prepare a “city presentation,” a PowerPoint deck that showed how the potential executive would build out a market for Uber. Pierre-Dimitri Gore-Coty, a Frenchman who had been working for a hedge fund in London, prepared such a presentation in the fall of 2012, hoping to become general manager for Paris. A short while later he found himself on Skype with Kalanick and Graves. Kalanick’s goal in interviewing candidates is to try “to simulate real-life interaction in an office,” says Gore-Coty. “Travis spent ten to fifteen minutes discussing my previous experiences, asking me about my investments and my analysis of the media industry”—topics that might have little bearing on Uber.

…

Whereas many of the original Scour employees had stuck with Kalanick at Red Swoosh or followed Michael Todd to Google, Droege went his own way after Scour’s collapse. He founded an online shop to sell used golf equipment called Back 9 Golf. Then he helped start a company called Gizmo5 Technologies, eventually bought by Google, that created an Internet calling service similar to Skype but aimed at small businesses. Next Droege joined Taser International, the stun-gun maker, which had begun selling body cameras to police officers. Droege oversaw a Web-based repository for all the video cops uploaded called Evidence.com. Droege had discussed working at Uber before, but he decided to see things out at Taser, a publicly traded company in Arizona.

The Next Factory of the World: How Chinese Investment Is Reshaping Africa
by Irene Yuan Sun
Published 16 Oct 2017

Wall Street Journal, July 3, 1991, A4. 36. Gerschenkron, Economic Backwardness, 9. 37. Leslie T. Chang, Factory Girls: From Village to City in a Changing China (New York: Spiegel & Grau, 2008), 74. 38. E. P. Thompson, “Time, Work-Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism,” 80. 39. Kelly Pike, interview by the author on Skype, March 10, 2016. Chapter 6 1. Stephen Sigei, interview by author, Nairobi, Kenya, July 10, 2016. 2. Larry Hanauer and Lyle J. Morris, Chinese Engagement in Africa: Drivers, Reactions, and Implications for U.S. Policy, (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2014), 30–31. 3. Dinah Jerotich Mwinzi, remarks at the Africa Tech Challenge 2016 Opening Ceremony, Nairobi, Kenya, July 12, 2016. 4.

…

Dan Munro, “Ebola: While Big Pharma Slept,” Forbes, September 14, 2014, http://www.forbes.com/sites/danmunro/2014/09/14/ebola-while-big-pharma-slept/#a8293ee6627a; and Mirjam Gehrke, “Pharmaceutical Industry Neglects Developing Countries,” Deutsche Welle, October 26, 2012, http://p.dw.com/p/16WgN. 16. Doctors Without Borders, “No Time to Quit: HIV/AIDS Treatment Gap Widening in Africa,” May 2010, http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/sites/usa/files/MSF-No-Time-to-Quit-HIV-AIDS.pdf. 17. Daniel Berman, interview by author on Skype, July 22, 2016. 18. Yanzhong Huang, “Chinese Pharma: A Global Health Game Changer?” Council on Foreign Relations, New York, March 31, 2015, http://www.cfr.org/china/chinese-pharma-global-health-game-changer/p36365. 19. Viral Shah, “Evolution of Pharmaceutical Industry: A Global Indian & Gujarat Perspective,” Journal of Pharmaceutical Science and Bioscientific Research 2, no. 5, Sept–Oct 2012, 219–229, http://www.jpsbr.org/index_htm_files/5_JPSBR_12_RV109.pdf. 20.

…

Ina Skosana, “New State-Run Pharmaceutical Company to Produce ARVs by 2019,” Bhekisisa Centre for Health Journalism, http://bhekisisa.org/article/2016-02-17-new-state-run-pharmaceutical-company-to-produce-arvs-by-2019. 27. United Nations Industrial Development Organization, “Kenya Pharmaceutical Sector Development Strategy,” 2012. Author Skype interview with Daniel Berman, July 22, 2016. 28. Haddis Tadesse, interview by author, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, July 19, 2016. 29. Government of Ethiopia and World Health Organization, “Launch of Ethiopian National Strategy and Plan of Action for Pharmaceutical Manufacturing Development and Improving Access,” July 14, 2015. 30.

Exercise Every Day: 32 Tactics for Building the Exercise Habit (Even If You Hate Working Out)
by S.J. Scott
Published 19 Mar 2015

You keep meaning to get started on your micro-commitment, but you have to answer that text, Skype message, email, etc. It never seems to end. You will always have interruptions. If you let these interruptions dictate your life, you will never, ever accomplish anything beyond the immediate priorities of your job and personal life. This is called survival mode—putting out fire after fire as they pop up. This is no way to live, and it certainly isn’t a way to thrive and get the most out of life. In order to break the cycle of interruptions messing up your plans, you have to take back control of your life. You need to schedule your day and set aside certain times for email, Skype, phone calls, and communication with others.

Factory Man: How One Furniture Maker Battled Offshoring, Stayed Local - and Helped Save an American Town
by Beth Macy
Published 14 Jul 2014

I was the longshot and the underdog, but fortunately for me, John Bassett was too, whether he was ready to admit it to a reporter or not. With any luck at all, he would help me explain this circuitous piece of American history, from its hardwood forests to its executive boardrooms; from handsaws and planing tools to smartphones and Skype; from the oak logs that sailed from the port of Norfolk, Virginia, to Asia and then returned, months later, in the form of dressers and beds. 2 The Original Outsourcer Someday I’ll buy and sell you. —J.D. BASSETT SR. TO HIS FATHER, JOHN HENRY BASSETT To understand JBIII, you have to understand where he comes from, a place where everywhere he looked, he saw his name: on the WELCOME TO BASSETT sign, the bank, the library, the school, and the myriad company smokestacks that rose high above the town.

…

He’d spent the past decade developing a fiberboard-and-laminate flooring-supply business, called Plantation Timber Products, based in the southwestern Chinese province of Sichuan, a place even remoter than Dalian. “Labor was less of a factor with this one, which was all about being where the trees were,” Michael Moh said in a Skype interview from Shanghai. In the small city of Leshan, the Mohs had provided work for five hundred rural peasants and rare cash for wood for five hundred thousand subsistence farmers, he added. In the interim, Larry Moh had also made a bundle off a considerable heap of AOL stock. As Tothill, his old supplier buddy, recalled, “He liked to make risky investments, and he was very good at picking them out.

…

I began asking in the spring of 2012, which was lousy timing—it was soon after the mass suicides to protest working conditions at the Foxconn factory in the Chinese city of Wuhan. Micah Goldstein made it clear: He didn’t want a story about working conditions in Indonesia. “We don’t own the factories there,” he said repeatedly. When I landed in Surabaya in March 2013, I had already Skyped with Stanley’s vice president for Asia operations, a British-born factory man named Richard Ledger whose career perfectly mirrored the arc of globalization in the developing world. He’d met his wife in the Philippines in 1997, back when the furniture workers he supervised there were earning twenty-five dollars a month.

Overwhelmed: Work, Love, and Play When No One Has the Time
by Brigid Schulte
Published 11 Mar 2014

Heart surgeries. Back surgeries. Graduations. Anniversaries. Births. Deaths. Check. Check. Check. The handwriting often snakes up the sides of the letters into the margins of the decorative garland of stockings and tinsel stars. We put the letters aside for a moment and Burnett calls two colleagues on Skype to catch up on their ongoing research on busyness. They’ve studied how living fast and busy frays relationships. Couples they’ve interviewed lament that they have no time for each other. “I can’t honestly tell you when actually we had the last real conversation,” one told her. They likened their lives to living on a “speeding train,” a “roller coaster,” and a “carousel and there’s no way to get off.”

…

They’re deep in the process of analyzing the language women have used in interviews to describe their lives. “One woman we interviewed said, ‘It’s not the kind of cars you drive anymore, it’s how busy you are, how many activities you’re in, the bumper stickers on your car—that shows status,’” Burnett’s colleague, Becky DeGreeff, says over Skype. Another woman admitted judging people for taking time off. “We assume that if people aren’t always busy, then they must be lazy,” she told them. “I don’t know how people would not be busy,” sniffed another. “I’m so tired. I need a sabbatical,” one woman said, before quickly vowing she’d never take one, as if that would be admitting a lack of stamina to keep up.7 DeGreeff says she overheard two mothers who’d dropped their daughters off at a dance class and were busy grocery shopping before the class let out.

…

“They can choose not to be equal partners with their wives, in which case having children will help their careers with the fatherhood bonus. Or they can choose to be equal partners and hurt their careers even more than women. As long as that’s the case, we’ll have a few brave souls, but that’s it. Brave souls.” He’s stuck. With smartphones and Skype and e-mail and other fast-emerging technologies keeping us all tethered to work, the ideal worker is now expected to be on call and ready to roll all day, every day, all the time. And because the ideal worker is just that, a demanding, voracious ideal, no one can ever measure up. No matter how much you do, how hard you work, how much you sacrifice, how devoted you are, you can never attain that ideal.

The Googlization of Everything:
by Siva Vaidhyanathan
Published 1 Jan 2010

It now hosts e-mail for millions of users. Google purchased the innovative and free blog-hosting service Blogger in 2003. It runs a social networking site called Orkut that is popular in Brazil and India, but nowhere else. Google Voice offers a voice-over-Internet-provider (VoIP) that competes with Skype’s long-distance Internet phone service. It facilitates payment for Web-based commerce through Google Checkout. Google is also a software company. It now offers online software such as a word processor, spreadsheets, presentation software, and a REN D E R UNTO CA ESA R 17 calendar service—all operating “in the cloud” and thus freeing users from managing multiple versions of their files and applications on different computers, and easing collaboration with others.

…

“It is unacceptable,” Graham wrote to Eric Schmidt, “to roll out a product that unilaterally renders personal information public, with the intention of repairing problems later as they arise.”47 A few days after the Broughton incident, I had a long conversation with Peter Barron, head of communication and public affairs for Google in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg. “This was actually a fantastically successful launch” in the United Kingdom, Barron told me over a Skype connection. We had record numbers of people visiting Google Maps. Many, many millions of people used and enjoyed and found the product extremely useful. We had a very small number of complaints—complaints in the hundreds—about the fact that people’s houses were up or maybe their faces weren’t blurred.

…

See also censorship semantic searches, 22–23 Sennett, Richard, 231n33 seven deadly sins, 76, 77 sexually explicit content, 38. See also pornography Shell Oil corporation, 131 264 IND EX Shenk, David, 175 Shirky, Clay, 175, 231n33, 234n71 Shi Tao, 127 Silicon Valley, 56, 70–71 Sinsheimer, Robert, 207 Skype, 16 social networking, 16, 17–118, 90–92, 95, 116 social responsibility, 42–44 Solove, Daniel, 95, 96, 236n20 Souter, David, 170 South Africa, 121, 122, 128 South Korea, 25, 142–43, 145 Soviet Union, 121–23 Spain, 142, 146 speed, priority placed on, 51–54 Spencer, Herbert, 181 sponsored results, 26, 60 Stanford University, 56, 158, 187, 195 “Star Wars Kid,” 95–96 stock market, 79, 229n14 Street View.

Consent of the Networked: The Worldwide Struggle for Internet Freedom
by Rebecca MacKinnon
Published 31 Jan 2012

This ability could potentially make it more difficult for independent and nonprofit citizen media to reach large audiences or build broad communities. If ISPs are allowed to discriminate, they can also block other content services that happen to compete with their own. Internet service providers now have the technical ability to “see” what kinds of application a particular subscriber is using at a given moment in time: Are you using Skype? YouTube? Streaming movies on Netflix? Or are you accessing a nonprofit website that uses the open-source WordPress platform? Your service provider knows. Currently in most countries, there is no law preventing Internet service providers from discriminating between services for a profit: your ISP could in theory offer a “tiered” access package in which access to certain services belonging to major brand names (Amazon, Netflix, YouTube, and Facebook, for example) would be cheaper than access to the general Internet or to lesser known applications.

…

Several months later, the FCC issued rules that generally reflected this compromise: though mobile carriers would be prohibited from blocking websites, they would be free to block applications or services unless those applications directly competed with providers’voice and video products, such as Skype. The rules allowed for some “network management,” which includes prioritization of some services over others, and did not rule out “paid prioritization” of services, with the stipulation that carriers must be transparent about how they implement their traffic management. Net neutrality opponents and proponents were both highly critical with the compromise position.

…

In early 2011 the fifth-largest wireless carrier in the United States, MetroPCS, began offering a $40/month “no long-term commitment” service plan on one of its 4G phones, targeting lower-income customers. The service allowed unlimited talking, texting, web browsing, and YouTube access. Other premium multimedia services were available at additional cost, although some popular brand-name services like Skype and Netflix were excluded altogether. Apps from those services were blocked from being downloaded to the user’s handset. Though the logic for the blockage is that these tools tend to use a lot of bandwidth, which costs the providers money, the precedent of blocking certain applications and not others is potentially a slippery slope.

The End of Secrecy: The Rise and Fall of WikiLeaks
by The "Guardian" , David Leigh and Luke Harding
Published 1 Feb 2011

If media groups did not learn to work across borders on stories, the stories would leave them behind. In the run-up to cable D-Day, Ian Katz, the deputy editor managing these complex relationships, held regular Skype chats with the Guardian’s multilingual counterparts. “They were hilarious conversations,” Katz recalls. The reason the Spaniards were holding up the number of a US state department cable to the Skype camera was security – it had been agreed that no sensitive mentions would be made over the phone or by email. In Berlin, similarly, Marcel Rosenbach, from Der Spiegel, was the first to unearth a cable with the deceptively bland title: “National HUMINT Collection Directive on the United Nations.”

…

None of the team worries deeply about the consequences of losing a computer, though, because the lines of code to control the site are stored on remote computers under their control – “in the cloud” – and the passwords they need for access are in their heads. Popular for day-by-day in-house conversations is the internet phone service Skype, which also uses encryption. Because it was developed in Sweden rather than the US, the team trusts it not to have a “back door” through which the US National Security Agency can peer in on their discussions. As its name suggests, WikiLeaks began as a “wiki” – a user-editable site (which has sometimes led to confusion with the user-editable Wikipedia; there is no association).

…

Now Casson worked brutally long days comparing the Guardian’s editing decisions with those of his counterparts, and considering the representations about particular cables from the US state department that were passed on by the New York Times. The task was made vastly more difficult by the journalists’ determination not to discuss cables on the phone or in emails; after his daily round of Skype calls with international partners, Casson would meticulously alter the colour of some of the 700 or so cables listed on a vast Google spreadsheet that only he could understand. He looked like a man close to the edge. And then there were the legal risks. Could the Guardian be prosecuted under the British Official Secrets Act or the US Espionage Act?

PostgreSQL 9 Admin Cookbook: Over 80 Recipes to Help You Run an Efficient PostgreSQL 9. 0 Database
by Simon Riggs and Hannu Krosing
Published 23 Oct 2010

His previous experience covers management and senior technical roles in the banking, telecommunications and software industries. Simon's early research work has been published by the Royal Society. Hannu Krosing is a principal consultant at 2ndQuadrant and a Technical Advisor at Ambient Sound Investments. As the original database architect at Skype Technologies, Hannu was responsible for designing the Skytools suite of replication and scalability technologies. Hannu has more than 12 years experience working with and contributing to the PostgreSQL project. About the Reviewers Gabriele Bartolini is a long time open-source programmer, writing Linux/Unix applications in C and C++ for over 10 years, specializing in search engines and web analytics with large databases.

…

PostgreSQL Administration Cookbook offers the information you need to manage your live production databases on PostgreSQL. The book contains insights direct from the main author of the PostgreSQL replication and recovery features, and the database architect of the most successful startup using PostgreSQL, Skype. This hands-on guide will assist developers working on live databases, supporting web or enterprise software applications using Java, Python, Ruby, .Net from any development framework. It's easy to manage your database when you've got PostgreSQL 9 Administration Cookbook at hand. This practical guide gives you quick answers to common questions and problems, building on the author's experience as trainers, users, and core developers of the PostgreSQL database server.

…

It's been a personal mission of mine over the last six years to improve server performance and the team have been successful in making the server highly performant and very scalable. That gives PostgreSQL enormous headroom for growth. Who is using PostgreSQL? Prominent users include Apple, BASF, Genentech, IMDB.com, Skype, NTT, Yahoo, and The National Weather Service. PostgreSQL receives well in excess of 1 million downloads per year, according to data submitted to the European Commission, who concluded "...PostgreSQL, is considered by many database users to be a credible alternative... We need to mention one last thing.

Deep Sea and Foreign Going
by Rose George
Published 4 Sep 2013

First, the interior attractions: a karaoke machine in the crew’s lounge, a dart board and Wii machine in the officers’. A library on D-deck is equipped with cheap DVDs, books and two computers for gaming only. Kendal is only four years old, but it has no provision for browsing on the internet and no Skype. Internet access is not freely available: crew members pass their emails to the captain once a day and he sends them and transmits the replies. The last time I had that level of internet freedom was in 1995. There are outdoor facilities: a basketball hoop on the poop deck near the stern, where the decks seem too slippery to play safely, and the low railings an invitation to lose balls to the ocean.

…

He says the godfathers – the land-based pirate controllers – come here to spend their gains, that the money-changers are mostly Somali-owned. ‘The government turns a blind eye, maybe because of corruption. They can make you not see them.’ * There is no need for secrecy in piracy. John Chase’s negotiators often communicate by Skype. It’s not like in Afghanistan or Iraq, where you are trying to negotiate out of sight of governments who want to rush in and rescue. Somalia is different. ‘The pirates will talk on the phone for hours at a time. Everyone knows where they are, it’s not an issue of trying to locate them.’ Everyone knows where the hostages are, but no-one is rushing to rescue them.

…

I wasn’t even sure how to pronounce its name until Captain Glenn told of a girl in the office who pronounces Salalah like ‘Ooh-la-la!’ (the stress, at least in English, is on the first ‘la’). The spectacular view is to be had from the terrace of the Oasis Club, a bar-restaurant on the cliffs above the port. I go there twice in 24 hours, with whoever can grab a few hours’ leave to come with me, enough for a quick Skype home; perhaps a drink – non-alcoholic of course – and a meal that hasn’t been cooked by Pinky, some fruit that doesn’t look as sad as ours. In the better ports around the world, sailors always head for a mission to use those precious hours. Run by church organizations – the Norwegian Church, the Seamen’s Church Institute of New York and the UK’s Mission to Seafarers are the best known – these missions, or seafarers’ centres, offer internet, food, drink and a small period of solace and different company to that on your ship.

Bold: How to Go Big, Create Wealth and Impact the World
by Peter H. Diamandis and Steven Kotler
Published 3 Feb 2015

At the time Anderson wrote Free, beyond a few extremely obscure papers, economists had not studied the idea of free in the marketplace. It was a blank spot on the map. In other words, even people who make their living studying economic trends were fooled. Once demonetization arrived, they didn’t know what hit them. Nor is it just economists or, for that matter, Kodak executives. Skype demonetized long-distance telephony; Craigslist demonetized classified advertising; Napster demonetized the music industry. This list goes on and on. More critically, because demonetization is also deceptive, almost no one within those industries was prepared for such radical change. Dematerialization.

…

CONSULTANT 1987 Up to $2,000 $3,988 7 Video player free Toshiba V-8000 1981 $1,245 $3,103 8 Video camera free RCA CC010 1981 $1,050 $2,617 9 Music player free Sony CDP-101 CD player 1982 $900 $2,113 10 Encyclopedia free Compton’s CD Encyclopedia 1989 $750 $1,370 11 Videogame console free Atari 2600 1977 $199 $744 Total free $902,809 *Year of Launch The roughly $900,000 worth of applications in a smart phone today Source: Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think, page 289 * Manufacturer’s Suggested Retail Price It shows all the 1980s luxury technologies that have dematerialized and now come standard with your average smartphone. An HD video camera, two-way video conferencing (via Skype), GPS, libraries of books, your record collection, a flashlight, an EKG, a full videogame arcade, a tape recorder, maps, a calculator, a clock . . . just to name a few. Thirty years ago the devices in this collection would have cost hundreds of thousands of dollars; today they come free or as apps on your phone.

…

BE OPEN TO NEW WORKING METHODOLOGIES “The other day I was in London,” said Barrie, “and I met a financial analyst working from home doing financial models for pension funds on things like infrastructure projects. He needed a mathematician to develop these models in MATLAB to be able to do his research and present his findings, so he hired a PhD student in Pakistan to do the work. They set up a chat on Skype. The streaming video quality to somewhere like Pakistan is now unbelievable. It was just like the guy was in the room with him. He’d get up in the morning, have his cup of tea, sit down, put the iPad there, do the video call, and then they’d sit there and talk all day as if they were in the same room together.

Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art
by James Nestor
Published 25 May 2020

He’d written dozens of posts and self-published a book explaining breathing from the subatomic level on up, all annotated with hundreds of studies. He’d also become one of Scandinavia’s most respected and popular breathing therapists, helping to heal thousands of patients through the subtle power of healthy breathing. When I mentioned during one of our Skype conversations that I would be mouthbreathing for ten days during an experiment, he cringed. When I asked if he wanted to join in, he refused. “I do not want to,” he declared. “But I am curious.” Now, months later, Olsson plops his jet-lagged body onto the examination chair, puts on the video glasses, and inhales one of his last nasal breaths for the next 240 hours.

…

We’re eating the same food at the same time as we did ten days earlier, sweating through the same stationary bike workouts in the same gym, and having many of the same conversations. This afternoon we’re discussing Olsson’s favorite subject, his obsession for the past decade. We are, once again, talking about carbon dioxide. It is hard to admit now, but when I first interviewed Olsson more than a year ago, he was not a source I entirely trusted. On our Skype calls, he liked to hammer the importance of slow breathing, and he’d sent me a half-dozen PowerPoint presentations and reams of scientific studies on how paced breathing relaxed the body and calmed the mind. This part made perfect sense. But when he started in on the restorative wonders of a toxic gas, I began to wonder.

…

I understood why only one person showed up for the first conference he held on breathing, in 2010, and why, after honing his message and building his research base, he was now something of a Swedish media star who filled auditoriums, his grinning, perpetually tanned, rom-com face popping up on newspapers, magazines, and nightly news shows. In these interviews, he championed the therapeutic effects of nasal breathing and beseeched audiences with the same message of slow breathing. I returned home to San Francisco, and Olsson and I kept in contact. Every few weeks I’d get a new email or a Skype call about some new long-lost scientific discovery he’d just unearthed in a medical library. He’d continued his self-experimentation too, always seeking to use his own body to prove the power of breathing and wonders of the “metabolic waste product,” carbon dioxide. This is how Olsson ended up, a year after our first meeting, in my living room in San Francisco with a face mask Velcroed to his head and an EKG electrode clipped to his ear

A Year of Living Danishly: My Twelve Months Unearthing the Secrets of the World's Happiest Country
by Helen Russell
Published 14 Sep 2015

Great. Now I feel much better… ‘It’ll be OK,’ Lego Man says eventually, shuffling closer towards me on the sofa and putting his arm around me. ‘We just need to get to know the place better. You should get out and about more, meet people.’ He’s probably right. Working from home and socialising via Skype and FaceTime isn’t good for a girl. But then neither is Sticksville-on-Sea’s public transport system. Having suffered frostbite and fury at the mercy of infrequent buses and trains since Lego Man started commuting to work with our sole mode of transport, a leased Lego-mobile, I decide that the time has come to buy my own car out here.

…

I’ve just about got my head around this new state of affairs and Lego Man’s early arrivals when I hear a car crunch onto the drive at 2.30pm. The sound of the door handle turning gives me such a shock that I knock over a glass of water while speaking to a time management expert in New York. I have to pretend to her that the resultant cursing is coughing and that the madly barking dog is interference on the transatlantic Skype line. ‘Well, thank you so much for your time,’ I say as I scribble some final notes in poor shorthand. ‘I won’t keep you any longer!’ I add slightly manically in order to be heard over the din of the dog, whimpering with excitement at the return of his master, and Lego Man, bringing his characteristic drafts and noise into the house.

…

We talk fast – not at the pace I realise I’ve been adopting out here, over-enunciating every word to try and make myself understood. We catch up on each other’s news. We eat snegles. We take group pictures at the porny pony fountain in The Big Town. It’s A Lot Of Fun. A couple of them have small children, so there are daily Skype sessions before toddler bedtimes, reminding me of how much I want that life too. I love being a godmother to two utterly edible small people back home, and delight in being a not-at-all-related ‘special auntie’ to several more, but it’s not the same. And I still have to swallow down the lump that appears in my throat sometimes when I think about this.

The Mutant Project: Inside the Global Race to Genetically Modify Humans
by Eben Kirksey
Published 10 Nov 2020

JK had said he wanted to bring CRISPR to the fertility clinic, but at the time the initiative had seemed like an unrealistic long shot, a pipe dream. Now, seeing the text, Ryan was curious to learn more, so he called him up on Skype. “It was like seeing a warning in a rearview mirror,” Ryan told me, “like that object you saw in the distance is right next to your car.” JK told him that a woman was pregnant from his CRISPR experiment. The Skype call was short, and somewhat confusing. Within a few weeks, Ryan was on a flight to Shenzhen. Ryan took vacation time from HDMZ to explore the possibility of working for JK as a consultant. On that trip, in May 2018, he spent just a few days on the ground.

…

Before trying to alter his friend’s DNA, David initially tried a simpler experiment: he tried to splice green fluorescent protein genes from jellyfish into dogs to make them glow. On the side David was breeding attack dogs, and he knew that glowing puppies would fetch top dollar. He successfully introduced jellyfish DNA into dog sperm, but damaged the sperm in the process. When I first spoke with him on Skype he showed me a new litter that had just been born. But the puppies were normal, non-GMO. Tristan and David met each other through Ascendance Biomedical, a network of hackers who shared an interest in genetic engineering and human enhancement. As this collective started to form, excitement began to build about a do-it-yourself gene therapy for HIV.

…

Moving through a series of provocative poses—on all fours, throwing her mane of hair back as she sits up—she casts a sultry look at the camera. Then the male dancer joins her as a European photographer shouts stage directions. The pair strike a serious pose, then crack smiles. Then they start to dance to the refrain of the music: “I got this, got this, got this … I don’t care…”2 When we initially chatted over Skype about the ideas driving Project Tamara, she told me: “This performance is about the power of color and identity.” Like many others who have insisted that “black is beautiful,” Tamara was bringing attention to internalized racism and feelings of self-loathing that motivate many people to change the color of their skin.

Geek Sublime: The Beauty of Code, the Code of Beauty
by Vikram Chandra
Published 7 Nov 2013

They also provided seed funding to members of their community.83 These efforts were successful enough that the denizens of Silicon Valley sometimes refer to these networks, with decidedly mixed admiration and resentment, as the “Indian Mafia.”84 The resentment curdles and boils over in discussions of outsourcing. Since the nineties, American companies have gained commercial advantage by leveraging the new landscape of instant communication made possible by the internet and the disparities in programmer salaries around the globe. If you can manage employees via e-mail and Skype, it makes economic sense to have your code written in Bangalore rather than next door, and pay a fraction of the salary that a programmer living in San Jose would demand. American programmers have watched with mounting fear and fury as work has been outsourced; meanwhile, in India, the demand for competent programmers has steadily driven wages up.

…

The open-source database SQLite, at the time of this writing, has 1,177 times the amount of test code as it does program code.14 Most non-programmers have never heard of SQLite, but it is the most widely deployed database in the world.15 SQLite is a tiny program. It runs within your Firefox browser, storing your bookmarks; it is used widely within the Mac operating system; it runs within each copy of Skype; it runs on your smartphone, storing contacts and appointments. SQLite’s vast suite of tests is an attempt to prevent bugs from creeping into a program that has become an essential, foundational component of the working memory of humanity. Programmers work doggedly toward correctness, but the sheer size and complexity of software ensures that bugs lurk within.

…

—San Francisco Chronicle Paperback / Ebook available “Essays that reconfigure dream, fact and reflection.” —The New York Times Book Review “D’Agata is an alchemist who changes trash into purest gold.” —Guy Davenport, Harper’s Magazine Paperback / Ebook available WWW.GRAYWOLFPRESS.ORG Many Graywolf authors are available to chat with your book club or classroom via phone and Skype. E-mail us at wolves@graywolfpress.org for further details. Visit graywolfpress.org to sign up for our monthly newsletter and to check out our many regularly updated features, including our On Craft series, Pub Talk series, Poem of the Week, author interviews, special sales, book giveaways, tour listings, catalogs, and much more.

Southeast Asia on a Shoestring Travel Guide
by Lonely Planet
Published 30 May 2012

International roaming is prohibitively expensive and not available in Myanmar. »Wi-fi & Internet Access Internet cafes are common in tourist centres and wi-fi is often free in guesthouses in some countries. »Calling Home International calling rates are fairly affordable. To call home on a mobile phone, dial an international access code + country code + subscriber number. Internet cafes are often equipped with headsets and Skype as an alternative. With mobile wireless capability, you can also make Skype calls from a mobile phone. * * * Top of section if you like... Fabulous Food Southeast Asian cuisine celebrates its tropical bounty with fresh and bold flavours. Thai chillies turn a meal into a head rush, Vietnamese food is so refreshing you won’t need a beverage and exotic fruits are sweeter than desserts.

…

Post Main post office (St 13; 7am-7pm) Located in a grand old building, this has increasingly reliable postal services. Telephone The cheapest local and domestic calls in Phnom Penh are found at private stalls with the mobile telephone prefixes displayed. Many internet cafes offer low-cost international calls via the internet (or free via Skype). Tourist Information There is not much in the way of official tourist information in the Cambodian capital. Pick up the free listings mags and get up-to-date information from other travellers or guesthouses. Travel Agencies Reliable travel agencies include the following: Hanuman ( 218396; www.hanuman.travel; 12 St 310) VLK Tourism ( 723331; www.vlktravel.com; 195 Monivong Blvd) Getting There & Away Air See Click here for a list of airlines that serve Phnom Penh.

…

Mobile phones, whose numbers start with 01, 07, 08 or 09, are hugely popular with both individuals and commercial enterprises. Foreigners need to present a valid passport to get a local sim card. For listings of businesses and government offices, check out www.yellowpages-cambodia.com. Many internet shops offer cheap international calls for 100r to 1000r per minute, though in places with broadband speeds you can Skype for the price of an internet connection (usually 2000r to 4000r per hour). International calls from mobile phone shops cost about 1000r per minute. Time Cambodia, like Laos, Vietnam and Thailand, is seven hours ahead of Greenwich Mean Time or Universal Time Coordinated (GMT/UTC). Travellers with Disabilities Although Cambodia has one of the world’s highest rates of limb loss (due to mines), the country is not designed for people with impaired mobility.

The Art of Community: Building the New Age of Participation
by Jono Bacon
Published 1 Aug 2009

While IRC is useful, I have always been conscious to remember that most members start out unfamiliar with IRC and how to use it. You should always ensure that there are nice, clear instructions (with screenshots) showing how to connect with IRC. Voice over IP (VoIP) Examples include: Skype Ekiga Online telephony such as Skype or a Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) client such as Ekiga is the equivalent of having a conference call. As such, the same benefits and limitations apply: you can’t practically have more than 5–10 people in a conversation, but it does feel engaging. A downside of this medium is that it requires (a) a reasonably powerful Internet connection and (b) sound hardware and a microphone, which may not be as common as you would expect.

…

Here we want to separate out emotion and get to the heart of what really happened. You should first speak to those on both sides of the conflict and ask them to provide you with their stories. To engage in this discussion, you need to decide how to communicate with them. I highly recommend doing this on the phone or via Voice over IP (such as Skype) if possible. A phone conversation is far more interpersonal and allows both parties to communicate more quickly than over email or a chat medium such as IRC. When you gather this initial story, you should expect a fairly significant amount of venting and emotion. Expect both parties to speak quickly, dart the focus around different issues, and keep remembering details and frustrations they had previously forgotten to mention in the conversation.

…

By finding these patterns, you can make progress toward a general agreement and also build a more positive atmosphere around shared values as opposed to differing ones. The first step is to schedule the discussion. If the conflict is between two specific people, the best medium for discussion is typically a conference call. This can happen on a range of online telephony services (such as Skype) or by using a conventional telephone conference call service. Many conventional handsets even support three-way conversations at no extra cost. If the conflict is public and part of a team or group, schedule a public meeting. I have found the most suitable medium for this to be IRC. It allows people to share thoughts quickly so long as they can all get online at a specific time.

The Industries of the Future
by Alec Ross
Published 2 Feb 2016

Maria’s family is from Waziristan—or, as she puts it, “Yes, my parents, my in-laws, myself, we all belong to this place called Waziristan.” She now lives in Lahore, where her husband is stationed as a civil servant, but no matter her physical location, the virtual business is bustling. Maria Umar shares her story on a Skype call from her son’s bedroom in Lahore, the only place in her home where she can keep her kids out and have a quiet conversation. A Barcelona soccer flag is draped on the wall above her son’s twin bed, which she sits on as she talks about her improbable success. The story starts six and a half years ago when Maria was pregnant with her second child and teaching in a local private school.

…

Its GDP of over $25,000 per capita is 15 times what it was at the fall of the Soviet Union and ranks number one among the fifteen former Soviet republics. The real success of Estonia is reflected not only in these statistics, but also in its place as one of the world’s leading centers of innovation. Estonia has not produced a centi-billion-dollar company like Google, but it has achieved some notable successes, including Skype. More significant, it has innovated in a way that every place in the world, including Silicon Valley, should envy. In doing so, it has improved its civic and political life in a way that positions it as well as any place in the world for the industries of the future. CLOSED FOR BUSINESS Estonia and Belarus were in nearly the same position following independence and made opposite decisions about their future.

…

CHAPTER 2: THE FUTURE OF THE HUMAN MACHINE Survival rates for a first relapse are slim: “Doctor Survives Cancer He Studies,” McDonnell Genome Institute, Washington University, http://genome.wustl.edu/articles/detail/doctor-survives-cancer-he-studies. They decided to do something: Lukas Wartman, Skype interview with Teal Pennebaker, December 2, 2013. It turned out that one: Gina Kolata, “In Treatment for Leukemia, Glimpses of the Future,” New York Times, July 7, 2012, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/08/health/in-gene-sequencing-treatment-for-leukemia-glimpses-of-the-future.html?pagewanted=1. Four years later: Wartman, interview.

Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language
by Gretchen McCulloch
Published 22 Jul 2019

Semi Internet People’s early internet cultural touchstones consist more of funny chain emails than the crudely animated Flash videos of the Full Internet People. Although they took longer to develop, by now Semi Internet People do generally have some relationships that they keep up via technology, especially using email, texting, chat apps, Facebook, Skype, FaceTime, or other video calls. They’re often aware of internet slang, especially the kinds that got popularized in the late 1990s, when they were first coming online. They never quite got into as many emoticons as the more internetty cohorts, probably sticking to :-), but they leapfrogged directly into emoji.

…

They’ve both never really known an internet without Facebook and YouTube and wifi and touchscreens, and they’re both disproportionately likely to be using their family members’ cast-off electronics. Pre Internet People generally have one account somewhere that a more adept internet person set up for them, which may be on email, “the Facebook,” a text chat app like WhatsApp, or videochat like Skype or FaceTime. They know how to do basic things like send and receive messages there, but if they ever get logged out or if the app changes its interface, they’re going to have to ask for help again. They might only use the internet through a touchscreen device like a smartphone or tablet, but if they use a computer, they probably have a desktop shortcut helpfully labeled “The Internet” or “E-Mail,” and woe betide them if anything ever happens to it.

…

The problem with videocalling was that it faced an insurmountable social obstacle: with a robust norm of always answering a ringing phone and no efficient way to plan a phone call except via the same medium, the risk was too great of catching someone unclothed or with a messy house in the background. Picking up a videocall out of the blue was simply too awkward to contemplate. But since every videochat program includes a text messaging feature, you can plan a videochat before committing to one (“hey, you ready to skype?” “just give me 2 min”) and this awkwardness vanishes: you have the option to decline via text where no one can see you, or a minute to scramble into a decent-looking shirt. Paradoxically, having access to the lesser intrusiveness of chat conversations makes it easier to have higher-bandwidth conversations in video.

Reset
by Ronald J. Deibert
Published 14 Aug 2020

It was the same story across almost all of the Snowden disclosures. There was the infamous PRISM program, the second Snowden-related bombshell reported by the Washington Post and the Guardian, on June 6, 2013. The initial coverage of the PRISM program mistakenly described the NSA as “tapping into” the servers of Facebook, Apple, Skype, Microsoft, and other high-tech giants with some kind of “direct access.”25 In fact, the data was turned over to the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation by the companies under lawful access procedures, and then shared with the nsa. That explains why the companies responded to the news reports with denials of knowledge of PRISM: the latter was a code name the NSA had given to the arrangement, not something the companies themselves would recognize.

…

How easy it is to track their movements, to see their planning in progress as it unfolds from the very device they hold in their hands, and that they carry with them as they go about their daily business. How different it is from the time when moving to another country would shield them from the dictator’s totalizing gaze and iron grip. Thanks to social media and spyware, we’re in your chats. We’re in your Skype calls. We’re in your bedroom. We’re in your mind … Whetting the appetites of autocrats, while simultaneously educating them on means and methods, have been the private intelligence and surveillance contractors, most of them based or originating in the West. While states do develop surveillance systems in-house, the reality is that most surveillance services are outsourced to private industry.

…

Says Lepawsky, “No amount of post-consumer recycling can recoup the waste generated before consumers purchase their devices.”340 * * * Work-from-home and social isolation rules surrounding the COVID crisis prompted a huge increase in demands on the communications ecosystem. Uses of Zoom, FaceTime, Google Hangouts, Skype, Microsoft Teams, and other means of teleconferencing ballooned as friends and family checked in virtually and office routines migrated into makeshift bedroom and living room offices. In the evenings, citizens around the world flocked to already popular streaming video services like Netflix, or to online games like Doom and World of Warcraft.

European Spring: Why Our Economies and Politics Are in a Mess - and How to Put Them Right
by Philippe Legrain
Published 22 Apr 2014

Wayra, one set up by Telefónica, a Spanish telecoms company that owns O2 in the UK, has fourteen academies in twelve countries in Europe and Latin America that provide funding of up to €40,000 plus office space and mentoring. Europe needs to champion angel investors such as Niklas Zennström, the Swedish co-founder of Skype, who has raised $165 million for his second London-based venture-capital firm, Atomico Ventures II. “When it took us more than a year to get financing for Skype, we knew what line of business we eventually had to get into,” he observes.700 Marc Simoncini, the French founder of Meetic, Europe’s biggest dating website, has earmarked €100 million of his fortune for this.701 Brent Hoberman, the co-founder of lastminute.com, is a partner in PROfounders, an early-stage investment firm.

…

Italy did worst of all: a big fat zero.19 Europe’s productivity pipeline is blocked. Not enough new businesses are launched. Start-ups have trouble lifting off. Growth in promising small companies often stalls. Established businesses don’t innovate enough or invest enough in future growth. With a few notable exceptions such as Skype, Spotify and Shazam, the internet revolution has largely happened elsewhere. The new giants of our digital world – Google, Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, PayPal, eBay – are all American. There is no European equivalent of Silicon Valley. Europe isn’t just falling further behind the US; it also faces ever-greater competition from China, India, Brazil, Mexico, Turkey, Korea and other emerging economies – not just in lower-end manufacturing but also in higher-tech sectors.

…

Median income – that of a household richer than half of the population and poorer than the other half – plunged by more than a fifth in Greece between 2010 and 2012.536 The poorest tenth lost a third of their income – falling back to where they were in 2001.537 The poorest tenth in Germany have not experienced a sudden fall in income, but are scarcely richer than they were in 2001. Median income has fallen by 5 per cent in Britain, while the poorest tenth have stood still. Technological progress has continued, however. Home computers, then laptops and now tablets have proliferated. An unimaginable wealth of information can now be googled anywhere for free. You can skype your friends across the world and have a video chat without it costing you a penny. A global conversation is beginning on Twitter. Mobile phones are ubiquitous, most of them smart. As a student in 1994, I used to copy mix tapes for my friends; now you can carry all your music in your pocket, or stream it from a massive jukebox in the cloud.

Connectography: Mapping the Future of Global Civilization
by Parag Khanna
Published 18 Apr 2016

Even if political borders remain physically robust, the world has still become more borderless as countries eliminate extraneous visa requirements, currencies are exchangeable in real time at ATMs, content from almost anywhere can be accessed online, and the cost of phone calls drops to zero due to Skype and Viber. The more societies trade and communicate—and depend on each other for food, water, and energy—the less we can pretend that borders are the most important lines on the map. The absence of the full panoply of man-made infrastructure on our maps gives the impression that borders trump other means of portraying human geography.

…

Google began as a Web browser but has become a global data utility. In the race to provide pervasive and low-cost connectivity, Internet service providers are effectively becoming telecoms themselves, with Google launching Wi-Fi Zeppelin blimps to connect off-grid populations to its services; meanwhile, Internet-based telephony such as Skype or WhatsApp has all but eliminated calling charges; there is no “roaming” on the Internet. No matter how much they compete for eyeballs and data, Google and Facebook agree that there is no higher virtue than expanding connectivity, hence their partnership to launch more satellites to serve the “Other Three Billion.”*1 In the most remote corners of the world where there are neither hospitals nor electricity people have solar or motion-powered mobile phones.

…

Critics such as Harvard’s Robert Putnam and MIT’s Sherry Turkle who point to digital life as eroding family bonds ignore the importance of these new and more diverse relationships, as well as how digital communications reduce transaction costs and free up time for new kinds of engagement, learning, consumption, or investment. For example, Skype calling minutes increased by 500 percent from 2008 to 2013, no doubt bringing many families closer together while also enabling individuals to more easily afford to learn everything from the piano to Mandarin.*9 We should also remember that in low-trust societies such as Latin America, social media are essential to circulate accurate information to circumvent elite lies.

What We Cannot Know: Explorations at the Edge of Knowledge
by Marcus Du Sautoy
Published 18 May 2016

By taking data from different sensors, the highly integrated nature of a network with high Φ can make recommendations for future action. This ability to project oneself into the future, to perform mental time travel, seems to be one of the key evolutionary advantages of consciousness. A network with a high Φ appears to be able to demonstrate such behaviour. But why couldn’t it do all this while unconscious? SKYPING CONSCIOUSNESS Christof Koch, he of the Jennifer Aniston neuron, is a big fan of Φ as a measure of consciousness, so I was keen to push him on whether he thought it was robust enough to provide an answer to the ‘hard problem’, as philosopher David Chalmers dubbed the challenge of getting inside another person’s head.

…

It’s all open science, it’s not for profit, and they release all the data free. As Koch says: ‘It’s a pretty cool model.’ Since it was going to be tricky to make another trip to California to quiz Koch on his views on Φ and Tononi’s integrated information theory, I decided the next best thing was to access Koch’s consciousness via a Skype call. Koch was keen, though, to check which side of the philosophical divide I was on: ‘Sure, we can chat about consciousness and the extent to which it is unanswerable. But I would hope that you’re not going to turn away young people who are contemplating a career in neuroscience by buying into the philosopher’s conceit of the “Hard problem” (hard with a capital H).

…

It is a story that I have kept in mind ever since embarking on this journey into the unknown. Koch added another important voice to the debate, that of his collaborator Francis Crick, who wrote in 1996: ‘It is very rash to say that things are beyond the scope of science.’ Koch was in excited mood when we finally connected our consciousnesses via Skype – actually, I’ve never seen him anything but excited about life at the cutting edge of one of today’s greatest scientific challenges. Two days earlier, the Allen Institute had just released data that tried to classify the different cell types that you find in the brain. ‘One of the unknowns is how many different sorts of brain cells are there.

American Girls: Social Media and the Secret Lives of Teenagers
by Nancy Jo Sales
Published 23 Feb 2016

After camp, they started gradually making contact through Facebook messaging, occasional texting, favoriting each other’s tweets, and liking each other’s pictures on Instagram. “I just thought of him as a friend after camp until a month or two ago,” Lily said. And then something happened when they Skyped. “We just talked and talked for like four hours and he really liked talking to me and I really liked talking to him so…yeah.” Again she nervously rearranged her hair. Ever since then, she said, she and Josh had been Skyping most nights for about an hour, and then for three- or four-hour stretches every weekend, only stopping “when we have to, like, go to the bathroom or take a shower.” Now they were texting all day, every day, even during school (“We just talk about whatever we’re doing, or we’ll say like, Hey, what’s up, hi, bye”).

…

Of course I want to amount to great things,” she said, “but when everyone’s telling you and constantly badgering you about it, it can be really stressful. At the school I go to, one bad grade can, like, crush a person.” And so she wasn’t sure whether she could fit “a relationship” into her jam-packed schedule. Josh lived on Long Island, too, in a town nearby, but through all of this texting and Skyping and favoriting and liking, they had never managed to actually see each other in person. “And that’s why I wanted it to be a movie date,” Lily said, rambling along in her restless way, “a double date, because if it’s weird to see each other again there will be other people there.” She had enlisted the help of her best friend, Priya, to come along that night “in case it gets awkward,” and Josh was bringing another boy as Priya’s date.

…

“It’s almost like a title people associate me with”—meaning “Instafamous.” She relayed all this as if she thought it were ridiculous. The other girls listened with slightly strained expressions. I asked them what social media accounts they were on. “I have Facebook, a YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat,” Melissa said, “Vine…” “Path, Skype,” Zoe added. “Tumblr,” said Padma. “I have a Twitter, but I don’t use it except for stalking other people,” Greta said. The other girls smiled knowingly. “I think everyone does it,” said Greta. “Everyone looks through other people’s profiles, but especially being teenage girls, we look at the profiles of the males we find attractive and we stalk the females the males find attractive.

When You Find Out the World Is Against You: And Other Funny Memories About Awful Moments
by Kelly Oxford
Published 17 Apr 2017

He makes prayer hands to the sky. “Yes, we Skype two times a day. I came to Canada to work at McDonald’s and send them money. It’s much more money than I could have made there in a lifetime.” Jesus, Kelly. Shit. Shit. Shit. Keep smiling, fucking nod. Keep your fucking shit together for this man right now. “I can grab the food for you.” He steps away from the window, packs our food in the bag and passes it to me, then drapes his arm back across his body and slightly rocks back and forth. I smile like a crazy person, nodding. “That’s so great that you can Skype! Okay! Thanks. I hope I’ll see you soon!

…

Whatever it is, whatever I’m doing, the kids happy. I’m lucky to be here, I’m lucky to be here. I am happy I know there are probably others like me, like Aiden’s mom. Maybe she’s alone sipping a McDonald’s Coke right now, too? I am the village. I’m happy I don’t have to send money across the world to my children I have to Skype twice a day. I let the suction in my mouth go, relax, sip the Coke, wipe my eyes, and go back into the house. 5 Keeping Score “Mom,” she sighs, trying to roll her eyes but only succeeding in doing a strange-looking thing where her eyes dart back and forth. “I’m not going to school, ever again.”

Smart Money: How High-Stakes Financial Innovation Is Reshaping Our WorldÑFor the Better
by Andrew Palmer
Published 13 Apr 2015

They worked out the appropriate exchange rate by using the midmarket rate published on Reuters and saved themselves hundreds of pounds in foreign-exchange fees. Hinrikus, a T-shirt-wearing, mild-mannered Estonian with a beard, may not seem like an obvious threat to mainstream banks. But he also happened to be the first employee of Skype, the service that lets you make calls over the Internet for free. Skype at the time was based on a “peer-to-peer” system, in which each user acted as a node in the infrastructure. That same networking concept underpins TransferWise, the firm that Hinricus and Käärmann launched with their own money in 2011 to enable international money transfers.

…

Flowers, 69, 81 Japan, banking crisis in, 75 Japan, financial innovation in, 27, 29, 39–40 Jha, Saumitra, 27 Jiménez-Martín, Sergi, 73 Job creation, young small firms and, 147–148 Joint-stock firms, 23 JPMorgan, 77, 169 Jump-to-default risk, 238 Käärmann, Kristo, 190 Kabbage, 218 Kahneman, Daniel, 47, 137 Kanjorski, Paul, 145 Kauffman Foundation, 158 Kennedy, John F., 32 Keys, Benjamin, 48 Kharroubi, Enisse, 79 Kickstarter, 172 King, Stephen, 99 Klein, David, 182 Krugman, Paul, xv Lahoud, Sal, 166 Lang, Luke, 153, 161–162 Laplanche, Renaud, 179, 184, 188, 190, 193–194, 196–197 Latency, 53 Law of large numbers, 17 Layering, 57 Left-digit bias, 46 Lehman Brothers, x, 44, 65 Lending direct, 84 marketplace, 184 payday, 200 relationship-based, 11, 151, 206–208 secured, xiv, 76 unsecured, 206 See also Loans; Peer-to-peer lending Lending Club, 172, 179–180, 182–184, 187, 189, 194–195, 197 Leonardo of Pisa (Fibonacci), 19 Lerner, Josh, 59 Lethal pandemic, risk-modeling for demographic profile, 230 exceedance-probability curve, 231–232, 232 figure 3 historical data, 228–229 infectiousness and virulence, 229–230 location of outbreak, 230–231 Leverage, 51, 70–71, 80, 186, 188 Leverage ratio, 76–77 Lewis, Michael, 57 Liber Abaci or Book of Calculation (Fibonacci), 19 LIBOR (London Interbank Offered Rate), 41 Liebman, Jeffrey, 98 Life expectancy government reaction to, 128–129 projections of, 124–127, 126 figure 2 ratio of young to older people, 127–128 Life-insurance policies, 142 Life-settlements industry, 142–143 Life table, 20 Limited liability, 212 Liquidity, 12–14, 39, 185–186 List, John, 109 The Little Book of Behavioral Investing (Montier), 156 Lo, Andrew, 113–115, 117–123 Loans low-documentation, 48–49 secured, 76 small business, 181, 216 student, 164, 166–167, 169–171, 182 syndicated, 41 Victory Loans, 28 See also Lending; Peer-to-Peer lending Logistic regression, 201 London, early fire insurance in, 16–17 London, Great Fire of, 16 London Interbank Offered Rate (LIBOR), 41 Long-Term Capital Management, 123 Longevity, betting on, 143–144 Loss aversion, 136 Lotteries, 212, 213 Low-documentation loans, 48–49 Lumni, 165, 168, 175 Lustgarten, Anders, 111 Lynn, Jeff, 160–161 Mack, John, 180 Mahwah, New Jersey, 52, 53 Marginal borrowers assessment of, 216–217 behavioral finance and, 208–214 industrialization of credit, 206 microfinance and, 203 savings schemes, 209–214 small businesses, 215–219 unsecured lending to, 206 Wonga, 203, 205, 208 Marginal borrowers (continued) ZestFinance, 199, 202, 205–206 Maritime piracy, solutions to, 151–152 Maritime trade, role of in history of finance, 3, 7–8, 14, 17, 23 Market makers, 15–16, 55 MarketInvoice, 195, 207, 217–218 Marketplace lending, 184 Markowitz, Harry, 118 Massachusetts, use of inflation-protected bonds in, 26 Massachusetts, use of social-impact bonds in, 98 Matching engine, 52 Maturity transformation, 12–13, 187–188, 193 McKinsey & Company, ix, 42 Mercator Advisory Group, 203 Merrill, Charles, 28 Merrill, Douglas, 199, 201 Merrill Lynch, 28 Merton, Robert, 31, 113–114, 123–124, 129–132, 142, 145 Mian, Atif, 204 Michigan, University of, financial survey by, 134–135 Microfinance, 203 Micropayment model, 217 Microwave technology, 53 The Million Adventure, 213–214 Minsky, Hyman, 42 Minsky moment, 42 Mississippi scheme, 36 Mitchell, Justin, 166–167 Momentum Ignition, 57 Monaco, modeling risk of earthquake in, 227 Money, history of, 4–5 Money illusion, 73–74 Money laundering, 192 Money-market funds, 43, 44 Monkeys, Yale University study of loss aversion with, 136 Montier, James, 156–157 Moody, John, 24 Moody’s, 24, 235 Moore’s law, 114 Morgan Stanley, 188 Mortgage-backed securities, 49, 233 Mortgage credit by ZIP code, study of, 204 Mortgage debt, role of in 2007–2008 crisis, 69–70 Mortgage products, unsound, 36–37 Mortgage securitization, 47 Multisystemic therapy, 96 Munnell, Alicia, 129 Naked credit-default swaps, 143 Nature Biotechnology, on drug-development megafunds, 118 “Neglected Risks, Financial Innovation and Financial Fragility” (Gennaioli, Shleifer, and Vishny), 42 Network effects, 181 New York, skyscraper craze in, 74–75 New York City, prisoner-rehabilitation program in, 108 New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), 31, 52, 53, 61, 64 New York Times, Merrill Lynch ad in, 28 Noncorrelated assets, 122 Nonprofits, growth of in United States, 105–106 Northern Rock, x NYMEX, 60 NYSE Euronext, 52 NYSE (New York Stock Exchange), 31, 52, 53, 61, 64 OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development), 128, 147 Oldfield, Sean, 67–68, 80–84 OnDeck, 216–218 One Service, 94–95, 105, 112 Operating expense ratio, 188–189 Options, 15, 124 Order-to-trade ratios, 63 Oregon, interest in income-share agreements, 172, 176 Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), 128, 147 Overtrading, 24 Packard, Norman, 60 Pandit, Vikram, 184 Park, Sun Young, 233 Partnership mortgage, 81 Pasion, 11 Pave, 166–168, 173, 175, 182 Payday lending Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, survey on, 200 information on applicants, acquisition of, 202 underwriting of, 201 PayPal, 219 Peak child, 127 Peak risk, 228 Peer-to-peer lending advantages of, 187–189 auction system, 195 big investors in, 183 borrowers, assessment of, 197 in Britain, 181 commercial mortgages, 181 CommonBond, 182, 184, 197 consumer credit, 181 diversification, 196 explained, 180 Funding Circle, 181–182, 189, 197 investors in, 195 Lending Club, 179–180, 182–184, 187, 189, 194–195, 197 network effects, 181 ordinary savers and, 184 Prosper, 181, 187, 195 RateSetter, 181, 187, 196 Relendex, 181 risk management, 195–197 securitization, 183–184, 196 Peer-to-peer lending (continued) small business loans, 181 SoFi, 184 student loans, 182 Zopa, 181, 187, 188, 195 Pensions, cost of, 125–126 Perry, Rick, 142–143 Peterborough, England, social-impact bond pilot in, 90–92, 94–95, 104–105, 112 Petri, Tom, 172 Pharmaceuticals, decline of investment in, 114–115 Piracy Reporting Centre, International Maritime Bureau, 151 Polese, Kim, 210 Poor, Henry Varnum, 24 “Portfolio Selection” (Markowitz), 118 Prediction Company, 60–61 Preferred shares, 25 Prepaid cards, 203 Present value of cash flows, 19 Prime borrowers, 197 Prince, Chuck, 50–51, 62 Principal-agent problem, 8 Prisoner rehabilitation programs, 90–91, 94–95, 98, 108, 112 Private-equity firms, 69, 85, 91, 105, 107 Projection bias, 72–73 Property banking crises and, xiv, 69 banking mistakes involving, 75–80 behavioral biases and, 72–75 dangerous characteristics of, 70–72 fresh thinking, need for, xvii, 80 investors’ systematic errors in, 74–75 perception of as safe investment, 76, 80 Prosper, 181, 187, 195 Provisioning funds, 187 Put options, 9, 82 Quants, 19, 63, 113 QuickBooks, 218 Quote stuffing, 57 Raffray, André-François, 144 Railways, affect of on finance, 23–25 Randomized control trials (RCTs), 101 Raphoen, Christoffel, 15–16 Raphoen, Jan, 15–16 RateSetter, 181, 187, 196 RCTs (randomized control trials), 101 Ready for Zero, 210–211 Rectangularization, 125, 126 figure 2 Regulation NMS, 61 Reinhart, Carmen, 35 Reinsurance, 224 Relendex, 181 Rentes viagères, 20 Repurchase “repo” transactions, 15, 185 Research-backed obligations, 119 Reserve Primary Fund, 44 Retirement, funding for anchoring effect, 137–138 annuities, 139 auto-enrollment in pension schemes, 135 auto-escalation, 135–136 conventional funding, 127–128 decumulation, 138–139 government reaction to increased longevity, 128–129 home equity, 139–140 life expectancy, projections of, 124–127, 126 figure 2 life insurance policies, cash-surrender value of, 142 personal retirement savings, 128–129, 132–133 replacement rate, 125 reverse mortgage, 140–142 savings cues, experiment with, 137 SmartNest, 129–131 Reverse mortgages, 140–142 Risk-adjusted returns, 118 Risk appetite, 116 Risk assessment, 24, 45, 77–78, 208 Risk aversion, 116, 215 Risk-based capital, 77 Risk-based pricing model, 176 Risk management, 55, 117–118, 123, 195–197 Risk Management Solutions, 222 Risk sharing, 8, 82 Risk-transfer instrument, 226 Risk weights, 77–78 Rogoff, Kenneth, 35 “The Role of Government in Education” (Friedman), 165 Roman Empire business corporation in, 7 financial crisis in, 36 forerunners of banks in, 11 maritime insurance in, 8 Rotating Savings and Credit Associations (ROSCAs), 209–210 Roulette wheel, use of in experiment on anchoring, 138 Royal Bank of Scotland, 186 Rubio, Marco, 172 Russia, mortgage market in, 67 S-curve, in diffusion of innovations, 45 Salmon, Felix, 155 Samurai bonds, 27 Satsuma Rebellion (1877), 27 Sauter, George, 58 Save to Win, 214 Savings-and-loan crisis in US (1990s), 30 Savings cues, experiment with, 137 Scared Straight social program, 101 Scholes, Myron, 31, 123–124 Science, Technology, and Industry Scoreboard of OECD, 147 Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), 54, 56, 57, 58, 64 Securities markets, 14 Securitization, xi, 20, 37–38, 117–122, 183–184, 196, 236 Seedrs, 160–161 Sellaband, 159 Shared equity, 80–84 Shared-equity mortgage, 84 Shepard, Chris, xii–xiii Shiller, Robert, xv–xvi, 242 Shleifer, Andrei, 42, 44 Short termism, 58 SIBs. See Social-impact bonds Sims, Kath, 96 Single-family-home rental sector, 85 Single-family rental bond, 85 Skype, 190 Sleeping sickness, SIB program for elimination of, 103 Small businesses, as marginal borrowers, 215–219 Smart money, comparison of to dumb money, 155–158 SmartNest, 129–131, 211 Social Finance, 93, 97 Social-impact bonds (SIBs) benefits of, 91, 98–102, 104, 106 in Britain, 95–97 cost-effectiveness of, 100–102 data collection, 104 defined, 90 financial incentive, effect of on donors, 110–111 flexibility of, 105–106 Fresno, California, pilot program in, 103–104 G-8 task force on, 97 health-impact bonds, 103–104 individual givers, attraction of, 109 Massachusetts, prisoner-rehabilitation programs in, 98 New York City, prisoner-rehabilitation program in, 108 Peterborough, England, pilot in, 90–91, 94–95, 104–105, 107 philanthropists, role of, 108 possible abuses of, 111 purpose, 107 risk management in, 108 in United States, 98 Social-impact bonds (SIBs), uses for accomodation for homeless people, 96–97, 106–107 adoption of hard-to-place children, 97 cutting HIV infection rates in Swaziland, 103 early detection of health conditions, 102–104 elimination of sleeping sickness in Uganda, 103 improving educational outcomes for girls in India, 103 keeping troubled adolescents out of foster care, 96 prisoner rehabilitation programs, 90–91, 94–95, 98, 108 soldiers reentering civilian life, 102 Social insurance, 183 Social-investment bank, 92–93 Social Security, 128 Societas publicanorum, 7 SoFi, 184 South Sea Bubble, 36 South Sea Company, 36 S&P 500 index, 29, 40, 157 Spain, banking crisis in, xiv–xv, 69, 75 Spanish flu outbreak (1918–1919), 228, 230 Spear, Leeds & Kellogg, 61 St.

The Economic Singularity: Artificial Intelligence and the Death of Capitalism
by Calum Chace
Published 17 Jul 2016

In January 2016 Baidu (often described as China's Google) showed off a system called DuLight which uses a camera to capture an image of something in front of you, sends the image to an app on your smartphone, which identifies the object and announces what it is. One application of this is to help blind people know what they are “looking” at.[xc] You can download a similar app called Aipoly for free at iTunes.[xci] Speech recognition systems that exceed human performance will be available in your smartphone soon.[xcii] Microsoft-owned Skype introduced real-time machine translation in March 2014: it is not yet perfect, but it is improving all the time. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella revealed an intriguing discovery which he called transfer learning: “If you teach it English, it learns English,” he said. “Then you teach it Mandarin: it learns Mandarin, but it also becomes better at English, and quite frankly none of us know exactly why.”

…

In a number of genre categories, especially romance and crime, the most popular books are written by AIs. Major sporting competitions have three strands: robots, augmented humans, and un-augmented humans. Audiences for the latter category are dwindling. Long-distance communication is massively improved by VR Skype. Dating sites have become surprisingly effective by requiring their members to provide clothing samples from which they extract data about their smells and their pheromones. The discovery that relationship outcomes correlate closely with these data have slashed divorce rates. 11. Management.

…

t=33 [lxxxviii] http://news.sciencemag.org/social-sciences/2015/02/facebook-will-soon-be-able-id-you-any-photo [lxxxix] http://www.computerworld.com/article/2941415/data-privacy/is-facial-recognition-a-threat-on-facebook-and-google.html [xc] http://www.wired.com/2016/01/2015-was-the-year-ai-finally-entered-the-everyday-world/ [xci] At the time of writing, April 2016, Aipoly is impressive, but far from perfect. [xcii] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-12-23/speech-recognition-better-than-a-human-s-exists-you-just-can-t-use-it-yet.html [xciii] http://www.forbes.com/sites/parmyolson/2014/05/28/microsoft-unveils-near-real-time-language-translation-for-skype/ [xciv] http://www.technologyreview.com/news/544651/baidus-deep-learning-system-rivals-people-at-speech-recognition/#comments [xcv] https://youtu.be/V1eYniJ0Rnk?t=1 [xcvi] http://edge.org/response-detail/26780 [xcvii] http://techcrunch.com/2016/03/19/how-real-businesses-are-using-machine-learning/ [xcviii] http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-cutting-edge-ibm-20160422-story.html [xcix] http://www.wired.com/2016/04/openai-elon-musk-sam-altman-plan-to-set-artificial-intelligence-free/ [c] http://www.strategyand.pwc.com/global/home/what-we-think/innovation1000/top-innovators-spenders#/tab-2015 [ci] 2013 data: http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/rdit1/gross-domestic-expenditure-on-research-and-development/2013/stb-gerd-2013.html [cii] http://insights.venturescanner.com/category/artificial-intelligence-2/ [ciii] http://techcrunch.com/2015/12/25/investing-in-artificial-intelligence/ [civ] http://www.wired.com/2015/11/google-open-sources-its-artificial-intelligence-engine/ [cv] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/apr/13/google-updates-tensorflow-open-source-artificial-intelligence [cvi] http://www.wired.com/2015/12/facebook-open-source-ai-big-sur/ [cvii] The name Parsey McParseFace is a play on a jokey name for a research ship which received a lot of votes in a poll run by the British government in April 2016. http://www.wsj.com/articles/googles-open-source-parsey-mcparseface-helps-machines-understand-english-1463088180 [cviii] Assuming you don't count the Vatican as a proper country. http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/google-project-loon-provide-free-wifi-across-sri-lanka-1513136 [cix] https://setandbma.wordpress.com/2013/02/04/who-coined-the-term-big-data/ [cx] http://www.pcmag.com/encyclopedia/term/37701/amara-s-law [cxi] http://www.lrb.co.uk/v37/n05/john-lanchester/the-robots-are-coming [cxii] Haitz's Law states that the cost per unit of useful light emitted decreases exponentially [cxiii] http://computationalimagination.com/article_cpo_decreasing.php [cxiv] http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/07/technology/circuits/07essay.html [cxv] . http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/02/intel-forges-ahead-to-10nm-will-move-away-from-silicon-at-7nm/ [cxvi] .

A Burglar's Guide to the City
by Geoff Manaugh
Published 17 Mar 2015

Another useful resource on this topic is the FBI’s own collection of “surreptitious entry” files, available online as a thirty-part sequence of PDFs called “Surreptitious Entries (Black Bag Jobs).” The FBI’s definition of burglary also comes from the FBI website (fbi.gov). Retired burglar Jack Dakswin—a pseudonym—told me his story over Skype and, to a certain extent, e-mail. Witold Rybczynski’s question “Where is the front door?” comes from his book How Architecture Works: A Humanist’s Toolkit (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2013). 2: Crime Is Just Another Way to Use the City The specific flights with the LAPD Air Support Division described in this chapter took place in July 2013 and January 2014; quotations or references to conversations with LAPD pilots and tactical flight officers come from my interviews.

…

Westlake, whose books The Hot Rock (New York: Grand Central Publishing, 1970) and Thieves’ Dozen (New York: Mysterious Press, 2004) are particularly enjoyable. 3: Your Building Is the Target Bill Mason’s memoir, Confessions of a Master Jewel Thief (New York: Villard, 2003), written with Lee Gruenfeld, is a thoroughly enjoyable introduction to the life of a cat burglar. Mason’s appearance on CNN was in September 2003; a transcript of the show is available online. My conversation with Jack Dakswin—a pseudonym—took place over Skype, with some preliminary details shared over e-mail. The book I refer to here, Local Code: The Constitution of a City at 42 Degrees North Latitude by architect Michael Sorkin, was published by Princeton Architectural Press in 1996 and appears to be out of print. “Where Have All the Burglars Gone?” was published by The Economist in July 2013.

…

Elston Avenue in Chicago, Illinois. The scene described here took place on June 5, 2013. John “Jack” Benigno is a sergeant with the Chicago Police Department, but spoke to me in an unofficial capacity, as a civilian locksport enthusiast. We spoke in person at the event at PS:One, but much more extensively over Skype and e-mail. Michel Foucault’s Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (New York: Vintage Books, 1995, translated by Alan Sheridan) has become a classic in the field of security studies. The story of the Antwerp diamond heist is told in the book Flawless: Inside the Largest Diamond Heist in History by Scott Andrew Selby and Greg Campbell (New York: Sterling, 2010).

The Introvert Entrepreneur: Amplify Your Strengths and Create Success on Your Own Terms
by Beth Buelow
Published 3 Nov 2015

Without me needing to be present, two people promoted my services, and a client was born. This is one of the best ways to expand your reach while still preserving your energy. Find those people who are your biggest cheerleaders and advocates. They could be family members, friends, teachers, mentors, and professional colleagues. Reach out intentionally, in person if you can, or via Skype, VoIP, or phone if distance is a challenge. At the most basic level, you’ll want to learn more about each other’s businesses and needs so you can extend your reach to more people. This process is about cultivating a group of mutual champions. Each person in the relationship is actively seeking opportunities to promote the other.

…

Remember to cross-reference the profiles to get the complete picture. If someone seems to be in sync with you, your business, and values, reach out to her through the most appropriate social media platform. Suggest a coffee date if you live in the same area; if not, have “virtual coffee” over Skype or other videoconferencing service. You don’t need to go into the conversation with a strict agenda. Let the other person know when you send your introductory message that you’re interested in learning more about her business, in the event you can share her as a resource or otherwise support her goals.

…

See also Self-reflection for fear, 44–45 Rehearsal in networking, 102 in sales, 126–27 Religious groups, for networking, 94 The Reluctant Rainmaker: A Guide for Lawyers Who Hate Selling (Fleming), 129–30 Research, 58 for networking, 99 for niche, 120 risk as, 71–72 on social media, 99 Research and development (R&D), 145 Respect, 12 Retreats, 140 Reverse blogging, 173 Risk of failure, 71–73 of introvert entrepreneurs, 66 as research, 71–72 on social media, 164 voice and, 71–73 Robbins, Tony, 175 Roberts, Julia, 13 Rotary, 179 Sales by ambiverts, 148–49 content for, 128–47 Doerr on, 149–51 education in, 128–29 energy management and, 116 by extroverts, 148 financial return on, 144–47 by introvert entrepreneur, 115–51 love and, 144–45 message for, 116–19 middle ground for, 148–49 niche for, 116–22 old story about, 122–28 patience in, 127 public speaking for, 177 questions in, 126–27 rehearsal in, 126–27 steps for transformation, 125–28 strengths in, 124–28 success in, 141–44 value equation in, 149 voice in, 147 winners in, 149–51 Sales Success, 60 Scarcity in collaboration, 210 competitiveness and, 86 fear and, 34–35 Schleef, Susan “Joy,” 32 Schwab, Charles, 13 Self-care energy management with, 88 for networking, 88, 99 Self-effacing, 14 Self-loathing, 19 Self-possessed, 15 Self-promotion of introvert entrepreneur, 19, 122–28 old story about, 122–28 self-talk about, 123–24 Self-Promotion for Introverts (Ancowitz), 179 Self-reflection assumptions and, 39 of introvert entrepreneur, 15–17 for reality check, 39 Self-reliance, 14–15 “Self-Reliance” (Emerson), 15 Self-talk, 106 on content, 130 about self-promotion, 123–24 Sellner, Jadah, 226–28 Shakespeare, William, 87 Shulman, Joan, 36 Simple Green Smoothies, 226–28 Sinek, Simon, 99–101, 113 Skype, 83, 168 Small Planet Studio, 202 Small talk, 77 Social media. See also Facebook; LinkedIn; Twitter content on, 163 extrovert on, 164 hobbies on, 167 for networking, 20, 82, 86, 114 for other people, 86 overview of, 161–64 real life with, 165–68 research on, 99 risk on, 164 transparency on, 153, 164–65 tribe and, 155–58, 161–64 values and, 167 vulnerability on, 164 Solitude of introverts, 22–23 networking and, 76 Spielberg, Steven, 13 StartOut, 112 Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action (Sinek), 99, 113 Success business expansion with, 217–18 in collaboration, 209, 210 defined, 64 freedom as, 143–44 Janeczko on, 113 motivation and, 143 in public speaking, 177–78 in sales, 141–44 ways to set yourself up for, 229–40 Surface acting, 67 Sustainability choices for, 21 for introvert entrepreneur, 21, 236–39 tribe and, 155 Swenson, Paula, 105 Talbot, Betsy, 28–29, 54–55 Talking to extroverts, 11–12 to introverts, 10–11 small talk, 77 Team Introvert, 13 Technology, 158–61 TED talks, 178 Telephone discomfort with, 44 for networking, 83 Testimonials from networking, 84, 85 for public speaking, 180 thank-you note for, 85 Thank-you notes, 85 TheIntrovertEntrepreneur.com, 63, 138, 139 on collaboration, 193 leadership resources in, 220 Toastmasters, 178, 179 Transparency authenticity and, 68–69 with content, 131 of introvert entrepreneurs, 153, 164–65 on social media, 153, 164–65 in tribe, 156–57, 185 Trial and error, 74 Tribe.

Tech Titans of China: How China's Tech Sector Is Challenging the World by Innovating Faster, Working Harder, and Going Global
by Rebecca Fannin
Published 2 Sep 2019

With China-created superapp WeChat, you can text or chat in groups or one-on-one; transfer cash to peers; pay bills; get a loan within seconds; buy movie tickets; find nearby friends; order groceries; shop for fashions; and post videos, news, emoticons, and photos. No need for a business card. You just exchange a barcode-like QR (quick response) code on your smartphone and, presto, you’re connected. WeChat is super innovative—it combines the functions of Facebook, Twitter, Skype, WhatsApp, Instagram, and Amazon. WeChat has more than 1 billion users worldwide, and it’s hard to beat it for work or for play. A San Francisco venture capitalist completed a term sheet for an investment deal in Beijing entirely on WeChat. Fans surrounding a Bay Area venture investor speaking at a Shenzhen conference connected instantaneously with him by scanning his WeChat QR code from their smartphones.

…

Table 5-5 Key China Unicorns and Chief US-China Venture Investors Xiaomi: Morningside Venture Capital, Qiming Venture, IDG, Temasek, DST Global Meituan Dianping: Qiming Venture, Sequoia Capital China, General Atlantic Pinduoduo: Lightspeed China, IDG Capital, Banyan Partners, Sequoia Capital China ByteDance: SIG Asia, GGV Capital, Qiming Venture, New Enterprise Associates, Hillhouse Capital, Sequoia Capital Kuaishou: DCM Ventures, Sequoia Capital China, Morningside Venture Capital SenseTime: Tiger Global, CDH, IDG Capital, Fidelity International, Temasek, Silver Lake, HOPU Capital Face ++: Qiming Venture, Sinovation Ventures Didi: GGV Capital, GSR Ventures, Matrix Partners China DJI: Sequoia Capital China, Accel Partners NIO: Sequoia Capital China, Temasek, IDG Capital Xiaohongshu: ZhenFund, GGV Capital UB Tech: Qiming Venture, CDH Investments Mobike: Qiming Venture, Vertex Ventures, Hillhouse Capital Source: Silicon Dragon research Stumbles along a Digital Silk Road Despite the growth opportunity for startups, the wide-open landscape for new technologies, and the entrepreneurial culture of China, success is not a given. Several top-tier Sand Hill Road firms have stumbled along this digital Silk Road, not able to transfer their knowledge in from the Valley. Staying power in China is tough. Tim Draper, known for his bets on Skype, Hotmail, and Tesla, was a very early supporter of China tech innovation, dating back nearly two decades. But he’s stopped investing in China, though an early bet on search company Baidu through DFJ and ePlanet made a 33 percent return on a 28 percent stake after the search startup went public on Nasdaq in 2005.

…

See also Mobike; Ofo Bilibili, 83 Blecharczyk, Nathan, 115 Bob Xu, 135 Booking.com, 90 Bo Shao, 138 Breadtrip, 116 Breyer, Jim, 128, 138 Brin, Sergey, 34–35 Buffett, Warren, 208 ByteDance, 31–32, 43, 81–89, 130, 143, 153 C CalPERS (California Public Employees’ Retirement System), 134 CalSTRS (California State Teachers Retirement System), 134 Caltech university, 11 Carlyle Group, 38, 51 Carmen Chang, 142 Carnegie Mellon university, 11 Chan, Connie, 138 Charles River Ventures, 137 Cheetah Mobile, 66, 88 Cheng Wei, 176, 181–183 Chenyu Zheng, 112 Cherubic Ventures, 169 Chesky, Brian, 115 China acquisitions and investments in US tech companies, 53 Belt and Road initiative, 12 car market, 197–210 central business districts, 9 coffee culture, 102 coffee retail market, 103 comparing BAT with US Tech Leaders, 30 consumer economy, 93 Cultural Revolution of the 1960s and 1970s, 28 data privacy issues and monitoring of personal information, 47, 106 data privacy rules, 6 digital economy, 26 digital markets, 8 e-commerce landscape, 185–195 economic development, 14 entrepreneurial culture, 11–12 global tech leadership, 11–12 high-tech giants, 3–4 innovations and business models, 18–20 internet censorship, 15 “Internet Plus” plan, 12 investment in Hollywood, 52–55 investment in US tech companies, 21 “Made in China 2025,” 12 national R&D spending, 13 New Era Technology Fund, 12 number of internet users, 14 patent filings, 13 pointers to win in, 107–108 rise as a tech superpower, 225 robotics and drone market, 212 sharing economy, 175–176 social credit system, 19 startup zeal, 10–11, 16 STEM graduates in, 13–14 supercomputers, 14 tech companies, 50–51 tech economy, 7 tech giants of, 14 tech hubs, 143–144 tech influence and power, 22 tech innovation, 10 tech inventors, 2–3, 5 tech investments, 13 tech IPOs, 20 types of technology phases, 132–133 venture capital market, 12, 130–158 wireless infrastructure and cell sites, 17 world-changing tech sector, 223–224 China Broadband Capital, 112 Chinaccelerator, 214 China Construction Bank, 171 China Creation Ventures, 134, 148 China International Capital Corp., 103 China Investment Corp, 172 China UnionPay, 168 China venture capitalists, 128 Chinese consumers, 3 Chinese culture, 22 Chinese economy, 3 Chinese internet brands, 15 Chinese IPOs, 131 Chinese tourism, 113 ChiNext, 135 Chrysler, 209 Chuhai, 56 City Brain, 163 CloudKitchens, 175 Cloud Valley, 119 Coach handbags, 9 Cohen, Brian, 121 Colin Huang, 185, 192–193 Committee on Foreign Investment (CFIUS), 55 Connie Chan, 86 Consumer Electronics Show (CES), Las Vegas, 32–33 Cook, Tim, 32 Costa Coffee, 102 Costco, 186 Coworking, 111 Creagh, Eleanor, 93 Credit Suisse, 171 CSC Upshot Ventures, 146 D Da-Jiang Innovations, 218 Dalian Wanda, 54 DAMO (discovery, adventure, momentum, and outlook) Academy, 56 Dangdang, 44–45 Daniel Zhang, 49 Danke Apartment, 106 David Chao, 154–155 David Li, 81 David Yuan, 157 DCM Ventures, 84, 106, 154–156 Deng Xiaoping, 16, 28, 128 Derrick Xiong, 217 Dick Clark Productions, 52, 54 Didi, 21, 42, 60, 69, 98, 104, 176–179 international operations, 182–183 safety issues, 184 vs Uber, 179–182 Didi Brain, 178 Didi Chuxing, 20, 44, 69, 173–174 DingTalk, 31, 106 DJI, 5, 211–212, 215–220 Doerr, John, 128, 139–140 Donovan Sung, 73 Douyin, 82, 89 Draper, Tim, 52, 136–137 Draper Associates, 137 Draper University, 137 Dropbox, 218 DST Global, 78 Duoduoyou, 95 Duoshan, 43, 85 E EachNet, 138 EBay, 15, 28, 52, 85, 96, 104, 216 Eclipse Ventures, 220 EHang, 5, 152, 216–217 EHi Car Services, 153 Ele.me, 42, 61, 157, 211 Elephant Robotics, 213 11Main.com, 191 Evans, Michael, 50 Evdemon, Chris, 50 Evernote, 104, 117–119 EyeVerify, 63 F Face++, 29, 165 Facebook, 1, 5, 10, 15, 26, 28, 30–32, 43–45, 48, 52, 82, 84, 87, 104, 115, 128, 132, 162, 218 Facial recognition systems, 2 Fallon, Jimmy, 85 Fandango, 90 Fanfou, 95 FANGs, 26, 50 Fang Xingdong, 138 Faraday Future, 207 FAW Group, 33 Fintech, 19 Fire in the Valley, 68 Fishtrip, 116 Flipagram, 88 Fong, Kevin, 137 Ford, 204, 209 Fortnite, 66 Foster & Partners, 216 Fountown, 110 4Paradigm, 165 Francis Leung, 161–162 Frank Wang, 216–218 Freshippo, 98 Friendster, 43 G Gaopeng, 95 Gates, Bill, 208 General Atlantic, 38, 51 General Catalyst Partners, 117 General Motors, 51, 209 Gen Z youngsters, 6 Gerson Lehrman Group, 107 GGV Capital, 11, 55, 86, 112 Glen Sun, 120, 127 Gobi Partners, 149 Go-Jek, 57 Golden Gate Bridge, 11 Goldman Sachs, 151 Google, 10, 15, 26, 28, 33–34, 45, 52, 57, 75, 79, 95, 104, 115, 127–129, 132, 144, 162, 178, 191, 193 Google China, 34–35 Google Pay, 5, 32 GoPro, 219 Grab, 57 Granite Global Ventures (GGV), 138, 143, 151–154, 169, 198, 217 Graziani, Thomas, 186 The Great Wall, 53 Great Wall Motors, 208 Groupon, 15, 43, 69, 95–96, 104, 186 GrubHub, 90 GSR Ventures, 138, 157 Gu, Amy, 118 Guangzhou Automobile Group, 207 Guinn, Colin, 219 Gullicksen, Ken, 118 H Hainan Airlines, 168 Hans Tung, 11, 55, 78, 120–121, 153, 192 Hao, Robert, 115 Haokan, 85 Hariharan, Anu, 87 Harvard university, 11 HAX accelerator, 213–214 Hearst Ventures, 169 Hemi Ventures, 118 He Xiaopeng, 197, 203–206 Hikvision, 162 Hillhouse Capital, 112, 175, 198 Hilton, 9, 54 Hoffman, Reid, 105 Hollywood, 52–55 Hong Ge, 115 Horizon Robotics, 213 Horizon Ventures, 112 Horowitz, Andreessen, 52, 86, 138 Hortons, Tim, 102 H&Q Asia Pacific, 102 Huahua Media, 54 Huami, 77 Huang, 186 Huawei, 5, 13, 16, 73, 76 Hurst Lin, 120, 155 Hyatt, 9 Hyundai, 28 I IBM, 162 IDG Capital, 138, 193, 198 IFlytek, 163 ING Group, 171 Instagram, 1–2, 15, 51 Intel, 16, 144 International Finance Corporation, 171 IPhone, 70 IQiyi, 19, 60, 84 Israel, 56 J Jack Ma, 3, 26, 28, 45, 47, 49–50, 52, 56, 78, 99–100, 135, 154–155, 191 JAFCO Asia, 154 James Mi, 121, 156, 193 Janow, Merit, 17 Japan, 56 JD.com, 18, 29, 38, 88, 98, 147, 185, 187–189, 191, 211 Jenny Lee, 154 Jerry Yang, 106, 154 Jet Li, 52 Jian Lu, 106 Jing Bing Zhang, 219 Jobs, Steve, 3, 68 Joe Chen, 44 Joe Zhou, 140 Johnson, Kevin, 101 Joy Capital, 103 Joyo.com, 75 JPMorgan, 115 Jurvetson, Draper Fisher, 134 K Kabam, 63 Kai-Fu Lee, 34, 123, 147, 165 Kalanick, Travis, 175, 181 Karma Automotive, 207 Katzenberg, Jeffrey, 85 Kayak, 69, 90 Kellman, Joel, 152 Kentucky Fried Chicken, 9 Keytone Ventures, 140 Khazanah Nasional Berhad, 171 Khosla, Vinod, 138 Khosla Ventures, 134, 138 Kingsoft, 74–75, 79 Kitt.ai, 163 KKR, 83 Kleiner Perkins, 140, 148 Koubei, 61 Kramlich, Dick, 139, 142 Kr Space, 110 Kuaidi, 173, 181 Kuaishou, 66, 84–85, 156 L LAIX, 169 Lam, David, 146 Lashou, 95–96 Lasso, 32, 84 Lau, Marvin, 64 Lazada, 58 Lazada Group, 58 League of Legends, 64 Lee, Jenny, 123 LeEco, 54 Legend Capital, 155, 171 Lei Jun, 44, 68, 71, 74–76, 79, 81, 135, 152 Leju, 66 LendingClub, 171 Leone, Doug, 129 LG, 28 Libin, Phil, 117–118 Lightspeed China Partners, 156, 193 Li Guoqing, 44 Li Haipeng, 175 Li Ka-shing, 171 Lin Haifeng, 193 LinkDoc, 169, 171–172 LinkedIn, 15, 104 LinkedIn China, 104–107 Lip-Bu Tan, 139 Little Elephant market, 98 Little Red Book, 189–190 Liulishuo (LingoChamp), 154 Live.me, 88 Livestreaming, 19, 80–81, 88 Li (David) Xueling, 199 Li Zexiang, 217 Li Zhaohui, 67 Lo, Vincent, 152 Long Hill Capital, 148 Lonsdale, Jeff, 138 Luan, Pan, 67 Luckin Coffee, 99–100 business model, 103 Lu Qi, 33 Lyft, 21, 51, 178, 183 M Macquarie Group, 115 Made-in-China business models, 10 Made in China 2025 initiative, 172, 200, 208, 212, 224 Magic Leap, 21 Ma Huateng (Pony Ma), 28 Mail.Ru, 29 Maimai, 106 MakeBlock, 213 Marriott, 9 Marvell, 15 Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 94, 168 Master-Card, 32 Matrix China Partners, 138 Matrix Partners, 138 Matrix Partners China, 110, 138, 198 Mavic Pro, 218 Mayfield, 51, 137–138 Mayi.com, 116 McDonald’s, 9 Meeker, Mary, 140 Megafunds, 134 Megvii, 165 Meituan, 175, 189 Meituan Bike, 175 Meituan Dianping, 20–21, 38, 42–43, 61, 69–70, 89–98 bike-sharing business, 94 competitors, 93 deliveries, 91–93 merger, 96–97 revenues, 94 travel and hotel segment, 93–94 Meizu Zero, 72 Messenger, 51 Mi.com, 71 Micron Technology, 16 Microsoft, 30, 33, 75, 79, 144, 162, 193 Milner, Yuri, 78, 83, 171 MIT university, 11 Mobike, 21, 61, 94, 151, 174–175 Mobile payments, 5, 19 MoneyGram, 55, 63 Morgenthaler Ventures, 118 Moritz, Mike, 11, 51, 128–129 Morningside Venture Capital, 84, 198 MOX, 214 Musical.ly, 83, 87–88 MySpace, 28 N Naked Hub, 108–111 Naspers, 66 Neil Shen, 97, 119 Netflix, 26, 48, 81 Netscape, 52 Neumann, Adam, 109 New Enterprise Associates, 51 New Enterprise Associates (NEA), 141–143 New Oriental Education & Technology Group, 135 New Space, 110 New York–based RRE Ventures, 133 Ng, Thomas, 152 Nike, 218 Nike shoes, 9 NIO, 2, 19, 200–201, 206–207 Nuomi, 96 Nvidia, 196 O Ofo, 61, 128, 138, 157, 174–175 On-demand ordering and delivery of takeout orders, 5 O2O, 97 OpenTable, 90 OPPO, 76, 168 Optibus, 56 Oracle, 129 O’Sullivan, Sean, 123, 214 P Page, Larry, 29, 34 Palo Alto, 52 Panda Selected, 175 Parrot, 220 PayPal, 31, 46, 128 Peggy YuYu, 44 Penaloza, 107 Penaloza, Dominic, 107 Perkins, Kleiner, 134 Perkins, Tom, 132 Pinduoduo, 2, 29, 66, 134, 185–188, 192–195 Ping An, 137 Pinterest, 15, 104 Pony Ma, 3 PPDAI Group, 171 Primavera Capital Group, 198 Princeton university, 11 Project Dragon, 15 Project Dragonfly, 104 Q Qiming Venture, 95, 175 Qiming Venture Partners, 129, 150–151 Qiye Weixin, 42, 106 QQ instant messaging service, 29 QR code, 109 QR (quick response) code, 1–2 Qualcomm, 15, 144 Qudian, 171 Quixey, 63 Qunar, 60 R Rational Robotics, 214 Reddit, 64, 88 Redpoint China, 157 Redpoint China Ventures, 133 Renren, 44 Retail commerce, 18–19 Revols, 214 Rework, 110 Richard Chang, 142 Richard Ji, 116 Richard Liu, 78, 123 Rieschel, Gary, 8, 16, 120, 122, 129, 150–151 Riot Games, 64 Robin Li, 3, 28, 33–35, 60, 122 Robinson, Jim, 121, 133 Robotics and drone market, 212 Roomba, 214 Rui Ma, 186 S Samsung, 28, 70, 76 Sandell, Scott, 141 Schultz, Howard, 100 SenseTime, 2, 29, 161, 167–169 camera surveillance technology, 162 Sequoia Capital, 11, 110, 129, 171, 175 Sequoia Capital China, 84, 95, 97, 105, 112, 119, 127–129, 194, 213, 218 Sequoia CBC Cross-Border Digital Industry Fund, 119 Serendipity Labs, 111 Sesame Credit system, 6 7Fresh, 189 7Fresh stores, 98 Shanghai Automotive Industry Corp., 208 Shanghai-based Qiming Venture Partners, 8 Shanghai World Financial Towers, 9 Shen, Neil, 128–129, 194 Shenzhen, 2 Short video entertainment apps, 7 Silicon Dragon, 109 Silicon Valley, 20–22, 27, 29, 31, 33, 42, 44, 50–52, 60, 63, 68–69, 79, 95, 105, 117, 129, 132–134, 137–143, 145–146, 150, 153, 158, 178, 192, 196, 199, 204–205, 218–220, 223–225 Silver Lake Partners, 38 Simon Loong, 171 Sina Corp., 95 Sino—US Venture Investors, 135–136 Sinovation Ventures, 110, 146, 165–166 Skype, 1 Snap, 64 Snapchat, 81, 84 Lens Challenges, 69 Social commerce, 20 SoFi, 44 SoftBank, 38, 51, 83, 138, 151, 183 Sonny Wu, 157 Southeast Asia, 56–57, 149 Alibaba and Tencent Investments in, 59 SpaceX, 51, 220 Spielberg, Steven, 52 SQream Technologies, 56 Squawk Box, 86 Stanford university, 10 Starbucks, 15, 99–100, 102–104, 111 initiative with Alibaba, 100–101 Reserve Roastery, 101–102 Startup Asia, 57 “Startup Nation” of Israel, 56 Steven Ji, 128 STX Entertainment, 52 Su Hua, 85 Sun Microsystems, 128 Supercharging stations, 7 T Tai, Bill, 137 Ta-lin Hsu, 102, 139 TangoME, 63 Tang Xiaoou, 167 Taobao, 28, 185, 187 Tao Peng, 113 TechSauce, 148 Temasek, 172 Tencent, 12–13, 20–21, 26, 28–32, 38, 44, 46–48, 51–52, 57, 61, 70, 80–81, 83, 95, 138, 147, 153, 163–164, 171, 190–191, 197, 206, 224 China Literature, 41 corporate culture, 63 diversification strategy, 67 gaming business, 40, 64, 66 growth of, 39–40 social networking service, 41–42 strategic investments, 63–66 in US, 52, 63–65 war with ByteDance, 85 youth culture, 39 Tencent Music Entertainment, 41 Tencent Video, 41, 84 Terminator: Dark Fate, 53 Tesla, 2, 15, 64, 196, 209–210, 220 Thiel, Peter, 138 Thompson, Ben, 77 Tian, Edward, 118–119 Tian Xu, 193 Tiger Computing Solutions, 163 TigerGraph, 163 Tiger Qie, 178 TikTok, 2, 21, 29, 31–32, 39, 43, 66, 69–70, 82, 84, 87 Tina Ju, 140 TMD, 43–44, 69 Tokopedia, 58 The Tonight Show, 85 3D Robotics, 219–220 TopBuzz, 82 Toutiao (Today’s Headlines), 21, 69–70, 80–81, 86–88 Traffic Brain, 178 Trump, Donald, 15, 45, 54–55, 164, 191 Tsai, Joe, 50 Tujia, 116 Twitch, 51 Twitter, 1, 15, 28, 43, 47, 84, 87, 104 U UBazaar mobile, 111 Uber, 21, 44, 51, 57, 60, 64, 83, 103–104, 128, 144, 173, 176–183 Uber Eats, 69, 90 Ubisoft, 64 UBTech, 213 UCAR, 103 UC Berkeley, 11 Ucommune, 110–111 UCWeb, 200 URWork, 110 US-China trade imbalance, 15 Ushi, 107 US IPOs, 131 US market, 46 US privacy laws, 7 US venture fund performance, 130 V Valentine, Don, 132, 139 VC Dixon Doll, 155 Venture capital market of China, 12, 130–158, 224 AI startups, 166 center of gravity for venture investing, 158 cross-border investors, 145–146 digital Silk Road, 136–139 funding for Asian companies, 148 history as a budding venture superpower, 139–140 investment returns, 141 investments in tech companies, 132–135 NEA’s China investing, 141–143 Sino—US Venture investment, 135–136, 146–148 venture firms, 150–158 Video streaming market, 2, 6, 19, 60, 83, 85, 154 Viomi, 77 VIPShop, 189–190 Vipshop, 156 Virtual gifts, 6 Virtual reality, 19 Visa, 32 Visualead, 56 Vivendi, 64 Vivo, 76 Vizio, 54 Volvo, 204 W Waimai, 60 Waldorf Astoria Hotel, 54 Walmart, 57–58 Wang Xing, 43, 89, 91, 94–95, 97 Wang Yi, 169 Wanka Online, 148 Warburg Pincus, 38 Warner Brothers, 51 Wayne Shiong, 121 Waze, 51 WeChat, 1–2, 29, 31, 34–35, 41–43, 46, 82, 106, 115, 144, 177, 187, 191, 197 WeChat Moments, 85 WeChat Pay, 5, 19, 32, 63, 182–183 WeDefend, 170 Wedo, 110 WeFlex, 170 Weibo, 35, 47, 82, 168, 197 Weiner, Jeff, 105–106 Weixin, 41 Wei-Ying Ma, 89 Wei Zhou, 121, 134 WeLab, 170–171 WeReach, 170 WeWork, 15, 104, 111 WeWork China, 108–111 WeWork Go, 109 WhatsApp, 1, 43, 51 Whitman, Meg, 85 William Li, 200, 206 Williams, David, 52 Wilson Sonsini Goodrich and Rosati (WSGR), 142–143 Wonder Woman, 52 Woo Space, 110 Workingdom, 110 Wu Xiaoguang, 199 X Xiadong Jiang, 172 Xia Huaxia, 92 Xiaodong Jiang, 142 Xiaomi, 20–21, 68–70, 75, 138, 141, 153, 168 business model, 76–79 core strength of, 73 customers, 72 growth, 72–73 international market, 79–80 Mi Home store locations, 73–74 mobile phone features, 70–71 range of internet-connected devices, 71 sales, 75–76 US market, 73–74 Xiaomi Finance, 80 Xiaonei, 95 Xiaopeng He, 122 Xiaozhu, 116 Xi Jinping, 12, 47, 208 Xpeng Motors, 19, 196–197, 200, 203–206 XPerception, 164 XTMD, 69 Xu Li, 161, 168–169 Y Yahoo!

The Happiness Curve: Why Life Gets Better After 50
by Jonathan Rauch
Published 30 Apr 2018

Online, Barb found an international school in Cairo that needed a special education teacher with strength in math. “We did Skype interviews and the people at the school there were just great. You could tell it was going to be a good institution.” Their kids were in their twenties. Her husband was retired. They felt ready. How did the move go? “We loved it.” Barb and her husband reveled in Egypt’s rich history and culture. She learned some Arabic, made local friends, camped in the desert with a bedouin guide. Her husband got involved with the local schools. Then, when Barb’s principal moved to a school in Chennai, Barb and her husband followed her. When I Skyped with her there, she described Chennai as amazing, a place where the people are gentle and the school absorbing.

…

In my survey, she described her fifties as exciting, full, entertaining, and rated her life satisfaction at nine, near the top of the Cantril scale—versus only a four for her forties, for which her descriptors were struggle, stressful. I rarely see turnarounds of that magnitude, so I tracked her down for an interview—via Skype to India, where she lives and works. Barb was raised by a conservative family in Texas and never felt she fit in well. She used a lot of drugs and alcohol in her teens. In her twenties she met her husband and entered what turned out to be a successful marriage, but she struggled to figure out who she was.

Scarred: The True Story of How I Escaped NXIVM, the Cult That Bound My Life
by Sarah Edmondson
Published 16 Sep 2019

Barbara Bouchey told me that for a lot of people, the trickiest part for a yellow sash to rise to orange is to work out his or her emotional issues. There were several components to the process to track my progress and hold me accountable. First, I undertook a weekly one-hour session the company called Goals Lab, phone calls or Skype sessions where I’d check in with my goals coach to discuss whether I was overcoming my limitations in order to progress successfully toward my aim of getting my orange sash, and discuss next steps. I studied to show them my proficiency in the principles, the curriculum, and the sales techniques. I flew myself to every Five-Day they offered, including one in Monterey, Mexico, and now I was playing a small role in helping to run the intensives.

…

This was a huge deal for me, for the Vancouver ESP community, and for NXIVM as a company. In July 2009, at the end of a forty-person intensive, the upper ranks promoted me in front of the entire coaching staff and our class. Mark was in town to help run that training, and for the promotion ceremony he Skyped in both Barb J. and Nancy. After the new students received their red stripe for completing the Five-Day, my two mentors paid me extensive tribute for all of my hard work as Mark placed that crisp orange sash around my neck. I had visualized this moment so many times! Getting to proctor status meant I had reached official, paid coach rank.

…

Getting to proctor status meant I had reached official, paid coach rank. I had worked my butt off for four years to get there, taking thousands of hours of NXIVM coursework and recruiting hundreds of devotees. I’d done it. Reaching proctor gave me a sense of worth, esteem, and completion that I’d never in my life felt before. Via Skype, Nancy applauded me. Reaching that point made all the hardships I had gone through to get there, and any doubts I had, disappear. There was nothing holding me back. Prior to this, we’d had no proctors in Vancouver or anywhere in Canada. My new status also meant I could open an actual center, as long as I did so in collaboration with a green sash.

The Dark Cloud: How the Digital World Is Costing the Earth
by Guillaume Pitron
Published 14 Jun 2023

Digital technologies currently use 10 per cent of the world’s electricity, and account for close to 4 per cent of global carbon dioxide emissions — almost double that of the global civil aviation sector.10 ‘While digital companies prove to be more powerful than the regulators that govern them, there is a real risk that we can no longer control their environmental impact’, warns Jaan Tallinn, the founder of Skype and the Future of Life Institute, which specialises in the ethics of technology.11 That digital pollution undermines the ecological transition is a compelling argument and will be one of the greatest challenges we face over the next thirty years. Meanwhile, the race has begun. On the one side, we have digital companies exerting their formidable financial and innovative power to optimise and ‘green’ the internet and smartphones — like they do with their lawns flanking their head offices.

…

For further reading on predictions of the Internet’s expansion to all of humanity, read ‘Humans on the Internet will triple from 2015 to 2022 and hit 6 billion’, Cybercrime Magazine, 18 July 2019. 6 ‘10 hot summer trends 2030’, Ericsson ConsumerLab, December 2019. 7 ‘Giant cell blob can learn and teach, study shows’, Science News, 21 December 2016. 8 Interview with Inès Leonarduzzi, director of Digital For The Planet, 2019. 9 Interviews with Françoise Berthoud, IT research engineer, 2019 and 2020. 10 ‘Lean ICT: Towards Digital Sobriety’, report of the working group directed by Hugues Ferreboeuf for the think tank The Shift Project, March 2019. 11 Interview with Jaan Tallinn, founder of Skype and the Future of Life Institute, 2020. 12 Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft: the five most powerful US companies of the digital economy. 13 To borrow the term used by Agnès Crepet, Head of Software Longevity & IT at Fairphone. 14 fridaysforfuture.org 15 The start-up in question is We Don’t Have Time: wedonthavetime.org 16 ‘What’s Behind Climate Change Activist Greta Thunberg’s Remarkable Rise to Fame?’

…

It could also be argued that ‘smart farming’ will increase yields even more. 16 Interview with Siim Sikkut, the then government chief information officer of Estonia, 2020. 17 It is also considered the Silicon Valley of Europe and has the highest number of unicorns (companies valued at over $1 billion) per inhabitant in the world: Skype, TransferWise, Playtech, and Bolt. 18 Interview with Ott Vatter, the managing director of e-Residence at the time of this interview in 2020. 19 Interview with Robert Krimmer, ERA-chair professor of e-governance in the Ragnar-Nurkse department of innovation and governance at Tallinn University of Technology, 2020. 20 Interview with Toomas Hendrik Ilves, former President of the Republic of Estonia (2006-2016), 2020. 21 This is a debate, taking place centuries apart, between the aesthetician G.W.F.

Engineering Security
by Peter Gutmann

Using the concept of the SSB from above, instead of having users navigate to arbitrary locations in the hope that they correspond to their bank, allow them to have a contact list like Skype or IM clients currently do to take them to sites where security is critical. Build the concept of a secure session into your application at a fundamental level, in the chrome and the site/contact-management system. When you’re connected to a remote site or system, display the information in an unmistakeable, unspoofable manner as many IM clients or applications like Skype do (although Skype as a whole isn’t much of an example of good UI design, one thing that they have got mostly right is their session management model).

…

I know that TLS requires a cert over the other end, and there is a potential client-side cert. But without that knowledge, a user would be lost […] It took longer to do the setting up of some security options than it takes to download, install, and initiate an encrypted VoIP call over Skype with someone who has never used Skype before” [153]. One of the reasons why Skype’s security model works so much better than (say) encrypted email is because it relies on end-to-end transport security, which can be made completely transparent to the user. Encrypted email, in contrast, offloads the transport security to the end user, creating an encrypted blob capable of safely passing through hop-by-hop store and forward systems that then arrives at its destination still in encrypted blob form, requiring tedious manual effort from the recipient to unravel.

…

[261] “Report of incident on 15-MAR-2011”, 23 March 2011, Comodo, http://www.comodo.com/Comodo-Fraud-Incident-2011-03-23.html. [262] “The Recent RA Compromise”, Phillip Hallam-Baker, 23 March 2011, http://blogs.comodo.com/it-security/data-security/the-recent-cacompromise/. [263] “Microsoft Advisory about fraudulent SSL Certificates”, Johannes Ulrich, 23 March 2011, http://isc.sans.edu/diary/Microsoft+Advisory+about+fraudulent+SSL+Certificates/10600. [264] “Phony SSL Certificates issued for Google, Yahoo, Skype, Others”, Paul Roberts, 23 March 2011, http://threatpost.com/en_us/blogs/phony-webcertificates-issued-google-yahoo-skype-others-032311. [265] “Iranian hackers obtain fraudulent HTTPS certificates: How close to a Web security meltdown did we get?”, Peter Eckersley, 23 March 2011, https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/03/iranian-hackers-obtainfraudulent-https. [266] “Web Browsers and Comodo Disclose A Successful Certificate Authority Attack, Perhaps From Iran”, Steve Schultze, 24 March 2011, http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/blog/sjs/web-browsers-andcomodo-disclose-successful-certificate-authority-attack-perhapsiran

Black Edge: Inside Information, Dirty Money, and the Quest to Bring Down the Most Wanted Man on Wall Street
by Sheelah Kolhatkar
Published 7 Feb 2017

Freeman was so intense: Eder, Rothfeld, Strasburg, “They Were Best of Friends, Until the Feds Showed Up.” “the log”: FBI notes from interviews with Noah Freeman, hereafter Freeman 302s. his numbered Gmail accounts: Details of Longueuil’s Gmail accounts; Freeman 302s. most of his instant-message chats through Skype: Longueuil use of Skype; FBI notes from interviews with Samir Barai, hereafter Barai 302s. They didn’t get home until 2:30 A.M.: U.S. v. Samir Barai and Donald Longueuil, No. 11 Mag. 332, February 7, 2011; reference to video surveillance, exit and return times from affidavit filed by FBI Special Agent B. J. Kang.

…

All along he’d been exceedingly careful, never saving any of the illegal information on his SAC computer, and never writing anything incriminating in his work email. All of his questionable dealings had been conducted via one of his numbered Gmail accounts on his laptop, with all his notes saved on the external drives. He tried to do most of his instant-message chats through Skype, which he was sure couldn’t be wiretapped. He tore around his apartment looking for a pair of pliers, which he used to rip the USB and hard drives apart, stripping them into little bits. Then he divided the pieces into four ziplock bags. He stuffed the bags into the pockets of his North Face jacket and turned to his fiancée.

…

— In early December, a couple of weeks after the raids on Diamondback and Level Global, Donald Longueuil was still feeling insecure. After smashing his hard drives he was hopeful that he had destroyed any evidence that would implicate him in any illegal trading. Still, he told his friend Noah Freeman, they should communicate from now on only by Skype. Freeman, since his firing from SAC the previous January, had attempted to turn his life around. He had a wife and a baby daughter and was trying to be a hands-on father, a present father. He had started teaching economics at the Winsor School in Boston, a private all-girls academy. He missed the money from his old life, but he felt better about himself.

Surviving AI: The Promise and Peril of Artificial Intelligence
by Calum Chace
Published 28 Jul 2015

TABLE OF CONTENTS TITLE PAGE INTRODUCTION: SURVIVING AI PART ONE: ANI (ARTIFICIAL NARROW INTELLIGENCE) CHAPTER 1 CHAPTER 2 CHAPTER 3 PART TWO: AGI (ARTIFICIAL GENERAL INTELLIGENCE) CHAPTER 4 CHAPTER 5 PART THREE: ASI (ARTIFICIAL SUPERINTELLIGENCE) CHAPTER 6 CHAPTER 7 PART FOUR: FAI (FRIENDLY ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE) CHAPTER 8 CHAPTER 9 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ENDNOTES COMMENTS ON SURVIVING AI A sober and easy-to-read review of the risks and opportunities that humanity will face from AI. Jaan Tallinn, co-founder Skype, co-founder Centre for the Study of Existential Risk (CSER), co-founder Future of Life Institute (FLI) Understanding AI – its promise and its dangers – is emerging as one of the great challenges of coming decades and this is an invaluable guide to anyone who’s interested, confused, excited or scared.

…

In November 2012 Microsoft research executive Rick Rashid demonstrated the company’s simultaneous translation software at a large presentation. The software rendered his speech in Mandarin in real time, almost flawlessly. The system is now available in 45 languages on a number of Microsoft platforms, including Skype. One of the most impressive recent demonstrations of AI functionality was DeepMind’s presentation at Lake Tahoe in December 2013 of an AI system teaching itself to play old-style Atari video games like Breakout and Pong. These are games which previous AI systems have found hard to play because they involve hand-to-eye co-ordination.

Snowden's Box: Trust in the Age of Surveillance
by Jessica Bruder and Dale Maharidge
Published 29 Mar 2020

Of these, none are fully transparent about the system of encryption they are using.” The researchers also learned that some companies don’t practice what they preach. “For example, Microsoft has a clear stated commitment to human rights, but is not applying any form of end-to-end encryption on its Skype service,” they wrote. Other organizations are leading the charge to protect the rights of minorities and targeted groups. All Out, a global LGBT+ rights organization, has mobilized members to protest what it has referred to as the Egyptian government’s “anti-gay witch hunt”: the surveillance and arrest of gay, bi, and trans Egyptians.

…

See US Postal Service (USPS) PredPol, 113 Privacy International, 144 The Program (Poitras), 18, 49–50, 72, 134 ProtonMail, 131–2, 137–8 Public Citizen, 146 Rekognition (software), 104 Remnick, David, 43–4 Reverend Billy, 84 Richards, Neil, 109 Ring Inc., 145–6 Risen, James, 40, 45 Risk (Poitras), 16 Romero, Anthony, 47 Roosevelt, Franklin, 52 Rosen, James, 29 Rubinstein, Julian, 13–14, 50 Russia, 139. See also Moscow Safari (browser), 139 Salon, 17, 72 San Francisco, 143–4 Scahill, Jeremy, 124, 126, 127–8 Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers (Ellsberg), 36–7 Sensenbrenner, F. James, Jr., 47 Sheehan, Neil, 43 Signal (messaging app), 131–2, 136 Singer, Natasha, 146 Skype, 145 Snowden, Edward, 1–3, 45, 92, 94; archives, 126–8, 130; “B. Manning” pseudonym, 1, 28, 121–2; “Citizenfour” pseudonym, 64–5; commentary on Assange indictment, 130; Gellman and, 41; Greenwald and, 6–7, 44–5, 48–9, 70–4, 75–6; Guardian video, 48–9, 92; middle name gaffe, 56; Micah Lee and, 74–6; Mills and, 80, 133; Moscow, 42, 56, 59, 122, 133; “odds never matter,” 116; “patternrecognition machines,” 131; Poitras and, 20, 22–5, 35–6, 37, 39–45, 55, 62, 72–7, 122–3; posters, 117; public ignorance regarding, 95; public response to revelations, 107, 108, 110; “Restore the Fourth” statement, 85; Timm and, 62–3; trust, 121; USPS use, 1–2, 28, 50, 57–9; Washington Post, 54 Snowden, Lonnie, 124 Soho House Berlin, 117–18 Stasi, 4, 18, 118 State of War (Risen), 40 Stone, Andy, 137 Stop Watching Us, 84 Sullivan, William, 86–7 Tails (operating system), 33, 34, 39, 77, 79, 116, 117, 119 Talen, William.

The New Geography of Jobs
by Enrico Moretti
Published 21 May 2012

Crucially, one of the requirements the company imposes on the firms it finances is that they move to San Francisco. It argues that the benefits from this kind of startup accelerator program—in which the venture capitalists guide firms from idea to product launch—can occur only face-to-face. In the end, geographical proximity to venture capitalists still matters. Skype and cell phones have not changed this simple fact. This is one of the reasons that the world of high tech is and will remain geographically concentrated. Advantage 3: The (Almost) Magical Economics of Knowledge Spillover ECOtality is a company at the forefront of clean transportation and power storage technology, which in 2010 moved its headquarters from Arizona to the Bay Area.

…

Most of our crucial interactions are still face-to-face, and most of what we learn that is valuable comes from the people we know, not from Wikipedia. The vast majority of the world’s phone calls, Web traffic, and investments are still local. Telecommuting is still incredibly rare. Videoconferencing, e-mail, and Skype have not made a dent in the need for innovative people to work side by side. In fact, that is more important than ever. At the same time that goods and information travel at faster and faster speeds to all corners of the globe, we are witnessing an inverse gravitational pull toward certain key urban centers.

…

See Wages and salaries Salinas–Sea Side–Monterey, California, [>] Salk Institute, [>] Salt Lake City, [>], [>] San Antonio, [>] San Diego, [>], [>], [>], [>]–[>], [>], [>] San Francisco, [>], [>]–[>] architects in, [>] artisanal workshops in, [>], [>] bookbinding business in, [>]–[>] college graduates in, [>], [>] college-educated immigrants in, [>] computer science salaries in, [>] cost of living in, [>] land-use regulation in, [>] Mission District of, [>] new housing limited in, [>] and venture capitalists, [>]–[>] waiters in, [>] Zendesk in, [>] San Francisco Bay Area, [>]–[>], [>], [>] biotech firms in, [>] clean-tech companies in, [>] employment gains in, [>] Walmart in, [>] San Francisco Chronicle Building, [>]–[>] San Francisco–Oakland–Vallejo area, [>] San Francisco–San Jose region, [>], [>] San Francisco–Silicon Valley region, as adapting, [>]–[>] San Jose, [>], [>], [>] college graduates in, [>], [>], [>] salaries of, [>] computer science salaries in, [>]–[>] and cost of living, [>] divorce rate in, [>] See also San Francisco–San Jose region Sanmina, [>] Santa Barbara, [>], [>], [>] Santa Barbara–Santa Maria–Lompoc area, [>] Santa Cruz, California, [>], [>] Santa Rosa–Petaluma, California, [>] Schmidt, Eric, [>] Schultz, Howard, [>] Schumpeter, Joseph, [>], [>] Scientific R&D, [>] Scott, Allen, [>] Scott, Eric, [>] Scranton, Pennsylvania, [>] Scripps Research Institute, [>] Seattle, [>], [>]–[>], [>]–[>], [>] Capitol Hill district in, [>]–[>] college graduates in, [>], [>] and divergence from Albuquerque, [>]–[>] employment gains in, [>] exciting celebrities in, [>] and Microsoft, [>], [>], [>], [>]–[>], [>]–[>], [>] as anchor company, [>] and software leadership, [>] Pioneer Square in, [>], [>] smart growth policies in, [>]–[>] waiters in, [>] Seattle-Everett, and cost of living, [>] Secular change, [>] Segregation economic, [>] educational, [>] sociological, [>] Semiconductors in Portland, Oregon, [>] and Shockley, [>] and Taiwan, [>] Sequoia Capital, [>] Serbia, PISA scores of, [>] Service ecosystems, [>]–[>], [>], [>] Services sector as hurt by manufacturing loss, [>] innovations in, [>] local jobs in, [>] Microsoft’s effect on, [>] Shah, Dharmesh, [>] Shanghai, [>] innovative concentration in, [>] PISA results for, [>], [>] Sharma, Vinita, [>] Sharon, Pennsylvania, and cost of living, [>] Shen, John, [>] Shenzhen, China, [>]–[>] and Pixar, [>] Shockley, William, [>] Siemens, [>] Silicon Alley (New York), [>] Silicon Laboratories, [>] Silicon Valley, [>], [>], [>], [>], [>], [>], [>], [>] cell phone firms in, [>] clustering in, [>] cricket games in, [>] diversification in, [>] dot-com boom in, [>] ecosystems of, [>] Facebook’s move to, [>], [>] high-tech jobs as driver in, [>] in innovative area, [>] and life expectancy, [>] nondescript locations in, [>] and personal computer industry, [>] as possible Microsoft location, [>] post-WWII Detroit compared to, [>], [>] San Francisco as residence for workers in, [>], [>] Trulioo success in, [>] Simmons, Russel, [>] Singapore iPhone parts from, [>], [>] PISA scores of, [>] Sivadasan, Jagadeesh, [>] Skype, vs. side-by-side work, [>] Slaughter, Matthew, [>] Slovenia, PISA scores of, [>] Small businesses, [>] Smart growth policies, [>], [>] in Seattle, [>]–[>] Smith, Vaughan, [>] Social class, [>]–[>] Social multiplier effect, [>]–[>], [>] Social Network, The (movie), [>] Social return on education, [>] on research, [>]–[>] (see also Knowledge spillovers) Software industry, jobs in, [>], [>] Solar-panel industry, [>]–[>] in Fremont, California, [>]–[>], [>] See also Clean-tech companies Solyndra, [>]–[>], [>], [>] South (American), as convergence example, [>] Soviet Union, and Norilsk, Siberia, [>]–[>] Spain mobility in, [>] PISA scores of, [>] and solar panels, [>], [>] Spartanburg, South Carolina, Chinese factory in, [>] “Spatial mismatch,” [>]–[>] SpringLeaf Therapeutics, [>] Springsteen, Bruce, [>]–[>] Square (company), [>] Stamford, Connecticut, [>], [>], [>], [>], [>], [>], [>], [>] Standard of living innovation as driver of, [>] and productivity, [>] See also Quality of life Stanford University, [>] and Google, [>] and Silicon Valley, [>] Starbucks, [>] Stars, academic, in biotech, [>], [>] Startups, [>], [>] and Austral Capital, [>] and biotech academics, [>] in digital music business, [>] in Seattle, [>] and venture capitalism, [>] Star Wars (movie), [>], [>] State College, Pennsylvania, [>] Stellar Solutions, [>] Stockton, California, [>] Subsidies, [>] in “big push” programs, [>], [>] on Chinese solar panels, [>] of college education, [>], [>], [>] for high-tech industries in Fremont, California, [>] and solar industry, [>], [>], [>] for local investment, [>]–[>] Empowerment Zone Program, [>]–[>] of R&D (research), [>], [>] for thick labor markets, [>] and TVA, [>] varying value of, [>]–[>] Sun-tech, [>] “Supply side approach” to revitalizing cities, [>] Svane, Mikkel, [>], [>] Sweden, PISA scores of, [>] Switzerland, [>], [>] Taiwan, [>], [>] Talent, economic value of, [>]–[>] Tallahassee, Florida, [>] Tax advantages, [>] Taylor, Bret, [>] Taylor, Lori, [>] Technological progress and commercial knowledge, [>] and geography of jobs, [>] and increase in value of innovation, [>]–[>] innovation sector driven by, [>] as job creator, [>] and manufacturing loss, [>] productivity increase in, [>] and skilled-labor demand, [>] and standard of living, [>] in technologies of the earth, [>] See also Innovation Telecommuting, vs. side-by-side work, [>] Television manufacturing industry, [>] Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), [>], [>]–[>], [>], [>] Terre Haute, Indiana, and cost of living, [>] Tesla Motors, [>] Texas, “Emerging Technology Fund” for, [>] Texas Instruments, [>] Thailand, PISA scores of, [>] Thiel, Peter, [>] Thomas, Paul, [>] Three Americas, [>]–[>], [>]–[>], [>]–[>], [>], [>] 3M, [>] 3scale Networks, [>] T-Mobile, [>] Tocqueville, Alexis de, [>] Toledo, Ohio, [>], [>], [>] Topeka, Kansas, [>] Tourist destinations, [>] Trade Adjustment Assistance, limited allocation allowance for, [>] Traded (tradable) sector, [>]–[>], [>], [>] and innovation, [>] innovative hubs, [>] and multiplier effect, [>] Trajtenberg, Manuel, [>] Travelocity, [>] Travel websites, [>]–[>] Trenton, New Jersey, [>], [>] Trina Solar, [>] Trulioo, [>] Truly Disadvantaged, The (Wilson), [>] TRW, [>] Tulsa, immigrants with little education in, [>] Tunisia, PISA scores of, [>] Turkey, [>], [>] TVA (Tennessee Valley Authority), [>], [>]–[>], [>], [>] Twilight: New Moon (movie), [>] Ufford, Stephen, [>] Unemployment in Berlin, [>] in Detroit vs.

We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves
by Karen Joy Fowler
Published 29 May 2013

Sometimes the chimps don’t feel like having guests, and they show it by rushing the wall, body-slamming it with a loud crash, making the glass shiver in its frame. When this happens, we go away, come back another time. The center is their home. They get to decide who comes in. But we also have a Skype connection in the classroom. I leave this open throughout the morning, so my students can check on the chimps anytime they like, and the chimps can do likewise. Only six chimps remain here now. Three are younger than Fern—Hazel, Bennie, and Sprout. Two are older, both males—Aban and Hanu. So Fern is not the largest, nor the oldest, nor the malest.

…

My kindergartners say she’s kind of mean, but to me she’s just a good mother. She manages the social life at the center and doesn’t tolerate nonsense. When there’s a row, she’s the one who stops it, forces the rowers to hug and make up. Sometimes our own mother appears on the other end of the Skype connection, telling me to pick something up at the store on my way home or reminding me that I have a dentist appointment. She volunteers at the center daily. Her current job is to make sure Fern gets to eat the foods she likes. The day our mother walked in for the first time, Fern refused to look at her.

…

We’d had to remind Grandpa Joe in his nursing home that Dad had died, over and over, and five minutes later he’d be asking us again, in an anguished voice, what he’d done so bad that his only son never came to see him. But Fern has never mentioned either one. Sometimes my kindergartners and the chimps do a craft project together, either when we visit or over Skype. We finger-paint. We cover paper with paste and glitter. We make clay plates with our handprints impressed into them. The center holds fund-raisers, where they sell chimp artwork. We have several of Fern’s paintings on the walls of the townhouse. My favorite is her rendition of a bird, a dark slash across a light sky, no cage for creature or artist in evidence anywhere.

The Dark Net
by Jamie Bartlett
Published 20 Aug 2014

She had signed up to pose for a series of nude photographs for an alternative soft-core company called God’s Girls to earn some extra cash while she was at university. One day, she overheard some friends at God’s Girls discussing camming as a good way to make money. After a spot of research, she bought a webcam, and signed up to perform private shows on Skype with a local camming company. ‘I was very nervous the first time I did it. I talked way too much,’ she tells me. ‘I had twenty visitors in my room, and that felt insane! I think I made about thirty pounds.’ She then joined Chaturbate, and almost immediately started making enough money for it to become her sole source of employment.

…

The Climax Vex has never met her viewers, and doesn’t plan to. Her relationship with her regulars exists strictly online, a boundary she is determined to keep. But part of Vex’s appeal is that she is obviously real. Her shows are unashamedly home-made – a mixture of porn and, as one regular viewer describes it, a Skype chat with your girlfriend. Shirley tells me that camming is so popular because people want ‘the real girlfriend’ experience, warts and all. If people are going to use the internet for sexual satisfaction – and they will – camming is a more realistic and meaningful experience. Things go wrong, there are mistakes, there’s chat, cats wander in and out.

…

‘From that point I decided to dedicate my life to the transhumanist cause,’ Zoltan explains. He has a wife and two young children – but makes time, he says, for twelve to fourteen hours a day of transhumanist-related work. His ultimate aim, he tells me, is to live for ever, or as long as possible – 10,000 years or so. ‘If you and I were offered the chance,’ he tells me over Skype from his home in California, ‘we’d certainly try it. We’d have awe-inspiring superhuman powers.’ ‘But what would you do?’ I ask. ‘Ten thousand years seems like an awfully long time.’ ‘I can only answer this based on my current brain,’ Zoltan patiently replies. ‘One day we’ll have brains the size of the Empire State Building, connected to thousands of servers.

Exponential Organizations: Why New Organizations Are Ten Times Better, Faster, and Cheaper Than Yours (And What to Do About It)
by Salim Ismail and Yuri van Geest
Published 17 Oct 2014

Such drag on costs and operations is simply not acceptable in an Exponential Organization—or, indeed, for any company trying to compete in the 21st century. Telepresence has been around for many years in the form of videoconferencing. Although videoconferencing was quite a hassle in the past, an organization can now leverage services such as Skype and Google Hangout, which are fast, easy to use and available on every device. Telepresence enables employees to work proactively from any location and interact on a global scale, reducing travel costs and improving well-being. Even greater improvement comes from Telepresence robots such as Beam, from Suitable Technologies, and Double Robotics, which leverage the user’s tablet.

…

After all, everybody in a place like Silicon Valley has an idea for a new tech business. Instead, the key to success is relentless execution, hence the need for passion and the MTP. To demonstrate, consider the number of times the founders of the following companies pitched investors before finally succeeding: Company Number of Investor Pitches Skype 40 Cisco 76 Pandora 300 Google 350 What if Larry Page and Sergey Brin had stopped pitching after 340 attempts? The world would be a very different place today. Just as intriguing: what magical technologies and businesses don’t exist today because the founders gave up one investor pitch too soon?

…

According to Google, deep personal loss has resulted in employees who are more humble and open to listening and learning. Finally, Rate of Learning will become a mainstream measure to gauge the progress of an individual, team or even a startup. Key Opportunities Implications and Actions Digital job interviews and meetings Job interviews and collaboration leveraging video (Skype), telepresence (Double Robotics) or virtual reality (Oculus Rift or High Fidelity) for virtual meetings, as well as testing to enable the growing global Staff on Demand workforce. Social networking skills will increase in importance, as will internships and a focus on real life skills testing. Hire employees who ask the right questions We’re moving into a world of open data, open APIs and even open source (deep learning) algorithms.

Sarah Millican--The Queen of Comedy
by Tina Campanella
Published 14 Apr 2017

I still can’t quite believe it. Australians love a bloody badge. I am running low. My new material for my new show is working (thank God). I am broody. For a tiny baby koala of my own.’ Sarah loved Melbourne but she really missed her family and her boyfriend. She kept in touch via Skype but sometimes it wasn’t enough and she found herself feeling very down. During one Skype session, she said to Gary, sadly: ‘You’re too far away…’ Her boyfriend misunderstood and moved the webcam closer to his face. It made Sarah laugh and she immediately saved the moment in her memory – it was great comedy material. But despite the difficulties of being apart from her loved ones, her first Australian festival was a success.

…

Whether I’ve needed it or not, there’s always been someone in my life all too keen to dish out relationship advice. But to be fair to him, he’s been married for 47 years. He’s not here, but we can talk to him now, via the magic of the Internet…’ Sarah announced her next guest to be her dad Philip, and he soon appeared on screen via Skype. For Sarah it was the perfect way to involve her family in her new comedy world. And she knew that Philip was funny – after all, he’d been making her laugh all her life. Philip smiled and waved to the audience from the family home in South Shields, before recounting a story about how he had met Sarah’s mum.

AIQ: How People and Machines Are Smarter Together
by Nick Polson and James Scott
Published 14 May 2018

• The version of Google Translate that went live in 2016 represented a massive improvement over previous efforts at machine translation. The software can now generate respectable translations for over 100 languages—many of them directly from your smartphone camera, like for a restaurant menu or a sign in a train station. Skype can do something similar during a video chat, in real time. • Chatbots—software designed to simulate human conversation—are becoming a pervasive feature of the digital world. They’re especially popular on Facebook Messenger, where you can ask a bot to book a trip through Kayak or pester a merchant to check the status of a delayed package.

…

Think of the immense collections of spoken and written English sentences found on the servers of the world’s major tech firms. Think of a library with every book, magazine, newspaper, journal, song, film, and play ever written. Now think way bigger. Every web page. Every email in history. Every Google search or product review, every text message ever sent, every chat on Slack or Skype, every post on Facebook or Twitter, every comment on YouTube or Instagram. By volume, this collection of sentences makes the Library of Congress look like a third-rate bookmobile. And around 2010, the best minds in AI had finally developed the right tools for using all that data to its full effect.

…

politics prediction rules contraception and deep learning and evaluation of Google Translate and Great Andromeda Nebula and image recognition and massive data and massive models and as models natural language processing and neural networks and overfitting problem training the model trial and error strategy Price, Richard principle of least squares privacy ProPublica Quetelet, Adolphe rage to conclude bias ransomware Reagan, Ronald recommender systems health care and large-scale legacy of Netflix See also suggestion engines Rees, Mina Reinhart, Alex robot cars Bayes’s rule and introspection and extrapolation (dead reckoning) LIDA image of a highway LIDAR (light detection and ranging sensor) SLAM problem (simultaneous localization and mapping) and Waymo robotics Bayes’s rule and in China revolution of SLAM problem (simultaneous localization and mapping) search for USS Scorpion and Stanford Cart Theseus (life-size autonomous mouse) See also robot cars Rose, Pete Royal Mint coin clipping Great Recoinage (1696) Newton, Isaac and Trial of the Pyx Russell, Alexander Wilson S&P 500 Salesforce Sapir, Edward Sarandos, Ted SAT (standardized test) Scherwitzl, Raoul Schlesinger, Karl Schuschnigg, Kurt Schweinfurt-Regensburg mission (World War II) sci-fi AI anxiety and robots self-driving cars. See robot cars Sendak, Mark Shannon, Claude Shapley, Harlow Sieveking, Edward Henry Silicon Valley Skype SLAM problem (simultaneous localization and mapping) Slattery, Francis A.. See also USS Scorpion Slipher, Vesto smart cities smart medical devices smart watch smartphones apps GPS technology social media. See also Facebook SpaceX speech recognition Harpy (early program) See also natural language process (NLP) Spotify conditional probability personalization square-root rule (de Moivre’s equation) Standard and Poor’s Stanford University Statistical Research Group (SRG) statistics Stigler, George Stripe (payment system) submarines.

Off the Edge: Flat Earthers, Conspiracy Culture, and Why People Will Believe Anything
by Kelly Weill
Published 22 Feb 2022

He got a niche of people who could go ‘Not only are we being lied to, but also the government is now spawning these extraneous groups that are trying to detract people from the truth.’ ” Globe Earthers took note of Dubay’s 200 Proofs video and made their own videos debunking Dubay’s arguments—not that these fact-checks vanquished the theory. A growing cohort of conspiracy YouTubers began dabbling in Flat Earth in 2014 and 2015. They began organizing digital hangouts on Skype, then in person at localized meetups. And unlike the polite, anonymous debates on the Flat Earth Society forums, this crowd was less interested in arguing their points with nonbelievers and more focused on building a boots-on-the-ground movement with real faces and real money. Zen Garcia, a writer who’d focused for decades on obscure Christian offshoots, turned his focus to Flat Earth in 2016, churning out book after book on the topic and opening a publishing house for other Flat Earth writers.

…

She wasn’t going back to dating Globe Earthers, though. At fifty-six in 2019, she was looking for her true love, her soul mate, she said in a video that has since been removed from YouTube. And she thought she’d found him. Antonio Subirats was a small-time Flat Earth YouTuber, a bit player on the scene until Steere invited him to Skype into her show, she said in the video. They had the chemistry that was missing from Steere’s relationship with Sargent. Their webcam conversations continued long after they stopped recording. “We went from talking about ideas to talking about each other and the things we valued in love. I thought he was a very deep person, a very wise person, and a very kind person,” Steere said in the video.

…

A lot of them will just pull down the blinds and be like, ‘All I need is me, myself, and I, and my friends on the internet.’ ” It’s a disconnected way to live. Before Flat Earthers started organizing meetups, Robbie Davidson told me, the movement looked like “just some kooky, crazy conspiracy people online.” Believers would host video hangouts, but the kinship they craved was fragmented by screens and laggy Skype connections. When “you sit down with someone, look them in the eyes, and see their mannerisms, it becomes real,” Davidson said. Meetups, many of which sell individual tickets for hundreds of dollars, are critical to the movement. “I always encourage people, go to a meetup, even if you have to drive two, three hours,” Wolfe told me.

There's a War Going on but No One Can See It
by Huib Modderkolk
Published 1 Sep 2021

What I wanted to know was why he had attacked the Netherlands’ biggest telecom company and plunged it into chaos. I wanted to know how he’d learned to do what he did. And what happened to him after his arrest. Our chats were erratic. One day he’d be effusive and engaging, then he’d become remote. Sometimes days would pass before he answered a message. It would turn out he was in Asia. We also talked on Skype, once. I wanted to meet. He did, too, he said. But we never would. Edwin was cremated a few months before this, my second visit to his parents. As we talk, grief over the loss of their adopted son rears up suddenly several times. Ruud, his father, was the last person to see Edwin alive, and it still weighs heavily on him

…

‘Should I have let him come back home?’ he wonders. ‘Should I have given him one more chance?’ And then, regretfully: ‘I’d reached my limit. I just couldn’t do it.’ I hadn’t been planning to interview Edwin’s parents. I’d wanted to hear the story from Edwin himself, but that didn’t work out. The one time we Skyped, he’d been in a hotel room in South Korea. Eight minutes into our call he signed off with a smile and a peace sign. After that we chatted sporadically over WhatsApp. His final messages were laced with despair. ‘I don’t like it here,’ he wrote, ‘They’ve got guns’ and ‘I want to get out of here ASAP,’ He stopped responding to my questions about KPN.

…

Arranging a video call was also problematic. The two men had to travel south to the country’s capital at Mogadishu, a hazardous trip that took days and required a security escort. The only option we had was to bring them to a safe house in the capital where they could tell their story through an interpreter over Skype. The first man we interview is a Somali herder named Omar Mohammad Ali. On that particular Sunday, says Omar, he had taken his herd of forty sheep and goats to a large plain around the southern village of Haaway. Accompanying him were his two daughters, Saharo (nine) and Nimo (eight). The girls were especially fond of the goats.

Finance and the Good Society
by Robert J. Shiller
Published 1 Jan 2012

Karlan and McConnell (2009) showed experimentally that such publicity increases the amount given. The desire for recognition may be evidence that gift-giving is at least in part a form of disguised exchange. See Stark and Falk (1998). 10. List and Lucking-Reiley (2002). 11. Falke (2004). 12. One such Skype call, complete with smiles and kisses, is shown at “Meeting Our Compassion International Sponsored Child over skype!!!” at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tT3CY8Lwiak. 13. “Except Gifts from Income,” New York Times, June 17, 1917, p. 3. 14. The Chicago Tribune estimated in 1920 that $4 billion had been given to war organizations, the Red Cross, religious and educational movements, and other causes since 1915. “$4,000,000,000 to Philanthropy,” Chicago Tribune, April 25, 1920, p. 8. 15.

…

Save the Children, established in the United Kingdom in 1919, led the way by assigning a single child in poverty to each contributor, who would correspond by mail, giving the contributor a sense of personal relationship. Save the Children is now an international organization, and a number of other such organizations have followed. Some now employ more advanced communications tools, such as Skype calls between donors and recipients, to allow a closer bond to develop. One can look the child in the eyes and feel empathy as never before.12 It seems that we are gradually learning more about how to make the giving experience more meaningful, and that current strategies are not the nal word in encouraging such giving.

…

See also mortgage securities Seghers, Conrad, 35 self-esteem, 139, 159, 163, 224, 234, 237 self-regulatory organizations, 36, 80, 94, 95, 96–97, 101–2 sensation seeking, 140, 141–42 Šerys, Rosalia, 174 shadow banking system, 42–43 Shakers, 120 Shapley, Lloyd S., 69, 73 Sharpe, William, 34, 81 Sharpe ratio, 34, 35 Shefrin, Hersch, 78, 80 Shiller, George, 174 Shiller, Robert J., 2, 166, 172, 178, 180, 185–86, 193, 195 Shubik, Martin, 116 Simmons, Joseph P., 161 Simonov, Andrei, 28 Singapore, Central Provident Fund, 214 Singh, Manmohan, 3 SIVs. See structured investment vehicles Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, 98 Skelton, Noel, 212 Skype, 200 sleaziness: in finance, 159–60, 161–62; overreactions to, 166–67; perception of, 159, 165, 166 Small Business Administration (SBA), 216–17 Smith, Adam, xvii, 124, 140, 237, 238 social comparison theory, 191–92, 234 social epidemics, 180, 181 social influence, 181 socialist market economies, 3.

The Future of Technology
by Tom Standage
Published 31 Aug 2005

So what should the consumer see? 97 THE FUTURE OF TECHNOLOGY The mom test A geek’s benchmark for true simplicity ith e-mail, it wasn’t till my mom could use it that it became ubiquitous. The real test is always the mom test,” says Brad Treat, the boss of SightSpeed, an internet video company. “If my mother flips over to some Skype thing …,” begins Michael Powell, America’s media and telecoms regulator, answering a question about internet telephony. “If my mother is going to use it …,” starts Ray Lane, a venture capitalist, asked whether this or that technology has a future. Mothers come up surprisingly often in Silicon Valley conversations.

…

The caller’s voice is broken into packets of digital information that are routed separately to their destination and reassembled at the other end. In pure form, such conversations are called internet telephony. This might involve a video call between two SightSpeed customers, or a voice call between two computers that use software from Skype, a fastgrowing European firm. This pure form is still rare, however, because most people still use traditional phones, which requires people calling from a pc or an internet phone to “bridge” over to the phone network. The umbrella term that includes such hybrid calls is “voice-over-internet S 103 THE FUTURE OF TECHNOLOGY protocol”, or voip.

…

This is opening the door to disrupters such as Comviq, in Sweden, which has taken 39% of market share away from the incumbent, Telia, by offering half as many handset features and radically simpler pricing plans. Wireless and fixed-line telephone companies may simultaneously become vulnerable to new providers of internet telephony or voip, such 109 THE FUTURE OF TECHNOLOGY as Skype and Vonage, or networking companies such as Cisco (especially once fast, wireless internet access has become ubiquitous and totally reliable). The disruption could be especially severe if the upstarts not only make calling dirt-cheap or free, but also find ways to help consumers with jobs such as simplifying their communications as a whole or meeting their needs for privacy.

Extreme Economies: Survival, Failure, Future – Lessons From the World’s Limits
by Richard Davies
Published 4 Sep 2019

He began writing computer code at ten and in his twenties he and his business partner Janus Friis helped found Kazaa (an early illegal file-sharing site, similar to Napster) and, later, Skype. Well over six feet tall, with sharp features and a shock of blond hair, he could only be northern European; he wears tailored trousers from an expensive suit with a faded T-shirt. Mr Heinla appears half nerd, half businessman and it is a lucrative combination: Skype was sold to eBay in 2005 for a reported $2.6 billion and, after being bought back by private owners, sold once more to Microsoft for $8.5 billion in 2011. Having got in early and retained stakes in the company through its rise, Mr Heinla is thought to be a millionaire many times over; his co-investor Mr Friis is worth over $1 billion.

…

Concerns over the impact of technology make Tallinn an interesting test case. Just as Akita offers a glimpse of the economics of ageing we will all soon experience, Tallinn is a technology frontier, and has already adopted many technologies that look set to catch on in our own economies. The capital is famously home to Skype, and pushed as a ‘start-up paradise’ by the government with some justification (the number of new companies established per head of population is one of the highest in the world). But what makes Estonia stand out as a leader in a way Silicon Valley does not is the role of technology in the government.

…

Abercrombie, Sir Patrick 203 Aceh 2–39, 10, 331, 332, 333, 334, 335 ‘building back better’ 24–5, 29–31, 42 civil war 32–3 education 13, 31 financial system 20–22 history 17–18 Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) 32, 33 tsunami 2–3, 6, 12–14, 15, 16, 18–19, 23 ageing populations 6, 212–49, 331 agglomeration see industrial agglomeration AI see artificial intelligence Akita, Japan 212–49 ageing population/ low birth rate 7, 213–25, 227–49, 331 suicides 225–6 Allende, Salvador 296–8, 301 amoral familism 196, 202 Anglo-Dutch wars 25 Angola: Kongo people 83 Angola (Louisiana penitentiary) 5, 76–104, 331, 335, Angolite, The 80 Argentina 110, 144, 291, 303 Arkwright, Richard 267 Arrol, Sir William 191 artificial intelligence (AI) 245, 268–9, 270, 284, 286, 287, 378 automation: and job losses 253 see also technology Azraq refugee camp 57–67, 71, 72, 144, 334, 340, 348–9 Bajo Chiquito, Panama 106, 108–9, 1112, 133, 136, 139 Banda Aceh 13, 16, 18, 20, 26–7, 34–5 Bandal, Kinshasa 144, 162 Bandudu, Congo 164, 165 banks 97, 99 in Aceh 19, 21, 22 Chilean 296, 297, 302 in Kinshasa/ Congo 151, 158 online 99, 278 Panamanian 131 Barbour, Mary 203, 366 barter economy, prison 89–90 Bevan, Aneurin 201 birth rates, falling 215–16, 226–7, 233, 247 Blockbuster Video 97 blood circulation (William Harvey) 3–4 borders: and conservation of common resources 126–7 Borland, Francis: History of Darien 107 Brazil: ageing population 213, 214 Brazzaville, Congo 174–5 Bruce, Robert 203 Brumberg, Richard 218 buccaneers and Darien 112–14 business start-up rates 54 Calabria, negative social integration 195–6 Calton, Glasgow 179, 190, 191, 192 Cambridge University 26, 182 Cameron, Verney Lovett 141, 143, 149 cannabinoids, synthetic 93–4, 95–6, 352 cartels, Chilean 321–3 Casement, Roger: on Congo Free State 150 cash vs. barter 89–90 Castro, Fidel 298 Castro, Sergio de 301 centenarians, Japanese 215, 216 Chesterton, George Laval 77 Chicago Boys 294–5, 296, 300, 301, 314, 325 El Ladrillo (economic plan) 301–5, 315–16, 317, 323–4, 325–6 protests against 305, 317 Chile Allende period 296–8, 301 education 294, 295, 302, 304–5, 310, 311–12, 312, 313–17, 318, 324, 326, 327 national income 291–3 nationalization 296–7 Pinochet dictatorship 298, 300–1, 305, 322, 383 tsunami 15 see also Chicago Boys ‘Chilean Winter’ 317–18 Clyde shipyards 178–9, 181, 183–4, 185 Cold Bath Fields prison 91 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor 113 Colombian peace accord (2016) 111, 134 common resources and conservation 124–5 depletion paradox 122–39 overgrazed land 122–3 and self-regulation 125, 126–8 Confucian ethics 220 Congo, Democratic Republic of ‘Crisis’ 151–8 GDP per capita 153, 173 independence (1960) 151 unemployment 142–3 see also Kinshasa; Mobutu, Sese Seko; Zaire consumerism as slavery 319 copper mining 143, 151, 156, 296, 323–4 corruption 133 in Kinshasa 143, 145–6, 148, 159–61, 168, 333, 361 credit: and poverty 308–10 Crompton, Samuel 267 crop rotation 279 Cunard Line 185 currencies cacao beans 91 cigarette papers 91 cigarettes/tobacco 92, 95 coffee 77, 96, 100 commodities 90–91 ‘dot’ payment system 97–100 dual-currency system 166–7 ‘EMAK’ (edible mackerel) 92 postage stamps 92 in prisons 91–101 ramen noodles 92 roles played (Jevons) 90 on Rossel Island 91 salt 91 Yoruk people 91 Cut Nyak Dhien 35 Dael, Syria: refugees 42–4 Dagahaley settlement, Kenya 45, 46 Dampier, William 113, 114 Daraa: and Syrian civil war 44 Darien Gap 6, 106, 107–39, 332, 333, 334 borders and common resource conservation 126–7 buccaneers’ accounts 112–14 eco-tourism 132 environmental damage 6, 120–21, 129–31 ethnic rivalry 126–8 externalities 131, 138, 183, 186, 332 illegal immigrants 132–7 market failure 109–10, 122–3, 129, 138 Scottish disaster 114–15, 133, 137–8 Darien National Park 126, 132 deaths lonely 225, 226, 236, 237, 248 premature (‘Glasgow effect’) 192–3 suicide 194, 213, 224, 225–6, 236, 248, 366 see also life expectancy digital divide 254, 281, 377 digital ID 277, 279 digital infrastructure, Estonian 259 drugs in Angola (prison) 81, 82, 88, 93–4, 95–6, 97, 99, 100, 101, 352 in Chile 306, 310, 322 in Darien 110, 111, 128, 134, 135 in Scotland 191–2, 193 in Tallinn 206 Dunlop, John Boyd 150 Durkheim, Emile: La Suicide 194, 196, 206 e-democracy (Estonia) 284, 287 e-Residency (Estonia) 277–8, 279, 283, 287, 379 education in Aceh 13, 31 in Chile/Santiago 295, 302, 304–5, 310, 311–12, 312, 313–17, 326, 327 in Italy 195 in Japan 220, 223, 229 in Louisiana 81 in Zaatari camp 67, 71, 349 see also universities Embera tribe 108, 109, 111, 119, 127, 128, 129, 133, 136, 137, 138–9, 357 entrepreneurs 331 in Aceh 19, 22, 23, 24, 27, 30, 39 in Akita, Japan 236–7, 238 in Angola (prison) 89, 102–3 Chilean 295, 296 in Darien 5, 114 Estonian 270, 275, 278–9, 281 in Glasgow 181, 182 in Kinshasa 162, 171 in Zaatari camp 43, 46, 54, 55–8, 62–3, 71 environmental damage see Darien Gap Estonia 256–7, 259 Ajujaht competition 252, 260, 275, 276, 278, 283–3 companies 281 economic revival 275–87 e-Government services 254–5 as ESSR 257–9, 272–4 labour shortage 280 Russia border 271–2 Russian population 272–4, 281–3 technology 252–6, 259–87 externalities 183, 206 Darien Gap 131, 138, 183, 186, 332 Glasgow 183–4, 186, 189–90, 333 and markets 332 extractive economy 122–39 Fairfield Heritage 349 Fairfield shipyard 178, 186, 189, 200, 206 FARC guerrillas 111, 132, 133, 134–5, 137, 355, 357 Ffrench-Davis, Ricardo 302 Foljambe, Joseph 265–6 Force Publique 150 foreign aid 23, 27–9, 54, 170 foreign exchange traders 166–7 Franklin, Isaac 83 free markets 128, 131, 174, 296, 300–3, 316, 320, 326–7, 331–2, 356 Frente Amplio coalition 318, 384 Friedman, Milton 289, 295, 303, 319, 326, 383, 384 GAM (Gerakan Aceh Merdeka) freedom fighters 18, 32, 346 Gbadolite 159 GDP see Gross Domestic Product Gécamines 155–6 Geddes, Reay: report 189–90 gender roles, Japanese 223–4, 232 Germany 187, 195, 222, 227, 247, 249, 292, 302, 360 Glasgow 6–7, 176, 177–207, 333 culture 180 drug users 191–2 externalities 183–4, 186, 189–90, 333 population density 197 shipbuilding 178–9, 181, 184–6, 187–8, 189, 190–91, 199–200, 206–7, 333, 334 tenement homes and social capital 196, 197–202, 205, 335 unemployment 190 see also Calton; Gorbals; Govan and below Glasgow City Council (GCC) 202–4 Glasgow City Improvement Trust 202–3, 366 ‘Glasgow effect’, isolation 205–6 Glassford, John 181 Glenlee 179 gold in Aceh 17, 20–22, 37, 332, 334 in the Congo 143 in Darien 109, 113, 117, 120, 356 Golden Island 114–15 Good Neighbor Policy (USA) 294, 383 Goodyear, Charles 150 Gorbals, Glasgow 176, 191, 192, 204, 205, 367 Govan, Glasgow 176, 178, 184, 186, 192, 197–8, 201–3, 206, 207 Great Depression 26 Gross Domestic Product (GDP) 26 Aceh 27, 37–8 Chile 316 Congo 153, 173 Estonia 259 Hagadera refugee camp, Kenya 45 Han, Byung-Chul 319 Harberger, Arnold ‘Alito’ 295, 305, 326 Hargreaves, James 266, 267 Harris, Walter 115 Harvey, William 1, 3–4, 5, 6, 329, 330, 336 Heinla, Ahti 263–4, 268, 282, 284, 285 Hinohara, Shigeaki 211 housing 90 Aceh 12–13, 16, 19, 24, 26, 27, 28, 29–30, 26, 38, 39 Akita, Japan 223, 228, 229, 230, 232, 233, 236–7, 239, 248 Azraq and Zaatari camps 44, 45, 48, 54, 55, 59, 61, 63, 70, 71 Chile 296, 297, 300, 302, 204, 306, 207, 308, 326 Darien 118, 139 Glasgow 197–9, 202–6 Kinshasa 142 Louisiana 95, 102 human capital 38–9, 168, 305, 335, 346–7 human rights abuses 300–1 Hyakumoto, Natsue 235 ID cards, personal data 260–61 Ifo refugee camp, Kenya 45 incarceration rates, USA 76–7, 78 industrial agglomeration 182–6, 200, 206, 330–31, 333, 365 inequality 6, 18, 254, 331, 337 in Chile 6, 291–2, 292, 293, 297, 298, 304, 308, 311, 317, 318, 324–7 intergenerational (Japan) 221–3, 238, 248 informal economies 122–5, 214–15, 331, 333–4, 336 Aceh 21–2, 24, 30, 31, 34, 37 Akita 233, 248 Chile 297, 306–7, 310, 323 Darien 122, 128, 129 Estonia 258 and Glasgow 204, 206, 334 Italy 196, 336 Kinshasa 142, 146, 148, 163–6, 167–8, 170, 173–5, 334 in prisons 77, 78–9, 86–7, 91, 93, 96, 99, 100–1, 102 in Zaatari camp 43, 45, 47, 57, 61, 64, 71, 72, 86 Innophys 245 innovation in Chile 315 and currency 97, 99–100 and economies 43, 79, 80, 87, 100, 122, 162, 333, 334 in Estonia 252, 256–7, 258–87 in Glasgow 179, 180, 182, 185, 188, 192, 201 technological 97–8, 183, 187, 252, 256–7, 258–87 intergenerational inequality (Japan) 221–3, 238, 248 International African Association (IAA) 149 International Cooperation Administration (ICA) 294 International Monetary Fund 303 inventions 265–6 in Estonia 252–3, 260, 265, 275–6, 282–3 isolation, ‘Glasgow effect’ 205–6 Italy 195–6, 201, 202, 335–6, 366 ageing population 213, 220, 222, 243, 331 population decline 227, 230, 233, 249 ivory trade 149 Jackie Chan Village 35–7, 39 Jackson, Giorgio 317–20 Jadue, Daniel 322, 332 Japan ageing population 6, 213–25, 227–49, 331 common forest conservation 124, 125 education 220, 223, 229 shipyards innovation/ competition 187–8, 189 tsunamis 15 Japan Football Association (JFA) 212–13 Jendi, Mohammed 54–5, 56, 71 Jevons, William Stanley 75, 89–90, 99, 352 Kabila family 154, 161, 162, 173 Kajiwara, Kenji 238 Kakuma refugee camp, Kenya 45 Kalanick, Travis 57 Kasa-Vubu, Joseph 151 Katanga 143, 151 Katumba refugee camp, Tanzania 45 Kenya: refugee camps 45, 46 Keynes, John Maynard 5, 7 Kinshasa 6, 140, 141–75, corruption 143, 145–6, 148, 159–61, 168, 333, 361 informal economy 142, 146, 148, 163, 166, 167–8, 170, 173, 334 natural wealth 143 pillages 157–8 police 159–61 roads as informal markets 163–6 tax system 145–6, 147–8, 16 Kirkaldy, David 4, 5, 6, 330 Kuala Lumpur 293 Kuna tribe 126, 340 Laar, Mart 258 labour pools, industrial agglomeration 183, 184–5, 200 Ladrillo, El see Chicago Boys Lagos 293 Lampuuk 2–3, 6, 13, 14, 22–3, 26, 32, 33, 35, 37, 345 Lancashire 266, 267 Las Condes 288, 290, 293, 304, 306, 307, 308, 309, 321, 322, 325 Lasnamäe, Tallinn 272, 281 Le Corbusier: Cité radieuse 203 Leontief, Wassily: Machines and Man 251, 377 Leopold II, King of the Belgians 149–50 Lhokgna 10, 12–13, 14, 26, 27–8, 29, 31, 33, 34, 35, 38, 345 life-cycle hypothesis 218–19, 248 life expectancy Glasgow 179, 190, 191–3 Japan 215 Russia 273–4 Swaziland 179 Lima 293 Liverpool 89, 177, 192, 193, 205–6 Livingstone, David 148–9 Lloyd, William Forster 122–3 lonely deaths 225, 226, 236, 237, 248 Louisiana 74, 76, 81 Department of Public Safety and Corrections 83 Prison Enterprises 83–4, 85, 351 State Penitentiary see Angola Lüders, Rolf 293, 295, 304, 305, 325 Lumumba, Patrice 151 machine learning 268–70 Makarova, Marianna 272, 274 Malacca Strait 10, 17,. 18, 35, 39 Malahayati, Admiral Laksamana 34–5 Maluku steel mill, Kinshasa 155, 156–7 Manchester 192, 193, 205–6 market economies Chile 297, 302, 305, 317 prison 78, 79, 87, 89, 100, 101, 103 markets 71, 122, 332–3, 336 Aceh 20–22, 36–7, 38, 144, 331 Azraq camp 62–4, 71, 144 Chile 295, 296, 297, 298–9, 304, 309, 319, 320–23 Darien 122, 126–7, 128, 129, 131, 138 free 128, 131, 174, 296, 300–3, 316, 320, 326–7, 331–2, 356 Glasgow 181, 190 Japan 232, 233, 248, 249 Kinshasa 143, 145, 146–7, 162, 163–6, 167, 173, 174 Zaatari supermarkets 48–53, 64, 348 Marshall, Alfred 182–3, 184, 185, 186, 187, 189, 190, 194, 200, 206, 329, 330, 365 Maslow, Abraham 41, 65–7, 68, 71, 72, 286, 319, 326, 349 Meikle, Andrew 266 Melvin, Jean 197, 198, 199, 200, 201, 202, 205 ménage lending system 201, 334 Menger, Carl 90, 99, 352 Michelin brothers 150 military coup, Pinochet’s 298 Mill, John Stuart 11, 38, 335, 346–7 minimum wages 94, 267, 296, 307–8, 310 Mishamo refugee camp, Tanzania 45 Mississippi River 74, 76 Mobutu, Sese Seko (formerly Joseph-Désiré) 141, 151–2, 154–9, 161, 162, 166, 173, 297, 333, 360–61 Modigliani, Franco 218–19, 372 Mojo (synthetic cannabis) 92–4, 95–6, 97 monopolies, facilitated 319 Montgomery, Hugh 3–4 Moore, Gordon 269 Morgan, Henry 112–13 Narva, Estonia 250, 271, 272, 274, 283, 287, 378 National Health Service 201–2 nationalization 187, 296, 301–2, 383 natural disasters: and economic growth 24–5 New Caledonia 114, 356 New Orleans 74, 76, 79, 93, 101, 102, 103 Ninagawa, Yukio 234–5 norms, economics and 196, 200, 201, 323, 334, 336 obesity 81, 309, 326, 351 opportunism: and depletion of common resources 126–38 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) 291, 316, 326, 377 Ostrom, Elinor 123–5, 137 Pan-American Highway 106, 110, 111, 115–17, 118–19, 121, 139, 355 Panama 106, 108-9, 110, 111, 113, 117, 118, 121, 130, 131, 356–7 see also Darien Gap; FARC guerrillas Panian refugee camp, Pakistan 45 Paro robot 243–5 Paterson, William: A Proposal to Plant a Colony in Darien 107 pawn shops 200, 334, 367 Penguins’ Revolution 317 pepper: global boom 17, 345 Pepper robot 246–7 personal data 260–61 Petty, William 25–6, 38n, 346 Piñera, Sebastián 309 Pinochet, General Augustine 298, 300–1, 305, 322, 383 pirate economies see informal economies population 122, 125, 330, 347 Aceh 14, 16, 18 Chile/Santiago 291, 324 China 76 Congo/Kinshasa 143, 150 Dael 42 Darien Gap 126, 128 Estonia 255, 256, 265, 272 Glasgow 179, 197 Greece 238 Japan 226–7, 229 Portugal 238 refugee camps 44, 45, 49, 57, 348 Sweden 238 US prisons 76–7 see also ageing populations Portugal 213, 227, 230, 233, 238, 243, 249, 291, 331, 351, 360 poverty Chile 291, 293, 300, 301, 303–4, 305, 208, 311. 15. 326 Congo/Kinshasa 143, 144, 160, 169, 11, 173 Glasgow 192 Italy 195 Japan 220, 226, 233, 248 Louisiana 81, 351 prices 147–8, 302 Pride of York 207 Prisoner’s Dilemma 174 privatization 169, 173, 301–2, 315, 326, 361 Pugnido refugee camp, Ethiopia 45 Putnam, Robert 195–6, 201, 202, 335–6, 366 Rahmatullah mosque, Aceh 14 rainforest destruction 121, 128–31 Rand, Rait 260, 275–6, 283, 284 Red Road Estate, Glasgow 203 refugee camps 45, 46, 55, 173 see also Azraq; Zaatari Reid, Alexander 180 resilience 3, 5, 6, 13, 16, 22, 31, 34, 35–9, 78, 103, 109, 122, 123, 146, 170, 248, 293, 325, 333–7, 384 Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia see FARC Rideau, Wilbert 79–80, 82, 87–8, 100, 351 Rio Chucunaque 117, 119 robotics/ robots and care 243–4, 245–7, 248 delivery robots 262–4 for egalitarian economies 284–5 human overseers/ minders 280 ‘last-mile problem’ 264 machine learning 268–70 Sony AIBO robotic dogs 245 trams, driverless 264 Roosevelt, Franklin D. 294, 356 rosewood trees 120, 128, 138 rubber trade 149–50 Russian-Estonians 272–4, 281–4, 286–7 salarymen, retired 223–4, 228, 248 Samuel, Arthur 269 Santiago 7, 288, 289–327 see also Chile schools/ schooling markets 165, 311–15 Scotland Darien disaster 114–15, 133, 137–8 see also Glasgow self-governance 125–8 shipbuilding 178–9, 181, 184–6, 187–8, 189–91, 199–200 Sikkut, Siim 259, 277, 284 Skype 254, 263, slavery 82–6 smuggling 42, 46–8, 68 social capital 195–6, 199, 200, 202, 323, 325, 335–6, 366 social inequality 142–3, 324–5 Somalia 15 South Korea 213, 214, 220, 227, 233, 247, 319, 373 Spain 115, 137, 213, 222, 227, 243, 331 Spice (synthetic cannabis) 352 Spice Islands 17 Spiers, Alexander 181 Spinning Jenny 267, 269, 274, 378 Sri Lanka 15, 17, 49 Stanley, Henry Morton 148–9 Stanyforth, Disney 266 Starship Technologies 262–4, 269, 280 stateless people 255 store cards, prepaid 97–8 students 81, 168, 218, 221, 223, 236–7, 238, 248, 282, 283, 294–5, 304–5, 311–14, 315–18 suicide 194, 213, 224, 225–6, 236, 248, 366 Sumatra 17-18, see also Aceh supermarkets, Zaatari 48–53, 64, 348 Swing Riots 266, 378 synthetic cannabis see Mojo; Spice Takahashi, Kiyoshi 235, 236 Tallinn 7, 250, 251–87 Russian population 272–4, 281–4, 286–7 start-up paradise 254 Tallinn, Harry 278, 282–3 Tanzania: refugee camps 45 taxation 25, 346 Aceh 32 Chile 295, 302, 307, 315–17, 325 Darien 111, 130 Estonia 256–7, 259, 273, 278, 287 Glasgow 190 Japan 220, 231 Kinshasa 145–6, 147–8, 151, 152, 158, 161–2, 165, 167–8, 169, 173–4 in Zaatari refugee camp 48, 56 Tay Bridge collapse 5 teak trees 116, 130–31, 138, 333, 356, 357 technology and inequality 253–4 innovation 97–8, 183, 187, 256–7, 258–9 spill-overs 183, 189 and unemployment 253, 262, 270, 279, 286, 287, 377, 379 tectonic plates 13–14 tenement buildings, Glaswegian 196, 197–202, 205, 335 Thailand 15, 144, 213 tobacco 77, 85–6, 92, 95, 100, 143, 156, 181, 191, 202, 365 Tomaya, Yoichi 235 Törbel, Switzerland: forest conservation 124 towerblocks 203, 204, 205 trade in prison 97–100 in Zaatari camp 43–57, 67–70 see also markets traditions, economic resilience and 21, 22, 24, 34, 196, 336 trust 148, 150, 174, 196, 199, 201, 206, 248, 261, 295, 321, 323, 325, 335 Tshisekedi, Félix 154 tsunamis 2–3, 12–14, 15, 16, 18–19, 22–3, 25 Tull, Jethrow 266 Turkey 28, 58, 144, 213 Uber 57 Ukegawa, Sachiko 234 underground economies 77–9, 87–101 see also informal economies unemployment 64–5, 142–3, 190, 275 Chile 290, 297, 302, 307, 311 Congo 142, 359 Estonia 270, 273, 275, 279, 283, 379 Glasgow 179, 190, 191 and technology 253, 262, 270, 279, 286, 287, 377, 379 United Kingdom 4, 18, 26, 181, 187, 188, 199, 213, 223, 278, 335 agriculture 265, 267 housing 232 jails 86, 91, 96, 352 National Health Service 201, 203 population 226 and technology 253, 254, 257, 260, 262, 264 see also Glasgow; Scotland United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) 44, 46, 48, 54, 57, 72, 348 World Food Programme (WFP), and Zaatari 48, 49–50 universities Aceh 13, 33, 34 Akita, Japan 221, 223 Chile 294, 305, 313, 314, 315, 316–17, 318, 324, 326 Congo/Kinshasa 151, 160, 166, 168 Estonia 275, 282, 283 Upper Clyde Shipbuilders (UCS) 189 urbanization: and agglomeration forces 330–31 United States 26, 54, 76, 83, 93, 213, 223, 253, 262, 279, 292, 294, 297–8 prisons 76–7, 78, 81, 91–2, see also Angola population 226 and technology 260, 262, 264, 267, 269, 276 USAID 28, 29 Valdez, Samuel 121, 128–9, 130 Vallejo, Camila 317–18, 384 Van Gogh, Vincent 180 Vatter, Ott 277, 278 Viik, Linnar 257, 258–60, 261–2 Wafer, Lionel 113–14, 134, 355 Waisbluth, Mario 313 Walpole, Sir Spencer: A History of England 177 Walsh, David: History, Politics and Vulnerability … 177 Watanabe, Hiroshi 234 wealth 4–5, 159, 218–19, 324–5, 329, 334–6 nation’s 25, 38n, 346–7 natural 109, 132, 143 workforce 184–5, 264–8, 275, 297 World Bank 303, 305, 346 World Health Organization (WHO) 63, 215 World Trade Organization 303 Wounan tribe 126, 127 X-Road data system 261, 274–5, 279, 283, 377 Y Combinator 252 Yamamoto, Ryo 236–7 Yaviza, Panama 110, 111, 116–20, 127, 132, 135, 138, 144, 356 Yida refuge camp, South Sudan 45 Zaatari Syrian refugee camp 6, 40, 41–73, 86, 89, 100, 163, 173, 308, 331, 332, 334, 335, 348, 349 declining population 57 education 67, 71, 349 informal economy 43, 45, 47, 57, 61, 64, 71, 72, 86 smuggler children 42, 46–8, 68 supermarkets 48–53, 64, 348 trade development 43–57, 67–70, 71, 72 UNHCR cedes control 44–6 Zaire 152, 154, 155–6, 159, 361 Zorrones 324 TRANSWORLD PUBLISHERS 61–63 Uxbridge Road, London W5 5SA penguin.co.uk Transworld is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com.

Samsung Rising: The Inside Story of the South Korean Giant That Set Out to Beat Apple and Conquer Tech
by Geoffrey Cain
Published 15 Mar 2020

Her family used another: Peter Arnell, interview by the author (via Skype), July 4, 2017. More information on Taki’s career is in Tomio Taki and Adam Taki, Zennovation: An East-West Approach to Business Success, ed. Mortimer Feinberg (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2012). “[Tomio] had been at Donna Karan”: Peter Skarzynski, interview by the author, December 28, 2016. in a tennis outfit: Peter Skarzynski, interview by the author, December 28, 2016. “I did all the ad work”: Peter Arnell, interview by the author (via Skype), July 4, 2017. “New York’s worst bosses”: Emily Gould, “New York’s Worst Bosses: Peter Arnell,” Gawker, March 15, 2007, https://gawker.com/​244608/​new-yorks-worst-bosses-peter-arnell.

…

“Samsung had eight or nine operating systems running our devices,” he said. Software developers were struggling to design an in-house operating system called Bada (“ocean” in Korean). It was released in February 2010, just a month before T.J.’s arrival, and the company quickly realized it was a failure. Basic applications like Skype couldn’t be used because of restrictions on VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) software, and the GPS system was poor. Samsung’s executives realized they had a chicken-and-egg problem. Few people were willing to use a junky operating system without applications, and few developers are willing to make applications for their software without users.

…

“to match what Apple was doing”: T.J. Kang, interview by the author, January 29, 2016. “I very much wanted T.J.”: Ho Soo Lee, interview by the author, September 5, 2016. “Why don’t you come”: T.J. Kang, interview by the author, January 29, 2016. “Samsung had eight or nine”: Ibid. Basic applications like Skype: Joern Esdohr, “Petition: VoIP for Bada!” Joern Esdohr, September 13, 2010, http://www.joernesdohr.com/​bada/​petition-voip-for-bada/. the GPS system was poor: Gareth Beavis, “Samsung Wave Review,” TechRadar, August 8, 2010, https://www.techradar.com/​reviews/​phones/​mobile-phones/​samsung-wave-680092/​review/​9.

Peggy Seeger
by Jean R. Freedman

Botkin, “Folksong Revival,” 107. 18. Peggy Seeger, Skype interview with the author, July 29, 2015. 19. Ellen J. Stekert, “Cents and Nonsense in the Urban Folksong Movement: 1930–66,” in Transforming Tradition: Folk Music Revivals Examined, ed. Neil V. Rosenberg (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993), 99–100. 20. Peggy Seeger, “A Singer for My Time,” program of Smithsonian Folklife Festival 2000, 95. 21. Peggy Seeger, “Singer for My Time,” 95. 22. Boyes, Imagined Village, 3. 23. Peggy Seeger, “Singer for My Time,” 95. 24. Peggy Seeger, Skype interview, July 29, 2015. 25. Peggy Seeger, Skype interview, July 29, 2015. 26.

…

Liner notes, Heading for Home, Appleseed Recordings APR CD 1076, 2003. 31. Calum MacColl, interview, August 24, 2009. This story has clearly become a family legend. When I interviewed Kitty, she asked, “He's [Calum] told you the balls story?” (August 24, 2009) 32. Peggy Seeger, email message, July 27, 2014, emphasis in original. 33. Kerry Harvey-Piper, Skype interview with the author, August 4, 2014. 34. Peggy Seeger, personal interview, May 20, 2011. 35. Heading for Home. 36. “About Peggy,” http://www.peggyseeger.com/about/whats-new/2003, accessed August 11, 2016. 37. Crazy Quilt, Timely Productions, 2008. Massey has written about his experience in Kill!

…

Judith Tick, Ruth Crawford Seeger: A Composer's Search for American Music (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 11. 33. Ray Allen and Ellie M. Hisama, eds., Ruth Crawford Seeger's Worlds: Innovation and Tradition in Twentieth-Century American Music (Rochester, N.Y.: University of Rochester Press, 2007). 34. Judith Tick, telephone interview with the author, July 14, 2014. 35. Peggy Seeger, Skype interview with the author, July 20, 2014. 36. Rhythms of the World, unedited material from program on Ewan MacColl, videotape, roll number: SL 115-222, Ewan MacColl/Peggy Seeger Archive, Ruskin College, Oxford, England. 37. Ken Hunt, Q magazine, http://www.peggyseeger.com/listen-buy/an-odd-collection/an-odd-collection-reviews, accessed August 11, 2016. 38.

Tomorrow's Lawyers: An Introduction to Your Future
by Richard Susskind
Published 10 Jan 2013

Crucially, also, the report did establish that a video link between a police station and a court can be used successfully to conduct a first hearing in the majority of criminal cases—and, in the pilot, it reduced the average time from charge to first hearing, it cut down the failure-to-appear rates, and it saved the costs of transporting prisoners from prisons to courts. The growing use across society of video-calling and video-conferencing—from Skype to ‘telepresence’ (which is like Skype on steroids)—suggests there is enormous scope for virtual courts, if not for trials then for earlier hearings, when judges could sit in their chambers and all participants could attend remotely. For tomorrow’s lawyers, appearance in physical courtrooms may become a rarity. Instead, virtual appearances will become the norm, and new presentational and advocacy skills will be required.

That Used to Be Us
by Thomas L. Friedman and Michael Mandelbaum
Published 1 Sep 2011

We know where this eventually goes—to universal connectivity to the Internet via cell phone, smartphone, or traditional computer, probably within a decade. “I call my mother in Karachi every day. I use Skype and she uses her regular phone. It costs so little, it’s almost free,” Raziuddin Syed, a senior IT engineer based in Tampa, Florida, told the Pakistani newspaper Dawn (February 20, 2011). Syed “works for an international accounting firm, thanks to internet-connected laptop computer and the Voice over Internet Protocol technology. ‘Five years ago the cost of phone calls, especially those using VOIP, was much higher than it is today. Calls between members of services like Skype are always free but calls to other phones, landlines or mobiles, carry a very small per minute charge,’ Syed says.”

…

When Tom wrote The World Is Flat, Facebook wasn’t even in it. It had just started up and was still a minor phenomenon. Indeed, in 2005 Facebook didn’t exist for most people, “Twitter” was still a sound, the “cloud” was something in the sky, “3G” was a parking space, “applications” were what you sent to colleges, and “Skype” was a typo. That is how much has changed in just the last six years. In fact, so many new technologies and services have been introduced that we would argue that sometime around the year 2010 we entered Flat World 2.0—a difference of degree that deserves its own designation. That is because Flat World 2.0 is everything Flat World 1.0 was, but with so many more people able to connect to the Flat World platform, so many more people able to communicate with others who are also connected, and so many more people now empowered to find other people of like mind to collaborate with—whether to support a politician, follow a rock group, invent a product, or launch a revolution—based on shared values, interests, and ideals.

…

Shi, Katheryn Cheng Shiite Muslims Shriver, Sargent Shriver, Timothy Shultz, George Sigma Xi, the Scientific Research Society Silicon Valley Simpson, Alan Simpsonville (South Carolina) Singapore; education in Singh, Kartikeya Sinha, Abhinav Sinha, Abhishek Sirsi (India) situational values 60 Minutes (television series) Skype Smithsonian magazine Socialist Party Social Network, The (movie) social networks; see also Facebook; Twitter social safety net Social Security; cuts in; federal deficits and costs of; partisan politics and; Reagan’s reform of So Damn Much Money (Kaiser) Soffer, Edy Soil Science Society of America solar energy; Chinese investment in; declining cost of; for electric cars; for low-income housing Somalia Sorbonne Sosa, Sammy South Africa South Carolina South Korea Southwest Airlines Soviet Union; invasion of Afghanistan by; launch of Sputnik 1 by Spain Special Olympics Spelman College Splinter, Mike Spruance (Virginia) Sputnik Sridhar, K.

Smart Cities: Big Data, Civic Hackers, and the Quest for a New Utopia
by Anthony M. Townsend
Published 29 Sep 2013

Not far from where those early cable networks first appeared decades earlier, the AMC set up shop in Reading, Pennsylvania. There, with a grant from the National Science Foundation, in 1975 they built a primitive, yet functional, two-way interactive cable television network.6 Using a split-screen display and telephone lines to transmit voices, the rudimentary Skype-like multiparty video chat room linked three senior citizens’ centers. Burns and her team intended to experiment with new ways to deliver social services such as counseling, health care, and education online over television cable links—some forty years before Cisco would craft its own vision of a smart city around interactive video in Songdo in South Korea.

…

What they mean is that it’s not a priority, not worth the hassle of making it work with their existing systems. Haselmeyer sighs. “Do you think it will fit into the lives of 380,000 people in your city? To get up in the morning and go to work?” I can tell from his tone he didn’t close the deal. As I speak with him by Skype from his office in Barcelona, Haselmayer paints a convincing picture of situated software gone wrong. “Look at Germany. You have twenty-four cities which each have their own mobile app for parking. Every city backs its own local service provider thinking that they’re helping the next Google to emerge.

…

The award was designed to “give these companies visibility, help them to get an opening internationally.” When we spoke in late 2011, there were signs that the model was working—he reported that pilots based on winning projects in 2011 were up and running in Chicago, Taipei, and Lagos. A few months after our conversation over Skype, I met up with Haselmayer in Barcelona. As we wove our way across the old city, ducking in and out of medieval plazas, Haselmayer beamed as he explained the latest thrust in his campaign to promote smart-city start-ups, a new website called CityMart. He recited his pitch: “It’s a platform that provides cities with market intelligence about what kind of solutions are being developed, and where they are working.”

Go, Flight!: The Unsung Heroes of Mission Control, 1965-1992
by Rick Houston and J. Milt Heflin
Published 27 Sep 2015

Telephone interview with Rick Houston, 12 July 2013. Reed, H. David. Email correspondence with Rick Houston, 9 May 2013. —. Email correspondence with Rick Houston, 9 September 2013. —. Email correspondence with Rick Houston, 24 October 2013. —. Email correspondence with Rick Houston, 3 March 2014. —. Skype interview with Rick Houston, 3 June 2013. —. Skype interview with Rick Houston, 4 June 2013. Renick, J. Gary. Telephone interview with Rick Houston, 2 August 2013. Ross, Jerry L. Telephone interview with Rick Houston, 5 May 2014. Scott, Craig. Email correspondence with Rick Houston, 29 December 2013. Scott, Gary B. Telephone interview with Rick Houston, 10 December 2013.

…

JSC Oral History interview with Roy Neal, Houston, 19 March 1998. —. JSC Oral History interview with Rebecca Wright, Houston, 8 January 1999. —. Telephone interview with Rick Houston, 10 July 2013. —. Telephone interview with Rick Houston, 31 July 2013. Lewis, Charles R. Telephone interview with Rick Houston, 2 August 2013. Liebergot, Seymour A. Skype interview with Rick Houston, 2 April 2013. Loden, Harold A. Email correspondence with Rick Houston, 23 July 2013. —. Email correspondence with Rick Houston, 22 August 2013. —. Telephone interview with Rick Houston, 12 July 2013. Loe, T. Rodney. Telephone interview with Rick Houston, 5 July 2013.

…

Telephone interview with Rick Houston, 23 April 2013. —. Telephone interview with Rick Houston, 1 May 2013. Mattingly, Thomas Kenneth, II. Telephone interview with Rick Houston, 12 June 2013. McCandless, Bruce, II. Email correspondence with Milt Heflin, 19 August 2013. —. Email correspondence with Rick Houston, 28 August 2013. —. Skype interview with Rick Houston, 22 August 2013. Merritt, W. Merlin. Email correspondence with Rick Houston, 14 October 2013. —. Telephone interview with Rick Houston, 20 August 2013. Mill, Jerry W. Telephone interview with Rick Houston, 21 August 2013. Miller, Harold G. Email correspondence with Rick Houston, 17 June 2013

Completely Mad: Tom McClean, John Fairfax, and the Epic of the Race to Row Solo Across the Atlantic
by James R. Hansen
Published 4 Jul 2023

I looked up, and came to know very well, its mournful yet wistful lyrics of challenge, loneliness, escape, defiance, perfect solitude, and finality that so brilliantly told the story of Don Allum’s final brave Atlantic row. I watched an interview, posted on YouTube, in which Marillion leader Steve Hogarth explained why he wrote the song and how and why he thought the song touched the hearts of so many of the group’s fans. I managed to Skype with Hogarth to ask him questions about the song and get contact information for the Allum family (Don had died in 1992, at age 55.) Through social media, I met and chatted with other devotees of the song. For many of them, as with me, their love of Marillion began with “Ocean Cloud.” For us, the song is very special in that it brings goosebumps, tears, and, finally, a tender smile.

…

Instead, I would direct my readers to pick up those four books, if interested, and read the full firsthand accounts penned by the two men themselves. I doubted that anyone would benefit greatly from a standard set of source notes similar to those one would find in any of my other books. As for my Skype interviews with Tom McClean, with Tom’s permission my plan has been to offer them for publication on the website of the Ocean Rowing Society. The only source materials that might be in question are the emails I received from Sylvia Cook in response to the questions I asked her about John Fairfax.

…

NEWSPAPERS AND PERIODICALS John Fairfax, “How I Rowed the Atlantic and Found Florida,” Esquire, April 1, 1970, accessed at https://classic.esquire.com/article/1970/4/1/how-i-rowed-across-the-atlantic-and-found-florida. INTERVIEWS CONDUCTED BY AUTHOR Cook, Sylvia, Sussex, England (by telephone) July 14, 2020 August 4, 2020 McClean, Tom, Morar, Scotland (via Skype) June 18, 2020 June 24, 2020 July 2, 2020 July 16, 2020 August 14, 20202 September 4, 2020 November 18, 2020 December 17, 2020 January 21, 2021 March 18, 2021 April 1, 2021 July 8, 2021 August 20, 2021 June 30, 2022 August 4, 2022 September 16, 2022 December 14, 2022 E-MAIL CORRESPONDENCE WITH AUTHOR Cook, Sylvia, Sussex This correspondence between the author and Ms.

The Irrational Bundle
by Dan Ariely
Published 3 Apr 2013

Would this kid have taken cash from my wallet, even if he knew for sure that no one would ever catch him? Maybe, but I imagine that the answer is no. Instead, I suspect that there were some aspects of Skype and of how my account was set up that “helped” this person engage in this activity and not feel morally reprehensible: First, he stole calling time, not money. Next, he did not gain anything tangible from the transaction. Third, he stole from Skype rather than directly from me. Fourth, he might have imagined that at the end of the day Skype, not I, would cover the cost. Fifth, the cost of the calls was charged automatically to me via PayPal. So here we had another step in the process—and another level of fuzziness in terms of who would eventually pay for the calls.

…

None of this makes logical sense, but when the medium of exchange is nonmonetary, our ability to rationalize increases by leaps and bounds. I HAD MY own experience with dishonesty a few years ago. Someone broke into my Skype account (very cool online telephone software) and charged my PayPal account (an online payment system) a few hundred dollars for the service. I don’t think the person who did this was a hardened criminal. From a criminal’s perspective, breaking into my account would most likely be a waste of time and talent because if this person was sufficiently smart to hack into Skype, he could probably have hacked into Amazon, Dell, or maybe even a credit card account, and gotten much more value for his time.

…

Was this person stealing from me? Sure, but there were so many things that made the theft fuzzy that I really don’t think he thought of himself as a dishonest guy. No cash was taken, right? And was anyone really hurt? This kind of thinking is worrisome. If my problem with Skype was indeed due to the nonmonetary nature of the transactions on Skype, this would mean that there is much more at risk here, including a wide range of online services, and perhaps even credit and debit cards. All these electronic transactions, with no physical exchange of money from hand to hand, might make it easier for people to be dishonest—without ever questioning or fully acknowledging the immorality of their actions.

Grave New World: The End of Globalization, the Return of History
by Stephen D. King
Published 22 May 2017

… the tendency of the time is to throw all power into the hands of the greater empires … But, if Greater Britain remains united, no empire in the world can ever surpass it in area, in population, in wealth, or in the diversity of its resources … Extracts from a speech by Joseph Chamberlain, Secretary of State for the Colonies, at the annual dinner of the Royal Colonial Institute, 31 March 1897 INTRODUCTION The Andalucían Shock ONE-WAY TRAFFIC Globalization is often regarded as ‘one-way traffic’. In the modern age, we think of extraordinary advances in technology that allow us to connect in so many remarkable – and increasingly inexpensive – ways. We can communicate verbally and pictorially through WhatsApp, Twitter and Facebook. We can talk to each other via FaceTime and Skype. We can search for recipes and the structure of the human brain through Google. We can purchase chicken madras and salmon nigiri over the internet and have them brought to our homes via local delivery services. We can stream music for free thanks to Spotify and watch our favourite artists and cat videos on YouTube or Vevo.

…

It’s time to look at technology in a new – more sceptical – light. 9 THE DARK SIDE OF TECHNOLOGY THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING WORLD Technology supposedly shrinks the world. The falling cost of telecommunications has linked citizens, countries and continents together in ways that previously would have been unimaginable. Search engines have provided us with information at the press of a button or the swipe of a screen. With the advent of web-based systems such as Skype and FaceTime, we can talk to each other (and, if we really have to, look at each other) wherever we happen to be in the world. And we are not being directly billed for the privilege. These extraordinary connections suggest that technology and globalization are fellow travellers. And they appear increasingly to be travelling at the economic equivalent of the speed of light.

…

(i), (ii)n1 Roosevelt, Theodore (i), (ii) Rothwell, Jonathan (i) Rousseff, Dilma (i) Royal Navy (i), (ii) Rumsfeld, Donald (i) Russia (i) see also Soviet Union 19th century (i), (ii) 20th century (i) Cold War in Africa (i) debt default (i) EU and (i) Eurasian Economic Union (i) George Bernard Shaw on (i) Germany and (i) military spending (i) Ottomans and (i) Persia defeated (i) Peter the Great (i) Putin becomes president (i) railways (i) Syria and (i), (ii) Ukraine and (i) Russo-Japanese War 1904–05 (i), (ii) S&P 500 index (i) Saddam Hussein (i), (ii), (iii) Safavid dynasty (i) Sahara (i) Salmond, Alex (i) Sanders, Bernie (i), (ii), (iii), (iv) Sarajevo (i) Sardinia (i) Saudi Arabia Iran and (i), (ii), (iii) military spending (i) petrodollars (i) Sunnis (i) savings and loans crisis (i) Saxony (i) Scarborough Shoal (i) Schatzalp (i) Schengen Agreement (i), (ii), (iii) Schuman Declaration (i) Schwab, Klaus (i) Scotland (i), (ii) Scottish National Party (i), (ii) Second World War Coca-Cola in (i) economic progress following (i) Germany implodes (i) living standards and (i), (ii) US and (i), (ii), (iii) US and Soviet Union after (i) US, Britain and (i) World Bank and (i) Security Council (UN) (i), (ii), (iii), (iv) see also UN self-determination (i), (ii) Seljuk Turks (i) Senate (US) (i) Senkaku Islands (i) Serbia (i) Sevastopol (i) Seville Cathedral (i), (ii) Shanghai (i), (ii), (iii), (iv) Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) (i), (ii), (iii) SHAPE (Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe) (i) Sharia law (i) Shaw, George Bernard (i), (ii), (iii) Shi’as (i), (ii) Shimoda, Treaty of (i) Sikhs (i), (ii) Silk Road (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v) Singapore Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (i) British in (i) IMF and World Bank (i) Lee Kuan Yew (i) mathematical abilities (i) TPP (i) Western living standards (i) Skype (i) slavery (i), (ii) Slavs (i) Slovakia (i) Slovenia (i) Smith, Adam (i), (ii), (iii) Smoot–Hawley tariff (i), (ii) Snowden, Edward (i) social media (i), (ii) social mobility (i) social welfare (i) socialism (i), (ii), (iii) Somalia (i), (ii) South China Sea (i) South Korea (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v) South Sudan (i), (ii) Southern Kurils (i) Soviet Union see also Russia American suspicions of (i) collapse of (i), (ii), (iii), (iv) Eastern Europe freed from (i), (ii), (iii) invades Afghanistan (i), (ii) Korean War and (i) League of Nations and (i) living standards (i) perceived threat to US (i) post-Second World War balance of power (i) Steffens impressed by (i) Spain Andalucía (i) Battle of Trafalgar (i) EU deficits (i) joins EU (i) living standards increase (i) Spaniards head north for work (i) Spanish speakers in US (i) US military presence (i) Spanish Succession, War of the (i) Speakers’ Corner (i) Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) (i) Spice Islands (i) ‘Spirit of Davos’ (i) Spirit of the Laws, The (Montesquieu) (i) Spratly Islands (i) St Petersburg (i) Stability and Growth Pact (i) Stalin, Joseph (i) Stanley, H.M.

@War: The Rise of the Military-Internet Complex
by Shane Harris
Published 14 Sep 2014

Under a secret program called the SIGINT Enabling Project, it strikes deals with technology companies to insert backdoors into their commercial products. Congress allocated $250 million for the project in 2013. Working in conjunction with the FBI, the NSA got inside knowledge about a feature in Microsoft’s e-mail product, Outlook, that could have created obstacles to surveillance if left unaddressed. The agency also got access to Skype Internet phone calls and chats as well as Microsoft’s cloud storage service, SkyDrive, so that NSA analysts could read people’s messages before they were encrypted. Classified documents also show that the NSA invites makers of encryption products to let the agency’s experts review their work, with the ostensible goal of making their algorithms stronger.

…

See signals intelligence SIGINT Enabling Project, [>], [>] Signals Intelligence Directorate, [>], [>], [>], [>] signals intelligence (SIGINT), [>], [>], [>], [>], [>] signature (hacker methods). See threat signature signature (written name), [>] Silk Road, [>] sinkholing, [>] SkyDrive, [>] Skype, [>] Snort, [>] Snowden, Edward: background, [>]–[>]; information released by, [>]–[>], [>]–[>], [>], [>], [>], [>], [>], [>]–[>], [>] n. [>] software: antivirus, [>]; cybersecurity, [>]; cyber targeting, [>]; data filtering, [>]; data mining, [>], [>], [>], [>], [>]–[>]; distributed computing, [>], [>]; to fend off automated probes, [>]; geo-location, [>]; malicious (see malware; spyware); network forensics, [>], [>]–[>], [>]; patches and updates for, [>]–[>], [>]–[>], [>], [>], [>], [>], [>]; and secret/illegal access (see backdoors) software manufacturers, [>], [>], [>].

…

See Tailored Access Operations Target, [>], [>], [>] TASC, [>]–[>] Team Themis, [>]–[>] telecommunications companies, [>]–[>], [>], [>], [>]–[>], [>], [>], [>]–[>], [>]. See also specific companies telecommunications networks: DOD, [>]; fiber-optic trunk lines, [>], [>], [>]; Google, [>]; kill switch provision, [>]; right to spy in exchange for US license, [>]; Skype, [>]; undersea cables, [>], [>] Telvent, [>]–[>], [>] terrorism. See counterterrorism; 9/11 attacks threat signature, [>], [>], [>], [>], [>], [>]–[>], [>] thumb drives, [>], [>], [>], [>], [>]–[>], [>], [>] Tier [>], [>] tippers, within communications data, [>] Tiversa, [>]–[>] Tor, [>]–[>], [>], [>], [>] Tranche 2 plan, [>]–[>], [>] Transportation Security Administration, [>] transportation system.

The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies
by Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee
Published 20 Jan 2014

By now, the number of pages of digital text and images on the Web is estimated to exceed one trillion.2 As discussed in chapter 4, bits are created at virtually zero cost and transmitted almost instantaneously worldwide. What’s more, a copy of a digital good is exactly identical to the original. This leads to some very different economics and some special measurement problems. When a business traveler calls home to talk to her children via Skype, that may add zero to GDP, but it’s hardly worthless. Even the wealthiest robber baron would have been unable to buy this service. How do we measure the benefits of free goods or services that were unavailable at any price in previous eras? What GDP Leaves Out Despite all the attention it gets from economists, pundits, journalist, and politicians, GDP, even if it were perfectly measured, does not quantify our welfare.

…

But this decrease in costs lowers GDP even as our personal well-being increases, leaving GDP to travel in the opposite direction of our true well-being. A simple switch to using a free texting service like Apple’s iChat instead of SMS, free classifieds like Craigslist instead of newspaper ads, or free calls like Skype instead of a traditional telephone service can make billions of dollars disappear from companies’ revenues and the GDP statistics.5 As these examples show, our economic welfare is only loosely related to GDP. Unfortunately many economists, journalists, and much of the general public still use “GDP growth” as a synonym for “economic growth.”

…

Schreyer, Peter Schumpeter, Joseph science: effect of digitization on government support of prizes in rapid progress in science fiction robots in SCIgen Sears Second Industrial Revolution second machine age: career opportunities in characteristics of complementary innovations in economic data relevant to intangible assets of interventions for key advances of long-term recommendations for mental power boosted by metrics of second machine age (continued) policy recommendations for Power Law distributions in reality of values of see also digitization SecondMachineAge.com self-organizing learning environments (SOLEs) semiconductors Sen, Amartya senses, human sensorimotor skills sensors, digital Shabtai, Ehud Shakespeare, William Shannon, Claude Shapiro, Carl Shinar, Amir Siciliano, Francis SIGGRAPH conference Silicon Valley Simon, Herbert Simon, Julian Sims, Peter Singapore: education system in Electronic Road Pricing System in singularity Singularity Is Near, The (Kurzweil) Siri Siu, Henry Sixteenth Amendment Skype smartphone applications smartphones Smith, Adam Smith, Michael social media Social Progress Index Social Security Socrates software open source solar flares Solow, Robert Sony PlayStation 3 South Korea, education system in Soviet Union speech recognition Spence, Michael Spiegel, Eric Spotify Sprague, Shawn spread bounty vs.

The Great Convergence: Information Technology and the New Globalization
by Richard Baldwin
Published 14 Nov 2016

Psychological research shows that “microexpressions”—split-second facial changes lasting only a twenty-fifth of a second—can indicate whether a person is concealing an emotion, consciously or unconsciously. These reactions cannot be perceived over regular video calls or Skype and, indeed, these sorts of nonverbal messages are one of the reasons face-to-face meetings generally lead to better understanding and trust than calls or Skype. Such systems are already deployed in high-end services sectors. They have reduced the need for face-to-face meetings in businesses such as consulting firms and financial services companies. However, they are still expensive and still limited to fixed facilities.

…

Face-to-Face Costs, the Virtual Presence Revolution and Telerobotics The third separation cost—the cost of face-to-face interaction—is also likely to persist on its downward path. More specifically, really good ICT is creating reasonable substitutes for in-person meetings. This “virtual presence revolution” is based on high-quality video and audio systems on both ends of what can be thought of as “the telephone wire.” It is—in essence—really, really good Skype. An example is Cisco Systems’ TelePresence. This combines full-size images of participants, using three plasma screens, sound channels, high-precision microphones, custom lighting, and high-definition cameras. Audio is arranged such that the voices of the participants on the “left” (who could be in Mumbai) sound like they are coming from the left.

Squeezed: Why Our Families Can't Afford America
by Alissa Quart
Published 25 Jun 2018

Or, as Karen Kelsky, a former anthropology professor who founded a counseling service called The Professor Is In, has put it: “find a ‘real job.’” (I paused at this, wondering how being a professor was not “real” in Kelsky’s mind.) Kelsky’s clients pay her $150 per hour to edit their documents or résumés. Two email consultations are $15. An hour-long Skype session for interview prep is $250. This is all part of the guidance she offers clients in reinventing themselves, she said, and, for some, in expressing “rage, despair, and disappointment” about their disappearing profession. “Adjuncts can accrue massive debt to support their children,” she noted, and in the process “destroy their health, teach at five campuses, in a professional death spiral.

…

The first time she left them had been nine years earlier, when she came to the United States on a student visa; she spent the initial few months crying and sleeping fitfully. Esther made enough money as a baby nurse and sleep trainer—$20 to $25 an hour—to send her kids to a boarding school in Kenya. “Now my daughter is a teenager. We are Skyping, and she says, ‘I want to ask you a question, Mama,’ and I want to hug her, but I cannot.” The separation is painful for mother and daughter. “But it is important that I am doing this,” said Esther, slapping the table. Her wages were supporting eight family members, including her two children. She sent home checks in varying amounts, sometimes for as much as $1,000.

…

She gestured at a long leafy ivy plant in a china pot that stood in one of the only two small windows of her apartment. “This plant has been my company since I moved here—that plant is my best friend,” she laughed. Then there was the fact that she hadn’t seen Guido for two years—buying the new clothes he’d need would be difficult. “He’s taller than me,” Blanca said. Guido didn’t Skype with her, since he didn’t have Internet access, so she had trouble picturing him sometimes. She had bought him boxers, socks, and pajamas with hearts on them, but she didn’t know his size, and “he’s very boy, so I am not sure he will like these hearts.” At some point, she called Guido as he prepared for his journey and talked to him in Spanish about the clothes he was packing.

A Crack in Creation: Gene Editing and the Unthinkable Power to Control Evolution
by Jennifer A. Doudna and Samuel H. Sternberg
Published 15 Mar 2017

At least, it seemed to be essential in bacteria within the Streptococcus genus, but it stood to reason that any critical component of one group of Type II systems would be just as vital in all the others. Exactly what role Cas9 was playing, however, remained to be determined. Together with Martin, I had a Skype meeting with Emmanuelle to begin strategizing about our Cas9 experiments. Setting up the call had been a challenge, underscoring the logistical difficulties of our collaboration. Emmanuelle was at Umeå University in northern Sweden, ten hours ahead of Pacific standard time, and the PhD student leading the CRISPR project from her lab—Krzysztof Chylinski—was working out of the University of Vienna, where Emmanuelle’s lab had previously been located.

…

To explore this latter possibility, Martin and Krzysztof began testing different ways of setting up the DNA-cutting experiment. In one of the many serendipitous twists to the story, they soon discovered they had grown up just across the border from each other—Krzysztof in Poland and Martin in what was then Czechoslovakia—and both spoke Polish, which greatly helped the increasingly frequent Skype sessions they held to brainstorm about their experiments. Eventually, Krzysztof and Martin performed experiments in which they included not only the CRISPR RNA but also the second type of RNA, called tracrRNA, that Emmanuelle’s lab had found to be required for production of CRISPR RNAs in S. pyogenes.

…

In June 2012, Emmanuelle and Krzysztof came to Berkeley for a conference, giving Martin and me a chance to finally see them in person again. Incredibly, given the scientific distance all of us had traveled together, our communication up until that point had been almost exclusively virtual. After innumerable phone calls, Skype discussions, and e-mail exchanges, we were all sitting in my Berkeley office, marveling at the results of our brief but intense collaboration. Emmanuelle and Krzysztof were in town for the fifth annual CRISPR conference, a meeting that brought together members of the twenty or thirty laboratories that were studying the bacterial defense system in 2012.

Confessions of a Bookseller
by Shaun Bythell
Published 8 Aug 2019

I had anticipated that it would last me until Sunday, but on the strength of experience I probably ought to have guessed that she’d devour the entire thing. When I mentioned it to her, she replied, ‘Fuck off, fucking bastard.’ The cursing side of her English vocabulary has considerably expanded since she arrived. Bed at 4.30 a.m. after a late Skype with Anna, who seems resigned to settling back in America, although she clearly feels that Scotland is her spiritual home. Till Total £257.88 26 Customers FRIDAY, 11 SEPTEMBER Online orders: 1 Orders found: 1 Nicky shuffled in just after 9 a.m. She started the day with a hectoring lecture about evolution and what a ridiculous concept it is.

…

Emailed John, the builder, about the chimney. We need to repair it before the weather really turns wintery and causes further damage. No reply, so I phoned Wacek, the Polish builder. Message from Granny on Facebook: ‘Shaun, you shitty bastard, why you not write to the Granny? I miss Scotland, with the rain and the sheep.’ Replied that I’ll Skype her next week. Isabel came in at two o’clock to do the accounts. She was raving about the ‘Night Before Christmas’ videos. Telephone call at 2.30 from a man near Dumfries with 2,000 books to sell. I have arranged to visit him on Friday as he has Oxfam coming to collect them next Tuesday if I don’t get there first.

…

At about 4 p.m., as darkness was falling, a customer asked, ‘Where did you get your lights from? They’re really good.’ Me: Which lights do you mean? Customer: The emotionally sensitive ones out the back. They come on really quickly. I’m not sure if incredulity can be considered an emotion, but if it can, those lights should be blazing right now. Skyped Granny. She talked for over an hour, barely letting me get a word in edgeways, and complaining that I never message her. She’s clearly missing Scotland and threatening to come back. Till Total £15 2 Customers FRIDAY, 4 DECEMBER Online orders: 3 Orders found: 3 Norrie in. As we were sorting through the endless boxes of books, I found a book called The English Tourist in Italy, which contains the following extremely useful phrases: Your niece has very beautiful arms, how old is she?

The Future Is Analog: How to Create a More Human World
by David Sax
Published 15 Jan 2022

I remember using Windows for the first time and the first alien pop, hiss, and static crackle of my teenage babysitter’s modem connecting over our phone line, as he fed half a dozen floppy disks into the beige Compaq to download Operation Wolf. I was there at the dawn of it all: Email. AOL. ICQ. Ethernet. Skype. Cell phones. Napster. iPods. Blackberries. iPhones. iPads. The first MacBook I bought after I sold my first article. The first photo I took on a digital camera. The day I created a social media account. The moment I connected to the internet wirelessly, like magic. The first pixilated breast I saw on a computer screen (Leisure Suit Larry behind Josh Dale’s bedroom door)… I remember it all.

…

This is why all those digital conversations fell short. We could talk. We could joke. We could make faces and share stories. But it wasn’t the same. Of course not. Anyone who lived away from their family could tell you that. When I lived in South America for nearly three years, I talked to my parents almost every day on Skype but only visited home once a year for a month. The two experiences were incomparable. Not just because of the physical surroundings—their smell and sound, the hugs and subtle body language—but because when I was actually with them, our conversation never ended. It just wrapped itself around whatever we were doing.

…

I’ve seen kind people turn into vicious trolls, given the right prompts and subjects, and been ashamed of myself when I’ve responded to a message or post with the type of off-the-hip snideness I would never, ever dare to use when speaking to the same person face-to-face. “Screens are amazing at conveying bad emotion,” Alter told me when we spoke by Skype. “The acuteness of anger I feel watching a screen is the same as if you cut me off in my car. But you’ll never feel the joy and ecstasy that you will feel in real life on a screen.” Social media takes conversation and weaponizes it. It removes the human, makes other people more abstract, and then rewards us for behaving in ways we know we shouldn’t.

Revolution in the Age of Social Media: The Egyptian Popular Insurrection and the Internet
by Linda Herrera
Published 14 Apr 2014

The first was Egypt’s 6th of April Youth Movement, and the second was Colombia’s No More FARC (acronym for the “Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia”), also known as One Million Voices Against FARC. Oscar Morales, an unemployed web developer, ingeniously adapted the tools and architecture of Facebook, Skype, and instant messaging to build a spectacularly successful transnational campaign against FARC, the military wing of the Colombian Communist Party, designated a terrorist group by the US. This citizen-initiated campaign culminated in massive demonstrations on February 4, 2008, when some fourteen million people took to the streets of cities in Colombia and around the world.

…

See Tamarud Reporters Without Borders, 103–4 Revolution 2.0, 1, 42, 64, 79, 121, 149 See also Ghonim, Wael Ross, Alec, 42–3 Sabahi, Hamdeen, 124 Said, Khaled, 46, 47–101, 107, 108, 110–11, 150–5 January 25th event and, 5, 19 See also “We Are All Khaled Said” saint, 151–5 Saint Avatatas, 11 Sakhr, 7 Sakr, Rehab, 121 Salafi Front, 91–2 satellite dishes, 7, 8–10, 12 Satellite Thief (Harami al-Dish), 9 Saweris, Nagib, 10 Schmidt, Eric, 44 See also Google Serbia, 18, 33–4 Shafik, Ahmed, 120, 122 Sharp, Gene, 35, 88 Sidi Bouzid, 99, 101 silent stand, 65–68, 87–89, 97 el-Sisi, Abdel Fattah, 136–41, 155–6 6th of April Youth Movement, 22–3, 34, 59, 86–7, 107 AYM and, 35, 38, 46 members of, 37, 75, 107, 110, 119 Skype, 35 soft power, 25–7, 156 Spacenet Internet cafe, 47, 49 State Department, 2, 23–4, 28–44, 106, 146–8 Stepka, Matthew, 1 Stone, Biz, 22 See also Twitter Suez, 114 canal, 14 Supreme Constitutional Court, 136 Supreme Council of Armed Forces (SCAF), 3, 74, 120 taboos, 12–14, 158 Al Taghrir.

Mastering Prezi for Business Presentations
by Russell Anderson-Williams
Published 24 Jul 2012

However, if you do not take into account the simple points raised in this chapter your design is likely to fail. It probably won't engage your audience as you'd hope it would and this could mean you've wasted an awful lot of time designing it in the first place. Be realistic when you plan your online Prezi. People are extremely busy these days and normally have e-mail, web pages, Skype, and other distractions coming through their computer screens at them all day long. If you want your Prezi's message to hit home and engage, then make it clear from the start what the user has to do, design your Prezi to look and sound great, and above all keep it short and to the point. The next chapter looks at importing slides into your Prezi canvas.

…

If your Prezi doesn't have paths, you can zoom around freely and your guests will also move along with you. Audio We obviously recommend you use some kind of audio system to speak with your guests as well. Prezi doesn't have any built-in function for using audio, so a company conference line or Skype will be sufficient enough. Make sure you mention the audio details on your invite, and also in the very first frame of your Prezi link we have in the following screenshot: [ 202 ] Chapter 10 Where have they gone? The only real danger you face when presenting online through Prezi meeting is losing people on your canvas.

What's Your Future Worth?: Using Present Value to Make Better Decisions
by Peter Neuwirth
Published 2 Mar 2015

One day I got an urgent call from David who summoned me to his office to tell me the exciting news that we had just received an invitation to bid on a massive project to assist a consortium of telephone companies—including all of the old “Baby Bells,” who were formed when the government broke up AT&T in the early ’80s—with an effort to convince the FCC that a new set of accounting rules (regarding retiree medical benefits) was going to increase company costs so much that the government should allow all the local telephone companies to raise the rates that they charged AT&T to use their lines. (AT&T still controlled all the long distance calls, while the “Baby Bells” provided local service.)23 Obviously it is a very different world today. Not only do most of the “Baby Bells” no longer exist, and AT&T itself is just one of several cell phone carriers, but in a world with Skype, Wi-Fi connections, and multiple cable companies providing everything from streaming video to teleconferencing, the notion that there would be one national phone system managed and regulated by the government seems downright bizarre. But twenty years ago, the old order was still very much in place, and David, who had a great deal of expertise in navigating intricate regulatory schemes (the UK system of rules governing pension, insurance, and actuarial matters is a veritable puzzle palace), viewed this opportunity as truly golden.

…

See also actuarial perspective applicability of, 4 balance between present and future and, 4 better decision making with, 23 in complicated situations, 62–64 and compound interest, 52 and consideration of all possible futures, 5 in day-to-day world, 23–37 definition of, 4–5, 52–54 vs. discounted cash flow method, 117–118 in evaluating time shares, 31–37 failure to properly utilize, 120–128 5-step process for comparing, 7–13 implied rate of discount by, 119 importance of proper use of, 82, 124–125 improving decision making with, 4 improving society and, 4 improving the world and, 150–157 in life-and-death decisions, 130–138 lifestyle choices and, 135–138 and liquidity premium, 54 in long-term decisions, 139–148 math of, 52, 109–116 mischaracterization of, 59–60 mechanics of, 51–57 in medical tests, 135–138 not-for-profit organizations and, 142 in a nutshell, 4 and “once in a lifetime” opportunities, 27–31 for organizations and communities, 117–128 and personal rate of discount, 54–57 question answered by, 55 and real estate, 60–62 and rental properties, 60–62 relative weights, importance of, 108, 110 and risk, 54 and risk-free return, 53 in saving and investing strategies, 37 rental properties and, 60–62 risk-free return and, 53 and value of time, 30 Present Value thinking in big decisions, 39–49 importance of taking your time, 35–36 taking responsibility for owning process of, 48 problems, simplification of, 116 public employees retirement programs, 120–128 pure randomness, 80 R rate(s) of discount, 11 definition of, 51, 55–57 example of, 26 extraordinarily high, in companies, 119 implied in present values, 119 infinite, 98 math behind, 56–57 for organizations vs. individuals, 104–118, 120 personal, 54–57, 98–100, 101–108 variation in, 99–100 real estate, 60–62 regime change, 89–90, 94 Relativity, Theory of, 90 relaxed playful attitude, 116 Rest of Life Communications, 159 retirement plan, private vs. public sector, 124 risk, 54 risk-free return, 53 risk management, 93 RPA, 116 S saving and investing strategies, 37 Schwartz, Mordecai, 15–21 signal in the noise, 80 Skype, 84–85 Stanford’s Center for Longevity, 160 statistical significance, 77, 79–80, 89, 89 T Taleb, Nassim Nicholas, 87–88, 92, 94, 118 The Power of Now (Tolle), 2 The Wall Street Journal, 86, 91 Thinking, Fast and Slow (Kahneman), 10 time horizon, 98, 118–119 and elections, 127 for organizations, 120 time preference, 54 time, risk, and money, 104 time shares, 31–37 time, value of, 30 Tolle Eckhart, 2 Towers Watson, 153 Tversky, Amos, 77 U University of Pennsylvania, 86 US Social Security, 153–154 V Verney, Arthur (Tad), 99,101–108 Vernon, Steve, 157–160 Vonnegut, Kurt, 65 W Walter, Bob Watson Wyatt, 159 Wickes, Gene, 150–157 Z Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (Pirsig), 68–69 About the Author Peter Neuwirth has been an actuary for over thirty-five years, and after decades of having been asked too many times the question “What is an actuary exactly?”

The Despot's Accomplice: How the West Is Aiding and Abetting the Decline of Democracy
by Brian Klaas
Published 15 Mar 2017

I was only allowed out of the cell one hour per day to go for a “walk” but in a closed space. I measured it. It was thirty-five steps long. But I still refused to sign.27 â•… Being told these harrowing stories while also being followed by KGB agents is a little unnerving. I woke up in my Minsk hotel room the day after arriving to a series of automated alerts from Skype saying that my account had been targeted by a hacking attempt. My account was shut down; it had been compromised. But during my visit, I was reassured by one of my contacts, a pro-democracy dissident, in startlingly frank language: “don’t be afraid—while the EU is processing some grants for Belarus, you can feel safe here as I do.”

…

Afifi, a former Egyptian police officer who stood up to his superiors, fled Egypt in April 2008 and landed in New York “with nothing but $50 and a gold watch.”6 After being granted political asylum, Afifi settled in Falls Church, Virginia—inside the DC beltway and just a fifteen-minute drive from the Pentagon. During the Arab Spring and the social media-fueled Tahrir Square 163 THE DESPOT’S ACCOMPLICE standoff between protesters and President Mubarak, Afifi shared insider tips about how police tactics would be used to crush the protests. He used Skype to stay in constant contact with those occupying the square. He used Google Maps to highlight potential routes that protesters should use if and when the eventual crackdown came.7 There is no doubt that the digital revolution influenced the Egyptian Revolution. â•… However, just as Afifi played a part in establishing Egypt’s brief experiment with democracy, he also played a part in its downfall.

…

Federal Election Commission, 185, 188 City on a Hill, 10, 35, 179, 188, 189 Cleisthenes, 28 climate change, 209 Clinton, Hillary, 5–6, 112, 178, 190 Clinton, William “Bill”, 52, 92, 102, 112, 115–16, 184, 190 Cobra Gold, 201 Cold War, 1, 20, 35–6, 37–50, 55, 66, 75, 81, 93, 149, 150, 200–1, 204, 221 Colombia, 27, 33, 171, 189 Commonwealth of Independent States Observation Mission (CISEMO), 211 Communist Party of China, 208 of Moldova, 195 of Thailand, 199 Community College of Denver, 209 Confucius Institutes, 209 Congo, 20, 36, 38, 42–4, 47, 48, 95, 121 Congress, US, 32, 33, 35, 184, 194 Connecticut Compromise, 32–3 constitutions, 31–2, 150–1, 190, 197 Contadora Island, Panama, 117 COPPPAL (Conferencia Permanente de Partidos Políticos de América Latina y el Caribe), 211 Corner House, Riga, 147–8, 160, 225 corruption, 73, 82, 99, 107, 139, 260 170–1, 197, 200, 201, 209, 210, 219 Côte d’Ivoire, 3, 19, 104–10, 111, 119 2000 presidential election, 104 2002 outbreak of civil war, 104 2010 presidential election, 104–5; outbreak of violence, 105–6, 119; Gbabgbo offered asylum in the US, 111 2011 UN/French intervention, 106, 108–10; Gbabgbo extradited to ICC, 106, 109, 119 2015 presidential election, 110 Council of Europe, 84 Council of Five Hundred, 29 counterfeit democracies, 3, 6–9, 20, 23, 33–4, 52, 70, 73, 79, 82–90, 158–9, 173, 175, 204, 210, 216–17, 220, 223 Crimea, 64, 65 crisis of democracy, 180 Critias, 29 Croatia, 75 Cuba, 45, 49–50, 176 curse of low expectations, see Madagascar Effect Daily Show, The, 53 Dark Ages, 30, 219 Dayton, Mark, 186–7 DDoS (Distributed Denial-ofService), 168 death squads, 47, 114, 117 Delian League, 29 democracy deficit, 180 democracy promotion industry, 58–60, 138 democracy wars, 67, 69–79, 220 Democratic Party, 35, 58, 84, 92, 124, 142, 182–8 INDEX Democratic Republic of the Congo, see Congo demos, 27, 28 Deng Xiaoping, 206 Denmark, 77, 220 Denver, Colorado, 209 Department for International Development (DFID), 59 Department of Defense, 115 Detention Site Green, Udon Thani, 201 Development Alternatives Inc., 138 Development Assistance Committee (DAC), 58 Devlin, Larry, 43 Diamond, Larry, 171 Dictator’s Learning Curve, The (Dobson), 210 digital communications, 49, 125, 161–75, 207, 208, 221, 223 Dirección de Inteligencia Nacional (DINA), 48 direct democracy, 28–9 disabled rights, 141, 144 disinformation, 207–8 Dobson, Will, 210 “Don’t Forget Me” (GooGoosha), 140 Dubai, 82 Duékoué, Côte d’Ivoire, 105 Dulles, Alan, 41 Durack, Western Australia, 29–30 Duvalier, Jean-Claude “Baby Doc”, 114 Ebola, 184 echo chamber effect, 165 Egypt, 6, 9–10, 13–16, 27, 88, 155, 163–4, 225 1987 US aid payments begin, 14 2001 EU Association Agreement, 155 2008 Afifi exiled to US, 163 2009 Clinton describes Mubaraks as ‘friends of my family’, 6; Obama’s Cairo speech, 9–10, 218 2011 Tahrir Square protests begin, 10, 13, 163–4; Mubarak ousted, 13, 164 2012 Morsi elected president, 14; anti-Morsi demonstrations begin, 164, 247 2013 coup d’état; el-Sisi comes to power, 14–16, 88, 164; Saudi Arabia announces aid package, 15 Eid al-Kabir, 124 Eisenhower, Dwight David, 38, 43 elections campaign finance, 185–8, 238 foreign aid/intervention, 97–110, 143 “free and fair”, 8, 14, 88–90, 102, 159, 193 gerrymandering, 180–5, 188, 251 grade inflation, 88–9, 158, 159 inclusivity, 24, 129–31, 221 observation/monitoring, 8, 65, 81, 83–4, 88–90, 102, 158–9, 173–4, 178, 211, 223 polling, 174–6 respect for, 5, 37–48 rigging of, 22–3, 34, 61, 63–4, 70–1, 83–5, 87, 112, 158–9, 166, 210–11 short-term thinking, 26, 54, 56 turnout, 180, 184 Electoral Integrity Project, 189, 238 Elizabethville, Congo, 43 “emerging democracy”, 88 Emory University, 136 261 INDEX “End of History”, 163, 214 English Civil War (1642–51), 31 Ennahda party, 126–8 Equatorial Guinea, 6, 11, 121, 173, 220 Erdoggan, Recep Tayyip, 20, 161–3, 176 Eritrea, 11, 24 Estonia, 17, 149, 151 Ethiopia, 27 Eton College, Berkshire, 202 European Commission, 150 European Parliament, 84, 180 European Partnership for Democracy (EPD), 58 European Union (EU), 2, 3, 56, 61–3, 65–7, 84, 90, 100, 143, 145, 148–56, 160, 180, 195, 214, 223, 225, 247 1999 European Parliament elections, 180 2004 Eastern Bloc countries accede to Union, 148–9 2005 intervention in Palestinian election campaign, 100 2006 asset ban on Lukashenko government, 63 2008 aid given for Ghanaian election, 143 2009 Eurozone crisis begins, 180, 190 2013 endorsement of Azerbaijani election, 84; endorsement of Malagasy election, 90 2014 Riga designated European Capital of Culture, 148, 225 2015 Riga summit; Juncker slaps Orbán, 150 2016 Belarus sanctions suspended, 65, 67, 195; Zimbabwe sanctions suspended, 247; UK € 262 holds membership referendum, 1 Eurozone crisis, 180, 190 Facebook, 125, 161–3, 165, 168, 172, 223 Falls Church, Virginia, 163 famine, 24 Fatah, 99–102 Fats Domino, 207 Ferjani, Said, 125–33, 142, 156, 221, 224 Fidesz Party, 150–2 financial crisis (2008–9), 185, 206 FixMyStreet, 171 Florida, United States, 117 Forces Nouvelles, 106 Ford, Gerald, 45 Foreign Affairs, 53 foreign aid, 14–15, 47, 49, 52, 57, 89, 90, 92, 93, 95, 100–1 Fourteen Points (1918), 35 France, 2, 33, 44, 55–6, 58, 72, 89, 106, 108–10, 115, 129, 214, 225 “free and fair”, 8, 14, 88–90, 102, 159, 193 free speech, 94, 103, 161–3, 165, 188 free trade zones, 152–60 Freedom House, 139, 140, 189 Friedrich Ebert Foundation, 189 Front Populaire Ivorien, 105 FSB (Federal’naya sluzhba bezopasnosti), 61 Fukuyama, Francis, 74, 163, 214 fungibilty, 95 Gaddafi, Muammar, 24, 76–9, 102, 113, 129 Gambia, The, 121 Gandhi, Jennifer, 136 INDEX Gaza, Palestine, 100–1, 240–1 Gbabgbo, Laurent, 105–10, 111, 119 General Motors, 48 Geneva Convention, 177 Geneva, Switzerland, 140 George III, King of the United Kingdom, 31 Georgia, 143 Geraldton, Western Australia, 30 Germany, 17, 23, 35, 44, 56, 58, 74–5, 103–4, 147–8, 165, 189, 201, 204, 208, 213, 223 Gerry, Elbridge, 181–2 gerrymandering, 180–5, 188, 251 Ghana, 17, 143, 144, 171 Ghani, Rula, 137 globalization, 153 Globe & Mail, 94 golden handcuffs, 111, 119–21, 154 golden parachutes, 19, 116–21 Gollum, 20, 161–3, 165, 176 Google, 164 GooGoosha (Gulnara Karimova), 140, 145 Government Organized NonGovernmental Organizations (GONGOs), 209–10, 212 grade inflation, 88, 99, 158, 159 Great Leap Forward (1958–61), 24 Greece, 20, 21, 22, 27–30, 31, 156, 230 Green Revolution (2009), 135–6, 166–8 gridlock, 184–5, 187 Guardian, 166 gun regulation, 186–7 gunboat diplomacy, 116, 118, 120 Gutiérrez, Luis, 182 Guyana, 171, 220 Guys and Dolls, 40 Hague, William, 77 Haiti, 114–21 Hamas, 99–104, 241 Harmodius, 28 Harvard University, 45 health care, 184–5 Henry IV “the Impotent”, King of Castile and Léon, 30, 231 Herodotus, 29 Higiro, Robert, 94 Hipparchus, 28 Hitler, Adolf, 23, 103–4, 165 HIV (human immunodeficiency virus), 116, 207 Hobart, Tasmania, 153 homosexuality, 12, 20 Hong Kong, 168–70, 176, 221 House of Representatives, 33, 181 human rights, 10, 11, 52, 54, 57, 64, 113, 118, 139, 209, 213 Humphrey, Hubert, 21 Hungary, 150–2, 160, 171 Hussein, Saddam, 63, 72, 73, 79, 124, 156–7 I Paid a Bribe, 170–1 Ibragimbekov, Rustam, 82 Iceland, 88 Iglesias, Julio, 140 “illiberal democracy”, 227 Illinois, United States, 182–3 Iloniaina, Alain, 222–3 imihigo program, 93 Immunization of the Revolution, 127 inclusion, 24, 129–31 India, 56, 98, 152, 156, 170–1, 172, 220 Indonesia, 27, 156, 218 Indyk, Martin, 102 insidious model effect, 46, 48 Inter-Commission Working Group 263 INDEX on International Cooperation, 211 Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), 52, 53 International Criminal Court (ICC), 106, 109, 118, 119 International Monetary Fund (IMF), 105 International Republican Institute (IRI), 58, 142 Internet, 49, 125, 161–75, 207, 208, 221, 223 iPad, 151 iPhones, 20, 83, 135–6, 145 Iran, 26, 30, 36, 38, 47, 48, 69, 98, 117, 135–6, 145, 208, 232 1951 nationalization of AngloIranian Oil Company, 38 1953 Operation Ajax; Mossadegh ousted, 38–42, 98, 208 1979 Islamic Revolution, 42, 117, 216 2009 intervention in Lebanese election, 98; presidential election; Green Revolution protests, 135–6, 166–8 2010 VOA announces “citizen journalism” iPhone app, 135–6, 145 2015 nuclear deal, 26 Iraq, 2, 5, 20, 49, 63, 67, 72–5, 77, 78, 79, 98, 124, 128, 129, 133, 156–7, 198, 213 1979 Saddam comes to power, 72, 129 1990 invasion of Kuwait, 156 2003 US-led invasion, 63, 72–3, 77, 84, 98, 156, 201, 234; de-Ba’athification campaign, 72, 77, 124, 128 2006 formation of al-Maliki government, 73 264 2015 IS execute election officials, 74 Ireland, 90, 217 Islam, 11, 12, 16, 99, 105, 123–6, 129, 131, 177, 218 Islamic State (IS), 74, 78, 131 Islamism, 99, 123–6, 129, 131, 177 Israel, 14, 99–104 Italy, 98, 192 Jackson, Peter, 162 Jammeh,Yahya, 121 Japan, 17, 24, 35, 56, 58, 74–5, 89, 112, 154, 156, 164, 204, 206, 217, 218, 220 al-Jazeera, 76 Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, 172 Joan of Portugal, Queen consort of Castile, 231 Jobs, Steve, 151 Johnson, Boris, 202 Jordan, 18, 60, 155 Juncker, Jean-Claude, 150 Kabila, Joseph, 121 Kabul, Afghanistan, 70 Kagame, Paul, 6, 91–6 Kagan, Robert, 217–18 Kakul Military Academy, 53 Kallel, Abdallah, 124 Kant, Immanuel, 118 Karbala, Iraq, 201 Karegeya, Patrick, 94 Karimov, Islam, 139–40, 142, 154 Karimova, Gulnara, 139–40, 145 Karnataka, India, 170 Karoui, Nébil, 131 Karzai, Hamid, 70 Katanga, Congo, 43–4 Keane, John, 30 INDEX Kennedy, John Fitzgerald, 11, 35–6, 55, 190, 192 Kenya, 220 KGB (Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti), 3, 61–2, 147–8, 194, 225 Khan, Rana Sanaullah, 52 Khomeini, Ruhollah, 167 Kim Jong-un, 136, 181 Kingdom of Ebla, 28 Kipling, Rudyard, 69 Kissinger, Henry, 44–7, 214 knee-jerk reactions, 26, 55 Koch Brothers, 185–6 Konrad Adenauer Foundation, 58, 189 Kounalakis, Eleni, 151 kratos, 27 Kununurra, Western Australia, 30 Kuwait, 156, 229 Kyrgyzstan, 185 2011 NATO-led intervention, 76–7; death of Gaddafi, 76–7, 113 2013 Political Isolation Law, 77, 128 LINE, 164–5 Literary Digest, 174 lobbying, 186–7 local-level democracy, 3, 18, 169–73 locusts, 6–7 London, England, 132–3 long-term thinking, 4, 46, 48, 51–67, 138, 141, 234 Lord of the Rings (Tolkien), 20, 161–3, 165, 176 “Luck Be a Lady Tonight”, 40 Lukashenko, Alexander, 61–7, 154, 193–5, 206, 222 Lumumba, Patrice, 42–4 Lumumbashi, Congo, 43 Lake, Anthony, 117 Landon, Alf, 174 Langouste (Ramakavélo), 87 Laos, 200 Latin Earmuffs, 182 Latvia, 147–50, 151–2, 154, 160, 225 League of Democracies, 152–60, 212 Lebanon, 98 Léon, 30–1, 231 Léopoldville, Congo, 43 Levy, Phil, 157 Libya, 2, 5, 20, 24, 49, 67, 69, 76–9, 102, 113, 128, 129, 133, 156, 213 1969 coup d’état; Gaddafi comes to power, 78, 113, 129 2008 Rice makes visit, 76 MacCann, William, 34 Madagascar, 3, 6–9, 17, 20, 59, 85–91, 96, 200, 220, 222–3, 234–5 1991 Panorama Convention, 87 1992 presidential election, 87 1993 population census, 89 2006 presidential election, 85–6 2009 coup d’état; Rajoelina comes to power, 6, 90 2012 Rajoelina announces capture of bandits’ sorcerer, 7 2013 general election, 8, 89–90, 211, 222–3 Madagascar Effect, 6–8, 17, 81, 96, 159, 204, 234–5 Madison, James, 31–2 Malaysia, 153, 218 al-Maliki, Nouri, 73–4 Mao Zedong, 23, 24 265 INDEX marketplace of ideas, 24, 219 Mauritius, 220 May, Theresa, 26 McCain, John, 77 McMahon, Michael, 83 McSpedon, Joe, 49 Megara, 156 Mejora Tu Escuela, 171 El Mercurio, 47 Merkel, Angela, 208 Mesopotamia, 28 Mexico, 27, 149, 155, 156, 171, 172, 178 MI6, 43 Miami, Florida, 117 Miloševicc, Slobodan, 98, 120 Minnesota, United States, 21, 186–7 Minsk, Belarus, 19, 61–2, 66, 192, 193 Mo Ibrahim Foundation, 119 Mobutu, Joseph-Desiré, 43–4 Mogadishu, Somalia, 116 Moghaddam, Ismail Ahmadi, 167 Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Shah of Iran, 39–42, 117 Moldova, 195–6 Mondale, Walter, 21 Mong Kok riots (2016), 169 Mongolia, 17, 30, 189 Morjane, Kamel, 130 Morocco, 155, 171 Morsi, Mohammed, 14, 15, 164, 247 Moscow, Russia, 210 Mossadegh, Mohammed, 38–42, 43, 232 Mosul, Iraq, 72, 73 al-Moubadara, 130 Mubarak, Hosni, 6, 13, 164 Mugabe, Robert, 112–13, 157–8 Mugenzi, Rene Claudel, 94–5, 189 € 266 Muhirwa, Alice, 93 Muñiz de Urquiza, María, 90 Munyuza, Dan, 94 Musharraf, Pervez, 51–7 Myanmar, 218, 225 Nasiri, Nematollah, 40 Nation, The, 198 National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO), 197 National Democratic Institute (NDI), 58, 92, 142 National Endowment for Democracy (NED), 58, 60, 144, 247 National Rifle Association (NRA), 186–7 Native Americans, 32, 33 Nawabshah, Pakistan, 51 Nazi Germany (1933–45), 23, 44, 74–5, 103–4, 147–8, 165 Nepal, 98 Netherlands, 58, 89, 143 Netherlands Institute for Multiparty Democracy, 58 New Stanford Hospital, Palo Alto, 26 NewYork Times, 71, 93, 185–6 New Zealand, 112, 156, 209 Nicaragua, 24, 98 Nidaa Tounes, 131 Niger, 185 Nigeria, 171, 172 Nixon, Richard, 44–7 Niyazov, Saparmurat, 25 Nobel Prize, 18, 24, 131, 156, 163 non-alignment, 43 non-governmental organizations (NGOs), 58–60, 141–2, 144, 158, 209–10, 212, 238 North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), 45, 55, 77 INDEX North Carolina, United States, 183 North Korea, 4, 11, 136, 138, 144, 173, 176, 181 Norway, 24, 77, 205, 219 nuclear power/weapons, 26, 192 Nunavut, Canada, 153, 230–1 Nunn, Sam, 116 Nuristan, Afghanistan, 70 Nyaklyayew, Uladzimir, 61–2, 65 Nyamwasa, Faustin Kayumba, 94 Obama, Barack, 6, 9–10, 14, 49, 54, 55, 57–8, 76, 96, 111, 183, 204, 205, 218 Obiang, Teodoro, 6, 121 Odysseus, 22, 153 oil, 4, 11, 16, 24, 84, 192, 229 olive oil, 125 Operation Ajax (1953), 38–42, 98, 208 Operation Desert Storm (1991), 156 Operation Enduring Freedom (2001–14), 70 Operation Uphold Democracy (1994–5), 116 Orbán, Viktor, 150–2 Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), 64 Ortega, Daniel, 98 Orwell, George, 15, 101, 199 Oswald, Lee Harvey, 192 Ouattara, Alassane, 105–10, 119 Oxford University, 198, 202 OxfordGirl, 166 Pakistan, 18, 50–7, 70, 220, 233 Palestine, 99–104, 108, 240–1 Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), 99 Panama, 117 Panorama Convention (1991), 87 Papua New Guinea, 188 parliaments, 31 partisan engagement, 99–104 Peloponnesian War (431–404 BC), 156 People’s Alliance for Democracy (PAD), 197, 202 Pericles, 29 Persia, 28 Peru, 153 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 33 Philippines, 218 Pinochet, Augusto, 47–8, 225 Piromya, Kasit, 204–5 Plateau Dokui, Abidjan, 107 Plato, 29 Poland, 201 Political Isolation Law (2013), 77, 128 polling, 174–6 Pomerantsev, Peter, 210 Pongsudhirak, Thitinan, 165 Port-au-Prince, Haiti, 117 Portugal, 218, 231 Pouraghayi, Saeedah, 167 Powell, Colin, 116, 120 Préval, René, 117 Price, Melissa, 30 Princeton University, 186 prisoner’s dilemma, 200 process engagement, 99–100 propaganda-industry tax, 209 protectionism, 177 proto-democracy, 28 Public Diplomacy of the Public Chamber of Russia Elections, 211 Pul-i-Charki, Kabul, 71 Putin, Vladimir, 63, 64–5, 194–5, 204, 207, 214 267 INDEX al-Qaeda, 18, 50, 52–3, 55, 78, 177, 234 Qatar, 155, 229 Qatif, Saudi Arabia, 11, 16 Queen, 121 racism, 176, 218, 250 Rajoelina, Andry, 6 Ramadan, 126 Ramakavélo, Desiré-Philippe, 86–7 Rao, Bhaskar, 170 Rassemblement des Républicains, 105 Ratchaburi, Thailand, 199 Ravalomanana, Marc, 6 Reagan, Ronald, 35–6, 55 realpolitik, 4, 45, 48, 98, 104 refugees, 208 representative democracy, 30–3 Republican Party, 39, 58, 79, 124, 142, 181, 182–8 Rever, Judi, 94 Riahi, Taghi, 39–40 Rice, Condoleeza, 76, 102 Riga, Latvia, 147–8, 150, 160, 225 rock lobster, 87 Rojanaphruk, Pravit, 198–9, 221, 223–4 Romania, 149, 209 Rome, Ancient (753 BC–476 AD), 21, 30 Romney, Mitt, 112 Roosevelt, Franklin Delano, 39, 174 Roosevelt, Kermit, 38–40, 208 Roosevelt, Theodore “Teddy”, 39 de Rosas, Juan Manuel, 34–5 Roskam, Peter 183 rule of law, 10, 27, 73, 77, 136, 159, 209, 218 Rumsfeld, Donald, 145 Russia Today (RT), 207–9 268 Russian Federation, 24, 27, 60–1, 63–5, 82, 106, 140, 149, 190, 191–6, 204, 205–12, 214, 221, 229 1996 Commonwealth with Belarus established, 194 2002 proposal for re-integration of Belarus, 194 2005 support for Moldovan opposition on Transnistria, 195–6; Russia Today established, 207 2010 Putin sings Fats Domino’s Blueberry Hill, 207 2013 endorsement of Azerbaijani election, 211 2014 annexation of Crimea; intervention in Ukraine, 64, 65; RT reports “genocide” in Ukraine, 207; RT reports CIA behind Ebola outbreak, 207 2015 NED banned, 60; pressure on Belarus to host military base, 65, 195 2016 RT report on rape of “Lisa” in Germany, 208; Putin praised by Trump, 214 Rwanda, 6, 20, 91–6, 120, 185, 189, 215, 216 Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), 91 San Diego State University, 209 sanctions, 52, 62–5, 67, 103, 106, 135–6, 145, 156–8, 160, 195, 247, 253 Sandinista National Liberation Front, 98 Sandy Hook massacre (2012), 186 dos Santos, José Eduardo, 112–13 Sarkozy, Nicolas, 108 INDEX SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome), 25–6 Saudi Arabia, 5–6, 9–12, 15–16, 19–20, 85, 98, 138, 144, 200, 216, 229 1962 slavery abolished, 11 2009 intervention in Lebanese election, 98; children sentenced to prison and lashes for stealing exam papers, 11, 16; Jeddah floods, 172 2010 Indonesian maid mutilated by employer, 11, 12; arms deal with US, 10–12 2011 Qatif protests, 16 2013 aid package to Egypt announced, 15; purchase of US naval craft announced, 16; Badawi sentenced to prison and lashes, 16 Saudi Arabia Effect, 5, 9, 16, 85, 138, 200 Schneider, René, 45 School of the Americas, 115 Seattle, Washington, 77 Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), 43 Sen, Amartya, 24 Senate, US, 32–3, 187 Senegal, 42, 121 September 11 attacks (2001), 18, 52–3, 55, 70 Serbia, 98, 120 Shanghai Cooperation Organization, 211 Sharif, Nawaz, 51–2, 233 Shinawatra, Thaksin, 196, 199, 201, 202, 205 Shinawatra,Yingluck, 198 short-term thinking, 3–4, 26, 46, 48, 51–67, 120, 138, 141, 234 Shushkevich, Stanislav, 192–3 Siberia, 147, 148 Sidick, Koné Abou Bakary, 107–9 Sierra Leone, 88, 171, 209 Singapore, 23, 24, 27, 93, 155, 215, 216, 217, 229 Siripaiboon, Thanakorn, 165 el-Sisi, Abdel Fattah, 15 Skujenieks, Knuts, 148 Skype, 62 slavery, 11, 29, 32 social media, 49–50, 125, 161–70, 173, 176, 199, 207, 208, 223 Socrates, 29 Solon, 28 Somalia, 42, 116 Sophocles, 29 Sopko, John, 137 Sousse attacks (2015), 131 South Africa, 27, 94, 157, 189 South Korea, 17, 27, 112, 152, 156, 218 Soviet Union (1922–91), 1, 22–3, 35–6, 37–50, 61, 64, 82, 121, 147–8, 150, 160, 192–4, 201, 204, 206–7 Spain, 218 Sparta, 28, 29 St John’s College, Oxford, 202 Stalin, Joseph, 23 Stanford University, 171 State Department, 11, 15, 54, 202 state power, 27 Statkevich, Mikalai, 61–2, 65, 222 Stewart, Jon, 53 Sting (Gordon Sumner), 140 Stockholm Syndrome, 199 Sudan, 206 Sukondhapatipak, Werachon 198 Sundaravej, Samak, 197 Super PACs, 185 Supreme Court, US, 185, 188 Sweden, 92, 220 269 INDEX Switzerland, 118, 140, 205 Syria, 78, 120, 131, 198, 208, 217, 224, 225 Szájer, József, 151 Tahrir Square, Cairo, 10, 13, 163–4 Taiwan, 27, 218 Taliban, 18, 52, 56, 71, 138 tame democracy promotion, 59 Taming of Democracy Assistance, The (Bush), 59 Tarakhel Mohammadi, 70–1 Tasmania, Australia, 153 Tasting and Grumbling, 197 Tea Party, 185 terrorism, 11, 16, 18, 19, 20, 26, 52–3, 55, 63, 70, 78, 97, 100, 101, 131, 156, 201, 234 Tetra Tech, 138 Thailand, 3, 19, 27, 154, 164–5, 196–206, 212, 221, 223–4, 253 1973 pro-democracy uprising, 199 1976 student protests, 199 1982 launch of Cobra Gold exercises with US, 201 2003 troops dispatched to Iraq, 201 2006 coup d’état, 196, 197 2008 judicial coup, 196, 197, 202, 253 2010 protests and crackdown, 202 2014 NCPO coup d’état, 164, 196–206, 221; junta gives out free haircuts, 154; rail deal with China, 203; junta releases LINE “values stickers”, 164–5 2015 man arrested for insulting Tongdaeng, 165 270 2016 constitutional referendum, 197, 223 Thirty Tyrants, 29 Thucydides, 28, 29 time horizon, 55 Tobruk, Libya, 77 Togo, 170, 177–8 Tolkien, John Ronald Reuel, 20, 161–3, 165, 176 Tongdaeng, 165 torture, 11, 28, 43, 48, 52, 124–7, 132, 139, 141, 222, 224 Trans-Pacific Partnership, 153 Transnistria, 196 transparency, 26, 82, 170, 174, 212, 218 Tripoli, Libya, 77 Trojan War, 22 Trump, Donald, 1, 20, 25, 79, 178, 180, 187, 188, 204, 205 Tudeh Party, 41, 232 Tunisia, 12–13, 17, 18, 19, 27, 65, 77, 123–33, 142, 143, 144, 155, 156, 209, 218, 221, 224–5 1987 coup d’état; Ben Ali comes to power, 124, 126, 129 1991 Barraket Essahel affair, 123, 126, 224 1995 EU Association Agreement, 155 2010 self-immolation of Bouazizi; protests begin, 12, 126, 224 2011 ousting of Ben Ali, 13, 124–6, 130 2014 assembly rejects bill on political exclusion, 128; law on rehabilitation and recognition of torture victims, 224; presidential election, 130 2015 Bardo Museum and Sousse attacks, 131, 156; National INDEX Dialogue Quartet awarded Nobel Peace Prize, 18, 131 Tunisia’s Call, 131 Turkey, 20, 27, 39, 149, 161–3, 165, 176 Turkmenistan, 11, 25, 26, 138, 144, 154 Twitter, 49, 162, 163, 166, 168, 176, 199, 208 U2, 92 Udon Thani, Thailand, 201 Uganda, 166, 176 Ukraine, 2, 27, 64, 65, 171, 198, 207, 213 Umbrella Movement (2014), 168, 176, 221 United Arab Emirates (UAE), 229 United Kingdom (UK), 1–3, 31, 33, 38, 43–4, 56, 58, 71–2, 92, 94–5, 126, 129, 132–3, 156, 166, 171–2, 180, 189, 202, 214 1707 Acts of Union, 31 1947 Churchill’s statement on democracy, 22, 190, 215 1951 Mossadegh nationalizes Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, 38 1987 Ferjani arrives in exile, 126 1999 European Parliament election, 180 2003 invasion of Iraq, 72–3 2009 OxfordGirl tweets on Iranian Green Revolution, 166; Blair meets with Kagame, 6, 92 2011 intervention in Libya, 77; Kagame appears on BBC radio; threat against Mugenzi, 94–5, 189 2012 launch of FixMyStreet, 171 2016 EU membership referendum, 1 United Nations (UN), 104, 105, 106, 108–10, 118, 130, 132, 140, 152 United States (US) 1787 Constitutional Convention, 31 1812 redrawing of Massachusetts senate election districts, 181–2 1869 Wyoming grants women vote, 33 1870 non-white men receive vote, 33 1913 Seventeenth Amendment enacted, 32 1917 Wilson’s “safe for democracy” speech, 35 1918 Wilson’s Fourteen Points, 35 1920 women receive vote, 33 1924 protections to ensure Native American voting rights, 33 1936 presidential election, 174 1948 CIA intervention in Italian election, 98 1953 Operation Ajax; Mossadegh ousted in Iran, 38–42, 98, 208 1960 plot to assassinate Lumumba with poisoned toothpaste, 43 1961 Foreign Assistance Act, 14–15 1962 Saudi Arabia pressured into abolishing slavery, 11; Cuban Missile Crisis, 50 1963 Kennedy’s Berlin speech, 35; assassination of Kennedy, 192 271 INDEX 1965 protections to ensure minority voting rights, 33 1973 ousting of Allende in Chile, 47 1982 launch of Cobra Gold exercises with Thailand, 201 1987 Reagan’s Berlin speech, 35; aid payments to Egypt begin, 14 1988 Reagan’s “city on a hill” speech, 10, 35, 179, 188, 189 1990 intervention in Nicaraguan election, 98 1991 launch of Operation Desert Storm in Iraq, 156 1992 presidential and House of Representatives elections, 183–4 1993 Clinton assumes office, 115; Battle of Mogadishu, 116 1994 launch of Operation Uphold Democracy in Haiti, 116; Cessna crash at White House, 116; Cédras given “golden parachute”, 116–17 1997 USAID Cambodia claims to have “exceeded expectations”, 59 1999 Pakistan urged to return to democracy, 52, 53 2001 September 11 attacks, 18, 52–3, 55, 70; cooperation with Pakistan begins, 52–3, 55; invasion of Afghanistan, 70, 71, 84, 98 2002 Bush announces new approach for Israel/Palestine conflict, 99 2003 invasion of Iraq, 63, 72–3, 77, 84, 98, 156, 201, 234 272 2004 Belarus Democracy Act, 63, 194 2005 Senate vote on armorpiercing bullet ban, 187; intervention in Palestinian election campaign, 99–104 2006 Musharraf appears on The Daily Show, 53 2008 Afifi arrives in exile, 163, 247; Rice’s visit to Libya, 76 2009 Obama assumes office, 55, 57; Clinton describes Mubaraks as “friends of my family”, 6; Obama’s Cairo speech, 9–10, 218; military helicopter drops ballot boxes in Afghanistan, 70; Kagame receives Clinton Global Citizen award, 92 2010 VOA announces “citizen journalism” app for Iran, 135, 145; Citizens United v.

The Revenge of Analog: Real Things and Why They Matter
by David Sax
Published 8 Nov 2016

Each March, Moross attends the technology conference South by Southwest Interactive in Austin, Texas, where he hears about the next app predicted to kill the business card. Meanwhile, everyone in the room is still ordering more cards from MOO, which supplies stationery to such technology companies as Skype, LinkedIn, and Uber. “Attempts to reinvent business cards for the digital age have got nowhere,” The Economist wrote in 2015. “Even at the trendiest of Silicon Valley tech gatherings, people still greet each other by handing out little rectangles made from dead trees rather than tapping their phones together.”

…

On any given day there are thousands of encounters happening all over the world thanks to Meetup, from bird-watching groups in Bangkok to record swaps in Buenos Aires. But Meetup only has one office, which is in New York City, and all its employees work under one roof. When I met Heiferman there, he told me this was a conscious choice. “I don’t do phone calls, I don’t let people Skype into a meeting, and I’m going to eat lunch with my friends,” he said, as we sat on folding Coleman chairs in a small meeting room made to look like a campsite, complete with walls covered in photos of Meetup hiking groups. Heiferman refuses to have important conversations by phone, e-mail, or other digital means unless absolutely necessary.

…

88 scalability, 170, 172 school libraries, 187 schools alternative, 208 physical versus virtual, 176–177, 200–201 See also education Schram, Stefanie, 200 Schumpeter, Joseph, 153 Schwartz, Barry, 130 Scorsese, Martin, 71 Scott, Ken, 25–26 Scrabble, 76, 77, 85 screen-free parenting, xv screen-free schools, 208 Search Inside Yourself, 206 Seasick Steve, 22 Sebregondi, Maria, 32–34, 35, 36, 39, 40, 41, 46, 47, 48–49, 111 Second Life (virtual world), 81, 217 Senk, Glen, 134 sensory experience, xiii, xvii, 32, 83, 111, 113, 131, 132, 180–181, 188, 195, 225–226, 231 Serena and Lily, 137 serendipity, 113, 115, 131, 238 Settlers of Catan, 76, 85, 89–90, 93, 239 7-inch EP format, 8, 22 “Shake It Off” (Swift), 6 Shake It Records, 21 Shapiro, Dan, 226 Sharma, Mala, 210 Sharman, Mark, 119, 120 Sharman’s, 119–120 Sheridan College, 195 Shinola, 149–152, 157–158, 159–161, 167–168, 169, 171, 172 shipping costs, 135–136, 137 shopping experience, 126–127, 134, 137 Shut Up and Sit Down (blog), 90 sign making, 215–217 Silicon Valley, xv, xvii, 45, 155, 166, 178, 206, 208, 211, 213, 223, 225, 226, 229, 238 Singer, Dorothy, 181–182 Sinkov, Andrew, 222, 223 Siwak, Heidi, 196–198 16 mm film, 56 sketchbook, 221–222 Skidgel, John, 221, 222 Skype, 45, 220 Slack, 219 Small World, 85 smart boards, 191, 213 smartphones abstaining from, xii, xv, 27, 115, 205, 231, 234, 235, 241, 242 attachment to, xii–xiii, 27, 235 companion to, 31 in education, 182 handwriting and, 46 music on, ix photography and, 62, 69–70 role of, in analog’s rise, xvii years living with, 237 Smolokowski, Slava, 69–70 Snakes & Lattes, 75–76, 77, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 85, 86–88, 89, 90, 93, 95, 96–98, 239–240 Snapchat, 234 social interaction, experiencing, xv, 82, 144, 212, 217–219 social media/networks creating real social experiences for, 217–218 dominance over, 163 film photography and, 62 limitations of, 144 role of, in analog’s rise, xvii surge of, notebooks and, 43 tabletop gaming and, 80, 91, 94 See also specific social networking service software building, role of analog in, 209, 215 educational, 179, 181, 186, 190 and the Great Recession, 156 inherent bias of, 36 role of, in analog’s rise, xvii Songlines, The (Chatwin), 33 Songza, 20 Sony, 9, 11, 17 Sound on Sound (magazine), 22 Sour Soul (album), 27 South by Southwest Interactive, 45 Spark Notebook, 43 Spence, Michael, 163 Sperduti, Anthony, 138 Spin Master, 85 Spotify, 10, 13, 20 Stack, 103, 106 Stack Live, 103, 105 stamps, 132 Standage, Tom, 110 standardization, 7, 36, 118, 145, 162, 186, 194 Stanford University, 193, 201 Stapleton, Rich, 103–104 Star Wars: The Force Awakens (movie), 72 Starcraft (game), 94 Starr, Ringo, 26 startup trend, xiv stationery, 36, 45, 132, 218 stationery stores, 33, 34, 44 Steelcase, 190 STEM programs, 192 Sterling, Greg, 218 still film, 52, 53, 55, 56, 58–59, 63, 64, 68 Stoltz, Kelly, 22 Stoppelman, Jeremy, 217 Strand, 127, 128 streaming services, x, xvi, 10, 12, 19–20, 22, 242 streaming video technology, 201 Street Fighter 2 (game), 80 Studio O+A, 211–213 Success Academy, 189 Sun Records, 5 Super 8 film, 71 Super Mario Bros.

The Myth of Capitalism: Monopolies and the Death of Competition
by Jonathan Tepper
Published 20 Nov 2018

Sellers want to go where all the buyers are, and buyers want to be where all the sellers are. The more buyers and sellers there are, the greater the value of Uber as a platform. The same is true for Skype. If almost no one is on Skype, you can't call anyone, but the more people there are, the more you can call. PayPal doesn't work well if only a few people use it, but if everyone accepts it, you can pay for almost anything with it. The more people that use eBay, PayPal, Skype, Twitter, or Facebook, the less likely it is that they will face competitors. Various mathematicians have come up with mathematical formulas to ascribe value to networks: Sarnoff's Law, Metcalfe's Law, and Reed's Law.

Radical Markets: Uprooting Capitalism and Democracy for a Just Society
by Eric Posner and E. Weyl
Published 14 May 2018

The institution then sends a small number of profiles of matching applicants to the families. The profile includes detailed information about the applicant’s background, interests, skills, and so on. The host family can interview some or all of the applicants, or reject them, whereupon the agency will send the family another group of profiles. The interview takes place over Skype. Once an applicant is selected, she goes through a week of training—in which she learns about American ways of doing things—and then is sent to the host family. The agency periodically sends people to check on the au pair and family. Among other things, it interviews the parties privately. If one or both sides are unhappy, then the agency will try to match the au pair with another family, so that she will not have to return to her home country.

…

Antitrust authorities, who are accustomed to worrying about competition within existing, well-defined, and easily measurable markets, have allowed most mergers between dominant tech firms and younger potential disrupters to proceed. Google was allowed to buy mapping start-up Waze and artificial intelligence powerhouse Deep Mind; Facebook to buy Instagram and WhatsApp; and Microsoft to buy Skype and LinkedIn. While such acquisitions doubtless help accelerate a path to market for start-up products and provide badly needed financing, they also have a dark side. Economist Luís Cabral has named these mergers “Standing on the Shoulders of Dwarfs”: they may crush the possibility of new firms emerging to challenge the business model of existing industry leaders, instead co-opting them to cement the dominance of those leaders.57 To prevent this dampening of innovation and competition, antitrust authorities must learn to think more like entrepreneurs and venture capitalists, seeing possibilities beyond existing market structures to the potential markets and technologies of the future, even if these are highly uncertain.

…

Steel and, 174 Monopoly (game), 43 monopsony, 190, 199–201, 223, 234, 238–41, 255 Moore’s Law, 286–87 mortgages, 65–66, 70, 74–75, 130, 157 Morton, Fiona Scott, 191 Mullainathan, Sendhil, 114 Musk, Elon, 30 Muslims, 129, 131 mutual funds, 181–82, 193 Myerson, Roger, 50–51, 66, 69 Naidu, Suresh, 240 Napster, 212 National Health Service, 291 Nationalist revolution, 46 Nazis, 93–94 neoliberalism, 5, 9, 11, 24, 255 Nepal, 151–53, 157 Netflix, 221, 289–91, 314n17 network effects, 211, 236, 238, 243 neural networks, 214–19 New Deal, 176, 200 New World, 136 New Zealand, 10, 159 Nielsen, Jakob, 212 Nielsen ratings, 230 Niemöller, Martin, 94 Nobel Prize, xxi, 40, 49–50, 57, 66–68, 92, 97, 236, 278 Obamacare, 114–15, 116 Occupy Wall Street, 3 oligopsony, 234 Oman, 158 one-person-one-vote (1p1v) system, 82–84, 94, 109, 119, 122–24, 304n36, 306n51 open markets, 21–22, 24 OpenTrac, 30–31, 30–32 opt-out rules, 194, 274 Orange Is the New Black (TV series), 221 Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), 141, 147–49, 159–61, 171 ownership: banking industry and, 183, 184; capitalism and, 34–36, 39, 45–49, 75, 78–79; common, 31, 41–42, 49, 52, 54–55, 61, 147, 187–88, 253 (see also common ownership self-assessed tax [COST]); competition and, 20–21, 41, 49–55, 79; control and, 178–81, 183–85, 193; democracy and, 81–82, 89, 101, 105, 118, 124; developers and, 26, 30–33, 105; efficiency and, 34–38, 43, 48–52, 55, 58–60, 67, 69, 73; entrepreneurs and, xiv, 35, 39, 129, 144–45, 159, 173, 177, 203, 209–12, 224, 226, 256; feudalism and, 16, 34–35, 37, 41, 61, 68, 136, 230–33, 239; holdout risk and, 33, 62, 71–72, 88, 299n28; homeowners and, 17, 26, 33, 42, 56–57, 65; inequality and, 42, 45, 75, 79, 253; intellectual property and, 26, 38, 48, 72, 210, 212, 239; labor and, 146–47, 245, 247; land, 31–33, 38–39, 41, 68, 105, 173; landlords and, 37, 43, 70, 136, 201–2; liberalism and, 17–19, 26–27; liquidity and, 31, 69, 177–79, 194, 301n49; partial common, 52, 298n7; partnerships and, 52–54, 57, 174; peasants and, 35–37, 61, 136; property as monopoly and, 30–34, 37–44, 48–62, 65, 68, 72, 77, 79; public goods and, 253 (see also public goods); Quadratic Voting (QV) and, 105; Radical Markets and, 170, 173, 177–90, 193, 195, 199–200; self-assessment and, 31, 55–56, 61–62, 70, 72, 258, 260, 270, 302n63; shareholders and, 118, 170, 178–84, 189, 193–95; Smith on, 17–18; state, 19, 39, 42, 48 Page, Larry, 211 Pandora, 289, 292 Pareto efficiency, 110 partnerships, 52–54, 57, 174 PayPal, 212 Peloponnesian War, 83 pencils, 278–79 pensions, 157, 181 phalanx system, 83 Philosophical Radicals, 4, 16, 20, 22–23, 95 Pierson, Paul, 191 PNC Bank, 183, 184 Poland, 47 polls: elections and, 13, 111; Likert surveys and, 111–16, 120, 306n53; market research and, 111–16; Quadratic Voting (QV) and, 111–16, 118, 303n17; Trump and, 296n20 pollution, 44, 65, 98–105, 137, 299n28 populism, 3, 12–14, 146, 261, 265, 296n16 portfolio theory, 180 poverty, xv; COST and, 259; extreme, 164; Galbraith on, 125; George on, 36–37, 43, 250; migrants and, 166; peasants and, 35–37, 61, 136; serfs and, 35, 48, 231–32, 236, 255; slavery and, xiv, 1, 19, 23, 37, 96, 136, 255, 260; slums and, xiii, xviii, 17; prices: auctions and, xv–xix, 49–51, 70–71, 97, 99, 147–49, 156–57, 300n34; common ownership self-assessed tax (COST) and, 62–63, 67–77, 256, 258, 263, 275, 300n43, 317n18; competition and, 20–22, 25, 173, 175, 180, 185–90, 193, 201, 204, 244; computers and, 21; controls for, 132; democracy and, 92, 97–102; indexing and, 185–91, 302n63; Internet and, 21; labor and, 132, 156, 207, 212, 221, 235, 243–44; liberalism and, 7, 8, 17–22, 25–27; markets and, 278–80, 284–85; markup, 7, 8, 60; monopoly, 58–59, 179, 258, 300n43; property and, 31–42, 47–64, 67–77; public leases and, 69–72; Quadratic Voting (QV) and, 263, 275; Radical Markets and, 170–75, 179–80, 185–90, 193, 201, 204; resale price maintenance and, 200–201 private goods, 97, 99, 110, 122–24, 253, 262, 264, 271–72, 303n17 privatization, xiv, 9 “Problem of Social Cost, The” (Coase), 48 productivity, 9–10, 16, 38, 57, 73, 123, 240–41, 247, 254–55, 258, 278 profits: common ownership self-assessed tax (COST) and, 275, 300n43; democracy and, 99; human capital and, 258; inequality and, 6–7; labor and, 163, 208–9, 234, 258, 260; liberalism and, 6–7, 17–18; lobbyists and, 262; moral values and, 271; ownership and, 33, 59–60, 68, 78, 299n28; Radical Markets and, 171, 178–79, 185–89, 193, 199, 201 programmers, 163, 208–9, 214, 217, 219, 224 Progress and Poverty (George), 36–37, 43, 250 Progressive movement, 45, 137, 174–75, 200, 203, 262 property, xiv; capitalism and, 34–36, 39, 45–49, 75, 78–79; central planning and, 39–42, 46–48, 62; common ownership self-assessed tax (COST) and, 31, 61–79, 271–74, 300n43, 301n47; competition and, 41, 49–55, 79; democracy and, 83, 88, 96, 99; developers and, 26, 30–33, 105; efficiency and, 34–38, 43, 48–52, 55, 58–60, 67, 69, 73; eminent domain and, 33, 62, 89; feudalism and, 16, 34–35, 37, 41, 61, 68, 136, 230–33, 239; freedom and, 34–39; George on, 36–37, 42–46, 49, 51, 59, 66; gift of nature and, 40; hoarding of, 255; holdout risk and, 33, 62, 71–72, 88, 299n28; homeowners and, 17, 26, 33, 42, 56–57, 65; inequality and, 42, 45, 75, 79, 253; investment in, 33, 35, 37, 43, 49–54, 58–61, 66–67, 71, 73, 76–78, 255, 299n28; labor and, 34–39, 45, 67, 73–79, 136, 147, 210, 212, 239; laissez-faire and, 253; landlords and, 37, 43, 70, 136, 201–2; landowners and, 31–33, 38–39, 41, 68, 105, 173; liberalism and, 17–18, 25–28; liquidity and, 31, 69, 177–79, 194, 301n49; markets and, 40–45, 282; monopolies and, 34–39; ownership and, 30–34, 37–44, 48–62, 65, 68, 72, 77, 79; partnerships and, 52–54, 57, 174; peasants and, 35–37, 61, 136; prices and, 31–42, 47–64, 67–77; private, 25, 28, 34–42, 48–52, 61–62, 68, 76, 78, 99, 177, 253, 271–72, 299n28, 301n46; public goods and, 41, 73, 253; public leases and, 69–72; Quadratic Voting (QV) and, 273; Radical Markets and, 173, 177, 272; reform and, 35, 37, 39, 46; regulations and, 46–48, 299n27; right of way and, 32–33; rights of, 35, 48–49, 51–52, 88, 173, 210; self-assessment and, 31, 55–56, 61–62, 70, 72, 258, 260, 270, 302n63; socialism and, 37–42, 45–49; taxes and, 28, 31, 42–44, 51, 55–70, 73–76, 301n36; turnover rate and, 58–61, 64, 76; United States and, 36, 38, 45, 47–48, 51; wealth and, 36, 38, 40, 45, 55, 61, 73–79 Proposition 8, 89 “Protection and Real Wages” (Stolper and Samuelson), 142 psychology, 67, 78, 111, 114, 233, 238, 248, 290 public goods: collective decisions and, 98; common ownership self-assessed tax (COST) and, 256; democracy and, 28, 97–100, 107, 110, 120, 123, 126; globalization and, 265; labor and, 147; markets and, 271; property and, 41, 73, 253; Quadratic Voting (QV) and, 110, 120, 123–26, 256, 264, 272; selfishness and, 270; Smith on, 16 public leases, 69–72 “Pure Theory of Public Expenditure, The” (Samuelson), 97 Qatar, 158 Qin dynasty, 46 Quadratic Voting (QV): 1p1v and, 82–84, 94, 109, 119, 122–24, 304n36, 306n51; Arrow’s Theorem and, 303n17; auctions and, xvii–xix; broader application of, 118–19, 273–74; collective decisions and, 110–11, 118–20, 122, 124, 273, 303n17, 304n36; common ownership self-assessed tax (COST) and, 123–25, 194, 261–63, 273, 275, 286; competition and, 304n36; corporate governance and, 194; cryptocurrencies and, 117–18; democracy and, 105–22; efficiency and, 110, 126, 256; elections and, 115, 119–21, 268, 306n52; equality and, 264; free-rider problem and, 107–8; globalization and, 266–69; governance and, 117, 122, 266–69; growth and, 123; happiness and, 108–10, 306n52; immigrants and, 261, 266–69, 273; inequality and, 264; legal issues and, 267, 275; liberalism and, 268; Likert surveys and, 111–16, 120, 306n53; markets and, 122–23, 256, 272, 286, 304n36; methodology of, 105–10; monetizing, 263–64; monopolies and, 272; nature of currency and, 122–23; optimality and, 108–9, 120, 286; ownership and, 105; Pareto efficiency and, 110; political effects of, 261–64; polls and, 111–16, 118, 303n17; prices and, 263, 275; property and, 273; proportional, 106–7; public goods and, 110, 120, 123–26, 256, 264, 272; Radical Markets and, 82–126, 194, 272; rating and, 117–18; reform and, 95, 105–6; scope of trade and, 122–23; social aggregation and, 117–18; society and, 272–73; software flaw and, 305n44; square root function and, 82; taxes and, 263, 275; technology and, 264; testing of, 111, 114–18; voice credits and, 80–82, 105, 113, 117, 119, 121–23, 251, 263–64, 267, 269; wealth and, 256–57, 261–64, 267–68, 272–73, 275, 286 Quarfoot, David, 114 reCAPTCHA, 235–36 Reddit, 117 Red Queen phenomenon, 176–77, 184 Red Terror, 93 reform: academics and, 2–3; antitrust policies and, 23, 48, 174–77, 180, 184–86, 191, 197–203, 242, 255, 262, 286; auctions and, xv–xvii, 49–51, 70–71, 97, 99, 147–49, 156–57; common ownership self-assessed tax (COST) and, 298n7; George and, 23; globalization and, 255; immigrants and, 129, 153; labor and, 129, 153, 240, 247, 255; liberalism and, 2–4, 23–25, 255; property and, 35, 37, 39, 46; Quadratic Voting (QV) and, 105 (see also Quadratic Voting [QV]); Radical Markets and, 95, 105–6, 181, 191; regulations and, 239–45 (see also regulations); taxes and, 274–75; United Kingdom and, 95–96 Reform Act of 1832, 95 refugees, 130, 140, 145 regulations: banking, 98–99; capitalism and, 262; Coase on, 299n27; competition and, 262; democracy and, 98–100, 123; deregulation and, 3, 9, 24; discrimination and, 272; elitism and, 3; environmental, 265, 291; labor and, 138, 155–56, 165, 239–45, 266; liberalism and, 3, 9, 18, 24; property and, 46–48, 299n27; Radical Markets and, 176, 180, 189, 191, 194, 197, 203 religion, 15, 17, 19, 55, 78, 81, 85–90, 94, 129, 145, 272 resale price maintenance, 200–201 revolutions, 36, 41, 46, 86, 88, 90–92, 95, 224, 255, 273, 277 Ricardo, David, 133 Rio de Janeiro, xiii–xiv, 105 robber barons, 175, 199–200 Robinson Crusoe (DeFoe), 132 robots, 222, 248, 251, 254, 287 Rockefeller, John D., 174–75 Roemer, John, 240 Roman Catholic Church, 85, 94 Roman Republic, 84 Roosevelt, Franklin D., 176 Roosevelt, Theodore, 175 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 86 Russia, 12, 13, 46 same-sex marriage, 89 sample complexity, 218 Samuelson, Paul, 97–98, 106–7, 142–43 Sanders, Bernie, 12 Satterthwaite, Mark, 50–51, 66, 69 Saudia Arabia, 158–59 savings: growth and, 6; labor and, 150–51; mercantilism and, 132; Radical Markets and, 169, 172, 181; retirement, 171–72, 260, 274; squandering, 123 Schmalz, Martin, 189 Schumpter, Joseph, 47 Segal, Ilya, 52 self-assessment, 31, 55–56, 61–62, 70, 72, 258, 260, 270, 302n63 self-driving cars, 230 serfs, 35, 48, 231–32, 236, 255 Shafir, Eldar, 114 Shalizi, Cosma, 281 shallow nets, 216–19 shareholders, 118, 170, 178–84, 189, 193–95 Sherman Antitrust Act, 174, 262 Show Boat (film), 209 Silicon Valley, 211 Silk Road, 131 Singapore, 160 siren servers, 220–24, 230–41, 243 Siri, 219, 248 Skype, 155, 202 slavery, xiv, 1, 19, 23, 37, 96, 136, 255, 260 slums, xiii, xviii, 17 Smith, Adam, xix–xx, 4; capitalism and, 34–35; competition and, 17; diamond-water paradox and, 224–25; efficiency and, 37; immigrants and, 132–33; inequality and, 22; markets and, 16–17, 21–22; monopolies and, 173; Wealth of Nations and, 22 social aggregation, 117–18 Social Democratic Party, 45 social dividend, 41, 43, 49, 73–75, 147, 256–59, 263, 269, 298n13, 302n63 socialism: central planning and, 39–42, 47, 277, 281; George and, 37, 45, 137, 250, 253; German right and, 94; industry and, 45; irrationality of capitalism and, 39 (see also capitalism); labor and, 137, 299n24; laissez-faire and, 250, 253; markets and, 277–78, 281; Marx and, 137, 277; property and, 37–42, 45–49; radical democracy and, 94; Radical Markets and, 293; Sanders and, 12; Schumpeter on, 47; von Mises and, 278; workers’ cooperatives and, 299n24 social media, 251–52; data and, 202, 212, 231, 233–36; democracy and, 117, 126; Facebook, xxi, 28, 50, 117, 202, 205–9, 212–13, 220–21, 231–48, 289; Instagram, 117, 202, 207; Reddit, 117; Twitter, 117, 221; WhatsApp, 202; Yelp, 63, 117 Social Security, 274 Southwest, 191 sovereignty, 1, 16, 86, 131–32 Soviet Union, 1, 19, 46–47, 277–78, 281–82, 288 spam, 210, 245 special interest groups, 25, 98, 256 Spense, A.

Thinking About It Only Makes It Worse: And Other Lessons From Modern Life
by David Mitchell
Published 4 Nov 2014

Will DNA analysis of the stick reveal that it’s a sword after all? All of which means it feels like an inopportune moment for Keith Bristow, the director general of the new National Crime Agency, to request more police powers. He’s trying to influence the new communications data bill so that he’ll be able to scour Skype and social media networks for wrongdoers. But he’s quick to allay the fears of those who call the bill a “snoopers’ charter”: “I value my privacy, I don’t want to be snooped upon,” he explains. “That’s not what we’re talking about here. We’re talking about criminals who run organised crime gangs that import drugs … We’re talking about predatory paedophiles, we’re talking about dangerous people.”

…

He’s not trying to find out what other books they might want or be short of. He’s just dispensing the Word of Gove from on high. Transport minister Norman Baker would probably advocate doing it remotely. No need to drag Moses all the way up the mountain when you can just tell him what’s what over Skype. Responding to the Whitehall plan to “cut or change” 50% of civil servants’ journeys during the seven-week Olympic and Paralympic period by encouraging people to work from home, Baker said: “I’m very keen to use this opportunity to record speeches remotely.” He continued: “It’s much better value than travelling maybe hundreds of miles to make a 10-minute speech.”

…

A spokesman for Cadbury’s said: “If they could get the chocolate to stick to the Curly Wurlys properly, maybe they’d deserve the minimum wage.” Shock WikiLeaks revelations The debate over transparency and freedom of information intensified in 2019 when WikiLeaks published details of what everyone in the world would be getting for Christmas. “Secrets are used to control people,” said Julian Assange via Skype from his Mars-bound prison rocket. “Wrapping paper is one of the most oppressive inventions in human history. As for the Christmas cracker, it is a highly dangerous form of violent concealment. In order to satisfy the human need to discover what is kept hidden, one must actually trigger an explosion.

We Are Data: Algorithms and the Making of Our Digital Selves
by John Cheney-Lippold
Published 1 May 2017

NBC News, “Inside the Mind of Edward Snowden, Part 3,” May 29, 2014, www.nbcnews.com. 12. The NSA’s assemblage depends heavily on several different code-named programs: PRISM was the system used to access emails, chat messages, search queries, and personal data within Microsoft’s, Google’s, Yahoo!’s, Facebook’s, PalTalk’s, AOL’s, YouTube’s, Skype’s, and Apple’s secure networks; XKeyscore acted as a “front-end search engine” for all of the NSA’s recorded data—like a Google for the NSA’s huge cache of data that lets analysts search the near entirety of the past three to five days of Internet traffic; Trafficthief and MARINA both produced reservoirs of Internet metadata from physical wiretaps. 13.

…

See also microtargeting; psychographics; Values and Lifestyles (VALS) semi-supervised learning, 60, 79 Seinfeld, 241 Severson, Richard W., 235 sexuality, 42, 50–53, 67, 85, 137, 149, 219–22, 243, 252, 257–58, 277n40; algorithms producing, 29, 50–53, 55–56, 74, 81, 87–89, 194, 219–22, 237, 277n40, 299n61; intersectionality and, 76, 86, 184; as social construction, 45. See also Gaydar Shenk, David, 245 Sherman, Jamie, 119 Shimon, 68–72, 70, 85, 90–91, 260–61, 280n91 SIM cards, 3, 188, 190 Simondon, Gilbert, 194 Skype, 289n12 Smith, Brian Cantwell, 47–48 Smith, Zadie, 252 Snapchat, 133 Snowden, Edward, 154–56, 168, 174 social constructionism, 8, 11, 46, 77, 196, 242 The Social Network, 167, 252 societies of control, 26, 100–101, 105, 107, 168, 172 Solove, Daniel, 32, 167 Spade, Dean, 220 Spartacus, 232 Spivak, Gayatri, 192 SRI International, 75 Star, Susan Leigh, 7, 52 Stevens, Roger, 51 Stiegler, Bernard, 50 Sun Microsystems, 207 Sunnstein, Cass, 28 Super Mario Brothers, 218 superpanopticon, 171–72, 228 supervised learning, 79 surveillance, 15, 24, 100, 112, 122, 157, 185, 198, 205–9, 216–17, 223, 231–32, 234, 242, 262, 270n18, 273n59, 295n103, 301n98; assemblages, 20, 80, 108, 144, 155, 240; Data Wars and, 20–21; digital epidermalization and, 12, 278n60; measurable types and, 74, 97; NSA, 154–56, 160–62, 174–75, 189, 199, 219, 289n12; ubiquitous, xii, 4, 9, 29, 35–36, 56–57, 131, 156, 193, 227, 236, 241, 244.

The Complete Android Guide: 3Ones
by Kevin Purdy
Published 15 Apr 2011

With the Voice app on Android, the call is connected automatically (though there's still a short wait between calling and hearing a dial tone). Connected to Voice, you start ringing the other number. On their caller ID, they see your Voice number. If they pick up, you're now both talking through Google Voice's servers—they're using advanced VoIP technology, or, in layman's terms, running a huge internet-to-voice, Skype-style system. Whether you connect with Voice or not, you're still using your actual cellphone voice connection, so Voice won't save you cellphone "minutes"—unless you're using a handy little billing trick, detailed further down. The difference is in the number others see when you dial, and whether your call routes through Google's servers.

…

These extensions also offer instant SMS and message checking abilities, making them well worth the download for any Voice enthusiast. Moving an app icon Make free desktop calls with Voice: Your Android handles Google Voice calls just fine. Need to save on minutes, or just like the convenience of headset calling? You can make free, internet-based, Skype-like calls from your computer using free software. I detailed the setup at Lifehacker. Listen to voicemails in Gmail: In your Google Voice settings (on the google.com/voice web page), you'll find options to have your voicemail messages sent to an email address (and SMS, too, though that can be a bit overwhelming).

Lonely Planet Cancun, Cozumel & the Yucatan (Travel Guide)
by Lonely Planet , John Hecht and Sandra Bao
Published 31 Jul 2013

Calls from Telmex card phones cost M$3 for unlimited time for local calls (M$1.50 per minute to cell phones); M$2.50 per minute for long-distance within Mexico (M$3 per minute to cell phones); M$5 per minute to the continental US, Canada and Central America; and M$10 per minute to anywhere else. VOIP Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP) services such as Skype (www.skype.com) are a very economical option for travelers who have a computer and the required software. You can also use Skype at internet cafes. Time The entire Yucatán Peninsula observes the Hora del Centro, which is the same as US Central Time – GMT minus six hours in winter, and GMT minus five hours during daylight-saving time (horario de verano, summer time), which runs from the first Sunday in April to the last Sunday in October.

…

Check that the policy covers ambulances and emergency flights home. Worldwide medical insurance for travelers is available online at www.lonelyplanet.com/travel-insurance/ Internet Access Internet cafes (which charge about M$10 per hour) abound in the Yucatán. Many have webcams, headphones and Skype. Many places (hotels, bars and restaurants) have wi-fi available, but in some hotels the signal only reaches the lobby. In this book the wi-fi icon means the signal reaches at least some part of the premises, while the internet icon means the establishment has internet-available computers for guests.

Lonely Planet Cancun, Cozumel & the Yucatan (Travel Guide)
by Lonely Planet , John Hecht and Lucas Vidgen
Published 31 Jul 2016

Calls from Telmex card phones cost M$3 per minute for local and national calls; M$1.50 per minute to cell phones; M$5 per minute to the continental US, Canada and Central America; and M$10 per minute to anywhere else. VOIP Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP) services such as Skype (www.skype.com) are a very economical option for travelers who have a computer and the required software. You can also use Skype at internet cafes. Time The states of Campeche, Chiapas, Tabasco and Yucatán observe the Hora del Centro, which is the same as US Central Time – GMT minus six hours in winter, and GMT minus five hours during daylight saving time (horario de verano, summer time), which runs from the first Sunday in April to the last Sunday in October.

…

Worldwide medical insurance for travelers is available online at www.lonelyplanet.com/travel-insurance. You can buy, extend and claim online anytime – even if you’re already on the road. Internet Access Internet cafes (which charge about M$10 per hour) abound in the Yucatán. Most computers have Skype installed. Many places (hotels, bars and restaurants) have wi-fi available, but in some hotels the signal only reaches the lobby. We use the wi-fi icon in our reviews if the signal reaches at least some part of the premises; an internet icon refers to establishments with internet-ready computers for guests.

Content: Selected Essays on Technology, Creativity, Copyright, and the Future of the Future
by Cory Doctorow
Published 15 Sep 2008

This decision held that the VCR was legal because it was "capable of sustaining a substantially non-infringing use." That means that if you make a technology that your customers can use legally, you're not on the hook for the illegal stuff they do. This principle guided the creation of virtually every piece of IT invented since: the Web, search engines, YouTube, Blogger, Skype, ICQ, AOL, MySpace... You name it, if it's possible to violate copyright with it, the thing that made it possible is the Betamax principle. Unfortunately, the Supremes shot the Betamax principle in the gut two years ago, with the Grokster decision. This decision says that a company can be found liable for its customers' bad acts if they can be shown to have "induced" copyright infringement.

…

Kazaa's business model was to set up offshore, on the tiny Polynesian island of Vanuatu, and bundle spyware with its software, making its profits off of fees from spyware crooks. Kazaa didn't want to pay billions for record industry licenses — they used the international legal and finance system to hopelessly snarl the RIAA's members through half a decade of wild profitability. The company was eventually brought to ground, but the founders walked away and started Skype and then Joost. Meantime, dozens of other services had sprung up to fill Kazaa's niche — AllofMP3, the notorious Russian site, was eventually killed through intervention of the US Trade Representative and the WTO, and was reborn practically the next day under a new name. It's been eight years since Sean Fanning created Napster in his college dorm-room.

The Internet Is Not What You Think It Is: A History, a Philosophy, a Warning
by Justin E. H. Smith
Published 22 Mar 2022

On most understandings of the ontology of a musical work, when we hear music streaming through Spotify or YouTube, we are hearing the music itself, and not just a representation of it. And much less or much more mysteriously (depending on your philosophical commitments), when we pay bills online, when we issue such speech acts as promises or threats via Facebook or Twitter, when we tell our loved ones we love them over Skype or Zoom, we are bringing about real transformations in the world, in our financial situation, in our social standing, in our hearts. All of this is conducted through electrical pulses, but it is not all mere “simulation.” The remote-controlled vibrator or the 3D-printed gun are only further twists on a power we had already mastered and were already exercising, to effect world-changing action at a distance.

…

W., 2–5, 22, 26, 45–46, 63, 93, 102–7, 109, 111–20, 129–33, 136–38, 147, 157, 160–62 Leonardo da Vinci, 169 Leopold, Aldo, 39 lichen, 69–70 LinkedIn, 122 Linus, Franciscus, 148 Llull, Ramon, 4, 147 Lotze, Hermann, 25 Lovelace, Ada, 104, 130–31, 134–39 Lucian of Samosata, 61, 65 Luddites, 5–6 Lumière Brothers, 31 Lunch, Lydia, 47 Malebranche, Nicolas, 116 Malmesbury, William of, 101 Manson, Marilyn, 47 Marcus Aurelius, 60, 126–27, 140–42 Marx, Karl, 50 memes, 40, 89–90, 142 memory, 33–34 Menabrea, Luigi, 131–35, 139 Mendel, Gregor, 70 Mesmer, Franz, 62, 74 metaphor, 24, 30, 51, 60, 72, 80, 92, 126, 130, 138–46, 148–49 metrics, 40 mindfulness, 36 Modi, Narendra, 49 More, Thomas, 125, 154 Münster, Sebastian, 154 Musk, Elon, 90 Nabokov, Vladimir, 18 Newton, Isaac, 63, 70 normies, 2 Orbán, Viktor, 49 Ortelius, Abraham, 159 Pāṇini, 34–35 Paracelsus (Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim), 74 Pascal, Blaise, 4, 102, 118, 136, 153 perennialism, 12 Perrault, Charles, 121 Peter the Great, Tsar, 160 phenomenology, 6, 8, 17, 24, 27, 29, 96, 156 Plato, 91, 114 Pliny the Elder, 75 Pony Express, 76 “proof of concept,” 61, 78, 125 Proust, Marcel, 32 QAnon, 44–45 Ramelli, Agostino, 168–71 Ramus, Petrus, 157 Renfrew, Colin, 77 Republic of Letters, 76 ResearchGate, 122 rhizomes, 67, 80 Ricoeur, Paul, 149 Rorario, Girolamo, 95 Russell, Bertrand, 3 Sallust, 172–73 Scharf, Caleb, 94 Schiller, Friedrich, 45 Schneider, Susan, 93–95 Schwitzgebel, Eric, 97 Scientific Revolution, 82, 157 Scott, James C., 82 Searle, John, 107–8 semaphore, optical, 73–74, 80 Seress, Rezső, 47 Serres, Michel, 14 Shakespeare, William, 153 Shapin, Steven, 82 Simone, Nina, 47 simulation argument, the, 43, 89–93, 99–100, 164 Siri (voice-activated search), 28, 101–3 Skype, 164 slime molds, 86–88 Smith, Brian Cantwell. See Cantwell Smith, Brian sociobiology, 71 Source, The (computer network), 8 Spotify, 47–49, 164 Srinivasan, Balaji, 29 Stanley, Manfred, 6–7 Stendhal (Marie-Henri Beyle), 35 telecommunication: among humans, 59, 83–84, 124; among plants and animals, 56–59, 73–74, 83–84 teledildonics, 164 TikTok, 50 Tinder, 21 Tormé, Mel, 47 trolley problem, 13 Trump, Donald, 44, 49 Tupi (language), 108 Turing test, 30 Turing Tumble (toy), 110–11 Twitter, 32, 53–55, 122, 155, 164 Tyson, Neil DeGrasse, 90 Uber, 45 Vaucanson, Jacques de, 98, 119, 128–30 video games, 41, 43–45, 122 virality.

Free Ride
by Robert Levine
Published 25 Oct 2011

“The usually voluble Brin grew quiet,” Auletta writes, “ready to change the subject.”22 To Google, Auletta’s book is just a series of ones and zeros—and not very many of them, compared with a movie. To Auletta, those ones and zeros were exceptionally expensive to create—at least in terms of time—since the technology that has revolutionized the cost of distributing text hasn’t dramatically changed the nature of writing it. Reporters can access online databases and interview sources by Skype, but they still have to read documents and ask the right questions. In cases like this, “information wants to be expensive.” Therein lies the conflict. Most online companies that have built businesses based on giving away information or entertainment aren’t funding the content they’re distributing.

…

As Griffin read Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk by the economist Peter Bernstein, he saw how the need to allocate risk on the voyages of English merchant ships in the eighteenth century led to the advent of “actuarial economics.”2 As opposed to “transactional economics,” which involves the purchase of individual items, actuarial businesses gather pools of money and divide them according to the outcome of subsequent events. Such pools can be used to defray the risk to anything, from an eighteenth-century trade vessel to a teenager’s Toyota. Griffin points out that Ooma, the voice-over-Internet system he uses for long-distance service instead of Skype, works on an actuarial model, since customers buy the machine from the company, which then covers the cost of all their calls out of that price. And he consulted on Nokia’s Comes with Music service—it didn’t catch on—which made music free with the price of a cell phone. “I increasingly think of copyright as copyrisk,” Griffin says.

…

Olivennes, Denis, 8.1, 8.2 Olson, Theodore Olympics, itr.1, 3.1, 5.1, 5.2, 10.1 “1,000 True Fans” (Kelly), 2.1, 2.2 Open Book Alliance Open Internet Coalition “open networks”, 4.1, 10.1, 10.2 Operation in Our Sites Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Page, Larry Patel, Marilyn, 2.1, 2.2, 2.3 Patry, William PayPal paywalls, 4.1, 4.2, 4.3, 10.1 Penguin Books, 6.1, 10.1 Perfect 10 Perfect Thing, The (Levy) Performance Rights Act (2009) Pew Research Center, itr.1, 4.1 phonographs, 3.1, 9.1, 10.1 Pirate Bay, itr.1, 1.1, 2.1, 8.1, 8.2 Pirate Parties International, 8.1, 9.1 Piraterna (Rydell) PlaysForSure Politico, 3.1, 4.1 Preliminary Draft of the Report of the Working Group on Intellectual Property Rights, A (White Paper) Premier League, 3.1, 3.2, 5.1 privacy issues, 3.1, 8.1, 8.2, 9.1 “private copying exception” Project Alesia, 4.1, 4.2 Promises to Keep (Fisher), 9.1, 9.2, 9.3 public domain, 3.1, 3.2, 3.3, 6.1, 10.1 Public Knowledge, 2.1, 3.1, 3.2, 3.3, 3.4, 3.5, 3.6, 5.1, 9.1, 10.1 publishing industry, itr.1, itr.2, itr.3, itr.4, 1.1, 1.2, 3.1, 3.2, 6.1, 7.1, 7.2, 8.1, 8.2, 10.1, 10.2 Q Prime Management, 2.1, 2.2 Quadroid Qualcomm Quantcast radio, 2.1, 3.1, 4.1, 9.1, 9.2, 9.3, 9.4, 9.5, 9.6, 10.1 Radiohead, 2.1, 2.2, 6.1, 8.1 Raimer, Daniel, 7.1, 7.2, 7.3 Random House, 6.1, 6.2, 10.1 Random Media RapidShare, 7.1, 7.2, 7.3, 8.1, 10.1 record albums, 2.1, 2.2, 2.3, 2.4, 7.1, 9.1 record companies, 1.1, 1.2, 2.1, 2.2, 2.3, 2.4, 2.5, 3.1, 3.2, 3.3, 3.4, 5.1, 6.1, 6.2, 6.3, 7.1, 7.2, 7.3, 8.1, 9.1, 9.2, 9.3, 9.4, 9.5, 9.6, 9.7, 9.8, 10.1, 10.2, 10.3, 10.4, 10.5 Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), 1.1, 1.2, 2.1, 2.2, 2.3, 2.4, 2.5, 3.1, 3.2, 3.3, 7.1, 9.1, 10.1, 10.2, 10.3 remixes, 3.1, 3.2, 9.1 “remnant ad networks” Renner, Tim, 8.1, 9.1 Republican Party, 3.1, 10.1 retransmission fees, 5.1, 5.2, 5.3, 9.1 Rhapsody Richardson, Eileen Rio Roku Ronen, Avner, 5.1, 5.2, 5.3 Rosen, Hilary, 2.1, 2.2, 2.3, 2.4 royalties, 1.1, 2.1, 2.2, 2.3, 6.1, 6.2, 6.3, 9.1, 9.2, 9.3, 10.1 Rusbridger, Alan, 4.1, 4.2, 4.3, 4.4, 4.5 “Rusbridger Cross” Rydell, Anders “safe harbor”, 1.1, 1.2, 2.1, 3.1, 3.2, 7.1, 10.1 Salon, 2.1, 4.1 Samuelson, Paula, 1.1, 1.2, 6.1 Sapan, Josh, 5.1, 5.2 Sargent, John, Jr., 6.1, 6.2, 6.3 Sarkozy, Nicolas Sarnoff, Richard, 6.1, 10.1 Saturday Night Live, itr.1, itr.2 Saudi Arabia Schmidt, Eric, 3.1, 3.2, 3.3, 3.4, 3.5, 4.1, 8.1 Schmitz, Kim Schuler, Barry Scientific American Scientology Scribd search engines, itr.1, 3.1, 3.2, 4.1, 4.2, 5.1, 6.1, 7.1, 7.2, 8.1, 8.2, 8.3, 8.4, 10.1; see also Google Seattle Post-Intelligencer, itr.1, 4.1, 4.2 Seattle Times Secure Digital Music Initiative, 1.1, 2.1, 7.1 Seidler, Ellen, 3.1, 3.2, 7.1 Senate, U.S., 1.1, 1.2, 2.1, 2.2, 10.1 SESAC Shapiro, Gary, 1.1, 2.1 Sherman, Cary Siler, Megan Silicon Valley, itr.1, 1.1, 2.1, 2.2, 2.3, 3.1, 4.1, 7.1, 10.1 Simon & Schuster, 6.1, 6.2 Singer, Mitch, 7.1, 7.2 SkyDrive, 7.1, 7.2, 7.3 Skype, itr.1, 9.1 Slate, itr.1, 2.1, 3.1, 3.2, 10.1 smartphones, 2.1, 3.1, 5.1, 10.1, 10.2 Société des Auteurs, Compositeurs, et Éditeurs de Musique (SACEM) software, itr.1, 2.1, 2.2, 3.1, 10.1, 10.2 Sohn, Gigi, 3.1, 3.2, 9.1 songwriters, 1.1, 2.1, 2.2, 3.1, 3.2, 3.3, 4.1, 9.1, 9.2, 9.3, 10.1, 10.2 Sony BMG Music Entertainment, 2.1, 2.2 Sony Corp., 1.1, 3.1, 5.1, 6.1, 7.1 Sony Corp. of America v.

The Human Age: The World Shaped by Us
by Diane Ackerman
Published 9 Sep 2014

It looks like water, ripples like water, and when he touches it, it plashes and burbles. But it doesn’t feel wet. And when he lifts his fingers to his nose, he doesn’t smell water. From his sensory perspective, it’s strange. Not as strange, though, as interacting with humans and other orangutans via Skype. The first time Budi saw Richard Zimmerman, the director of Orangutan Outreach, calling to him in a halo of light, he touched the screen, as if thinking, He’s talking to me. Then, puzzled, he reached over and touched Matt’s face. On the screen, a talking human, who knew him by name, was looking right at him and smiling, calling to him in a friendly voice.

…

Only twenty years later, the basic experience is the same, but its scope has been vastly amplified. For example, our proprioception, the sense of where we are in space, now spins far beyond the physical body. We can spy on ourselves in sly, public, or cloak-and-dagger ways, from lavish perspectives, inside and out. By satellite, a drone’s eye, via Skype, on security cameras, through electron microscopes. Some of us are even relaxed about, or excited by, the promise of connecting our brains to the world outside of the body. In such sweeping sensory adventures, our cameo of who and what we are shifts, and also how we may decide to know ourselves in the future.

…

It’s a little odd thinking of computers taking meetings on the fly and gabbing together in an alien argot. But naming it the Internet of Things domesticates an idea that might otherwise frighten us. We know and enjoy the Internet, already older than many of its users, and familiar now as a pet. In an age where even orangutans Skype on iPads, what could be more humdrum than the all-purpose, nondescript word “things”? The Internet of Things reassures us that this isn’t a revolutionary idea—though, in truth, it is—just an everyday technology linked to something vague and harmless sounding. It doesn’t suggest brachiating from one reality to another; it just expands the idea of last century’s cozy new technology, and animates the idea of home.

Dragnet Nation: A Quest for Privacy, Security, and Freedom in a World of Relentless Surveillance
by Julia Angwin
Published 25 Feb 2014

We published much of the literature online in a database called “The Surveillance Catalog: Where governments get their tools.” The brochure for Gamma Group’s FinSpy, the tool used to monitor the Bahraini activists, touted its capability of “monitoring of encrypted communications.” The brochure also stated that it had been used in an Internet café to monitor Skype communications, and even to take pictures of people as they use Skype. “FinSpy is a field-proven Remote Monitoring Solution that enables Governments to face the current challenges of monitoring Mobile and Security-Aware Targets that regularly change location, use encrypted and anonymous communication channels and reside in foreign countries,” the brochure stated.

…

Security Engineering (Anderson) security questions Security Theater September 11, 2001, attacks sexual orientation Shahzad, Faisal Shearson, Julia Shilkin, Rob Shiller, Benjamin Reed Shopping.com Shutova, Ekaterina Shutterfly Signal conference Silent Circle Silent Phone Silent Text Sinclair, Upton Singer-Vine, Jeremy Skyhook Skype Slobogin, Christopher smart card Smith, Stephen Smith, Will Snowden, Edward social networking sites. See also specific sites social network mapping social security numbers Soghoian, Christopher Soltani, Ashkan Sonic.net “sousveillance” South Africa Southern District of New York (federal court) Soviet Union spamgourmet.com spam messages SpiderOak Spokeo spoofing Sputnik spy satellites spyware Staas, David stalkers Standard Oil Company Staples Stasi state and local governments stealth wear Stecklow, Steve Steel, Emily Strauchs, John J.

The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President
by Bandy X. Lee
Published 2 Oct 2017

Instead, the Ethics Committee of the APA decided, without polling the members, to double down on the Goldwater rule by extending it beyond the realm of diagnosis to include any and all comments on the mental functioning of this or any president or prominent public figure. In addition to changes in the availability of coverage on TV, there has been an evolving use of phone and Skype in the distant treatment of patients in both psychotherapy and psychoanalysis. Many contemporary psychiatrists no longer feel that their patient must be present in the consulting room with them. While clinicians vary in their comfort and experience with phone and Skype therapies, there is a definite trend toward these modalities as essential if one is to conduct a full-time practice and extend treatment into underserved areas. This shift in attitude toward “remote” treatment conducted through previously untried communication methods is relevant to why commenting on President Trump’s mental function feels not only comfortable but necessary.

…

In particular, does the stance of the APA, with its newly minted version of the Goldwater rule, prevent a psychiatrist-psychoanalyst from attempting such an analysis? A classical psychoanalyst would scoff at the idea that any psychoanalysis could be done from a distance, whether by telephone or by Skype. For such an analyst, both analyst and analysand must be present in the consulting room, so that observations of the patient who is practicing free association can be made continuously. The unconscious is to be found and interpreted to the patient at the moment of interaction. Judged by the criteria of classical psychoanalysis, no analysis of candidate or President Trump is possible.

Cryptoassets: The Innovative Investor's Guide to Bitcoin and Beyond: The Innovative Investor's Guide to Bitcoin and Beyond
by Chris Burniske and Jack Tatar
Published 19 Oct 2017

All it takes is typing in the person’s bitcoin address and clicking send, a functionality that all exchanges and wallets provide (which we cover in Chapter 14). Bitcoin’s utility in sending value using the Internet is similar to that of Skype, which can safely, quickly, and efficiently transmit anyone’s voice and image to anyone, anywhere in the world. The innovative investor might say: “OK, I understand that bitcoin can have utility as MoIP, just as Skype has utility as VoIP, but how does that translate to bitcoin being worth $1,000 a coin?” Bitcoin’s utility value can be determined by assessing how much bitcoin is necessary for it to serve the Internet economy it supports.

…

This is often referred to as the market capitalization of an asset on many current resources, but the authors prefer this term as more accurately conveying the total value of a cryptoasset. 2. https://coinmarketcap.com/. 3. http://cryptome.org/jya/digicrash.htm. 4. Ibid. 5. Ibid. 6. https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/quick-history-cryptocurrencies-bbtc-bitcoin-1397682630/. 7. http://karmakoin.com/how_it_works. 8. MoIP is a riff off the term “VoIP,” which stands for Voice-over-Internet-Protocol. Skype, FaceTime, and Google Hangouts are all examples of VoIP. 9. Remember that a coinbase transaction goes to the miner that discovered the block through the proof-of-work process. 10. As more machines are dedicated to mine on the network, there are more “guesses” at the solution to the PoW puzzle, which means the solution will be guessed more quickly if the difficulty of the problem is not increased.

The Golden Thread: How Fabric Changed History
by Kassia St Clair
Published 3 Oct 2018

The reason for the odd choice, according to Nexia, lay in the similarity between spider silk glands and the milk-producing ones of goats. 26Hirsch; Kenneth Chang, ‘Unraveling Silk’s Secrets, One Spider Species at a Time’, New York Times, 3 April 2001 <http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/03/science/unraveling-silk-s-secrets-one-spider-species-at-a-time.html> [accessed 5 February 2017]; Rogers. 27Even if someone could replicate a spider’s spinnerets, it would still be insufficient: they produce silk too slowly for an exact mechanical copy to work commercially. 28Dr Randy Lewis, molecular biologist at the University of Utah. 29Adams. 30Fritz Vollrath, zoology professor, University of Oxford, Skype interview with author, February 2017. 31Vollrath, ‘The Complexity of Silk’, p. 1151. 32Fritz Vollrath, zoology professor, University of Oxford. Vollrath, ‘Follow-up Queries’. 33Ibid. Adams. 34Jamie Bainbridge, VP of product development at Bolt Threads, told me proudly: ‘There are no spiders in our building.’ 35Widmaier, ‘Spider Silk: How We Cracked One of Nature’s Toughest Puzzles’; Widmaier, phone call with author. 36Bainbridge. 37Widmaier, phone call with author. 38Bainbridge. 39Peers, phone interview with author.

…

, Chicago Tribune, 5 August 2016 <http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-olympics-swimsuits-20160805-story.html> [accessed 17 December 2017] ———, ‘Roger Bannister’s Sub Four-Minute Mile Running Shoes Sell for £266,500’, the Guardian, 11 September 2015, section UK news <http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/sep/11/roger-bannisters-sub-four-minute-mile-running-shoes-sell-for-266500> [accessed 6 January 2018] ‘Astronauts’ Dirty Laundry’, NASA <https://www.nasa.gov/vision/space/livinginspace/Astronaut_Laundry.html> [accessed 12 December 2017] B Bailey, Ronald, ‘The Other Side of Slavery: Black Labor, Cotton, and Textile Industrialization in Great Britain and the United States’, Agricultural History, 68 (1994), 35–50 Bainbridge, Jamie, VP of Product Development at Bolt Threads, Skype interview with author, October 2016 Bajaj, Vikas, ‘Fatal Fire in Bangladesh Highlights the Dangers Facing Garment Workers’, New York Times, 25 November 2012, section Asia Pacific, p. A4 Balter, Michael, ‘Clothes Make the (Hu) Man’, Science, 325 (2009), 1329 ‘Bangladesh Factory Collapse Death Toll Tops 800’, the Guardian, 8 May 2013, section World news <http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/may/08/bangladesh-factory-collapse-death-toll> [accessed 4 October 2017] Bar-Yosef, Ofer, Belfer-Cohen, Anna, Mesheviliani, Tengiz, et al., ‘Dzudzuana: An Upper Palaeolithic Cave Site in the Caucasus Foothills (Georgia)’, Antiquity, 85 (2011), 331–49 Bard, Kathryn A.

…

Wins Final with Penalty Kicks’, New York Times, 11 July 1999, section Sport, pp. 1, 6 Vedeler, Marianne, Silk for the Vikings, Ancient Textiles Series, 15 (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2014) Venable, Shannon L., Gold: A Cultural Encyclopedia (Santa Barbara: ABC-Clio, 2011) Vickery, Amanda, Behind Closed Doors: At Home in Georgian England (Yale: Yale University Press, 2009) ———, ‘His and Hers: Gender Consumption and Household Accounting in Eighteenth-Century England’, Past & Present, 1 (2006), 12–38 Vigliani, Enrico C., ‘Carbon Disulphide Poisoning in Viscose Rayon Factories’, British Journal of Industrial Medicine, 11 (1954), 235–44 ‘Viking Ship Is Here, The’, New York Times (New York, 14 June 1893), p. 1 ‘Viking Ship Sails, The’, New York Times, (New York, 2 May 1893), p. 11 Vogt, Yngve, ‘Norwegian Vikings Purchased Silk from Persia’, Apollon, 2013 <https://www.apollon.uio.no/english/vikings.html> [accessed 31 July 2017] Vollrath, Fritz, ‘Follow-up Queries’, 14 February 2017 ———, ‘The Complexity of Silk under the Spotlight of Synthetic Biology’, Biochemical Society Transactions, 44 (2016), 1151–7 <https://doi.org/10.1042/BST20160058> Vollrath, Fritz, and Selden, Paul, ‘The Role of Behavior in the Evolution of Spiders, Silks, and Webs’, Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics, 38 (2007), 819–46 Vollrath, Fritz, Zoology Professor, University of Oxford, Skype interview with author, February 2017 W Wade, Nicholas, ‘Why Humans and Their Fur Parted Ways’, New York Times, 19 August 2003, section News, p. F1 Walker, Annabel, Aurel Stein: Pioneer of the Silk Road (London: John Murray, 1995) Walmsley, Roy, World Prison Population List, Eleventh Edition (Institute for Criminal Policy Research, October 2015) Walton Rogers, Penelope, Textile Production at 16–22 Coppergate, The Archaeology of York: The Small Finds (York: Council for British Archaeology, 1997), xvii Wardle, Patricia, ‘Seventeenth-Century Black Silk Lace in the Rijksmuseum’, Bulletin van Het Rijksmuseum, 33 (1985), 207–25 Wayland Barber, Elizabeth, Prehistoric Textiles: The Development of Cloth in the Neolithic and Bronze Ages (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991) ———, Women’s Work: The First 20,000 Years.

Permanent Record
by Edward Snowden
Published 16 Sep 2019

Once Wendy goes back, reassess things. 6.3.2013 Brought Wendy to the airport, to fly back to MD. She didn’t want to go back, but she has work. I took her as far as I could go and hugged her. I didn’t want to let go of the hug. Then she got in line for security. Came home to find Ed’s Skype status has changed to: “Sorry but it had to be done.” I don’t know when he changed it. Could’ve been today, could’ve been last month. I just checked on Skype and happened to notice it, and I’m crazy enough to think he’s sending me a message. 6.7.2013 Woke up to a call from NSA Special Agent Megan Smith asking me to call her back about Ed. Still feeling sick with fever. I had to drop off my car at the autobody shop and Tod gave me a ride back on his Ducati.

…

Additionally, Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act allows the IC to target any foreigner outside the United States deemed likely to communicate “foreign intelligence information”—a broad category of potential targets that includes journalists, corporate employees, academics, aid workers, and countless others innocent of any wrongdoing whatsoever. This legislation was being used by the NSA to justify its two most prominent Internet surveillance methods: the PRISM program and upstream collection. PRISM enabled the NSA to routinely collect data from Microsoft, Yahoo!, Google, Facebook, Paltalk, YouTube, Skype, AOL, and Apple, including email, photos, video and audio chats, Web-browsing content, search engine queries, and all other data stored on their clouds, transforming the companies into witting coconspirators. Upstream collection, meanwhile, was arguably even more invasive. It enabled the routine capturing of data directly from private-sector Internet infrastructure—the switches and routers that shunt Internet traffic worldwide, via the satellites in orbit and the high-capacity fiber-optic cables that run under the ocean.

Nomad Capitalist: How to Reclaim Your Freedom With Offshore Bank Accounts, Dual Citizenship, Foreign Companies, and Overseas Investments
by Andrew Henderson
Published 8 Apr 2018

The former Soviet state of Estonia has become an excellent example of innovation in both the private sector and government. In 2016, US presidential candidate Jeb Bush suggested that his country should adopt a tax system as simple as that of Estonia. Thirty years earlier, Estonia was part of a failed state minutes away from dissolution. In one generation, Estonians went from boiling stones for dinner to inventing Skype and creating one of the most transparent governments on earth. The reality is that none of us can know what will happen next. Like bankruptcy, countries tend to become irrelevant very slowly… and then all at once. Betting the house on the future of one country is risky, but fortunately you can diversify and take the best parts of each place.

…

It also gives you better travel and investment options, as well as another place you can go and live, among other benefits. Chapter Five: Birth, Love, and Children Is This Only a Young Man’s Game? Dateline: Hanoi, Vietnam “Where did your mother go into labor?” a throaty voice greeted me at the other end of the Skype call. I had just arrived in Hanoi – the 1000-year-old historic capital city of Vietnam – where I was about to embark on a six-month scouting trip throughout Southeast Asia looking for investment opportunities. In preparation, I had arranged calls with several fellow nomads with experience in the area.

…

In addition to business-friendly laws, Estonia is finding innovative ways to attract capital and preserve freedom, including their e-residency program and zero corporate tax model. It has some of the best offshore banks in the world and its capital, Tallinn, is fast becoming a hub for entrepreneurship. As any Estonian will proudly tell you, Tallinn is where Skype was founded. The Balkans present an even greater opportunity. It is a very interesting, emerging region. If you want to invest somewhere that is absent the EU but close to European markets, the Balkans will provide you with more area to grow. Montenegro is very open to business and foreign investors.

My South American Odyssey: on a budget
by Doug Thompson​
Published 2 Apr 2016

We lost, but noticed that the Germans weren’t drinking all of there beer when we scored a shot. In most countries this would be seen as a foul. However the referee was drunk too and awarded the title to the Germans, but at least we were honest sportsmen. What a night! Really hung-over in the morning. Rob and I feel this is a good opportunity to skype with our girlfriends before we grab a vodka and orange to cure the hangover. Everyone searches for that elusive hangover cure when it’s standing right in front of their eyes. All it requires is that you drink more alcohol than the night before. As I said from the beginning, I hope my words inspire you not advise.

The Orbital Perspective: Lessons in Seeing the Big Picture From a Journey of 71 Million Miles
by Astronaut Ron Garan and Muhammad Yunus
Published 2 Feb 2015

“Because of the networking that we have from the International Space Station,” Polk continued, “if I needed something, I could reach out and touch the Japanese flight surgeon, the ESA [European Space Agency] flight surgeon, the Canadian flight surgeon, the Russian flight surgeon. We are a global network.” Technology also played a big role in the operation and enabled much of the international collaboration, as well as communication with the miners underground. Social media, e-mail, Skype, and other communications capability enabled quick organization and 108â•…  L O O K I N G F O R WARD information transfer between the two hundred or so people on-site and the rest of the world. And the entire world stepped up with ideas, designs, and support. Another key factor in the collaboration was the operation leaders’ insistence on open, honest, two-way dialogue, and their leadership by example.

…

The Africans consulted with the folks in Nepal to show them what they were doing, and surely they will help the next region to come online. Each region is sharing knowledge to build a global network. For the most part, this is accomplished through commonly available social and communication platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, or Skype. For Irwin, the most rewarding result is that SERVIR catalyzed the involvement of so many elite scientists and researchers around the world. “It’s been a really nice example of scientific diplomacy,” he said. “It’s been a sharing and a two-way street of knowledge exchange. We may have some of the satellite knowledge and the applications knowledge, but it’s the people in the field that understand how their system works, and we’re bringing those two together.”

Code Red: Know Your Flow, Unlock Your Super Powers and Create a Bloody Amazing Life. Period.
by Lisa Clark
Published 15 Feb 2015

You are a bearded man-god + I’m in a deep bow to you for embracing, honouring + celebrating me + my cycle, and for knowing that on Day 25 when I’m Kali Ma incarnate, it’s best to feed me chocolate + work a late shift. I love you hard. My BFF, Susie – I LOVE YOU. Tamara Protassow – word minx and woman o’ awesome, thank you so much for adding punctuation to my 5-line-long sentences, for delicious Skype calls and for totally getting me and this work. Best. Editrix. Ever. The gorgeous women who have shared their SHE story in this book. As MM, said, ‘my story is your story.’ When you share your story, you allow others to hear their truth – thank you, thank you, thank you. Mark Leruste – for being French, having an awesome beard and for being the most badass cheerleader, coach, friend + lipstick buyer.

…

Creatrix of the SHE Flow protocol – yoga, sacred movement and ancient menstrual health practices – Lisa works directly with women who: Bleed Suffer from menstrual health related dis-ease, irregular bleeds, infertility and PMS symptoms Want to work with their cycle and not against it Want to access their monthly super powers so they can create a bloody amazing business, relationship + life How to work with Lisa 1-to-1 SHE Flow sessions: menstrual mentoring + consultations in person or via skype Womb wellness + love-your-lady-parts sessions SHE Flow Yoga classes – a fierce + feminine movement practice that puts the ‘ass’ into asana The SHE Chocolate Experience – Yoga nidra, radical yin resting + inner journeying co-partnered with the transformative and healing power of a SHE Chocolate ceremony Crack Your Lady Code – 1-day in-person workshop Explore Your Lady Landscape – 28 day online programme For more details on Lisa and how you can work with her, visit: www.thesassyshe.com or email her at: Lisa@thesassyshe.com LOVE BITES Feedback from amazing women who have worked with Lisa… My belief is that the Divine Feminine is calling more of us to allow her expression to come through us.

Maeve in America: Essays by a Girl From Somewhere Else
by Maeve Higgins
Published 6 Aug 2018

There is no distinction made between a throwaway line or a joke that contains an actual kernel of truth, a clue as to where the joker’s loyalty may lie, so it’s safer never to utter either. The subversive power of comedy is taken seriously by these dictators and the systems that exist to uphold them, and that is a legacy that would take years to undo. Ali Farzat, a Syrian artist and head of the Arab Cartoonists Association, joined the workshop by Skype. He called from Kuwait where he now lives, having left Syria after being attacked by government forces who smashed his hands and left him for dead. Mark had tried to get him to Erbil but it proved impossible because of visas and paperwork. Still, the call went well, with the Iraqi cartoonists, including some elderly men, huddled around a phone exchanging low, gentle words of encouragement while a young woman, herself a political cartoonist, filmed the scene and wiped tears from her eyes.

…

She also told me that it’s helpful to have someone in your life who can gently suggest you may be overthinking a situation that isn’t as complicated as you think. I assured her that I do not have a problem with overthinking. “I’m not prone to that, I’m a person of action, unafraid of anything!” I insisted before we finished Skyping. I then went immediately to the nearest body of water, the lake in Prospect Park, and sat cross-legged on the ground, staring at the water until both of my legs went dead, thinking. I thought about a cure for loneliness and about trying something different because what I’m doing now isn’t working anymore, and I thought about not being afraid and also about how I tend to overthink things, so perhaps it was time for action.

The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom
by Yochai Benkler
Published 14 May 2006

Here, too, perhaps more dramatically than in either of the two other functionalities, we have seen the development of sharing-based techniques. The most direct transfer of the design characteristics of peer-to-peer networks to communications has been the successful development of Skype--an Internet telephony utility that allows the owners of computers to have voice conversations with each other over the Internet for free, and to dial into the public telephone network for a fee. As of this writing, Skype is already used by more than two million users at any given moment in time. They use a FastTrack-like architecture to share their computing and communications resources to create a global [pg 87] telephone system running on top of the Internet.

…

BitTorrent and eDonkey were both used by the Swarthmore students when their college shut down their Internet connection in response to Diebold's letter threatening action under the service provider liability provisions of the DMCA. The founders of KaZaa have begun to offer an Internet telephony utility, Skype, which allows users to make phone calls from one computer to another for free, and from their computer to the telephone network for a small fee. Skype is a p2p technology. 742 In other words, p2p is developing as a general approach toward producing distributed data storage and retrieval systems, just as open wireless networks and distributed computing are emerging to take advantage of personal devices to produce distributed communications and computation systems, respectively.

…

See computer producer surplus, 297 Producers professionalism, mass media, 356 Production capital, 21-23, 73, 89, 120, 195, 216, 309 control of, 195-196 cost minimization and benefit maximization, 89 fixed and initial costs, 216 production costs as limiting, 309 transaction costs, 120 Production inputs, 81, 108, 135-148, 140, 149, 214, 238, 281, 285, 296, 335, 355, 366, 397, 463, 531, 702 Wikipedia project, 140-148 existing information, 81-83, 108 immersive entertainment, 149-150 individual action as modality, 238-243 large-audience programming, 355, 366-375, 463 limited by mass media, 355-358 pricing, 214-219 propaganda, 285, 397-402, 531-536 systematically blocked by policy routers, 281-284, 296, 355-358, 702 universal intake, 335-336, 355-358 Production inputs NASA Clickworkers project, 137-139 Production of information, 15, 79, 88, 174, 194, 403, 815 feasibility conditions for social production, 194-207 networked public sphere capacity for, 403-415 nonrivalry, 79-83, 174 physical constraints on, 15-17 strategies of, 88-99 Project Gutenberg, 164-165, 264 Propaganda, 285, 397, 531 Stolen Honor documentary, 397-402 manipulating culture, 531-536 Property ownership, 59-64, 100, 121, 252-257, 273, 570 autonomy and, 273-278 control over, as asymmetric, 121-123 effects of exclusive rights, 100-104 trade policy, 570-571 Proprietary rights, 57-66, 88, 89, 100, 114-117, 171, 177, 290, 291, 294, 346, 348, 501, 522, 539, 556, 568, 578, 594, 598, 598, 611, 624, 671, 719, 729, 754, 764, 769, 778, 782, 787, 791, 796, 809 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), 671, 729-736 agricultural biotechnologies, 594-596, 598-608 commons-based research, 568-583 contractual enclosure, 778-781 copyright issues, 769-778 cultural environment and, 501 database protection, 787-790 domain names, 754-758 dominance of, overstated, 809-811 effects of, 100-104 enclosure movement, 671-672 global welfare and research, 568-572, 624-628 information-embedded goods and tools, 556-558 infrastructure ownership, 294-295 international harmonization, 796-801 justice vs., 539-541 medical and pharmaceutical innovation, 611 models of, 89-94 openness of personal computers, 719-720 peer-to-peer networks and, 171-172 radio patents, 346, 348-349 scientific publication, 578-580 software patents, 764-766 strategies for information production, 88-99 trademark dilutation, 522, 782-786 trespass to chattels, 791-795 university alliances, 598-604 wireless communications policy, 291 wireless networks, 177, 290-292 Proprietary rights, inefficiency of, 79-87, 100-104, 208-224, 221, 571, 810-813 capacity reallocation, 221-224 property protections, 571 Public Library of Science (PLoS), 579 Public goods vs. nonrival goods, 79-83 Public opinion, 338, 358, 367, 373 iconic representations of, 367, 373 synthesis of, 338, 358 Public sphere, 27, 31-34, 324-328, 327, 331, 340, 356-358, 376-484, 385, 403, 416, 425, 429, 437, 467, 469, 473, 481, 515, 631, 642, 649, 686, 817-818 Diebold Election Systems case study, 403-415, 469, 686-689 Internet as concentrated vs. chaotic, 429-436 authoritarian control, working around, 473-480 basic communication tools, 385-393 critiques that Internet democratizes, 416-428 future of, 481-484 liberal, design characteristics of, 331-339 loose affiliations, 27-28, 631, 642, 649-653 mass media platform for, 327-330, 340-341 topology and connectivity of, 437-466 transparency of Internet culture, 515-527 watchdog functionality, 425, 467-472 Public sphere relationships, 559, 577-583 see social relations and norms publication, scientific, 559, 577-583 Public-domain data, 559-560 Putnum, Robert, 641 Q Quoting on Web, 392 R RCA (Radio Corporation of America), 346, 350-351 RCA strategy, 91-92, 93 RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America), 733 Radio, 341-354, 345, 346, 348, 363, 655, 682, 711-712 as platform for human connection, 655-656 as public sphere platform, 345 market concentration, 363 patents, 346, 348-349 Radio Act of 1927, 352 Radio B92, 475 Radio telephony, 349 Raw data, 559-560, 787 database protection, 787-790 Rawls, John, 338, 505, 544-545, 547 Raymond, Eric, 132, 264, 464 Raz, Joseph, 269 Reallocating excess capacity, 166-181, 221-224, 297, 620-622 Reallocation, 221-224, 291, 571 property protections, 571 wireless communications policy, 291 Redistribution theory, 544-545 Referencing on the Web, 392, 437, 791 linking as trespass, 791-795 power law distribution of Web site connections, 437-466 Regional clusters in network topology, 34 Regulated commons, 122 Regulating information, efficiency of, 79-87, 100-104, 208-224, 810-813 Regulation by social norms, 27, 41, 67, 120, 145-148, 157, 183, 208, 273, 421, 430, 459, 629-667, 631, 649, 654, 659, 664, 818 Internet and human coexistence, 664-666 Internet as platform for, 654-658 Slashdot mechanisms for, 157-160 enforced norms with software, 659-663 fragmentation of communication, 41, 421, 430-431, 459-460, 818-819 loose affiliations, 27-28, 631, 649-653 motivation within, 183-187 property, commons, and autonomy, 273-278 software for, emergence of, 659-663 technology-defined structure, 67-76 thickening of preexisting relations, 631 transaction costs, 120, 208-224 working with social expectations, 649-653 Regulations by social norms, 642 loose affiliations, 642 Reichman, Jerome, 789 Relevance filtering, 34, 135, 151-161, 152, 153, 154, 155, 204, 297, 314-322, 317, 336-337, 355, 358, 397, 423, 425, 426, 429, 462-466, 467 Amazon, 152-153 Google, 153 Open Directory Project (ODP), 154 Slashdot, 155-161, 204-205 as distributed system, 317-318 as public good, 34 by authoritarian countries, 426 capacity for, by mass media, 358 concentration of mass-media power, 297, 397-402, 423, 429-436 power of mass media owners, 355, 358-365, 397-402 watchdog functionality, 425, 467-472 Repeater networks, 179-180 Research, commons-based, 568-583, 584, 609, 624-628 food and agricultural innovation, 584-608 medical and pharmaceutical innovation, 609-623 Responsive communications, 358 Reuse of information, 81-83, 108 Reynolds, Glenn, 470 Rheingold, Howard, 393, 472, 634-636 Right to read, 771 Romantic Maximizer model, 90-92 Rose, Carol, 122 Routers, controlling information flow with, 281-284, 296, 298, 355-358, 702 influence exaction, 296, 298-300 Rubin, Aviel, 408 S SBG (Sinclair Broadcast Group), 360, 396-402 SETI@home project, 168-170 Sabel, Charles, 123, 218, 266 Saltzer, Jerome, 705 Sampling, digital (music), 777 Samuelson, Pamela, 63, 730 Sarnoff, David, 351 Scholarly Lawyers model, 91-92, 94 Scientific data, access to, 559-560 Scientific publication, 559, 577 commons-based welfare development, 577-583 Scope of loose relations, 27-28 Scope of loose relationships, 631 Scott, William, 622 Second Life game environment, 150, 263 Security Systems Standards and Certification Act, 721 Security of context, 273-278 Security-related policy, 146, 695, 803-807 vandalism on Wikipedia, 146-148 Self-archiving of scientific publications, 580-581 Self-determinims, extrinsic motivation and, 187 Self-esteem, extrinsic motivation and, 187 Self-organization, 40, 140, 154, 218, 525 Open Directory Project, 154 See clusters in network topology self-reflection, 40-41, 525-526 Wikipedia project, 140-148 self-identification as transaction cost, 218 Services, software, 575-576 Shaping perceptions of others, 281-288, 285, 295, 298, 315-316, 397, 531 influence exaction, 295-296, 298-300 with propaganda, 285, 397-402, 531-536 Shapiro, Carl, 558 Shareable goods, 220-222 Sharing, 91, 98, 118-181, 166-181, 221, 225, 239, 297, 613, 620, 709, 711 capacity, 711-712 emergence of social production, 225-243 excess capacity, 166-181, 221, 297, 620-622 limited sharing networks, 91, 98 open wireless networks, 709-714 radio capacity, 711-712 technology dependence of, 239-240 university patents, 613-618 Shirky, Clay, 81, 320, 455, 660 "shoulders of giants", 81-83 Shrink-wrap licenses, 778-781 Sidewalk.com, 794 Simon, Herbert, 441 Sinclair Broadcast Group (SBG), 360, 396-402 Skype utility, 176, 741 Slashdot, 155-161, 204-205 Small-worlds effect, 454-457 Social action, 55-56 Social capital, 189, 638-639, 640-653, 643, 649 networked society, 649-653 thickening of preexisting relations, 643-647 Social clustering, 446-453 Social production, relationship with market-based business, 244-250 Social regulations and norms, 145-148 Social relations and norms, 27, 41, 67, 120, 157, 183, 208, 273, 421, 430, 459, 629-667, 631, 642, 649, 654, 659, 664, 818 Internet and human coexistence, 664-666 Internet as platform for, 654-658 Slashdot mechanisms for, 157-160 enforced norms with software, 659-663 fragmentation of communication, 41, 421, 430-431, 459-460, 818-819 loose affiliations, 27-28, 631, 642, 649-653 motivation within, 183-187 property, commons, and autonomy, 273-278 software for, emergence of, 659-663 technology-defined structure, 67-76 thickening of preexisting relations, 631 transaction costs, 120, 208-224 working with social expectations, 649-653 Social software, 659-663 Social structure, defined by technology, 67-76 Social-democratic theories of justice, 550-554 Software, 573, 659, 764 commons-based welfare development, 573-576 patents for, 764-766 social, 659-663 Software, open-source, 19, 37, 96, 125-132, 202, 247, 573, 762, 803 as competition to market based business, 247 commons-based welfare development, 573-576 human development and justice, 37 policy on, 762-763 project modularity and granularity, 202 security considerations, 803-807 Solla Price, Derek (de Solla Price), 441 Solum, Lawrence, 476-477 Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998, 776, 798 Specificity of price, 214-219 Speilberg, Steven, 732 Stakes of information policy, 808-829 Stallman, Richard, 20, 129-131 Standardizing creativity, 214-219 Starr, Paul, 45, 342-343, 682 State, role of, 52-56 Static Web pages, 388-389 Steiner, Peter, 368 Stolen Honor documentary, 397-402 Storage capacity, 175, 218 transaction costs, 218-244 Strategies for information production, 88-99, 120, 208 transaction costs, 120, 208-224 Strogatz, Steven, 454 Strongly connected Web sites, 448-450 Structure of mass media, 327-330 Structure of network, 171, 179, 278, 279, 319, 392, 437, 448, 451, 455, 737, 791, 805 autonomy and, 278, 279-303 emergent ordered structure, 455-460 linking as trespass, 791-795 moderately linked sites, 451 peer-to-peer networks, 171-175, 737-752, 805 power law distribution of Web site connections, 437-466 quoting on Web, 392 repeater network, 179-180 strongly connected Web sites, 448-450 Structure of organizations, 200-207, 221, 543 granularity, 200-203, 221-222 justice and, 543-545 modularity, 200-203 Structured production, 200-207, 204, 221 granularity, 200-203, 221-222 maintenance of cooperation, 204-205 modularity, 200-203 Sunstein, Cass, 421-422 Supercomputers, 167-168 Supplantation of real-world interaction, 631, 642-647 Supply-side effects of information production, 95-96 Sustainability of peer production, 208-224 Symmetric commons, 122 Syngenta, 597 Synthesis of public opinion, 338, 358 See also accreditation, 358 T TalkingPoints site, 398 Taste, changes in, 249 Taylor, Fredrick, 265 Teaching materials, 582 Technology, 44, 67, 111, 239, 385-393, 594, 659, 813 agricultural, 594-610 costs of, 813 dependence on, for sharing, 239-240 effectiveness of nonmarket strategies, 111-113 enabling social sharing as production modality, 239-243 role of, 44-46 social software, 659-663 social structure defined by, 67-76 Telephone, as platform for human connection, 657 Television, 262, 341, 355, 363, 366, 463, 638, 646 Internet use vs., 638-639, 646 culture of, 262 large-audience programming, 355, 366-375, 463-464 market concentration, 363 Tendrils (Web topology), 448-450 Term of copyright, 776, 798-799 Text distribution as platform for human connection, 655-656 Text messaging, 393, 647, 651 Textbooks, 582 The Halloween Memo, 245 The Memory Hole, 203 Thickening of preexisting relations, 631, 642-647 Thinness of online relations, 638 Thurmond, Strom, 470 Ticketmaster, 794 Tirole, Jean, 187, 207 Tirole, Jean,von Hippel, Eric, 207 Titmuss, Richard, 186, 343 Tocqueville, Alexis, de, 342 Toll broadcasting, 349-351, 349-351 Tools, information-embedded, 558 Toomey, Jenny, 245 Topical clustering, 446-453 Topology, network, 171, 179, 278, 279, 319, 392, 437, 448, 451, 455, 737, 791, 805 autonomy and, 278, 279-303 emergent ordered structure, 455-460 linking as trespass, 791-795 moderately linked sites, 451 peer-to-peer networks, 171-175, 737-752, 805 power law distribution of Web site connections, 437-466 quoting on Web, 392 repeater networks, 179-180 strongly connected Web sites, 448-450 Torvalds, Linus, 130, 205, 264 Trade policy, 568-572, 624-628, 798-799 Trademark dilutation, 522, 782-786 Traditional model of communication, 16, 29, 31, 57-66, 120, 146, 208, 244, 309, 327, 340, 356, 539, 611, 671, 674-807, 679, 685, 695, 803, 808, 825-826 autonomy and, 309-310 barriers to justice, 539-540 emerging role of mass media, 327-330, 340-341, 356-358 enclosure movement, 671-672 mapping, framework for, 685-698 medical innovation and, 611 path dependency, 679-684 relationship with social producers, 244-250 security-related policy, 146-148, 695, 803-807 shift away from, 31-34 stakes of information policy, 808-829 structure of mass media, 327-330 transaction costs, 120, 208-224 Transaction costs, 120, 208-224 Transfer of knowledge, 562 Transparency of Internet culture, 515-527 Transparency of free software, 575 Transport channel policy, 701-717, 704, 709, 715 broadband regulation, 704-708 municipal broadband initiatives, 715-717 open wireless networks, 709-714 Trespass to chattels, 791-795 Troll filters (Slashdot), 157 Trusted systems, computers as, 721-722 Tubes (Web topology), 448-450 U UCC (Uniform Commercial Code), 780 UCITA (Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act), 778-781 Uhlir, Paul, 789 Universal intake, 335-336, 355-358 University alliances, 598-604, 613-618 University-owned-radio, 347 Unregulated commons, 122 Users as consumers, 249-250 V Vacuity of online relations, 638 Vaidhyanathan, Silva, 501 Value of online contact, 638 Vandalism on Wikipedia, 146-148 Variety of behavioral options, 286-288, 316 Varmus, Harold, 559 Virtual communities, 630-639 see also social relations and norms, 630 Visibility of mass media, 356 Von Hippel, Eric, 20, 98, 250 Voting, electronic, 403-415, 469, 686-689 Vouching for others, network of, 653 W WELL (Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link), 636 Walter, Benjamin, 530 Walzer, Michael, 508 Watchdog functionality, 425, 467-472 Watts, Duncan, 454 Weak ties of online relations, 638, 644 Web, 387-391, 392, 437, 448, 463, 753, 759, 791 backbone sites, 448-450, 463-464 browser wars, 759-761 domain name addresses, 753-758 linking as trespass, 791-795 power law distribution of Web site connections, 437-466 quoting from other sites, 392 Weber, Steve, 205 Welfare, 255, 297, 427, 542, 550, 555, 568 commons-based research, 568-583 commons-based strategies, 550-554 digital divide, 427 freedom from constraint, 297-299 information-based advantages, 555-562 liberal theories of justice, 542-549 see also justice and human development, 542 Well-being, 50 Wellman, Barry, 45, 642, 644, 650 Westinghouse, 346-347, 350-351 Wet-lab science, peer production of, 622-623 Wikibooks project, 201 Wikipedia project, 140-148, 205, 519 Barbie doll content, 519-521 Wikis as social software, 659-663 Williamson, Oliver, 120 Winner, Langdon, 45 Wired communications, 290, 704 market structure of, 290 policy on, 704-708 Wireless communications, 177-179, 289, 392, 437, 448, 463, 709, 715, 753, 759, 791 backbone sites, 448-450, 463-464 browser wars, 759-761 domain name addresses, 753-758 linking as trespass, 791-795 municipal broadband initiatives, 715-717 open networks, 709-714 power law distribution of Web site connections, 437-466 privatization vs. commons, 289-292 quoting from other sites, 392 Writable Web, 388-391 Written communications as platform for human connection, 655-656 X Y Z Zipf, George, 441 Zittrain, Jonathan, 477

To Save Everything, Click Here: The Folly of Technological Solutionism
by Evgeny Morozov
Published 15 Nov 2013

It’s this propensity to view “the Internet” as a source of wisdom and policy advice that transforms it from a fairly uninteresting set of cables and network routers into a seductive and exciting ideology—perhaps today’s über-ideology. Science and technology writer Steven Johnson has offered perhaps the sharpest summary of this ideology in Future Perfect. For Johnson, “the Internet” is much more than just a cheap way of sending Skype messages or adding hilariously unfunny captions to photos of cats. Rather, it’s an intellectual template for how society itself should be reorganized; it’s not “the solution to the problem, but a way of thinking about the problem.” Thus, writes Johnson, “one could use the Internet directly to improve people’s lives, but also learn from the way the Internet had been organized, and apply those principles to help improve the way city governments worked, or school systems taught students.”

…

It starts from the premise that openness of the platform is the main reason why “the Internet” has unleashed so much innovation. On “the Internet,” no one has to ask for permission to start a new service. Google could build a search engine without negotiating with ISPs. Wikipedia could build an encyclopedia without negotiating with the likes of Microsoft or AOL. Skype could build its impressive software without negotiating with AT&T. As an explanation of what has happened in the last two decades, Zittrain’s is a very elegant and pithy theory. However, generativity also prescribes how things should be done in the future: if we want this great wave of innovation to continue, the argument goes, we should maintain—even proactively defend—the openness of “the Internet.”

…

It seems that Internet-centrism turns our most insightful analysts into Martians, who have just landed on Earth and have a hard time imagining how things are run over here. So, in their doomed quest to understand these quirky humans, they venture into a modern university, where they encounter professors, who spend hours coauthoring papers with strangers on other continents, browsing academic journals housed on servers miles away, giving Skype presentations at international conferences. “Ah,” say the Martians, “we get it: this Internet thingy is the network that generates all your knowledge. Let’s drink to that!” Poor Martians: they’d never understand that the real knowledge-generating networks lie elsewhere—they tie together scholars, universities, conferences, computer servers, books, norms and practices, the phenomena they study and the tools and laboratories that allow them to do so.

The History of the Future: Oculus, Facebook, and the Revolution That Swept Virtual Reality
by Blake J. Harris
Published 19 Feb 2019

Then, as the burst of excitement subsided and they felt more like just two guys eating pizza—permutations of partnership running through each of their heads—they both couldn’t help but wonder: So how, exactly, is this relationship going to work? Chapter 7 Freedom Is Happiness June/July 2012 “I NEED TO UPDATE YOU ON SOME STUFF,” LUCKEY TYPED TO HIS TRUE-BLUE buddy Chris Dycus over Skype the day after his meeting with Iribe. “What stuff?” Dycus asked, assuming it would probably be something related to their beloved online forum, ModRetro. “Sony offered to hire me after E3,” Luckey said. “$140k salary.” “Holy crap,” Dycus replied. Here he was, just a senior in high school—graduating in a few weeks and then taking community college classes in the fall—and his best friend—who was only one year older—was being offered the job of a lifetime.

…

But he wasn’t sure he was comfortable with resigning to make that happen. “I know it’s a lot to ask,” Iribe told him. “But you can’t go on behalf of Oculus while you’re still employed at Gaikai. So we have to decide what to do here about QuakeCon . . .” “WANT TO COME TO QUAKECON?” LUCKEY MESSAGED HIS FRIEND CHRIS DYCUS over Skype. CHRIS DYCUS: What’s happening there? PALMER LUCKEY: We have a booth. And I am on a panel. CHRIS DYCUS: Ooh, sounds sweet. But wouldn’t it be sold out by now? PALMER LUCKEY: We don’t need no stinking passes! By the way: Brendan emailed you. Wants to have a phone chat. I should brief you really fast CHRIS DYCUS: All right.

…

You guys know I’m an open book:-) Bettner was a true optimist, and he truly believed in VR. But having gone through a high-priced acquisition himself, he feared what this would mean for his friends at Oculus. MEANWHILE, IN HAWAII, A PAIR OF ENTREPRENEURS WHOSE PARTNERSHIP HAD recently dissolved had a heated discuss over Skype: “Been trying to reach you for a few days,” typed one of the entrepreneurs: Ron Igra. “I’m going after Oculus . . .” “My views on taking Palmer to court are the same as before,” typed the other entrepreneur: Thomas Seidl. “That it makes bad financial sense for you and me.” In response to this, Igra called Seidl—who answered only to immediately hang up.

The Great Firewall of China
by James Griffiths;
Published 15 Jan 2018

“Go, go, go,” he said. It was the last time she would ever see him in person. * Over a year after that day in the Beijing airport, Jewher sat by her computer in Bloomington, where she had been living in de facto exile, refreshing her browser for news on her father’s trial. She had talked to Ilham on Skype every day between her leaving China and his arrest in January 2014. She still had the suitcase he’d packed for his move to the US. Accused of separatism and inciting ethnic hatred, few among Ilham’s supporters doubted that he would be found guilty. Chinese courts have a conviction rate of nearly 100 per cent.2 Five years earlier, Ilham had predicted in an interview that he would be imprisoned, maybe even executed.

…

Badiucao and Rebel Pepper were among the early victims of this type of overseas harassment by pro-government trolls, but online abuse is a common tactic, said Sophie Beach, editor of China Digital Times, the website founded by Xiao Qiang that focuses on censorship and free expression. It shows how far the government is willing to go in stamping out dissent even beyond its borders. “Dissidents and activists have been subjected to very personal attacks,” she told me via Skype from California. “The kind of language used in the attacks is the kind of language used in government propaganda.” In the years since then, trolls like those who went after Badiucao have become emboldened, launching campaigns on foreign social media against other dissidents, Australian and Taiwanese celebrities, and even the president of Taiwan, after Tsai Ing-wen irritated Beijing by attending an official flag-raising ceremony.15 China’s online influence effort is sprawling, dwarfing even those of Russia and the US.

…

Glenn Greenwald, who helped break the NSA spying story, almost missed out on it due to his lack of a secure email account and initial unwillingness to use the clunky PGP encryption method to communicate with Snowden.39 Telegram, along with a similar app, Signal, which was endorsed by Snowden himself, helped make encrypted communications easy and straightforward.40 Increased competition from these apps in turn forced larger tech companies to adopt similar security protocols, with Facebook-owned WhatsApp and Microsoft-owned Skype both adopting end-to-end encryption for fear of losing market share. Encryption doesn’t only hamper spies; it can also help bypass filtering, making DPI impossible and forcing censors to either block all traffic from the app or allow it through. China swiftly banned Telegram, with an editorial in the People’s Daily saying it had been used by human rights lawyers to coordinate “attacks on the party and government”.41 Chinese dissidents weren’t the only ones using the platform, however, and if the timing of the Snowden revelations helped Telegram, another geopolitical development proved almost fatal.

Central America
by Carolyn McCarthy , Greg Benchwick , Joshua Samuel Brown , Alex Egerton , Matthew Firestone , Kevin Raub , Tom Spurling and Lucas Vidgen
Published 2 Jan 2001

Many towns and cities frequented by tourists have privately run call offices where you can make international calls for reasonable rates. If the telephone connection is by internet, the rates can be very cheap (Q1 a minute to the USA, Europe and Australia), but line quality is unpredictable. Many travelers use an account with a VOIP service like Skype (www.skype.com). If an internet cafe does not have Skype installed, it can usually be downloaded in a matter of minutes. Headphone and microphone equipment in Guatemala is of varying quality, if it exists at all – if you’re planning on using internet cafe computers to make calls, buy earbuds with a microphone attached before you leave – they take up very little room in your pack and you can plug them into the front of most computers in the country.

…

TELEPHONE Local phone calls are cheap, but domestic long-distance and international calls can be expensive unless you call from casetas telefónicas (or locutorios; call offices where an on-the-spot operator connects the call for you), which offer international calls from M$3 or M$5 per minute. Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP) calling like Skype is available from many internet cafes and is a great money-saver. Area codes have three digits and local numbers have seven. To call Mexico from abroad, dial your international access code, then 52 (Mexico’s country code), followed by the area code and the seven-digit number. To call abroad from Mexico, dial 00, followed by country code, area code and number.

…

A second branch, one block east, changes US dollars and euros. Visa & MasterCard ATM (5a Av Norte) Facing Parque Central. Post Post office (cnr 4a Calle Poniente & Calz de Santa Lucía Norte) West of Parque Central, near the market. Telephone Most internet cafes offer cut-rate international calls, though Skype calls may be even cheaper. Conher (5521-2823; 4a Calle Poniente 5) Charges Q0.75 per minute to USA or Europe. Tourist Information Antigua Guatemala: the City and its Heritage, by long-time Antigua resident Elizabeth Bell, is well worth picking up at a bookstore. It describes all of the city’s important buildings and museums, and neatly encapsulates Antigua’s history and fiestas.

The Cheapskate Next Door: The Surprising Secrets of Americans Living Happily Below Their Means
by Jeff Yeager
Published 8 Jun 2010

Free meals for the kids (MyKidsEatFree.com): A nationwide directory of thousands of restaurants where kids can eat for free when accompanied by an adult. Free audio books (LibriVox.org): Volunteers record books found in the public domain (i.e., no longer covered by copyright), and you can download their recordings from this nonprofit website. Free calling (Skype.com): Use Skype software and worldwide computer-to-computer calling is free. Another cheap—but not free—favorite is the $40 magicJack device (magicJack.com) that plugs into the USB port on your computer and allows you to make unlimited local and domestic long-distance calls for $20 a year. Free foreign languages (bbc.co.uk/languages): Jumpstart your training in a wide range of foreign languages using these online audio and visual teaching tools, compliments of the British Broadcasting Corporation.

Elsewhere, U.S.A: How We Got From the Company Man, Family Dinners, and the Affluent Society to the Home Office, BlackBerry Moms,and Economic Anxiety
by Dalton Conley
Published 27 Dec 2008

During the 1990s, she traveled in the backseat of the car on family trips with her laptop humming, the power cord hooked into the cigarette lighter, and a black metal rectangular box clipped onto the screen, dashing off e-mails in real time Awhile chatting on another black boxlike cell phone. The laptop clip-on was called “Ricochet,” a product that used radio networks to provide linkage to the Internet as we sped through California’s Santa Clara Valley before the advent of GPRS (Internet service) on BlackBerries and Treos. A few years later, she became an early adopter of Skype—the Internet-based phone system— so that she could video-conference with Australia (her home continent), the UK, and Belgium about various projects. When our son would wet his bed, he would wander out to a blazingly lit living room to find his mother discussing project proposals for cageless zoos, color-coded interactive parking lots, and upside-down tree plantings with various collaborators around the globe.

…

Or maybe we just want to escape the chaos of home life, as some sociologists have suggested, and find work to be a calming refuge from the demands of kids and spouses (home offices, of course, threw a wrench into that plan).35 After all, working on solving a software problem for our employer (or for our online, open-source community) may feel a lot more rewarding than taking out the garbage, doing the shopping, or scrubbing the oven. Perhaps, then, we may stay late at the office so we can browse eBay—and avoid having to do the laundry in the process. Or instant-message with old flames on Skype while toggling over to finish up a dreadful report due on our boss’s desk the next morning. Or maybe we just sneak off, excusing ourselves prematurely from the family “dinner” in order to write that report in the den—the same report we should have been working on all day when instead we were e-mailing.

Not My Father's Son: A Memoir
by Alan Cumming
Published 6 Oct 2014

I had eaten in my hotel room alone, the crew having had to go and get some location shots before the sun went down. As much as I knew it was necessary for me to have time on my own to process everything that was happening, and to allow myself the chance to give rein to my emotions, I also yearned for company. I Skyped with Grant back in London, which offered little relief. It was great to be able to see him, not just hear him, and for this I am grateful to modern technology. But at the same time, seeing the one you love but not being able to touch, when their comfort is what you crave most, actually makes you feel worse, and more depleted, than if you had not seen them at all.

…

I flew from Singapore to Tokyo and then had a few hours’ layover and once more was able to indulge in my lounge worship. But even this swanky Air Nippon lounge couldn’t quite lift me out of the numbness that had descended. It was now Saturday morning around 8 A.M. My body clock was all over the place. I was drinking a sake Bloody Mary (I am very adaptable!) and Skyping with my assistant who was at my house in the Catskills, preparing for the influx of friends who were coming up for the Fourth of July holiday weekend. There the time was 8 P.M. the night before. As much as I was looking forward to seeing Grant and my friends, I was a little apprehensive. I felt like one of those soldiers returning from the battlefield a different man.

The Secret War Between Downloading and Uploading: Tales of the Computer as Culture Machine
by Peter Lunenfeld
Published 31 Mar 2011

As for the cinema, which was itself swallowed up by televisual prostheses like videocassette recorders (VCRs), DVRs, and DVDs, the computer simulates it, migrates it online, chops it into YouTube segments, has it pirated on peer-to-peer networks, and shoots, stores, and projects it digitally. When computers simulate telephones, everything becomes available from the free Internet calling on services like Skype to mobile tele/computing hybrids like the iPhone. When we are talking about communication devices, simulation engenders participation. After establishing communication between machines, between machines and people, and between people themselves, the next step is to allow the user to make 15 CHAPTER 2 something and then put it out into the network, where others will be able (and more crucially willing) to download that which has been uploaded.

…

Robert, 150 Oracle, 172–173 Order of the British Empire, 18 Otivion, 101 Ourobors, 175 Oxford Internet Institute, 83 Packard, Dave, 145, 157 Pac-Man game, 71 Page, Larry, 144, 174–176 Paris, 66 Parker, Charlie “Bird,” 25 Participation affordances and, 16–17 bespoke futures and, 98–99, 120–121, 129 culture machine and, 143–147, 151, 156–165, 170, 175–178 fan-based production and, 28–32 Licklider and, 151–152 MP3s and, 27 simulation and, 15–17 stickiness and, 15–17, 27–35 toggling and, 33–34, 43, 102, 197n30 tweaking and, xvi, 32–35, 185nn22,23 unimodernism and, 54, 66–67, 74–80 Web n.0 and, 79–95 Patio potatoes, 9–10, 13 Patriarchs Bush and, 52, 108, 144, 147–152, 157 description of term, xv development of computer and, 143–144, 147–158, 162–163, 166–168 Licklider and, 108, 144, 147–148, 151–152, 158, 163, 168 Paul, Frank R., 109, 109–110 PBS, 68 PDP minicomputer, 71 Peer-to-peer networks, 15, 54, 92, 116, 126 Perot, Ross, 145 Perpetual beta, 36 Personal digital assistants (PDAs), 17 Petrini, Carlo, 5–6 Photography, 15, 40–42, 46–47, 64, 109, 150, 176 Photoshop, 131 Picasso, Pablo, 93 210 INDEX Pico Swap Mart, 105 Pirate Bay, 92 Pixar, 167 Pizza Hut, 5 Plagiarism, 41 Play, 188n25 bespoke futures and, 110–111, 130–131 culture machine and, 143, 153, 160–163 gaming and, 15, 23, 33–34, 57, 67, 70–74, 72, 188n25 meaningfulness and, 32–34 modders and, 69–70 power and, 32–34 rejuveniles and, 67 running room and, 74–77 stickiness and, 13, 15, 32–34, 70–74 toggling and, 33–34, 43, 102, 197n30 tweaking and, xvi, 32–35, 185n22, 185n23 unimodernism and, 39, 53, 55, 62, 64, 67–77 video games and, 15, 23, 33–34, 57, 67, 72, 188n25 Web n.0 and, 85, 88 Play space, 74–77 Plug-in Drug, The (Winn), xii Plutocrats culture machine and, 144, 152–159, 163–166, 170 description of term, xv Hewlett and, 145, 157 Moore and, 156 Noyce and, 156 Packard and, 145, 157 profit and, xv Watsons and, 144, 153–157, 165–166 Plutopian meliorism, xvi, 127–129, 133, 137–138 Poetry, 14, 18–19, 136, 145 Politics African National Congress and, 113 211 Berlin Wall and, xvi, 85, 97, 99, 104 Communism and, 97–98, 103 copyright and, 88–93 Cuban Missile Crisis and, xi fantasies of, 104 New Economy and, 104 propaganda and, 31, 103, 124 scenario planning and, 111–119, 191n19, 192n20 Slow Food and, 5–7 Soviet Union and, xi, 31, 49–52, 59, 73, 85, 88, 97, 102–107, 146 Tiananmen Square and, 104 Velvet Revolution and, 104 Pong, 71 Popper, Karl, 107 Popular Mechanics magazine, 69 Pop-up ads, 23 Positivism, 10, 125 Postmodernism, 29–30, 39–41, 74, 79, 130, 135 PostScript World, 55–56, 102 Poststructuralism, 29–30 Power, 8 bespoke futures and, 98–103, 112– 116, 119–126, 129–130, 136–137 culture machine and, 143, 147, 150– 151, 155–156, 163, 166, 169, 175 meaningfulness and, 32–34 play and, 32–34 stickiness and, 13, 17, 22, 30–34 toggling and, 33–34, 43, 102, 197n30 tweaking and, xvi, 32–35, 185nn22,23 unimodernism and, 39, 49–50, 62, 71–75 Web n.0 and, 81–87, 90–95 PowerBook, 39 Pro bono work, 111 Production appropriation and, 28, 31, 35, 41 balance and, 13 collaborative, 30 INDEX Production (continued) continuous partial, 34 DIY movements and, 67–70 fan culture and, 28–32, 48 mashing and, 25, 54–55, 57, 74 mechanization and, 44–45 modders and, 69–70 open source, 36, 61, 69, 74–75, 91–92, 116, 121–126, 144, 170– 173, 177, 189n12 plagiarism and, 41 remixing and, 27, 35, 39, 53–54, 62–63, 70, 92–94, 129, 189n12 toggling and, 33–34, 43, 102, 197n30 tweaking and, xvi, 32–35, 185nn22,23 unfinish and, xvi, 34–37, 51, 67, 70, 76–79, 92, 127–129, 136 WYMIWYM (What You Model Is What You Manufacture) and, 64–67, 74, 131 Propaganda, 31, 103, 124 Prosumers, 120–121 Psychology culture machine and, 151, 161 Gestalt, 42–43 Licklider and, 151 propaganda and, 31, 103, 124 scenario planning and, 111–119, 191n19, 192n20 stickiness and, 16, 21–22 unimodernism and, 42–44, 56 Public domain, 91 Publishing, 31, 190n8 bespoke future and, 109–110, 112 culture machine and, 146, 148–149, 168 DIY movement and, 67–69 Gutenberg press and, 11, 137–138 unimodernism and, 55–65, 68 Puccini, Giacomo, 61 Punk aesthetic, 46, 67–68, 87, 110 Quantum theory, 148 Radio, 8 Radio frequency identification devices (RFIDs), 65 Radiohead, 39 Ramayana, 28 Rand, Paul, 43 Raymond, Eric, 172 Raytheon, 149 Rear Window (film), 44 Relativity, 49–50, 186n4 Religion, xi, 1, 13, 76, 130–135, 138 Remixing, 27, 94, 129, 189n12 appropriation and, 28, 31, 35, 41 Creative Commons and, 92 Moulin Rouge and, 60–63 unimodernism and, 39, 53–54, 53–55, 62–63, 70 Renaissance, 60 Rent (Larson), 61 Reperceiving, 112–113 Reuters Spectracolor Board, 9 Revivalism, 60 Reyner Banham Loves Los Angeles (BBC documentary), 10 Rheingold, Howard, 145 Rick’s Café, 90 Roberts, Alwyn “Lord Kitchener,” 25–27 Robot butlers, xiv Rockefeller, John D., 166 Rolling Stone magazine, 67 Romanticism, 103 Romeo and Juliet (hip-hop version), 61 Roosevelt, Franklin D., 148 Rope (film), 44 Roux, A., 11 Royal Dutch Shell, 112, 112–113 Royal Library of Alexandria, 89 R-PR (Really Public Relations), xvi, 123–127 RSS feeds, xvii Rumsfeld, Donald, 99 Running room, 74–77 Run time, 57 212 INDEX environmental perception and, 16 memes and, 19, 53–54, 76, 87, 91, 98, 113, 143–144, 149–150, 156–162, 165–170, 178, 194n1 mimicry and, xvii MP3s and, 27 participation and, 15–17 stickiness and, 15–19, 27, 32, 35 unimodernism and, 39, 49, 53–54, 57, 71–76 Sinatra, Frank, 63 Skype, 15 Skyscrapers, xiv Slow movements, 5–7, 181n7 Slurpees, 4 “Smells Like Teen Spirit” (Nirvana), 62 Smith & Hawken, 113 Snakes on a Plane (film), 30 Snow White (Disney film), 20 Social issues advertisement and, 23, 52, 57, 59, 107, 175–177, 184nn12,15 Aquarians and, xv, 144, 152, 157, 159–169 atomic age and, xi (see also Atomic age) Berlin Wall and, 85, 97, 99, 104 bespoke futures and, xvi, 97–139 blogosphere and, xvii, 30, 34, 49, 68, 80, 92–93, 101, 175, 177, 181n7 capitalism and, 4, 13, 66, 75, 90, 97–100, 103–105 capitulationism and, 7, 24, 182n1 cell phones and, xiii, 23, 42, 53, 56, 76, 101 Communism and, 97–98, 103 computers and, xvi, 5, 15–19 (see also Computers) Cuban Missile Crisis and, xi dangers of overabundance and, 7–10 desk jobs and, 3 89/11 and, xvi, 97, 100–102, 105, 130 Enlightenment and, xvi, 129–139 Sacred texts, 28 Saint Laurent, Yves, 60 Saks Fifth Avenue, 31 Samizdat, 59 Scenario planning bespoke futures and, 111–119, 191n19, 192n20 chaos theory and, 117–119 crafting of, 113–116 Ogilvy and, 113–114 Schwartz and, 113–114 Scènes de la vie Bohème (Murger), 61 Schindler, Rudolph, 45 Schrödinger, Erwin, 49 Schwartz, Peter, 113–115, 119 Scott, Ridley, 107 Scratching, 53 Searchers, 167, 177–178 Brin and, 144, 174–176 description of term, xv–xvi Page and, 144, 174–176 Sears, 103–105 September 11, 2001, xvi–xvii, 99–101, 130 SETI@home, 122 Sex, 7, 19, 88, 129–130, 167 Shakespeare, William, 28, 44 Shannon, Claude, 148 Shockley, William, 156 Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory, 156 Silicon Valley, 149, 161, 164 Silly Symphonies (Disney film), 88 Simon, John, Jr., 39 Simulation, xvi, 2, 11 affordances and, 16–17 bespoke futures and, 98, 121, 124, 126–127 buttons/knobs and, 16 communication devices and, 15–16 culture machine and, 143–144, 147– 152, 156–160, 166–168, 175–178 downloading and, 143, 168 emulation and, 183n3 213 INDEX Social issues (continued) figure/ground and, xvi, 42–43, 46, 102 folksonomies and, 80–81 hackers and, 22–23, 54, 67, 69, 162, 170–173 Holocaust and, 107 Hosts and, xv, 144, 167, 175 hypercontexts and, xvi, 7, 48, 76–77 information overload and, 22, 149 MaSAI and, xvi, 112, 120–123, 127, 193nn32 meaningfulness and, xvi, 14, 17, 20, 23–29, 42, 67, 77, 79, 119, 123, 128–129, 133, 173 narrative and, xv, 2, 7–8, 58–59, 67, 71, 76, 108, 110, 130–132, 143– 145, 174, 178, 180n4, 188n25, 193n34 personal grounding and, xiv–xv play and, xvi, 13, 15, 32–34, 39, 53, 55, 62, 64, 67–77, 85, 88, 110–111, 130–131, 143, 153, 160–163, 185n22, 188n25 Plutocrats and, xv, 144, 152–159, 163–166, 170 plutopian meliorism and, xvi, 127–129, 133, 137–138 power and, xvi, 8, 13, 17, 22 (see also Power) relationship with data and, 32 religion and, xi, 1, 13, 76, 130–135, 138 R-PR (Really Public Relations) and, xvi, 123–127 Searchers and, xv–xvi, 144, 167, 174–178 suburbs and, 3, 8 television and, xii (see also Television) terrorism and, 99–101, 130–131, 134, 137 unfinish and, xvi, 34–37, 51, 67, 70, 76–79, 92, 127–129, 136 urban planning and, 84–86 utopia and, 36, 73, 97, 101, 104, 108, 110, 120, 127–129, 138 wants vs. needs and, 13, 37, 57 wicked problems and, 158 World War I era and, 21, 107, 123, 146, 190n1 World War II era and, xi, 18, 25, 32, 47, 73, 107–108, 144–150, 157, 170 Socialists, 102–105 Software platforms, 15, 164, 170 Sontag, Susan, 135 Sopranos, The (TV show), 7 Soundscapes, 53–55 Soviet Union, 31, 85, 88, 146 Berlin Wall and, 85, 97, 99, 104 Cuban Missile Crisis and, xi Exhibition of the Achievement of the Soviet People’s Economy (VDNX) and, 102–105 fall of, 104 gulags of, 107 samizdat and, 59 unimodernism and, 49–52, 73 Space Invaders, 71 Spacewar!

Effective Programming: More Than Writing Code
by Jeff Atwood
Published 3 Jul 2012

I know, I know, the whole reason we got into this programming thing was to avoid talking to other people, but bear with me here. You can’t be face to face on a remote team without flying 6-plus hours, and who the heck has that kind of time? I’ve got work I need to get done! Well, the next best thing to hopping on a plane is to fire up Skype and have a little voice chat. Easy peasy. All that human nuance which is totally lost in faceless ASCII characters (yes, even with our old pal *<:-)) will come roaring back if you regularly schedule voice chats. I recommend at least once a week at an absolute minimum; they don’t have to be long meetings, but it sure helps in understanding the human being behind all those awesome check-ins.

…

We walked the list of everything we could think of to solve it, and then some: swapping network ports replacing network cables a different switch multiple versions of the network driver tweaking OS and driver level network settings simplifying our network configuration and removing TProxy for more traditional X-FORWARDED-FOR switching virtualization providers changing our TCP/IP host model getting Kernel hotfixes and applying them involving high-level vendor support teams some other stuff that I’ve now forgotten because I blacked out from the pain At one point in this saga our team almost came to blows because we were so frustrated. (Well, as close to “blows” as a remote team can get over Skype, but you know what I mean.) Can you blame us? Every few days, one of our servers — no telling which one — would randomly wink off the network. The Chaos Monkey strikes again! Even in our time of greatest frustration, I realized that there was a positive side to all this: Where we had one server performing an essential function, we switched to two.

The End of Traffic and the Future of Transport: Second Edition
by David Levinson and Kevin Krizek
Published 17 Aug 2015

Transport planning has been consumed with finding the best ways to connect matter moving along physical networks. But it is now easier to conceptualize other forms of exchange. The scenarios that we painted earlier about buying a book or a movie point to such. Or think of how instead of meeting in person, people transmit moving pictures of themselves in the form of data over digital networks (e.g., Skyping with video calling, or broadcasting live with Meerkat or Periscope). While it is difficult to conceive of things moving over digital networks, the rise of 3D printing means data is being sent and instantly manufactured at physically remote locations. Ordering — and delivering — a pizza over the Internet, might be here sooner than later.149 Producing three dimensional solid objects from a digital file is clearly in its infancy.

…

Driving to work five days a week and driving to the big box store for detergent are both disappearing. The Amazon Dash button336 demonstrates how we might take care of some of this. Parents will soon be able to order a self-driving car to take their children to soccer practice. Relying on descendants of apps like Skype and FaceTime and Google Hangouts, workers will meet colleagues periodically at both offices and random third places. Yet to crystalize effects will be rendered by 3-D printers. Stimulus Effects? While the traditional workplace will shrink in size and importance, it will not vanish. Work, like shopping and much of life, has a social as well as economic function.

China's Disruptors: How Alibaba, Xiaomi, Tencent, and Other Companies Are Changing the Rules of Business
by Edward Tse
Published 13 Jul 2015

Its marketing has improved enormously, not just for its smartphones but also for its tablets and high-end PCs. One of its smartest moves was signing up Hollywood star Ashton Kutcher as a “product engineer” to help promote new products. Kutcher, who played Steve Jobs in the Jobs movie, also has a strong record as an investor in tech start-ups, among them Skype, Foursquare, and Airbnb. Even if its purchases of Motorola Mobility and IBM’s low-end servers both fail, that wouldn’t bring down the company. If they succeed, however, they have the potential to transform Lenovo from a $50 billion company into a $100 billion one. THE TACTICS OF EXPANSION Which Chinese companies will be most successful at internationalizing themselves?

…

Warren, 93–94 McGrath, Rita Gunther, 99 Manganese Bronze, 133 manufacturing, 109–10 Mao Zedong, 13, 42, 51 Cultural Revolution instigated by, 4, 42, 43 Marks and Spencer, 194 media, 157–62, 213 medical research, 109 Meituan.com, 53, 191 Metallurgical Corporation, 124 MG Rover, 136–37 Mi, 68 see also Xiaomi Miasolé, 123 Microsoft, 112 middle-income trap, 213–14 Mindray Medical International, 122–23, 178 mining, 119, 163 Mitchell, James, 136 motorcycles, 47, 76, 95, 100, 178 Motorola Mobility, 127, 128, 129, 136 Nan Fung, 224 Nanjing Auto, 136 Naspers, 86, 194 National People’s Congress, 43, 81 Navarro, Peter, 9 Nestlé, 194, 196 New Citizens Movement, 170 New York Stock Exchange, 33, 52, 159, 206 Nexen, 119–20 Nike, 195 Nissan, 180 Noah Wealth Management, 12, 150, 153, 212 Nokia, 102, 112 Nortel, 102 open markets, 71, 72–77, 83, 85, 88, 97 Panda W, 205–7, 208, 225 Pan Shiyi, 48 People’s Liberation Army, 101–2 Pepsi, 180 Pew Research Center, 219 piracy, 9, 75, 199 pollution, 115, 209, 212, 217, 221 Pope, Larry, 22 pride, 41, 55, 57, 61, 123 private-equity funds, 79 Procter & Gamble, 12, 175, 177 products, updating of, 97 property rights, 81, 170 Pudong New Area, 224 Putzmeister, 130 Qihoo 360, 84, 113 Qingdao Refrigerator Factory, 4–5 see also Haier Qingqi, 76 QQ, 85, 86, 160, 185, 201 Reckitt Benckiser, 194, 196 Red Packet, 88 Red Rice smartphone, 69 Renault/Nissan, 133 Renren, 52–53 Ren Zhengfei, 11, 43–44, 54, 60, 101–3, 175, 200 Rio Tinto, 119 robots, 110 Roche Diagnostics, 155 Roewe, 137 Russia, 13, 68 doctorates in, 108 oligarchs in, 17 SAIC Motor Corp, 136–37 Samsung, 67, 68, 89, 128 Sany, 178 Sanyo Electric, 7 Schumpeter, Joseph, 163 Sehgal, Aditya, 196 Sequoia Capital, 113, 150 SF Express, 100 shared heritage, 55, 61–64 Shen, Neil, 113 Shenzhen Stock Exchange, 156 Shunwei China, 112 Siemens, 102 Silicon Graphics, 112 Silicon Valley, 18 Silk Road, 57 Sina Weibo, 69, 87–88, 161, 170, 191 Singapore, 68, 100, 155 SingPost, 100 Sino Iron mine, 124 Sinovac Biotech, 109 Sky City, 217–18, 221 Skype, 129 smartphones, 9, 11, 67–70, 75, 89, 128, 135, 139 Smithfield Foods, 22, 120 Softbank, 37, 156, 194 SOHO China, 48 Sohu, 158, 159 sourcing networks, 188 South China Morning Post, 37 South Korea, 121, 141 special economic zones, 43 Standard Chartered, 151 State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film, and Television, 219 State Council, 215 state-owned enterprises, 9–10, 13–14, 36, 40, 76, 80, 119, 137, 158, 164, 176, 179–80, 209, 213 strategy+business, 49–50 Su, Sam, 196 subsidies, 9, 163 Surprise (series), 160 Sze Man Bok, 43, 176, 177 Tabarrok, Alex, 113 Taikang Life Insurance, 45, 55, 148 Taiwan, 68, 121, 214 Taizhou, 44 Tang dynasty, 28–29, 229 Tango, 135 Tan Wanxin, 13 Taobao, 34–35, 38, 40, 184 TCL, 76, 84, 148 Tedjarati, Shane, 190, 196 telecoms, 103–4, 122, 178 television, 76, 158, 178, 219 Tencent, 11, 18, 39, 52, 60, 80, 81, 83–84, 85–88, 90, 101, 135, 136, 151, 158, 159, 161, 162, 185, 191, 201, 222, 225 founding of, 49, 85 innovation by, 94, 113 Naspers’ purchase of stake in, 86, 194 overseas listing of, 89 revenue of, 87 Tenpay system of, 36 Tenpay, 36, 87 Tesco, 180 Tetra Pak, 196 ThinkPad, 128 Third Plenum of the 18th Party Congress, 211, 214, 215 Thomas Group, 177–78 3D printing, 110–11 360 Mobile Assistant, 84 Tian, Lawrence, 147–48 Tiananmen Square, 44 Tingyi, 180 Tmall, 36, 38, 87, 184, 195, 206 Tmall Global, 195 Toyota, 133, 180 TPG Capital, 225 transport, 115 Tsai, Joe, 37 Twitter, 87, 222 United Kingdom, doctorates in, 108 United States, 18 doctorates in, 108 R&D spending in, 107 technological supremacy of, 106 urbanization, 28, 115, 214 Uyghurs, 53 Vanke, 148 Vantone Holdings, 46, 148 vehicles, 115 venture capital, 79 Vipshop, 84, 113, 206 Volkswagen, 133, 137, 179, 180 Volvo, 123, 131, 132, 133, 134, 138, 185 wage pressure, 98 Wallerstein, David, 136 Wal-Mart, 96, 194 Wanda E-Commerce, 88 Wang, Diane, 12, 57 Wang, Victor, 145–47, 167, 168–69, 171 Wang Jianlin, 48, 88, 172 Wang Jingbo, 12, 150, 152 Wang Shi, 148 Wang Wei, 147–48 Wang Xing, 52–53 Wanxiang, 130, 134, 178 Ward, Stephen, 126 water, 6, 25, 106, 188 WeChat, 18–19, 84, 87, 88, 139, 160, 185, 191, 201, 212 Wen Jiabao, 147 WhatsApp, 18–19, 191 WH Group, 21–22, 120 Wong, Jessica, 205–7, 208, 210, 214, 225 World Economic Forum, 147 World Health Organization (WHO), 114 World Trade Organization, 6, 16, 37–38, 47, 122, 222 Xiangcai Securities, 150 Xiaomi, 11, 12, 57, 67–70, 75, 77, 89, 101, 128, 139, 162, 191–92, 197, 226 innovation by, 94, 112, 113 Xiaonei, 52–53 Xi Jinping, 78, 80, 152, 160, 165, 167, 168, 170, 181, 210–11, 213, 223, 229 Xu, William, 222 Xue, Charles, 161, 170 Xu Lianjie, 12, 43, 53, 175–78, 200 Yabuli, 145, 147, 149, 166 Yahoo, 194 Yang Yuanqing, 11, 125–26, 128, 148 Yao, Frank, 205–7, 210, 214, 225 Yihaodian, 11, 89, 95–97, 194 Yinlu, 194 Yoga IdeaPad, 127 Youku Tudou, 84, 114, 158–60, 161, 162, 209, 212, 218 YouTube, 158, 218 yuan, 9 Yu’e Bao, 39, 40, 153, 212 Yu Gang, 11, 94–96, 100, 112 Yum!

A Grand and Bold Thing: An Extraordinary New Map of the Universe Ushering
by Ann K. Finkbeiner
Published 16 Aug 2010

Ed Mannery, Walt Siegmund, and Russ Owen, University of Washington, Seattle, WA: 4/11/07. Bruce Margon, University of California, Santa Cruz; by Skype: 8/22/08. Kevin Marvel, American Astronomical Society; by phone: 5/23/07. Tim McKay, University of Michigan; by phone: 10/25/07. Matt Mountain, Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, MD: 8/10/07. Heidi Newberg, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute; by phone: 12/21/07, 6/25/09. Robert Nichol, University of Portsmouth; by e-mail: 5/21/08; by Skype: 5/21/08, 5/22/08; at collaboration meeting, Princeton, NJ: 7/27/09. Jerry Ostriker, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ: 5/16/07, 8/14/07, 1/14/08.

The Meritocracy Trap: How America's Foundational Myth Feeds Inequality, Dismantles the Middle Class, and Devours the Elite
by Daniel Markovits
Published 14 Sep 2019

as much as $100,000: Emma Jacobs, “The $600-an-Hour Private Tutor,” Financial Times, December 12, 2013, accessed November 18, 2018, www.ft.com/content/080d6cce-61aa-11e3-aa02-00144feabdc0. Hereafter cited as Jacobs, “The $600-an-Hour Private Tutor.” $1,250 per hour: Caroline Moss, “Meet the Guy Who Makes $1,000 an Hour Tutoring Kids of Fortune 500 CEOs over Skype,” Business Insider, August 26, 2014, accessed November 18, 2018, www.businessinsider.com/anthony-green-tutoring-2014-8. Hereafter cited as Moss, “Meet the Guy Who Makes $1,000 an Hour Tutoring Kids of Fortune 500 CEOs over Skype.” Robert Frank, “Meet the $1,250-an-Hour Tutor,” CNBC, December 12, 2013, accessed November 18, 2018, www.cnbc.com/2013/12/12/meet-the-400000-a-year-tutor.html. Hereafter cited as Frank, “Meet the $1,250-an-Hour Tutor.”

…

An exhaustive analysis recently studied Google data on searches initiated in both the most and least prosperous counties in the country (ranked according to an index that includes income and education). The study revealed that the searches most correlated with prosperity include digital cameras, baby joggers, Skype, and foreign travel. By contrast, the searches most correlated with deprivation included health problems; weight loss; guns; video games; and the Antichrist, hell, and the Rapture. Even geography now separates the rich from the rest. Palo Alto has left St. Clair Shores behind. Median incomes in Palo Alto now almost triple those in St.

…

Veritas Tutors Agency, run by a Princeton graduate based in Manhattan but serving clients nationwide, charges $600 an hour for tuition in basic academic subjects; a typical tutee’s family spends between $5,000 and $15,000 on Veritas services, and some families have spent as much as $100,000. Amazingly, Veritas is not even the top of the market. One test preparation tutoring company that caters to students in New York City charges $1,500 for a ninety-minute Skype tutoring session, requiring a minimum of fourteen such sessions in order to enroll. Another charges $1,250 per hour. And a third recruits Ivy League professors to give individual tuition, offering to pay the professors nearly $1,000 an hour and charging the students substantially more. (Some professors, unsurprisingly, have accepted the arrangement.)

The Investment Checklist: The Art of In-Depth Research
by Michael Shearn
Published 8 Nov 2011

For example, for a Father’s Day gift, power tools may serve as a substitute for a necktie. The threat of substitute products is high if they can offer the customer an attractive price or performance tradeoff to the current industry product or service. Here are a few examples: International calling cards suffered when low-cost Internet-based service Skype entered the market. Advancements in digital photography replaced the duopoly on traditional film that Kodak and Fuji had. Kodak and Fuji took too long to transition to the new digital medium and therefore lost significant market share. There are certain types of businesses that are currently immune from the competitive threats of substitute products.

…

Watch for those businesses that retain employees after an acquisition as this is often a good sign that the management team is making a good acquisition.13 Does Management Have Discipline or Is there a Risk That They Will Overpay? Management teams, even good ones, usually overpay for acquisitions. This represents a huge source of risk for you as an investor. For example, in October of 2007, online auction house eBay admitted it overpaid when it acquired the Internet phone services company Skype Technologies for $2.6 billion in 2005, and took a $1.4 billion write-down. This write-down represented 53 percent of the total EBITDA generated by eBay in 2007. Companies overpay because quite simply, they don’t know the real value of the target company. They often think they do, which adds to their problem.

…

See return on invested capital Rollins, Kevin Rose, Pete Roth, John Rutherford, John salary, stock ownership versus sale indicators, management activity as sales, inflating same-store sales Samsung Electronics Schwartz, Mark schedule 13-D Schultz, Howard Scrushy, Richard Seagate secular trends, business growth due to selling, forced service, competing on services customer dependency on high quality purchasing Seyhun, Nejat shared values shareholder letter shares, tracking a business via Sharpe, Isaadore Shell Sheth, Jagdish short-term earnings, growth and Silberman, Robert Sinegal, Jim Singleton, Harry Sisodia, Rajendra Skype Technologies slowing growth SOE. See state-owned enterprises Sonkin, Paul sourcesevaluating interview locating of supplies Southwest Airlines balance sheet of speed of growth Spirit Airlines spreadsheet, tracking investments via Stahl, Jack stakeholders, benefitting Staples Starbucks state-owned enterprises (SOE) static ratios Stemberg, Thomas Stericycle sticky accounts stock awards, restricted stock options dilution, offsetting stock options employees managers and stock ownership required salary versus stock returns, employee relations and stock screens, using stock buying back financing acquisitions with management buying or selling transaction motivation strategic plans failure of long-term planning versus setting financial goals Strayer Education structural advantage subscription-type firms, metrics for substitute products, risks from Sun Microsystems Sunbeam suppliers dependence on innovation by relationship with supplies, sources of supply chain management sustainable competitive advantage finding business with structural switching costs synergy Sysco Tan, Seng Hock Taubman, Alfred tax purposes, selling stock for taxes, generally accepted accounting principles versus IRS technology price transparency and Tesco TEV.

Dawn of the New Everything: Encounters With Reality and Virtual Reality
by Jaron Lanier
Published 21 Nov 2017

It might make remote collaboration work better, and that might reduce humanity’s carbon footprint. Transportation brings people together for meetings, classes, comedy clubs, etc., but burns a lot of carbon and causes a lot of congestion. Straightforward camera-to-camera contact, such as in the familiar Skype experience, can do a lot, but not as much as we might like. Remember when I mentioned that there’s a subconscious information channel between people that’s transmitted by head motion? Add eye motion, skin tone, tiny changes in expression, and undoubtedly other factors we are not yet aware of. MIT’s Sandy Pentland dubbed these the “honest signals.”

…

“Telepresence” used to mean being connected with a robot in such a way that you felt as though you were the robot, or at least that you were in the robot’s location. The community that studied telepresence had started way back in the analog era, well before Ivan Sutherland, or even Alan Turing. Lately it has a broader usage, including Skype-like interactions in VR or mixed reality. “Tele-existence” was coined by the wonderful pioneering Japanese VR researcher Susumu Tachi to include both telepresence and VR. I wish I could remember the precise moment when I started using the term “virtual reality.” It was in the 1970s, before I came to Silicon Valley, and it served as both my North Star and my fledgling calling card.

…

See also DataGloves sensorimotor loops sensorimotor mirror sensors “set and setting” principle sex sexism sexual singularity shakuhachi shaman Shankar, Uday ship design shitposting Shulgin, Sasha SIGGRAPH (Special Interest Group on Computer Graphics conference for the Association for Computing Machinery) sign language silence Silicon Graphics Silicon Valley similarity, recognition of simulated code Sinatra, Frank Singapore Singer, Alex singing singularity freaks Sketchpad Skinner, B. F. Skinner box skin sensor cells ski simulator Skype Slater, Mel Smalltalk smartphones Smith, Adam Smith, Alvy Ray Smith, Graham Smith, Jack Smolin, Lee Snapchat Spectacles snark Snow, Michael socialism social media social networking social VR software. See also programming abstractions and obsolescence and two-phase nature of VPL and songlines sonic general purpose programming language Sony PlayStation VR headset Sound of One Hand sounds source code Soviet Union spacetime topological quantum computers Spacewar!

Who Owns the Future?
by Jaron Lanier
Published 6 May 2013

Here is how it could go: Students at colleges ranked lower than Stanford would tune in to Stanford seminars, and gradually wonder why they’re paying their local, lower-ranked academics at all. If locals are to remain valuable once a globalized star system comes into being over the ’net, it can only be because they are present and interactive. But online experts can also be made virtually present and interactive. Perhaps tutors will be Skyped in the cheapest places. Forget people. Artificial intelligence can animate a simulated tutor. Imagine Siri, but as a digital talking head with the faraway look and awkwardly groomed countenance of a graduate assistant in a math class. Why should we keep on paying for colleges? Why pay for all those levees that benefit a privileged class of middle-class people?

…

To the dismay of generations of computer scientists, the first glimmer of the wonders we have built was a dystopian tale. In the story, what we’d call the Internet is known as the “Machine.” The world’s population is glued to the Machine’s screens, endlessly engaged in social networking, browsing, Skypeing, and the like. Interestingly, Forster wasn’t cynical enough to foresee the centrality of advertising in such a situation. At the end of the story, the machine does indeed stop. Terror ensues, similar to what is imagined these days from a hypothetical cyber-attack. The whole human world crashes.

…

M., 129–30, 261, 328 “Forum,” 214 Foucault, Michel, 308n 4chan, 335 4′33″ (Cage), 212 fractional reserve system, 33 Franco, Francisco, 159–60 freedom, 13–15, 32–33, 90–92, 277–78, 336 freelancing, 253–54 Free Print Shop, 228 “free rise,” 182–89, 355 free speech, 223, 225 free will, 166–68 “friction,” 179, 225, 230, 235, 354 Friendster, 180, 181 Fukuyama, Francis, 165, 189 fundamentalism, 131, 193–94 future: chaos in, 165–66, 273n, 331 economic analysis of, 1–3, 15, 22, 37, 38, 40–41, 42, 67, 122, 143, 148–52, 153, 155–56, 204, 208, 209, 236, 259, 274, 288, 298–99, 311, 362n, 363 humanistic economy for, 194, 209, 233–351 361–367 “humors” of, 124–40, 230 modern conception of, 123–40, 193–94, 255 natural basis of, 125, 127, 128–29 optimism about, 32–35, 45, 130, 138–40, 218, 230n, 295 politics of, 13–18, 22–25, 85, 122, 124–26, 128, 134–37, 199–234, 295–96, 342 technological trends in, 7–18, 21, 53–54, 60–61, 66–67, 85–86, 87, 97–98, 129–38, 157–58, 182, 188–90, 193–96, 217 utopian conception of, 13–18, 21, 30, 31, 37–38, 45–46, 96, 128, 130, 167, 205, 207, 265, 267, 270, 283, 290, 291, 308–9, 316 future-oriented money, 32–34, 35 Gadget, 186 Gallant, Jack, 111–12 games, 362, 363 Gates, Bill, 93 Gattaca, 130 Gawker, 118n Gelernter, David, 313 “general” machines, 158 General Motors, 56–57 general relativity theory, 167n Generation X, 346 genetic engineering, 130 genetics, 109–10, 130, 131, 146–47, 329, 366 genomics, 109–10, 146–47, 366 Germany, 45 Ghostery, 109 ghost suburbs, 296 Gibson, William, 137, 309 Gizmodo, 117–18 Global Business Network (GBN), 214–15 global climate change, 17, 32, 53, 132, 133, 134, 203, 266, 295, 296–97, 301–2, 331 global economy, 33n, 153–56, 173, 201, 214–15, 280 global village, 201 God, 29, 30–31, 139 Golden Goblet, 121, 121, 175, 328 golden rule, 335–36 gold standard, 34 Google, 14, 15, 19, 69, 74, 75–76, 90, 94, 106, 110, 120, 128, 153, 154, 170, 171, 174, 176, 180, 181–82, 188, 191, 192, 193, 199–200, 201, 209, 210, 217, 225, 227, 246, 249, 265, 267, 272, 278, 280, 286, 305n, 307, 309–10, 322, 325, 330, 344, 348, 352 Google Goggles, 309–10 Googleplex, 199–200 goops, 85–89, 99 Gore, Al, 80n Graeber, David, 30n granularity, 277 graph-shaped networks, 241, 242–43 Great Britain, 200 Great Depression, 69–70, 75, 135, 299 Great Recession, 31, 54, 60, 76–77, 204, 311, 336–37 Greece, 22–25, 45, 125 Grigorov, Mario, 267 guitars, 154 guns, 310–11 Gurdjieff, George, 215, 216 gurus, 211–13 hackers, 14, 82, 265, 306–7, 345–46 Hardin, Garrett, 66n Hartmann, Thom, 33n Hayek, Friedrich, 204 health care, 66–67, 95, 98–99, 100, 132–33, 153–54, 249, 253, 258, 337, 346 health insurance, 66–67, 95, 98–99, 100, 153–54 Hearts and Minds, 353n heart surgery, 11–13, 17, 18, 157–58 heat, 56 hedge funds, 69, 106, 137 Hephaestus, 22, 23 high-dimensional problems, 145 high-frequency trading, 56, 76–78, 154 highways, 79–80, 345 Hinduism, 214 Hippocrates, 124n Hiroshima bombing (1945), 127 Hollywood, 204, 206, 242 holographic radiation, 11 Homebrew Club, 228 homelessness, 151 homeopathy, 131–32 Homer, 23, 55 Honan, Mat, 82 housing market, 33, 46, 49–52, 61, 78, 95–96, 99, 193, 224, 227, 239, 245, 255, 274n, 289n, 296, 298, 300, 301 HTML, 227, 230 Huffington Post, 176, 180, 189 human agency, 8–21, 50–52, 85, 88, 91, 124–40, 144, 165–66, 175–78, 191–92, 193, 217, 253–64, 274–75, 283–85, 305–6, 328, 341–51, 358–60, 361, 362, 365–67 humanistic information economy, 194, 209, 233–351 361–367 human reproduction, 131 humors (tropes), 124–40, 157, 170, 230 hunter-gatherer societies, 131, 261–62 hyperefficient markets, 39, 42–43 hypermedia, 224–30, 245 hyper-unemployment, 7–8 hypotheses, 113, 128, 151 IBM, 191 identity, 14–15, 82, 124, 173–74, 175, 248–51, 283–90, 305, 306, 307, 315–16, 319–21 identity theft, 82, 315–16 illusions, 55, 110n, 120–21, 135, 154–56, 195, 257 immigration, 91, 97, 346 immortality, 193, 218, 253, 263–64, 325–31, 367 imports, 70 income levels, 10, 46–47, 50–54, 152, 178, 270–71, 287–88, 291–94, 338–39, 365 incrementalism, 239–40 indentured servitude, 33n, 158 India, 54, 211–13 industrialization, 49, 83, 85–89, 123, 132, 154, 343 infant mortality rates, 17, 134 infinity, 55–56 inflation, 32, 33–34 information: age of, 15–17, 42, 166, 241 ambiguity of, 41, 53–54, 155–56 asymmetry of, 54–55, 61–66, 118, 188, 203, 246–48, 285–88, 291–92, 310 behavior influenced by, 32, 121, 131, 173–74, 286–87 collection of, 61–62, 108–9 context of, 143–44, 178, 188–89, 223–24, 225, 245–46, 247, 248–51, 338, 356–57, 360 correlations in, 75–76, 114–15, 192, 274–75 for decision-making, 63–64, 184, 266, 269–75, 284n digital networks for, see digital networks duplication of, 50–52, 61, 74, 78, 88, 223–30, 239–40, 253–64, 277, 317–24, 335, 349 economic impact of, 1–3, 8–9, 15–17, 18, 19–20, 21, 35, 60–61, 92–97, 118, 185, 188, 201, 207, 209, 241–43, 245–46, 246–48, 256–58, 263, 283–87, 291–303, 331, 361–67 in education, 92–97 encrypted, 14–15, 175, 239–40, 305–8, 345 false, 119–21, 186, 275n, 287–88, 299–300 filters for, 119–20, 200, 225, 356–57 free, 7–9, 15–16, 50–52, 61, 74, 78, 88, 214, 223–30, 239–40, 246, 253–64, 277, 317–24, 335, 349 history of, 29–31 human agency in, 22–25, 69–70, 120–21, 122, 190–91 interpretation of, 29n, 114–15, 116, 120–21, 129–32, 154, 158, 178, 183, 184, 188–89 investment, 59–60, 179–85 life cycle of, 175–76 patterns in, 178, 183, 184, 188–89 privacy of, see privacy provenance of, 245–46, 247, 338 sampling of, 71–72, 191, 221, 224–26, 259 shared, 50–52, 61, 74, 78, 88, 100, 223–30, 239–40, 253–64, 277, 317–24, 335, 349 signals in, 76–78, 148, 293–94 storage of, 29, 167n, 184–85; see also cloud processors and storage; servers superior, 61–66, 114, 128, 143, 171, 246–48 technology of, 7, 32–35, 49, 66n, 71–72, 109, 110, 116, 120, 125n, 126, 135, 136, 254, 312–16, 317 transparency of, 63–66, 74–78, 118, 190–91, 306–7 two-way links in, 1–2, 227, 245, 289 value of, 1–3, 15–16, 20, 210, 235–43, 257–58, 259, 261–63, 271–75, 321–24, 358–60 see also big data; data infrastructure, 79–80, 87, 179, 201, 290, 345 initial public offerings (IPOs), 103 ink, 87, 331 Inner Directeds, 215 Instagram, 2, 53 instant prices, 272, 275, 288, 320 insurance industry, 44, 56, 60, 66–67, 95, 98–99, 100, 153–54, 203, 306 intellectual property, 44, 47, 49, 60, 61, 96, 102, 183, 204, 205–10, 223, 224–26, 236, 239–40, 246, 253–64 intelligence agencies, 56, 61, 199–200, 291, 346 intelligence tests, 39, 40 interest rates, 81 Internet: advertising on, 14, 20, 24, 42, 66, 81, 107, 109, 114, 129, 154, 169–74, 177, 182, 207, 227, 242, 266–67, 275, 286, 291, 322–24, 347–48, 354, 355 anonymity of, 172, 248–51, 283–90 culture of, 13–15, 25 development of, 69, 74, 79–80, 89, 129–30, 159, 162, 190–96, 223, 228 economic impact of, 1–2, 18, 19–20, 24, 31, 43, 60–66, 79–82, 117, 136–37, 169–74, 181, 186 employment and, 2, 7–8, 56–57, 60, 71–74, 79, 117, 123, 135, 149, 178, 201, 257–58 file sharing on, 50–52, 61, 74, 78, 88, 100, 223–30, 239–40, 253–64, 277, 317–24, 335, 349 free products and services of, 7n, 10, 60–61, 73, 81, 82, 90, 94–96, 97, 128, 154, 176, 183, 187, 201, 205–10, 234, 246–48, 253–64, 283–88, 289, 308–9, 317–24, 337–38, 348–50, 366 human contributions to, 19–21, 128, 129–30, 191–92, 253–64 identity in, 14–15, 82, 173–74, 175, 283–90, 315–16 investment in, 117–20, 181 legal issues in, 63, 79–82, 204, 206, 318–19 licensing agreements for, 79–82 as network, 2–3, 9, 11, 12, 14, 15, 16, 17, 19–21, 31, 49, 50–51, 53, 54–55, 56, 57, 75, 92, 129–30, 143–48, 228–29, 259, 286–87, 308–9 political aspect of, 13–15, 205–10 search engines for, 51, 60, 70, 81, 120, 191, 267, 289, 293; see also Google security of, 14–15, 175, 239–40, 305–8, 345 surveillance of, 1–2, 11, 14, 50–51, 64, 71–72, 99, 108–9, 114–15, 120–21, 152, 177n, 199–200, 201, 206–7, 234–35, 246, 272, 291, 305, 309–11, 315, 316, 317, 319–24 transparency of, 63–66, 176, 205–6, 278, 291, 308–9, 316, 336 websites on, 80, 170, 200, 201, 343 Internet2, 69 Internet service providers (ISPs), 171–72 Interstate Highway System, 79–80, 345 “In-valid,” 130 inventors, 117–20 investment, financial, 45, 50, 59–67, 74–80, 115, 116–20, 155, 179–85, 208, 218, 257, 258, 277–78, 298, 301, 348, 350 Invisible Hand humor, 126, 128 IP addresses, 248 iPads, 267 Iran, 199, 200 irony, 130 Islam, 184 Italy, 133 Jacquard programmable looms, 23n “jailbreaking,” 103–4 Japan, 85, 97, 98, 133 Jeopardy, 191 Jeremijenko, Natalie, 302 jingles, 267 jobs, see employment Jobs, Steve, 93, 166n, 192, 358 JOBS Act (2012), 117n journalism, 92, 94 Kapital, Das (Marx), 136 Keynesianism, 38, 151–52, 204, 209, 274, 288 Khan Academy, 94 Kickstarter, 117–20, 186–87, 343 Kindle, 352 Kinect, 89n, 265 “Kirk’s Wager,” 139 Klout, 365 Kodak, 2, 53 Kottke, Dan, 211 KPFA, 136 Kurzweil, Ray, 127, 325, 327 Kushner, Tony, 165, 189 LaBerge, Stephen, 162 labor, human, 85, 86, 87, 88, 99–100, 257–58, 292 labor unions, 44, 47–48, 49, 96, 239, 240 Laffer curve, 149–51, 150, 152 Las Vegas, Nev., 296, 298 lawyers, 98–99, 100, 136, 184, 318–19 leadership, 341–51 legacy prices, 272–75, 288 legal issues, 49, 63, 74–82, 98–99, 100, 104–5, 108, 136, 184, 204, 206, 318–19 Lehman Brothers, 188 lemonade stands, 79–82 “lemons,” 118–19 Lennon, John, 211, 213 levees, economic, 43–45, 46, 47, 48, 49–50, 52, 92, 94, 96, 98, 108, 171, 176n, 224–25, 239–43, 253–54, 263, 345 leveraged mortgages, 49–50, 61, 227, 245, 289n, 296 liberal arts, 97 liberalism, 135–36, 148, 152, 202, 204, 208, 235, 236, 251, 253, 256, 265, 293, 350 libertarianism, 14, 34, 80, 202, 208, 210, 262, 321 liberty, 13–15, 32–33, 90–92, 277–78, 336 licensing agreements, 79–82 “Lifestreams” (Gelernter), 313 Lights in the Tunnel, The (Ford), 56n Linux, 206, 253, 291, 344 litigation, 98–99, 100, 104–5, 108, 184 loans, 32–33, 42, 43, 74, 151–52, 306 local advantages, 64, 94–95, 143–44, 153–56, 173, 203, 280 Local/Global Flip, 153–56, 173, 280 locked-in software, 172–73, 182, 273–74 logical copies, 223 Long-Term Capital Management, 49, 74–75 looms, 22, 23n, 24 loopholes, tax, 77 lotteries, 338–39 lucid dreaming, 162 Luddites, 135, 136 lyres, 22, 23n, 24 machines, 19–20, 86, 92, 123, 129–30, 158, 261, 309–11, 328 see also computers “Machine Stops, The” (Forster), 129–30, 261, 328 machine translations, 19–20 machine vision, 309–11 McMillen, Keith, 117 magic, 110, 115, 151, 178, 216, 338 Malthus, Thomas, 132, 134 Malthusian humor, 125, 127, 132–33 management, 49 manufacturing sector, 49, 85–89, 99, 123, 154, 343 market economies, see economies, market marketing, 211–13, 266–67, 306, 346 “Markets for Lemons” problem, 118–19 Markoff, John, 213 marriage, 167–68, 274–75, 286 Marxism, 15, 22, 37–38, 48, 136–37, 262 as humor, 126 mash-ups, 191, 221, 224–26, 259 Maslow, Abraham, 260, 315 Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), 75, 93, 94, 96–97, 157–58, 184 mass media, 7, 66, 86, 109, 120, 135, 136, 185–86, 191, 216, 267 material extinction, 125 materialism, 125n, 195 mathematics, 11, 20, 40–41, 70, 71–72, 75–78, 116, 148, 155, 161, 189n, 273n see also statistics Matrix, The, 130, 137, 155 Maxwell, James Clerk, 55 Maxwell’s Demon, 55–56 mechanicals, 49, 51n Mechanical Turk, 177–78, 185, 187, 349 Medicaid, 99 medicine, 11–13, 17, 18, 54, 66–67, 97–106, 131, 132–33, 134, 150, 157–58, 325, 346, 363, 366–67 Meetings with Remarkable Men (Gurdjieff), 215 mega-dossiers, 60 memes, 124 Memex, 221n memories, 131, 312–13, 314 meta-analysis, 112 metaphysics, 12, 127, 139, 193–95 Metcalf’s Law, 169n, 350 Mexico City, 159–62 microfilm, 221n microorganisms, 162 micropayments, 20, 226, 274–75, 286–87, 317, 337–38, 365 Microsoft, 19, 89, 265 Middle Ages, 190 middle class, 2, 3, 9, 11, 16–17, 37–38, 40, 42–45, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 60, 74, 79, 91, 92, 95, 98, 171, 205, 208, 210, 224–25, 239–43, 246, 253–54, 259, 262, 263, 280, 291–94, 331, 341n, 344, 345, 347, 354 milling machines, 86 mind reading, 111 Minority Report, 130, 310 Minsky, Marvin, 94, 157–58, 217, 326, 330–31 mission statements, 154–55 Mixed (Augmented) Reality, 312–13, 314, 315 mobile phones, 34n, 39, 85, 87, 162, 172, 182n, 192, 229, 269n, 273, 314, 315, 331 models, economic, 40–41, 148–52, 153, 155–56 modernity, 123–40, 193–94, 255 molds, 86 monetization, 172, 176n, 185, 186, 207, 210, 241–43, 255–56, 258, 260–61, 263, 298, 331, 338, 344–45 money, 3, 21, 29–35, 86, 108, 124, 148, 152, 154, 155, 158, 172, 185, 241–43, 278–79, 284–85, 289, 364 monocultures, 94 monopolies, 60, 65–66, 169–74, 181–82, 187–88, 190, 202, 326, 350 Moondust, 362n Moore’s Law, 9–18, 20, 153, 274–75, 288 morality, 29–34, 35, 42, 50–52, 54, 71–74, 188, 194–95, 252–64, 335–36 Morlocks, 137 morning-after pill, 104 morphing, 162 mortality, 193, 218, 253, 263–64, 325–31, 367 mortgages, 33, 46, 49–52, 61, 78, 95–96, 99, 224, 227, 239, 245, 255, 274n, 289n, 296, 300 motivation, 7–18, 85–86, 97–98, 216 motivational speakers, 216 movies, 111–12, 130, 137, 165, 192, 193, 204, 206, 256, 261–62, 277–78, 310 Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus, 23n MRI, 111n music industry, 11, 18, 22, 23–24, 42, 47–51, 54, 61, 66, 74, 78, 86, 88, 89, 92, 94, 95–96, 97, 129, 132, 134–35, 154, 157, 159–62, 186–87, 192, 206–7, 224, 227, 239, 253, 266–67, 281, 318, 347, 353, 354, 355, 357 Myspace, 180 Nancarrow, Conlon, 159–62 Nancarrow, Yoko, 161 nanopayments, 20, 226, 274–75, 286–87, 317, 337–38, 365 nanorobots, 11, 12, 17 nanotechnology, 11, 12, 17, 87, 162 Napster, 92 narcissism, 153–56, 188, 201 narratives, 165–66, 199 National Security Agency (NSA), 199–200 natural medicine, 131 Nelson, Ted, 128, 221, 228, 245, 349–50 Nelsonian systems, 221–30, 335 Nelson’s humor, 128 Netflix, 192, 223 “net neutrality,” 172 networked cameras, 309–11, 319 networks, see digital networks neutrinos, 110n New Age, 211–17 Newmark, Craig, 177n New Mexico, 159, 203 newspapers, 109, 135, 177n, 225, 284, 285n New York, N.Y., 75, 91, 266–67 New York Times, 109 Nobel Prize, 40, 118, 143n nodes, network, 156, 227, 230, 241–43, 350 “no free lunch” principle, 55–56, 59–60 nondeterministic music, 23n nonlinear solutions, 149–50 nonprofit share sites, 59n, 94–95 nostalgia, 129–32 NRO, 199–200 nuclear power, 133 nuclear weapons, 127, 296 nursing, 97–100, 123, 296n nursing homes, 97–100, 269 Obama, Barack, 79, 100 “Obamacare,” 100n obsolescence, 89, 95 oil resources, 43, 133 online stores, 171 Ono, Yoko, 212 ontologies, 124n, 196 open-source applications, 206, 207, 272, 310–11 optical illusions, 121 optimism, 32–35, 45, 130, 138–40, 218, 230n, 295 optimization, 144–47, 148, 153, 154–55, 167, 202, 203 Oracle, 265 Orbitz, 63, 64, 65 organ donors, 190, 191 ouroboros, 154 outcomes, economic, 40–41, 144–45 outsourcing, 177–78, 185 Owens, Buck, 256 packet switching, 228–29 Palmer, Amanda, 186–87 Pandora, 192 panopticons, 308 papacy, 190 paper money, 34n parallel computers, 147–48, 149, 151 paranoia, 309 Parrish, Maxfield, 214 particle interactions, 196 party machines, 202 Pascal, Blaise, 132, 139 Pascal’s Wager, 139 passwords, 307, 309 “past-oriented money,” 29–31, 35, 284–85 patterns, information, 178, 183, 184, 188–89 Paul, Ron, 33n Pauli exclusion principle, 181, 202 PayPal, 60, 93, 326 peasants, 565 pensions, 95, 99 Perestroika (Kushner), 165 “perfect investments,” 59–67, 77–78 performances, musical, 47–48, 51, 186–87, 253 perpetual motion, 55 Persian Gulf, 86 personal computers (PCs), 158, 182n, 214, 223, 229 personal information systems, 110, 312–16, 317 Pfizer, 265 pharmaceuticals industry, 66–67, 100–106, 123, 136, 203 philanthropy, 117 photography, 53, 89n, 92, 94, 309–11, 318, 319, 321 photo-sharing services, 53 physical trades, 292 physicians, 66–67 physics, 88, 153n, 167n Picasso, Pablo, 108 Pinterest, 180–81, 183 Pirate Party, 49, 199, 206, 226, 253, 284, 318 placebos, 112 placement fees, 184 player pianos, 160–61 plutocracy, 48, 291–94, 355 police, 246, 310, 311, 319–21, 335 politics, 13–18, 21, 22–25, 47–48, 85, 122, 124–26, 128, 134–37, 149–51, 155, 167, 199–234, 295–96, 342 see also conservatism; liberalism; libertarianism Ponzi schemes, 48 Popper, Karl, 189n popular culture, 111–12, 130, 137–38, 139, 159 “populating the stack,” 273 population, 17, 34n, 86, 97–100, 123, 125, 132, 133, 269, 296n, 325–26, 346 poverty, 37–38, 42, 44, 53–54, 93–94, 137, 148, 167, 190, 194, 253, 256, 263, 290, 291–92 power, personal, 13–15, 53, 60, 62–63, 86, 114, 116, 120, 122, 158, 166, 172–73, 175, 190, 199, 204, 207, 208, 278–79, 290, 291, 302–3, 308–9, 314, 319, 326, 344, 360 Presley, Elvis, 211 Priceline, 65 pricing strategies, 1–2, 43, 60–66, 72–74, 145, 147–48, 158, 169–74, 226, 261, 272–75, 289, 317–24, 331, 337–38 printers, 90, 99, 154, 162, 212, 269, 310–11, 316, 331, 347, 348, 349 privacy, 1–2, 11, 13–15, 25, 50–51, 64, 99, 108–9, 114–15, 120–21, 152, 177n, 199–200, 201, 204, 206–7, 234–35, 246, 272, 291, 305, 309–13, 314, 315–16, 317, 319–24 privacy rights, 13–15, 25, 204, 305, 312–13, 314, 315–16, 321–22 product design and development, 85–89, 117–20, 128, 136–37, 145, 154, 236 productivity, 7, 56–57, 134–35 profit margins, 59n, 71–72, 76–78, 94–95, 116, 177n, 178, 179, 207, 258, 274–75, 321–22 progress, 9–18, 20, 21, 37, 43, 48, 57, 88, 98, 123, 124–40, 130–37, 256–57, 267, 325–31, 341–42 promotions, 62 property values, 52 proprietary hardware, 172 provenance, 245–46, 247, 338 pseudo-asceticism, 211–12 public libraries, 293 public roads, 79–80 publishers, 62n, 92, 182, 277–78, 281, 347, 352–60 punishing vs. rewarding network effects, 169–74, 182, 183 quants, 75–76 quantum field theory, 167n, 195 QuNeo, 117, 118, 119 Rabois, Keith, 185 “race to the bottom,” 178 radiant risk, 61–63, 118–19, 120, 156, 183–84 Ragnarok, 30 railroads, 43, 172 Rand, Ayn, 167, 204 randomness, 143 rationality, 144 Reagan, Ronald, 149 real estate, 33, 46, 49–52, 61, 78, 95–96, 99, 193, 224, 227, 239, 245, 255, 274n, 289n, 296, 298, 300, 301 reality, 55–56, 59–60, 124n, 127–28, 154–56, 161, 165–68, 194–95, 203–4, 216–17, 295–303, 364–65 see also Virtual Reality (VR) reason, 195–96 recessions, economic, 31, 54, 60, 76–77, 79, 151–52, 167, 204, 311, 336–37 record labels, 347 recycling, 88, 89 Reddit, 118n, 186, 254 reductionism, 184 regulation, economic, 37–38, 44, 45–46, 49–50, 54, 56, 69–70, 77–78, 266n, 274, 299–300, 311, 321–22, 350–51 relativity theory, 167n religion, 124–25, 126, 131, 139, 190, 193–95, 211–17, 293, 300n, 326 remote computers, 11–12 rents, 144 Republican Party, 79, 202 research and development, 40–45, 85–89, 117–20, 128, 136–37, 145, 154, 215, 229–30, 236 retail sector, 69, 70–74, 95–96, 169–74, 272, 349–51, 355–56 retirement, 49, 150 revenue growth plans, 173n revenues, 149, 149, 150, 151, 173n, 225, 234–35, 242, 347–48 reversible computers, 143n revolutions, 199, 291, 331 rhythm, 159–62 Rich Dad, Poor Dad (Kiyosaki), 46 risk, 54, 55, 57, 59–63, 71–72, 85, 117, 118–19, 120, 156, 170–71, 179, 183–84, 188, 242, 277–81, 284, 337, 350 externalization of, 59n, 117, 277–81 risk aversion, 188 risk pools, 277–81, 284 risk radiation, 61–63, 118–19, 120, 156, 183–84 robo call centers, 177n robotic cars, 90–92 robotics, robots, 11, 12, 17, 23, 42, 55, 85–86, 90–92, 97–100, 111, 129, 135–36, 155, 157, 162, 260, 261, 269, 296n, 342, 359–60 Roman Empire, 24–25 root nodes, 241 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 129 Rousseau humor, 126, 129, 130–31 routers, 171–72 royalties, 47, 240, 254, 263–64, 323, 338 Rubin, Edgar, 121 rupture, 66–67 salaries, 10, 46–47, 50–54, 152, 178, 270–71, 287–88, 291–94, 338–39, 365 sampling, 71–72, 191, 221, 224–26, 259 San Francisco, University of, 190 satellites, 110 savings, 49, 72–74 scalable solutions, 47 scams, 119–21, 186, 275n, 287–88, 299–300 scanned books, 192, 193 SceneTap, 108n Schmidt, Eric, 305n, 352 Schwartz, Peter, 214 science fiction, 18, 126–27, 136, 137–38, 139, 193, 230n, 309, 356n search engines, 51, 60, 70, 81, 120, 191, 267, 289, 293 Second Life, 270, 343 Secret, The (Byrne), 216 securitization, 76–78, 99, 289n security, 14–15, 175, 239–40, 305–8, 345 self-actualization, 211–17 self-driving vehicles, 90–92, 98, 311, 343, 367 servants, 22 servers, 12n, 15, 31, 53–57, 71–72, 95–96, 143–44, 171, 180, 183, 206, 245, 358 see also Siren Servers “Sexy Sadie,” 213 Shakur, Tupac, 329 Shelley, Mary, 327 Short History of Progress, A (Wright), 132 “shrinking markets,” 66–67 shuttles, 22, 23n, 24 signal-processing algorithms, 76–78, 148 silicon chips, 10, 86–87 Silicon Valley, 12, 13, 14, 21, 34n, 56, 59, 60, 66–67, 70, 71, 75–76, 80, 93, 96–97, 100, 102, 108n, 125n, 132, 136, 154, 157, 162, 170, 179–89, 192, 193, 200, 207, 210, 211–18, 228, 230, 233, 258, 275n, 294, 299–300, 325–31, 345, 349, 352, 354–58 singularity, 22–25, 125, 215, 217, 327–28, 366, 367 Singularity University, 193, 325, 327–28 Sirenic Age, 66n, 354 Siren Servers, 53–57, 59, 61–64, 65, 66n, 69–78, 82, 91–99, 114–19, 143–48, 154–56, 166–89, 191, 200, 201, 203, 210n, 216, 235, 246–50, 258, 259, 269, 271, 272, 280, 285, 289, 293–94, 298, 301, 302–3, 307–10, 314–23, 326, 336–51, 354, 365, 366 Siri, 95 skilled labor, 99–100 Skout, 280n Skype, 95, 129 slavery, 22, 23, 33n Sleeper, 130 small businesses, 173 smartphones, 34n, 39, 162, 172, 192, 269n, 273 Smith, Adam, 121, 126 Smolin, Lee, 148n social contract, 20, 49, 247, 284, 288, 335, 336 social engineering, 112–13, 190–91 socialism, 14, 128, 254, 257, 341n social mobility, 66, 97, 292–94 social networks, 18, 51, 56, 60, 70, 81, 89, 107–9, 113, 114, 129, 167–68, 172–73, 179, 180, 190, 199, 200–201, 202, 204, 227, 241, 242–43, 259, 267, 269n, 274–75, 280n, 286, 307–8, 317, 336, 337, 343, 349, 358, 365–66 see also Facebook social safety nets, 10, 44, 54, 202, 251, 293 Social Security, 251, 345 software, 7, 9, 11, 14, 17, 68, 86, 99, 100–101, 128, 129, 147, 154, 155, 165, 172–73, 177–78, 182, 192, 234, 236, 241–42, 258, 262, 273–74, 283, 331, 347, 357 software-mediated technology, 7, 11, 14, 86, 100–101, 165, 234, 236, 258, 347 South Korea, 133 Soviet Union, 70 “space elevator pitch,” 233, 342, 361 space travel, 233, 266 Spain, 159–60 spam, 178, 275n spending levels, 287–88 spirituality, 126, 211–17, 325–31, 364 spreadsheet programs, 230 “spy data tax,” 234–35 Square, 185 Stalin, Joseph, 125n Stanford Research Institute (SRI), 215 Stanford University, 60, 75, 90, 95, 97, 101, 102, 103, 162, 325 Starr, Ringo, 256 Star Trek, 138, 139, 230n startup companies, 39, 60, 69, 93–94, 108n, 124n, 136, 179–89, 265, 274n, 279–80, 309–10, 326, 341, 343–45, 348, 352, 355 starvation, 123 Star Wars, 137 star (winner-take-all) system, 38–43, 50, 54–55, 204, 243, 256–57, 263, 329–30 statistics, 11, 20, 71–72, 75–78, 90–91, 93, 110n, 114–15, 186, 192 “stickiness,” 170, 171 stimulus, economic, 151–52 stoplights, 90 Strangelove humor, 127 student debt, 92, 95 “Study 27,” 160 “Study 36,” 160 Sumer, 29 supergoop, 85–89 supernatural phenomena, 55, 124–25, 127, 132, 192, 194–95, 300 supply chain, 70–72, 174, 187 Supreme Court, U.S., 104–5 surgery, 11–13, 17, 18, 98, 157–58, 363 surveillance, 1–2, 11, 14, 50–51, 64, 71–72, 99, 108–9, 114–15, 120–21, 152, 177n, 199–200, 201, 206–7, 234–35, 246, 272, 291, 305, 309–11, 315, 316, 317, 319–24 Surviving Progress, 132 sustainable economies, 235–37, 285–87 Sutherland, Ivan, 221 swarms, 99, 109 synthesizers, 160 synthetic biology, 162 tablets, 85, 86, 87, 88, 113, 162, 229 Tahrir Square, 95 Tamagotchis, 98 target ads, 170 taxation, 44, 45, 49, 52, 60, 74–75, 77, 82, 149, 149, 150, 151, 202, 210, 234–35, 263, 273, 289–90 taxis, 44, 91–92, 239, 240, 266–67, 269, 273, 311 Teamsters, 91 TechCrunch, 189 tech fixes, 295–96 technical schools, 96–97 technologists (“techies”), 9–10, 15–16, 45, 47–48, 66–67, 88, 122, 124, 131–32, 134, 139–40, 157–62, 165–66, 178, 193–94, 295–98, 307, 309, 325–31, 341, 342, 356n technology: author’s experience in, 47–48, 62n, 69–72, 93–94, 114, 130, 131–32, 153, 158–62, 178, 206–7, 228, 265, 266–67, 309–10, 325, 328, 343, 352–53, 362n, 364, 365n, 366 bio-, 11–13, 17, 18, 109–10, 162, 330–31 chaos and, 165–66, 273n, 331 collusion in, 65–66, 72, 169–74, 255, 350–51 complexity of, 53–54 costs of, 8, 18, 72–74, 87n, 136–37, 170–71, 176–77, 184–85 creepiness of, 305–24 cultural impact of, 8–9, 21, 23–25, 53, 130, 135–40 development and emergence of, 7–18, 21, 53–54, 60–61, 66–67, 85–86, 87, 97–98, 129–38, 157–58, 182, 188–90, 193–96, 217 digital, 2–3, 7–8, 15–16, 18, 31, 40, 43, 50–51, 132, 208 economic impact of, 1–3, 15–18, 29–30, 37, 40, 53–54, 60–66, 71–74, 79–110, 124, 134–37, 161, 162, 169–77, 181–82, 183, 184–85, 218, 254, 277–78, 298, 335–39, 341–51, 357–58 educational, 92–97 efficiency of, 90, 118, 191 employment in, 56–57, 60, 71–74, 79, 123, 135, 178 engineering for, 113–14, 123–24, 192, 194, 217, 218, 326 essential vs. worthless, 11–12 failure of, 188–89 fear of (technophobia), 129–32, 134–38 freedom as issue in, 32–33, 90–92, 277–78, 336 government influence in, 158, 199, 205–6, 234–35, 240, 246, 248–51, 307, 317, 341, 345–46, 350–51 human agency and, 8–21, 50–52, 85, 88, 91, 124–40, 144, 165–66, 175–78, 191–92, 193, 217, 253–64, 274–75, 283–85, 305–6, 328, 341–51, 358–60, 361, 362, 365–67 ideas for, 123, 124, 158, 188–89, 225, 245–46, 286–87, 299, 358–60 industrial, 49, 83, 85–89, 123, 132, 154, 343 information, 7, 32–35, 49, 66n, 71–72, 109, 110, 116, 120, 125n, 126, 135, 136, 254, 312–16, 317 investment in, 66, 181, 183, 184, 218, 277–78, 298, 348 limitations of, 157–62, 196, 222 monopolies for, 60, 65–66, 169–74, 181–82, 187–88, 190, 202, 326, 350 morality and, 50–51, 72, 73–74, 188, 194–95, 262, 335–36 motivation and, 7–18, 85–86, 97–98, 216 nano-, 11, 12, 17, 162 new vs. old, 20–21 obsolescence of, 89, 97 political impact of, 13–18, 22–25, 85, 122, 124–26, 128, 134–37, 199–234, 295–96, 342 progress in, 9–18, 20, 21, 37, 43, 48, 57, 88, 98, 123, 124–40, 130–37, 256–57, 267, 325–31, 341–42 resources for, 55–56, 157–58 rupture as concept in, 66–67 scams in, 119–21, 186, 275n, 287–88, 299–300 singularity of, 22–25, 125, 215, 217, 327–28, 366, 367 social impact of, 9–21, 124–40, 167n, 187, 280–81, 310–11 software-mediated, 7, 11, 14, 86, 100–101, 165, 234, 236, 258, 347 startup companies in, 39, 60, 69, 93–94, 108n, 124n, 136, 179–89, 265, 274n, 279–80, 309–10, 326, 341, 343–45, 348, 352, 355 utopian, 13–18, 21, 31, 37–38, 45–46, 96, 128, 130, 167, 205, 207, 265, 267, 270, 283, 290, 291, 308–9, 316 see also specific technologies technophobia, 129–32, 134–38 television, 86, 185–86, 191, 216, 267 temperature, 56, 145 Ten Commandments, 300n Terminator, The, 137 terrorism, 133, 200 Tesla, Nikola, 327 Texas, 203 text, 162, 352–60 textile industry, 22, 23n, 24, 135 theocracy, 194–95 Theocracy humor, 124–25 thermodynamics, 88, 143n Thiel, Peter, 60, 93, 326 thought experiments, 55, 139 thought schemas, 13 3D printers, 7, 85–89, 90, 99, 154, 162, 212, 269, 310–11, 316, 331, 347, 348, 349 Thrun, Sebastian, 94 Tibet, 214 Time Machine, The (Wells), 127, 137, 261, 331 topology, network, 241–43, 246 touchscreens, 86 tourism, 79 Toyota Prius, 302 tracking services, 109, 120–21, 122 trade, 29 traffic, 90–92, 314 “tragedy of the commons,” 66n Transformers, 98 translation services, 19–20, 182, 191, 195, 261, 262, 284, 338 transparency, 63–66, 74–78, 118, 176, 190–91, 205–6, 278, 291, 306–9, 316, 336 transportation, 79–80, 87, 90–92, 123, 258 travel agents, 64 Travelocity, 65 travel sites, 63, 64, 65, 181, 279–80 tree-shaped networks, 241–42, 243, 246 tribal dramas, 126 trickle-down effect, 148–49, 204 triumphalism, 128, 157–62 tropes (humors), 124–40, 157, 170, 230 trust, 32–34, 35, 42, 51–52 Turing, Alan, 127–28, 134 Turing’s humor, 127–28, 191–94 Turing Test, 330 Twitter, 128, 173n, 180, 182, 188, 199, 200n, 201, 204, 245, 258, 259, 349, 365n 2001: A Space Odyssey, 137 two-way links, 1–2, 227, 245, 289 underemployment, 257–58 unemployment, 7–8, 22, 79, 85–106, 117, 151–52, 234, 257–58, 321–22, 331, 343 “unintentional manipulation,” 144 United States, 25, 45, 54, 79–80, 86, 138, 199–204 universities, 92–97 upper class, 45, 48 used car market, 118–19 user interface, 362–63, 364 utopianism, 13–18, 21, 30, 31, 37–38, 45–46, 96, 128, 130, 167, 205, 207, 265, 267, 270, 283, 290, 291, 308–9, 316 value, economic, 21, 33–35, 52, 61, 64–67, 73n, 108, 283–90, 299–300, 321–22, 364 value, information, 1–3, 15–16, 20, 210, 235–43, 257–58, 259, 261–63, 271–75, 321–24, 358–60 Values, Attitudes, and Lifestyles (VALS), 215 variables, 149–50 vendors, 71–74 venture capital, 66, 181, 218, 277–78, 298, 348 videos, 60, 100, 162, 185–86, 204, 223, 225, 226, 239, 240, 242, 245, 277, 287, 329, 335–36, 349, 354, 356 Vietnam War, 353n vinyl records, 89 viral videos, 185–86 Virtual Reality (VR), 12, 47–48, 127, 129, 132, 158, 162, 214, 283–85, 312–13, 314, 315, 325, 343, 356, 362n viruses, 132–33 visibility, 184, 185–86, 234, 355 visual cognition, 111–12 VitaBop, 100–106, 284n vitamins, 100–106 Voice, The, 185–86 “voodoo economics,” 149 voting, 122, 202–4, 249 Wachowski, Lana, 165 Wall Street, 49, 70, 76–77, 181, 184, 234, 317, 331, 350 Wal-Mart, 69, 70–74, 89, 174, 187, 201 Warhol, Andy, 108 War of the Worlds, The (Wells), 137 water supplies, 17, 18 Watts, Alan, 211–12 Wave, 189 wealth: aggregate or concentration of, 9, 42–43, 53, 60, 61, 74–75, 96, 97, 108, 115, 148, 157–58, 166, 175, 201, 202, 208, 234, 278–79, 298, 305, 335, 355, 360 creation of, 32, 33–34, 46–47, 50–51, 57, 62–63, 79, 92, 96, 120, 148–49, 210, 241–43, 270–75, 291–94, 338–39, 349 inequalities and redistribution of, 20, 37–45, 65–66, 92, 97, 144, 254, 256–57, 274–75, 286–87, 290–94, 298, 299–300 see also income levels weather forecasting, 110, 120, 150 weaving, 22, 23n, 24 webcams, 99, 245 websites, 80, 170, 200, 201, 343 Wells, H.

The Innovation Illusion: How So Little Is Created by So Many Working So Hard
by Fredrik Erixon and Bjorn Weigel
Published 3 Oct 2016

They prefer a slowdown in the pace of market change. Innovation and corporate destruction How the mighty fall! Nokia’s history of producing mobile handsets is now, well, history. It sold its mobile unit to Microsoft for a little more than $7.2 billion a few years ago – much less than what Microsoft paid for Skype, and many times below Nokia’s peak value just a few years earlier.4 Nokia stumbled – and squandered shareholders’ money. It failed to do what the company prided itself on: “changing with the times, disrupting the status quo,” as its own hagiography put it.5 Companies with new business models and technological applications relevant to the mobile sector outcompeted Nokia in the handset consumer market.

…

Steve Ballmer, the then newly minted heir to Bill Gates, described how Microsoft would create a “unified platform through which devices and services co-operate with each other.”7 Microsoft predicted the need for interconnected web services that could be used across platforms and shared between colleagues or family members. It understood what would come in location-aware devices, voice-control services, and photo sharing. Microsoft even predicted the services, or variants thereof, that later became known as Facebook and Skype. However, Microsoft did not reshape the consumer market with these products. Since the millennium it has been trying to catch up with the kinds of new devices and services that have made the shareholders of other companies rich. While it is only natural that fast-growing and technology-intensive markets have many successful companies, it is remarkable that Microsoft – given its dominant market position for operating systems – could not lead the consumer market with new products and technologies it knew was coming.

…

(i)n17 savings aggregate (i) corporate (cash hoarding) (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v) retirement (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii) Schmidt, Eric (i) Schumpeter, Joseph (i), (ii), (iii), (iv) Schumpeterian innovation (i), (ii) “scientific civilization” thinking, and planning (i) scientific research (i) see also R&D; research Scrooge character (i) “second half of the chessboard” (Ray Kurzweil) (i) Second Machine Age, The (Brynjolfsson and McAfee) (i), (ii) Second World countries, and globalization (i) Seinfeld (TV series) Art Vandelay and “importer-exporter” conversation (i), (ii) “Art Vandelay logistics operation” (i) self-driving vehicles see driverless vehicles self-regulation (i) Sellers, Peter (i) Servan-Schreiber, Jean-Jacques, Le Défi américain (The American Challenge) (i) services and globalization (i) and market contestability (i), (ii) and second unbundling of production (i) see also online services “servicification” (or “servitization”) (i), (ii) SetPoint nerve stimulator (i) shale gas, and regulation in Europe (i) shareholders (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii) shares buybacks (i), (ii), (iii), (iv) share/stock structures (i) see also stock markets Shelley, Percy Bysshe, Prometheus Unbound (i) shipping containers (i) short-termism (i) Sidecar (i) SIFIs (systemically important financial institutions) (i) Silicon Valley (i), (ii), (iii) silo curse (i) Silvia, John (i) Simons, Bright (i) Simphal, Thibaud (i) Sinclair, Clive (i) Sinn, Hans-Werner, “bazaar economy” (i) size see corporate size skill deficiencies, and productivity (i) Skype (i), (ii) Slyngstad, Yngve (i) smartphones (i), (ii), (iii), (iv) Smith, Adam economy of specialization (i) labor and wealth (i) “man of system” (i) The Wealth of Nations (i), (ii) Smiths, The (rock band), “hang the DJ” lyric (i) social democratic vision (i) social regulation (i), (ii) socialism and bureaucracy (i) and community-generated content (i) corporate socialism (i), (ii) and Cybersyn project (i) and death of capitalism utopia (i) and labor vs. work (i) market socialism (i) and open source technology (i) socialist planning (i) and Swedish hybrid economy (i) Söderberg, Hjalmar (i) software technology, and regulation (i) Sombart, Werner (i) Sony (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v) sourdough production, history of (i) South Africa, taxi services and regulation (i) South Korea “Asian Tiger” (i) R&D spending (i) Sovereign Wealth Fund Institute (i) sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) (i), (ii), (iii) “Soviet–Harvard illusion” (Nassim Nicholas Taleb) (i) space flights, commercial (i) SpaceX (i) Spain biofuels regulation (i) and diffusion of innovations (i) and globalization (i) left-wing populism (i) lesser dependence on larger enterprises (i) pensions (i) public debt (i) taxi services and regulation (i) specialization and corporate control (i) and creative destruction (i) and deregulation (i) and firm boundaries (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v) and globalization (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii) and innovation (i), (ii), (iii), (iv) and organization (i) and sunk costs (i), (ii) vertical (i), (ii) speech codes, in universities (i) staff turnover rates, and economic dynamism (i) Stanford University (i), (ii) Star Trek (TV series) (i) start-ups (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v) Startup Genome Report (i) statistics see recorded data (national accounts) Statoil (i) Stein, Gertrude, “there is no there there” quote (i) Stern, Ariel Dora (i) stock markets changing role of (i) and corporate politics (i) post-financial crisis growth (i) and sovereign wealth funds (i) see also shareholders; shares stockholding periods (i), (ii), (iii) strategic management (i) strategic planning (i) strategy, and managerialism (i) Stratos pacemaker (i) subprime mortgage crisis (US) (i) see also financial crisis (2007) subsidies domestic companies (i) US firms (i) sunk costs (i), (ii), (iii), (iv) Sunstein, Cass (i) supply chains fragmentation of (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii) German-Central European supply chain (i), (ii) globalization of (i), (ii) and market concentration (i) marketization of (i) and multinationals (i) and Nokia (i) outsourcing of (i) and private standards (i) see also value chains Sweden corporate renewal levels (i) economic situation: 1970s–1980s (i); globalization and post-financial crisis (i) productivity and incomes (i) services and globalization (i) sourdough hotel (Stockholm) (i) state telecommunication monopoly and mobile technology (i) SWFs (sovereign wealth funds) (i), (ii), (iii) SWOT analyses (i) systemically important financial institutions (SIFIs) (i) Tabarrok, Alex (i) tablets (i), (ii) Taibbi, Matt, “Why Isn’t Wall Street in Jail?”

Tools and Weapons: The Promise and the Peril of the Digital Age
by Brad Smith and Carol Ann Browne
Published 9 Sep 2019

Given the sensitive nature of the program this is the earliest opportunity we have had to contact you for comment.” He wanted a response by six p.m. Eastern Daylight Time, or three p.m. for Seattle. The Guardian had obtained classified intelligence documents that detailed how nine US technology companies—Microsoft, Yahoo!, Google, Facebook, Paltalk, YouTube, Skype, AOL, and Apple—purportedly had signed up for a voluntary program, called PRISM, granting the NSA direct access to email, chat, video, photos, social networking details, and other data. Dominic’s plans for lunch—and for most of the coming days—were abandoned. He did an about-face and bolted up the stairs, two at a time, back to the fifth floor.

…

“This is the house of freedom and it should constantly remind us how subtle and sensitive the barrier is between freedom and its opposite, totalitarianism.”3 Each year, the Vabamu Museum takes more than fifty thousand visitors from around the world on Estonia’s journey through occupation and freedom—and, as it turns out, how technology can become a weapon. The internet helped push Estonia out of the shadows of Communism, transforming what would become the home of Skype into a vibrant self-proclaimed “e-democracy.” But in 2007, Estonia’s former occupier struck the country’s digital underbelly, revealing democracy’s inherent fragility and how the very technology that helped define a nation’s freedom also made it more vulnerable. That spring, Estonia suffered the first cyber-based nation-state attack on another country, a digital siege called a denial-of-service attack that froze much of the country’s internet, including sites that powered Estonia’s government services and economy.

…

Bartholomew’s Hospital, 61–62 Salesforce, 215 Samuelsen, Anders, 109 Sandberg, Sheryl, 16 Sanger, David, 67, 118 Santa Lucia, Naria, 182 SAP, 285 Sauer, Rich, 218 scams and frauds, 192–93, 316n2 Scharre, Paul, 203 Scheidler, Hans-Jochen, 40–42 Schmidt, Eric, 16, 97 Schrems, Max, 132–37, 144, 148, 149 Schumer, Chuck, 57 search warrants, 5–7, 11, 15, 23, 28, 30, 31, 228 Fourth Amendment and, 7–8, 14, 33 gag orders and, 23–24, 30–31, 33, 35–37 international borders and, 46–59 Stored Communications Act and, 23 Seattle, Wash., 157, 186–88, 297, 302 commute times in, 187–8, 326n37 Seattle Times, 183 Second Circuit Court of Appeals, 314n10 Senate, U.S., 56, 84, 85, 98, 174, 176 Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee, 323n9 elections and, 83 Intelligence Committee, 95 Judiciary Committee, 26 September 11 terrorist attacks, 8–9, 71, 72 Shadow Brokers, 63–64 Shaw, Frank, 215, 218, 306 Sheinwald, Nigel, 110 Sherman, William Tecumseh, 152 Shields, Mike, 279–80 Shum, Harry, 207–8, 252 Siebel, Edwin, 309n2 Siemens AG, 111, 122, 294 singularity (AI superintelligence), 197, 199, 328n12 Skillful initiative, 325n18 Skype, 2 Slate, 101, 199 smartphones, cell phones, 34–35, 94, 158, 159, 200, 241, 270 Snapp, Mary, 180 Snowden, Edward, 4–5, 8, 9, 13–14, 17–19, 25, 41, 263 social media, 89–107, 212 disinformation campaigns and, 90, 94–98, 102–4 illegal content on, 99, 103 NewsGuard and, 104 privacy and, 145 regulation of, 98, 100–104, 144 Russia and, 95–98, 103 terrorists and, 99, 100, 125–26 violent material on, 102 Socolow, Michael, 318nn27–28 Socrates, 259 software: creative aspects of software development, 140–41 Hippocratic oath for coders, 207–8 open-source, 264, 276–78, 283 resource allocations and trade-offs in development, 15 role of software architects for GDPR, 140–41 Software Freedom Law Center, 314n8 Sony Pictures, 63 Sotomayor, Sonia, 33–34 South Korea, 81, 124, 316n2 Soviet Union, 40, 90, 91 in Cold War, 12, 40, 107, 116–18 KGB in, 92 Spain, 63 Spalter, Jonathan, 323n9 spear-phishing, 79, 83 speech recognition, 194–95, 197, 201 Spielberg, Steven, 211–12 Stahlkopf, Dev, 125, 293 Stamos, Alex, 97 Standard Oil, 148, 310n6 Stasi (State Security Service), 39–41, 44 Stern School of Business, 333n16 Stored Communications Act, 23 Strontium (Fancy Bear; APT28), 78–81, 84–85 student activism, 217–18 Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS), 323n9 Supreme Court, 7, 33–35, 52–56, 58, 228, 299, 311n15, 314n10 Surace-Smith, Kathy, 50, 308 surveillance, 1–19, 45, 131, 289–90, 292, 300 commercial, 145; see also privacy facial recognition and, 227–28 FISC and, 12 Fourth Amendment and, 34 GPS, 33–34, 228 PRISM and, 1–4, 8, 9, 310–11n4 Reform Government Surveillance coalition, 16–17 see also privacy Swift, Taylor, 256 Switchboard data set, 197 Symantec, 120 T Tallinn, Estonia, 89–90, 92 Tallinn Manual 2.0, 128, 320n19 taxes, 146, 182–83, 290 Tay, 255–56 Taylor, Anne, 287–88, 334–35n1 TechFest, 170–71 tech intensity, 289 technology(ies), 129–30, 184, 221, 247 cultural values and, 244–45 Einstein on, 129, 209–10, 289 government and, 109–30 international collaboration on, 300 managing, 287–304 market barriers to, 257 network effects and, 270 regulation of, see regulation time needed for adoption of, 240–41 technology companies: banks compared with, 11 blitzscaling and, 292 cultural change and, 292 cybersecurity and, 294–95 employees’ role at, 217 entrepreneurs in, 335n9 government and, 11, 19, 23, 76, 85–86 interns and young employees at, 218 leaders in, 293, 295 as nation, 119 principles in, 293–94 PRISM and, 1–4, 8, 9 regulation of, 11 talent gap and, 169–90; see also education; immigration White House meetings with leaders of, 16–19, 111–12 women and racial minorities at, 184–85 Technology Education and Literacy in Schools (TEALS), 178–79 Techonomy, 192 techplomacy, 127 TechSpark, 233, 331n8 telegraph, 192 telephones, 161, 192, 289, 299 cell, 34–35, 94, 158, 159, 200, 241, 270 landline, 94, 159 television, 159, 299 white spaces, 159–60, 162, 163, 167 Tencent, 256 Terminator movie franchise, 202 terrorism, 9, 12, 25, 26, 99, 100, 102, 203, 222 Christchurch mosque shootings, 99–100, 102, 125–26 facial recognition and, 330n21 in Paris, 26–28 Pearl kidnapping, 21–22 September 11 attacks, 8–9, 71, 72 social media and, 99, 100, 125–26 Thompson, John, 221, 252 Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station, 143–44, 146 Tiku, Nitasha, 225 TitleTownTech, 331n8 Tomahawk missiles, 66–67 Toronto, 316n2 Total, 122 trademark law, 80 transparency, 30, 32, 35 artificial intelligence and, 200–201, 207 transportation, 185–86 Trudeau, Justin, 142–43 Trump, Donald, 58, 73–75, 82, 83, 115, 144, 157, 172–74, 180, 214, 263, 279–82, 284 meeting at Trump Tower with tech executives, 172–73, 176 technology strategy for 2016 presidential campaign, 279–82 Trump, Ivanka, 180 Trunnell, Matthew, 272–73, 275, 276, 278, 282, 284–85 Turing, Alan, 328n12 Twitter, 90, 95, 104, 125 Christchurch mosque terrorist shootings and, 99, 126 2001: A Space Odyssey, 328n12 U Uganda Wildlife Authority, 288 UHF, 159 Ukraine, 69–72, 90, 317n2 unemployment, 152, 156 unions, 216 United Kingdom, 14, 42, 53, 69, 75, 95, 103, 265, 284 Brexit and, 131–32, 139, 238 cyberattack in, 63 war between France and, 105 in War of 1812, 46, 313n5 United Nations (UN), 72, 129, 160 United States Trade Representative, 257 University of Washington, 178, 182, 208, 273, 286, 297, 325n11 V Vabamu Museum of Occupations and Freedom, 90–92 Vail, Theodore, 161 Vatican, 208–10 Verizon, 2–3 VHF, 159 vision, computer, 194–95, 197, 201 Voice of America, 107 voting, see elections W Walker, Kent, 12–13 Wall Street Journal, 21, 104 Wang, Kevin, 178 WannaCry, 63–69, 71–74, 122, 294, 300, 301 war, 204–5, 302, 329n29 cyberwar, cyberweapons, 69, 118, 130, 205–6, 289 see also military weapons Ward, Patrick, 61–62 WarGames, 116–17 Warner, Mark, 98, 99, 103, 105 War of 1812, 46, 313n5 Warren, Samuel, 330n24 Washington, George, 105, 106, 319n36 Washington Post, 4, 13–15, 298 Washington State Opportunity Scholarship program, 181–82, 325n20 WeChat, 256 Wicker, Roger, 323n9 Wikileaks, 78 Wilkes, John, 5–6, 23 Willard InterContinental Washington, 160–61 Wilson, Woodrow, 100 Windows, xx, 12, 29, 63–65, 203, 212, 253, 270 Wired, 225 wireless technologies, 159, 167, 296 broadband, 151–67, 289, 296, 322n6, 323n9 TV white space, 159–60, 162, 163, 167 Wiretap Act, 47 Word, 50, 264 workforce, see jobs Workforce Education Investment Act, 182–84 World Bank, 325n18 World Economic Forum at Davos, 191–93, 202 World Trade Organization, 257 World War I, 123 World War II, 28, 40, 61, 62, 77, 88, 90, 95, 117, 122, 123, 166, 172, 209, 317n2 writ of habeas corpus, 10 X Xamarin, 277 Xbox, 72, 100, 126, 140, 160 XiaoIce, 255, 256 Xi Jinping, 249–52, 268 Y Yahoo!

Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest
by Suzanne Simard
Published 3 May 2021

“Don’t worry, Suzanne, I’ve got this,” he’d assured me in his British brogue. We’d have to time our Skype meetings according to my stamina. The day they labeled, I felt as if I were climbing a mountain without air, wishing I were in the game but grateful they were carrying on without me there. “We stayed up all night in the greenhouse,” Brian wrote after the trees were harvested, their mycorrhizas counted, tissues ground for carbon-13 analysis. I lay back on the couch with a sigh. A month later, we conferred on Skype, with Amanda’s data tables and figures on the screen. She started by saying, “Hey, you look great.”

…

“Do you think it’s important that we’re seeing that Mother Trees are also bigger when they’re next to their kin?” Amanda asked. “It makes sense if they’re passing signals back and forth.” Of course it did. Being connected and communicative affects the parents as much as the kids. The next day, I clicked on Skype to join Amanda and Brian looking over the isotope data. Even before their images grew into focus, Brian was excitedly saying, “Look at this!” “The amounts are small,” Amanda said, “but the Mother Trees are sending more carbon to the mycorrhizal fungi of their kin than the others! Kin-recognition molecules seem to have carbon and micronutrients.”

This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends: The Cyberweapons Arms Race
by Nicole Perlroth
Published 9 Feb 2021

In an attempt to solicit more funds, the agency boasted that some of these “enabling” projects were “at, or near total completion.” That year, 2013, the NSA claimed that it planned to “reach full operating capability for SIGINT access to a major Internet Peer-to-Peer voice and text communications system.” The Snowden leaks did not say which system, but Skype was the obvious suspect. It also claimed to have “complete enabling for the two leading encryption chip makers used in Virtual Private Network and Web encryption devices.” In other words, the NSA was making fools of anyone who believed they could thwart spies using off-the-shelf encryption tools like VPNs—virtual private networks that route a person’s web activities through a protected, encrypted tunnel.

…

A backdoor for one party, national security officials knew better than anyone, would become a target for all. The idea these companies would leave Americans more vulnerable to cybercriminals and nation-states to satisfy law enforcement’s needs was off the table. Then there were the logistical challenges. Not every tech company was based in the United States. Skype, for example, was originally hosted in Luxembourg. How many backdoors, for how many government agencies, would these tech companies be required to produce? What NSO offered law enforcement was a powerful workaround, a tool to keep from going blind. By hacking the “end points” of the communication—the phones themselves—NSO’s technology gave authorities access to data before and after it was encrypted on their target’s device.

…

Not long after Caproni testified to Congress, Hulio and Lavie pivoted and began pitching their remote access technology as a surveillance tool. They called the tool Pegasus, and like the mythological winged horse it was named for, it could do the seemingly impossible: capture vast amounts of previously inaccessible data—phone calls, text messages, email, contacts, calendar appointments, GPS location data, Facebook, WhatsApp and Skype conversations—from the air without leaving a trace. Pegasus could even do what NSO called “room tap”: gather sounds and snapshots in and around the room using the phone’s microphone and video camera. It could deny targets access to certain websites and applications, grab screenshots off their phones, and record their every search and browsing activity.

The Numerati
by Stephen Baker
Published 11 Aug 2008

Does Al Qaeda follow similar patterns? JUST AS OUR experience on the Internet is moving beyond the written word, so is the data pouring into NSA computers. Much of it arrives as spoken voices, images, and video. It might be a face in a crowd in Baghdad, or perhaps a raspy voice giving orders in Farsi from a Skype account somewhere in the Horn of Africa. To mine this outpouring of data, machines must make sense of the words we speak in scores of languages. They must learn to pick out one or two faces from six billion others. To extend their nets into sounds and images, the counterterrorists need new technologies.

…

Over the course of an entire school year, this data would show the researchers not only where the students went and how they communicated with each other, but also who they circulated with, and even who they were spending the night with. This was a privacy invasion huge enough to agitate a congressional oversight committee. But all of Eagle's subjects signed lengthy consent forms. By the time I catch up to Eagle, he's living on the coast of Kenya, working on an education project. Our Skype connection fails, so we chat online. He tells me that he's watching turtles swimming in to lay their eggs on the beach below, where they're hard-pressed to protect them from local poachers. "You can get six shillings for these eggs in town," he writes. I nudge him toward faraway Cambridge, and he tells me about his experiment.

Platform Scale: How an Emerging Business Model Helps Startups Build Large Empires With Minimum Investment
by Sangeet Paul Choudary
Published 14 Sep 2015

In terms of the producer-consumer parlance that we used to explain network effects in Section 1, the problem can be reduced to the following pattern: Problem. How do I get producers and consumers, given that Condition 1. I need producers to get consumers, and Condition 2. I need consumers to get producers? If the two roles are not too distinct (e.g. Skype), the pattern may simply be stated as: Problem: How do I get users, given that: Condition 1: Users will not come unless there is value in the platform, and Condition 2: There is no value in the platform without having users on it? The chicken-and-egg problem continues to persist till a certain point at which there is enough overlap between supply and demand to sustainably enable interactions.

…

Much of 9GAG’s viral growth also stems from consumers sharing creations on the platform, rather than the producers alone sharing those creations. Platforms that require users to explicitly connect with each other, before they experience network effects, grow virally through invites. Communication networks, like Skype and Facebook, require users to explicitly connect with others. These platforms rely on local network effects, where users benefit only from having more friends within their immediate network. In contrast, every user on YouTube or Airbnb benefits when there are a greater number of users using the overall network.

Ctrl Alt Delete: Reboot Your Business. Reboot Your Life. Your Future Depends on It.
by Mitch Joel
Published 20 May 2013

The constant hum of music, the muted bumps from the Embody office chair as it rolls across the floor, and the 3:32 a.m. sounds from the gourmet coffee machine. Oh, and let’s not forget about the heated debates that creep through the walls of the apartment and seep into the neighbors’ space—the conversations that seem to increase in volume and frustration when the video Skype call fails. Why doesn’t this guy just go to an office during the day like the rest of us? THIS IS THE STORY OF MARCO ARMENT… Marco Arment is changing the face of business forever with his computer, smartphone, home office, and one new user after another. What does the near future of business look like?

…

But Cisco is now predicting that mobile data use worldwide is poised to grow to more than twenty times the current usage by 2015. It would be interesting to see what the prediction is for voice. As we get more and more connected, not only do email, text messaging, and chat start chewing into the voice usage, but it’s clear that FaceTime, Google Hangouts, mobile Skype, and other soon-to-follow products could make voice calls as relevant as sending a letter in the mail (with all due respect to the pains that the postal industry is currently facing). So where’s the true purgatory in all of this? Mobile networks versus Wi-Fi versus telecommunications companies. Interoperable devices.

Found in Translation: How Language Shapes Our Lives and Transforms the World
by Nataly Kelly and Jost Zetzsche
Published 1 Oct 2012

Indeed, the Internet has been quietly breathing new life into the Irish language. Google Translate is now available in Irish, and there is an Irish user interface for Facebook. Many Irish language lessons are available on the Internet, and there are even apps for iPhones and iPads. Who would have thought that you could do a video chat via a Skype user interface in a language dating back to the third and fourth century? Well, you can with Irish. But perhaps the most convincing reason of all to care about the future of languages like Irish is best expressed in a saying from the language itself, “Tír gan teanga, tír gan anam,” which translates into English as, “A country without a language is a country without a soul.”

…

Terms for “to tweet” are now quite common in every market where Twitter has seen success, though some languages have employed the tried-and-true strategy of simply turning the product name into a verb (German users prefer to twittern rather than to tweeten, just as English users like to google or to skype), and Turkish Twitter users creatively prefer to tweetle. As if these new terms weren’t enough, many languages have also adopted new terms for “retweet,” which is when one person sends the same message another user sent previously via Twitter. Other languages have elected to keep it simple, using terms that just mean “resend” or “send again.”

Do More Faster: TechStars Lessons to Accelerate Your Startup
by Brad Feld and David Cohen
Published 18 Oct 2010

The Cheezburger Network serves over 10 million page views every day. Luckily for me, I have no idea how many servers it takes to do that. The reason is because we use WordPress (free!) to host our content. We also use YouTube (free!) to host our videos. We share information in the company using Google Apps (free!) and every day I jump on Skype to talk (free!) and videoconference (free!) with people around the world. We use dozens of open source applications (free!) to run our business. Our philosophy is to outsource everything that we're not great at to someone who is a proven and scalable leader, preferably without paying them. Because we have this philosophy, our developers get to spend 90 percent of their time doing something valuable instead of chasing down complexity.

…

You may have to give up a few features here and there, but you'll be more nimble as a company. By using what's free and avoiding complexity, you'll find that you can do more faster. Every great startup entrepreneur uses the tools Ben mentions and more. In addition to WordPress, YouTube, Google Apps, and Skype, the TechStars companies told us that they routinely use the following free or very inexpensive products: Balsamiq for screen prototyping DimDim for web meetings DropBox for file storage and sharing Evernote for organizing tidbits of information Gist for keeping on top of your contacts GitHub for source code sharing Jing for screencasting MogoTest (TechStars 2009) for making sure your applications look great on every browser Pivotal Tracker for issue tracking SendGrid (TechStars 2009) for e-mail delivery SnapABug (TechStars 2009) for chatting with customers who visit your web site Twilio for audio conferencing and phone and SMS services Vanilla (TechStars 2009) for hosting a great forum for your community Be Tiny Until You Shouldn't Be Jeffrey Powers Jeffrey is a co-founder of Occipital, which uses state of the art computer vision in mobile applications for faster information capture and retrieval.

Alan Partridge: Nomad: Nomad
by Alan Partridge
Published 19 Oct 2016

We live in a post-Yewtree age. Now, this is an uncomfortable thing to discuss, but I run towards discomfort like a man who has strapped truth explosives to his body and made his peace with God. And I’m saying that broadcasters are now deeply, deeply wary of any interaction with children. Some of our Sunday Skype Clubs116 have been given over to discussing this very issue. We hurl in scenarios and the group debates whether they should be red-flagged. Is it OK to hug a crying child? All right, what if the child is fifteen and a girl? Or if this takes place in your dressing room and you’ve taken wine? Or if the child’s parents are present but temporarily distracted?

…

But other than Richard Keys, there are very few men out there who have so much hair on their shoulders that it needs to be shampooed. (Richard even blow-dries his.) Around a man’s privates, however, it’s a very different issue. I’m no branding expert but surely a better name would have been Head & Groins? 116 The Sunday Skype Club is a weekly video-call social – usually taking place when Sunday Politics comes on and Eamonn (Holmes) has finished his breakfast – in which me, Eamonn (Holmes), John Stapleton (when allowed), Pete Sissons and a Hairy Biker meet up to shoot the breeze, tackle the issues of the day and slag off other broadcasters.

438 Days: An Extraordinary True Story of Survival at Sea
by Jonathan Franklin
Published 17 Nov 2015

The thought of a reunion with his grown daughter flooded him with fears. What if she refused to forgive him? What would be her first reaction to her estranged, yet world-famous, father? Would she see a dad or a deadbeat? “I couldn’t really talk, it was too much,” said Alvarenga once his family popped up on Skype. “My mom, my daughter, my dad was there. It was hard to believe it was true.” Fatima stared back, also in disbelief. This was her father? “He was shaven and he said hello and then he started crying,” Fatima remembers. “I could not believe it, there he was. My dream comes true.” But the connection was more of a group cry than conversation.

…

I want to thank my seven daughters, who put up with Dad being away for weeks on end, always supporting me and brainstorming about what makes a great book. Before too long, I will be editing your manuscripts. I missed you dearly, Francisca, Susan, Maciel, Kim, Amy, Zoe and last but not least my little Akira. Finally to my loving partner, Toty, who never tired of dropping me off at the airport, suffering through impossibly bad Skype connections and keeping our family emotionally united. Special kudos to my head of research, Bud Theisen, without whom this book would never have been so complete. From tracking down turtle experts to finding world-class meteorologists, Bud was always one step ahead. His role in crafting this story was fundamental and much appreciated.

The End of Absence: Reclaiming What We've Lost in a World of Constant Connection
by Michael Harris
Published 6 Aug 2014

In Forster’s vision of the future, humans live below the surface of the earth, happily isolated in hexagonal rooms like bees in a massive hive. They each know thousands of people but are disgusted by the thought of physical interaction (shades of social media). People communicate through “plates” (they Skype, essentially), and all human connection is conducted through the technological grace of what’s simply called the Machine, a massive networked piece of technology that supplies each person with pacifying entertainment and engaging electronic connections with other people. The Machine does not transmit “nuances of expression,” but gives “a general ideal of people” that’s “good enough for all practical purposes.”

…

(Capek), 56–57 Russell, Bertrand, 195 Sabinus, Calvisius, 143–45 Sas, Corina, 156 Science, 142 Scoville, William Beecher, 138 search engines, 142–43, 146 Second Life, 104 Seed, 105 Seife, Charles, 145, 146 Sejong, 12n self-documentation, 68–71 selfies, 68 Seneca, 118, 143–44, 203–4 senses, 161, 179, 205 synesthesia and, 62–63 Sergeant Star, 59–60 Sesame Street, 1–2, 3 sex, 104, 164–77 pornography, 83, 88, 168, 169, 174 Shallows, The (Carr), 38, 86 Shaw, George Bernard, 57 Shelley, Mary, 56 Skinner, B. F., 114 Skype, 106 Sloth Club, 204 Slowness (Kundera), 184 Small, Gary, 10–11, 37–38 smartphones, see phones Smith, Gordon, 186 “smupid” thinking, 185–86 Snapchat, 168 social media, 19, 48, 55, 106, 150–51, 175 Socrates, 32–33, 40 solitude, 8, 14, 39, 46, 48, 188, 193, 195, 197, 199 Songza, 90–91, 125 Space Weather, 107 Squarciafico, Hieronimo, 33, 35 Stanford Engineering Everywhere (SEE), 94 Stanford University, 94–97 Statistics Canada, 174 sticklebacks, 124 Stone, Linda, 10, 169 Storr, Anthony, 203 stress hormones, 10 Study in Scarlet, A (Doyle), 147–48 suicide, 53–54, 63, 67 of Clementi, 63, 67 of Todd, 50–52, 67 sun, 107–9 surveillance, 66n synesthesia, 62–63 Tamagotchis, 29–30 technologies, 7, 18, 20, 21, 99, 179, 188, 192, 200, 203, 205, 206 evolution of, 43 Luddites and, 208 penetration rates of, 31 technology-based memes (temes), 42–44 Technopoly (Postman), 98 television, 7, 17, 27, 31, 69, 120 attention problems and, 121 temes (technology-based memes), 42–44 text messaging, 28, 30–31, 35–36, 100, 169, 192–94 Thamus, King, 32–33, 35, 98, 141, 145 Thatcher, Margaret, 74 theater reviews, 81–84, 88–89 Thompson, Clive, 141–42, 144–45 Thoreau, Henry David, 22, 113, 197–200, 202, 204 Thrun, Sebastian, 97 Thurston, Baratunde, 191 Time, 154 Timehop, 148–51, 160 Tinbergen, Niko, 124 Todd, Amanda, 49–53, 55, 62, 67, 70–72 Todd, Carol, 51–52, 71–72 Tolle, Eckhart, 102 Tolstoy, Leo: Anna Karenina, 125–26 War and Peace, 115, 116, 118, 120, 122–26, 128–29, 131–33, 135, 136 To Save Everything, Click Here (Morozov), 55 touch-sensitive displays, 27 train travel, 200–202 Transcendental Meditation (TM), 76–78 TripAdvisor, 92 Trollope, Anthony, 47–48 Trussler, Terry, 172 Turing, Alan, 60, 61, 67, 68, 186, 190 Turing test, 60–61 Turkle, Sherry, 30, 55–56, 103–4 Twain, Mark, 73 Twitch.tv, 104 Twitter, 9, 31, 46, 63, 149 Udacity, 97 Uhls, Yalda T., 69 Unbound Publishing, 88 Understanding Media (McLuhan), 14 University of Guelph, 53 Valmont, Sebastian, 166 Vancouver, 3–4 Vancouver, 8–11, 15 Vaughn, Vince, 89 Vespasiano da Bisticci, 33 video games, 32, 104 Virtual Self, The (Young), 68, 71 Voltaire, 83 Walden (Thoreau), 113, 198–200 Wales, Jimmy, 77 Walker, C.

The Smartphone Society
by Nicole Aschoff

The former chief technology officer for the CIA, Ira “Gus” Hunt, summed up the government’s philosophy when he said, “We try to collect everything and hang on to it forever.”72 Through his disclosures about NSA spying, particularly the NSA’s PRISM program (given the green light by the Patriot Act), Snowden showed Americans how they are subject to what Schneier calls “ubiquitous mass surveillance.”73 The NSA collects internet communications from Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, YouTube, AOL, Skype, Apple, and many other tech companies whose services millions of Americans rely on. Meanwhile, the CIA’s Mobile Devices Branch has perfected a wide range of hacking systems, malware, and viruses that it uses to track people through their smartphones. Documents from WikiLeaks show that both the NSA and the CIA can bypass encryption.74 “Corporate and government surveillance interests have converged,” Schneier contends.

…

P., 37, 39, 41, 44, 54 Mori, 61–62 MoveOn.org, 91 M-pesa mobile money transfer system, 6 MSD (Marjorie Stoneman Douglas) High School, 90 mSpy, 25 Mubarak, Hosni, 92, 94, 97 Muflahi, Abdullah, 20 multitier subcontracting, 31 Munro, Alice, 62–63 Musk, Elon, 126 Myanmar, 42, 50, 94 National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, 157 National Hispanic Media Coalition, 55 National Justice Project (Australia), 21 National Labor Relations Board, 153 National Policy Institute, 105–6 National Security Agency (NSA), 80, 81, 95 NationBuilder, 93–94 neoliberalism: and capitalism, 69, 102, 112–13, 117–18, 144–45; and economic crisis, 99–100, 176n30; and feminism, 107; and new titans, 54 Nepal, 94 network(s), 61, 143 “network effects,” 44 “network society,” 121 #NeverAgain movement, 90, 110 New America, 56 New Center, 45–46 “New Economy,” 121 news: fake, 50–51, 56 news cycle, 89 newspapers, 50–52 news sources, 50–52 New York Taxi Workers Alliance, 146, 153, 178–79n5 Nichols, Synead, 89–90 Nigeria, politics in, 97 Nixon, Richard, 88 Noah, Trevor, 110 Noble, Dylan, 19–20 Nobu Malibu, 62 #NotOkay, 108 NSA (National Security Agency), 80, 81, 95 Obama, Barack, 6, 44, 55, 92, 106 obsolescence, built-in, 82 Ocasio-Cortez, Alexandria, 104, 112, 152, 179n22 Occupy movement, 102–3, 104 Oculus, 41 OKCupid, 23, 24 O’Neill, Caitlin, 56 online dating, 23–27, 35 online search, 52 Open Markets Institute, 150 Open Sesame, 10 Operation Haymaker, 95–96 O’Reilly, Holly Figueroa, 93 O’Rourke, Beto, 92 outrage politics, 109 outsourcing, 146 ownership of our own data, 135–36, 156 Oxford, Kelly, 60, 108 Pacific Railroad Act (1862), 80 Page, Larry, 38, 39, 41, 54, 119–20, 124 PageRank, 52 Palantir, 81 para-social interactions with celebrities, 65 parental limitation, 8 Parkland, Florida, 90 Patriot Act, 81 payment systems, mobile, 4, 5, 6, 10 PayPal, 44 peer-to-peer networks, 120 Pelosi, Nancy, 56 performance: politics as, 109, 111; social media as, 63, 64, 68 permatemps, 46, 47 personal information: ownership of, 135–36, 156; sharing on social media of, 60–61 personalization, 53 personal narratives, 115–16 philanthropy, 56–57 Philippines, 90–91 “phone boss,” 69 Physician Women for Democratic Principles, 89 “pickers,” 33, 46 Pickersgill, Eric, 7 Pinterest, 60, 64, 69 PlentyOfFish, 24 polarization, in politics, 111 police: surveillance by, 96–97, 137–38, 176n28; violence against blacks by, 17–23, 35, 89–90, 100–102, 111, 169n6, 169n13 political advertising, 149 political movements, 97, 102, 111–12 political organizing, 91 political parties, 93–94 politics, 87–113; algorithms and filter bubbles in, 109–10; Black Lives Matter in, 89–90, 100–102, 111; bots in, 109; censorship in, 95; Dakota Access Pipeline Protests in, 103–4, 110; decentralization in, 101–2; digital-analog model in, 104, 110–12, 162; economic crisis in, 98–100; feminist movement in, 107–8; finding our voice in, 108–13; geo-, 95–96, 144; government tracking in, 94–95; gun violence in, 90, 91, 110, 111; modern-day revolt in, 100–108; neoliberal, 99–100, 112–13; Occupy movement in, 102–3; outrage, 109; outside of US, 93–94; as performance, 109, 111; as personal, 88–100; polarization in, 111; political movements in, 97, 102; political parties in, 93–94; protests in, 89–90, 92, 95, 100–104; slacktivism in, 111; social media use by candidates in, 103–5; social media use by people in power in, 87–88, 92–93; Sunrise Movement in, 103–4; surveillance by law enforcement in, 96–97, 176n28; Syrian War in, 90; virality in, 81; voter outreach in, 89; white supremacy in, 35, 105–7 poor communities, internet access for, 149–50 Posner, Eric A., 135 poverty, 12–13 power, in cognitive mapping, 145 power inequalities, 137–38 predictive modeling, 77 print magazines, 172n40 PRISM program, 81 privacy, 69–72, 137–38, 150–51, 156 “privacy tools,” 71 private sphere, commodification of, 144 producers vs. consumers, 28–29 profit, frontiers of, 72–79, 85–86 proponents, 9–12 ProPublica, 48, 106, 149, 153 protests, 89–90, 92, 95, 100–104 Proud Boys movement, 106 public opinion, molding of, 55 Pulitzer, Joseph, 50 “push” notifications, 84 racism, 17–23, 35, 169n6, 169n13 RAM (Rise Above Movement), 106–7 rare metals, 82, 83 Reagan, Ronald, 43 real estate market, effect of high-tech company location in, 48–49 “real life,” digital life vs., 68 recommender algorithm, 67 Reddit, 24 redlining, digital, 29 regulation of monopolies, 43–46 reinforcement learning, 157 Rekognition software, 149 relationships, expectations and norms about, 24–25 religious beliefs, tech-based, 123 remote medicine, 10 rents, 48 research funding, 55 retreat from technology, 132–35 Reynolds, Diamond “Lavish,” 20, 35 Rice, Tamir, 18 “right to repair,” 155 right-wing movements, 105–7 Rise Above Movement (RAM), 106–7 rituals, on social media, 61 Robbin, Jonathan, 77 robots, 128, 131 Rockefeller, Jay, 77 Rockefeller, John D., 37, 54, 57 Rongwen, Zhuang, 94 Roosevelt, Franklin Delano, 88 Rousseff, Dilma, 97 Rudder, Christian, 23 rural areas: internet access for, 29, 149–50 Salesforce: employees organizing at, 148; immoral projects at, 154 Sandberg, Sheryl, 107 Sanders, Bernie, 103–5, 110 Santana, Feidin, 19, 20 Santelli, Rick, 105 Saudi Arabia, censorship in, 95 Scavino, Dan, 88 Schifter, Doug, 127 Schillinger, Klemens, 8 Schneier, Bruce, 135 Schrems, Max, 151 science fiction, 126 Scott, Walter, 19, 20 scraping, 71 Seamless, 30 search algorithms, 51–52, 53 Seasteading Institute, 124 Seinfeld, Jerry, 110 self-esteem, 65 selfies, 59–60 selfish behavior, 138–39, 154–56 self-monitoring tools, 69 service jobs, 33–34 Seth, Jodi, 56 sexism, 23–27, 35 sexting, 25–27, 35 sexual division of labor, 74–75 sexual harassment, 25, 27, 126–27 sexuality, 23–27, 35 sexual violence, 25 shareholder value society, 98 sharing on social media, 60–61, 84 Sharpton, Al, 102 shopping, mobile, 31–32 short message service (SMS), 6 Sidewalk Labs, 41 Sierra Club, 157 signals intelligence, 95–96 “silent spring,” 7 Silicon Valley, 115–41; distrust of, 125–31; and government control, 124; and spirit of capitalism, 115–25; taking back control from, 131–41 Silicon Valley Rising (SVR), 147 Sina Weibo (China), 94 Singh, Jagmeet, 93–94 the Singularity, 123 skeptics, 7–8 Skype, 81 slacktivism, 111 Slager, Michael, 19 Slutwalks, 108 smartness, 9 smartphone(s): demographics of, 3, 4; vs. “dumb phones,” 167n15; loss of, 1; ownership of, 3, 13–14; repurposing of, 161–62 Smith, Adam, 67 “smombie,” 3 SMS (short message service), 6 Snapchat, 41, 60 Snowden, Edward, 80, 81, 96 social change, 12 social class, 62 social cohesion, 8, 9 “social credit system” (China), 94 social limits of digital frontier, 84–85 social media, 59–86; addiction to, and fears about, 65–69; and big data, 82–86; characteristics of, 59–65; connection on, 63–64; content on, 60–65; and government, 80–81; as performance, 63, 64; and privacy, 69–72; and profit, 72–79; and self-esteem, 65; sharing on, 60–61; and smartphones, 6; time spent on, 60–61 social movements, 92 “social utility,” 54, 172n46 sociotechnical layers of cognitive map, 145 “sock-puppet subsidiaries,” 49 Spain, 97 Spare5 mobile task app, 32 Spencer, Richard, 105–6, 111 spying.

Dual Transformation: How to Reposition Today's Business While Creating the Future
by Scott D. Anthony and Mark W. Johnson
Published 27 Mar 2017

Like all mobile providers, Singtel built and operated communications networks that historically were used by consumers to make voice calls. At first, the shift from voice calls to messages and other data services was a boon for the industry. However, it created opportunities for new competitors like Skype, WhatsApp, Facebook, and others to ride over the top of the communications networks and provide competing services. The industry had nightmares of becoming a so-called dumb pipe, bearing all the costs of building expansive, expensive networks but seeing the returns go to these upstarts. Singtel has a deep finance function, plans rigorously and thoroughly, and regularly wins awards for having the best corporate governance in Asia.

…

See also Deseret Media Samsung, 204 Sanders, Matt, 84 SAP, 78–79 Sasson, Steve, 1–2 scale, 74 of disruption, 4–5 leveraging capabilities of, 188–189 printing and, 3 pros and cons of, 78–79 superheroes and, 174–175 Scheffler, Axel, 171 Schein, Edgar, 147 Schumpeter, Joseph, 7 Seizing the White Space (Johnson), 36, 40, 53, 214 Settlement Music School, 185–186 Sibel Systems, 27–28 Simmons, Bill, 10 Simpson, O.J., 2 Sinfield, Joseph V., 62 Singapore Institute of Management, 110–113 Singapore Post (SingPost), 50–53 acquisitions by, 67 focus at, 117 Singapore Prison Service, 178–179 Singlish, 145 SingPost. See Singapore Post (SingPost) Singtel, 24, 51, 53, 135–137, 140, 185 curiosity at, 142–150 exposing leaders to new thinking at, 145–147 reinforcing curiosity at, 147–150 Singtel Learning Fiesta, 146 Siri, 67 Skype, 136 Southern New Hampshire University (SNHU), 58, 59 space race, 115–116, 132 stakeholders, 11, 167–168 communicating to, 195–196 Starbucks, 57, 67 The Startup Owner’s Manual (Blank and Dorf), 153 startups disruption and, 58–59 established businesses versus, 72–73 Stone, Biz, 49, 138 strategic opportunity areas, 123–127, 216 strategy fitness landscape and, 5–8 future-back approach to, 129–133 at Manila Water, 117–128 predictability and, 137–139 story at the center of, 171–173 transformations A and B and, 16–20 The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Kuhn), 68 Systrom, Kevin, 2 talent bringing in special-purpose, 44 capability development via external hires, 66–69 communicating to, 195–196 Tan, Wilson, 51 Taobao, 201–202 Tata Sons, 149 Tay Soo Meng, 135 TechCrunch, 206 Temasek, 136 template, goals and boundaries, 123, 215 Tencent, 106, 202 Tesla, 178 Theranos, 61 3Com, 13 Thrun, Sebastian, 205 Tiddler (Donaldson and Scheffler), 171 Time Warner, 96 transfer pricing, 85 transformation A, 27–45 at Adobe, 31–32, 33 aggressive implementation of, 43–45 balancing with transformation B, 173–175 business model blueprint, 214 business model innovation in, 40–42 crises of conflict in, 163–168 at Deseret Media, 29–31 determining job to be done after, 36–39 distinguishing from other strategic choices, 16–20 driving, 36–45 in dual transformation equation, 12 interface management and, 75, 80–87 leaders of the critical role of, 187 metrics in, 42–43 at Netflix, 32–36 systems for, 80–82 trigger point for, 36–37 at Xerox, 14 transformation B, 47–70 “aliens” and “diplomats” in, 68–69 at Amazon, 53–55 balancing with transformation A, 173–175 business model iterative development in, 59, 63–66 capability development in, 66–69 consumption patterns transformation in, 61–62 crises of commitment in, 161–163 crises of conflict in, 163–168 distinguishing from other strategic choices, 16–20 in dual transformation equation, 12 in higher education, 55–58 identifying constrained markets in, 59–63 interface management and, 75, 80–87 keys to success in, 58–69 at Netflix, 69–70 at SingPost, 50–53 systems for, 80–82 at Xerox, 14 transformation blurbs, 129 transformation maps, 211–212 transparency, embracing, 153–154 TripAdvisor, 50 Trustwave, 188 TurboTax, 132 Turner Broadcasting System, 2, 95–99 Turner Classic Movie, 99 Turner Entertainment Networks (TEN), 95–99 decision making at, 102, 109 early warning signs at, 108 focus at, 117 Tushman, Michael, 53, 54 TVinContext, 99 Twitter, 49, 138 Tyson, Mike, 64 Uber, 205 UK-92480, 138–139 Ulmer, Dave, 71–72 Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, 35 universal resource locators (URLs), 3 value, business model innovation and, 40 Vasquez, Robbie, 127 venture capitalists, 103–104, 112, 140–141 corporate, 143–144 Verizon, 49 Viagra, 138–139 Viki, 143 von Braun, Wernher, 116 vPost, 52 Walgreen, Charles R., Sr., 60 Walgreens, 60–61 Wanamaker, John, 67 warning signs, 102–113 assessment table, 213 catalysts, 104–105 circumstances, 103–104 how to spot, 107–110 impact, 106–107 underestimation of, 120 Wasson, Gregory, 60–61 Watson supercomputer, 70, 204 WebMD, 100 WeChat, 106 Welch, Jack, 177 WhatsApp, 48, 136 white space, 63, 66 will.i.am, 151 Williams, Ev, 49, 138 Wilson, Joseph C., 13 World Media Enterprises, 156 Wright brothers, 64–65 Xerox, 13–16 acquisitions and partnerships at, 67 arbitration at, 86 business model innovation at, 42, 63–64 capabilities link at, 14–15 focus at, 117 postdisruption job to be done at, 39 transformation journey at, 182 Xerox Global Services (XGS), 14, 63–64, 86 Yahoo, 49 Y Combinator, 72 Yelp, 50 Young Broadcasting, 156 YouTube, 97, 105, 108 Zillow, 50 Zipcar, 205 Zuckerberg, Mark, 48, 97 Acknowledgements From the team The central idea in Dual Transformation—that leaders need to simultaneously reposition today’s business and create tomorrow’s—has been core to each of our professional careers since 2000.

I'm Judging You: The Do-Better Manual
by Luvvie Ajayi
Published 12 Sep 2016

We’ve had a bad rap sheet since the beginning of time: the first sin was committed by woman (Eve), and she convinced man (Adam) to disobey God, so the things that women uniquely suffer from are said to be direct punishment for that. We were condemned to pain in childbirth, Aunt Flo, and to be ruled by men. It’s not our fault that Adam didn’t know how to make decisions for himself. In fact, if we were able to trick Adam into eating the forbidden fruit, why should he be trusted to lead us? NAWL. He couldn’t lead a Skype meeting. Chauvinism in biblical texts has justified laws that have led to the persistence of subservience of women to men. The Bible actually sanctions women being property, and too many societal norms have been informed and justified by this view. A wife is told to submit to her husband because he’s the head of the house, but submission is not blind obedience.

…

Everyone who is connected to you, on your friends list, or as your fan is not necessarily a genuine cheerleader. So pull back a bit. We are opening up our private lives for public consumption, and most of us aren’t even getting paid for it. The Internet cannot replace real life friends who we can call, see (or Skype), and touch. We can start friendships online, but they also need to be accessible if any of our social platforms are shut down. We need to have the phone numbers of those we have learned to love through social media, because if our relationship might end due to a suspended account, how tangible is it?

Company of One: Why Staying Small Is the Next Big Thing for Business
by Paul Jarvis
Published 1 Jan 2019

I would add small bits of helpful advice without offering my own services or charging them. More important, I wouldn’t be pushy about it—I’d just look for folks who have questions I have answers to. This free help I offer wouldn’t be a month of work or a redesign of their whole website, but rather emails and chats, either in person or by phone or Skype. Basically, I would offer a free consult or a project roadmapping session. In this way, I’d learn the key factors involved when people are thinking about hiring a web designer and gain insight into why and how they end up choosing to hire one. Just like Alex Franzen in Chapter 4, I’d start by finding a single person to offer my knowledge to.

…

Even when I was charging good money for consulting, I’d still be at the top of each client’s list to hire. Being helpful proved to be a great lead-generation funnel. My new business would be based on helping others first, with a contract for web design or design consulting coming later. I’d do it this way not because I frown on capitalism and want to sit around a Skype video-call singing “Kumbaya,” but because I know this is how you build a loyal client base and following. Many people would view this approach as advice for building a charity or aiming a business only at your close friends—it couldn’t possibly be applied to a business that makes enough money to put clothes on the children, keep food on the table, and pay the rent.

The Serengeti Rules: The Quest to Discover How Life Works and Why It Matters
by Sean B. Carroll
Published 16 Feb 2016

Goldstein and M. Brown, Letter to R. Vagelos, 5/5/1983; courtesy of J. Goldstein. 86Within a few months: Roy Vagelos, Phone Interview, 12/17/2014; Tobert (2003). 86Merck’s new head of Basic Research: Edward Skolnick, Skype Interview, 12/1/2014. 86Goldstein and Skolnick later shared a lab: J. Goldstein, Phone Interview, 12/1/14; Brown and Goldstein (2004). 87Skolnick was confident: Skype Interview with Dr. Ed Skolnick, 12/1/2014. 87After two years of testing: Havel et al. (1987); The Lovastatin Study Group III (1988). 87The results were better: Scandanavian Simvastatin Survival Study Group (1994). 87Thanks in considerable part: National Institutes of Health (2012), p. 10. 88“Without Endo, the statins”: Brown and Goldstein (2004), pp. 15–16.

Death Glitch: How Techno-Solutionism Fails Us in This Life and Beyond
by Tamara Kneese
Published 14 Aug 2023

What does it feel like to maintain a dead loved one’s cancer blog, even years after the person’s death? I spoke with transhumanists who are optimistic about the future of technology or view it as an extension of their religious beliefs. Ethnographic research tells us what lived experiences of digital remains are like. This is a global phenomenon, so many of my interviews took place over Skype, with interlocutors in Hong Kong, Boston, London, Texas, and rural Vermont. In addition, I talked to people in cafés in Los Angeles, Portland, Oakland, San Francisco, and Seattle. I also traveled to key locations to engage in participant observation. Unsurprisingly, given San Francisco’s status as a tech hub, my research has taken me all over the city to sites like the Internet Archive and the Long Now Foundation’s Interval Space and events like Wired magazine’s twenty-fifth anniversary festival, the 2012 Singularity Summit—an annual transhumanist conference—and the 2013 Death Salon.

…

Sandberg, “Making It Easier to Honor a Loved One on Facebook.” 62. Jed Brubaker and I have known each other since 2012, when we were both part of Intel’s Science and Technology Center for Social Computing. In addition to informal conversations at various in-person conferences and through a number of email exchanges, I also interviewed him via Skype for this book; the quotations included here are from our formal interview. 63. Lustig, “Facebook Death Rate.” 64. Sandberg, “Making It Easier to Honor a Loved One on Facebook.” Chapter 2. Networked Death 1. The Stanford Research Institute became SRI International after its 1970 split from Stanford University, and it is headquartered in Menlo Park, California. 2.

Googled: The End of the World as We Know It
by Ken Auletta
Published 1 Jan 2009

Three years earlier, in 2002, there was a total of 308 cable and video networks, a number that had tripled from just eight years earlier, and would double over the next four. The radio industry was also squeezed by newer technologies that allowed the iPod and Internet and satellite radio to subvert their traditional ad-supported broadcast model. The phone companies nervously watched their traditional landline business erode, and with the 2005 acquisition by eBay of Skype, a largely free Internet phone/voice service, and Google’s voice-chat software also released that year, the erosion would accelerate. The cable companies were unsettled—as were all existing media—by how new media, from sharing networks like MySpace.com or Meetup.com to video games, captured the attention of their customers.

…

And that burgeoning business—now taking in twenty-one billion dollars a year worldwide and expected to double by 2012—was expanding from action games for teens to mass-market Wii games for adults to play with their kids, or with one another. Telephone companies watched their lucrative landline phone business rapidly lose customers to Skype Internet calls and mobile and new cable phone services. Yahoo and Microsoft were tossed in the digital storm. With better search and advertising technology, Google’s search widened its lead. With the promise of cloud computing and free software applications, Google menaced Microsoft’s packaged software business.

…

The snickers from those who thought the Google test must have failed, as David Pogue noted in the New York Times, became sneers. In March 2009, Google Voice was announced, and the sneers turned to gasps. Everyone in the telephone business—from telephone companies to new entrants like cable companies to eBay’s Internet phone service, Skype, which imposes small charges on calls made on regular phones—had reason to be concerned. Google would at first give away the phone service for free, with a nominal charge for long distance calls, and hoped one day to sell the service to corporations at a low price.What was an advance for consumers was a potential setback for these companies.

Advertisers at Work
by Tracy Tuten
Published 28 May 2012

I feel happy that I work for people that didn’t let the traditional rules stop them. I feel enormously fortunate that I have a husband and kids, parents, and extended family who all said “we are here to help.” And I thank God every day for technology. Because if I didn’t have technology, this would not work. Whether I am Skyping or Facetiming with my kids, or Skyping or Facetiming with my co-workers, technology enables this whole thing to happen. Tuten: What led you to advertising as a profession? Did you grow up wanting to work in the field? Cavallo: Heavens, no. I worked in sales and I got my undergraduate degree in business from James Madison University.

…

I think we’re going to get to the point in the world pretty soon where we’re going to have bandwidth that’s like twenty to thirty times more than what we have right now. The experiment that Google’s doing in Kansas City is an example. When this happens, and again, this is not far off, communication such as PowerPoint, Skype, and basic videoconferencing that we see now as being standard practice will seem incredibly primitive. I don’t want to go all the way to say there will be holograms that we’ll look at and communicate via gesture, but certainly, from the perspective of what is possible when one can transmit large amounts of data, we’ll begin to see these possibilities to be true.

Ukraine
by Lonely Planet

Post Central post office ( ; vul Khreshchatyk 22; internet per hr 12uah; 9am-7pm Mon-Fri, internet 24hr; Maydan Nezalezhnosti) The entrance is on maydan Nezalezhnosti. DHL International ( 490 2600; www.dhl.com.ua; vul Chervonoarmiyska 1; Pl Lva Tolstoho) Telephone Internet cafes (Click here) often offer VOIP calls or Skype. Central telephone centre (vul Khreshchatyk 22; 24hr; Maydan Nezalezhnosti) You can make international calls here or purchase phonecards. Tourist Information Kyiv lacks a tourist office but many hotels have an information bureau. Travel Agencies Chervona Ruta ( Червона Рута ; Click here ; 253 6909; www.ruta-cruise.com; vul Lyuteranska 24; Khreshchatyk) This is your only port of call if you’re interested in Dnipro River and Black Sea cruises.

…

Krakivsky Market Market (Краківський ринок ; Click here ; vul Bazarna) Fans of outdoor markets will enjoy this real, bustling Soviet-style rynok (market) with all the fresh fruit, raw meat and cheap junk that entails. Information Central telephone office ( Укртелеком ; vul Petra Doroshenka 37; 8.30am-7pm Mon-Fri, 9am-4pm Sat) Central post office ( Поштамт ; Click here ; vul Slovatskoho 1) Chorna Medea ( Чорна мідія ; vul Petra Doroshenka 50; per hr 6uah; 24hr) Lviv’s greatest internet cafe, with drinks, Skype and cheap, speedy web connection. InLviv ( 032-235 7630; www.inlviv.info) InLviv runs a variety of tours and has a website with loads of information on Lviv. Krylos.com ( 032-225 8215; www.krylos.com) Runs a range of themed tours and arranges transport tickets, hotels and apartment rental. Lonely Planet (www.lonelyplanet.com/ukraine/western-ukraine/lviv) Head here for planning advice, author recommendations and travel reviews.

…

Nicknamed the tolkuchka or tolchok (both meaning ‘push’ in Russian), its appeal lies in its sheer size, rather than its shopping selection, which mainly entails row after row of the same old cheap knock-offs and junk. The official name comes from its location about 7km outside the city. To get there, take a marshrutka (fixed-route minibus) marked ‘7KM’ from Privoz bus station. Information Angar18 ( Ангар -18; vul Velika Arnautska 52; per hr 6uah; 24hr) Internet at any time of day plus Skype and photocopying. Central post office ( Почта ; vul Sadova 10) European Business Center (vul Preobrazhenska 34; per hr 6uah; 9am-midnight) Modern internet place on the ground floor of the Passazh Hotel. Lonely Planet (www.lonelyplanet.com/ukraine/odesa) You’ll find planning advice, author recommendations and travel reviews here.

The Age of Cryptocurrency: How Bitcoin and Digital Money Are Challenging the Global Economic Order
by Paul Vigna and Michael J. Casey
Published 27 Jan 2015

Some in the VC community have serious doubts—they just don’t seem to express them often. In a post on the StrictlyVC blog by Connie Loizos titled “A Bitcoin Bear in Silicon Valley, It’s True,” Josh Stein, the managing director at Tim Draper’s Menlo Park firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson, is quoted describing himself as a “bitcoin bear.” Stein, whose firm has invested in Twitter, Skype, and Tesla, argued that transaction-cost savings on bitcoin weren’t much more competitive than electronic wires or new dollar-based payment technologies, and that bitcoin, unlike gold, had no “intrinsic value.” In a telling turn, however, Loizos wrote that Stein quickly cut his comments short, claiming that publicly revealing his views would “cue the trolls.”

…

Similarly, a decentralized organization has no central point of vulnerability and is thus virtually impossible to shut down or destroy. Brafman and Beckstrom explore some contemporary Internet organizations that thrived under the starfishlike advantages of decentralization: Wikipedia, Craigslist, and Skype, for example. They also cite cases from outside the Net: the leaderless Alcoholics Anonymous, the Apache tribe, and the ultimate decentralized institution of our era, al-Qaeda. The experiences of Napster and BitTorrent are also instructive. While the former’s groundbreaking file-sharing service posed a challenge to record companies’ control of the music business, its network was centralized, controlled on an identifiable server.

…

philanthropy Philippines Philo Pierce, Brock Piper pizza Plug and Play Tech Center Polis, Jared political donations Ponzi schemes Portugal poverty Powell, Jesse Prasad, Eswar Pretty Good Privacy printing press privacy private key proof of burn proof of stake proof of work property rights ProtonMail public key Purse QuickCoin Quigley, William Rabois, Keith Radar Capital Radtke, Autumn Raspberry Pi Ratha, Dilip Reagan, Ronald Realcoin Reddit Reed, John regulation regulatory arbitrage remittance business Renaissance revolutions Ripple Rivest, Ron Robbins, Scott Robinson, Scott Rolling Stone Roman Empire Rosen, Sholom Rossiello, Elizabeth Roszak, Matthew Roubini, Nouriel RSA Rulli, Francesco Russia Sacramento Kings Safaricom Saggers, Laura Salomon Smith Barney Salt Lake City San Francisco, Calif. 20Mission in SAP satellites SatoshiDice Schechter, Joshua Schmidt, Eric Schopenhauer, Arthur Schumer, Chuck Sclavos, Stratton scrypt Sean’s Outpost SecondMarket Secure Electronic Transactions (SET) Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) securities contracts seigniorage Selkis, Ryan Serrano, Sebastian sharing economy Shasky Calvery, Jennifer Shavers, Trendon Shiller, Robert Shrem, Charlie Silbert, Barry Silent Circle Silicon Valley accelerator programs Silicon Valley Silk Road Simpson, David Singapore Sirer, Emin Gün Skype smart contracts smartphones smart property Smith, Adam Smith, Peter Snowden, Edward societal changes Softcard Spain spam bitcoin and Square stagflation Stanford, Leland Starbucks Starfish and the Spider, The: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations (Brafman and Beckstrom) staters Stein, Josh Stellar Stockholm Stockman, Steve Strauss, Levi StrictlyVC Stripe Summers, Larry Sutter, John Sutter’s Mill Swarm Sweden Switzerland Szabo, Nick Taaki, Amir Tally Capital Target taxes capital-gains regulatory arbitrage and taxi services technology(ies) bitcoin as disruptive Tel Aviv Tencent Holdings Terpin, Michael TerraMiner terrorism Tesla Texas 37Coins Thornburg, Jonathan Time Times (London) T-Mobile Toronto trade Tradehill Tradenet transaction fees bitcoin and Travelers Group Treasury Department, U.S.

The Patient Will See You Now: The Future of Medicine Is in Your Hands
by Eric Topol
Published 6 Jan 2015

There are more than seven billion cellphones on Earth, which is way more than the number of toilets or toothbrushes in the world, making this technology the most pervasively deployed in the history of mankind.35 The conversion of “dumb” cellphones to smartphones is occurring at a torrential pace, as is the increase in video connects between people via Skype and FaceTime. This sets up the potential to bring multimedia expertise from one place to another virtually anywhere and anytime. Ironically, smartphones and tablets are now helping children learn to read in remote places around the world.36 The big social networks that span the globe connect their participants from all 196 countries.

…

It would not take much to see a device help guide medication adherence, coach a healthy lifestyle, and respond to questions customized to the individual patient’s circumstances and needs. The Outpatient Visit of the Future It seems like every week there is a new headline for an article related to who will see you (the smartphone, robot, avatar, algorithm, or Dr. Siri) for medical care or how you will be seen (cellphone, smartphone, Skype) (Figure 9.2).23,36–49 Fast Company had an article titled “Could ePatient Networks Become the Superdoctors of the Future?” and asserted “the idea of going down to your doctor’s office is going to feel as foreign as going to the video store.”50 That may seem bold, but they got that one right. Physical office visits are on their way out.

…

Wasserman, “The Doctor Will See You Now—On Your Cellphone,” Mashable, December 10, 2013, http://mashable.com/2013/12/10/doctor-on-demand-app/. 39. R. Xu, “The Doctor Will See You Onscreen,” New Yorker, March 10, 2014, http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/currency/2014/03/the-doctor-will-see-you-onscreen.html?printable=true&currentPage=all. 40. A. Sifferlin, “The Doctor Will Skype You Now,” TIME, January 13, 2014, http://content.time.com/time/subscriber/printout/0,8816,2161682,00.html. 41. K. Bourzac, “The Computer Will See You Now,” Nature 502 (2013): 592–594. 42. “The Robots Are Coming. How Many of Us Will Prosper from the Second Machine Age?,” Raw Story, January 4, 2014, http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/01/04/the-robots-are-coming-how-many-of-us-will-prosper-from-the-second-machine-age/. 43.

Masters of Management: How the Business Gurus and Their Ideas Have Changed the World—for Better and for Worse
by Adrian Wooldridge
Published 29 Nov 2011

It is a serious threat to the nation’s competitiveness now that so many opportunities are opening up elsewhere. The positive change is the global spread of the entrepreneurial revolution. The European Union is far more entrepreneurial than it was a few decades ago. Europe has produced some notable startups. Skype, which pioneered Internet-based telephone calls, exemplified the continent’s potential strengths: it was founded by a Swede and a Dane who based the company in London, contracted out much of their work to computer programmers in Estonia, and eventually sold their creation off to an American company, Microsoft, for more than $8 billion.

…

Two of the company’s founders were based in Boston, the third in Sydney, and the fourth in Tel Aviv. The company made its first videos in Australia and found its first customers on the West Coast. The impecunious founders were able to make this arrangement work because of the cost-destroying wonders of Skype and the Internet. Born-global entrepreneurs are forming some surprising cross-border collaborations. Shai Agassi, an American businessman based in Palo Alto, California, is promising to revolutionize the car industry in alliance with politicians, entrepreneurs, and corporations in Israel, Denmark, Japan, and France.

…

See Compensation Sanders, Harlan, 195 Sarbanes-Oxley, 166, 297 Sarkozy, Nicolas, 270 Schaefer, Scott, 300 Scholars, 255 Schramm, Carl, 173, 201 Schumpeter, Joseph, 22, 102, 170, 172–173, 200, 245, 396 Scindia, Jyotiraditya, 53 Seligman, Martin, 406 Seng, Wong Kan, 53 The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People (Covey), 111–112, 391–392 Sex in the City (Bushnell), 129 Shah, Ashish, 208 Shapiro, Eileen, xiii Shareholders, 299–303 Shell Center, 143 Sheth, Jag, 262 Shetty, Devi, Dr., 211–212, 224, 229, 375, 409 Shirky, Clay, 68 Siemens, 91 The Silver Lining: An Innovation Playbook for Uncertain Times (Anthony), 71 Simon, Hermann, 56 Simon-Kucher & Partners, 56 Singapore, entrepreneurs and, 181–182 Sirkin, Harold, 64 Sisodia, Raj, 262 Skilling, Jeff, xv, 10, 309 Skinner, Jim, 376, 404 “Skunks,” 101 Skype, 178–179 Slim, Carlos, 114 Sloan, Alfred, 22, 79, 153–155, 208, 252, 341 Sloanism, 153–155. See also Capitalism Sloan Management Review, 52 Sloan School of Management, 58 Slogans, 273 Smart Is Not Enough! (Guarino), 365 Smith, Adam, 22, 77, 270 Smith, Fred, 197 Smith, Roger, 260 Snakes on a Plane, 157 SNCF, 304 Social contract, 358–359 Social networks, 359 Social responsibility, 38 Soifer, Ray, 11 Soifer Consulting, 11 Soros, George, 57 The Soul of a New Machine (Kidder), 259 Southwest Airlines, 172 Sovereignty at Bay (Vernon), 272 S&P 500, 366 Stalk, George, 111 Stanford Business School, 61 Starbucks, 38 Steiner, George, 253, 267 Stephenson, Howard, 194 Stewart, Matthew, xiii, 14, 15–16, 59 Stone, Bob, 319 Stonecipher, Harry, 298 Strategic Planning (Steiner), 253 Strategy & Business, 64 Strengths Based Leadership (Rath and Conchie), 64 Strengths Finder 2.0 (Rath), 64 Sull, Donald, 71 Sulzberger, Arthur, 114 Summers, Larry, 126, 133 Sun Microsystems, 240 Sunstein, Cass, 331 Supercapitalism (Reich), 127–128 Sykes, Richard, 236–237 Syriana, 118 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, 159 Taleb, Nassim, 67, 149–150 Taobao, 184 Tapscott, Don, 67, 240, 242, 243, 326–327 Tata, Ratan, 239, 285–286, 289 Tata Chemicals, 209 Tata Communications, 286 Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), 208–209, 210–211, 218, 221–222, 226, 227, 285 Tata Global Beverages, 285 Tata Group, 288, 415–416 Tata Motors, 239, 286 Tata Sons, 287 Tata Steel, 46, 166, 285 Tavistock Institute, 80 Taxes, 178 progressive, 390 Taylor, Frederick Winslow, 3–4, 68, 77–79, 235, 252 TCHO, 241 TCS.

First Time Ever: A Memoir
by Peggy Seeger
Published 2 Oct 2017

I have a mixed singing voice with no vocal break in the middle of my two-octave range. Now those bridge notes have become difficult. Eliza Carthy – daughter of Master Martin Carthy and Regal Norma Waterson and a law unto herself, no holds barred on stage – recommends her voice coach, Dr Denise Borland, who lives in Edinburgh and teaches via Skype. Where Eliza Skypes, there Skype I. I sit at the computer and try to sing for Denise. I have to fight the tears. I have sung since forever and now I can’t. Denise, with her red lipstick, pink headphones and cheerful, mobile face, guides me as I warble across the river and over the bridge to grandmother’s house, where she’s humming, burbling, singing with and without words, searching for the Ease of Singing that she had always taken for granted.

Nothing Personal: My Secret Life in the Dating App Inferno
by Nancy Jo Sales
Published 17 May 2021

It was a long-distance relationship, since Buckley had relocated to Arizona to be near his children after his wife had moved them out there to be with the guy from Facebook, so I was spending money on travel. No, Buckley didn’t buy my tickets; he was devoutly frugal. He didn’t seem to feel like he had to do much of anything to keep this relationship going—and why should he, when I was doing everything? I was setting up the Skype calls and putting on shows for him like a free webcam girl. When I visited him, I even cleaned his house. “Poor Buckley,” I thought, “I will cheer him up by scrubbing his tub.” But no, Buckley’s house was a mess because Buckley had never been taught that he had to clean up after himself. He was home most days, listlessly playing the stock market while he waited for his father to join the stock exchange in the sky.

…

“A Brief History of ‘F**kboy,’ the Internet’s Favorite New Man-Bashing Slur.” HuffPost, June 3, 2015. www.huffpost.com/entry/f—kboy-definition-take-that-haters_n_7471142. Bonos, Lisa. “The Awkward Intimacy of Video Dates, When They’re in Your Bedroom but You Can’t Touch.” Washington Post, March 26, 2020. www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2020/03/26/video-date-facetime-skype-zoom/. Bonos, Lisa, and Emily Guskin. “It’s Not Just You: New Data Shows More Than Half of Young People in America Don’t Have a Romantic Partner.” Washington Post, March 21, 2019. www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2019/03/21/its-not-just-you-new-data-shows-more-than-half-young-people-america-dont-have-romantic-partner/.

…

Forbes, June 4, 2019. www.forbes.com/sites/hayleycuccinello/2019/06/04/from-taylor-swift-to-katrina-lake-americas-richest-self-made-women-under-40/#61d963e1753a. Curtin, Sally C., Margaret Warner, and Holly Hedegaard. “Increase in Suicide in the United States, 1999–2014.” NCHS Data Brief No. 241, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, April 2016. Dawkins, Philip. “Phone Sex Is Safe Sex: Please Postpone Your Hookup. Get Off on Skype Instead.” New York Times, March 20, 2020. www.nytimes.com/2020/03/20/opinion/coronavirus-sex.html. Dean, Michelle. “The Story of Amanda Todd.” New Yorker, October 18, 2012. www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-story-of-amanda-todd. Dean, Signe. “Widespread Loneliness Is Killing People and We Need to Start Taking This Seriously.”

Tmux: Productive Mouse-Free Development
by Brian P. Hogan
Published 29 Feb 2012

It was actually my first introduction to tmux, and I immediately saw the potential as my friend walked me through using its various features. Pair programming has a lot of great benefits. Working with another developer can help you see things you might not have seen on your own, but unless you’re physically in the same location, pair programming can be somewhat difficult. Screen-sharing through iChat, Skype, or even GoToMeeting takes up a lot of bandwidth and can be dodgy when you’re not using the best network connection. In this chapter, we’ll explore using tmux for pair programming, so you can work remotely with another developer on even the slowest hotel Wi-Fi connection. There are two ways to work with remote users.

Race Against the Machine: How the Digital Revolution Is Accelerating Innovation, Driving Productivity, and Irreversibly Transforming Employment and the Economy
by Erik Brynjolfsson
Published 23 Jan 2012

At a less abstract and more personal level, the digital frontier is also improving our lives. If you have Internet access and a connected device today, it’s both free and easy to keep in touch with the people who mean something to you—your kith and kin—even as you and they move around. You can use resources like Skype, Facebook, and Twitter to send messages, make voice and video calls, share still and moving pictures, and let everyone know what you’re doing and how you’re doing. As any lover or grandparent will tell you, these are not trivial capabilities; they’re priceless ones. Many of us use these resources so often now that we take them for granted, but they’re all less than 10 years old.

Stake Hodler Capitalism: Blockchain and DeFi
by Amr Hazem Wahba Metwaly
Published 21 Mar 2021

The advancement of encryption technology has raised many legal and privacy issues in the information age. Due to cryptography's potential to be used in espionage, illicit activities, and other counterfeit applications, many governments have classified it as a weapon and have restricted or even banned its use and export. Skype, for example, uses a proprietary custom implementation of the AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) encryption algorithm. If you don't know what AES means, the important thing to understand is that cryptography is what keeps our privacy and safety assured during this information age. Some jurisdictions where the use of encryption is legal may require legislators to disclose encryption keys for documents related to investigations.

Lonely Planet Central Asia (Travel Guide)
by Lonely Planet , Stephen Lioy , Anna Kaminski , Bradley Mayhew and Jenny Walker
Published 1 Jun 2018

Central Asian bazaars are enjoyable, even if you're just looking, with everything from Russian sparkling wine to jeep parts. Another surprising souvenir source is the local TsUM department store. Telephone International Calls Most people will find it easiest and cheapest to use an app such as Skype or Viber to make phone calls back home. Note that Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan sometimes block Skype. You can also place international calls (as well as local and intercity ones) from the central telephone and telegraph offices in most towns. You tell a clerk the number and prepay in local currency. After a wait of anything from half a minute to several hours, you're called to a booth.

…

Other typical mementos include pottery figurines, miniature yurts, embroidered bags, horse whips, kymys shakers, leather boxes, felt slippers, Kyrgyz musical instruments and chess sets featuring Manas and his entourage. For some Soviet-era throwback souvenirs, stop by the small antique shop in central Karakol. Telephone Mobile numbers are 10 digits; landlines have five or six digits. Central telecom offices usually offer booths with Skype-enabled computers for cheaper international calls, but the prevalence of wi-fi across the country means most travellers will never need to visit. EMERGENCY & IMPORTANT NUMBERS Ambulance 103 Fire 101 Mountain search and rescue 161 Police 102 Mobile Phones SIM cards are very inexpensive and are often given away to arriving passengers at Manas International Airport.

…

Internet Access Wi-fi is now ubiquitous in tourist hotels and in many restaurants and cafes, so there's little need to resort to internet cafes. Speeds vary from glacial to lightning fast, but in general are quite adequate. Some websites, notably politically sensitive Uzbek-language sites, are blocked but social media sites like Facebook and Twitter work fine. Communication apps like Skype and WhatsApp often don't work properly. LGBTIQ Travellers Uzbekistan is a conservative Muslim country. Gay sex between men is technically illegal, and while there is a small gay scene in Tashkent, most gay men are discreet. Lesbians tend to be overlooked by the authorities. Travellers will find little overt hassle but, again, discretion is wise in this tightly monitored country.

The Wikipedia Revolution: How a Bunch of Nobodies Created the World's Greatest Encyclopedia
by Andrew Lih
Published 5 Jul 2010

The book was composed on a combination of open source and commercial software. I’m grateful to the many authors of NeoOffice, Mozilla Firefox, Text-Mate, Quicksilver, MacJournal, MyMind, TextExpander, and Colloquy as critical tools for writing. For accessing the Internet from China, OpenVPN, OpenSSH, Foxy-Proxy, Tor, and Skype helped cope with any issues regarding Internet blocking. Writing a book with a broken arm is no easy task, unless you have friends and relatives to help you through eight weeks of disability. These included Abigail Tay, Joe Merican, and Dr. Mahmoud Merican, who all helped to arrange treatment during holiday season.

…

But as work started to get more rapid, leaving messages on talk pages and waiting for replies became inefficient for quick collaboration. As 2001 progressed, the community experimented with trying out a form of online communication in the form of Internet relay chat, or IRC. As a simple, open standard, IRC was a group chat space that preceded today’s modern “instant messaging” such as AOL, MSN, Skype, or Jabber. With IRC, users could run a program to connect to the central machine operated by Freenode, one of the largest IRC servers, and chat in real time with other Wikipedians. It was a new experience for Wikipedians to converse synchronously, and it provided an even faster feedback loop with which Wikipedia could evolve.

Here I Am: The Story of Tim Hetherington, War Photographer
by Alan Huffman
Published 12 Mar 2013

Once the photographers arrived at the media center, Hondros uploaded his photos to Getty while the others checked e-mail and Martin “got all domestic,” as he put it—took a shower and changed into some dry clothes. After his shower, Martin sat on a small couch, downloading and backing up his photos and Skyping with his partner back in Budapest, Polly Fields. Occasionally Hetherington “would literally throw himself down and peer over my computer and comment about what I was doing,” Martin said. Without a laptop or a digital camera, Hetherington had time to kill. He did have his iPhone with him, and Michael Brown had, in Martin’s words, “made a splash with his,” selling Hipstamatic-enhanced iPhone photos to National Geographic and other magazines.

…

I have also drawn extensively from transcripts of Sebastian Junger’s interviews for his documentary film, which he very generously shared with me, as well as from his book War and from James Brabazon’s memoir My Friend the Mercenary. I conducted my interviews face to face, primarily in New York City and Misrata, and over the phone, via Skype, and through e-mail. I also drew from my own experiences in Monrovia, Liberia and from my personal conversations with Tim. Quotes from all interviews are verbatim, when accompanied by quotation marks, with the exception of some that were quoted by other published sources, which I am not in a position to verify, and of others that have been edited in small ways, such as by the deletion of repetitive filler words (“um” and “like”), conversational breaks that are needlessly disruptive in print.

Tubes: A Journey to the Center of the Internet
by Andrew Blum
Published 28 May 2012

It occurred to me that Crouch was part of the small global fraternity that knows the geography of the Internet the way most people know their hometowns. Her boss, a Texan named Alan Maudlin who improbably led TeleGeography’s analyst team from his home in Bratislava, possessed one of the best mental maps of the physical infrastructure of the Internet. I’d spoken with him before coming. “I don’t need to look at a map,” he told me over Skype. “I have in my mind, and I can almost note, which cables connect everywhere in the world.” Rather than maps of the Internet, his study in Slovakia was decorated with antique maps of Texas. “I suppose it is kind of like the Matrix, where you can see the code. I don’t even have to think about it anymore.

…

As I approached the beach parking lot, there were more manholes and then a little compound of equipment surrounded by a wood fence, nestled in the reeds. It hummed. Sprouting out of a drainage ditch were huge prehistoric stalks of Gunnera, or giant rhubarb, each one bigger than a man—as if their growth were nurtured from below by the light passing beneath them. That night at the B&B, I Skyped with my wife in New York, about the drawings our daughter made at day care, the mess the dog made, the man who was coming to fix the leak. Unlike a phone call, our conversation went over the Internet; it was free and crystal clear, composed of something like 128,000 bits each second. Afterward, out of curiosity, I ran a traceroute to see if I could discern which way they had all gone.

Dogfight: How Apple and Google Went to War and Started a Revolution
by Fred Vogelstein
Published 12 Nov 2013

Gundotra’s falling-out with Jobs earlier in 2008 had, by the end of the year, made him a staunch Android ally, and he focused his team on not only building basic Google apps for the iPhone—such as search, Maps, and YouTube—but on developing a mobile version of software called Google Voice. Like Android, Google Voice grew out of the acquisition of a start-up in August 2007. The company, GrandCentral Communications, seemed like a weird purchase at first. It was like Skype. It made software to enable telephone calls that traveled over the Internet instead of via a telephone company. But to many Google engineers that was like owning a fancier buggy whip. Telephone conversations were something their parents did. To them it was old, increasingly obsolete technology. When Google had moved to its current office complex, Brin and Page had looked into not installing telephones at all—until they were told that would be a violation of the fire code.

…

Samsung trial; iPad and; iPhone given to; Jobs and; Open Handset Alliance and; role at Google; on smartphones Sculley, John SEC Seidenberg, Ivan Sense by HTC Sequoia Capital Sewing Machine Combination sewing machines Shazam Shockley, William Sholes, Christopher Latham Showtime Sidekick smartphone Sigman, Stan Silicon Valley; convergence and; entertainment industry and; software copyright law and Silver Lake Capital Singer, Isaac Siri Skype smartphones; Android, see Android phones; apps for, see apps; BlackBerry, see BlackBerry; carriers for, see wireless carriers; Google applications on; Internet and; iPhone, see iPhone; network for; price of; Quattro Wireless and; sales of TVs vs.; Schmidt on; switch from cell phones to; Windows on Snow Fall project social media: Facebook, see Facebook; MySpace; Twitter software: copyright law and; patents on Sony SOPA/PIPA SpaceShipOne Spacey, Kevin Spindler, Michael Spotify spreadsheet programs Sprint Stahl, Norman Stanford University Star7 Stone, Matt Stratton, John Strickon, Josh Stringer, Christopher Summly Sun Microsystems Symbian tablets; EO; GRiDPad; iPad, see iPad; Microsoft; Nexus 7; sales of televisions vs.

4th Rock From the Sun: The Story of Mars
by Nicky Jenner
Published 5 Apr 2017

One of the 100 candidates, Joseph Roche of Trinity College Dublin, Ireland, expressed his concerns in a 2015 interview with Matter. He claimed not to have met anyone from the organisation in person, to have been chosen purely based on the amount of his donation and to have only been vetted via a 10-minute Skype call. ‘That means all the info they have collected on me is a crap video I made, an application form that I filled out with mostly one-word answers … and then a 10-minute Skype interview,’ Roche said. ‘That is just not enough information to make a judgment on someone about anything.’ The Mars One critics are almost certainly correct in their cynicism; every one of Lansdorp’s grand plans has been delayed by several years.

Going Dark: The Secret Social Lives of Extremists
by Julia Ebner
Published 20 Feb 2020

‘That’s a shame, you’ll miss out on a great evening and the opportunity to meet other members of GI.’ Before I leave Café Prückerl, we agree that I will stay in touch and set up an initial call with the UK-based Identitarian leaders. That same night, the FPÖ receives 26 per cent of the country’s votes,11 a shocking success for an Austrian party with links to neo-Nazi fraternities. I log on to Skype. Thomas is waiting for our voice call; he joins me from Scotland. Although the new GI Scotland leader has been living in the UK for seven years, selling software, he has kept his Austrian dialect. He has a friendly laugh and a calm voice. Thomas was on a family visit when he decided to go to one of Generation Identity’s regular meet-ups in a Viennese café half a year ago.

…

The Austrian Identitarian Markus Willinger had been active in the New Right for five years when he published his book Generation Identity: A Declaration of War Against the ’68ers at the age of twenty.18 ‘Then I did my first GI summer camp in France,’ Liam says. He tells me that they are in the process of screening people for GI UK at the moment. ‘So first we do a Skype interview and screen their social media profiles, then we meet them in person – we just go for a beer with them.’ Over a drink he tells me that he attended the march organised by the Football Lads Alliance (FLA), a group of English football fans who claim to be fighting extremism of any kind but have become increasingly associated with far-right activists.19 ‘They kept saying “every form of extremism”,’ Liam adds, bursting into laughter.

In Pursuit of Memory: The Fight Against Alzheimer's
by Joseph Jebelli
Published 30 Oct 2017

So numerous were the breakthroughs and new theories, I wanted to clone myself and put a copy of me in every room. I wondered if my research using the brain’s immune cells was still cutting-edge. Like an octopus, the field appeared to have spread its arms into wholly uncharted territory. One evening that week, alone in my hotel room, I received a Skype call from my father. Like others in my family he wanted to know if I’d spotted anything that might have helped Abbas. I told him that the research here was experimental and probably wouldn’t have done much for Granddad. I could see the disappointment on his face. I think that after seeing Abbas’s decline he had grown fearful of dying in the same way.

…

‘I immediately told him about Tony Wyss-Coray’s work,’ Nikolich said, sitting in his home office in Palo Alto, California. I’d just asked him to recount the inception of this radical new therapy, and he was beaming. It was 5 a.m. for him–the time he usually starts his day–and we were talking over Skype. He was easy-going and casually dressed, and yet had the face of a stern industrialist. ‘Afterwards I rang Tony and said, “Can you believe this!?” He said it was the first time he’d ever heard of a human situation where this may actually be helpful. We were fascinated.’ Alex had told the Hungarian professor about his grandfather over lunch in Hong Kong.

Blitzscaling: The Lightning-Fast Path to Building Massively Valuable Companies
by Reid Hoffman and Chris Yeh
Published 14 Apr 2018

Because it is so easy for the rest of the team to communicate with one another, you have to make an effort to constantly communicate with any remote members to keep them on the same page as the rest of the team. Communications tools like Slack not only provide a medium where all teammates participate on the same terms but also allow for asynchronous communication, which helps overcome time zone differences. Another approach some companies take is to set up a 24/7 videoconference using tools like Skype or Google Hangouts to simulate being in the same room. These informal bonds remain a critical part of the communications process, even as your firm grows into a global giant. Human beings are social animals, and the bonds between coworkers and teammates require regular dialogue. However, as early as the Tribe stage, you will need to begin implementing processes to supplement the one-to-one dialogue.

…

All these new ecosystems around the globe represent interesting and potentially differentiated opportunities, much like China fifteen years ago or Silicon Valley twenty-five years ago. Boston has won a leadership position in health, for example, because of its world-class hospitals and universities, while New York is the leader in fashion-related businesses like Rent the Runway and Birchbox. Countries like Estonia have made their dependence on international markets a strength; Skype (founded by Estonian programmers Priit Kasesalu and Jaan Tallinn) wasn’t likely to have started in the United States because international phone calls simply weren’t as important to the US consumer. CHINA: THE LAND OF BLITZSCALING Remember Pony Ma’s decision to launch and then blitzscale WeChat in 2010?

DarkMarket: Cyberthieves, Cybercops and You
by Misha Glenny
Published 3 Oct 2011

One day in early February 2008 an alert that warned of suspect software flashed up on Darryl’s screen. Unauthorised Application: Messenger. Darryl’s systems were looking out for several different types of unauthorised application. The word ‘Messenger’ suggested that someone was trying to install or operate some form of communications package like Skype. Within minutes Darryl had traced its origin to one of the chemical engineers who represent the backbone of GSA’s business. Walking over to the workstation in question, Darryl decided simply to ask him outright whether he was running any new instant messenger on his machine. ‘And he turned to me quite cooly and said “No!”

…

It is, of course, embarrassing continually having to ask people fluent in the tongue why a ‘buffer overload’ can have alarming consequences for the security of your network, but geeks are not a patronising clan and are generally happy to oblige. Estonia may be small, but it is the most wired country in Europe and one of the leading digital powers in the world, from where – among other inventions – came Skype. Free wireless can be found in most places, as connectivity is considered a basic right, not a privilege. You won’t find hotels gouging your wallet for Internet access here. However, I was talking to Hillar Aarelaid not about Estonia’s go-ahead approach, but about its fabled position in the now fast-growing history of international digital strife.

The Doomsday Calculation: How an Equation That Predicts the Future Is Transforming Everything We Know About Life and the Universe
by William Poundstone
Published 3 Jun 2019

He wipes silverware before using it. His health-food diet is complicated. He’s concerned about the effects of certain foods on the brain. He does not drive a car. Bostrom listens to audiobooks played at two or three times normal speed to avoid wasting time. His sociologist wife and son live in Montreal. They communicate by Skype. If anyone is improbably special, Bostrom is. The Future of Humanity Institute has two conference rooms named for Cold War Soviets. One honors Vasili Arkhipov, who was almost literally Brandon Carter’s philosophic nuclear submariner. During the height of the Cuban missile crisis one Russian submarine remained submerged and out of radio contact with Moscow.

…

The Future of Humanity Institute is an expression of a global movement. There are comparable think tanks on both sides of the Atlantic. The Oxbridge orbit has not only Bostrom’s institute but the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk at Cambridge, cofounded by Martin Rees. The United States has the Future of Life Institute at MIT, founded by Max Tegmark and Skype cofounder Jaan Tallinn, with a board of advisors including the ubiquitous Elon Musk (who donated $10 million). Silicon Valley has two such think tanks: the Machine Intelligence Research Institute, founded by computer scientist Eliezer Yudkowsky and tech entrepreneurs Brian and Sabine Atkins; and the OpenAI Foundation, founded by Musk, Sam Altman, Peter Thiel, and others.

Upscale: What It Takes to Scale a Startup. By the People Who've Done It.
by James Silver
Published 15 Nov 2018

A serial entrepreneur with two decades of experience building and exiting companies in the US, Israel and Europe, Saul has a passion for working with seed- and early-stage businesses. Most recently he co-founded Kano and Seedcamp. He co-founded and was CEO of LOVEFiLM International (acquired by Amazon) and was also part of the original executive team at Skype (acquired by eBay). CHAPTER 5 ‘Skilled coders don’t necessarily make the best managers.’ Toby Moore, co-founder and former CTO at Space Ape Games, and now venture partner at Entrepreneur First, on scaling your startup’s tech team. When Toby Moore first moved to London as a Java developer over a decade ago, he assumed he was going to go into banking, ‘because that’s what Java developers did in those days’.

…

‘But there’s a big difference between meeting someone for a coffee and someone actually engaging with you and being part of your success within that role. It did make a big difference to me, and I’ve seen it make a big difference for others too. ‘The nice thing is that we’re now approaching the second or third generation of tech startups in London. I’ve been there for 12 years now and we’ve had the Skypes and Last.fms, the Moo.coms and Mind Candys and we’ve got the third generation coming through now. A lot of people from the second generation are now doing what I’m doing, which is taking a bit of a break before starting another company, and spending it with startups to help them grow.’ Toby Moore has been a technical leader since the early 2000s in a variety of early-stage and scale-up roles, most notably as co-founder and CTO at Space Ape Games, an award-winning mobile gaming studio based in London, and as Mind Candy’s CTO for six years, where he helped build and scale the Moshi Monsters entertainment juggernaut.

Outnumbered: From Facebook and Google to Fake News and Filter-Bubbles – the Algorithms That Control Our Lives
by David Sumpter
Published 18 Jun 2018

I am just waiting for it to happen. That same thing that has happened to me at almost every social gathering for the past year. A period during which I have spent most of my time locked in my office: coding algorithms, fitting statistical models, writing about my results and interviewing engineers and scientists over Skype. There is small talk. I listen politely. Then someone brings it up. It is not the same thing each time. The stories are slightly different, but the theme is the same. ‘The danger with Facebook is that it controls what people see,’ he says. ‘I read about one study they did where they only showed people negative posts and they got depressed.

…

Lovisa and I had been worried at first – might this online ‘friend’ turn out to be a 40-year-old paedophile? Our concerns were unjustified. Elise met up with a normal 13-year-old with bright blue hair. This summer she wants to go to visit another friend she has made online who lives in Poland. They often chat on Skype while they do their homework together. Elise’s parents will have to think long and hard about whether this will be allowed or not. My son, Henry, and I had just returned from a trip to Newcastle. Through Twitter, I had got in contact with another dad, Ryan, who like me, trains his son’s football team.

Crushing It!: How Great Entrepreneurs Build Their Business and Influence—and How You Can, Too
by Gary Vaynerchuk
Published 30 Jan 2018

Visiting the book’s Amazon page, Pat noticed something else. Gary was actually replying to the occasional negative reviewer and saying, “Hey, I’m sorry this book didn’t speak to you. Let’s get on the phone and chat.” I couldn’t believe that an author was paying attention, responding to comments, and offering a phone or Skype number. Many of the one- or two-star reviewers came back with a follow-up comment. They might not have changed their opinion, but they’d say, “Gary, I still don’t agree with you, but I so appreciate the time you took to reach out to me and understand where I was coming from.” That impressed me more than even the content of the book itself.

…

Within six months, he saw a rise in viewership: one hundred views, then two hundred. All along, he was commenting, answering questions, and interacting with viewers. He made himself available to anyone who wanted to talk. Crush It! talks about building your business off of search.twitter.com. I also made it a point to answer every single e-mail that came in. I put up my Skype number so that anybody could call at any hour. If I was sitting there, I would take the call. Then I would get the caller’s permission to record the call, because there’s nothing like free content. They were asking me questions, and if they’re asking it, then other people probably have the same one.

The Skripal Files
by Mark Urban

‘Team’, his Whitehall minders, apparently even offered to bring Yelena over to the UK and buy Skripal a bigger house so that they could live together. At the end of 2010, a few months after he arrived in Britain, the Skripals had seen in the New Year together via Skype; Sergei and Liudmila in Salisbury, Yelena, Valery, and his daughter in Yaroslavl. It brought them comfort as they adapted to life apart. Sergei kept up the regular phone calls to his mother but did not, following her accident, use the video feature of Skype. Watching her in this predicament, fading away, when he could do nothing practical to help was too much for him, perhaps. Although Sergei must have found this separation from family, and the inability to attend his brother and son’s funerals, to be a great sorrow, he did not see an alternative.

The Business of Platforms: Strategy in the Age of Digital Competition, Innovation, and Power
by Michael A. Cusumano , Annabelle Gawer and David B. Yoffie
Published 6 May 2019

Technological innovation and regulatory change eventually allowed new competitors, such as MCI (Microwave Communications Inc., founded in 1963), to use microwaves (not phone lines) to offer telephone and data services to large businesses. But there were still no mass-market alternative telephone platforms until wireless companies like Sprint and then cable TV companies and Internet-based services such as Skype gradually got into the voice communications business, most notably during the 1990s and 2000s. FROM THE WHITE PAGES TO THE YELLOW PAGES American Bell Telephone introduced the White Pages in 1878 along with the first telephones in order to help people find each other.7 This was simply a catalogue, with names in alphabetical order and divided by towns or local regions, of every individual and organization with a publicly listed telephone number.

…

See economies of scale Schmalensee, Richard, 69, 82–83, 250nn21–22 seafood.com, 110 self-driving cars, 224–26 self-regulation and curation overview, 90–91, 186, 207–8 EU allows self-regulation of hate speech, 205–6 and Facebook, 186–87, 191 moving toward self-regulation, 199–206 openness and curation tradeoff, 191 platform businesses evolving into curated business, 219–20 as platform defining what they stand for, 208–9 social media’s resistance to, 189–90, 191 on YouTube, 204–5 Shor, Peter, 228 Sidecar, 112–15, 116–18 sides of your platform cross-side or indirect network effects, 17, 42–44, 46–47, 94–96 engaging multiple sides of a market, 15–16, 41–42 same-side or direct network effect, 16, 42–44 Siemens’s MindSphere for IIoT, 166 “6 Reasons Platforms Fail” (Van Alstyne, Parker, and Choudary), 111 Skype, 37 smartphone market, 130–35 smartphones, value of platforms associated with, 21–22, 23t, 24–25, 251nn23–24 smart platforms, 51 Snapchat, 55–56, 70–71, 97, 218 social networks and social networking, 6–7, 70–71, 110. See also specific social networks Sony, 43–44 specialized retail platforms, 55 Spiegel, Evan, 55–56 Sprint, 37 stand-alone firms, lifespan and failures of, 109 Star 360, 55 Starwood Hotels and Resorts, 142 state sales taxes, 201–2 strategies for platform businesses overview, 18–21, 19f, 25–26, 240t, 241t choosing which side of the market to subsidize, 112, 114 See also business models Strategy Rules: Five Timeless Lessons from Bill Gates, Andy Grove, and Steve Jobs (Yoffie and Cusumano), ix success, measuring, 236–37 sustainability, 86 switching costs, 48 Symbian (Nokia), 79–80, 130, 131 Taiwan, 142–43 TALEN (transcription activator-like effector nuclease), 232 “technically impossible” defense against liability, 178–79 telephone network effects, 32–37 Tencent (China), 58, 100–101 third-party innovators, platform-offered building blocks for, 18–19, 68 Tinder, 70–71, 81 tipping, viii TOM Online (Hong Kong), 123 Toys “R” Us and Amazon, 152 traditional businesses, 141–71 overview, 27, 141–44, 169–71 building a new platform, 159–69 General Motors and Lyft, 147–48 joining a competing platform, examples of, 145–51 joining a competing platform, pitfalls of, 151–52 London’s black cabs, 148–51 peer-to-peer transaction platforms vs., 9 Pharmapacks, 145–47 product platforms of, 12–13, 20 rules related to, 11–12 stand-alone products of, 5, 18 Walmart buying existing platforms, 153–59 See also General Electric transaction platforms overview, 19f, 20–21, 80, 101–3, 250n22 adding an innovation platform, 102 advertisements on, 85 Amazon Marketplace as, 57–58 choosing your market sides, 69–71 complementary services, 83–84 complementary technology sales, 84–85 designing your business model, 77–78, 80–85 establishing and enforcing ecosystem rules, 85–86, 90–93 innovation platforms vs., 22, 23t, 24 lifespan and failures of, 108–9 matchmakers, 80–83 mistrust in, 119–24 reducing friction in transactions, 82–83 solving the “chicken-or-egg” problem, 71–72, 74–77 two-sided, Yellow Pages as, 39 value associated with, 21–22, 23t, 24–25 See also Alibaba’s Taobao; Facebook; Google Search TripAdvisor, 85 trust, building, 119, 122, 124, 137, 185–86 Tumblr, 89, 135 Twitch, 56 Twitter blocking Instagram’s “Find Friends” feature, 89 choosing market sides, 70–71 multi-homing effects, 42–43 opening and closing API interfaces, 88–89 subsidizing one side of platform, 76 two-sided transaction platform, Yellow Pages as, 39 tying as exclusionary practice, 181, 182 Uber attempting winner-take-all, 77–78 and autonomous vehicle technology, 224–25 challenges ahead, 136–37 and current laws, 206–7 driver rating system, 92 and London’s black cabs, 149–51 no sex rule, 90 performing driver background checks, 90 platform model and losses, 81–82 predecessors, 107 regulatory scrutiny, 111 roll out on Windows phone, 135 as start-up, 115, 116–19 UberX, 115–16, 118, 148 United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team, 127 Upwork, 46–47, 81, 91 U.S.

The Best Business Writing 2013
by Dean Starkman
Published 1 Jan 2013

She needs this job, too, so she has no choice but to tell me something I have never been told in nineteen years of school or at any of some dozen workplaces. “You’re doing really bad,” she says. I’ll admit that I did start crying a little. Not at work, thankfully, since that’s evidently frowned upon, but later, when I explained to someone over Skype that it hurts, oh, how my body hurts after failing to make my goals despite speed-walking or flat-out jogging and pausing every twenty or thirty seconds to reach on my tiptoes or bend or drop to the floor for 10.5 hours, and isn’t it awful that they fired Brian because he had a baby, and, in fact, when I was hired I signed off on something acknowledging that anyone who leaves without at least a week’s notice—whether because they’re a journalist who will just walk off or because they miss a day for having a baby and are terminated—has their hours paid out not at their hired rate but at the legal minimum.

…

Which in this state, like in lots of states, is about seven dollars an hour. Thank God that I (unlike Brian, probably) didn’t need to pay for opting into Amalgamated’s “limited” health insurance program. Because in my 10.5-hour day I’ll make about sixty dollars after taxes. “This is America?” my Skype pal asks, because often I’m abroad. Indeed, and I’m working for a gigantic, immensely profitable company. Or for the staffing company that works for that company, anyway. Which is a nice arrangement, because temporary-staffing agencies keep the stink of unacceptable labor conditions off the companies whose names you know.

…

They aren’t entitled to raises, either, and they don’t get vacation and they’d have a hell of a time unionizing and they don’t have the privilege of knowing if they’ll have work on a particular day or for how long they’ll have a job. And that is how you slash prices and deliver products superfast and offer free shipping and still post profits in the millions or billions. “This really doesn’t have to be this awful,” I shake my head over Skype. But it is. And this job is just about the only game in town, like it is in lots of towns, and eventually will be in more towns, with U.S. Internet retail sales projected to grow 10 percent every year to $279 billion in 2015 and with Amazon, the largest of the online retailers, seeing revenues rise 30 to 40 percent year after year and already having sixty-nine giant warehouses, seventeen of which came online in 2011 alone.

Chaos Monkeys: Obscene Fortune and Random Failure in Silicon Valley
by Antonio Garcia Martinez
Published 27 Jun 2016

In my limited experience, there are two traits that distinguish successful startup founders at whatever level of the game, from the forgettably minuscule (e.g., AdGrok) to the epoch changing (e.g., SpaceX). First, the ability to monomaniacally and obsessively focus on one thing and one thing only, at the expense of everything else in life. I lived, breathed, and shat AdGrok. Thanks to focusing on AdGrok, I watched my daughter grow up through the frame of a Skype window while I was in AdGrok’s Mountain View shit hole. I had no social life outside of schmooze-and-booze tech events, at which I would wear my AdGrok T-shirt and engage in techno small talk with people I didn’t really care about. I had no hobbies or outside activities of any kind, except very occasional trips to the gym.

…

This was the personnel state of Facebook Ads when I signed on: about thirty or so engineers and one designer, spread out over about a dozen products, grouped into broad areas nucleated by six product managers, of which I was one. The whole merry circus was run by my boss, Gokul Rajaram, who seemed to always be writing three emails at once, along with attending at least two meetings, one in person, the other via Skype or his mobile. Gokul was the nominal product leader for Ads, meaning he was the “product masseur” who gave overall direction to what Facebook actually built in Ads, as well as managing the product managers themselves, at the time an unruly lot, each with their own miniature product fiefdom. Rather than an overall ads strategy, what we had was a general feeling in the air, a sort of collective mood that, like a slanted floor, tended to send more people one way than the other.

…

Second, it meant the Growth team’s ever-present task of getting users to connect to other users was rendered trivial: simply hoover in the contact list on a user’s phone, and that person has instantly “friended” everyone he or she knows (none of this Facebook business of prodding you via pseudo-ads to friend your long-lost classmate). Reportedly, the reason for spurning the usual made-up app identity of a user name–password combo for WhatsApp was due to its founder and CEO, Jan Koum, constantly losing his Skype password, and wanting to do away with a log-in process altogether. * In a bit of feel-good Valley news that soon became folklore, Jan Koum signed the multibillion-dollar deal’s documents on the door of the welfare office his family would frequent for food stamps, after they immigrated from the Ukraine.

Algorithms to Live By: The Computer Science of Human Decisions
by Brian Christian and Tom Griffiths
Published 4 Apr 2016

Earlier networking research, Vint Cerf notes, had been founded “on the assumption that you could build a reliable underlying net.” On the other hand, “the Internet was based on the assumption that no network was necessarily reliable, and you had to do end-to-end retransmissions to recover.” Ironically, one of the few exceptions to this is in transmitting the human voice. Real-time voice communications, such as Skype, typically do not use TCP, which underlies most of the rest of the Internet. As researchers discovered in the early days of networking, using reliable, robust protocols—with all their ACKs and retransmission of lost packets—to transmit the human voice is overkill. The humans provide the robustness themselves.

…

Fully extricating the Internet from bufferbloat will draw on all of these changes and require the patience of many years. “This is a long-term swamp,” says Gettys. But there’s a lot to look forward to about a post-bufferbloat future. With their inherent latency, buffers are bad for most interactive processes. When we speak via Skype, for example, we generally prefer an occasionally staticky signal now to a clear recording of what our caller said three seconds ago. For gamers, even a 50-millisecond lag could be the difference between fragging and being fragged; in fact, gaming is so sensitive to latency that all important gaming honors are still contested in person, with players boarding airplanes to gather and compete over a network serving just a single room.

…

See also randomness San Francisco Sartre, Jean-Paul Saxena, Nitin saying no scale, sorting and scale-free distributions scheduling Schmidt, Eric Schmidt, Peter Schooler, Lael Science Scientific American Scientific Management Scientist in the Crib, The (Gopnik) Seale, Darryl search, gap between verification and search engines search-sort tradeoff self-organizing lists second-chance scenario secretary problem burglar variant full-information variant recall variant rejection variant seeding selfish routing self-organizing lists sequential information processing serendipity Shallit, Jeffrey Shaw, George Bernard Shi, Yong Shoenfield, Joseph shop hours Shortest Processing Time unweighted weighted Shoup, Donald Sibneft oil company Sieve of Erastothenes Silicon Valley Simulated Annealing Sinatra, Frank Single Elimination single-machine scheduling Siroker, Dan size dominance hierarchies and memory hierarchy and sorting and Skype Sleator, Daniel slot machines small data as big data in disguise Smith, Adam Smith, Dan soccer social media Social Network, The (film) social networks social policy socks, sorting software, term coined solid-state drives solitaire sorting Sorting and Searching (Knuth) sort-search tradeoff soy milk space-time tradeoffs SpaceX spinning sports league commissioner overfitting and season scheduling tournament structures Sports Scheduling Group squirrels SRAM standardized tests Statistical Science status pecking order and races vs. fights and Stewart, Martha Steyvers, Mark stock market.

The Mathematics of Love: Patterns, Proofs, and the Search for the Ultimate Equation
by Hannah Fry
Published 3 Feb 2015

Eli Finkel, a professor of psychology at Northwestern University, has done a lot of work on the so-called ‘non-conscious synchrony’ that happens between two people, and believes that much of the technology to integrate these measures into online matchmaking already exists – or is just around the corner. Imagine if you could have a series of short online speed dates on a Skype- or FaceTime-like system over the course of an evening. Siri-type technology could track your language patterns, while image-recognition software could keep a log of your body language. At the end of your evening, a realistic and meaningful compatibility statistic for your matches could be delivered, giving you a much better basis on which to judge who is worthy of being graced with your real-life presence.

Television disrupted: the transition from network to networked TV
by Shelly Palmer
Published 14 Apr 2006

• Media RSS - a kind of syndication of media files used by Yahoo! • MMScast - podcasting to mobile phones using MMS. • Mobilecast - podcasting to mobile phones. • Palmcasting - podcasting to Palm devices like Treo and LifeDrive. • Punchcasting - punching podcasts directly into smartphone devices. • Skypecasting - recording Skype text, voice or video conversations. • Soundseeing tour - podcast utilizing ambient noise and descriptions. • Streamcasting - when an RSS feed contains a link to streaming media instead of a file, RSS becomes a way to control streaming syndication. • Vodcasting/Vidcasting - video-based podcasts.

…

SHVA states that satellite service providers like, DirecTV and DISH Network, can only allow clients with national networks to use their services when the signals from their local network affiliates are not available through the use of a rooftop antenna Copyright © 2006, Shelly Palmer. All rights reserved. 13-Television.Glossary v2.qxd 3/20/06 7:29 AM Page 213 SBC/ATT – Subscriber 213 Skype A Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) service that uses the public Internet. Skyscraper A type of web advertisement that is taller than it is wide. Visit, http://www.iab.org for details. Smart Card Plastic cards the viewer can insert in the set-top box, which intelligently trigger the box to decrypt content programming.

Industry 4.0: The Industrial Internet of Things
by Alasdair Gilchrist
Published 27 Jun 2016

The robots are designed to provide reassurance to friends and family, by enabling a relative or carer to call up the Giraff from a remote computer or smartphone from any location. The 3G audio/video channel displays the carer’s face on the Giraff's video screen, allowing them to chat to the patient via a Skype-like video call. The Giraff launched in 2013 as a pilot trial. The Giraff robots are just under five feet tall with wheels, and a video screen instead of a head. They are fitted with high-definition cameras to monitor the home and provide remote surveillance. The Giraff allows relatives and carers to keep a vigilant eye on the patients, to ensure they are taking their medication and eating meals, while also providing a method for social exchange potentially from hundreds of miles away.

…

Industry 4.0 XMPP (Jabber) XMPP stands for the Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol, which is an open technology for real-time communication developed to deliver a wide range of applications. XMPP was developed to focus on the advent of technologies such as instant messaging, presence, and video conferencing, which were dominated by Skype and WhatsApp. There was also the possibility of even entering into collaboration, for developing lightweight middleware, and content syndication. However, to understand XMPP, we need to understand why it was originally designed. That was for use in instant messaging, to detect presence, and allow people to connect to other people and exchange text messages.

Narconomics: How to Run a Drug Cartel
by Tom Wainwright
Published 23 Feb 2016

Inside, in an office lined with books and papers, Clark, whose research interests focus on Tijuana’s ample underbelly, tells me about market conditions in the people-smuggling business. He regularly chats with the local “coyotes,” as people-smugglers are known; some of them have even participated in his lectures in San Diego, appearing via Skype to talk to American students about the smuggling game. Broadly, he says, there are two types of service. The basic option is to sneak over the frontier with a guide on foot, hoping to avoid the US Border Patrol’s sentries. For those with deeper pockets, or without the stamina to wade through rivers or cross deserts and mountains, there is a luxury option: crossing “in the line,” meaning walking up to the immigration desk with fake documents.

…

The Instituto Madre Assunta, which is run by a network of Catholic missionaries, allows female migrants to stay for up to two weeks, during which time they are given three meals a day, clean clothes, and access to medical and legal help. In a small computer room off a sunny courtyard, women talk to their children on Skype. Mary Galván, the center’s director, is depressed about the US approach to immigration. “We had great hopes for Obama. We expected there would be a big reform to help migrants,” she says. But it was “todo lo contrario”—exactly the opposite. During Obama’s first presidential term, from 2009–2013, an average of nearly 400,000 illegal aliens was deported each year—double the number at the turn of the century, and nearly ten times more than in the early 1990s.

Capitalism Without Capital: The Rise of the Intangible Economy
by Jonathan Haskel and Stian Westlake
Published 7 Nov 2017

In all three cases, the economic disadvantage of not having vibrant cities that can grow have become larger and larger as the importance of intangibles has increased. But creating the infrastructure for spillovers is not just about physical space. Currently, the most effective collaborations happen face-to-face, despite the dizzying variety of digital technologies for socializing and collaboration, from Skype and e-mail to Facebook and Slack. But just because the widely predicted death of distance has not come to pass, doesn’t mean that it will never do so. It seems very likely that at some point people will discover better ways to interact meaningfully with one another at a distance using IT, as new applications develop and the workforce becomes populated by people who grew up with online social lives and hobbies.

…

K., 131 rules and norms, 211–14 Sadun, Rafaella, 53, 82 Salter, Ammon, 197 Sampson, Rachelle, 168 Samsung, 73, 112 Sanders, Bernie, 223 Santa Fe Institute, 80 scalability, 9–10, 58, 60, 87, 101–2; definition of, 246n2; importance of, 67–68; income inequality and, 133–34; and increased investment, 110; and intangibles, 65–67; secular stagnation and, 103–5 Schreyer, Paul, 40 Schwarzenegger, Arnold, 16 Science: The Endless Frontier (Bush), 232 Second Machine Age, 30 secular stagnation, 91, 116; explanation for, 101–16; and intangibles investment, 102–3; profits and productivity differences and, 103–7; relationship of scalability and spillovers to, 109–16; symptoms of, 92–96 Shankar, Ravi, 61 Shi, Yuan, 168 Shih, Willy, 85 Shinoda, Yukio, 42 short-termism, 161, 168–69 Sichel, Dan, 4, 5, 39, 42, 43, 45 Siemens, 60–61, 204 single-factor productivity, 98–101 Six Sigma, 51 Skype, 217 Slack, 152, 217 smartphones, 72–73, 81 Smil, Vaclav, 146 Smith, Adam, 36, 188 social capital, 156, 236 soft infrastructure, 156 solar energy, 85 Solow, Robert, 39, 125 Song, Jae, 129, 131, 135 South Wales Institution of Engineers, 83 speculation, 249n1 spending, 46–47, 54; on assets, 20; rent-seeking, 113 Spenser, Percy, 80 spillovers, 9, 58, 61, 87, 102; contestedness and, 87; importance of, 77–79; and intangibles, 72–77, 109–16; Jacobs, 138; Marshall-Arrow-Romer, 62, 138; physical infrastructure and, 147–51; secular stagnation and, 103–4; slowing TFP growth and, 107–9; venture capital and, 178 Spotify, 18 Stack Overflow, 29 Stansted Airport, 1–2, 3–4 Starbucks, 34, 52, 65, 140, 183, 195, 197; scalability of, 67 start-up ecosystems, 222 Statute of Anne (1709), 76 stock markets, 167–68, 205–6; IPOs and, 171–72 stock of intangible assets, 56–57 Summers, Larry, 93 sunkenness, 8–9, 58, 60, 87, 246n5; as characteristic of intangibles, 68–70; importance of, 70–72; venture capital and, 175–76 sustained advantage, 250n2 Sutton, John, 67 symbolic analysis, 132–34 synergies, 10, 58, 61, 87–88, 213; and intangible assets, 80–83, 83–86; among investments, 110; maximizing the benefits of, 214–18; physical infrastructure and, 147–51; venture capital and, 176 System of National Accounts, 20, 43, 51 systems innovation, 198 tacit knowledge, 65 tangible investments, differences between intangible and, 7–10, 58 taxes, 139–40, 235; and financing, 166, 219 technology: and cost of intangible investment, 28; inequality as result of improvements in, 123–24, 126–27; and productivity of intangibles, 28–30; and spillovers, 151–52 Tesla Motors, 24, 111, 209 Thatcher, Margaret, 127 Theory of Moral Sentiments, The (Smith), 188 Thiel, Peter, 78, 175, 184–85, 187, 223 3M, 194 Toffler, Alvin, 4 Tonogi, Konomi, 42 total factor productivity (TFP), 96, 98, 102; poor performance of, 109–9, 114 Toyota, 29, 51 trade and inequality, 124 trademarks, 76 training and education, 51–52, 170, 228–30 Trajtenberg, Manuel, 106 Trump, Donald, 122, 141–42, 143 trust, 156 23andMe, 152 Twitter, 185, 187 Uber, 24, 28, 51; building of driver network by, 112–13; contestedness and, 115; legal travails of, 187; scalability of, 67, 101–2, 105; and synergies, 82; venture capital and, 174, 175 uncertainty, 87 Ure, Andrew, 126 Ur-Nammu, 75 US Federal Reserve, 4, 40, 41, 42, 165 US Food and Drug Administration, 154 Van Reenen, John, 82, 136, 173, 195 venture capital (VC) funding, 154–55, 161, 166, 174–75; problems with, 177–79; and intangibles, 175–77 Vlachos, Jonas, 131 Volcker, Paul, 165 von Mises, Ludwig, 38 von Wachter, Till, 129 Wallis, Gavin, 42, 223–24 Walmart, 81, 187 Warsh, David, 62 Wasmer, Etienne, 128 Watt, James, 78 wealth, 119–20, 121; housing and, 122, 128–29, 136–39; inequality of, 139–40; intangibles’ effects on, 129–40 Wealth of Nations, The (Smith), 36 Weightless World, The (Coyle), 4 Weitzman, Martin L., 195 Welch, Jack, 184 Whalley, Alexander, 224 “What Is the U.S.

No Ordinary Disruption: The Four Global Forces Breaking All the Trends
by Richard Dobbs and James Manyika
Published 12 May 2015

“US education is a brand that travels well,” he notes.32 DATA AND COMMUNICATION Perhaps the most dramatic change in recent years has been the speed at which information is flashing around the world. More than two-thirds of humans have a mobile phone, and the proportion is rising rapidly. “Today, there are more phones than people. . . . And we can call almost any part of the world at almost no cost through Internet services such as Skype,” notes Kishore Mahbubani, dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore. “This level of teledensity means that people have become interconnected at a level never seen before in history.”33 One-third of the planet is online. At more than 1.35 billion, the community of Facebook users is equivalent to the population of the world’s largest nation.

…

At more than 1.35 billion, the community of Facebook users is equivalent to the population of the world’s largest nation. Global online traffic rose from eighty-four petabytes a month in 2000 to more than forty thousand petabytes a month in 2012—a five-hundred-fold increase. Cross-border voice traffic has more than doubled over the past decade, and Skype call minutes have increased more than 500 percent since 2008.34 These connections have already had an enormous impact and are poised to have an even greater one, especially in developing countries. Internet-related consumption and expenditure is now bigger than either global agriculture or the worldwide energy sector.35 In 2005, mobile subscriptions in aspiring countries—defined as the thirty countries with the economic size and dynamism to become significant global players—accounted for 53 percent of worldwide subscriptions; just five years later, that share had risen to 73 percent.

An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth
by Chris Hadfield
Published 29 Oct 2013

Educational outreach is part of an astronaut’s job, but it’s a particular passion of mine. For 20 years I’d been speaking about the space program in tiny town halls, elementary schools and Rotary Clubs—anywhere that would have me, basically. In 2010 I set up a program called “On the Lunch Pad,” where I talked with school kids via Skype during my lunchtime. I have found it frustrating at times that so few people know what the space program does and, as a result, are unaware that they benefit from it. Many people object to “wasting money in space” yet have no idea how much is actually spent on space exploration. The CSA’s budget, for instance, is less than the amount Canadians spend on Halloween candy every year, and most of it goes toward things like developing telecommunications satellites and radar systems to provide data for weather and air quality forecasts, environmental monitoring and climate change studies.

…

We get it: you’re safe!” Apparently the thrill of a phone call from space had worn off. The two-second delay on the line, that irritating echo, didn’t help matters. On Earth, my family doesn’t typically talk very much on the phone because the kids are so far-flung, but we do communicate constantly via a family Skype chat room: Kristin is at university in Ireland, Kyle lives in China and Evan was, until recently, at university in Germany. I couldn’t easily access the site on orbit, though, so instead I got into the habit of phoning and emailing with Helene daily, and primarily emailing with Kristin and Evan. Kyle, though, still had to put up with some phone calls because he’s not a good emailer.

Uberland: How Algorithms Are Rewriting the Rules of Work
by Alex Rosenblat
Published 22 Oct 2018

In some places where Uber was illegal, I observed and interviewed drivers while they worked underground, and I returned to observe after the company came out in the open. In all, I have conducted interviews with 125 drivers who work for ridehail companies, as well as some taxi drivers, in cars, on the phone, through Skype, and occasionally in online chats. I have also made observations by riding along with over 400 drivers in cars. Hundreds of rides later, the treacly scent of air fresheners I inhale on each trip still makes my eyes water. The stories that these ridehail drivers share with me remain etched in my mind.

…

Nancy MacLean, Democracy in Chains (New York: Viking, 2017), 31. 55. Jordan Pearson, “Uber’s AI Hub in Pittsburgh Gutted a University Lab—Now It’s in Toronto,” May 9, 2017, https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/3dxkej/ubers-ai-hub-in-pittsburgh-gutted-a-university-lab-now-its-in-toronto. 56. Calo and Rosenblat, “The Taking Economy.” 57. Anne Washington in Skype interview with author, August 5, 2017. 58. Andrew Zimbalist and Roger G. Noll, “Sports, Jobs, and Taxes: Are New Stadiums Worth the Cost?” Brookings, June 1, 1997, www.brookings.edu/articles/sports-jobs-taxes-are-new-stadiums-worth-the-cost/; Gregg Easterbrook, “How the NFL Fleeces Taxpayers,” Atlantic, October 2013, www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/10/how-the-nfl-fleeces-taxpayers/309448/; Bret Schrotenboer, “Abandoned NFL Cities Have Old Stadium Debt, New Outlook,” USA Today, March 31, 2017, www.usatoday.com/story/sports/nfl/2017/03/31/relocation-oakland-raiders-san-diego-chargers-st-louis-rams/99848210/. 59.

Possible Minds: Twenty-Five Ways of Looking at AI
by John Brockman
Published 19 Feb 2019

Let’s create our own meaning, based on something more profound than having jobs. AGI can enable us to finally become the masters of our own destiny. Let’s make that destiny a truly inspiring one! Chapter 9 DISSIDENT MESSAGES JAAN TALLINN Jaan Tallinn, a computer programmer, theoretical physicist, and investor, is a co-developer of Skype and Kazaa. Jaan Tallinn grew up in Estonia, becoming one of its few computer game developers, when that nation was still a Soviet Socialist Republic. Here he compares the dissidents who brought down the Iron Curtain to the dissidents who are sounding the alarm about rapid advances in artificial intelligence.

…

THE SECOND MESSAGE: AI RISK My exposure to the second revolutionary message was via Yudkowsky’s blog—the blog that compelled me to reach out and arrange that meeting in California. The message was: Continued progress in AI can precipitate a change of cosmic proportions—a runaway process that will likely kill everyone. We need to put in a lot of extra effort to avoid that outcome. After my meeting with Yudkowsky, the first thing I did was try to interest my Skype colleagues and close collaborators in his warning. I failed. The message was too crazy, too dissident. Its time had not yet come. Only later did I learn that Yudkowsky wasn’t the original dissident speaking this particular truth. In April 2000, there was a lengthy opinion piece in Wired titled “Why the Future Doesn’t Need Us” by Bill Joy, co-founder and chief scientist of Sun Microsystems.

No Rules Rules: Netflix and the Culture of Reinvention
by Reed Hastings and Erin Meyer
Published 7 Sep 2020

According to Adam, it was one of the greatest documentaries he’d ever seen: It follows this crazy story of a Colorado-based journalist, Bryan Fogel, who is also a cyclist and wants to run an experiment to see if he can dope himself, get away with it like Lance Armstrong did, and show the extreme progress the doping allows him to make in a bike race. Through a contact he reaches out to the head of Russia’s anti-doping program, this guy Rodchenkov, who agrees to help. They become Skype friends. But partway through Bryan’s experiment, Russia is accused of doping its Olympic athletes—and it’s Rodchenkov who’s been running that doping program (alongside his anti-doping program!). Rodchenkov flees Russia and hides out in Fogel’s house, afraid Putin is going to have him killed. You just can’t make up a story like that.

…

Then I wrap up by stating, “This is just my opinion, for whatever it is worth,” and “You can take it or leave it.” The elaborate dance is quite humorous from a Dutch person’s point of view . . . but it certainly gets the desired results! Ise’s words sum up the strategies Netflix learned for promoting candor as they opened offices around the world. When you are leading a global team, as you Skype with your employees in different cultures, your words will be magnified or minimized based on your listener’s cultural context. So you have to be aware. You have to be strategic. You have to be flexible. With a little information and a little finesse, you can modify the feedback to the person your speaking with in order to get the results that you need

Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters
by Abigail Shrier
Published 28 Jun 2020

“There are different pathways that can lead to gender dysphoria, but it’s an intellectual and clinical mistake to think that there is one single ‘cause’ that explains gender dysphoria,” he said in a BBC documentary about his life’s work.⁵ In the case of one child he treated, the boy’s desire to be a girl stemmed from wanting to connect with his single mother, who had briefly abandoned him, to keep her from leaving again. The therapy addressed his feelings of abandonment and only secondarily the child’s gender dysphoria. * * * I spoke to Dr. Zucker several times, mostly over Skype. At sixty-nine, he has a close-cropped white beard, the gentle manner of someone who excels at working with kids, and a Talmudic habit of answering every question with a question. Although he has maintained a clinical practice for decades, when he talks about his work he is the consummate academic—apparently incapable of providing a straightforward answer to any question without considering every nuance, drawing all sorts of fine distinctions, and reaching for every caveat that will make his ultimate statement precise.

…

“I think the whole area has become politicized,” said psychotherapist Marcus Evans, who resigned from England’s national gender clinic, the Tavistock Foundation, over the lack of careful protocols in its treatment of transgender-identified children. “The drugs, you know, the hormone blockers, first of all, they say it’s a neutral act. What are they talking about? You’re going to powerfully interfere with a person’s biological development,” he said to me over Skype. “I’m not saying you shouldn’t do it…. But you don’t say it’s a neutral act…. They’re not with their peers anymore.” Even if those peers are perfectly sensitive and supportive, surely the girl on blockers will be acutely aware of her strangeness. Other girls her age have breasts, hair under their arms, struggle to manage their periods, say things that indicate sexual awakening—all things she knows little about.

Ludicrous: The Unvarnished Story of Tesla Motors
by Edward Niedermeyer
Published 14 Sep 2019

Ultimately, as we will see, Tesla would struggle to get the costs of making and selling a car under control—and it would pay a high price for its first lesson in the economics of the car business. CHAPTER 4 THE STARTUP TRAP Raising venture capital is the easiest thing a startup founder is ever going to do. Marc Andreessen By 2006, Silicon Valley had fully shaken off its post-dot-com-bubble hangover and was entering a new golden age. The “Web 2.0” wave had already made companies like Skype, Pandora, and Yelp into household names, Facebook and Twitter were just starting their rise to ubiquity, and Apple was putting the final touches on the world’s first smartphone. The venture capitalist Paul Graham captured the mood in a speech he gave that year called “How to Be Silicon Valley.” Between deriding the stifling effects of bureaucracy and celebrating the valley’s “rich people and nerds,” Graham argued, “a place that tolerates oddness in the search for the new is exactly what you want in a startup hub, because economically that’s what startups are.

…

Edwards, 56 Department of Energy (DOE) loans from, 68–89, 118, 120, 121 as shareholder of Tesla, 82–86, 90 detractors, 102–108 Detroit, Michigan, 2, 4 Detroit Auto Show, 68 disruptive innovator, Tesla as, 195–197 DOE. see Department of Energy doors falcon-wing, 137–141 gull-wing, 136–137 Downey, California, 76 Drori, Ze’ev, 49–50, 65 Dunlay, Jim, 58 E Eberhard, Martin as advocate of Tesla, 67 founding of Tesla by, 21–24, 27–31, 35, 37–40 ouster of, 44–48, 50, 79 EBITDA, 215 Eisner, Michael, 45 Electrek, 97–101 electric vehicles (EVs), 3, 12–14, 24, 77, 202, 207 Energy Independence and Security Act, 67 Enron, 105 environmental issues, 112–113, 119 Esquire, 61 e-tron quattro, 203 EV1, 13, 24, 34 EVs. see electric vehicles F Facebook, 41 Falcon One, 28 falcon-wing doors, 137–141 FCW (Forward Collision Warning), 125 Ferrari, 60, 200–201 Fiat, 11, 34 financial crisis (2008), 75–76, 105 fixed costs, 54 Flextronics, 47 FOIA (Freedom of Information Act), 72, 131 Ford, Henry, 56, 194 Ford Focus, 159 Ford Fusion, 75 Ford Motor Company, 3, 4, 56, 75, 181, 194, 204, 216 Forward Collision Warning (FCW), 125 Founders Edition Roadster, 215 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), 72, 131 Fremont, California, 53, 206, 218 funding (fundraising), 29, 40, 44–47, 50, 69–71, 85 G Gage, Tom, 27–29 Galileo Galilei, 105 Gao Yaning, 128 Gartner, 175 gas prices, 11, 14 General Motors (GM). see also specific models bankruptcy and bailout of, 2–3, 88 and electric cars, 11–13, 34 Impact concept car, 24 and Lotus, 36, 37, 53 OnStar system, 194 Germany, 203, 204 Ghosn, Carlos, 197–200 Gigafactory, 77, 183–184, 189, 218 GM. see General Motors G170J1-LE1 screens, 228 Goodwill Agreements, 149 Google, 44, 120–124, 171 Graham, Paul, 41 “A Grain of Salt” (blog post), 152–153 Grant, Charley, 100 “green car” companies, 11 GT Advanced Technologies (GTAT), 95–97 gull-wing doors, 136–137 H Harrigan, Mike, 30 Harris Ranch, 115–116, 119 Harvard Business School, 195 herd mentality, 96 Hethel, England, 49 Hoerbiger, 138–140 Holzhausen, Franz von, 137 Honda, 201 “How to Be Silicon Valley” (speech by Paul Graham), 41 Hyperloop, 16, 88, 217 I IDEO, 38 IGBT (insulated-gate bipolar transistor), 49 Impact concept car, 13, 24 imperfection, 55 incumbent companies, 196–197 innovation, 193–210 by Citroën, 193–195 disruptive, 195–197 by Carlos Ghosn, 197–200 by Tesla, 201–210 “Innovation Killers: How Financial Tools Destroy Your Capacity to Do New Things” (Christensen), 196–197 The Innovator’s Dilemma, 197 insulated-gate bipolar transistor (IGBT), 49 internal conflict, 29–32 InvestorsHub, 99 Israel, 4, 12 J Jaguar I-PACE, 202–203 Jivan, Jon, 98 Jonas, Adam, 172 K kaizen, 58, 60 Krafcik, John, 176 L Lambert, Fred, 98–101 Lamborghini, 204 Land Rover, 60 lead-acid batteries, 23–24, 197 Leech, Keith, 146–147, 156 Level 4 autonomous cars, 175–176 Level 5 autonomous cars, 170, 172, 175–176, 178 Lexus, 204 lithium-ion batteries, 22–24, 26, 34 “long tailpipe,” 110 losses, 11 Lotus, 36–37, 38, 43, 44, 49, 59 Lotus Elise, 28, 36, 37, 38, 40, 43 Lotus Evora, 59 “Ludicrous Mode,” 16 Lyons, Dave, 64 M Mac, Ryan, 218 Magna Powertrain, 48–49 Magna Steyr, 202 manufacturing, 180–192 of batteries, 183–184, 188–189 and continuous reiteration of Model 3s, 182–192 Elon Musk on, 180–182 preproduction as, 187–188 Marchionne, Sergio, 11 market saturation, 10 Marks, Michael, 47, 48, 50 Mars, 25 “Master Plan, Part Deux” (blog post), 164 McLaren F1, 25–26, 39 media hype, 88, 90–91, 93–95, 97–102, 130, 211–224 and base version of Model 3, 220–224 Elon Musk as cause of, 217–224 at Semi/Roadster unveiling, 211–215 as stock price stimulant, 215–216 Menlo Park, California, 28, 58 Michelin, 194 Miles, 11 Mobileye, 167–170 mobility technology, 11 Model 3, 8–10, 180–182 base version of, 220–224 production of, 182–192 Model S, 15, 74–75, 81–84, 90, 99, 135–137. see also Whitestar Model T, 56 Model X, 101, 134–145 Model Year 2008, 69 Moggridge, Bill, 38–39 Montana Skeptic, 105–108 Morgan Stanley, 172 Morris, Charles, 43 Motley Fool, 98 Musk, Elon on belief, 21 and branding of Tesla, 16–17 as cause of media hype, 217–224 childhood and personality of, 25–26 clientele knowledge of, 60 “cluelessness” of, 33–35 and culture of Tesla, 60 and Daimler, 68 detractors of, 102–108 and electric cars, 25–28 and Elise-Roadster conversion, 38–39 on financial viability of Tesla, 72–73 and fundraising, 44, 69–71 and loans, 70, 78 on manufacturing, 180–181, 190 on Model 3, 8–9 on Model S, 74 on Model X, 144–145 on obstacles faced by Tesla, 46 offers of, to sell Tesla, 120–121 on price increases, 71 and production process, 142, 165 as public figure, 15 on Series D, 47 and JB Straubel, 26 and stress, 64–67, 77–78 and Superchargers, 109–119 and Tesla cofounders, 29–32, 45, 47–48 on Tesla’s master plan, 21–22, 30–31, 58, 163 at town hall meeting, 70–71 and Whitestar, 51 Musk, Errol, 25 Musk, Justine, 25–26 Musk, Kimball, 65 N National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), 66 National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), 127, 131–132, 149–162 National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), 132, 167 NDAs. see non-disclosure agreements Neil, Dan, 59 Neuralink, 16, 217 New Mexico, 48, 67 New United Motor Manufacturing, 53 New York Times, 2, 30, 66 NHTSA. see National Highway Traffic Safety Administration Nissan Leaf, 198 Nissan-Renault Alliance, 197–200, 207 Noble M12, 27 nondisclosure agreements (NDAs), 5, 149–151, 152, 155–156 Norway, 12 NTSB (National Transportation Safety Board), 132, 167 NUMMI plant, 76, 81 Nürburgring, 203 NuvoMedia, 23 O Occupy Wall Street, 80–81 Ohno, Taiichi, 57 OnStar, 194 Opel, 36 Opel Speedster, 36 OpenAI, 217 operating profits and losses, 89 P Packet Design, 23 Page, Larry, 44 Paine, Chris, 13, 64, 71, 73–74 Panasonic, 77 Pandora, 41 PayPal, 16, 28 Peak Oil, 11 Pinnacle Research, 25 platforms, 135–136 Porsche, 24, 26, 39, 203–204 Porsche 911, 39 power electronics module (PEM), 49 Powertrain Technology, 58 Prenzler, Christian, 100 preproduction, 187–188 price increases, 71 Prius, 24 profitability, 81–82, 89 Project Better Place, 4–5, 11–12 public, going, 80–81 Q quality, 55, 59–60 Quality Control Systems, 131 R Ranger, 60 Reddit, 97, 99–100 reliability, 143 Renault Kwid, 207 Renault Zoe, 198 Reuters, 66 Revenge of the Electric Car (film), 64 Roadster as Elise conversion, 37–39 launch of, 14–15, 29, 42, 47–51, 59–61 new model of, 211–215 profitability of, 71–72, 81 securing investments for, 44, 45 and Tesla startup, 2–3 robotaxis, 166–167 Rogan, Joe, 219 Rosen, Harold, 26 Rosen Motors, 26 S Saleen, 99–100 San Carlos, California, 28 San Francisco, California, 59 San Jose, California, 75–76 Santa Monica, California, 45 Saudi Arabia, 218–219 Schwarzenegger, Arnold, 45 Scion xB, 27 Seagate, 23 “The Secret Tesla Motors Master Plan” (blog post), 21 Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), 67, 160, 219–220, 224, 234 Seeking Alpha, 103, 105–107 self-driving cars, 120–133 Semi, 211–215 Senate Finance Committee, 67 Series A funding, 29 Series C funding, 40, 44–45 Series D funding, 46, 47 Series E funding, 50 S 40 model, 84 Shashua, Amnon, 167–170 Silicon Valley, 4, 14, 15, 17, 45, 53, 54, 58 Siry, Darryl, 65, 73 60 Minutes, 66 S 60 model, 84 “skateboard” chassis, 134, 202 Skype, 41 Smart (Tesla car), 68 software startups, 54–55 SolarCity, 110–111, 164 solar power, 109–114 Sorbonne University, 66 South Africa, 25 SpaceX, 15, 16, 25, 28, 39, 66, 78, 100 Spiegel, Mark, 102–103 Stanford University, 4, 26, 27, 28, 121 startups, 41–43, 59, 62, 76 “stealth recalls,” 160–161 stock price, 89, 90, 93, 97, 100, 102–103 StockTwits, 98 Straubel, JB, 26, 28, 48 SunCube, 146–147 Superchargers, 109–119 SYNC, 194 T TACC (Traffic Aware Cruise Control), 125 Tama, 197 Tarpenning, Marc, 21–24, 27, 31, 37, 43, 113 Tea Party movement, 80–81 “Tesla Death Watch” (blog posts), 3 Tesla Energy Group, 68 Tesla Founders Blog, 50 Tesla Motors. see also specific headings and barriers to entry, 35, 56 branding of, 16–17, 18, 59–63, 225–234 and collisions, 127–133 concept of, 34–36 continuous improvement at, 58 culture of, 51–52, 60 detractors of, 102–108 as disruptive innovator, 195–197 EBITDA of, 215 and environmental issues, 112–113, 119 “factory-less” model of, 35–36 innovation by, 201–210 internal conflict at, 29–32 legacy of, 19 Model 3 introduced by, 8–10 personal approach to public relations, xii raising capital for, 44, 69–71, 85 “shaky ground” of, 4, 5 as startup, 2–3 stock price of, 89, 90, 93, 97, 100, 102–103 strategy of, 22 and Supercharger network, 109–119 and whistleblowers, xii Tesla Motors Club (TMC), 95–97 Teslarati, 100 “Tesla stare,” 60 “Tesla Suspension Breakage: It’s Not the Crime, It’s the Coverup” (blog post), 151 Thailand, 48, 218 Think Global, 11, 67 Thrun, Sebastian, 121 TMC (Tesla Motors Club), 95–97 Too Big to Fail, 91 Toyoda, Akio, 76 Toyoda, Sakichi, 57 Toyota, 184, 201. see also specific models auto sales, 11 contract with, 81, 83 electric vehicles of, 159–160 and 2008 financial crisis, 76–77 pragmatism of, 209 safety scandal, 149–151 Toyota Previa, 214 Toyota Production System (TPS), 56–60, 76–77, 142, 183 Toyota Way, 58, 77 TPS. see Toyota Production System Traction Avant, 193–194 trading volume, 89 Traffic Aware Cruise Control (TACC), 125 The Truth About Cars (TTAC) (blog), 1–3 Tse, Bernard, 67 turnarounds, financial, 83–87 Twitter, 41, 98, 104–108, 113, 152, 156, 217–220, 224, 236 tzero, 23–24, 26, 27, 31, 37 V Valor Equity Partners, 47 Vance, Ashlee, 38, 47, 66, 73, 84, 120–121, 137, 227–228 VantagePoint Capital Partners, 66 variable costs, 54 V8 engine, 62 Volkswagen, 11, 171, 203–205 W Wall Street Journal, 2, 18, 100, 129, 132, 168, 187 Waymo, 173–174 Web 2.0, 41 Weintraub, Seth, 97–98, 101 Wharton School of Business, 25 whistleblowers, xii Whitestar, 46–48, 51, 65, 67, 68, 73 Who Killed the Electric Car?

How to Work Without Losing Your Mind
by Cate Sevilla
Published 14 Jan 2021

People who had never worked from home before were suddenly doing it every day. People who previously had no idea what Zoom was were suddenly using it several times a day for important meetings (and the occasional pub quiz). Suddenly we were all that guy on the BBC whose wife and child burst into the room while he was Skyping a report on BBC News. Those of us who had previously been told that it was impossible for us to do our jobs remotely or part-time from home were shown that, well, that wasn’t exactly true. For all the parts of work that have changed, altered or shifted – there is one element that has stayed the same, and has often been amplified: STRESS.

…

Plus, once again, it’s making life easy for you – providing a contact number just in case you can’t find each other at the venue or whatever. I send a similar message before all my meetings now. The complicated etiquette of virtual meetings and video calls Whether it’s Zoom or Google Meetup, Skype or Microsoft Teams – taking part in a video call or ‘virtual meeting’ is more complicated than you might expect. If you work at a tech company or an international firm with remote workers, you were probably already very familiar with video meetings before coronavirus happened. However, the pandemic saw more of us using these apps for virtual meetings than ever before, and it became quite clear that the etiquette of how they should run was as fuzzy as the resolution of your colleagues’ webcams.

The Pay Off: How Changing the Way We Pay Changes Everything
by Gottfried Leibbrandt and Natasha de Teran
Published 14 Jul 2021

Taavet and Kristo, two enterprising Estonians, were living in London in the late 2000s. Taavet worked for Skype and got paid in euros but needed pounds for his day-to-day living costs. Kristo earned in pounds but needed euros to pay his mortgage in Estonia. They both became frustrated with the high fees charged by their banks for transferring money back and forth between Estonia and the UK. And (just like my brother with me) they soon realised that they could avoid the banks by pooling their needs and wants with friends and family. They started doing just that. Taavet transferred his euros from Skype to pay Kristo’s mortgage and Kristo sent his pounds to Taavet to pay his London bills.

Code Dependent: Living in the Shadow of AI
by Madhumita Murgia
Published 20 Mar 2024

Confused, she started clicking through to the websites, until she stumbled across naked images of herself, which had clearly been edited from the fully clothed originals. ‘I saw many, many doctored images of me, depicting me having sexual intercourse, in fellatio positions, being ejaculated on,’ she said during a Skype call from her parents’ home in Perth, in an almost clinically detached tone that I had noticed in Helen too. ‘I think what happened is that someone somewhere stumbled upon an image of me and I represented someone they sexually fetishized, because they lifted those images and posted them to sites about bustier women.

…

The algorithms considered dozens of lawful behaviours suspicious. They were triggered by travel outside Xinjiang, whether within China or abroad, switching off your phone repeatedly, speaking to relatives abroad, ‘not socializing with neighbours, often avoiding using the front door’, or using Western apps such as WhatsApp and Skype. The deeper Maya dug, the more irrational the algorithm’s decisions started to seem. Criteria such as being generally untrustworthy or being young, that is, ‘born after the 1980s’ (80, 90 ) emerged. Other flags included ‘generally acting suspiciously’, ‘having complex social ties’ or ‘unstable thoughts’, or ‘having improper [sexual] relations’.14 The data collected was ever broader, casting the net wide to catch as many Uyghurs as possible, without rhyme or reason.

Private Equity: A Memoir
by Carrie Sun
Published 13 Feb 2024

Even then, however, I was starting to sense a flattening, a dimensionality reduction that made it difficult for me to extract meaningful features, like personality—they all seemed supercompetitive, highly extroverted, fiercely energetic, and nice. And at last, on Thursday, I had my fourteenth and final interview, this one with Boone’s executive coach. With a PhD in clinical psychology, Keith was tasked with assessing my mental fitness. We met over Skype. I made sure to look squarely at digital Keith and not twitch or shake or blink at the wrong speed. Keith asked about my family background, life history, values, and dreams. He asked me questions for which I cannot remember the wording, but this was what I heard: How was I with stress? Was I emotionally mature?

…

I explained the product: You enter your zip code, how many hours you’re willing to fly, and the website, using APIs from various surf-report aggregators, will spit out a list (based on your preferred forecasts) of the top surfing locations for the next seven days. If this sounded like a lot of work, it was. I had already hired and paid a developer in India to code this, but, alas, although the developer and I had multiple Skype calls and desktop-sharing sessions, language issues led to him building a website with a totally different functionality. I decided it would be much simpler if I did it all myself. Boone smiled. “Cool.” He handed me a gift bag. “Go ahead. Open it.” I pulled out a black alligator-leather clutch. “Elisabeth loves this designer,” he explained.

The Empowered Empath: A Simple Guide on Setting Boundaries, Controlling Your Emotions, and Making Life Easier
by Judy Dyer
Published 15 Apr 2019

Working like this enables you to plan your own schedule, set your own rules, and take breaks at will when you need to recharge your batteries. Empaths prefer to be self-employed to avoid being overwhelmed by coworkers, managers, frequent meetings, and demanding schedules. If being self-employed is too risky for you, some businesses allow you to work from home. With advanced technology such as Skype, emails, text messages, and access to the internet, it is not always necessary to work in an office. So, you may be able to split your time during the week so that you are working from home for a few days. One important point to take into consideration is that you need to be careful not to become too isolated when working from home.

MacroWikinomics: Rebooting Business and the World
by Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams
Published 28 Sep 2010

Soon hundreds of volunteers around the world were using Ushahidi-Haiti to translate, categorize, and geo-locate urgent life-and-death text messages in real time. Many of the volunteers spent weeks on end on their laptops in a dimly lit school basement in Boston that Meier converted into a makeshift situation room. Although located some 1,640 miles from the scene, the volunteer crisis mappers used Skype to relay critical information about the location of potential survivors to search-and-rescue teams on the ground in Port-au-Prince. They responded to requests from the World Food Program and the aircraft carrier USS Vinson in the middle of the night. And to better link calls with specific GPS coordinates, they even got direct access to DigitalGlobe’s high-resolution satellite imagery and to the U.S.

…

After all, the car is not just a vehicle for moving around; it’s a place for work, learning, and entertainment with a series of software programs connected to a wireless network. Now imagine a car with a set of open APIs allowing thousands of programmers and niche businesses to create a cloud of applications for your car—from remote personal assistants to navigation and geospatial search applications to on-demand movies and music, and why not throw in mobile Skype for good measure. Optimizing Our Infrastructure with a Ubiquitous Data Grid A rich cloud of in-car services can do more than inform and entertain us; it could help optimize our entire transportation infrastructure. Accompanying your iTunes service, for example, would be an infinite number of applications that enable you to fundamentally change the way you use your car.

…

When Estonians regained independence from the former Soviet Union in 1991, they not only acquired new political freedoms, they inherited a mass of rubbish—thousands and thousands of tons of it scattered across illegal dumping sites around the country. When concerned citizens decided that the time had come to clean it up, they turned not to the government, but to tens of thousands of their peers. Using a combination of global positioning systems and Google Maps, two entrepreneurs (Skype guru Ahti Heinla and Microlink and Delfi founder Rainer Nõlvak) enlisted volunteers to plot the location of over ten thousand illegal dump sites, including detailed descriptions and photos. That, in itself, was ambitious. Phase II of the cleanup initiative was, by their own admission, rather outrageous: clean up all of the illegal sites in one day, using mass collaboration.

Minimalism: Live a Meaningful Life
by Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus
Published 8 Dec 2011

Over the course of a year we met with each of these individuals face to face—all five of whom lived thousands of miles away—and learned from their experiences. We bought them coffee or lunch and offered to add value in any way we could. We took copious notes and thanked them for adding value to our lives. We stayed in contact with these guys via email, phone, Skype, social media, etc., establishing a stronger bond over time. After meeting them and learning from their experiences, it was clear to us what we needed to do to successfully turn our passions into our mission. That’s when we took action; that’s when we created our website and worked incredibly hard on adding value to other people’s lives through our writing and various other content.

Reinventing Discovery: The New Era of Networked Science
by Michael Nielsen
Published 2 Oct 2011

Body language, facial expression, tone of voice, and regular informal contact are all tremendously important to effective collaboration, and cannot be replaced. With people you like, in-person conversation is enjoyable and stimulating, and online collaboration loses something by contrast. Of course, this loss is gradually being offset by more expressive collaborative technologies—a tool such as Skype video chat is remarkably effective as a way to collaborate. Over the longer run ideas such as virtual worlds and augmented reality may even make online contact better than face-to-face contact. Still, today the online experience of direct person-to-person collaboration lacks much of the richness of offline collaboration.

…

See designed serendipity sex workers, training for technology jobs, 22 Shallows, The (Carr), 20 shared data. See data sharing shared praxis, 75–77, 78–82, 198 Sheppard, Alice, 133, 135 Shirky, Clay, 153, 154, 219 signaling. See scoring Simon, Herbert, 217, 223 Sinclair, Cameron, 46 Singh, Simon, 165–67 Skilling, Jeffrey, 165 Skunk Works, 36 Skype video chat, 41 sky surveys, 98 of Hipparchus, 104 of Large Synoptic Survey Telescope, 107, 151 of Palomar Observatory, 102 of Ptolemy, 98, 102, 104. See also Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) Slashdot, 163 Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), 96–105 data-driven intelligence and, 112, 114 data sharing by, 102–5, 108–10, 181 data web and, 111 Galaxy Zoo’s use of, 138, 139, 140 new pattern of discovery and, 106–7 potential of networked science and, 175 Schawinski’s use of, 134 spectra of galaxies in, 138 Sloan Great Wall, 97, 99, 100, 112, 116 small contributions, 33, 48, 63–64, 227.

Hacking Growth: How Today's Fastest-Growing Companies Drive Breakout Success
by Sean Ellis and Morgan Brown
Published 24 Apr 2017

AVOIDING GROWTH STALLS One of the greatest threats to long-term success is when companies aren’t vigilant enough about responding to the changes in their market—whether it’s by failing to spot product or channel fatigue, acknowledge new competition, make needed updates to products or marketing adjustments in a timely fashion, or embrace new technology coming online. One prime example of the dangers of such complacency is Skype, which was once massively successful by any measure, but which failed to continue to innovate after its acquisition by Microsoft. As a result, it is now rapidly losing ground to mobile apps offering chat service, such as Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp, and the fast-growing group chat company Slack that is sweeping the corporate world. Where did Skype go wrong? Put simply, the product and executive teams failed to grasp the appeal of mobile messaging and perceive how rapidly mobile phones and tablets were being integrated into workplace communication.

Singularity Rising: Surviving and Thriving in a Smarter, Richer, and More Dangerous World
by James D. Miller
Published 14 Jun 2012

Donated $1.1 million to the Institute;91 •Ray Kurzweil—famed investor and Singularity writer; •Justin Rattner—Intel’s chief technology officer; •Eric Drexler—the father of nanotechnology; •Peter Norvig—Director of Research at Google; •Aubrey de Grey—leading longevity researcher; •Stephen Wolfram—developer of the computation platform Mathematica; and •Jaan Tallinn—founding engineer of Skype and self-made tech decamillionaire who donated $100,000.92 I also spoke on the economics of the Singularity at the Institute’s 2008 Summit. Given the superficial bizarreness of some of Eliezer’s beliefs (e.g., that an intelligence explosion could create an ultra-AI), the support he receives from these men is impressive.

…

At least six people mentioned in this book have signed up with either Alcor or the Cryonics Institute: •Ray Kurzweil, inventor and leading Singularity intellectual357 •Peter Thiel, self-made technology billionaire358 •Robin Hanson, economist •Eliezer Yudkowsky, leading friendly-AI theorist •Michael Anissimov, Media Director for the Singularity Institute •Eric Drexler, the father of nanotechnology359 Furthermore, •super-genius Thomas McCabe, who helped edit this book, told me he was in the process of completing the paperwork at the time I talked with him; •Skype cofounder Jaan Tallinn said that although he isn’t currently signed up, he would use cryonics if he or a loved one were about to die; and •former Alcor president Stephen Van Sickle told me that there are one or more famous businesspeople, not associated with the Singularity movement, who are [secret] Alcor members.

The Most Human Human: What Talking With Computers Teaches Us About What It Means to Be Alive
by Brian Christian
Published 1 Mar 2011

He replied by giving me the name of Philip Jackson, a professor at the University of Surrey, who is the one in charge of the logistics for this year’s Loebner Prize contest in Brighton, where it will be held under the auspices of the 2009 Interspeech conference on speech and communication science. I was able to get in touch via Skype with Professor Jackson, a young, smart guy with the distinct brand of harried enthusiasm that characterizes an overworked but fresh-faced academic. That and his charming Briticisms, like pronouncing “skeletal” so it’d rhyme with “a beetle”: I liked him immediately. He asked me about myself, and I explained that I’m a nonfiction writer of science and philosophy, specifically of the ways in which science and philosophy intersect with daily life, and that I’m fascinated by the idea of the Turing test and of the “Most Human Human.”

…

Evolution appears to have been willing to trade interhemispheric lags for a disproportionate increase in computational power. 10. High Surprisal One-Sided Conversations Eager to book my room in Brighton, I did some quick digging around online and found an intriguing (and intriguingly named) place, just a stone’s throw from the Turing test, called “Motel Schmotel.” I called them up via Skype. Now, I don’t know if it was the spotty connection, or the woman’s low speaking volume, or the English accent, or what, but I could barely understand a word of what she was saying, and immediately found myself hanging on to the flow of the conversation for dear life: ____tel. Presumably, she’s just said something like “Hello, Motel Schmotel.”

Present Shock: When Everything Happens Now
by Douglas Rushkoff
Published 21 Mar 2013

I had neglected my email for the fourteen hours it took to get from outside New York to outside Berlin, and there were already second and third pings in the inbox from people wondering why they hadn’t yet received a reply to their initial missives. (Teaches me right for answering emails so quickly and creating unrealistic expectations.) Not that I hadn’t made a valiant effort to connect while in transit. The plane had some sort of WiFi while we were over land, but someone kept trying to make Skype calls, which crashed all the passengers’ connections. After the flight attendant restarted the system for the third time, I gave up, took a pill, and fell asleep to the movie. I tried again from my iPhone at the airport but couldn’t log on. Now that I was at the hotel with plug-in power, I knew I’d have an easier time catching up with all that was waiting for me.

…

See consumers short forever. See overwinding SimCity (game), 62 Simmons, Bill, 41 simplification, 220, 247 The Simpsons (TV show), 23, 25–26, 28 simulations, digiphrenia and, 84 singularity, 3, 8, 252, 253, 254, 256, 258, 260, 263 situation comedies, 30 skaters, 132–33 Skype, 70 Slavin, Kevin, 179–80 sleep, polyplastic, 95 smart phones, 83, 84, 99, 211 Smith, Adam, 226 Smith, Zadie, 34 soap operas, 33 social games, 62–63 social interaction: digiphrenia and, 85, 96, 109; overwinding and, 169, 184; television and, 24 social issues, games and, 63–64 social media/networks: fractalnoia and, 199, 204, 209, 211, 214, 215, 216–17; narrative collapse and, 64.

Beyond: Our Future in Space
by Chris Impey
Published 12 Apr 2015

The future of Solar System exploration may lie in telepresence, a set of technologies that allow a person to feel that he or she is in a remote location. Videoconferencing is one familiar and simple form of this technology. The market for projecting images and sound to connect meeting participants from around the world is growing 20 percent a year and is worth nearly $5 billion. Skype video calls now account for a third of all international calls, a staggering 200 billion minutes a year. Other examples include using robots with sonar to explore the ocean floor or robots with infrared sensors to explore caves. The robot provides the “eyes and ears” for an operator who doesn’t have to leave the comfort of an office or home.

…

Mex., 239 Los Angeles Times, 71 Losing My Virginity (Branson), 86, 87 Louis IX, king of France, 23 Louis XVI, king of France, 68 Lovelock, James, 286 Lowell, Percival, 163–64 Lucian of Samosata, 20 Lucretius, 18–19 Luna program, 50–51 Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, 156 Lunokhod rover, 143 Lynx rocket plane, 101 M5 fiber, 161 McAuliffe, Christa, 55, 74 Mack 3 Blackbird, 69 McKay, Chris, 173 McLellan, William, 283 magnetic implants, 207 magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), 190 magnetic sails, 186, 223 magnitude of time, 248–50, 249 Manhattan Project, 36, 221 Manifest Destiny, applied to space, 146–47, 199 Manned Habitat Unit, 169 many worlds concept, 17–20, 17, 49, 267 Mao Zedong, 141 Marconi, Guglielmo, 237 Mariner 2, 51 Mariner 4, 164 Marino, Lori, 190 Marriott hotels, 145 Mars, 28, 237, 270 challenges of travel to, 166–70 distance from Earth to, 50, 148, 166 Earth compared to, 171–72, 216 establishing a colony on, 166–71, 169, 192, 195, 200–201, 203, 214, 248 evidence of water on, 124–25, 163–66, 165, 173 fly-bys of, 51, 170 imaginative perceptions of, 163–65 latency on, 178 map of, 163 obstacles to exploration of, 66–67, 148 one-way journey to, 166, 170–71, 200 as potentially habitable, 124–25, 163, 165–66, 171, 172–74, 234, 278 privately funded missions to, 170–71 probes to, 40, 51, 52, 164–65, 176, 246 projected exploration of, 94–98, 101, 104, 115, 119, 157, 161, 163–74, 178, 181, 182 property rights on, 145, 198–99 sex and reproduction on, 200 simulated journey to, 169–70 soil of, 170 staging points for, 161 terraforming of, 172–74, 182, 216, 227 tests for life on, 52 Mars Direct, 169 Mars500 mission, 169 Mars One, 170–71, 198–201 Mars Society, 166 Mars 3 lander, 51 Masai people, 120 Massachusetts General Hospital, 250 Masson-Zwaan, Tanja, 199 mathematics, 19 as universal language, 236–37 Matrix, The, 260 matter, manipulation of, 258 matter-antimatter annihilation, 220, 220, 221–22 Mavroidis, Constantinos, 182 Max-Q (maximum aerodynamic stress), 46 Maxwell, James Clerk, 183 Mayor, Michel, 126–28, 133 medicine: challenges and innovation in, 92–93, 263 cyborgs in, 205 medicine (continued) as lacking in space, 200 in life extension, 259 nanotechnology in, 225, 259 robots in, 180, 181, 182, 205 mediocrity, principle of, 261 Mendez, Abel, 278 mental models, 13–17, 18–19 Mercury: orbit of, 126, 215 property rights on, 145 as uninhabitable, 124 mercury poisoning, 118 Mercury program, 41, 42, 71, 74, 272 meta-intelligence, 94 meteorites, 152, 160, 160, 164, 195 methane, 52–53, 125, 132, 278 as biomarker, 217–18 methanogens, 217 “Method of Reaching Extreme Altitudes, A” (Goddard), 30, 31 Methuselah, 131 mice, in scientific research, 48–49, 250–51 microbes, microbial life, 97–98, 173, 174, 217, 241, 246, 286 habitable environments for, 122–25, 165–66, 186 microcephaly, 203 microgravity, 115 microsatellites, 90 Microsoft, 84, 188 microwaves: beaming of, 223–24 signals, 187 Microwave Sciences, 223 Middle East, population dispersion into, 8, 118 migration: early human population dispersion through, 5–9, 9, 15, 19 motivation for, 9–12, 11 military: covert projects of, 69–72 Eisenhower’s caveat about, 79 in Internet development, 77, 78–79 nanotechnology in, 180–81, 225 in rocket development, 30, 32–39, 55–56, 71 in space programs, 73, 76, 79, 144, 153 Milky Way galaxy, 227, 240, 253, 263, 270 ancient Greek concept of, 18 Drake equation for detectable life in, 188, 233–35 Earth-like exoplanets in, 129–33, 233, 291 formation and age of, 235 size of, 242 Millis, Marc, 290 mind control, 245 mind uploading, 259 miniaturization, see nanotechnology minimum viable population, 201, 251 mining: of asteroids, 155–56, 182, 214 of Enceladus, 227 on Moon, 214 by robots, 178, 182 Minsky, Marvin, 177, 179 MirCorp, 75 mirrors, 173 Mir Space Station, 75, 115, 167–68 Miss Baker (monkey), 47–48, 48 Mission Control, 43, 100, 158, 269 MIT, 38, 77, 90, 141, 226, 257 mitochondrial DNA, 6, 9 Mittelwerk factory, 33, 35 Mojave Desert, 71, 82, 83 population adaptation to heat in, 118–19 molecules, in nanotechnology, 151 Mongols, 23, 24 monkeys, in space research, 47–48, 48 Montgolfier brothers, 68 Moon: age of, 50 ancient Greek concept of, 18 in asteroid capture, 156 distance from Earth to, 49–50, 150, 166, 267 first animals on, 49 first man on, 71, 158 latency on, 178 lunar base proposed for, 157–63, 158, 160, 195, 214, 248 manned landings on, 44–45, 49–50, 54, 56, 63, 71, 84, 99, 104, 108, 143, 157, 158, 176, 219, 270, 272 obstacles to exploration of, 66 orbit of, 25 probes to, 40, 51, 129, 140, 143 projected missions to, 92, 143, 157–63, 166, 214, 275 property rights on, 145–47, 198–99 proposed commercial flights to, 102 in science fiction, 20, 26 soil of, 159, 160, 162 as staging point for Mars, 161 staging points for, 148 telescopic views of, 31, 49–50 as uninhabitable, 124, 166 US commitment to reach, 41–45 Moon Treaty (1979), 146 Moon Treaty, UN (1984), 279 Moore, John, 203 Moravec, 259–60 Morgan, Barbara, 74 Morrison, Philip, 187, 239 Mosaic web browser, 79 Moses, 148 motion, Newton’s laws of, 25, 67–68 multistage rockets, 29 multiverse, 252–57, 255 Musk, Elon, 94–98, 97, 100–101, 112–13, 148, 205 mutation, 6–7 cosmic rays and, 204 7R, 10–12, 11, 15 mutually assured destruction, 42 Mylar, 184, 225 N1/L3 rocket, 44, 54 nanobots, 179–82, 181, 224–28 NanoSail-D, 184, 185 nanosponges, 180 nanotechnology, 151–52, 179–82, 208, 214, 245, 280, 283 projected future of, 257–59 see also nanobots National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), 83, 90, 96, 97–98, 114, 116–17, 128, 144, 153, 156, 176, 178, 182, 184–85, 185, 195, 200, 205, 206, 216, 224, 226, 271, 275, 280, 290 and Air Force, 71 artistic depiction of space colonies by, 196, 196 budget of, 39, 42, 43, 49, 54, 64, 75, 99, 104, 140, 144, 158, 166, 188, 238, 270, 272, 284 cut back of, 45, 49, 54, 188 formation of, 38–39, 145, 269 private and commercial collaboration with, 99–102, 104 revival of, 103–5 space program of, 51, 55–56, 71–76, 92, 157–58, 285–86 stagnation of, 63–67, 141, 147, 166 National Geographic Society, 7, 265 National Radio Astronomy Observatory, 187–88 National Science Foundation (NSF), 78–79 Native Americans, 118 naturalness, 256 natural selection, 6, 16, 123, 164, 251, 291 Nature, 187 Naval Research lab, 37 Navy, US: Bureau of Aeronautics, 30 in rocket development, 36–37 Nayr, Ernst, 238 Nazis, 48 Propaganda Ministry of, 32 von Braun and, 32–34, 141, 269 NBC, 75 Nedelin, Mitrofan, 43 “needle in a haystack” problem, 188–89, 242–43 “Nell” (rocket), 29 Neptune, 127, 131, 225 as uninhabitable, 125 Nergal, 163 Netscape, 80 New Mexico, 88, 88, 105 Newton, Isaac, 24–25, 25, 30, 67–68, 110, 262, 267 New York Times, 30, 94 Nicholas, Henry, 214 Niven, Larry, 198, 253 Nixon, Richard, 108, 167 Nobel Prize, 126, 180, 214 nomad planets, 128 Noonan, James, 266 nuclear fission, 220, 220, 221 nuclear fusion, 110, 161–62, 220, 221, 221, 222 nuclear reactors, 224 nuclear weapons, 36, 42, 78, 129, 146, 197–98, 222, 234–35, 244, 245, 246, 286 Nuremberg Chronicles, 17 Nyberg, Karen, 200 Obama, Barack, 104 Oberth, Hermann, 28, 31–32, 36, 268 oceans: acidification of, 195 sealed ecosystem proposed for, 197 Oculus Rift, 176 Ohio, astronauts from, 74 Okuda, Michael, 228 Olsen, Ken, 213 100 Year Starship project, 224 100 Year Starship Symposium, 229 101955 Bennu (asteroid), 156 O’Neill, Gerard, 196, 251–52 Opportunity rover, 165 optical SETI, 190, 243 Orbital Sciences Corporation, 100–101, 275 orbits: concept of, 25 geostationary, 149–50, 150 legislation on, 146 low Earth, 49, 54, 63, 70–71, 70, 74–75, 97, 100, 110, 113–14, 151, 155, 184 manned, 40–41, 141–42 staging points from, 148 orcas, 190 Orion spacecraft, 104 Orteig, Raymond, 90 Orteig Prize, 90–91 Orwell, George, 35 OSIRIS-REx, 156 Outer Space Treaty (1967), 145–47, 198–99 “Out of the Cradle, Endlessly Rocking” (Clarke), 201 oxygen, 156, 159, 161, 170, 172, 173–74, 182, 193–95, 214 Oymyakon, Siberia, population adaptation to cold in, 119–20 ozone, as biomarker, 217 Pacific Ocean, 9, 224 Pac-Man, 175 Page, Larry, 92 Paine, Thomas, 167 Pale Blue Dot (Sagan), 121 “Pale Blue Dot,” Earth as, 53, 118–22, 121, 130 Paperclip, Operation, 141 parabolic flight, 93 paradox, as term, 241 Paratrechina longicornis (crazy ant), 193 Parkinson’s disease, 202–3 particle physics, standard model of, 256 Pascal, Blaise, 120 Pauley, Phil, 196–97 PayPal, 95, 97 Pensées (Pascal), 120 People’s Daily, 162 People’s Liberation Army, 144 Pericles, 18 Pettit, Don, 100, 273 phenotype, 6 philanthropy, 95 PhoneSat, 185 photons, 183, 186 in teleportation, 229, 230, 231 photosynthesis, as biomarker, 217 pigs, 250 Pinker, Steven, 16 Pioneer probes, 50, 51–52 piracy, 24 Pitcairn Island, 202 planetary engineering, 172 Planetary Resources, 156 planetary science, 51–52, 176 Planetary Society, 184 planets: exploration of, 49–53 formation of, 156 plate techtonics, 132, 241 play, imagination in, 10, 14 pluralism, 17–20, 17, 49 plutonium, 66 poetry, space, 272–73 politics, space exploration and, 63–64, 104, 141, 214, 238 Polyakov, Valeri, 115, 167–68 population bottleneck, 201–2, 287 Poynter, Jane, 193 Princess of Mars, A (Burroughs), 164 Principia (Newton), 25 Project Orion, 221, 221 Project Ozma, 187–88, 237, 253 prokaryotes, 172 property rights, in space, 145–47, 198 Proton rockets, 65, 113 proton scoop, 222–23 Proxmire, William, 238 Puerto Rico, 239, 243 pulsar, 131 Pythagorean Theorem, 238 Qian Xuesen, 141 Qi Jiguang, 24 Qualcomm Tricorder X Prize, 92 quantum entanglement, 230–32, 230 quantum genesis, 255 quantum mechanics, 258 quantum teleportation, 230–32, 230 quantum theory, 189 qubits, 230 Queloz, Didier, 126–28, 133 R-7 rocket, 37 R-16 rocket, 43 radiation, infrared, 109, 253–54, 254 radioactivity, as energy source, 124, 181 radio waves, 66, 187, 189, 242 ramjets, 222–23 RAND Corporation, 222 Rare Earth hypothesis, 241 RCS Energia, 106 RD-180 engine, 72 Reagan, Ronald, administration of, 167, 271 reality TV, 75, 171, 214, 282 “Realm of Fear,” 229 reasoning, human capacity for, 13–17, 18–19 red dwarfs, 131 Red Mars (Stanley), 174 Red Scare, 141 Redstone rocket, 36–37, 71 reindeer, 119–20 remote sensing, 175–91, 224 RepRap Project, 227 reproduction, sexual, 6, 172 Ride, Sally, 74 “Right Stuff,” as term, 71, 114 Right Stuff, The (Wolfe), 272 Ringworld series (Niven), 253 risk: as basic to human nature, 9, 262 genetic factor in, 10–12 of living on Mars, 167–70 in pushing human limits, 120 of space tourism, 102, 105–9, 155 of space travel, 42–43, 55–56, 56, 106–9, 152–53 Robinson, Kim Stanley, 174 robonaut project, 179 robots, robotics: as aids to humans, 249, 250 in asteroid redirection, 104 commercial, 178 ethical issues of, 179 nanotechnology in, 179–82, 181 remote control of, 177–78 remote sensing through, 176 self-assembly and self-replication by, 226–28, 258, 259 in spacecraft, 50, 100, 100 space exploration by, 53–57, 66, 98, 133, 161, 177–79, 179, 208, 224–28 see also cyborgs; nanobots Rocketdyne, 112 rocket equation, 27, 53, 72–73, 110–11, 111, 148, 220, 268 rocket fuel, 110–13, 148, 156, 159, 161 comparison of efficiency of, 219–24 Rocket Performance Calculator, 222 rockets: alternatives to, 148–53 “bible” of, 267 challenges in launching of, 43–44, 46–49, 106, 107, 111–12, 148 comparison of US and Soviet, 44 cost of, 112–13, 113 developing technology of, 21–39, 43, 101, 103, 112–13, 183, 262 fuel for, 110–13, 148, 156, 159, 161, 220–21 launched from planes, 84 liquid-fueled, 28–29, 29 physics and function of, 110–14 proposed energy technologies for, 220–24 reusable, 101, 103, 111, 112, 113 solar sails compared to, 183 as term, 23 visionaries in development of, 26–30, 94 in warfare, 22–24, 30, 32–34 see also specific rockets “Rockets to the Planets in Space, The” (Oberth), 28 Rogers Commission, 271 Rohrabacher, Dana, 284 Rome, ancient, 18, 67, 163 Rovekamp, Roger, 207 rovers, 66–67, 92, 125, 140, 143, 158, 165, 167 nanotechnology in, 181–82 remote sensing through, 176 Rozier, Jean-François de, 68 RP-1 kerosine, 110 RS-25 rocket, 112 Russia, 23, 26–27, 149, 178 space program of, 37, 65–66, 72, 75, 84, 91, 104, 106, 107–8, 113, 114, 140, 143, 168, 184, 195, 200, 271 space tourism by, 75, 102 tensions between US and, 72 see also Soviet Union Russian Revolution, 27, 47 Russian Space Agency, 102 Rutan, Burt, 72, 82–86, 85, 88, 88, 89, 91, 97–98, 105–6, 214 Rutan, Dick, 83–84 Rutan Aircraft Factory, 83 Saberhagen, Fred, 177, 259 Sagan, Carl, 53, 121–22, 121, 176–77, 184, 198, 234–35, 238, 240 Sahakian, Barbara, 98 Sahara Desert, 238 sails: solar, 183–86, 185 wind-driven, 67–68, 183, 262 Salyut space station, 54, 108 satellites: artificial Earth, 36–39, 37, 40, 65, 71, 106 commercial, 96, 105 communications, 101, 142, 153 in energy capture, 253 geostationary, 149 GPS, 144 launching of, 154, 154 miniature, 90, 184–85 Saturn: moon of, 125, 227 probes to, 52–53 as uninhabitable, 125 Saturn V rocket, 43, 44, 46, 54, 83, 104, 111, 113, 113, 166 Scaled Composites, 83, 89 science fiction, 192, 196, 222, 223, 239, 250, 253 aliens in, 186–87 in film, 28, 204 Mars in, 164, 174 roots of, 20 technologies of, 228–32, 259 see also specific authors and works scientific method, 213 Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI), 187–90, 234, 239, 254 evolution and technology of, 237–39, 242–43, 242 lack of signals detected by, 236–37, 240–44 new paradigms for, 258 “Searching for Interstellar Communications” (Cocconi and Morrison), 187 sea travel: early human migration through, 8, 9 exploration by, 109, 262 propulsion in, 67–68 self-replication, 226–28, 258, 259 Senate, US, Armed Services Preparedness Committee of, 39 SETI Institute, 188 78–6 (pig), 250 sex: promiscuous, 12 in reproduction, 6, 172 in space, 200, 214 Shackleton Energy Company, 161 Shane, Scott, 98 Shatner, William, 88–89 Shelley, Mary, 206 Shenlong (“Divine Dragon”), 145 Shenzhou 10, 142–43 Shepard, Alan, 41, 84 Shostak, Seth, 243 Siberia, 65, 119–20, 238 population dispersion into, 8, 118, 218 Sidereal Messenger, The (Galileo), 270 Siemienowicz, Kazimierz, 267 Simonyi, Charles, 75 Sims, 175 simulation: infinite regression in, 261 living in, 257–62 simulation hypothesis, 261 Sinatra, Frank, 45 singularity, 207 in origin of cosmos, 255 and simulation, 257–62 technological, 258–59 Singularity University, 94, 259 Skylab space station, 54, 116 Skype video, 176 smart motes, 181, 225 smartphones, 92, 185 Smithsonian Institution, 30, 81 Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, 85, 91, 271 Snow Crash (Stephenson), 103 Snowden, Edward, 178 social media, 195 Sojourner rover, 165 SolarCity, 96–97 solar flares, 167 solar power, 96, 181, 183–86 solar sails, solar sailing, 183–86, 185, 223, 225, 227 Solar System: discovery of first planet beyond, 126–27 edge of, 50, 53, 121 formation of, 156 habitability potential in, 122, 124–26 latency variations in, 178 probes into, 51–52, 66, 177, 185–86, 208, 270 projected travel within, 248–49, 263 property rights in, 145–47, 198 worlds beyond, 126–29, 156, 208, 215, 250, 263 solar wind, 162, 223 sound barrier, breaking of, 69, 71 South America, 11, 202, 218 Soviet Union, 30, 34, 37, 141 fall of, 47, 65, 75, 197, 271–72 rocket development in, 35–39 space program failures and losses of, 43, 47, 50–51, 54, 269 space program of, 37–39, 40–43, 141, 149, 237, 271 Soyuz spacecraft, 43, 55, 75, 84, 91, 102, 106, 113, 143 crash of, 107–8 space: civilians in, 55, 74 civilian vs. military control of, 37–39, 69–71, 79, 153 commercialization of, 55, 63, 73–76, 79–80, 88–89, 92, 97, 99–109, 100, 110, 147, 153–56, 154, 199, 214, 249, 275 debris in, 144, 152 first American in, 41 first man in, 40–41, 41 first women in, 40, 74 as infinite, 18, 19, 22 as inhospitable to human beings, 53–54, 114–17, 121 legislation on, 39, 78, 90, 144, 145–47, 198–200 living in, 192–208 “living off the land” in, 166, 200 peaceful exploration of, 39 potential for human habitabilty in, 123 prototype for sealed ecosystem in, 192–97 Space Act (1958), 39, 90 Space Adventures, 102, 275 space colonization: challenges of, 197–201 cyborgs in, 204–8 evolutionary diversion in, 201–4 legal issues in, 198–200 of Mars, 166–71, 169, 192, 195, 203 off-Earth human beings in, 215, 250–51 prototype experiments for, 192–97 space elevators, 27, 148–53, 150, 160–61, 185, 280 “Space Exploration via Telepresence,” 178 Spaceflight Society, 28 space hotels, 102–3 Space Launch System (SLS), 104 space mining, 155–56, 161–62 “Space Oddity,” 142 spaceplanes, 71–72, 85, 144 Spaceport America, 1–6, 105 Space Race, 35–39, 37, 40–43, 50, 55, 139 SpaceShipOne, 72, 85, 85, 88–89, 88, 91 SpaceShipTwo, 88, 101, 105 Space Shuttle, 45, 46, 49, 64, 72, 84, 85, 111–13, 112, 159, 167, 194, 219–20, 222, 275 disasters of, 55–56, 56, 74–75, 107, 111–13 final flight of, 271 limitations of, 55–56, 64–65 as reusable vehicle, 54–55 space sickness, 114 spacesuits, 89, 182, 195–96 space-time, 255, 255 manipulation of, 258 space tourism, 63, 73, 75–76, 79–80, 88–89, 91, 101–3, 154, 170, 214 celebrities in, 88, 101–2 revenue from, 154–55, 155 risks of, 102, 105–9, 155 rules for, 105 space travel: beyond Solar System, see interstellar travel bureaucracy of, 105–10, 271 cost of, 39, 42, 45, 49, 54, 55, 66, 75, 81–82, 91, 112–14, 113, 139–49, 153, 155–56, 158–59, 161, 166, 179, 183, 198, 214, 217, 222, 224–26, 252, 270, 275, 284 early attempts at, 21–22, 22 effect of rocket equation in, see rocket equation entrepreneurs of, 81–98 erroneous predictions about, 214 failures and disasters in, 21–22, 22, 38, 43, 47, 50–51, 54–56, 56, 63–64, 68, 72, 74–75, 101, 102, 107, 142, 184, 269, 271, 275 fatality rate of, 107–9 fictional vignettes of, 1–4, 59–62, 135–38, 209–12 Internet compared to, 76–80, 77, 80 life extension for, 250–51 lifetimes lived in, 251 living conditions in, 114–17 new business model for, 99–105 Newton’s theories as basis of, 25 obstacles to, 21, 63, 66–67, 105–109 space travel (continued) as part of simulation, 261–62 public engagement in, 45, 73, 85, 93, 162, 177, 217 remote sensing vs., 175–91 risks of, 43–44, 83, 89, 93, 105–9 speculation on future of, 76–80, 133, 213–32, 248–52 suborbital, 84 telescopic observation vs., 49–50 visionaries of, 26–39, 80, 94, 109 SpaceX, 96, 97, 100–103, 113–14, 275 SpaceX Dragon spacecraft, 96, 100, 100, 102, 170 special theory of relativity, 228, 231 specific impulse, 220 spectroscopy, 127, 165, 176 spectrum analyzer, 237 Speer, Albert, 34 Spielberg, Steven, 238 Spirit of St.

Only Humans Need Apply: Winners and Losers in the Age of Smart Machines
by Thomas H. Davenport and Julia Kirby
Published 23 May 2016

But if, for example, a lung cancer diagnosis arising from the KRAS gene had 90 percent confidence, that would give a doctor a very different feeling than he or she would have about a 30 percent level diagnosis. The real-time nature of some decision contexts will preclude a reporting of the confidence of some decisions. In Google Translate or Skype Translator, for example, it won’t help much to know the confidence level for each word or phrase in a translation. In general, however, knowing and reporting the level of confidence for an automated answer or decision is an important step for smart machines. It will help us know when to trust these systems.

…

J., 179 Persado, 121 personal shoppers, 111 Pink, Daniel, 169 Plett, Heather, 110–11 Popa, Dan, 123 Port, David, 87 precariat, 241 Predictably Irrational (Ariely), 113 Press, Gil, 191 productivity automation and gains, 1, 3, 167, 227 BYOD and, 13 knowledge workers and, 100 man-machine partnerships and, 234 price reductions and, 14 “silent firing” and, 24 Progressive insurance, 197 “Prose of the Machines, The” (Oremus), 127 ProSystem, 22 “quantified self” movement, 68 Race Against the Machine, 31 RAGE Frameworks, 45, 216–17 Reimsbach-Kounatze, Christian, 236 Rethink Robotics, 50, 182, 193 Rhodin, Mike, 55 Riedl, Mark, 126 Riordan, Staci Jennifer, 160 Rise of the Robots (Ford), 205 Risi, Karin, 210, 220, 223 Ritchie, Graeme, 125 Robinson, Sir Ken, 115 robotic process automation, 48–49, 187, 221, 222–23 robotics, 24, 35, 40, 49–52, 54, 157 anthropomorphizing and, 49 collaborative robots, 49–51, 182, 193 DARPA Robotics Challenge, 51, 56 education for, 232 patience and, 123–24 programming language, 49, 50 self-awareness and, 56 transparency and ease of use, 193 warnings and predictions about, 225–26 Ronanki, Rajeev, 187–89, 220 Roosevelt, Franklin D., 238, 248 Rudin, Cynthia, 193 Rumsfeld, Donald, 214 Russell, Stuart, 227–28 Sachs, Jeffrey, 228 Sadler-Smith, Eugene, 117–18 Safecast, 247 Saffo, Paul, 24 Salovey, Peter, 113, 116 Samasource, 168 Sand, Benjamin, 6 SAP, 133 SAS, 104, 132, 140, 141, 194 Saxena, Manoj, 45 Schneider National, 132, 147–48, 189–90, 196 Short Haul Optimizer, 147, 190, 191 Scientific Music Generator (SMUG), 126 “School of One,” 141 Science: The Endless Frontier (Bush), 248 Scott, David, 67 Scott, Rebecca, 162 Second Machine Age, The (Brynjolfsson and McAfee), 6, 74 self-driving vehicles, 4, 51–52, 213–14, 244, 246 Sharp, Phillip, 209 Shaughnessy, Dan, 117 Shiller, Robert, 7 Simon, Herbert, 163 Singapore, 250 Singularity Is Near, The (Kurzweil), 36 Skype Translator, 56 smartphones, 53, 235, 239 “social license to operate,” 233 Spanish National Research Council, 54–55 Spielberg, Steven, 125 spreadsheets, 69–70 Standing, Guy, 241 Starner, Thad, 65 Stats Inc., 97 Steinberg, Dan, 124–25 Stepping Aside, 77 artisanal jobs, 119–21 augmentation to free people up, 121–24 characteristics of a candidate, 129 for financial planners and brokers, 87 how to build skills for, 129–30 incursion of machines into human attributes, 124–27 in insurance underwriting, 81 jobs with nonprogrammable skills, 109–12 learning “noncognitive” skills, 115–18 multiple intelligences and, 112–14 for teachers, 85 value of human involvement, 127–28 what it means, 108 where a candidate is likely found, 130 Stepping Forward, 77, 176–200 adding new sources of data, 196–97 broadening application of tools, 194–95 broadening the base of methods, 194 characteristics of a candidate, 199–200 consultants, 187–89 creating usability and transparency by business users, 192–94 data scientists, 179–80 embedding automation functions, 196 entrepreneurs, 185–87 examples, successful people, 179–89 for financial planners and brokers, 88 focusing on behavioral finance and economics, 198–99 how to build skills for, 200 in insurance underwriting, 83–84 internal automation leaders, 189–91 jobs, technical and nontechnical, 177–91 marketers, 183–85 number of jobs, 191–92 product managers, 182–83 programmers and IT professionals, 178 reporting and showing results, 195–96 researchers, 181–82 for teachers, 85–86 what it is, 176 where a candidate is likely found, 200 working on the math, 197–98 Stepping In, 77, 131–52 automation technologies and, 134–35 bright future for, 149–51 characteristics of a candidate, 151–52 common attributes of, 145–49 examples, successful people, 132, 134–35, 137–48 for financial planners and brokers, 97 having an aptitude for, 142–45 how to build skills for, 152 in insurance underwriting, 81–82 predecessors of, 132–34 purple people, 131, 133–34, 135, 147, 151 for teachers, 85 value provided by, 138–42 what it is, 131–32 what candidates are and aren’t, 135–38 where a candidate is likely found, 152 working with vendors and, 140–41 Stepping Narrowly, 77, 153–75 achieving mastery and, 162–66 augmentation and, 166–69, 173–74 building on your narrowness, 161–62 characteristics of a candidate, 174 education for, 232 examples, successful people, 153–54, 159–60, 162, 163, 164, 170, 172–73 for financial planners and brokers, 87–88 finding a specialty, 158–61 “hedgehog” thinker and, 171 how to build skills for, 175 individual psychology and, 169–71 in insurance underwriting, 82 “long tail” and, 157, 162 machine-unfriendly economics and, 155–58, 162 in medicine, 157 niche business, 153–54, 171–73 for teachers, 85 where a candidate is likely found, 175 Stepping Up, 76–77, 89–107, 155 automation decisions and, 93–95 big-picture perspective, 98–100 building and ecosystem, 100–102 careful work design for automated business functions, 103–4 characteristics of a candidate, 106 creating a balance between computer-based and human skills, 105–6 examples, successful people, 89–91, 95–98 for financial planners and brokers, 86–87 in financial sector, 92–93 how to build skills for, 106–7 in insurance underwriting, 80 in marketing, 93 staying close, but moving on and, 102–3 for teachers, 84–85 what it is, 91–93 where a candidate is likely found, 107 Stewart, Martha, 111 Summers, Larry, 95, 227 Suncor, 205 Surrogates (film), 125 Sutton, Bob, 170–71 Sweetwood, Adele, 104 taste, augmentation and, 122 TaxCut, 22 tax preparation, 22, 67–68 Tegmark, Max, 243–44, 247 Telefónica’s O2, 49 Teradata, 43 Terminator films, 65 Tesla, 213, 246 Thiel, Peter, 243 Thinking, Fast and Slow (Kahneman), 236 Thinking for a Living (Davenport), 5 This, Herve, 164 Thompson, Derek, 242 Tibco, 194 Time magazine, AI cover and article, 36 TopCoder, 168 Torrence, Travis, 132, 147–48, 189, 190 Tourville, Lisa, 83–84, 137 TurboTax, 22, 67–68 “12 Risks That Threaten Human Civilization” (Armstrong), 249 2001: A Space Odyssey (film), 76, 245 Udacity, 178 UltraTax, 22 UnitedHealthCare, 83 University of California, Berkeley, 51 University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research, 115 “Unusual and Highly Specialized Practice Areas” (Bohrer), 159 UPS automated driver routing algorithm (ORION), 196 USAA, 87–88 U.S.

The Big Nine: How the Tech Titans and Their Thinking Machines Could Warp Humanity
by Amy Webb
Published 5 Mar 2019

Microsoft, which at one point published industry-leading research on computer vision, machine reading comprehension, and natural language processing, never successfully gained internal alignment and momentum on how to compete in AI. Now the company is downsizing and primarily supplying support to its legacy systems: what’s left of its original Azure cloud, SharePoint, Skype, and Outlook. While IBM’s Watson found partners and clients, IBM’s cloud service, which had long been a distant third to Amazon and Microsoft, shrunk once Google began offering competitive rates for both government and big corporations. Its other business units—such as data centers, storage, and semiconductors—have found it impossible to compete against companies in Taiwan, which are now the world’s largest suppliers.

…

See also Future and AI, catastrophic scenario of; Future and AI, optimistic scenario of; Future and AI, pragmatic scenario of Schmidt, Eric, 211–212 Self-driving taxi services, catastrophic scenario of future and: Amazon riders, 218–219; Google riders, 219 SenseTime, 5 Sentinel AIs, need for, 241 Shannon, Claude, 24, 25, 29, 31; “A Symbolic Analysis of Switching Relay Circuits,” 24. See also Dartmouth Workshop SharePoint, 215 Shaw, Cliff, 30. See also Dartmouth Workshop Shopping, brick-and-mortar store: in optimistic scenario of future, 162 Simon, Herbert, 30, 34; Logic Theorist program, 30, 34. See also Dartmouth Workshop Siri, 13, 43, 119 Skype, 215 Smart city pilot programs: in optimistic scenario of future, 168, 176 Smart glasses: Apple, 161; Applezon, 191; in catastrophic scenario of future, 221; Google, 191; in pragmatic scenario of future, 191, 192 Smartphones: Apple, 94; in pragmatic scenario of future, 191 Social Credit Score system, 6, 80, 82, 152, 154, 209; in Rongcheng, 81; tradeoffs for desirable, 211 Socrates, 17 Sorenson, Arne, 75 South China Morning Post, 69–70 Southern, Taryn, 15 SpaceX, 87 Splinternets, 83; pragmatic scenario of future and, 198 Spy birds, 77–78 Stanford, 60, 63; Artificial Intelligence Lab, 65 Stasis: among U.S. policymakers and think tanks, 213; cigarette smoking danger and, 213; climate change and, 213 Step reckoner, 21, 24 Subscription model, smart wearables and tools: in pragmatic scenario of future, 192–193 Suleyman, Mustafa, 43, 117 Summit supercomputer, 146 Sunstein, Cass, 142 Supercomputers, 146 Surveillance capitalism, 95 Sweeney, Latanya, 113–114, 122 Syllogistic logic, Aristotle and, 18 Synthetic data, 182 Tanzania, 83, 200, 210 Taobao, 68–69 Technology, deployment of: need for technical simulations and risk mapping before, 241–242 Tencent, 3, 5, 9, 49, 65, 67, 70–71, 96, 158; cloud service, 71; conversational interfaces, 76; corporate slogan, 70; digital assistant, 71; facial and object recognition lab, 71; healthcare partnerships, 71, 76; management philosophy, 100; market value, 71; mobile payment system, 71, 186; movie studio, 71; original product, 70; pharmaceutical company investments, 71 Tencent Pictures, 71 Tenpay, 71, 186 Tensor Processing Units (TPUs), 91 TensorFlow, 91, 92, 139 TensorFlow Object Detection API, 91 TensorFlow-GAN, 91 Terminator, The: Skynet, 2 Tesla, BAT investment in, 72 Thinking machines, 23, 24, 25, 35, 36, 50–51, 60, 98, 106, 127, 135, 138, 149, 150, 154; ceding control to, 131; computers as, 22; first, 145; generally intelligent, 159, 189 Thousand Talents Plan, 84–85 Tiān Māo, 13 Tianhe-1 supercomputer, 146 Tinsley, Marlon, 39; versus CHINOOK, 39 Transparency: among G-MAFIA in catastrophic scenario of future, 208; G-MAFIA Coalition adoption of as core value in optimistic scenario of future, 157; in pragmatic scenario of future, 188.

Reset: How to Restart Your Life and Get F.U. Money: The Unconventional Early Retirement Plan for Midlife Careerists Who Want to Be Happy
by David Sawyer
Published 17 Aug 2018

This new hyper-connected world has had profound effects on the world of work, too. There’s an online tool for everything. Systems, services and software that once were the domain of large companies and organisations are now available to the one-man band (strumming their song in a coffee shop) for nothing. There’s Skype, the cloud, everywhere-wifi and 4G. There is no need for us to be chained to our desks, yet the way we work is still catching up. Flexible working is trumpeted but not implemented. All this change is hard to process; it takes generations. Change will come and you better be ready Change will transform what employers look for in their recruits.

…

First up, influencer marketing expert Scott (Guthrie). I’ve met Scott only once, yet his friendship has come to mean a great deal to me. We’ve both worked in the PR industry for more years than we care to remember. And we both “went digital” at pretty much the same time, starting in 2013; him in Sydney, me in Glasgow. Over the last two years, we’ve skyped (often glass in hand) every month. Scott has been invaluable in helping loosen tight knots in RESET’s structure, and listening. Love you mate. Second, the rest of my alpha readers (people who read your shitty first draft out of kindness and obligation). What a stellar band they’ve formed. There’s Cousin Paul (Thompson) on meaning, purpose and so much more; Jane (Cumming) the PR guru on grammar; big third sector cheese Ian (Williams) on intro-cutting and gentle persuasion; Neal (Gibson) the ultramarathoner on inadvertent sexism (mine not his); Kenny (Barr) the top newsman on meeting me to say how fantastic he thought it was; Rob (Sykes) the accountant on intro-hatred and questioning the maths; Peter (Donelan) the Tanzanian shoulder-dwelling devil, who made me think in a writerly fashion about such elevated topics as the narrator’s voice; Steve (Murray) on monthly trips to the best front-room-bar in the world (“Matthew’s”), and well-meant but offensive casual remarks (again, mine, not his); and sister-in-law Robyn (Maguire) who demanded I remove that bizarre comment about cats.

The Revolt of the Public and the Crisis of Authority in the New Millennium
by Martin Gurri
Published 13 Nov 2018

If, after all these admissions, you were to ask me why you should read on, I would respond: because the world I’ll describe is probably very different from the one you think you’re living in. The problem is that there are so many superficially dazzling aspects of the information tsunami. When I sit in my study in Vienna, Virginia, and Skype with someone in Beirut, Lebanon – that’s dazzling. It feels remarkable even as I’m doing it. So, naturally enough, attention has focused on the capabilities of digital platforms like Skype, Facebook, and Google, on the proliferation of communication and collaboration around the globe, or on the unprecedented growth in the volume of information. I understand the fascination – my own journey started with these concerns.

Ghost Road: Beyond the Driverless Car
by Anthony M. Townsend
Published 15 Jun 2020

As I soon learned, the management consultants (the guys with the scotches over at the bar) call this whole emerging category of driverless droids “automated ground vehicles”—or just AGVs for short, hitting the G hard to distinguish them from their larger cousins. I call them conveyors (Figure 3-2, page 61) instead, because they remind me of buckets on a warehouse belt as they jog along the sidewalk. This one hails from Estonia and was built by Starship Technologies, a startup founded by the same guys who created Skype. For over a year, the company had been testing the little droids to deliver lunch to college students in Tallinn, the capital. Their thinking was that European cities could adopt conveyors as substitutes for the fleets of delivery cars used by fast-growing companies like Postmates and Deliveroo, which were adding to traffic, noise, and air pollution on neighborhood streets.

…

“self-driving,” 38 early self-steering schemes, 5–6 private-sector funding, xiv self-driving bicycles and tricycles, 62–63 self-driving vehicle at Tsukuba, 6, 8 Stanford University’s self-driving robots, 6–7, 63 see also driverless vehicle development semacodes, 231–32 semi-autonomous suitcases, 125 Senseable City Lab (MIT), 66 Serendipitor, 87 SharedStreets, 233 “sheds with beds,” 199 sheet-to-tiller system for ships, 3–4, 4 shipping cost effect on demand, 130–32, 131 shipping costs decline in twentieth century, 130 shuttle lines in high-tech clusters, 100 shuttles. See driverless shuttles Shyp, 133 Sidewalk Labs, 209, 210, 211, 222, 232 Silverdome (Pontiac, MI), 196n SilverRide, 95 Singapore, 97, 167, 169, 177, 209, 211 singletons, 237–38 Singularity predictions, 234–35, 236–38 Skype, 56 smartphones, 13, 64, 89, 90, 139, 169 see also mobile phones SoftBank, 176, 176–78, 238 software trains, 70–71, 70–72, 197, 200–201, 202, 204, 206 Son, Masayoshi, 176, 178 Space10 (IKEA), 72–73 specialization overview, 16 shifts in daily travel patterns, 53–54 of taxibot rides, 95–97 of traditional automobiles, 52, 80 vehicular variety increase, 16, 18, 52–55 see also specific types of AVs Speedostat, 24 Sprinter delivery vans (Mercedes), 125 Stae, 247 Standard Oil, 174 Starship conveyors, 55–56, 57, 125, 192 Starship Technologies, 56, 57, 124–25 Starsky Robotics, 46 status quo bias, 49–50, 52 steering wheel introduction, 4 Steffens, Lincoln, 180 store closures in US, 117–18, 121 streetcars, 58, 59, 88–89, 106, 174–75, 180–81, 186 “street furniture,” 77 suitcases, semi-autonomous, 125 Sullenberger, Chesley, 45 Superintelligence (Bostrom), 236–37 supermarket, origins of, 116 Superpedestrian, 66 surge pricing, 17, 87, 181 Swift Nick, 161 task model for computerization of work, 150–54, 151, 155 taxibots (AV cabs) computer models of growth, 97–98, 99 doubts about cost-effectiveness, 97–98 impact on taxi business, 94–95 overview, 60–61, 94–95 price savings, 94, 96 rides for pregnant women, 96–97 specialization of rides, 95–97 traffic congestion and, 99 Waymo self-driving taxi service, 8, 46, 97, 230, 240–41 see also mobility as a service taxis automation predicted by 2030, 10–11 impact of taxibot takeover, 94–95 meters in, 169 number of vehicles, 10 ride-hail push to deregulate the taxi business, 40 Waymo self-driving taxi service, 8, 46, 97, 230, 240–41 Teague, 127 TECO Line streetcar (Tampa, FL), 58, 59 Teetor, Ralph, 24, 26 Tel Aviv’s traffic gridlock, 85–87, 88 Tesla, 26–29, 44, 60, 62, 231 three big stories of the driverless revolution, 16–20, 187–88, 238, 248, 253 see also financialization of mobility; materialization; specialization Thrun, Sebastian, xiv, 7, 8 ticketing in transit systems, 89, 90–91, 93, 109, 110–11 time wasted on commuting, 9, 12, 30–31 Toffler, Alvin, 120 toll roads in Great Britain, 162–63 Toronto, Canada, 209–10, 213–14, 222 traction monopolies investors, 176–78, 182–83 in New York City, 174, 174, 180 in Philadelphia, 180 SoftBank, 176, 176–78, 238 in streetcar era, 174, 174–75, 180 traffic congestion cost of time wasted, 9, 12, 30 driverless shuttles and, 106 predicted effects of AVs, 9 ride-hail and, 168 taxibots and, 99 see also congestion pricing trafficgeddons, 85–86 Trafi, 109, 216 transects of the driverless city, 187–88, 188–89, 194–95, 198–99, 200–201, 206–7, 208 transit oriented development (TOD), 200, 202, 203–4 transit systems autonomist contempt for, 214–15 impact of ride-hail, 215–16 as mobility integrators, 216 response to driverless revolution, 214–17 ticketing in, 89, 90–91, 93, 109, 110–11 as transportation utilities, 216 workforce changes, 216–17 TransMilenio (Bogotá), 69 Trikala, Greece, 102–3 trip chaining, 54 Tron (film), 137 trucks and trucking accident risks, 156 automated fleets impact on economic risks, 156–58 automation and types of truck drivers, 153–54 freight AVs and, 125–26 industrial sprawl and, 12–13 investment in self-driving truck startups, 152 “land trains” and “road trains,” 69 last-mile delivery, 121–29, 154, 218 platoons and platooning, 68–69, 70–71 self-driving tractor-trailers, 68, 122 software trains, 70–71 volatile energy costs, 157 Tsukuba, Japan, 6, 8, 216 turnpike trusts in Great Britain, 162–63 Turpin, Dick, 161 Uber betrayal of cities, 181 Careem purchase by, 177 competition with Lyft, 177–78, 179 congestion pricing, 179, 181 dynamic pricing, 181 fatal AV–pedestrian accident, 231 Greyball program, 178 initial public offering, 97, 177, 181 Jump bike-share platform, 202 limited global footprint, 98 market cap, 97 Micromobility Robotics, 67 number of vehicles, 10 partnerships with public transit, 110–11 relationship with transit, 215 SoftBank and, 177 specialization and variety of rides, 95, 96, 110–11 subscriptions, 244 surge pricing, 17, 87, 181 taxibots, 97 traffic congestion and, 168 Uber Eats, 124 vertically integrated urban-mobility empire, 98 Udelv, 57–58 unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), 246 UPS, 116, 120, 127, 130 urban design and driverless cities automation and urban concentration, 186–87 automobiles and urban expansion, 185 complete streets (shared streets), 208–9 core, 187, 188, 188–96, 194–95 desakota, 187, 189, 205–8, 206–7 freight tunnels, 211 fulfillment zone, 187, 188, 196–99, 198–99 infill housing, 204, 253–55 legibility, 229–30, 231 megablocks, 209–10 microsprawl, 187, 189, 200–201, 200–205, 243 parking, 189–93 population growth and home building, 253–54 separation of people and vehicles, 208–12, 210 transects, 187–88, 188–89, 194–95, 198–99, 200–201, 206–7, 208 transit oriented development (TOD), 200, 202, 203–4 urban growth since 1950, 186 Urbanetic, 58 Urban Mobility in a Digital Age, 88 urban ushers, 76–77, 77–79 Vélib system (Paris), 63 VeoRide, 67 Via, 107 Vickrey, William, 165–67, 168, 169, 172 Vinge, Vernor, 233–34 Vision Fund, 176, 178 Vitruvius, 169 von Neumann, John, 234 “Walking City” (Herron), 74 warehouseless distribution systems, 157–58 Waste Management, 142 wayfinding, 229–30 Waymo improvement in rate of disengagement, 42 lidar cost reduction, 35 market cap, 97 market share goal for 2030, 11 remote human safety monitors, 46, 98 self-driving taxi service, 8, 46, 97, 230, 240–41 see also Google Waze, 86–87 Webb, Kevin, 233 Where Do Cars Go at Night?

Freezing Order: A True Story of Money Laundering, Murder, and Surviving Vladimir Putin's Wrath
by Bill Browder
Published 11 Apr 2022

If the Russian authorities couldn’t stop the Swiss case from going forward, their next best option was to stop Perepilichnyy. To do so, the Russians promptly launched a new criminal case targeting him. Then, in early September, a man named Andrei Pavlov, the consigliere and personal lawyer to Dmitry Klyuev, started communicating with Perepilichnyy over Skype. Pavlov suggested there might be a way to resolve Perepilichnyy’s issues if the two men could meet in person. Since there was no way Perepilichnyy was going to return to Moscow, they agreed to meet at Zurich Airport. Early on September 6, Perepilichnyy flew from London to Zurich. The two men had never met, so Perepilichnyy wore a bright orange jacket.

…

Bush Presidential Center (Dallas), 230 Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, 103–105, 115, 117 Giuliani, Rudy, 103 Global Entry program, 265–269 Global Magnitsky Act, 198–199, 204–205, 206, 208, 211, 215, 231 Global Response Centre, 169–170 Glover, Juleanna, 128–131, 222, 230, 258, 259, 260–261, 262, 277, 294 Goldfarb, Alex, 219 Goldman Sachs, 193 Goldstone, Rob, 253 Google Alerts, 213 Google searches, 44, 104, 135, 192, 204 Google Translate, 7, 179 Gorbushka, 33–34 Gorokhov, Diana, 237–239, 241, 242–244, 297 Gorokhov, Julia, 237–244, 283–284, 297 Gorokhov, Nikolai, 234–244, 283–284, 294, 297 Prevezon case and, 234–239, 245 rooftop “accident” and recovery, 239–244, 293 Gran Hotel Inglés (Madrid, Spain), 1–4, 272–273 Grassley, Charles, 246–249, 259–262, 268 Griesa, Thomas, 116–121, 131, 142–145, 151–152, 177–179, 182–184, 185–187, 245 Grin, Viktor, 198–199, 265 Grinda, José, 1–3, 10–11 GRU (Russian military intelligence wing), 278, 280, 283 Guardian, 190–192 Gupta brothers, 295 Haberman, Maggie, 288 Hammond, Philip, 170 Harding, Luke, 190–191, 192 Hautala, Heidi, 38–42, 201–203 Helsinki Summit (2018), 277–289 Herbst, Jeffrey, 213 Hermitage Fund / Capital Management, 17–23, 101, 116, 120, 143, 182, 214, 254 expulsion of Browder from Russia, 17–23 origins of, 17, 43 raid / fraud on offices in Russia, 19–20, 23, 24–25, 26, 28, 32–34, 64 Hersh, Ken, 230 Hersh, Seymour, 212, 217–218 Hitler, Adolf, 222 House of Representatives: Foreign Affairs Committee, 154, 198–199, 207–210, 211, 220–221, 256, 289n Intelligence Committee, 288–289 Subcommittee on Europe and Eurasia, 211 Hoyer, Steny, 154 Huckabee Sanders, Sarah, 288, 289 Human Rights Accountability Global Initiative (HRAGI), 203–204, 215, 223 Hunt, Heather, 223–224 Hyman, Todd, 90, 91, 93, 97, 112, 283, 284, 284n Ibis Hotel (Kazan), 157 Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), 89–90 Inova Fairfax Medical Campus, 175 International Bar Association, 28 Interpol, Russia: Madrid, Spain arrest of Browder, 1–10 Red Notice / arrest warrants, 1–10, 95–96, 107, 203n, 269, 270–272, 292–293 Wanted List, 267–269 Jason (Aspen Institute cameraman), 252, 281–282, 286 Jay-Z, 192 Jinek (Dutch TV program), 133–137 Jinek, Eva, 134–136 Johnson, Boris, 9–10 JPMorgan, 29, 32, 47, 193 Jung, Eva, 273–275, 291 Kara-Murza, Evgenia, 153, 156, 162–176, 240 Kara-Murza, Vladimir, 137, 141, 153–159, 294 poisonings and surgery, 158–159, 160–175, 191, 249, 293, 297–298 Kardava, Ketevan, 76–77 Karpov, Pavel, 71, 149, 200, 203, 203n “dirty money” investigation and, 32, 34–35, 37–38, 50–51 investigation of raid on Hermitage offices, 20 Magnitsky Act sanctions, 295 raid / fraud on Hermitage offices, 18–20, 24n, 28 Katsyv, Denis: Human Rights Accountability Global Initiative (HRAGI) and, 204 Prevezon case and, 81–82, 88, 93, 114, 148, 151, 178–179, 215, 236, 248 settlement, 248 Katsyv, Piotr, 81 Kaufmann, Adam, 46–47, 83, 88, 89, 91, 297 Khashoggi, Jamal, 295 Khlebnikov, Vyacheslav, 60, 235 Khodorkovsky, Mikhail, 156, 162 Kim, Michael, 144–152, 177, 182–184, 186–187 Kitching, Kimberley, 294 Kleiner, Vadim, 210, 215, 216, 221, 227, 229–230, 248, 291 in Denmark, 273–275 evacuation from Russia, 18 at the Finrosforum, 39–42 OCCRP and, 79–81, 189 Panama Papers and, 190–196 photograph of Rinat Akhmetshin, 254, 255 Russian Treasury fraud and, 32–36, 47, 49–53 at the Southern District of New York, 94–97 Klyuev, Dmitry, 48–52, 61, 65, 69–70, 71, 149, 195, 231 images of, 52, 75–78 Magnitsky Act sanctions, 295 Universal Savings Bank and, 20, 32, 34–35, 36, 48–50, 56 Klyuev Organized Crime Group, 78, 181, 284 Kommersant (newspaper), 49, 180, 199 Korobeinikov, Semyon, 48, 49, 181 Kosachev, Konstantin, 197–198 Kozlov, Andrei, 290, 293 Kramer, David, 284 Kurochkin, Valery, 49, 181 Kushner, Jared, 251 Kuznetsov, Artem, 200 arrest of Magnitsky, 26 “dirty money” investigation and, 32, 34–35, 37–38 Magnitsky Act sanctions, 295 raid / fraud on Hermitage offices, 18–20, 22, 24n, 26, 28 Le Pen, Marine, 132 Leviev, Lev, 81 Levin, Duncan, 88–89, 91, 92–93 Levin, Sharon, 93, 96 Levine, Paul, 183–184 Lewis Baach Kaufmann Middlemiss, 297 Lieberman, Joe, 38, 294 Litvinenko, Alexander, 40, 107, 167 Litvinov, Maxim, 58 Lloyd Webber, Andrew, 192 London Metropolitan Police, 168 Lund, Michael, 273–275, 291 Lurakhmaev, Valid “Validol,” 67, 102 Ma, Yo-Yo, 192 Madoff, Bernie, 27 Madrid, Spain arrest of Browder, 1–10, 272–273, 278 Magnitskaya, Natalia, 200–201, 212 Magnitsky, Natasha, 26, 91, 298–302 move to London, 301–303 Russian Interior Ministry demands of, 299–301 Magnitsky, Nikita, 26, 91, 298–302 Magnitsky, Sergei, 20, 24–30, 37–42 arrest, 26, 29, 32, 119, 223 Browder accused of killing, 292 Browder investigation of money laundering and, 1, 10–11 death by “natural causes,” 31–32, 181, 292–293 discovers and reports fraud on Hermitage, 19–21, 23 posthumous case and trials in Russia, 49–53, 90–91, 198, 299–300 Russian Interior Ministry raid on home, 26 Sergei Magnitsky Human Rights Awards, 175–176, 177 torture and murder, 28–30, 223, 289, 293, 294 uncovers fraud on Russian Treasury, 24–26, 29 videos of, 136 Magnitsky Acts, 87–90 Canada and, 153–154, 249, 265–266, 268, 270, 272 cosponsors of the original, 38, 154, 289 current countries with, 295 Dutch Magnitsky Act, 292 EU Magnitsky Act, 292–293 Europe and, 38–42, 69–78, 132–134, 140–141, 201, 212, 292–293 freezing orders / sanctions, 61, 78, 82–83, 97, 154–156, 188, 195–196, 198–199, 227, 263–264, 295, 296 at the Geneva Human Rights Summit (2018), 270–271 Global Magnitsky Act, 198–199, 204–205, 206, 208, 211, 215, 231 Latvia and, 270 Lithuania and, 270 lobbying against, 195, 197–199, 200–205, 208–210 The Magnitsky Act: Behind the Scenes (film), 200–205, 211–219 Magnitsky List and, 95, 129, 136, 154–156, 230–231, 264 original idea for, 38, 284 Putin’s need to repeal, 90–91, 95–96, 252–253, 263–264, 282, 283–289, 291–293 Russian adoption ban as code for repealing, 90, 195, 199, 204, 253, 256, 277, 285 Swiss Magnitsky investigation, 272n Trump Tower meeting and, 250–256, 263, 277, 281, 285 in the US, 38, 57, 89–90, 109–111, 128–129, 136, 154–156, 167, 181, 195, 223, 262–264, 285, 295n Malaysian Airlines flight MH17, 133, 134 Manafort, Paul, 251, 253, 257, 259, 262, 277 Mark, Richard, 117–119 Mastro, Randy, 103–105, 115–121, 122–124, 131, 142–144 McCain, John, 38, 269, 294 McCartney, Paul, 192 McFaul, Mike, 220, 283, 284, 285, 287, 288–289 McGovern, Jim, 154, 294 Medvedev, Dmitri, 64–65 Medynskaya, Elmira, 84–85 Melnikova, Svetlana, 73–75 Mikhailovsky GOK, 50, 71 Moldovan file, 79–83, 188–190, 218–219, 273–275, 291 Molotov, Vyacheslav, 58 Monteleoni, Paul, 93–94, 96, 106, 112, 120, 147, 150, 224, 234, 236–238, 245, 248, 294 Morgenthau, Robert, 104 Moscow, John: at the Cambridge Crime Conference, 21, 44, 46, 47, 58, 150, 297 at Lewis Baach Kaufmann Middlemiss, 297 in the New York District Attorney’s Office, 21, 46 prepares 1782 subpoena, 28–29 Prevezon case and, 98–103, 104, 105, 113, 114–120, 122–131, 142, 145, 148, 150, 151, 177, 182, 185–187, 189, 212, 223, 226, 236, 238, 293 represents Hermitage, 21–23, 26–29, 101, 116 Mossack Fonseca, 191–192, 195 MSNBC, 249, 282, 286, 287 Mueller, Robert, 278, 280 Mukasey, Michael, 212 Museum of Soviet Arcade Games (Kazan), 157 Nashi (pro-Putin youth group), 136 Natalie (mother’s nurse), 122–126 National Institutes of Health (NIH), 167, 168 National Medal of Science, 151 National Poisons Information Service, 168, 171 National Review, 204–205, 269 National Security Agency, 284n Nauert, Heather, 288 Navalny, Alexei, 298 NBC, 249, 254n, 285 Nekrasov, Andrei, 40, 200–204, 211–219, 220–221, 223, 256 Nemtsov, Boris, 41–42, 87, 142, 153–155, 164, 175–176, 200, 201, 284, 294 assassination at the Bolshoy Moskvoretsky Bridge (Moscow), 137–140, 153, 249, 293, 297 Newseum, 211–212, 213, 216–219 New Times Magazine, 32, 164 New York Attorney Grievance Committee, 101–102, 115 New York District Attorney’s office, 21, 46, 88, 98, 148 New Yorker, 261 New York Post, 255 New York Rules of Professional Conduct, 99–100 New York Second Circuit Court of Appeals, 186–187, 212, 220, 225–226, 251–252 New York Times, 132, 180, 213–214, 224–225, 229, 250–253, 256, 264, 288 Nixon, Richard M., 117 Nordlinger, Jay, 269 Nord Stream 2 Pipeline, 134 Novaya Gazeta (newspaper), 192 Novichok, 276–277 NTV (Russian state-controlled TV), 95 Obama, Barack, 89, 230–231, 266, 285 Oliver, Spencer, 69, 75, 76–78 Omtzigt, Pieter, 294 Open Russia, 156, 158 Orban, Viktor, 133 Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), 79–82, 102, 189, 192, 218–219, 273 Painton, Priscilla, 125 Panama Papers, 190–196, 197, 218 Parker, Kyle, 199–200, 204, 206, 210, 221–223, 284, 294 Kara-Murza and, 167–169, 172–173 Magnitsky Act development, 155–156, 167, 283 at the Newseum film presentation, 216–218 at the US Helsinki Commission, 289, 289n Parliamentary Assembly of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE PA), 28, 69–78, 140n, 195 Pavlov, Andrei, 65–67, 75–77, 195, 203, 230–231, 239 at the Depository Insurance Agency (Russia), 296 Magnitsky Act sanctions, 295 Pepper, Alisdair, 202–203, 204, 212, 213 Perepilichnyy, Alexander, 35–36, 64, 65–68, 74, 84–86, 87, 231, 292, 293 Peskov, Dmitri, 140 Pieth, Mark, 55–57, 59–60 Pirogov Hospital, 164–166, 172–175 Politico, 225, 246 Porton Down, 168, 171, 174, 176 Prevezon Holdings, 88, 96–97, 98, 100, 102, 106, 114–121, 142–144, 147–152, 178–179, 181, 182, 185–187, 191, 223, 224, 245–249 Nikolai Gorokhov as witness against, 234–244, 245 Moldovan file and, 80–83 settlement, 248 Priebus, Reince, 261 Prokhorov, Vadim, 163–166 Protsenko, Denis, 164–166, 172, 173, 176, 297 Putin, Vladimir, 132–136, 218–219 Albert, Prince of Monaco and, 70–71 Browder as threat to national security and, 18 at the G20 Summit (Hamburg), 250, 277 at the Helsinki Summit (2018), 277–289 need to repeal the Magnitsky Acts, 90–91, 95–96, 252–253, 263–264, 282, 283–289, 291–293 Nemtsov and, 137–141 as prime minister, 64 Roldugen and, 193–196 Trump and, 225, 227–229, 231, 232–233, 256, 277–282 Raab, Dominic, 294 Radio France Internationale, 135, 137, 160–161 R&B Strategies, 297 Reagan, Ronald, 197 Red Notice (Browder), 111, 124–126, 127–131, 132, 133–137, 261, 264 Regency Hotel (New York City), 115 Rehe, Aivar, 291 Rohingya genocide (Myanmar), 295 Rohrabacher, Dana, 197–199, 204–205, 206, 208–210, 211, 215, 217, 256, 265, 289n, 293 election defeat (2018), 297 at R&B Strategies, 297 Roldugen, Sergei, 191, 192–196, 218, 263 Rosneft, 232 Rouda, Harley, 297 Royce, Ed, 199, 204–205, 208, 211, 220–221 RT, 158, 210 RTVI, 153 Ruperto (Spanish lawyer), 3, 6, 10 Russian Central Bank, 34, 145, 290 Russian Federation Council, 197 Russian General Prosecutor’s Office, 177–178, 272–273, 283, 292 “Browder Organized Crime Group” and, 283–289 Russian Interior Ministry, 31–32, 34–35, 48, 50–53, 60, 66–67, 71, 139 Andrei Pavlov and, 239 domestic wanted list, 20, 70 Gorokhov complaint and, 241–244 Natasha Magnitsky and, 299–301 raids Magnitsky’s home, 26 raids on Hermitage offices, 18, 20–21, 24 Russian Laundromat data leak, 273–275, 276, 291 Russian State Investigative Committee, 24–25, 64 Russian Treasury, 24–26, 32–36, 100, 274 Russia Today (RT), 158 Rutte, Mark, 134–137, 292 Sabah, Mark, 71–78, 174 Safra, Edmond, 95 Salomon Brothers, 17 Sampo Bank (Estonia), 290, 291n Sberbank, 297 Scaramucci, Anthony, 261–262 Schiff, Adam, 288–289 Schnell, Vinzenz, 272n Schröder, Gerhard, 133 Schwartzman, Aleksander, 237, 283–284, 284n SEB, 291 Senate: Judiciary Committee, 246–249, 253, 256, 257–264, 268 resolution rejecting Putin’s “incredible offer,” 289 Servettaz, Elena, 135, 137, 160–161 Sessions, Jeff, 286–287 1782 subpoena, 26–27, 28–29, 57 Shearer, Cody, 228–229, 231–232 Shearer, Derek, 228 Sheremetyevo Airport (Moscow), 136, 190 Simon, Neil, 75–77 Simpson, Glenn, 214–216, 217, 219, 223–224, 225, 232–233, 252, 253, 257, 258, 259, 263, 293 Sjoerdsma, Sjoerd, 294 Skirpol, Sergei, 276–277 Skripal, Yulia, 276 Sky News, 10, 282 Skype sessions, 65 Slate, 128 SO15 (London Counter Terrorism Command), 277 Southern District of New York (SDNY), 92–97, 117, 144, 147, 234–238, 245, 296 SRF (Swiss national broadcasting company), 62–63, 64 Starlite Diner, 52 State Customs Committee, 34 State Department, 216–217, 284, 288 State Museum of Fine Arts (Kazan), 157 Steele, Chris, 232 Stepanov, Vladlen, 35–36, 43, 54, 60, 61, 64, 66, 68, 180, 295 Stepanova, Olga, 35–36, 54, 60, 61, 64, 66, 68, 180, 295 Stewart, Jon, 128–131 Sturgess, Dawn, 276 Sullivan, Drew, 218–219 Sussman Godfrey, 182–183 Swedbank, 291 Swiss Ministry of Justice, 55–57 Swiss ski vacation, of Brower, 270–272 TASS, 114 Time, 10 Total, 55 Transparency International, Corruption Perceptions Index, 275 Trump, Donald: elected president, 227–233, 278 at the G20 Summit (Hamburg), 250, 277 at the Helsinki Summit (2018), 277–289 Magnitsky Act and, 230–231 Pussygate scandal, 228–229 Putin and, 225, 227–229, 231–233, 256, 277–282 as Republican nominee for president, 225 transgender ban in military service, 258 Trump dossier and, 228–233, 263 Trump, Donald, Jr., 251, 253, 255, 256, 257, 259, 262, 285 Trump, Melania, 256 Trump Tower meeting, 250–256, 263, 277, 281, 285 Trusted Traveler program, 265–269 TV Centre (Moscow), 138 Twitter feeds, 4, 5–6, 8, 10, 258, 264, 272, 277–278, 288–289 Tyco, 21 UBS, 82–83 Uighur concentration camps (Xinjiang), 295 UK Law Society, 28 Universal Savings Bank, 20, 32, 34–35, 36, 48–50, 56 Van Ruymbeke, Renaud, 188, 227 Veselnitskaya, Natalia: indictment by US government, 296 Prevezon case and, 114, 120–121, 148, 151, 178–179, 185–186, 203, 204, 206, 212, 215–216, 217, 219, 220–221, 223–224, 236, 238, 296 Trump dossier and, 232 Trump Tower meeting and, 250–256, 263, 277 US arrest warrant and freezing order, 296 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, 170–171 VKontakte (Russian version of Facebook), 37, 244 Wall Street Journal, 128, 180, 214, 215–216, 224–225 Washington Post, 10, 219, 224–225 Whitehouse, Sheldon, 264 Wicker, Roger, 38, 289, 294 Winter, Jonathan, 283–284 World Economic Forum (Davos), 54–57 World War II, 58, 222 Wurzmann, Eduardo, 182–186 Wurzmann, Lina, 182, 183, 186 Yakunin, Vladimir, 198 Yandex (Russian version of Google), 81 Yeltsin, Boris, 41 YouTube videos, 35, 38, 69, 118, 203n Zakaria, Fareed, 255 Simon & Schuster 1230 Avenue of the Americas New York, NY 10020 www.SimonandSchuster.com Copyright © 2022 by Hermitage Media Limited All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

IRL: Finding Realness, Meaning, and Belonging in Our Digital Lives
by Chris Stedman
Published 19 Oct 2020

But our relationship never deepened beyond the occasional ping between long stretches of digital silence. From what little I gathered on Twitter, his life seemed incredibly ordinary. He posted about travel and politics. He loved Stevens—a lot. He was friendly. It all seemed very pleasant and basic. I didn’t see the point in looking any closer. I had no clue. In fall 2018 Zain answered my Skype call, and, after some initial pleasantries, I asked him to tell me his story. As it turns out, Zain was born into a conservative Shia Muslim family in London in 1982, five years before I was born to a young secular couple in their early twenties sharing a Section 8 apartment in Minnesota. My family had resided in the US for at least a couple of generations; Zain’s was far newer to their nation.

…

After five years of chatting they became good friends, and eventually Merisa told her she was trans and planned to transition someday. After that, she became a confidante and resource, helping Merisa navigate and improve her relationship with her parents and even helping her get in voice practice over Skype. A few years ago, after Merisa had saved enough money from her full-time job at a school district to move out of her parents’ house, she came out again and began to transition, and the two started dating. Today, Merisa and her girlfriend run an online game community together—an explicitly queer- and trans-inclusive space for people to play, because they want to create the kinds of welcoming gaming spaces that Merisa benefited from when she was younger.

The Art of Execution: How the World's Best Investors Get It Wrong and Still Make Millions
by Lee Freeman-Shor
Published 8 Sep 2015

You’ll soon see what was particularly rabbit-like about their investing habits: CASE STUDY: Vyke Communications Vyke Communications was a UK-based company that specialised in software that allowed users to make telephone calls and send text messages over the internet using their mobile phones, computers or normal landlines. Very big things were expected for this company when one investor started looking at it, not least because it basically meant that users could more or less make international phone calls for free. This seemed like a huge deal. Perhaps Vyke was the next Skype. It could revolutionise global communications. The investor bought shares in Vyke on 31 October 2007 at £2.10. As it happened, this would be more or less its peak price. When the stock started to fall shortly after his initial purchase he bought more. So far, so good – this is, after all, what you should do if you are sticking with a stock for the right reasons.

Lonely Planet Mexico
by John Noble , Kate Armstrong , Greg Benchwick , Nate Cavalieri , Gregor Clark , John Hecht , Beth Kohn , Emily Matchar , Freda Moon and Ellee Thalheimer
Published 2 Jan 1992

Call an operator on 020 for domestic calls, or 090 for international calls. Some casetas de teléfono (below) and hotels will make collect calls for you, but they usually charge for the service. Internet Telephony Internet phone services such as Skype (www.skype.com) can be the cheapest option if you have an account and an appropriate headset and microphone. You can use Skype at internet cafés with high-speed internet (that’s most of them), or on your laptop in places with wi-fi access. Locutorios & Casetas de Teléfono These are call offices where an on-the-spot operator connects the call for you. Costs are often lower than those for public card phones.

…

The Spanish built a fortress here to protect their trading galleons from marauding British and French pirates. It was also the port from which Junípero Serra, the ‘Father’ of the California missions, embarked on his northward peregrination. Information Banamex (Av Juárez s/n) Has an ATM. Cibernet la Web (Canalizo 155B; per hr M$15; 9am-9pm Mon-Sat, 5-9pm Sun) Speedy internet and Skype access. Health Clinic ( 285-12-07; cnr Azueta & Campeche; 24hr) Lavandería Express ( 729-85-11; Sinaloa 47; 5kg wash & dry M$40; 7:30am-8pm Mon-Sat, 7:30am-3:30pm Sun) Post office (cnr Sonora & Echeverría) Tourist office ( 285-00-73; Juarez s/n; 9am-3pm Mon-Fri) This basic tourist office, in the Casa de Cultura, has maps and brochures about the area and the state of Nayarit.

…

HSBC (Map; cnr Insurgentes & Miramar) Just north of the Río Cuale bridge. POST Main post office (Map; Colombia 1014) TELEPHONE & FAX Pay phones (card only) are plentiful everywhere in town, as are casetas de teléfono (public telephone call stations) with fax and long-distance service. Many internet cafés offer Skype service. TOURIST INFORMATION Municipal tourist office (Map; 226-80-80, ext 232; Juárez s/n; 8am-8pm Mon-Sat, 10am-6pm Sun) Vallarta’s busy but competent office, in the municipal building at the northeast corner of Plaza Principal, has free maps, multilingual tourist literature and bilingual staff.

Rick Steves Florence & Tuscany 2017
by Rick Steves
Published 8 Nov 2016

On your device’s menu, look for “cellular data usage” or “mobile data” and reset the counter at the start of your trip. Use Skype or other calling/messaging apps for cheaper calls and texts. Certain apps let you make voice or video calls or send texts over the Internet for free or cheap. If you’re bringing a tablet or laptop, you can also use it for voice calls and texts. All you have to do is log on to a Wi-Fi network, then contact any of your friends or family members who are also online and signed into the same service. You can make voice and video calls using Skype, Viber, FaceTime, and Google+ Hangouts. If the connection is bad, try making an audio-only call.

…

When you’re done, avoid further charges by manually switching off “data roaming” or “cellular data” (in your device’s Settings menu; for help, ask your service provider or Google it). Another way to make sure you’re not accidentally using data roaming is to put your device in “airplane” or “flight” mode (which also disables phone calls and texts), and then turn on Wi-Fi as needed. Don’t use your cellular network for bandwidth-gobbling tasks, such as Skyping, downloading apps, and watching YouTube: Save these for when you’re on Wi-Fi. Using a navigation app such as Google Maps over a cellular network can take lots of data, so do this sparingly or use it offline. Limit automatic updates. By default, your device constantly checks for a data connection and updates apps.

…

If the connection is bad, try making an audio-only call. You can also make voice calls from your device to telephones worldwide for just a few cents per minute using Skype, Viber, or Hangouts if you buy credit first. To text for free over Wi-Fi, try apps like Google+ Hangouts, Whats App, Viber, Facebook Messenger, and iMessage. Make sure you’re on Wi-Fi to avoid data charges. USING A EUROPEAN SIM CARD IN A MOBILE PHONE This option works well for those who want to make a lot of voice calls at cheap local rates, and those who need faster connection speeds than their US carrier provides. Either buy a basic cell phone in Europe (as little as $40 from mobile-phone shops anywhere), or bring an “unlocked” US phone (check with your carrier about unlocking it).

Simple Matters: A Scandinavian’s Approach to Work, Home, and Style
by Jenny Mustard
Published 3 Sep 2018

Alemanys 5—Girona, Spain: Here are a few things to consider, that might help you realize what you need to hone and shape that perfect-fit home: Where You Spend Your Time When awake, where in your home do you find yourself? Is the kitchen the heart of your home, or do you lounge on the sofa during your at-home time? Maybe you take a bath every chance you get, or hide under the comforting covers of your bed with dinner trays or makeup bags or Skype sessions or morning coffees, depending on the time of day. The office, that’s where you’ll find me. Know and appreciate where your home life takes place, and let that space be the focus. The other rooms and spaces can grow from there, complementing the heart of your home. What You Spend Your Time on Once you know where, why not look at what you spend your time doing?

Irrationally Yours: On Missing Socks, Pickup Lines, and Other Existential Puzzles
by Dan Ariely and William Haefeli
Published 18 May 2015

I suspect that this is the case, which means that maybe we should all start picking projects that are smaller, and more self-contained. Habits, Effort, Goals ON THE ART OF MULTITASKING “Are you multitasking me?” {Illustrations © 2015 William Haefeli} Dear Dan, I spend a lot of time on not-very-interesting conference calls using Skype and Google Hangouts. I usually try to answer emails during this time, so I turn off the video capability, so that no one can see me. On top of that I try to type quietly, so that no one can hear. But the sound of the keyboard seems to vibrate through the computer, and I suspect that the other participants know that I am not really paying attention.

Roads and Bridges
by Nadia Eghbal

Data accessed May 20, 2016. https://www.openhub.net/languages/compare [43] https://story.californiasunday.com/tim-hwang-infrastructure-tourist [44] http://blog.codinghorror.com/the-magpie-developer/ [45] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Engineering_Task_Force [46] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_(programming_language) [47] https://www.quora.com/How-was-the-idea-to-develop-React-conceived-and-how-many-people-worked-on-developing-it-and-implementing-it-at-Facebook/answer/Bill-Fisher-17 [48] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/React_(JavaScript_library) [49] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swift_(programming_language) [50] https://github.com/facebook/react/blob/master/PATENTS [51] http://venturebeat.com/2015/06/13/docker-now-valued-at-1b-paid-someone-799-for-its-logo-on-99designs/ [52] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-04-14/docker-said-to-join-1-billion-valuation-club-with-new-funding [53] https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/meteor [54] http://info.meteor.com/blog/announcing-meteor-galaxy [55] http://venturebeat.com/2015/12/06/its-actually-open-source-software-thats-eating-the-world/ [56] http://words.steveklabnik.com/is-npm-worth-26mm [57] https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/github [58] http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702303292204577517111643094308 [59] https://www.python.org/doc/essays/foreword/ [60] http://blog.codeeval.com/codeevalblog/2015#.VjvKZhNViko= [61] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guido_van_Rossum [62] http://skillcrush.com/2015/02/02/37-rails-sites/ [63] https://twistedmatrix.com/trac/wiki/SuccessStories [64] https://twistedmatrix.com/glyph/ [65] https://peerj.com/preprints/1233.pdf [66] Email interview with Arash Payan [67] https://medium.com/@shazow/urllib3-stripe-and-open-source-grants-edb9c0e46e82 [68] https://readthedocs.org/sustainability/ [69] https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2015/12/10/mozilla-open-source-support-first-awards-made/ [70] http://blog.readthedocs.com/ads-on-read-the-docs/ [71] Skype interview with Eric Holscher [72] http://david.heinemeierhansson.com/2013/the-perils-of-mixing-open-source-and-money.html [73] http://blog.codinghorror.com/is-money-useless-to-open-source-projects/ [74] http://www.datamation.com/open-source/linus-torvalds-and-others-on-community-burnout-1.html [75] http://www.apple.com/customer-letter/ [76] https://www.blackducksoftware.com/future-of-open-source [77] http://redmonk.com/sogrady/2013/12/19/dvcs-and-git-2013/#ixzz2qyfVpSR9 [78] As of January 6, 2016. https://www.openhub.net/repositories/compare [79] http://readwrite.com/2014/01/21/git-subversion-developers [80] https://github.com/blog/841-those-are-some-big-numbers [81] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GitHub [82] https://github.com/blog/1724-10-million-repositories [83] http://dirkriehle.com/publications/2008-2/the-total-growth-of-open-source/ [84] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stack_Overflow [85] https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/ [86] http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/271080/the-mit-license-clarity-on-using-code-on-stack-overflow-and-stack-exchange [87] http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/272956/a-new-code-license-the-mit-this-time-with-attribution-required [88] http://www.infoworld.com/article/2615869/open-source-software/github-needs-to-take-open-source-seriously.html [89] http://www.infoworld.com/article/2611422/open-source-software/github-finally-takes-open-source-licenses-seriously.html [90] http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/04/18/github_licensing_study/ [91] https://twitter.com/monkchips/status/247584170967175169 [92] http://blog.codinghorror.com/please-dont-learn-to-code/ [93] https://medium.com/@wob/the-sad-state-of-web-development-1603a861d29f#.443lcznv1 [94] https://coderanger.net/funding-foss/ [95] Email interview with Hynek Schlawack [96] http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/tech/tech-news/Security-experts-expect-Shellshock-software-bug-to-be-significant/articleshow/43657819.cms [97] http://www.scmagazineuk.com/openssh-flaw-opens-the-door-to-brute-force-attackers/article/428304/ [98] http://arstechnica.com/security/2016/01/bug-that-can-leak-crypto-keys-just-fixed-in-widely-used-openssh/ [99] https://medium.com/@christophera/i-ve-been-working-to-address-this-gap-for-a-while-thus-my-recent-exploration-of-the-commons-in-my-8094d41a874a#.qyh31ida4 Quote edited for clarity by source

Trixie and Katya's Guide to Modern Womanhood
by Trixie Mattel and Katya
Published 15 Nov 2020

If my husband ever dies prematurely, just remove the body and his belongings from my home—I bet I’d completely forget I was ever married. YELL FROM ANOTHER ROOM If you’re only lightly involved in your own problems, like me, you can let your TaskRabbit or teenage child worker describe items to you vaguely via Skype while you lounge in another part of the house. I pull out my earbuds only long enough to scream, “Keep” or “Toss.” KEEP GOING Sure you’ve eliminated all of your unworn clothes and excess tchotchkes, but why stop there? Pick up every single item in your house with your hands, close your eyes, and think, “Is this something I need to survive?”

Cyprus - Culture Smart!: The Essential Guide to Customs & Culture
by Constantine Buhayer
Published 24 Feb 2022

The “tut” sound (done by snapping the tip of the tongue against the back of the upper two front teeth), accompanied by the raising of the eyebrows, means “no.” If that sound is repeated two or three times, it means “out of the question.” Repeated several times in succession while slowly shaking the head means “what a pity,” “what a shame,” or expresses disapproval, as in “you shouldn’t have done that.” DIGITAL PROTOCOLS The moment Skype calls were available, Cypriots were onto it and there was no going back. The sudden necessity for daily video conferencing imposed by the Covid-19 pandemic raised some interesting cultural questions. There was a brief debate as to whether people could smoke when online. At home a person can smoke without affecting others.

The Mini Rough Guide to Nice, Cannes & Monte Carlo (Travel Guide eBook)
by Rough Guides
Published 1 Apr 2023

Directory enquiries: various providers, all starting with 118. Mobile phones. If you are calling a French number from a British-based mobile in France, dial as if you are a local subscriber. To call from one British mobile to another, use the international code even if you are both in France. Some mobiles support Skype, which allows calls for no or low cost. Most providers offer pre-bought bundles of minutes to use abroad. For longer stays, consider buying a French SIM from www.0044.co.uk or enquire about a carte prépayée (pay-as-you-go SIM) in France from Orange, SFR or Bouygues Télécom. Use WiFi for web browsing as mobile data costs are very expensive.

Bosnia & Herzegovina--Culture Smart
by Elizabeth Hammond
Published 11 Jan 2011

To use these, simply lift the receiver, insert the calling card, and dial the number. The card will be retuned to you after you hang up. It is wise to carry around a phone card for emergencies, as coin-operated phones don’t exist. There are other options if you wish to make long-distance phone calls. For short stays, many internationals use Skype, a free application that connects via the Internet. Many internationals who live in Bosnia use Vonage phones as well; these also use the Internet to connect and support US phone numbers, so calls to US numbers are free. Finally, callback services connect users to their home telephone grids and take advantage of local rates.

Poland - Culture Smart!
by Allen, Gregory;Lipska, Magdalena;Culture Smart!;
Published 15 Jun 2023

There is usually free Wi-Fi available at larger train stations, shopping centers, and on public transportation. Online Communication Instant messaging and video calling have become the standard means of communication for many Poles, and are commonly used in work and school settings as well as for messaging between friends and family members. The most popular platforms used for work-related purposes are Skype, Zoom, and Microsoft Teams. For communicating between friends and family, Facebook messenger, Viber, Signal, Telegram, and WhatsApp are most common. Online gamers in Poland use Discord and TeamSpeak. Red mailbox of the state postal service. MAIL The Polish postal system (Poczta Polska) is quite efficient and inexpensive.

Pandora's Brain
by Calum Chace
Published 4 Feb 2014

‘Have to be more careful next time.’ Matt leaned back in his imitation Aeron chair and glanced around his bedroom. The deep familiarity of the room and its contents gave him a bittersweet comfort. His desk was mostly clear, apart from a framed photo and the monitor he was using to play video games and Skype with Carl, but every other surface was covered by the clutter of a young man with an enquiring mind and no taste for tidyness. Books stood in unsorted ranks on shelves along one wall, and also idled in collapsed piles on the floor and furniture. Novels, magazines, schoolbooks, illustrated non-fiction books mingled in defiant disorder.

…

I’m going to a party with Alice on Saturday evening, and she’s staying the night, so I have to be positively vetted by her parents again over dinner first.’ ‘There’s a showing at two, so you could easily get to Alice’s in time for dinner. In fact, she could come along – especially if she wants to bring a friend.’ Carl’s sly grin was unconvincing, even via Skype. Matt always thought it odd that someone as smart as Carl was so lacking in confidence around girls. He and Carl reversed the usual stereotypes: Carl, the philosophy, politics and economics student, became mute and flustered in the company of women, even though his black hair, green eyes and dark complexion made an attractive combination.

Soonish: Ten Emerging Technologies That'll Improve And/or Ruin Everything
by Kelly Weinersmith and Zach Weinersmith
Published 16 Oct 2017

If your brain is connected to a computer and the two can modify each other, you are not a human being as we have always known ourselves. It would be an end and a beginning. Nota Bene on Dr. Phil Kennedy We open this section with a brief transcript from Kelly’s interview with Dr. Leuthardt. It actually happens on Skype, but for the sake of drama, please imagine a dark castle room with cold stone walls, littered with strange biological specimens and leather-bound tomes. Add lightning flashes as needed. Dr. Leuthardt: The technology is not the issue. If I had, actually not that much money, I could build one of those today. . . .

…

Craig Venter Institute, 214–15 Jell-O, 298 Jell-O shots, 161 jet fuel, 209–10, 218 Jin, Yaochu, 122 joinery, 143–44 Joint BioEnergy Institute, 210 Joint European Torus (JET), 89 Josephson, Brian, 5–6 Josephson junction, 6 Jurassic Park (film), 222 Kazakhstan, 100 Keasling, Jay, 199 Keating, Steven, 146–48, 153, 155, 253 Kennedy, Philip, 315–17 Kevlar, 35 Khoshnevis, Behrokh, 145, 146, 147, 158 kidneys (organ), 280 Kilobot project, 115, 119 Kohler, Matthias, 152 Kurman, Melba, 159 Lake Chagan, 100 lasers, 2, 27–29, 84, 86–87 Law of the Sea, 33 leukemia, 238, 239, 242 Leuthardt, Eric, 303, 314–15 Levin, Gilbert, 334 levitation, 326–27 LiDAR, 174 life insurance, 250 LIFT (laser-induced forward transfer), 265–66 Limited Test Ban Treaty (LTBT), 99 Lipschultz, Bruce, 91–92, 93 Lipson, Hod, 159 Lipton, Jeffrey, 162 liquid hydrogen, 39 liquid oxygen, 20, 39 lithium, 77 LIT ROOM, 110–11 livers (organs), 257–59, 260–61, 280 lizards, 187 locked-in syndrome, 316 Lockheed Martin, 90 lossless power transmission, 325 Low Earth Orbit (LEO), 14, 15–16, 21, 34, 38 Lowther, William, 50 lung cancer, 238–40 lungs (organ), 261 Lyme disease, 255 lymphoma, 242 McAlpine, Michael, 271 McCracken, Garry, 77 Magee, John Gillespie, Jr., 13 “magic book,” 176 MagLIF (Magnetized Liner Inertial Fusion) project, 87–88 “magnetic confinement”-type reactors, 85 magnetic levitation (MagLev) trains, 24–25, 30, 327 magnetosphere, 59 magnets, 5 MakerBot, 162 malaria, 198–203, 207 mammoth genome, 222–24 Mankins, John, 320 marble, 144 marching bands, 119–20 Mars, 19, 40, 45n, 52, 55, 158–59 Mars One project, 45n Masiello, Carrie, 210–11 Massachusetts General Hospital, 242 Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), 102, 103, 104, 106, 107n, 108, 214, 216 Mediated Matter lab at, 146 Plasma Science and Fusion Center at, 91 matching markets, 275–81 Matthews, Kirstin, 250 Maus, Marcela, 242–43 Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology, 212 µBiome, 2 M-blocks, 118 MD Anderson Cancer Center, 232, 234 Mediated Matter lab, 146 medical tourism, 272 medical trials, 254–55, 268–69 medicine, 221 augmented reality in, 179, 185–86 bioprinting and, see bioprinting origami robots in, 106–7 programmable matter in, 127–28 synthetic biology in, 198–207 see also precision medicine Meetup.com, 175, 179 MEG (magnetoencephalography), 289–90, 291 Meissner effect, 326 meltdown, 91–92 memory, 220, 304, 307–8, 311 Mendelsohn, John, 232, 234 Meng, Yan, 122 Menges, Achim, 104 Menon, Sandeep, 235 messenger RNA, 193 metabolome, 244–46 meteorites, 53, 67 Michigan Array, 296, 298 microRNA, 239–40, 246–47 Microsoft, 272 Miller, Jordan, 261, 269, 270–71, 274 miniaturization, 176 “Minibuilders,” 151–52 miRBase, 240 mirror humans, 332–35 MIT Technology Review, 6n molds, configurable, 134 molecular scissors, 212, 213–14 molecules, mirror, 334 monogenic traits, 196–97 mononucleosis, 230 moon, 55 moon landing, 19 moral hazard, 273–74 Moravec’s Paradox, 139 mosquitoes, 200, 203, 218 Mossad, 50 motion sickness, 168 movies, 183 MRI (magnetic resonance imaging), 290–91 M-type (metal) asteroids, 53, 54 mucociliary escalator, 187–88 mucus, 236 Mukhopadhyay, Aindrila, 210 multiverse, 329 Munger, Steven, 334–35 Musk, Elon, 19 mutation breeding, 191–92 mutations, 219, 236–37 Mycoplasma genitalium, 214–15 Mycoplasma laboratorium, 215 Mycoplasma mycoides, 215n Nagasaki bombing, 98 nano-bio-machines, 3 nanobots, 118 nanotechnology, 221 NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC), 25, 31, 35 nasal cycle, 186–89 nasal venous sinusoids, 188 NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration), 20, 47, 60, 65, 92, 158, 159–60 National Academy of Sciences, 203 National Cancer Institute, 238 National Defence Department, Canada, 47 National Ignition Facility (NIF), 86–87 National Institutes of Health, 214, 234, 235 Native Americans, 196n natural gas, 73, 98–99 Nebraska, University of, 176 Neufert, Ernst, 135 neural dust, 299 neural implants, 310 Neurobridge, 312 neuro-cyber-connection, 312–13 neurons, 286–87, 290, 298, 306 EEGs and, 287–90 NeuroPace, 302 neuroprosthetics, 311, 315, 322, 324 neurotrophic electrodes, 297–98, 315, 316 Neutron Club, 80 neutron gun, 80–81 neutrons, 73, 91 New Jersey, 299 New Mexico, 96 nickel, 54 Nocera, Dan, 208 North Carolina State University, 63 Norway, 22n nostrils, 186–89 Nuclear Explosions for the National Economy, 100 nuclear reactors, 58 Nucleon (concept car design), 97 nucleus, 192, 193 nutrition, 245–46 Olestra, 334 Oliver, John, 326n Open Humans Foundation, 252n “optical mining,” 63 orbiting factory, 24 organ donation, 257n organ markets, 274, 275–81 Organovo, 268 organ rejections, 275 organ sales, 258, 280–81 organ transplant list, 257–58, 272 organ transplants, 206–7 origami robots, 105–8, 129 OSIRIS-REx, 65 “Our Friend the Atom” (Disney cartoon), 97 Outer Space Treaty (1967), 63–64 oxidizer, 20 Oxman, Neri, 146, 148 oxygen, 208–9 oxygen deprivation, 205 oxygen gas, 82 Pacific Ocean, 35–36 Paddon, Chris, 199 Palo Alto Research Center, 116 Panama Canal, 97 pancreas, 236 parallel universe, 329 paralysis, 312 Parkinson’s disease, 301 patenting, 124 patent law, 272 peacekeepers, 181 Pennsylvania, University of, 108 Personal Genome Project, 252–53 personal security, 124–25 PERVs, 207 pesticides, 200 Petersen, Kirstin, 149, 150–51 Pfizer, 235 phobias, 179 Phobos (moon of Mars), 55 phosphenes, 306 photosynthesis, 208 Picon, Antoine, 138 pigs, 206 Piraha (Amazonian tribe), 140n Pitt, Brad, 167 Plait, Phil, 36, 38 plants, 125 Chinese sweet wormwood, 198–99 plasma, 85, 88 Plasma Science and Fusion Center, 91 platinum, 52, 55 pluripotent stem cells, 273 plutonium, 58 pogo sticks, 27 Pokémon GO, 8n, 166, 182–83 pollution, 94 porcine endogenous retroviruses (PERVs), 207 positive transcriptional autoregulation, 205n potassium iodide pills, 60 poverty, 157 precision medicine, 229–56 benefits of, 254–56 cancer diagnosis, treatment, and monitoring in, 238–44 concerns about, 248–53 data collection in, 234–35 genetic disorders and, 235–37 metabolome and, 244–46 privacy issues in, 248, 250–53 Precision Medicine Initiative Cohort Program, 234 predictive ability, 1–2 Princeton University, 142, 271 privacy issues, 130, 182, 248 of AR, 180–81 in brain-computer interfaces, 309–10 in precision medicine, 248, 250–53 programmable matter, 101–32 benefits of, 125–29 computers as, 101 concerns about, 122–25 in everyday life, 105 hacking of, 122–23 military applications of, 123–24 origami robots as, 105–8 power for, 118 reconfigurable houses and, 109–11 see also robots programmed materials, 103–5 Project Babylon, 48–49 Project Esper, 185 Project HARP (High Altitude Research Project), 47, 48 Project Plowshare, 96–100 Project Rulison, 98 Promobot, 129 Promobot IR77, 129 propellants, 14–15, 18, 20, 23 prostate cancers, 239n, 247 prosthetics, advanced, 322–24 proteins, 193, 194, 195, 221, 234, 239, 332 protium, 73 protons, 73, 77 Pryor, Richard, 328n QR code, 169–71 quantum computing, 328–30 quantum mechanics, 329, 330 Quinn, Roger, 151n radiation, 59–60, 62, 99 radiation therapy, 241 radioactive waste, 91 railgun, electromagnetic, 24–25 ramjet, 21, 22, 26 Reaction Engines, 22 Recognizer, 180 Reconfigurable House exhibit, 111 recycled fecal matter, 160 recycling, 128 Reece, Andrew, 247 refining, 56 refrigeration, 4 “Registry of Standard Biology Parts,” 216 Reichert, Steffen, 104 Reiss, Louise and Eric, 99 RepRap, 269–70 “repugnance,” in markets, 276 reuse, 128 ribosome, 193–94, 195 Rice University, 200n, 210, 250, 261 rigid airship, 29–30 Ringeisen, Bradley, 259 RNA, 193–94, 195, 332 RNS System, 302 Robinette, Paul, 130 Robot Baby Project, 120n robotic construction, 134–63 benefits of, 156–59 concerns about, 153–56 and space travel, 158–59 swarm robots in, 149–53 3D printing for, 144–49 robots, 102, 129–32 autonomous, 113–16 as construction workers, 139–44 coordinating movement of many, 119–22 evolving of, 120–22 generalization in, 142 industrial, 136 in medicine, 127–28 modular, 112–16 neuroprosthetics and, 311 origami, 105–8, 129 termite-inspired, 150–51 see also programmable matter rocket launches, 3 rockets, 23, 39 air-breathing, 19–24 aircraft-launched, 29–30 cost of, 14 laser ignition for, 27–29 propellant for, 14–15, 18, 20, 23 reusable, 14, 15, 18–19, 39 simplicity of, 22 stages of, 18n rocket sled, 25, 26 rockoon, 29 rod from God, 38 roller coaster, 23, 42 Romanishin, John, 118 Roombots, 112–13, 121, 127 Roth, Alvin, 276, 277, 279, 280 “Ruby Red” grapefruit, 192 Rus, Daniela, 106–7, 108, 118, 128 Russia, 67, 99, 217n SABRE (Synergetic Air-Breathing Rocket Engine), 22 Saddest Generation, 166 Safe Is Not an Option: Overcoming the Futile Obsession with Getting Everyone Back Alive That Is Killing Our Expansion into Space (Simberg), 44 Sahara Desert, 321 SAM (robot), 141, 142, 153–54 Sandia Labs, 85, 87 San Francisco, Calif., 154 sanitation, 157 satellites, 20, 34, 41, 47 Schalk, Gerwin, 313 Schall, Gerhard, 177 Schrödinger’s cat, 329 Schrödinger’s Killer App (Dowling), 330n Schwenk, Kurt, 187 See No Evil, Hear No Evil (film), 328n seizures, 300, 301, 302 Select Sires, Incorporated, 197n self-driving cars, 123 Sensorama, 168 Shapiro, Beth, 222, 223–24 Shotwell, Gwynne, 19 Shtetl-Optimized (blog), 330n Siberia, 224 sickle cell amenia, 237 Silberg, Joff, 210–11, 218–19 silicon, 52, 54 Silver, Pamela, 204, 205–6, 208–10, 219 Simberg, Rand, 44 Skylon, 22 Skype, 314 Skywalker, Luke (char.), 324 Slingatron, 25–26 slums, 157 smallpox, 216, 217 Smart Helmet, 179 “smart homes,” 111 smartphones, 169 smell, sense of, 174–75, 186–89, 334 Smith, Noah, 153n, 154 snakes, 187 social media, 248, 250 privacy issues of, 180–81 software, 102, 104–5, 124 hacking of, 122 solar flares, 60 solar panels, 58 cost of, 320 solar photovoltaic cells, 92, 208 solar power, space-based, 319–21 solar wind, 37 Solid Freeform Fabrication Symposium, 162 solid rocket boosters, 39 solid tumors, 238, 240–41 Solomon, Scott, 200n sound, speed of, 21 South Africa, 48 Southern California, University of, 145, 308 Soviet Union, 38, 58, 99, 100, 135 space cannon, 23–26 space debris, 39–40 space elevators, 31–38, 39, 41, 42–43, 314, 320 spaceflight, 13–50 air-breathing rockets and spaceplanes for, 19–24 benefits of, 41–45 concerns about, 38–40 cost of, 41, 44–45 present cost of, 13–14 reusable rockets for, 18–19 space elevators and tethers for, 31–38 starting at high altitude, 29–30 spaceplanes, 19–24, 39 space settlements, 40 Space Shuttle, U.S., 18, 39 space tethers, 31–38 space tourism, 42 space travel: fusion energy in, 94 supergun for, 23–26 SpaceX, 8n, 18–19, 30 spatial resolution, 288, 289, 292–93 spearmint, 334 spinal damage, 312 Sputnik, 39 SR-71 spy plane, 21 Starbucks, 180 Star Trek franchise, 34, 86 Star Wars franchise, 78n, 82, 263 steam turbine, 76 stem cells, 263, 272–73 Stevens Institute of Technology, 92, 122 STL-file, 267 storytelling, 178 stratospheric spaceport, 29–30 straw, reconfigurable, 103–4 stress, 246 stroke, 247 strong nuclear force, 77 strontium-90 (Sr-90), 99 Stuttgart, University of, 104, 143 S-type (stony) asteroids, 53, 54 sugar molecules, 210 sugar sintering, 270–71 sun, 59, 78 Sung, Cynthia, 108, 119, 127 superconducting levitation, 326–27 superconducting quantum interference device (SQUID), 4, 6, 290 superconductors, 4–6 room-temperature, 325–28 supergun, 46–50 supersonic ramjet (“scramjet”), 21–22, 26, 126 Sure Shot Cattle Company, 197n surgery, 185–86 Surrey, University of, 122 swarm bots, 119–20, 121–22 SWARMORPH project, 113–15 swarm robots, 149–53 switchgrass, 209–10 Switzerland, 22n SYMBRION, 115 Syn 3.0, 215 synthetic biology, 190–225 benefits of, 220–21 concerns about, 216–19 environmental monitoring by, 210–12 fuel production by, 208–10 generalizing of, 212–14 grassroots approach to, 216 “Synthetic Biology for Recycling Human Waste into Food, Nutraceuticals, and Materials: Closing the Loop for Long-Term Space Travel” project, 160 synthetic materials, 101–2 syphilis, 230n Syria, 156 Systems & Materials Research Consultancy, 159 T cells, 242–43 technology, 3–4 asteroid-moving, 67 contingent nature of development of, 3–7 discontinuous leaps in, 2 Telegraph, 183 Teller, Edward, 98 temporal resolution, 288, 292–93 Terminator (film), 103 termites, 120, 149, 150–51 terrorism, 36, 38, 217 Tethers Unlimited, 63 tetracycline, 200 theft, 130 3D printers, 144–49, 151–52, 259 prosthetics and, 322 3D printing, 125, 152 of food, 159–63 of organs, see bioprinting software for, 267 3554 Amun, 53 Throw Trucks with Your Mind (game), 312 thyroid, 60 Tibbits, Skylar, 103–5, 118, 123, 126 titanium, 35 “tokamak” configuration, 88, 92 tornados, 25 touch, sense of, 175 Tourette’s syndrome, 301 transcranial magnetic stimulation, 302, 304 transfer RNA, 193–94, 195 Transformers series, 102 The Tree of Life (Web site), 234n tritium, 74, 77n, 91 tumor cells, 205 tumors, 290 “Tunable Protein Piston That Breaks Membranes to Release Encapsulated Cargo, A” (Silver, et al.), 206 “Tunguska event” (1908), 67 turbofan engine, 20–21, 22 Turner, Ron, 35, 36, 37 23andMe, 251, 252 Twitter, 20n, 187, 250 Two and a Half Men (TV show), 310 Type II superconductors, 326 Umbrellium (Haque Design + Research), 111 Underground Railroad, 178 UN-Habitat, 157 Unilateral Forced Nostril Breathing (UFNB), 189 United Nations, 96 United States, 39, 135–36 Universal Semen Sales, Inc., 197n uranium, 58 U.S.

Zucked: Waking Up to the Facebook Catastrophe
by Roger McNamee
Published 1 Jan 2019

All it offered was interesting features, and Facebook imitated the good parts quickly. Facebook took no chances with Google+. The company went to battle stations and devoted every resource to stopping Google on the beach of social networking. The company cranked up its development efforts, dramatically increasing the size limits for posts, partnering with Skype, introducing the Messenger texting product, and adding a slew of new tools for creating applications on the platform. As 2012 began, Facebook was poised for a breakout year. The company had a new advertising product—Open Graph—that leveraged its Social Graph, the tool to capture everything it knew from both inside Facebook and around the web.

…

.: Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, 209 Google and, 282 Judiciary Committee, 128, 131, 132, 136, 209 Select Committee on Intelligence, 12, 111–12, 127, 132 Sherman Antitrust Act, 136 Signal, 271 Silicon Valley, 3, 5, 10, 15, 16, 26, 31–51, 83, 84, 104, 110, 112, 118, 130, 147, 151–52, 157, 173, 194, 197, 206, 225, 248, 253, 254, 263, 269, 274 diversity and, 45 libertarianism and, 44–45, 49 women in, 49–50 see also technology Silver Lake Partners, 28–30 Sinclair, Upton, 110 Siri, 43 SixDegrees.com, 54–55 60 Minutes, 81, 109, 161 Skype, 70 Slack, 41 Slate, 179, 186, 231 smartphones, 17, 59, 81, 84, 101, 105–8, 158, 225, 233, 250, 253, 255, 261, 265, 267, 269, 272–74 Android, 138, 204, 271, 282 checking of, 86–87, 99, 100, 257, 271 iPhone, 38, 84, 100, 105–6, 271 social apps on, 106 Snapchat, 99, 110, 140, 156, 214, 246, 253 Snyder, Timothy, 278 social graphs, 55, 70, 224, 264 social media, 38, 41, 48, 54–56, 63, 69, 102–5, 147, 153, 155, 177, 213 extreme views and, 91 human-driven, 108 mobile platforms and, 106 Social Network, The, 65 social reciprocity, 98–99 Soros, George, 159–63 World Economic Forum speech of, 159–63, 301–12 Space-X, 48 Speak & Spell, 22 Squawk Alley, 118 Sri Lanka, 178, 180, 204, 232, 239, 245, 247, 254, 277 Stamos, Alex, 119, 174, 183–84, 191–92 Standard Oil, 47, 136, 137 Stanford University, 54, 83, 107, 146–48, 160 startups, 40–41, 43, 45, 48–50, 104, 223–25, 259, 261–63, 284 lean, 41–42, 46, 48 state attorneys general, 120, 172, 227 Stein, Gertrude, 213 Stewart, Martha, 27 Steyer, Jim, 119, 156 Stoppleman, Jeremy, 48 Stretch, Colin, 131–33 suicide, 213 Summers, Larry, 60 Sun Microsystems, 26, 152 Sunstein, Cass, 90 Sybase, 26 Taylor, Bob, 34 technology, ix, 1, 9–10, 13, 31–51, 104, 106, 121, 135, 165, 177, 206, 214, 235–36, 238, 250–51, 254–55, 257, 258, 267–75, 282 addiction to, 100–101, 106–7, 162, 206, 240, 246, 250, 253, 254, 257, 268, 269, 281 business shift in, 33 changing personal usage of, 274 children and, 106, 156, 166, 237, 255, 268, 269, 272–73, 279–80 government era of, 32–33 human-driven, see human-driven technology and humane design McNamee’s investments in, 1, 7, 21, 24–30, 56–57 regulation of, 47–48, 112–14, 130, 173, 201, 206, 208, 220–21, 238, 282–83 society changed by, 10, 87 as value neutral, 129 see also Silicon Valley TED Conference, 66–67, 109–10, 111 television, 10, 17, 68, 87, 105, 106, 125–26, 158, 267, 284 terms of service, 100, 102, 114, 159, 253–54 Facebook, 97, 178, 182, 211, 253–54 terrorism, 230 Tesla, 48 Texas secession movement, 114–15 texting, 254, 255, 269, 271 Thiel, Peter, 45, 48, 54, 58, 113 3Com, 32 time sharing, 33 Time Well Spent, 108, 157 Tinder, 207, 218 transistor, 225, 226 trolls, 90, 116, 124, 126, 253 T.

Dark Territory: The Secret History of Cyber War
by Fred Kaplan
Published 1 Mar 2016

Inglis moved on to what he and his colleagues considered a far more important and damaging Snowden leak. It concerned the program known as PRISM, in which the NSA and FBI tapped into the central servers of nine leading American Internet companies—mainly Microsoft, Yahoo, and Google, but also Facebook, AOL, Skype, YouTube, Apple, and Paltalk—extracting email, documents, photos, audio and video files, and connection logs. The news stories about PRISM acknowledged that the purpose of the intercepts was to track down exclusively foreign targets, but the stories also noted that ordinary Americans’ emails and cellular phone calls got scooped up in the process as well.

…

.: Armed Services Committee of, 46, 71, 283 Church Committee of, 37, 230, 252 Foreign Relations Committee of, 197 Governmental Affairs Committee of, 48, 94 Intelligence Committee of, 35–36 Select Committee on Intelligence of, 126, 127, 231–33, 256 sensitive compartmented information facilities (SCIFs), 243 September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, 3, 140–41, 155, 171, 174, 192, 195, 241, 244, 261 Serbia, U.S. hacking of phone systems in, 113, 132 Shady RAT, Operation, 226 Shalikashvili, John, 67, 68, 146 Shamoon computer virus, 213–14 Shaw Air Force Base, 7, 108–9 Shiite Muslims, 147, 160 Shinseki, Eric, 111, 112 Siemens, logic controllers of, 204–5, 206, 211 Signal Security Agency, 11 609th Information Warfare Squadron, 7, 108–10, 120 60 Minutes (TV program), 240 Skype, PRISM and, 247 Slocombe, Walter, 44 Sneakers (film), 31–32, 33 Snowden, Edward, 194 NSA programs leaked by, 63–64, 228–30, 231, 234, 242, 244, 245, 251, 257–59, 262, 282, 285, 298n Social Security, 99 Social Security numbers, hacking of, 265, 268 Solar Sunrise cyber attack, 74–78, 80, 81, 98, 101, 119, 120, 123, 183, 187, 241 Sonic.net, 77 Sony Online Entertainment, hacking of, 268 Sony Pictures Entertainment, North Korean cyber attack on, 268–71, 272n South China Morning Post, 229 South Korea, North Korean cyber attacks on, 213, 269 South Ossetia, 164–65, 241 Soviet Union, 12, 13 collapse of, 162 Space Command, U.S., 122, 146 Spiegel, Der 228, 229, 298n Sputnik II, 119 Stabilization Force (SFOR), 110–12 “Star Wars” program, 2 Stasi, 235 Stellar Wind, 155n Stimpy (pseudonym), 77–78 Stimson, Henry, 11 Stoll, Cliff, 61–62, 82–83 Stone, Geoffrey: civil liberties expertise of, 239, 244, 251, 259, 264 in Review Group, 239, 244, 246, 250–52, 253, 254, 264 Strategic Command, U.S., 183 Studeman, William, 21–22, 26, 27, 28, 30, 42, 84, 128 as acting CIA director, 45 as CIA deputy director, 41 information warfare as focus of, 41 as NSA director, 126–27, 275–76 Stuxnet, 201, 213, 216, 217, 218–19, 228, 242, 304n–5n Alexander and, 204–5, 206 Bush and, 203, 205, 206, 208, 209, 212, 215 centrifuges speed manipulated by, 209 exposure of, 210–11 false data sent to monitors in, 208, 209 Gates and, 206 Iranian confidence as target of, 208 Israel and, 207 Natanz centrifuges targeted by, 203 Obama and, 203, 208–9, 210, 212 Siemens logic controllers infected by, 204–5, 211 successes of, 209–10 TAO and, 205–7 valve controls overridden by, 207–20 Summers, Lawrence, 200 Sunni Muslims, 147, 160 Sunstein, Cass, 239, 253 Suter, 161 Swire, Peter, 239–40, 243–44, 251, 253, 255 Sylvania Labs, 14–15 Symantec, 210, 211 Syria: cyber attacks by, 4 Israeli bombing of reactor in, 160–61, 198, 301n Taiwan, 224 Taliban, 149, 229 Tallinn, Estonia, 165 cyber attack on, 162–64 Tango, Operation, 111 TAO (Office of Tailored Access Operations), 135–37, 156, 158, 182, 195, 273n hacking software of, 136 Hayden and, 135 Minihan and, 134–35 Snowden leaks and, 229–30 Stuxnet and, 205–7 tools and techniques of, 298n Technical Advisory Group, 126 telecom companies: metadata collection and, 194, 247, 248, 253, 263 Snowden leaks and, 234 telecommunication networks, switches in, 44–45 Tenenbaum, Ehud (The Analyzer), 77, 78 Tenet, George, 113, 140 terrorism, terrorists: Bush (G.W.) administration complacency about, 140–41 CNE and, 139 cyber attacks by, 98 FISA and, 192 infrastructure as targets of, 39, 41, 42, 53 Internet and, 35 Obama’s focus on, 197–98 post-9/11 fear of, 195 Thompson, Fred, 95 thumb drives, malware on, 182, 207, 304n Thurman, Max, 145 Titan Rain, 224 Toyota Prius, hacking of, 273n Trailblazer, 132, 156–57, 158 Transportation Department, U.S., North Korean cyber attack on, 213 Treasury Department, U.S.: cyber security as low priority of, 172–73 North Korean cyber attack on, 213 “Trilateral Memorandum Agreement,” 216–17 Truman, Harry, 12 Turbulence, 157–58, 195 Unit 8200 (Israel), 161 United Arab Emirates, 75, 76 United States: Chinese relations with, 221–28 as digital communications hub, 191–92, 193, 248 see also five eyes university computers, as entry points for hackers, 61, 73, 82 UNIX operating system, Sun Solaris vulnerability in, 73–74 U.N.

Parkland: Birth of a Movement
by Dave Cullen
Published 12 Feb 2019

I started packing while hitting up my media and survivor networks to find a way to make contact with the kids. I was down there Monday, and once I met those kids, I was hooked. I have spent much of the past two decades working with children. Countless high schools and colleges have brought me in as a speaker, and I had been Skyping with classes regularly until I put that on hold to finish the soldiers book. So I am used to being amazed by kids, and I never really bought into the idea that they’re incapable of huge undertakings. Still, the march was a lot. Once I saw Jackie and her team pull off Tallahassee, I had no doubts.

…

He wanted to weave clips of actual survivors into the show. I suggested Kiki and Paula, and ABC eventually hired me (for the day) to interview them and three survivors of other brutal situations on camera. It aired in February 2016. Kiki has taught Columbine as a text in one of his English courses for the past several years. The first year, I Skyped in with the class. He knows writers struggle to make ends meet, and on several of my trips to Colorado, he and his wife, Kallie, invited me to stay at their house for a few days, and I accepted. That included both trips covered in this book: the April trip in this chapter, and the August trip in chapter 19.

Drunk: How We Sipped, Danced, and Stumbled Our Way to Civilization
by Edward Slingerland
Published 31 May 2021

Especially given the enhancement in efficacy and ease of use that has been made possible by modern science, they should continue to play a similar role in today’s world. Why Skype Didn’t Eliminate Business Travel In 1889 Jules Verne predicted that the “phonotelephote”—essentially a dedicated videoconferencing device that he imagined would become commonplace by the year 2889 (!)—would make business travel obsolete.34 We didn’t have to wait a thousand years. Videoconferencing became a real technology in 1968 with AT&T’s “Picturephone.” The advent of Skype and other videoconferencing technologies in the mid-2000s brought phonotelephotes into every home that had access to a decent internet connection.

Pure Invention: How Japan's Pop Culture Conquered the World
by Matt Alt
Published 14 Apr 2020

“Tomino did not realize the impact”: Patrick W. Galbraith, The Moé Manifesto: An Insider’s Look at the Worlds of Manga, Anime, and Gaming (Singapore: Tuttle Publishing, 2014), 181. “It was like, finally, we had a word for them”: Personal interview, Tomohiro Machiyama, conducted April 5, 2014, via Skype. In 1989, a young man by the name of Tsutomu Miyazaki: Ibid. There was pre-Otomo and post-Otomo: Nobunaga Minami, Gendai Manga no Bokentachi: Otomo Katsuhiro Kara Ono Natsume Made (Adventurers of Modern Comics: From Otomo Katsuhiro to Natsume Ono) (Tokyo: NTT Shuppan, 2008), 32–38. Upon meeting Otomo around this time: Kei Ishizaka, Suntory Saturday Waiting Bar Avanti, “Vol. 132,” Tokyo FM Podcast, October 4, 2008, https://podcasts.tfm.co.jp/​podcasts/​tokyo/​avanti/​avanti_vol132.mp3.

…

In 2005 Fortune reported: Christine Yano, “Monstering the Japanese Cute: Pink Globalization and Its Critics Abroad,” in In Godzilla’s Footsteps: Japanese Pop Culture Icons on the Global Stage, ed. William M. Tsutsui and Michiko Ito, (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), 156. “I was practically raised in Sanrio shops”: Skype interview with Krista Suh, April 30, 2018. Variety dismissed animator Osamu Tezuka’s: “Cleopatra, Queen of Sex,” Variety, Wednesday, May 10, 1972. Pornhub announced that “hentai”: Pornhub Insights, “2018 Year in Review,” Pornhub, December 11, 2018, https://www.pornhub.com/​insights/​2018-year-in-review.

If You See Them
by Vicki Sokolik
Published 23 Nov 2023

When I did check in, she never had anything urgent to report. She just wanted to hear my voice. She was also reaching out in the same way to Janice, her mentor, and to Amanda. Amanda felt that Taylor was lonely and just needed a lifeline. Some nights, around 11:30 p.m., she would text, “Can we Skype?” I’d already be dressed for bed, but I was happy to jump on Skype. Without my knowing, she sometimes took funny screenshots of me during our chats, and days later, she would email me a photo, usually the silliest one, my face frozen in an awkward pose. The photos made me laugh. I always emailed back, “burn that,” but I loved her sense of humor, and, even more, I loved that she loved talking to me.

The 4-Hour Chef: The Simple Path to Cooking Like a Pro, Learning Anything, and Living the Good Life
by Timothy Ferriss
Published 1 Jan 2012

Today, $100 30-frame-per-second cameras and the Internet, to name just two advances, improve both access to expertise and the speed of the feedback loop. Take, for instance, how I learned to pop up on a surfboard. Prior to a planned trip to Costa Rica, I found myself in Berlin, with no beach or pool in sight. I connected via Skype video with Brad Gerlach, formerly the #1-ranked surfer in the world. In 2006, he won the prestigious Billabong XXL by successfully riding a 68-foot wave in Todos Santos, Mexico. Now, he’s turned his mind to teaching. To start, he forced himself to surf “switch stance” (opposite foot forward) just so he could better communicate the mechanics.

…

CREDITS COVER Jonathan Arvizu, Trapdoor Studio TITLE PAGE IMAGES Drew Kelly DEDICATION Tim Ferriss ON THE SHOULDERS OF GIANTS Christopher Michel HOW TO USE THIS BOOK: CONFESSIONS, PROMISES, AND GETTING TO 20 MILLION Drew Kelly: Bobby Flay quote sign Tim Ferriss: Tim’s notes, Tim with book piles, and White House coffee cup Culinary Artistry by Andrew Dornenburg and Karen Page (John Wiley and Sons, 1996): chart META-LEARNING “BILL GATES WALKS INTO A BAR…”: THE POWER OF OUTLIERS Olivia Grabowski-West: Ed Cooke Nick Cunard, Rex USA: Daniel Tammet Barry Ross: Girl doing torture twist exercise Jim McDonald, supertraining.TV: Mark Bell dead-lifting Tim Ferriss: Japanese characters poster, Vital Judo book cover DECONSTRUCTION: EXPLORING THE GREAT UNKNOWN Justin Kern: Deconstructed cheesecake Tim Ferriss: Fire starting steps (A–F and finished fire), deconstructing languages notes ASSIGNMENT: LEARNING TO “TASTE” iStockPhoto/RedHelga: Basil leaves Hillside Supper Club: Turkey testicle soup Culinary Artistry by Andrew Dornenburg and Karen Page (John Wiley and Sons, 1996): Ze Herbs text SEQUENCING: THE MAGIC OF PROPER ORDERING Shawn Koppenhoefer, tangopics.com: Tango dancers COMPRESSION: CHEAT SHEETS FOR ANYTHING Tim Ferriss: Simplify wall-hanging, Slow-Carb before-and-after Daniel Krieger: Plating steps FREQUENCY: CRAMMING SIX MONTHS OF CULINARY SCHOOL INTO 48 HOURS Drew Kelly: Meat doneness points, travel cooking kit Tim Ferriss: Culinary cram school, chart sketches, stack of books, Brad Gerlach on Skype ENCODING: MAKING SLIPPERY IDEAS STICK Penny De Los Santos: Hanafuda card set THE DOMESTIC RETHINKING RECIPES Tim Ferriss: Practice cooking without cooking Drew Kelly: Muay Thai kickboxer THE 80/20 PANTRY: ALL YOU NEED Penny De Los Santos: Salt, pepper, sherry vinegar, garlic, sliced almonds, mustard, canned tomatoes, lentils, beans, glycerine, chocolate iStockPhoto/David Palmer: Bell peppers TOP GEAR: FROM SURGICAL TOWELS TO BIG GREEN EGGS Susan Burdick: The Basics (except De Longhi Hand Blender), Anatomy of a Knife, Obsessive World of Knives, Extras and Upgrades (except cutting boards), Shopping Spree, Novice Nine (except ramekins) Penny De Los Santos: De Longhi Hand Blender, OXO and John Boos Cutting Boards, Novice Nine ramekins LESSON 01: OSSO “BUKO” Tim Ferriss: Finished Osso “Buko” (top) Daniel Krieger: Finished Osso “Buko” (bottom), Osso “Buko” process A–C Penny De Los Santos: Ingredients, Jude’s Chuck Roast ingredients Susan Burdick: How to Hold Your Blade, Favorite Teas and Tools LESSON 02: SCRAMBLED EGGS Daniel Krieger: Finished Scrambled Eggs (both), separating eggs process A–C, pickup A–C Penny De Los Santos: Ingredients SLOW-CARB WINES: THE TOP 10 LISTS David Bishop, Inc.: Wine bottle Gary Vaynerchuk: Gary Vaynerchuk with wine LESSON 03: COCONUT CAULIFLOWER CURRY MASH Daniel Krieger: Finished Coconut Cauliflower Curry Mash, Prep C–D Penny De Los Santos: BCAAs, Ingredients, Prep A–B LESSON 04: UNION SQUARE ZUCCHINI Daniel Krieger: Using the Peeler, finished Union Square Zucchini, prep A–B, prep A–F, finished Squash Pappardelle Penny De Los Santos: Ingredients, garlic on fork, Squash Pappardelle ingredients THE VOCABULARY OF CUTTING Penny De Los Santos: Vocabulary of Cutting Daniel Krieger: How to Coarsely Chop INTRODUCTION TO DIM MAK Daniel Krieger: Fingertip placement, body placement for discarding, hand placement, finger placement, cutting angles for speed Margot Rogers: Body placement illustration Drew Kelly: French cutting method, Chinese cutting method LESSON 05: HARISSA CRAB CAKES Daniel Krieger: Finished Harissa Crab Cakes, cutting board organizations, forming the crab cake Penny De Los Santos: Ingredients LESSON 06: BITTMAN CHINESE CHICKEN WITH BOK CHOY Daniel Krieger: Finished Bittman Chinese Chicken with Bok Choy, Prep, Prep fresh ginger Penny De Los Santos: Ingredients LESSON 07: ARUGULA, AVOCADO, AND ROMA SALAD Daniel Krieger: Finished Arugula, Avocado, and Roma Salad; Correct and incorrect washing, Pickup A–C, Eggocado process A–G Penny De Los Santos: Ingredients Tim Ferriss: EVOO container, finished Arugula, Avocado, and Roma Sald first attempt © Billy Fung: Finished Eggocado Dan Bornstein: Conducting egg experiments with chef James Simpkins, boiled eggs results Jonathan Arvizu, Trapdoor Studio: Peeling egg blow method LESSON 08: SEXY-TIME STEAK Daniel Krieger: Finished Sexy-Time Steak, Pickup A–D, Pickup 13 Tim Ferriss: Book inscription Penny De Los Santos: Ingredients, steak resting Albert Law: Tim with Chef Joshua Skenes 1–4 Alanna Hale: Aging sidebar IN SEARCH OF THE PERFECT CUP OF COFFEE Reprinted with permission of Ephemera, Inc. www.ephemera-inc.com: Drink Coffee: Do Stupid Things Faster Susan Burdick: My Tools (except AeroPress plunger and Chemex), process A–G Chemex: Chemex Brand Coffeemaker Penny De Los Santos: AeroPress plunger Tim Ferriss: Finished mug of coffee LESSON 09: 9TH MEAL—4-PERSON DINNER PARTY Penny De Los Santos: Rosemary tea iStockPhoto/Shawn Hempel: David Blaine’s Morning Juice LESSON 10: ROASTED GARLIC AND GAZPACHO Daniel Krieger: Finished Roasted Garlic and Gazpacho, Prep D–E, Pickup A–E, Garnish Tim Ferriss: Roasted Garlic process A–C Penny De Los Santos: Ingredients, peeling garlic methods LESSON 11: TIM’S TOP 4 IMMERSION SAUCES: PICK ONE Daniel Krieger: How to Chiffonade Basil LESSON 12: ROCK ’N’ EEL Tim Ferriss: Cod with Chinese five-spice Daniel Krieger: Finished Rock ’N’ Eel, Prep and Pickup A–D iStockPhoto/Jon-Erik Lido: Sushi restaurant rock-and-roll Penny De Los Santos: Ingredients LESSON 13: SOUS-VIDE CHICKEN BREAST Daniel Krieger: Finished Sous-Vide Chicken Breast, Prep A–C, Prep A–D, Pickup, Finished Kale Chips Tim Ferriss: Michelin 2-Star Bathroom Sink Penny De Los Santos: Ingredients, Kale Chips ingredients LESSON 14: SEARED SCALLOPS Jonathan Arvizu, Trapdoor Studio: Chinese characters Daniel Krieger: Finished Seared Scallops, Seared Scallops process Penny De Los Santos: Ingredients LESSON 15: CHICKEN HIGADO PÂTÉ Daniel Krieger: Finished Chicken Higado Pate, chopping onion process Penny De Los Santos: Ingredients OPTIONAL LESSON 16: “MLBJ” Sex Pots…And Pans, by Munroe Howard (Paperback Library, 1970): book cover Penny De Los Santos: Ingredients Tim Ferriss: Finished MLBJ, process A–J LESSONS 17+17½: THE FIRST HOSTING PARTY, THE SECOND DINNER PARTY Jonathan Arvizu, Trapdoor Studio: Bear-Ninja-Cowboy THE WILD TOP GEAR SURVIVAL: TARPS, TRAPS, AND TACTICAL KNIVES Susan Burdick: All Gear items Getty Images/Hugh Turvey: Suitcase x-ray THE IMPORTANCE OF RABBITS iStockPhoto/Alina Kurbiel: Rabbit close-up Hero Design Studio/Beth Manos & Mark Brickey: The Importance of Rabbits illustration Excerpted from The French Laundry Cookbook.

…

In 1981, there were 1,945 characters; since 2010, there are 2,136. 8 Which I learned in judo’s “sacrifice throw.” 9 In the world of cooking, such paralysis is most often induced by herbs and spices. 10 For any vegetarians who might land there, the oboro tofu is incredible. 11 This logic reiterates the benefit of this book: even if you never cook, you’ll increase your enjoyment of meals. 12 If they coach and do hourly consultations, you could also just pay for a telephone or Skype session. 13 Strangely, the basketball principles later produced a quantum leap in my handgun marksmanship—most important, that you should solve left-right deviation before worrying about long-short adjustments. 14 Even for tepee-style fires, you can ensure a smoke-free start by lighting the end of a rolled up newspaper and holding it up the chimney for 10–15 seconds before lighting the fire. 15 Prayer edited to reflect the Catholic version as it would have been in the 18th and 19th centuries (though translated into English). 16 This is a bonus 13th, to be explained later. 17 I can’t hold back on one more tip: to start, you can just learn the I and you (first- and second-person) conjugations, as you will be using those more than 80% of the time. 18 FOR NERDS: What about that bonus line in parentheses?

Lonely Planet Chile & Easter Island (Travel Guide)
by Lonely Planet , Carolyn McCarthy and Kevin Raub
Published 19 Oct 2015

However, it isn’t recommended to undertake long treks in the wilderness by yourself. Telephone Throughout Chile there are call centers with private cabins and reasonable international rates, although these are rapidly being replaced by internet cafes with Skype. Remote tour operators and lodges have satellite phones with a Santiago prefix. Cell Phones Cell-phone numbers have eight digits, plus the two-digit prefix 09. The prefix must be used when calling from a land line or Skype-type calling service. Throughout this book, cell numbers are listed with their prefix. Drop the 09 prefix when calling cell-to-cell. If calling cell-to-landline, add the landline’s area code.

…

The one-hour, scenic narrow-gauge train ride comes with historical explanations in English and Spanish. Reserve in January and February, when cruise-ship tours take over. You can take it one way and return via minibus. Hitchhiking is feasible, but many cars may already be full. ESTANCIA HARBERTON Tierra del Fuego’s first estancia (grazing ranch), Harberton (Skype: estanciaharberton.turismo; www.estanciaharberton.com; tour & museum admission adult/child AR$45/free, half-board lodging s/d/t AR$802/1266/1772; 10am-7pm Oct 15–Apr 15) was founded in 1886 by missionary Thomas Bridges and his family. The location earned fame from a stirring memoir written by Bridges’ son Lucas, titled Uttermost Part of the Earth, about his coming of age among the now-extinct Selk’nam and Yaghan people.

…

Emphasizing the region’s marine mammals, the museum has inventoried thousands of mammal and bird specimens; among the rarest specimens is a Hector’s beaked whale. Much of this vast collection was found at Bahía San Sebastián, north of Río Grande, where a difference of up to 11km between high and low tide leaves animals stranded. Confirm the museum’s opening hours with the estancia. Reserve well in advance as there are no phones at the estancia, though Skyping may be possible. With advance permission, free primitive camping is allowed at Río Lasifashaj, Río Varela and Río Cambaceres. Harberton is 85km east of Ushuaia via RN 3 and rough RC-j, a 1½- to two-hour drive one way. In Ushuaia, shuttles leave from the base of 25 de Mayo at Av Maipú at 9am, returning around 3pm.

Robot Futures
by Illah Reza Nourbakhsh
Published 1 Mar 2013

Beingthere and not-being-there will become a blurred distinction; just where we are at any given point in time will have less meaning than ever before in our cultural experience. The excitement 80 Chapter 4 and anxiety of this new mode of physicality is wrapped up in the reach we will have. Unlike Skype, Face Time, and all other communication portals that place an image and audio source on the table or in a pocket, this time the space traveler will jump off the table, out of the pocket, and push back on the distant world with his own volition, sharing physical space with locals more literally. Three key ingredients combine to offer this blurred physicality in which people may interact with the world: the immersive human interface system, the spatial extension provided by physical robots, and the seamless adjustable autonomy offered on those robots.

Peak Car: The Future of Travel
by David Metz
Published 21 Jan 2014

In Britain, only five per cent of us usually work at home. Video‑conferencing has also made only a small impact as yet, although there is substantial potential for growth, taking advantage of the increasing availability of high quality hardware for business meetings and of low cost Internet‑based communication such as Skype. The question is whether this is likely to affect the amount of travel. To what extent can remote contact substitute for meeting face‑to‑face? Or perhaps ease of communication helps people build bigger networks of friends and colleagues with whom they’ll want to meet with when they can, not least for informal contact over food and drink to cultivate understanding and trust.

Lonely Planet Pocket Bruges & Brussels
by Lonely Planet and Helena Smith
Published 1 Nov 2012

You must dial the area code, even when dialling from within the relevant area. Telephone numbers given in this book include the necessary area codes. Making International and Domestic Calls › Public telephones that accept stored-value phonecards (available from post offices, tele­phone centres, newsstands and retail outlets) are the norm. › You can use Skype to call internationally at internet cafes, and at the computer terminals of some hostels. Useful Numbers › Directory assistance (English-speaking operator) ( 1405) › International dialling code ( 00) › International operator ( 1324) Toilets Public toilets are generally clean and well looked after.

Do Improvise: Less push. More pause. Better results. A new approach to work (and life) (Do Books)
by Poynton, Robert
Published 14 May 2013

It took much longer to type this up than it did to do (even though I type fast). Along the way, in a matter of seconds, I also got two other ideas - from ‘drips’, the idea of a drip ‘campaign’ - regular, small drops of information that put me on the radar of my American friends. From ‘round’, the idea of a Skype round-table session to share learning or client contacts. So if you want to get new ideas, find a way to embrace constraint. Connect or collide constraints of different kinds into your issue. Use whatever you have to hand, from a coffee cup to a sales director or a two-hour deadline. You need enough freedom to question assumptions, but wide-open vistas of possibility are less productive than combining things that normally don’t go together.

Pocket Bruges & Brussels Travel Guide
by Lonely Planet

You must dial the area code, even when dialling from within the relevant area. Telephone numbers given in this book include the necessary area codes. Making International & Domestic Calls APublic telephones that accept stored-value phonecards (available from post offices, telephone centres, newsstands and retail outlets) are the norm. AYou can use Skype to call internationally at internet cafes, and at the computer terminals of some hostels. Useful Numbers Directory assistance (English-speaking operator) 1405 International dialling code 00 International operator 1324 Toilets APublic toilets are generally clean and well looked after.

Dead People Suck: A Guide for Survivors of the Newly Departed
by Laurie Kilmartin
Published 13 Feb 2018

Reading off their social security number, confirming their address. Saying “he died” or “she died,” over and over and over again. You need to be home. ARE YOU AN EMPLOYER? FOUR REASONS TO OFFER FOUR WEEKS OF MORTERNITY LEAVE DYING IS DISTRACTING: Is Facebook making your employees less productive? Try having one of them Skyping with their dying mom during lunch. (And from a cubicle, because it’s never the employee with her own office.) The energy spent ignoring a coworker’s sobs and nose-blowing could be catastrophic for your bottom line. The increase in Kleenex purchasing alone could put you out of business. It’s in your economic self-interest to get that weeper out of the office until his mother is dead and buried.

Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends on It
by Kamal Ravikant
Published 7 Jan 2020

I’d like to gift you a session.” I have no idea what a Theta whatchamacallit is, but I don’t care. When life sends a gift, you accept. “It’s a little out there,” he says. “Are you okay with that?” I spent enough of my life in Northern California. Bring on the woo-woo. Next thing I know, I’m in a Skype session with a blond Swedish woman named Erika in Ubud. She has a centered presence about her, warm and caring. It’s like she glows. Okay, worst case, I get to talk to a nice glowy person. She walks me through her process, asking a series of questions about my beliefs, and something pops out. “They always leave me,” I find myself saying.

Beautiful security
by Andy Oram and John Viega
Published 15 Dec 2009

SECURING ONLINE ADVERTISING: RUSTLERS AND SHERIFFS IN THE NEW WILD WEST 95 $9.99/month—the very opposite of “free” (see Figures 6-4 and 6-5). Or consider an ad promising a “free credit report”—even though the touted service is actually neither free nor a credit report. Other bogus ads try to sell software that’s widely available without charge. Search for “Firefox,” “Skype,” or “Winzip,” and you may stumble into ads attempting to charge for these popular but free programs (see Figure 6-6). These scams fly in the face of decades of consumer protection law. For one thing, not every clause in an agreement is legally enforceable. In particular, material terms must be clear and conspicuous, not buried in fine print.‖ (For example, the FTC successfully challenged deceptive ads that promised ice cream was “98% fat free” when a footnote admitted the products were not low in fat.#) Yet online marketers often think they can promise “free ringtones” or a “free iPod” with a small-type text admitting “details apply.”

…

“Free” ringtones that aren’t FIGURE 6-5. “Unlimited Free” ringtones that actually cost $7.99 ‖ “FTC Advertising Enforcement: Disclosures in Advertising.” http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/workshops/ disclosures/cases/index.html. # Häagen-Dazs Co. 119 F.T.C. 762 (1995). 96 CHAPTER SIX FIGURE 6-6. Charging for Skype and Winzip Fortunately, regulators are beginning to notice. For example, the FTC challenged ValueClick’s deceptive banners and pop ups, which touted claims like “free PS3 for survey” and “select your free plasma TV.” The FTC found that receiving the promised merchandise required a convoluted and nearly impossible maze of sign-ups and trials.

Platform Revolution: How Networked Markets Are Transforming the Economy--And How to Make Them Work for You
by Sangeet Paul Choudary , Marshall W. van Alstyne and Geoffrey G. Parker
Published 27 Mar 2016

As we saw in chapter 7, this helps to explain Apple’s 2012 introduction of Apple Maps in response to the enormous popularity of Google Maps. Some kinds of platforms need still other customized metrics during their maturity phase. These include labor platforms such as Upwork, data platforms such as Thomson Reuters, connection platforms such as Skype, and platforms that connect machines such as GE’s Industrial Internet. Although these are distinct platform types with disparate needs, they all face the challenges of facilitating a core interaction, measuring the drivers of value, and innovating to maintain the platform’s ability to produce significant value for users.

…

, 275 side switching, 26, 198, 299 Siemens, 76, 204, 247, 284 signal-to-noise ratio, 199, 200 sign-up methods, 66, 81–85, 190 Silicon Valley, 16, 76–77, 112, 252–53, 281–82 siloed industries, 176, 178 Singapore, 160–61, 179 single-side strategy, 95–96, 105 single-user feedback loop, 45–46, 100–101 Siri, 147 Sittercity, 47, 122 Skillshare, 4, 96, 111, 122, 124, 212, 265, 266 Skullcandy, 162 Skype, 200–201 small businesses, 72, 276–77 smart grids, 272–74 smart metrics, 201–2 smartphones, 64, 66, 92, 113, 131, 140 Smith, Adam, 280 Snapchat, 217 social losses, 238, 239 social networks, 3, 11, 36, 41–42, 45, 51, 58, 71, 72, 90–91, 92, 95–104, 113–15, 120–21, 131–33, 152, 163, 185, 198, 204, 217, 218, 221, 226, 245, 251–52 software, 33, 52–54, 57, 62–63, 67, 91–92, 95, 125, 136, 137, 143, 151–53, 159, 170, 173–75, 216–17, 219, 254–55, 267, 295 SolarCity, 273 solar panels, 69, 273 Sollecito, Raffaele, 129–30 Sony, 61, 75, 94, 124, 137, 138–39, 178, 211, 240, 246, 259, 270–71 Sony Corp. of America v.

Age of Discovery: Navigating the Risks and Rewards of Our New Renaissance
by Ian Goldin and Chris Kutarna
Published 23 May 2016

These properties have rendered distance, time and the costs of both largely irrelevant to the distribution and exchange of ideas. As recently as 2001 the average long-distance phone call between, say, the US and the UK cost up to $1.75 per minute, and we rationed those minutes accordingly. Today, thanks to digital services like Skype, the cost has fallen by a factor of 100, and we’ve largely ceased to care about it. International call volumes have almost quadrupled since 2001, from 150 billion to about 600 billion minutes.23 The only relevance distance has to a phone call anymore is the hassle of coordinating time zones—which is one reason why asynchronous modes of contact like WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger have taken off.

…

See systemic risk risk-taking, 135, 225, 244 Russia, 66, 78, 84, 260, 262 and life expectancy, 88 and migration, 57, 68 and politics, 22–3, 223, 226 and trade, 24, 43, 49 and urbanization, 54 and World Trade Organization, 24 Savonarola, Girolamo, 203–10, 212, 214–16, 224, 228–9, 261 Savulescu, Julian, 121 Schawinski, Kevin, 148 Schott, Joannes, 17 Schwab, Klaus, 167 Sen, Amartya, 89 September 11, 2001, 4, 166, 207, 219, 227, 242 Servetus, Michael, 108 Sforza, Ludovico, 173–4 Shakespeare, William, 65 shipbuilding, 60–3 Singapore, 63, 96, 96, 98, 180, 193, 248 Skype, 33 slavery and slave trade, 40, 56, 64–5, 92–3, 166 smartphones, 25, 31–2, 136 Smith, Adam, 41 Snowden, Edward, 24 social division, 213–14 protest, 221–5 in the Renaissance, 214–18, 223–4 and risk exposure, 227–31 social media, 4, 65, 112, 138, 145–6, 198, 242, 252, 261 social safety nets, 244 Somalia, 98, 101 South Africa, 23, 64, 76 South Korea, 43, 86 Southern African Development Community (SADC), 25 Southern Common Market (MERCOSUR), 25 Soviet Union, 21–2, 24, 57, 98, 223.

The Blockchain Alternative: Rethinking Macroeconomic Policy and Economic Theory
by Kariappa Bheemaiah
Published 26 Feb 2017

Over the past 30 years, as competition and openness increased, not only did the sector see a myriad of new entrants, but in terms of services offered, it cannot even be compared to what it was before. From the days of dial-up Internet access , the industry has grown to offer free encrypted texts (WhatsApp) and free calls (Skype). The change has not only resulted in creating metrics-saturated, hyper-efficient business models, but it has led to a change in the mindset of society. Ask a teenager to surrender their smartphone for a day and watch the symptoms of a panic attack set in. Thus fragmentation does seem to be the antidote to the current economic malaise .

…

Rather, it provides a top-layer cryptographic escrow system which allows funds to move between ledgers with the help of intermediaries it calls “connectors.” As stated by Ripple CTO Stefan Thomas, “As long as your ledger supports [Interledger], you can participate in a payment and someone will be able to provide liquidity. It can be PayPal, Alipay, bitcoin, bank ledgers or Skype, anywhere people hold balances, they have a ledger” (Rizzo, 2015) Footnotes 1The Advertising Slogan Hall of Fame, sponsored by AdSlogans.com, recognizes excellence and best practice in advertising, identifying the best in branding. 2Ian Richardson played the character Francis Urquhart in the 1990’s while Kevin Spacey, plays the character Frank Underwood today.

The Fifth Domain: Defending Our Country, Our Companies, and Ourselves in the Age of Cyber Threats
by Richard A. Clarke and Robert K. Knake
Published 15 Jul 2019

Meanwhile, corporate players are busy dividing up the internet into commercial enclaves where users log in to a contained world that is curated for them, probably by Facebook or Google. Real names are increasingly mandatory. Even business communications, once the domain of email and its open standard, are moving into proprietary channels such as Slack and Skype. For a brief period, the corporate world did battle with governments. The corporations lost. Early internet companies tried to convince bureaucrats that the internet was an open, flat network and was therefore a “take-it-or-leave-it” proposition. Countries such as France and Germany were told that they could either opt in to the global internet or opt out.

…

We do not know of a good way to be highly confident that your security cameras are secure, but if you’re able to access them via a web browser without entering any username or password, you can probably assume that if somebody really had a reason for wanting to watch what your cameras are picking up, they could probably do so with very little work. If your cameras do use authentication, use the aforementioned best practices for choosing a password. So, what can you do about this? To begin with, tape over the camera (or use a Post-it note) on your laptop or desktop until you want to use it for FaceTime or Skype, or use a sliding webcam cover, which can be found with ease on the internet (and is now ubiquitous in the cybersecurity world). Again, there is little probability that someone is sitting around watching what goes on in your household all day, but if you’re worried regardless, turn the interior cameras off when you get home.

Spineless: The Science of Jellyfish and the Art of Growing a Backbone
by Juli Berwald
Published 14 May 2017

With a list of publications on gelatinous creatures that stretched back to the 1970s and required two generous scroll-downs of my computer screen to reach the oldest articles, she is one of the field’s most knowledgeable and prolific scientists. I asked her for an interview. Jenny was working in Qingdao, China, as a consultant to the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Despite being separated by eleven time zones, we arranged to meet virtually face-to-face using Skype. When she appeared on my computer screen, I saw a no-nonsense woman with matter-of-fact short dark hair and discerning eyes framed by sensible glasses. Our conversation ranged over a broad swath of jelly topics, like what they eat (a lot more fish than most people realize), how bad the sting of Japanese giant jellies is (could be quite bad), and how a North American comb jelly managed to invade seas worldwide (it’s a “formidable predator”).

…

Sato et al., “The Jellyfish Buffet: Jellyfish Enhance Seabird Foraging Opportunities by Concentrating Prey,” Biology Letters 11 (2015). submersibles and remotely operated vehicles (ROVs): Jennifer E. Purcell, “Extension of Methods for Jellyfish and Ctenophore Trophic Ecology to Large-Scale Research,” Hydrobiologia 616 (2011): 23–50. meet virtually face-to-face: I interviewed Jenny Purcell by Skype on April 5, 2012. 2. What’s Your Agenda? conference on jellyfish blooms: There have been five International Jellyfish Bloom Symposia. The first was held in Gulf Shores, Alabama, in 2000; the second, in Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia, in 2007; the third in Mar del Plata, Argentina, in 2010; the fourth in Hiroshima, Japan, in 2013; and the fifth in Barcelona, Spain, in 2016.

Nepal Travel Guide
by Lonely Planet

Private call centres charge around Rs 10 to 40 per minute to most countries. Internet phone calls are cheaper, costing around Rs 10 per minute (calls to mobile phones are often more expensive), but these are only available in Kathmandu and Pokhara. Most internet cafes offer internet phone calls through Skype (www.skype.com) for a couple of rupees per minute on top of their normal internet rates. Local phone calls cost around Rs 5 per minute, with long-distance domestic calls costing around Rs 10 per minute. Out in rural areas you may find yourself using someone’s mobile phone at a public call centre. Mobile Phones Ncell ( 9809005000; www.ncell.com.np) is the most popular and convenient provider.

…

FedEx Offline map Google map ( 4269248; www.fedex.com/np; Kantipath; 9am-6pm Sun-Fri, to 1pm Sat) Telephone You can make international telephone calls from any of the dozens of ‘communication centres’ for around Rs 20 per minute. A public-telephone rank below Or2k offers international calls for Rs 10 per minute to the US or UK. Most internet cafes offer Skype. Ncell Offline map Google map ( 9805554338; www.ncell.com.np; Sherpa Mall, Durbar Marg; 9.30am-7.30pm) is the most convenient central office to get an Ncell SIM card. Tourist Information There are a number of good noticeboards in Thamel that are worth checking for information on apartments, travel and trekking partners, courses and cultural events.

Powerful: Teams, Leaders and the Culture of Freedom and Responsibility
by Patty McCord
Published 9 Jan 2018

Bethany once worked with Reed on filling a director position. They met on a Thursday morning to discuss what type of candidates they were looking for. The next afternoon, Reed sent her an email telling her he had sent messages to twenty prospects he had found on LinkedIn and had gotten three responses. He had also gone ahead and had a Skype session with one of them, really liked him, and wanted to have him come in on Monday. When hiring managers are so engaged, that makes recruiters only all the more competitive. Bethany told me that after she got that message from Reed, she became determined to find someone even better. (We ended up hiring Reed’s guy and Reed gloated about it for years.)

The Rough Guide to South America on a Budget (Travel Guide eBook)
by Rough Guides
Published 1 Jan 2019

You can make direct-dial international calls from most South American phones, apart from remote areas, where calls must be made through an operator. International phone calls are, in general, expensive from South America, so you’re best off trying to buy international calling cards where they exist or using web services such as Skype – most internet cafés are set up with webcams and headsets. Mobile phones If you want to use your mobile phone in South America, check with your phone provider whether it will work abroad, and what the call charges are (beware of amassing a fortune in data charges and use wi-fi wherever possible).

…

Attempting the trip in the rainy season (Nov–March) is not recommended. Communications Most hotels and some restaurants offer free (though generally far from fast) wi-fi. Internet cafés are ubiquitous but connections are often slow. Expect to pay about B$2–6/hr. Calling internationally, the cheapest landline option is via an internet phone service such as Skype. Most mobile users in Bolivia have WhatsApp. There are ENTEL phone centres and Punto Cotel offices in most towns, where you can make local, national and international calls. It may be worth buying an inexpensive mobile phone, or bringing one with you, and getting a Bolivian pay-as-you-go SIM card (chip).

…

Mobile phone numbers are eight digits and start with a 9, 8, 7, 6 or 5; if you’re phoning from a landline, you need to use the prefix “09”. Calls abroad from the numerous centros de llamadas to most European countries and North America cost around CH$150–250/min, although prices vary from area to area. Many internet cafés in Chile are Skype-equipped. Alternatively, get an inexpensive Chilean SIM card for an “unlocked” mobile phone; to do this, annoyingly, you now need to register (for free) online – visit multibanda.cl for more information. Overseas mail sent from any part of Chile via Correos de Chile, the national postal service, generally takes two or three weeks to reach its destination.

Machine, Platform, Crowd: Harnessing Our Digital Future
by Andrew McAfee and Erik Brynjolfsson
Published 26 Jun 2017

He came across a video uploaded to YouTube earlier that year by Ivan Owen, a “mechanical special effects artist” who had built a giant metal extension of his own hand as part of a costume for a “steampunk” convention.§§ Although separated by more than 10,000 miles, Van As and Owen collaborated via e-mail and Skype to build a functional prosthetic finger. Their work was greatly accelerated when the 3D printer company MakerBot donated two of its desktop Replicator 2 machines to the effort. These enabled the makers to iterate and generate prototypes much more quickly, and eventually to come up with working mechanical digits for Van As.

…

accessed February 8, 2017, http://www.synbioproject.org/topics/synbio101/definition. 272 The campaign attracted over $70,000: Indiegogo, “DIY CRISPR Kits, Learn Modern Science by Doing,” accessed February 8, 2017, https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/diy-crispr-kits-learn-modern-science-by-doing#. 272 “I played God”: Andrew Tarantola, “I Played God with The Odin’s DIY CRISPR Kit,” Engadget, June 30, 2016, https://www.engadget.com/2016/06/30/i-played-god-with-the-odins-diy-crispr-kit. 272 Harper’s Open Agriculture Initiative: Open Agriculture Initiative, “Farming for the Future,” accessed February 8, 2017, http://openag.media.mit.edu. 272 “permissionless innovation”: Adam Thierer, Permissionless Innovation: The Continuing Case for Comprehensive Technological Freedom (Arlington, VA: Mercatus Center, 2014), section 1.02. 273 He came across a video: “Large Mechanical Hand,” YouTube, April 2, 2011, 0:48, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEHiAItVdiw. 273 Van As and Owen collaborated via email and Skype: Robert F. Graboyes, “A Hand for Innovation—Ivan Owen, Jon Schull and e-NABLE,” InsideSources, October 19, 2016, http://www.insidesources.com/a-hand-for-innovation-ivan-owen-jon-schull-and-e-nable. 273 “Corporal Coles could pick up a button”: eHive, “Corporal Coles Prosthetic Hand; Robert Norman; 1845; AR#1723,” accessed February 8, 2017, https://ehive.com/collections/5254/objects/387275/corporal-coles-prosthetic-hand. 274 “The cost of a workable prosthetic”: Graboyes, “Hand for Innovation.”

When Computers Can Think: The Artificial Intelligence Singularity
by Anthony Berglas , William Black , Samantha Thalind , Max Scratchmann and Michelle Estes
Published 28 Feb 2015

Technology billionaire Elon Musk recently warned that research into artificial intelligence was “summoning the devil” and that artificial intelligence is our biggest existential threat. World famous physicist Stephen Hawking expressed his concerns that “the development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race.”. Microsoft founder Bill Gates has expressed concern. Jaan Tallinn, co-founder of Skype, commented “I wish this was science fiction, but I know that it is not”. In January 2015 many of the worlds leading researchers into artificial intelligence signed a letter written by the Future of life institute warning of the dangers and promoting research so that “our AI systems (must) do what we want them to do”. 

…

Microsoft founder Bill Gates said that at first semi-intelligent machines will perform a lot of tasks, but a few decades after that strong intelligence will be a concern. “I do not understand why some people are not concerned.” Other noteworthy commentators include Bill Joy, ex Chief Scientist at Sun Microsystems who wrote a paper “Why the future does not need us”. Jaan Tallinn, co-founder of Skype, commented “I wish this was science fiction, but I know that it is not”. Google chief executive Eric Schmidt said fears over artificial intelligence and robots replacing humans are “misguided”. He refers to the introduction of disruptive technologies during the industrial revolution that eventually led to our current high standard of living.

Machines of Loving Grace: The Quest for Common Ground Between Humans and Robots
by John Markoff
Published 24 Aug 2015

In college, Cheyer had begun visualizing goals clearly and then systematically working to achieve them. One day just as they were getting started he wandered into an Apple Store and saw posters with an array of colorfully crafted icons representing the most popular iPhone applications. All of the powerful software companies were there: Google, Pandora, Skype. He focused on the advertising display and said to himself: “Someday Siri is going to have its icon right here on the wall of an Apple Store! I can picture it and I’m going to make this happen.” They went to work. In Gruber’s view, the team was a perfect mix. Cheyer was a world-class engineer, Kittlaus was a great showman, and Gruber was someone who could build high-technology demos that wowed audiences.

…

“Eventually, I think human extinction will probably occur, and technology will likely play a part in this.”11 For an artificial intelligence researcher who had just reaped hundreds of millions of dollars, it was an odd position to take. If someone believes that technology will likely evolve to destroy humankind, what could motivate them to continue developing that same technology? At the end of 2014, the 2009 AI meeting at Asilomar was reprised when a new group of AI researchers, funded by one of the Skype founders, met in Puerto Rico to again consider how to make their field safe. Despite a new round of alarming statements about AI dangers from luminaries such as Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking, the attendees wrote an open letter that notably fell short of the call to action that had been the result of the original 1975 Asilomar biotechnology meeting.

This Machine Kills Secrets: Julian Assange, the Cypherpunks, and Their Fight to Empower Whistleblowers
by Andy Greenberg
Published 12 Sep 2012

But Shirky’s analogy remains useful: Just as governments may have spied on each other’s citizens for the last sixty years, citizens are now spying on each other’s governments. “What we’re seeing is a pattern of transnational leaking,” he told the conference. “WikiLeaks is the first media outlet that is genuinely multihomed. There is no one country’s laws that govern how WikiLeaks operates.” Just minutes before, Birgitta Jónsdóttir had spoken to the same crowd via Skype, unable to travel to the United States for fear that her association with WikiLeaks would tempt U.S. authorities to keep her for questioning in its unfolding investigation. In her virtual talk, she outlined her plan for the Icelandic Modern Media Initiative and how she had tasked four ministries of the Icelandic government with changing thirteen laws to make Iceland the most liberated media nation in the world.

…

He began to monitor its leaks closely, and even experimented with uploading an unverified document that a source had sent him, in the hopes that this mysterious group might be able to authenticate it and publish it to a global audience. The document, written in Bulgarian, never surfaced on the site. It was only after the Cablegate release that Tchobanov began to consider the full power of WikiLeaks’ model—not just to protect journalism, but potentially to advance it. In a Skype chat with a few other journalists and technologists who worked on and off with Bivol, they proposed the idea of a leaking site that would publish locally focused documents that WikiLeaks wouldn’t, a leaking syringe targeted at the Balkans and its neighbors rather than a hose aimed at the world at large.

Giving the Devil His Due: Reflections of a Scientific Humanist
by Michael Shermer
Published 8 Apr 2020

Cockell in a series of meetings with scientists and scholars from varied fields in two conference proceedings titled Human Governance Beyond Earth and The Meaning of Liberty Beyond Earth. To learn more about what to do when the most basic necessities of life – oxygen, water, and food – are under the control of one company (SpaceX?) or one government (the US of Mars?), I spoke with Dr. Cockell by Skype, starting with the observation that Earthlings colonizing Mars will be nothing like Europeans colonizing North America.6 “Space is an inherently tyranny-prone environment,” Cockell told me. “You are living in an environment where the oxygen you breathe is being produced by a machine.” On Earth, he notes, governments can rob their people of food and water, “but they can’t take away your air, so you can run off into a forest and plan revolution, and you can get your friends together and you can try to overthrow a government.”

…

The real magicians are the scientists who have worked this all out. Quite by chance, my Scientific American column came out the same week that the popular podcaster Joe Rogan hosted a debate between me and Graham, along with his colleague Randall Carlson, plus our hand-selected “phone-a-friend” Skyped-in guests (geologist Marc Defant for me, planetary scientist Malcolm LeCompte for Hancock and Carlson). It was a three-hour-and-thirty-five-minute marathon that, at the time of this writing, many millions of people have heard or viewed on the usual podcast platforms. In preparation for the debate, I put together half a dozen reasons why alternative archaeologists in general, and Graham Hancock in particular, have failed to convince most scientists and archaeologists to abandon the theory about the timeline of the development of civilization over the past 13,000 years and to embrace his theory of an ancient lost advanced civilization dating back tens of thousands, perhaps even hundreds of thousands of years.

User Friendly: How the Hidden Rules of Design Are Changing the Way We Live, Work & Play
by Cliff Kuang and Robert Fabricant
Published 7 Nov 2019

Working with the blind yielded a smoother registration process for new Windows users, with clearer and better-timed, more concise user prompts; working with the blind, and screen-reader technology, yielded a captioning tool for PowerPoint presentations that would translate for the presenter in real time. That project, in turn, morphed and melded into a retooling of Skype that provided real-time captioning—then real-time language translation, so that people could hold conference calls without speaking each other’s language. In each case, making technology more assistive spawned innovations whose scope was far greater than the initial germ. This brings to mind Pellegrino Turri and his typewriter, Alexander Graham Bell and his telephone, and Vint Cerf and email—these were inventors who all started with people with disabilities in mind but eventually helped us all.

…

B., 64 Friedman, Jon, 209 Frog Design, 9, 24, 164, 175, 177, 244, 286, 288, 304, 306, 308, 309, 312, 315, 317, 318, 326, 328, 340, 345, 369n2, 370n11 Fukasawa, Naoto, 304 Fuller, Buckminster, 232 Fulton Suri, Jane, 171–73, 175–81, 190, 294, 310, 316, 334, 339; Thoughtless Acts, 179, 297 fuseproject, 107 Futures Wheel, 275 Gabler, Neal, 220 gambling, 253; slot machines, 253–56, 260 gaming, 197–98, 205–206 Gates Foundation, 182, 288 Gchat, 250 General Data Protection Regulation, 346–47 General Motors, 65, 334 German Luftwaffe, 32, 42 Germany, 61 Gillespie, Bo, 51–55, 71 Gillette, 154–55 Glaser, Erik, 113–14, 115, 125 Glaser, Milton, 94 Gmail, 163, 219, 227, 255 Goldberg, Adele, 142 Google, 148, 191, 227, 239, 240, 243, 259, 261, 269, 270, 294, 313, 342; Assistant, 122; Drive, 250; Duplex, 209–10; Fuchsia, 151–52; Gchat, 250; Glass, 304, 345–46; Gmail, 163, 219, 227, 255; Lens, 43–44; Maps, 219, 313, 369n6; YouTube, 243 Grand Tour, 307 graphical user interface, 143, 145, 146, 148 Great Depression, 65, 68–70, 86, 93 Greek philosophy, 33 Grice, Paul, 111–12 GRID Compass, 175–76, 339 Grudin, Jonathan, 370n14 hacks, 316 hairdressers, 306–307 Hal 9000, 105, 117 hand tremors, 33 Harari, Yuval Noah, 156 Haraway, Donna, 81 Harford, Tim, 35 Harmony of the Seas, 230 Harris, Tristan, 255, 274 Hauser, Ed, 20–21, 351n31 Hay, Steph, 211–12 health care, 287, 288, 303–304, 306; blood sample testing, 183–84; costs of, 34; hairdressers and, 306–307; HIV testing and medication, 305, 310, 329; infant, 324–25; medical appliances, 69 heart attacks, 139 Hegelian dialectic, 292 help button (Ripple device), 53–55, 80, 117, 204 Her, 194–96, 213, 233, 341, 345 Hertzfeld, Andy, 141–42 Herzberg, Elaine, 121 hierarchy of desires, 274 Hitachi Design Center, 325 HIV, 305, 310, 329 Holachef, 316–17 Holmes, Kat, 193–95, 199, 205, 207, 208, 312 home appliances, 63, 117, 230, 333, 370n16 home economics, 63, 68, 334 homemaking, 63–64, 285–86 Home Shopping Network, 54 Honeywell Round thermostat, 92, 93, 336, 343 Hooked (Eyal), 258–59 Hoover, Herbert, 61–62 Horn, Bruce, 140, 143–44 horseless carriage metaphor, 318 horse metaphor, 116, 117, 118, 126, 144 hotels, 323 Hult Prize, 280–81 human-centered design, 72, 182, 184, 272, 288 humaneness, 196, 240 human engineering, 81 human factors, 87, 95 human limitations, 95–96 human-to-human interactions, 195, 240 human-to-thing interactions, 95, 240 Human Use of Human Beings, The: Cybernetics and Society (Wiener), 336 IBM, 5–8, 145, 170, 236, 338 iCloud, 351n32 IDEO, 24, 136, 139, 164, 170, 171, 175–77, 180–83, 202, 283, 288, 297, 304, 339, 340, 343 If This Then That (IFTTT), 298–99 iMac, 5, 23, 149 immigrants, 63 in-box, 134 India, 192, 193; dabbawalas in, 316–17, 370n8; GP Block Pitampura in Delhi, 129–30, 132; internet and, 129–30, 132, 147; Khushi Baby in, 324–25 Indonesia, 319 industrial design, 55, 58–59, 61, 65, 71–72, 87, 89–90, 93–94; Dreyfuss and, 59, 67–68, 93; streamlined aesthetic in, 70 Industrial Design, 94 industrial revolution, 292 inevitability, 268, 299 innovation, 163–64, 168, 171, 181–82, 184–85, 200, 226–27 Instagram, 36–37, 134, 240, 255, 259, 261; Stories, 37, 346 insurance companies, 287 interfaces, 145; graphical user interface, 143, 145, 146, 148 internet, 34, 130–33, 199, 200, 208, 292; in China, 192–93; commerce on, 34–35; Google Lens and, 44; in India, 129–30, 132, 147; mental models and, 131; metaphors and, 132, 134–35 Internet of Things, 297 Internet.org, 131 Intuit, 325–26 intuition, 92, 93, 269 iPad, 5, 296 iPhone, 5, 23, 43, 127, 145–47, 149, 191, 216, 228, 259, 274, 289–90, 291, 296, 313, 327, 338, 343 iPod, 5, 23, 145, 338, 342–43, 346 iTunes, 146, 343 Ive, Jony, 23, 149, 299, 338, 342 Jakob’s law, 318 JetBlue, 309 jobs, 44–45 Jobs, Steve, 3–4, 7, 139–41, 145, 149, 157, 183, 190, 317, 340, 343 Joe and Josephine, 88–89, 92, 174, 176, 178, 185, 337 John Deere, 72 Johnson, Mark, 133, 152, 153 Johnstone, Dusty, 52–55, 352n4 Jonze, Spike, 194, 195, 341, 345 jukeboxes, 318 Jungen, Michael, 234 Kahneman, Daniel, 96, 350n25 Kant, Immanuel, 57 Kare, Susan, 144 Kay, Alan, 142 Kelley, David, 169–71, 177, 180–83 Kelly, Max, 247 Kennedy, Pagan, 183–84 Kenya, 147–48, 192, 281–85; Nairobi, 281, 283, 284, 315 Khushi Baby, 324–25 KitchenAid, 64 kitchens, 90, 117, 172–73, 353n39 Knowledge Illusion, The: Why We Never Think Alone (Sloman and Fernbach), 271 Kodak, 332–33, 336 Koklys, Audra, 211–12 Kolbert, Elizabeth, 271 Kosinski, Michal, 265–67, 276–77 Krieger, Mike, 259 Krippendorff, Klaus, 132 Kubrick, Stanley, 105 Ladies’ Home Journal, 63 Lakoff, George, 133, 152, 153, 317 Land, Edwin, 117, 336 Lang, Fritz, 334–35, 362n8 language, 122–23 Lathrop, Brian, 103–106, 110, 112, 115–18, 125, 126, 144 lawn mowers, 171–73, 178, 339 Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, 164 leaf metaphor, 137–39, 144 Le Corbusier, 62, 334 Leonardo da Vinci, 89 “L’Esprit Nouveau,” 62, 334 Liedtka, Jeanne, 170 Life, 167 Loewy, Raymond, 70, 87, 88, 164, 200–202, 313 logic, 310; inner, exposing, 319–22 Louis XV armchair, 332 Lubs, Dietrich, 46 Lyft, 260 Mace, Ron, 202 machine-made goods, 60–61 “Machines Cannot Fight Alone” (Stevens), 78–79 Maclean, Allan, 370n14 Macy’s, 66–67, 165 Mad Men, 168 Madrigal, Alexis, 255 Magic Bus Ticketing, 283–86 “makeshift,” coining of term, 332, 352n14 Margolis, Michael, 313 marketing-led organizations, 307 markets of one, 242–43 Markoff, John, 189 Marshall Field’s, 150 Marshall Plan, 6 Maslow, Abraham, 274 mass production, 60–64, 90 Matrix, The, 125, 126, 360n31 Mayo Clinic, 182; “Jack and Jill” consultation rooms of, 362n24 McCulloch, Warren, 36 McKim, Bob, 164–70, 174, 180, 181, 190 McKinsey & Company, 170 meal delivery, 316–17, 370n8 Measure of Man, The (Dreyfuss and Tilley), 92, 337, 341 Meikle, Jeffrey L., 69 memory: short-term, 322; sketching how something works from, 321 mental models, 31, 40–41, 105, 119, 120, 180, 288, 297, 320–22, 351n32; cognitive load and, 322; digital assistants and, 124; internet and, 131; metaphors and, 133 metaphors, 84, 124, 132–35, 139, 144–45, 147, 154, 155, 158, 195, 203, 295, 297, 299, 358n22; apps and, 149–52; brain and, 152–53; coach, 136–39; in defibrillator design, 139; desktop, 139–40, 143, 144, 146–47; dominant, in product categories, 317–18; embodied, 152–54; and Facebook in Kenya, 147–48; horse, 116, 117, 118, 126, 144; horseless carriage, 318; in-box, 134; internet and, 132, 134–35; ladder of, 147, 193, 317–19; leaf, on hybrid car dashboards, 137–39, 144; Macintosh OS and, 144; mental models and, 133; news feed, 134, 318; personal assistant, 189; personification, 155–57; time as money, 133–34, 135; visual, in Apple products, 148–49, 210 Metaphors We Live By (Lakoff and Johnson), 133, 152, 153 MetroCard, 311 Metropolis, 334–35, 362n8 Metropolitan Edison, 39 Metropolitan Museum of Art, 60 Mic, 260 microdermabrasion device, 328 Microsoft, 145, 191, 193–95, 199, 202, 205–206, 208, 370n14; Cortana, 194, 208; PowerPoint, 208–209; Visual Basic, 361n22; Word, Clippy in, 112; Xbox, 197, 205–206 middle class, 63, 290 Miller, George, 322, 337 mind, 95–96 Minority Report, 233, 236 Minsky, Marvin, 189–90 misinformation, 262, 263, 289 MIT, 165–67, 189, 337; Media Lab, 154, 155 Mob, the, 39 mobile phones, 368n2; Magic Bus Ticketing and, 283–86; see also smartphones mode confusion, 144 modernism, 157, 334 Moggridge, Bill, 175–78, 180–81, 339, 361n21 mood boards, 155 Moore, Patricia, 200–202, 313, 340, 341 Morris, William, 332, 352n14 Moskovitz, Dustin, 248 Mother of All Demos, 187–90, 338 Mothersill, Philippa, 154–57 motivations, 46, 259, 344 movies, 230–31, 243, 254, 363n11 M-Pesa, 284, 368n2 Münsterberg, Hugo, 81–82 Myanmar, 263 Nadella, Satya, 202 Nairobi, 281, 283, 284, 315 Nancy, 272–73 NASA, 104, 115–16, 337 Nass, Clifford, 108–10, 112, 211, 258 National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), 121, 122 navigability, 31 Navy, U.S., 87 Neeleman, David, 309 Nespresso, 117 Nest, 92, 336, 344–45 Netflix, 230–31, 260, 351n33 neural networks, 36, 44 neuroscience, 96 Newby, Paul, 342 news feeds, 134, 247, 248, 318 New York, 94 New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation, 303 New York City subway system, 311 New Yorker, The, 67–68 New York Times, The, 110, 183, 225, 259, 263 Nielsen, Jakob, 318 911 emergency calls, 51–53, 71; Ripple device as alternative to, 53–55, 80, 117, 204 Nokia, 308 Norman, Donald, 22–26, 45–46, 86, 95, 96, 103, 112, 124, 272, 287, 302, 318, 326, 334; at Apple, 22–23; The Design of Everyday Things, 22, 312, 339, 340; Emotional Design, 326, 340; Three Mile Island and, 24–25, 30, 38, 338–39 Nostradamus, 198 Noyes, Eliot, 8 nuclear radiation exposure, 19–20 nuclear reactors, 23, 25, 26, 29, 44, 45, 80, 113; see also Three Mile Island nuclear weapons, 100, 164, 167, 261, 291; missile warning, 121–22 Nuttall, Mike, 177 obsolescence, artificial, 69 Omondi, Wycliffe Onyango, 281–85 “On Exactitude in Science,” 91–92 operations research, 6 Oppenheimer, Robert, 247, 261 organized crime, 39 Ossete, Leslie Saholy, 279–85 OXO peeler, 202–203, 341 Padgett, John, 217, 221–22, 226, 228–32, 234, 235, 237–39, 242, 312, 323–24, 345 Page, Larry, 342 paintbrushes, 358n22 Panama-Pacific Exposition, 60 Papanek, Victor, 290 Patnaik, Dev, 307 Pattison, Mary, 63, 64 Pearl, 50 Pearlman, Leah, 247–49, 262, 292, 344 peeler, OXO, 202–203, 341 Peloton, 316 personality, 265–67 personalization, 231, 239, 245; Carnival’s Ocean Medallion and Personal Genome, 233–39, 268, 296; Disney’s MagicBand and MyMagic+, 217–29, 237, 243–44, 288, 304, 317, 345 personas, 178, 207, 261, 341 personification, 155–57 personnel research, 81 Piano, Renzo, 157 pilots: crashes of, 77, 81–85, 102–103, 104, 106, 121, 257; lost and confused, 75–78, 86, 87, 144; “pilot error” concept, 81, 83, 102–103, 121, 335 Pittman, Matthew, 260 Pitts, Walter, 36 Pixar, 211 Plunkett, Joseph, 57–58 Poland, 276 Polaroid camera, 117, 336, 342 politeness, 108–10, 112, 113, 239–40, 258; driverless cars and, 125, 126 Porter, Joshua, 329 postmodernism, 157–58 pottery making, 90 PowerPoint, 208–209 Princess Cruises, 230; see also Carnival Cruise Line Princess phone, 337, 371n21 Principles of Scientific Management, The (Taylor), 333 prototypes, 165, 180–82 psychologically natural controls, 84, 85; scrolling, 359n25 psychophysics, 84, 95 purpose, 33 radar, 32, 76–79, 83, 87 radio, 76, 77, 79, 84–85 Rams, Dieter, 46, 90, 338, 343, 370n17 Rand, Paul, 8 Raskin, Jef, 140, 141 Ratzlaff, Cordell, 317 razors, disposable, 154–55, 157 Read, Max, 262 Reddit, 249 Reeves, Byron, 110 Regal Princess, 229–30, 236 Renuka, 130–33, 147, 315 rewards, variable, 254, 255, 259 Ripple help button, 53–55, 80, 117, 204 RKO theater, 55–56, 92, 173–74, 335 robots, 115, 117; see also artificial intelligence (AI) Rogers, Richard, 157 Rohingya, 263 Rolls, Charles, 332 Rosenstein, Justin, 247–51, 262, 274, 291–92, 344 Russia, 201, 250, 313 Saarinen, Eero, 5, 8 Saproo, Sameer, 125–27 Sarajevo, 49–50, 54 savings accounts, 319 Scheiber, Noam, 259 Scheimann, Fred, 15–18 Schiller, Phil, 342 Schmidt, Eric, 191 Schon, Donald, 358n22 Schüll, Natasha, 255 Schulze-Mittendorff, Walter, 334–35 Schwartz, Barry, 231 science, 45 scientific management, 63, 333 Scott, Walter Dill, 81 scrolling direction, 359n25 Sears, 66, 69, 335 self-driving cars, see cars, self-driving Selfridge, Harry Gordon, 150, 333 self-service checkouts, 303 semiconductors, 168, 175 senses, 84 sewing machine, 72 sexual assault, 51–55, 204, 352n4 Sheehan, Kim, 260 Sholes, Christopher Latham, 332 Shum, Albert, 202 Silicon Valley, 3, 168, 175, 177, 180, 182, 221, 229, 257–59, 270, 291–92, 340 Simpsons, The, 161–62, 164, 180 Singapore, 24 Siri, 122, 151, 190–91, 193, 195, 208, 312 Sittig, Aaron, 344 skeuomorphism, 148, 202, 210 Skinner, B. F., 251–56, 258, 261, 268, 335 Skinner box, 252–56, 261, 268, 270, 312, 335 Skype, 205 slaughterhouses, 60 Sloman, Steven, 271 slot machines, 253–56, 260 Smalltalk, 140–44 Smart Design, 138, 164, 174, 175, 177, 202, 305, 343 smartphones, 26–27, 44, 45, 80, 124, 132, 151, 207, 219, 236, 242, 256, 257, 268, 271, 287, 294–95, 311; blind people and, 203–204; in China, 191–93; iPhone, 5, 23, 43, 127, 145–47, 149, 191, 216, 228, 259, 274, 289–90, 291, 296, 313, 327, 338, 343; Magic Bus Ticketing and, 283–86; phone-call icon on, 91 Smith, Brad, 325–26 Snapchat, 36, 37, 260, 346 social media, 240–42, 263, 287, 292–93 social mores, 108, 112, 114, 240, 264 social progress: consumption as, 55, 65, 90, 175; design as, 68–70, 271, 290 Society for Ethical Culture, 57 Sony Walkman, 242, 342 Space Shuttle, 175 specialization, 86 Sri Lanka, 263 stage design, 55–58 Staggs, Tom, 223–24, 226, 227 standardization, 84 Stanford Research Institute (SRI), 188, 190, 338 Stanford University, 104, 164, 165, 168, 180–82, 258, 344; d.school, 181–82, 330 Starbucks, 325 State Department, 201 Stein, Robby, 37 Stevens, S.

Pauline Frommer's London: Spend Less, See More
by Jason Cochran
Published 5 Feb 2007

The English send well over a million text messages a month; they know, as you should, that for quick communications, they’re cheaper than even a local call. If you’ll be traveling with a laptop and you’ll have broadband Web access where you’re staying (two big “ifs”), consider downloading a free Internet phone service such as Skype (www.skype.com), which will allow free calls to anyone who also has the program, worldwide. You’ll have the option of being able to buy cheap credits enabling you to make phone calls to regular phones using your computer. Using a USB headset gives you the best call quality (and call privacy), but that’s one more thing to pack.

…

The most easterly of the bunch, so requiring a slightly longer commute to town, the Premier Inn London Docklands (ExCeL) (Royal Victoria Dock, E16; % 0870/ 0238-3322; Tube: Prince Regent DLR) also sports lower prices than any of its in-town brethren: £67 Fridays and Saturdays and £86 weekdays. £ 07_308691-ch03.qxp 82 12/23/08 Chapter 3 9:16 PM Page 82 Accommodations, Both Standard & Not Staying Web Connected in Your Room These days, even budget travelers are packing their laptops and keeping in touch with e-mail and free Internet-based phone calls such as Skype. (Hide those computers under your dirty socks, though, because most lowcost hotels don’t have in-room safes.) You can’t judge Web availability by the room rate. About 50% of inns currently offer some kind of in-room high-speed Web access, almost always for free. Many more provide free service on terminals in their lobbies, and a few charge by the minute for lobby use.

Bit by Bit: How P2P Is Freeing the World
by Jeffrey Tucker
Published 7 Jan 2015

I mean, you are probably right, but let’s just say that I think you made this whole thing up. I can dispute this in front of the judge?” “Yes, sir, you may. Just see the court date.” “And where is this court?” “Right here in this county.” Of course I had to explain to him that I was headed to the airport and that I live 1,000 miles away. I asked whether I could use Skype or Google Hangout to attend my hearing. “I’m sorry, sir, you have to attend in person.” I continued on: “So I have to drive to Atlanta, catch a flight to Dallas, rent a car and drive 100 miles south on some particular date in order to have my rights realized? You do understand that this would cost me probably two days of work and as much as $1,000?”

Frommer's Denver, Boulder & Colorado Springs
by Eric Peterson
Published 1 Jan 2005

To see where GSM phones work in the U.S., check out www.t-mobile.com/coverage. And you may or may not be able to send SMS (text messaging) home. VOICE-OVER INTERNET PROTOCOL (VOIP) If you have Internet access while traveling, consider a broadband-based telephone service (in technical terms, Voice over Internet protocol, or VoIP) such as Skype (www.skype.com) or Vonage (www.vonage. com), which allow you to make free international calls from your laptop or in a cybercafe. Neither service requires the people you’re calling to also have that service (though there are fees if they do not). Check the websites for details. Online Traveler’s Toolbox Veteran travelers usually carry some essential items to make their trips easier.

The One Device: The Secret History of the iPhone
by Brian Merchant
Published 19 Jun 2017

The CMOS, meanwhile, is in the iPhone and has beaten out the CCD as the go-to technology for phone cameras today. You can’t talk about iPhone cameras without talking about selfies. FaceTime video streaming, which Bilbrey’s algorithms still help de-clutter, was launched as a key feature of the iPhone 4 and would join Skype and Google Hangouts as burgeoning videoconferencing apps. Apple placed the FaceTime camera on the front side of the phone, pointed toward the user, to enable the feature, which had the added effect of making it well-designed for taking selfies. Selfies are as old as cameras themselves (even older, if you count painted self-portraits).

…

When I ask him about Apple and the iPhone, his response is swift: “We don’t blame Apple. We blame Foxconn.” When I ask them if they would consider working at Foxconn again if the conditions improved, the response is equally blunt. “You can’t change anything,” Xu says. “It will never change.” That may not be merely a gut feeling. One night in Shenzhen, I set up a Skype interview with Li Qiang, the executive director of China Labor Watch. Li himself was a former Foxconn worker; he became a labor organizer and an advocate for better working conditions after living through the horrors at the company. He fled the country and now runs CLW out of New York City. Li had high hopes for the chance at reform in the wake of the suicide epidemic and the resulting media spotlight.

Frommer's Kauai
by Jeanette Foster
Published 27 Feb 2004

There are plenty of package deals available, including family plans, discounted senior rates, and room and car package deals. 73 1 2 S TAY I N G CO N N E C T E D TELEPHONES information, dial 1, then the appropriate area code and 555-1212. CELLPHONES VOICEOVER INTERNET PROTOCOL VOIP If you have Web access while traveling, you might consider a broadband-based telephone service (in technical terms, Voice-over Internet Protocol, or VoIP) such as Skype (www.skype.com) or Vonage (www.vonage.com), which allows you to make free international calls if you use their services from your laptop or in a 3 S TAY I N G CO N N E C T E D Just because your cellphone works at home doesn’t mean it’ll work in Kauai (thanks to our nation’s fragmented cellphone system).

Jennifer Morgue
by Stross, Charles
Published 12 Jan 2006

I stretch in place, try to massage the crick out of the side of my neck, and yawn. Then I wake up my laptop. Almost immediately the Skype window starts flashing for attention. You have voice mail, it says. Voice mail? Hell, yes — in this Brave New World there's no escape from the internet, even at 40,000 feet. I yawn again and plug in my headset, trying to shake off the influence of Ramona's distantly sensed repose. I glance at the screen. It's Mo, and she's on Skype, too, so I place a call. "Bob?" Her voice crackles a little — the signal is being bounced via satellite to the plane and the latency is scary.

The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires
by Tim Wu
Published 2 Nov 2010

The devices, in a similar way, are also “telecom-friendly”: designed to operate with one carrier only, they reinforce the favored telephone company’s power—for a price. The veto that Apple maintains over functionality and specific applications is not notional, but one wielded in service of its partnerships’ interests. The first major exercise was in blocking Skype, the voice-over-IP firm whose software lets users call each other over the Internet for free, eating into AT&T’s long distance margins. Later, during the summer of 2009, Apple bodychecked an application written for the iPhone by Google. The product, named “Google Voice,” was designed to make a single phone number, when dialed, ring on all one’s phones at once.

…

Consider all the mischief that the information firms could undertake but choose to eschew. Cable operators, though not obliged by law to do so, generally carry channels that a cruder calculus would motivate them to block. Likewise, Apple, the maker of the iPhone, has been, in effect, shamed into allowing apps, such as Skype or Line2, that compete with its own services. Meanwhile Verizon, a born-and-bred Baby Bell, gains public applause by publicly declaring itself an “open” company. And Google, one of the great corporate hegemons of our time, does likewise under its banner “Don’t Be Evil.” Whatever its missteps and shortcomings, that firm has, so far, done more than any other to promote what we have been describing as a constitutional policy of separations for the information industry.

The Death of Money: The Coming Collapse of the International Monetary System
by James Rickards
Published 7 Apr 2014

Reporting on Estonia in 2012, CNBC’s Paul Ames writes, “Shoppers throng Nordic design shops and cool new restaurants in Tallinn, the medieval capital, and cutting-edge tech firms complain they can’t find people to fill their job vacancies.” The BELLs have also made good use of their human capital and a relatively well-educated workforce. Estonia in particular has become a high-tech hub centered on its most successful company, Skype, which has more than four hundred employees in a worker-friendly campus near Tallinn. The New York Times published a story on Latvia in 2013 that accurately captured the trajectory of steep collapse and strong recovery that used to be typical of business cycles but is now mostly avoided by Western governments at the expense of long-term growth: When a credit-fueled economic boom turned to bust in this tiny Baltic nation in 2008, Didzis Krumins, who ran a small architectural company, fired his staff . . . and then shut down the business.

…

Belen, 183 Schmidt, Helmut, 271–72 Schumann, Robert, 116 Schwartz, Anna, 84 Schwarzman, Stephen A., 51–52 Scotland, 136 Second Bank of the United States, 199 self-organized criticality, 270 Serbia, 136 Seven Years War, 115 shadow finance system, in China, 101–4 shadow gold standard, 236 Shafik, Nemat, 194–95 Shakespeare, William, 67, 88 Shamoon digital virus, 60 Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), 150–52 Shapiro, Mary, 59 Shinohara, Naoyuki, 194–95 sight accounts, in gold, 276 signal amplification, 22 in stock trading, 23 terrorist insider trading and, 24, 25, 26, 27 Skype, 144 small-and-medium-sized (SME) lending, 79–80 Smith, Adam, 70, 71, 72, 87, 218, 255 Snowden, Edward, 39, 54, 149 social disorder, 294–95 solidus, 114 Solyndra, 123 Sony, 82 Sorkin, Andrew Ross, 51 Sorman, Guy, 132 Soros, George, 45, 292 sou, 114 sound-dollar policy, 118, 176–77, 210, 211 South Africa, 139, 235.

Virtual Competition
by Ariel Ezrachi and Maurice E. Stucke
Published 30 Nov 2016

Consequently, the debate among some neoclassical economists is whether and when the government should intervene in certain markets. Dynamic Markets Will Correct Themselves Many online industries are dynamic and fast-growing. The European Commission, for example, took account of the dynamic market characteristics when it approved Microsoft’s acquisition of Skype. In upholding the Commission’s decision, the General Court observed that the consumer communications sector was “a recent and fast-growing sector which is characterised by short innovation cycles in which large market shares may turn out to be ephemeral.”12 In such a dynamic context, the Court noted, “high market shares are not necessarily indicative of market power and, therefore, of lasting damage to competition. . . .”13 Some argue that courts and agencies should rarely, if ever, intervene in dynamic industries.14 They claim that governmental intervention in dynamic economic markets will often harm consumers.

…

T., 118, 120, 294n2 Levinson, Arthur, 147 Lewis, Michael, 65, 220 LIBOR, manipulation of, 47, 268n5 Light touch antitrust policies, 22–26 Lobbying, by super-platforms, 244–245 Location data, extraction of, 162–163, 315n13 Loyalty programs, differential pricing and, 91–93, 229–230, 285–286n21 Lyft, 6, 51, 155, 210 Maas, Jenna, 170 Machine-to-machine communication (M2M), 18 Marcus, David, 17 Market-clearing prices, planned economies and, 211–214 Mattress industry, complexity of pricing and, 109 Maverick firms, as threat to collusion, 45, 65, 73, 80–81, 228–229, 230, 237–238 McKie-Mason, Jeff rey, 295n6 McKinsey & Company, 106 Messenger collusion scenario, 36, 39–45; algorithms as intermediaries in, 42–44; hub and spoke collusion scenario differs from, 48 Metasearch engines. See Comparison intermediaries Microsoft, 18, 138, 174, 227; antitrust issues and, 222, 247, 263n2; decoy products and, 106; personal assistants and, 201; Skype and, 25; as superplatform, 148, 175–176; Uber and, 155; voice activation and, 17; Windows phone platform, 149 Index Milgram, Stanley, 43–44 “Milgram’s 37 (We Do What We’re Told)” (song), 43 Misener, Patrick, 90 Mobile devices, 163–170; ad blocking technology and, 171; data extraction and, 162–170, 313n3; differential pricing and, 90, 108; do not track standards and, 172; Frenemy dynamic and, 148–151, 158; tracking of customers and, 94–96 Morgan Stanley, 269n9 Morozov, Evgeny, 239 Most Favored Nation (MFN) clauses, comparison intermediaries and, 140–142, 143 Neoclassical economics, 205; behavioral discrimination and, 120–121; price discrimination and, 117–119, 295nn4–9, 297n12 Nest Labs, 154 Netfl ix, 238, 337n22 Network effects: of comparison intermediaries, 133–135, 303n6; market power and, 237–238; super-platforms and, 175 New market dynamics, imperfection of, 27–31 New York Times, 92–93, 137, 215 1984 (Orwell), 199 Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, 23 Nissan Leaf, 243 Nomi Technologies, 95 North, Douglass, 225 Notice-and-consent privacy model, broken nature of, 226–228 Obama, Barack, 189 Obama administration, 224, 244, 248 Object illegality, 35, 42, 80, 269n10, 270n18, 271n20 Octo Telematics, 16–17 Office Depot, 90 Office of Fair Trading (OFT), in U.K., 7 Oligopolistic price coordination.

Twitter and Tear Gas: The Power and Fragility of Networked Protest
by Zeynep Tufekci
Published 14 May 2017

I had started interacting with them early—I was the twelfth person they followed, but that was just the beginning for them. In one night, @TahrirSupplies acquired more than ten thousand followers—far more than I had at the time. Within a day, these four young people were coordinating almost all supplies for ten field hospitals. To keep in touch with doctors on the ground, they also used Skype and other messaging apps. To keep track of supplies, they used publicly viewable Google documents and spreadsheets embedded on the website they had hastily put up. They used the spreadsheets, updated in real time, to list supplies and needs by hospital and to organize the volunteers who were transporting supplies.

…

Eric Lipton, and Scott Shane, “Democratic House Candidates Were Also Targets of Russian Hacking,” New York Times, December 13, 2016, http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/13/us/politics/house-democrats-hacking-dccc.html; Eric Sanger, David E. Lipton, and Scott Shane, “The Perfect Weapon: How Russian Cyberpower Invaded the U.S.,” New York Times, December 13, 2016, http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/13/us/politics/russia-hack-election-dnc.html. 38. “Erdogan on Skype, Announcement (Turkey Military Coup) 16.07.2016,” YouTube, July 15, 2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3uN340XHyc. 39. Konda survey, “Demokrasi Nöbeti Araştırması: Meydanların Profili,” July 26, 2016, http://konda.com.tr/demokrasinobeti/. 40. H. Akin Unver and Hassan Alassaad, “How Turks Mobilized against the Coup,” Foreign Affairs, September 14, 2016, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/2016-09-14/how-turks-mobilized-against-coup. 41.

Bottle of Lies: The Inside Story of the Generic Drug Boom
by Katherine Eban
Published 13 May 2019

Hesitantly, Thakur consented to the call. But still wanting to maintain control of the interaction, he tried to school Rivera-Martinez on the best and most secure way to set up the conference call. “Do you have access to publicly available VOIP applications?” he asked in one email. “I mean apps like GoogleTalk or SKYPE? In order to use either of these apps, you only need a microphone and speakers on your computer.” He then sent links for the FDA official to download. But the FDA had its own technology—and its own way of operating. Thakur ended up phoning in to the agency, as instructed. The conference call lasted about ninety minutes.

…

N.”, xxi, 368–69, 371, 386, 391, 397 Singh, Malvinder, xix, 246–47 AIDS drugs, 122, 123–24, 126 Daiichi Sankyo merger and, 196–203, 207–8, 210–14, 439n death of father and, 79–80 Deshmukh and, 199, 200, 201–3, 208, 211, 213–14, 398 education of, 149–50 FDA meeting, 161, 163–66 guilty plea of, 318–19, 397 Kumar’s board presentation of fraud (SAR), 115–17, 165–66, 199–201, 208–9, 215 lies and efforts to conceal, 113, 128–29, 171, 202, 207–8, 217 role as CEO, 149–52, 195–203 sense of crisis at Ranbaxy, 207–8, 210–12 Tempest as CEO, 60–61 update on, 398–99 Singh, Manjit, 77–78 Singh, Nimmi, 149–50, 151–52 Singh, Parvinder, xix, 75–80, 149 company portrait of, 33–34, 63 Deshmukh and, 26 education of, 75–76 Singh, Shivinder, 79, 150–51, 196, 203, 398–99 Skype, 144 SmithKline Beecham, 62 “Smoking gun theory,” 281–82 Sobti, Atul, xix, 278 “Soluble and Immobilized Catalase” (Thakur), 13 Sotret, 27–30, 209–10, 415 FDA inspections and findings, 153, 154, 165, 170–71, 185, 209–10 launch of, 28–30 Malik and failed tests, 28–30, 91–92 Pant and investigation report, 30, 170–71 Ranbaxy fraud and settlement, 317 Spreen and failed data, 112–13 whistleblowers on, 185 South Africa, AIDS drugs, 63–65, 83, 87–88 Spreen, Kathy, 112–13 Stability testing, 109–10, 123, 124, 125, 126, 135 Starling, Randall, xxiii, 240–43, 402–3 Stavudine, 82–83 Stearn, Douglas, 279 Stein, Jacob, 174 Stein, Mitchell, Muse & Cipollone LLP, 174–75, 176, 252–53, 312, 399 Stotland, Nada, xii Stouffer, Carla, 270–71 Substandard drugs, 115, 341–50, 419 Sulfanilamide, 49–50 Sulfathiazole, 50 Sun Pharmaceuticals, 398–99 Swaminathan, Venkat, 16, 58, 60–61, 109, 117 Synthroid, 260 Syracuse University, 15 Tacrolimus, 193–94, 240–43, 402, 418, 444n Taj Mahal, 39–40, 362–63 Taj Mahal Palace (Mumbai), 333–34 Takahashi, Karen, xxii, 144, 163, 273–79, 281–82, 289, 313 Tave, Steven, xxi, 249, 250–51, 279 Taxpayers Against Fraud Education Fund (TAFEF), 173–74, 380 Taylor, Paige, 280 Tempest, Brian, xix, 121 AIDS drugs, 39, 63, 64, 124–25, 126 Kumar’s board presentation of fraud (SAR), 115–17, 146, 200 lies and efforts to conceal, 128–29, 217 preliminary report of fraud, 109–10 promotion to CEO, 60–61, 149 Sotret launch, 27–28 Temple, Robert, xxii, 260, 263–70 Tetanus, 48 Tetracycline, 21 Tetzlaff, Ron, 164–65 Teva, 19, 24 Budeprion XL, 262–70, 419, 445n Thakur, Dinesh, xx appearance of, 9 Beato and, 174–78, 274, 312–14, 396 advice on wife Sonal, 252–53, 255–56 first conversation with, 174–75 first meeting, 177–78 at BMS, 9–12, 14–16 challenges of living in India, 32–33 childhood of, 13, 138–40 consulting work of, 138, 155 drunk pedestrian incident, 35–36, 141 education of, 13–14, 138–40 efforts to reform India drug industry, 377–79, 382, 383–84, 387, 389–93, 397 at Infosys, 155–56, 157, 162 moral dilemmas of, 139–40, 141 Pant and, 103, 256–57, 388–89 police registration in India, 32–33 at Ranbaxy, 11–13, 16, 32–33, 36, 61–63 Arun Kumar and, 102–5, 433–34n ARV drugs study, 63–65 Clinton visit, 38, 39 efforts to transform culture, 57–62 findings of fraud, 101–9, 114, 117–18, 137–38 Raj Kumar and, 62–65, 108–10, 114–15, 145–46, 171, 316 records retention policy, 59–60 resignation, 117–18, 137–38 Ranbaxy settlement, 312–14, 377–78 Ranbaxy settlement hearing, 314–18 as Ranbaxy whistleblower, 173–74, 176–78 awards for, 319, 379–81 meetings, 161–63, 173–74, 177–78 pseudonymously reaches out to FDA, 141–47, 161–62 seeking a lawyer, 173–74 Robertson and, 156–57, 161–67, 171, 251, 311–12, 317–18 meetings, 161–63, 173–74 Sciformix, 252, 313 Sonal and family life.

Kleptopia: How Dirty Money Is Conquering the World
by Tom Burgis
Published 7 Sep 2020

Only once he was waiting to board did he speak to her again. ‘Who am I meeting?’ he asked. ‘Where am I going?’ Bota gave him the name of a hotel. She said he should get there as quickly as he could after his plane landed. Ablyazov’s wife and daughter had been kidnapped. * * * Madina woke at 5 a.m. to feed the baby. She noticed her Skype: lots of missed calls. That was how they stayed in touch. Her father had gone into hiding more than a year ago. She had found it perplexing that you could be sent to prison in Britain for something called ‘contempt of court’. She had never believed that her father was a crook. Nazarbayev and his people had been saying he took money from here and there ever since Ablyazov first showed he would not be subservient to the boss; the BTA Bank stuff was just the same thing with bigger numbers.

…

She knew not to ask where he was, just whether he was safe. At least her mother and her six-year-old sister Alua had EU residence permits. They had gone to Rome, where they could live quietly until Ablyazov’s latest political troubles were over. As she got up to go to the baby, Madina saw not just the missed Skypes but her father’s messages: Call me call me call me. She called him. ‘Mum’s been arrested,’ he said. They had come in the middle of the night. Italian police, dozens of them, armed, had hammered on the doors of the house where Alma was living with her sister and her sister’s husband. Alua had been asleep.

The Human Cosmos: A Secret History of the Stars
by Jo Marchant
Published 15 Jan 2020

See also the following analysis which suggests that anywhere between 22 and 73 percent of people believe in astrology, depending on what you mean by “believe”: Nicholas Campion, “How many people actually believe in astrology?” The Conversation, April 28, 2017, https://theconversation.com/how-many-people-actually-believe-in-astrology-71192. “dislocated from its cosmology”: Skype interview with Nicholas Campion, May 28, 2018. “undermining the very fabric”: Trevor Jackson, “When Balance Is Bias,” British Medical Journal 343 (2011): d8006. “shriveling and cheapening”: Richard Dawkins, “The Real Romance in the Stars,” The Independent, December 31, 1995, https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/the-real-romance-in-the-stars-1527970.html.

…

a great ocean: Freya Mathews, “Panpsychism as Paradigm,” in Blamauer, ed., Mental as Fundamental, 141–56. “riding something alive”: Freya Mathews, Reinventing Reality: Toward a Recovery of Culture (Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 2005), 111. “shining with light . . . centre of things which is beyond”: Author’s Skype interview with Itay Shani, July 26, 2019. See also: Itay Shani, “Cosmopsychism: A Holistic Approach to the Metaphysics of Experience,” Philosophical Papers 44 (2015): 389–437; Itay Shani and Joachim Keppler, “Beyond Combination: How Cosmic Consciousness Grounds Ordinary Experience,” Journal of the American Philosophical Association 4 (2018): 390–410.

Reamde
by Neal Stephenson
Published 19 Sep 2011

Canvassing chat rooms to communicate with English-speaking gold farmers, he confirmed his suspicion that many of them were having trouble expanding their businesses because of a chronic inability to transfer funds back to China. He formed a partnership with “Nolan” Xu, the pathologically entrepreneurial chief of a Chinese game company, who was obsessed with finding a way to put Chinese engineering talent to work creating a new massively multiplayer online game. During an epic series of IM exchanges and Skype calls, Richard managed to convince Nolan that you had to build the plumbing first: you had to get the whole money flow system worked out. Once that was done, everything else would follow. And so, just as a way of learning the ropes, they worked out a system whereby Richard acted as the North American end of a money pipeline, accepting PayPal payments from American and Canadian WoW addicts, then FedExing hundred-dollar bills to Taiwan, where the money was laundered through the underground Filipino overseas worker remittance network and eventually transferred from Taiwanese bank accounts to Nolan’s account in China, whence he was able to pay the actual gold farmers in local specie.

…

Custom stump cups and other modifications would, of course, be needed, but the result was that Sokolov got something a bit nicer than what he would have been issued by the National Health Service. At eleven in the morning, after they had all come back from the memorial service—a ceremony honoring not only John but Peter, Chet, Sergei, Pavel, the bear hunters, the RV owners, and two of Jake’s neighbors—Zula hooked her laptop to the big flat-screen on Grandpa’s porch, and they made a Skype connection to Olivia in London. She had just returned to her apartment after work and was looking every inch the smartly turned-out intelligence analyst. Once the connection was made, she insisted that Zula put her face up to the little camera above the laptop screen and display her new artificial tooth, which was indistinguishable from the one that had been knocked out, and the lip in front of it, which bore a hairline scar and a little notch.

…

“You had nothing to pay for,” Sokolov said. “Oh,” Zula said, “I think I did.” The silence that followed was more than a little uncomfortable, and after giving it a respectful observance, Olivia edged around into view, standing behind Sokolov, and said, “Speaking of which, what do we hear from Marlon?” “We’re going to Skype him later,” Csongor said. “It is early in the morning, yet, in Beijing.” “He doesn’t work all night anymore?” Olivia said wonderingly. “Nolan has him on banker’s hours,” Richard said. “Oh, he was up as recently as a few hours ago, playing T’Rain, but we’re going to let him catch a little shut-eye before we confront him with this.”

WikiLeaks and the Age of Transparency
by Micah L. Sifry
Published 19 Feb 2011

Something had changed. After all, Assange had been in the United States just weeks earlier for the Collateral Murder press tour. But now he was not willing to risk another visit. We ended up conducting a virtual meeting on the PdF stage in New York, with Ellsberg seated next to me and Assange plugged in via Skype video from Australia, his head projected above us like some kind of strange Big Brother image. We had some trouble with the connection, which made our dialogue somewhat stilted. But one back-and-forth with Assange stands out. I had asked him if he thought the current crackdown on whistle-blowers in the United States, where several cases are under way for what is a very rarely prosecuted crime, might be related to the existence of WikiLeaks.

Operation Lighthouse: Reflections on Our Family's Devastating Story of Coercive Control and Domestic Homicide
by Luke Hart and Ryan Hart
Published 15 Jul 2018

Their names are Claire and Charlotte Hart.’ My voice was unsteady. The short pause before the woman on the end of the phone responded was excruciating. ‘Can I please take your name?’ ‘Ryan Hart’ I choked. ‘Hi Ryan, can I take a contact number for you and I’ll get someone to call you back soon?’ I gave my mobile number and Skype work number. At this point I was beginning to get tearful. I hurried an email to my manager to explain the situation and that I needed to take the afternoon off: ‘…even though I’m sure they’re OK, I’ve worked myself up too much to be able to concentrate.’ Scooping up my belongings from the small room, I hurried out of the office and back to the hotel, breaking into a jog once I was out of the office lobby.

Tuscany Road Trips
by Duncan Garwood , Paula Hardy , Robert Landon and Nicola Williams
Published 2 Jun 2016

International Calls A To call Italy from abroad, call the international access number (011 in the USA, 00 from most other countries), Italy’s country code (39) and then the area code of the location you want, including the leading 0. A The cheapest options for calling internationally are free or low-cost computer programs such as Skype, cut-rate call centres and international calling cards. A Cut-price call centres can be found in all of the main cities, and rates can be considerably lower than from Telecom payphones. A Another alternative is to use a direct-dialling service such as AT&T’s USA Direct (access number 800 172444) or Telstra’s Australia Direct (access number 800 172610), which allows you to make a reverse-charge (collect) call at home-country rates.

Goodbye, Things: The New Japanese Minimalism
by Fumio Sasaki
Published 10 Apr 2017

Though I no longer own a TV, I can visit the websites for TV networks and purchase archived programs that I’d like to watch. E-mail can be checked anywhere with my Gmail account, and I can work wherever I am by storing my files using cloud storage services like Dropbox. Wi-Fi infrastructure and Bluetooth connections have reduced the hassle of carrying around cables, and meetings can be done on Skype. We live in a wonderful world now where we can work without a physical office at all. The spread of a sharing culture Minimalist technology has expanded to include services as well. I live in Tokyo where traffic is always a nightmare and the public transportation system is very reliable, so there’s really no need to own a car.

The Nowhere Office: Reinventing Work and the Workplace of the Future
by Julia Hobsbawm
Published 11 Apr 2022

The London-based Norwegian-Nigerian entrepreneur and investor Tom Adeyoola, who successfully founded and sold Metail, a sustainable digital fashion technology start-up operating in the Asia-Pacific region and Europe and with over two hundred employees, subcontractors and remote-based workers spanning engineering and manufacturing, design, sales and marketing, told me: Engineers like to work in a quiet space, and then they go into other rooms to be noisy, whereas more creative types like to be in a noisy space, and they go into rooms to be quiet. So there’s a clash between them, but you want to try and create the ability for them to connect in ways which are low friction. So how can you do that? We spent a lot of time trying to create ways on Skype, or now Zoom rooms, where you could just walk in digitally, which still gave a sense of connectivity. In other words, experimenting with ways to use digital in a similar way to physical space, with the equivalent of ‘do not disturb’ for those who need it, while still being reachable and connected to what else is happening if they are needed.

Pocket London Travel Guide
by Lonely Planet

International Calls & Rates › International direct dialling (IDD) calls to almost anywhere can be made from most public telephones. › Many private firms offer cheaper international calls than British Telecom (BT). In such shops you phone from a metered booth. › Some cybercafes and internet shops also offer cheap rates for international calls. › PIN-activated international calling cards, available at most corner shops, are usually the cheapest way to call abroad. › Skype can be restricted in hostels and internet cafes due to noise and/or bandwidth issues. Local & National Call Rates › Local calls are charged by time alone; regional and national calls are charged by both time and distance. › Daytime rates apply from 6am to 6pm Monday to Friday. › The cheap rate applies from 6pm to 6am Monday to Friday; weekend rates apply from 6pm Friday to 6am Monday.

Barefoot Into Cyberspace: Adventures in Search of Techno-Utopia
by Becky Hogge , Damien Morris and Christopher Scally
Published 26 Jul 2011

As the rest of the world woke up to the web, it was up to this next generation to explain and, eventually, defend those ideals. And it wasn’t going to be easy. * * * Chapter 4: Just Kids I hear from Rop Gonggrijp again in late January, a week after my meeting with Brand. I’m logged into Skype when he pops up in my chat window to let me know he’s in Reykjavik, working with Julian Assange from WikiLeaks. “Working on the revolution here,” he types, before sending me a link to the planned “Media Freedom Bill” he hopes Iceland’s Parliament will vote to adopt soon. I glance at it – it looks interesting.

Information Doesn't Want to Be Free: Laws for the Internet Age
by Cory Doctorow , Amanda Palmer and Neil Gaiman
Published 18 Nov 2014

Even a “solitary” project like writing a novel will involve an operating-system vendor, a word-processing vendor, an email-hosting company (to communicate with your editor and agent), an ISP (so you can access the email), an email-software vendor, and probably a few online file lockers for previewing cover art, exchanging unwieldy electronic galleys, and the like. And whether you go indie or through one of the big five publishers, you’ll likely be expected to use some combination of blogs, Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube to promote your work. You might “visit” libraries or schools by Skype. If you go out on tour, you’ll want to use something like Upcoming.org to get the word out, and you might use a payment processor to sell tickets to some of your events. And, of course, the book itself will be sold through Amazon, BN.com, and the online shops run by independent stores. On top of that, there’s the world of e-books, whose intermediaries include specialist file-conversion houses that turn InDesign print layout files into ePubs, Mobipocket files, PDFs, HTML 5, and a million other potential formats, and the companies that sell those e-books, from the aforementioned Amazon and Barnes & Noble to Google Books and all its independent booksellers.

Lifestyle Entrepreneur: Live Your Dreams, Ignite Your Passions and Run Your Business From Anywhere in the World
by Jesse Krieger
Published 2 Jun 2014

Your IVR system can forward calls to any numbers in the world, allowing your team to be distributed across country or across the globe. A search in your country for “IVR providers” or “get toll-free number” will yield many options for you to choose from. Suffice it to say that your initial system can be pretty basic, as long as it can forward calls to any numbers you designate. Also, you can sign up for SkypeIn numbers from Skype.com and route the IVR to your team members’ SkypeIn numbers, which will ring on their computers if they are working, or on their phones if they are offline. This is especially cost effective if you are routing calls internationally, as it will cut out potentially costly long distance calling fees.

How to Weep in Public: Feeble Offerings From One Depressive to Another
by Jacqueline Novak
Published 1 Mar 2016

Being around people who have their shit together is an invitation to feel even worse. But a properly depressed friend—someone who also wants to be alone and mope—can be delightful company. My friend Deirdre* is frequently depressed, and it’s wonderful for me. I’ve found that when two depressives get together (by phone, Skype, et cetera, no pressure to go anywhere), they can have a shockingly good time. When you’re depressed, it’s a vicious circle: you hate yourself because you’re depressed and you’re depressed because you hate yourself. But when you hang out with other depressed people, you can actually spend a few hours with humans without being completely bowled over by how much better they are than you.

How Will You Measure Your Life?
by Christensen, Clayton M. , Dillon, Karen and Allworth, James
Published 15 May 2012

Diane Coutu, I thank you for sharing your enthusiastic vision of reinventing your own life with me that one day we drove across town together. You have no idea what wonderful things you helped set in motion. To my friends, both inside and outside the workplace, you have been the source of so much joy and support over the years. I owe you all a debt of enormous gratitude. I wanted to thank Skype, Google Docs, and Dropbox for making it possible to write this book with coauthors in Boston while living in London, but James tells me we should instead write a blog about how we used those tools to build our extraordinary working relationship…. So that will have to wait. But most of all, I want to thank my family.

Angrynomics
by Eric Lonergan and Mark Blyth
Published 15 Jun 2020

The policy changes and technology introduced into v.3.0 significantly increased competition, created a wide dispersion of returns between the winners and losers among owners of capital. Think again about telecoms. As a result of these technological and regulatory changes we all get cheaper telephone calls and digital phones that are powerful computers. When we were children, long-distance calls to relatives or friends were rare, special and brief events. Now we can Skype for free. But whenever we transition from one technological order to another there is an increase in the dispersion of returns, who gets what and how much of it, the creation of new winners and losers, which affects capital as well as workers. If you were a fixed line operator in the 1990s who had invested in copper wire infrastructure, the value of that capital was destroyed by the shift to mobile technology.

The Content Trap: A Strategist's Guide to Digital Change
by Bharat Anand
Published 17 Oct 2016

But while most of those ventures struggled, Tencent’s offerings grew from instant messaging and its associated iconic penguin mascot to an impressively broad suite: a social networking site, a news portal, a mobile platform, single- and multi-player games, and a microblogging service. Its most recent product, WeChat, was a mobile app that combined voice chat (similar to Skype), photo sharing (similar to Instagram), social network features (similar to Facebook), e-commerce capabilities (similar to Amazon), group messaging, and walkie-talkie features into a single offering—for free. By 2015 Tencent’s products and services were used by more than a billion Chinese, who accessed them through mobile phones, personal computers, and Internet cafés.

…

Notable were several features centered on three specific user needs: “the need that comes from people’s curiosity about others,” “the need that comes from your feedback and those of your friends,” and “the need that comes from a sense of presence from interacting with others which makes them feel comfortable.” A 2012 article in TechCrunch described WeChat as combining the best features of WhatsApp, Skype iMessage, Instagram, and Google’s Circles. The description may have been overly effusive, but it pointed to an interesting evolution of Tencent’s strategy. The company’s past success had come from its ability to leverage network strength from a single product, IM, into a portfolio of products including games, a news service, a social network, and a microblog.

ZeroMQ
by Pieter Hintjens
Published 12 Mar 2013

For application developers, HTTP is perhaps the one solution to have been simple enough to work, but it arguably makes the problem worse by encouraging developers and architects to think in terms of big servers and thin, stupid clients. So today people are still connecting applications using raw UDP and TCP, proprietary protocols, HTTP, and WebSockets. It remains painful, slow, hard to scale, and essentially centralized. Distributed peer-to-peer architectures are mostly for play, not work. How many applications use Skype or BitTorrent to exchange data? Which brings us back to the science of programming. To fix the world, we needed to do two things. One, to solve the general problem of “how to connect any code to any code, anywhere.” Two, to wrap that up in the simplest possible building blocks that people could understand and use easily.

…

Many APs solve this by randomly disconnecting clients when they reach some limit, such as 4–8 devices for a mobile hotspot, 30–50 devices for a consumer AP, or perhaps 100 devices for an enterprise AP. What’s the Current Status? Despite its uncomfortable role as enterprise technology that somehow escaped into the wild, WiFi is already useful for more than making a free Skype call. It’s not ideal, but it works well enough to let us solve some interesting problems. Let me give you a rapid status report. First, point-to-point versus AP-to-client. Traditional WiFi is all AP-client. Every packet has to go from client A to AP, then to client B. You cut your bandwidth by 50%—but that’s only half the problem.

Them And Us: Politics, Greed And Inequality - Why We Need A Fair Society
by Will Hutton
Published 30 Sep 2010

Hence McKinsey notes that there seems to be a survivors’ curse: organisations struggle to remain competitive and effective beyond twenty years. New firms do not have to worry about legacy investments, so they are free to explore as widely and as radically as they can. Moreover, if they simply replicate their larger peers, they are less likely to find a distinctive niche. Google, Microsoft, Cisco, Apple, Skype and Amazon all started as just one or two people – often supposed eccentrics and misfits – doing something very different from the norm. The death rate of incumbents is increasing. Most firms that were in the S&P 500 in 2007 will be gone by 2020, according to McKinsey. Surviving is becoming increasingly difficult.

…

INDEX Aberdeen University, 263 ABN AMRO, 150 Abramovitch, Roman, 64, 65, 67 accountancy firms, 296 Acemoglu, Daron, 299 aerospace, 136, 219, 268 Afghanistan, 13, 102, 144, 322 Africa, 71–2, 322, 383, 385 AIG, 152, 175, 176 airline industry, 30, 91, 109, 134, 143 Akerlof, George, 43 Alcoa, 133 alcohol policy, 335 Alessandri, Piergiorgio, 151, 153 Amazon, 253 Anderson, Elizabeth, 79 angels, business, 244, 252 Anglo Irish Bank, 181 Apple Inc., 29–30, 65–6, 71, 253 apprenticeships, 10, 295 Arculus, Sir David, 180 Argentina, 368 Aristotle, 39, 274 ‘arms race’ effects, 105 Arup Group, 66, 67, 93 Asda, 93 Ashcroft, Lord, 344 Ashdown, Paddy, 141 Asian Tiger exports, 149, 208, 355 AT & T, 133–4 Atari, 30 BAA, 8, 257–8 baby boomer generation, 34, 372–3 ‘Baby P’ case, 10, 325–6 Bagehot, Walter, 156–7 Bailey, Bob, 16, 25 Baker, Kenneth, 276 Baldacci, Emanuele, 367 Baldwin, Stanley, 315 Balls, Ed, 138, 147, 338 Bank of America, 152, 158, 175, 192 Bank of England, 4, 7–8, 129, 148, 180, 208, 250, 339, 359; lender-of-last-resort function, 157, 158, 160; Monetary Policy Committee, 185, 186, 264; reserve requirements scrapped (1979), 161, 208 Bank of International Settlements (BIS), 169, 182 Bank of Scotland, 186, 251 bankers, 4–5, 25–6, 62, 63–4, 180, 188; errors that caused the crash, 188–96, 197–204; gambling culture, 7, 8; pay see pay of executives and bankers Bankers Trust (New York), 140, 167 banking and banks: see also under entries for individual organisations; bail-out of, 3, 7–8, 19, 24, 138, 152–3, 172, 175, 176, 181, 204–5, 210, 389, 392; balance sheets, 7, 160, 164, 165, 191, 208, 210; bank runs, 9, 156–7, 158, 175–6, 202; borrow short and lend long principle, 154, 155–6, 157, 158–9; capital ratios, 151, 158, 162–3, 169, 170, 207, 208; credit-rating agencies and, 151, 196, 207; deposit insurance and, 158, 160; diversification, 154–5, 157, 165, 199, 354; fairness/desert and, 64, 206–7; interbank money markets, 164, 170, 176, 187–8, 202, 204; investment banks, 6, 28, 42, 101, 103, 150–1, 158, 165, 166, 170, 172–6, 195–6, 207; maturity transformation, 155–6, 157, 158–9; need for network of specialist banks, 251–2, 265, 371; nineteenth-century collapses, 156–7; post-crunch deleverage pressures, 359; principles and strategies, 154–6, 157; regulation of see regulation; relationship finance, 244, 251–2, 256–7; remoteness of management, 173–4; required reforms of, 205–10, 251–2, 371; short-term structure of lending, 33; banking and banks – continued socially vital role of, 155, 157; subsidiaries and special purpose vehicles, 181; unproductive entrepreneurship and, 28, 101, 103; vast assets/loans/profits, 32, 138, 147, 170, 172, 201; zero loyalty of front-line staff, 174 Barclay brothers, 327 Barclays, 24, 176, 177–8, 181, 215, 296, 363 Barker, Kate, 185 Basel system, 158, 160, 163, 169, 170–1, 196, 385 Baumol, William, 101, 111, 116, 253, 256 Bayerische Landesbank, 196 Bear Stearns, 150, 152, 158–9, 166, 173–4, 187 Bebchuk, Lucian, 198 Becht, Bart, 82–3 Beckwith, John Lionel, 179 behavioural psychology, 44, 47–50, 59–61 Bekar, Clifford, 108, 263 Bell, Alexander Graham, 221 Ben & Jerry’s, 266 Benz, Matthias, 86 Berlusconi, Silvio, 317, 328 Bettelheim, Bruno, 86 Better Government Initiative, 313, 336–7 Better Regulation Task Force, 180 Bhagwati, Jagwad, 163 Big Bang (1986), 90, 162 bin Mahfouz, Khalid Salim, 333 biotechnology, 109, 229, 240, 263, 268 Birt, John, 324 Bischoff Inquiry, 178 BISTRO (broad index secured trust offering), 169, 170, 196 Black, Fisher, 191 Blair, Tony, 5, 17, 138, 141–3, 144, 148–9, 276–7, 313, 328, 342; centralisation of power, 14–15, 313, 334, 337, 341; Iraq War and, 14, 36, 144; Rupert Murdoch and, 318; neo-conservative economics and, 388; ‘third-way’ as enthronement of resignation, 389–90; welfare reforms, 81 Blanchflower, Danny, 264–5 Blanden, Jo, 283–4 Blankfein, Lloyd, 42, 63, 168 BMW, 91 Boeing, 136, 256 Bologna University, 261 Born, Brooksley, 182–3 Bowen, Jeremy, 323 Boyle, Susan, 314 BP, 216–17, 392 Branson, Richard, 30 Brazil, 354–5, 385 Bretton Woods system, 159 Brinkley, Ian, 233 Briscoe, Simon, 294 Bristol University, 263 British Airways (BA), 30, 91 British Broadcasting Company (BBC), 321, 322, 323, 329, 330–1, 350, 389 British National Party (BNP), 16, 24–5, 82 Britishness, 15–16, 124, 392–3, 395 Brompton folding bicycle, 103, 105 Brooks, Clem, 281, 282 Brown, Gordon, 5, 12, 141, 178, 302, 314, 328; centralisation of power, 14, 334, 337, 341; as Chancellor, 138, 143, 145–8, 215, 245; deal with Blair (1994), 148; Gillian Duffy blunder by, 394; general election (2010) and, 20, 378, 394; neo-conservative economics and, 144–8, 388; as visionless, 391; Where There is Greed: Margaret Thatcher and the Betrayal of Britain’s Future (1989), 144 Browne, John, 216 Brunel, Isambard Kingdom, 126 Buffett, Warren, 116, 173, 222 Building Schools for the Future programme, 371 building societies, demutualisation of, 156, 186 Buiter, Wilhelm, 172 Burrows, Paul, 59 Buscombe, Baroness, 332 Bush, George W., 17, 36, 135, 177 Cabinet Office, 218–19, 336, 337 Cable, Vincent, 220 Cambridge University, 9, 363 Cameron, David, 20, 179, 233–4, 235, 318, 338, 342; ‘Big Society’ policy, 19–20, 234, 271, 280 Campbell, Alastair, 141, 142, 224, 312 Canada, 121, 354, 358–9, 383 capital controls, abolition of, 32, 161 capitalism: see also entrepreneurs; innovation; amorality of, 16–19; ‘arms race’ effects, 105; boom and bust cycle, 181–7, 392; deregulation (from 1970s), 159–63, 388; fairness and, ix, x, 23–7, 41, 106, 122–3, 206–7, 210, 249, 385, 386, 394; as immutable force of nature, ix, 23, 40–2; incumbent firms, 29–30, 31, 105, 106, 110, 111–12, 253–5, 257, 297; interconnectedness of markets, 200–2, 204; knowledge-entrepreneurship dynamic, 27–8, 31, 103, 110–11, 112–13; liquidity as totemic, 199, 200, 202, 240, 243; need for ‘circuit breakers’, 197, 199, 202, 203; network theory and, 199–204, 206; required reforms of, 205–9, 215–16; stakeholder, x, 148–9; undue influence of, 32–3 Carlaw, Kenneth, 108, 263 Carnegie, Andrew, 195, 303 cars, motor, 91, 108, 109, 134, 269 Castells, Manuel, 317 Cayne, Jimmy, 173–4 CCTV cameras, 10 celebrity culture, 282, 314 central banks, 154, 157, 158, 160, 182, 185, 187, 208; see also Bank of England; Federal Reserve, 169–70, 176, 177, 183 Cerberus Capital Management, 177 Cervantes, Miguel de, 274 Channel 4, 330, 350 Charles I, King of England, 124–5 Charter One Financial, 150 chavs, mockery of, 25, 83, 272, 286–8 child poverty, 12, 21, 74–5, 83, 278, 279, 288–90, 291 China, x, 101, 112, 140, 144, 160, 226, 230, 354–5, 385; consumption levels, 375–6, 379, 380, 381; economic conflict with USA, 376–7, 378–80, 381, 382, 383; export led growth, 36, 169, 208, 226, 355–6, 375–7, 379–81, 382–3; rigged exchange rates, 36, 169, 355, 377, 378–9; surpluses of capital and, 149, 154, 169, 171, 208, 226, 375; unfairness of world system and, 383, 385 Christianity, 53, 54, 352, 353 Church of England, 128 Churchill, Winston, 138, 273, 313 Churchill Insurance, 150 Cisco, 253 Citigroup, 152, 158, 172, 177, 184, 202, 203, 242, 247 city academies, 278, 307 City of London, 34, 137, 138, 178–9, 252, 359; as incumbent elite, 14, 26, 31, 32–3, 210, 249, 355; in late nineteenth-century, 128–30; light-touch regulation of, 5, 32, 138, 145, 146–7, 151, 162, 187, 198–9; New Labour and, x–xi, 5, 19, 22, 142, 144–5, 355; remuneration levels see pay of executives and bankers civic engagement, 86, 313 civil service, 13, 221, 273, 312, 343 Clasper, Mike, 178 Clayton Act (USA, 1914), 133 Clegg, Nick, 22, 218, 318, 327–8, 342, 391 Clifton, Pete, 321 Clinton, Bill, 140, 177, 183 coalition government (from May 2010), 14, 20, 22, 37, 307, 311, 343, 346, 390–2; abolition of child trust fund, 302; capital spending cuts, 370–1; deficit reduction programme, xi, 19, 34, 214, 227, 357, 360–1, 364, 369–71, 373, 390–2; emergency budget (June 2010), 369–70; market fundamentalism and, 370; political reform commitment, 35, 341, 343–4, 346, 350, 390, 391; proposed financial reforms, 208, 209, 245, 252, 371; repudiation of Keynesian economics, xi, 390–1 Cohan, William, 158–9 Cohen, Ronald, 12, 245 collapse/crash of financial system, x, xi, 4, 9, 41, 144, 146, 152–4, 158–9, 168; costs of, 7, 19, 138, 152–3, 172, 214–15; errors responsible for, 136, 187–96, 197–204; global interconnectedness, 375, 382–3; lessening of internationalism following, 376–83; need to learn from/understand, 36–7; predictions/warnings of, 148, 153, 180, 182–5; recommended policy responses, 215–16; results of previous credit crunches, 358, 359–60, 361–2 collateralised debt obligations (CDOs), 155, 167–8, 174 colonialism, 109, 124 Commodity Future Trading Commission, 182–3 communism, collapse of in Eastern Europe, 16, 19, 135, 140, 163 competition, 29, 30, 33, 51, 156, 185, 186, 207–8, 251; see also ‘open-access societies’; City of London and, 160, 178, 179, 198–9; deregulated banking and, 160, 161, 163, 164, 178, 179, 181; European Union and, 251, 258, 259; fairness and, 89–90, 99, 272; incumbent elites/oligarchs and, 104, 114, 129–30, 131–4, 257; innovation and, 40, 114, 257–60; national authorities/regimes, 201–2, 257–60, 316, 318; state facilitation of, 31 Competition Commission, 257–8 computer games, 233 Confederation of British Industry (CBI), 4, 6–7 Conservative Party, xi, 5, 11, 14, 97–8, 220, 343, 378; broken Britain claims, 16, 227, 271; budget deficit and, 19, 224, 357, 360–1, 368, 379; City/private sector funding of, 179, 257, 344; decline of class-based politics, 341; deregulation and, 32, 160, 161; fairness and, 83, 302, 374, 390; general election (1992) and, 140–1; general election (2010) and, 20, 97, 227, 234, 271, 357, 374, 379, 390; Conservative Party – continued government policies (1979-97), 32, 81, 275–6, 290; inheritance/wealth taxes and, 74, 302–3; market fundamentalism and, 5, 17, 138, 147, 160, 161; poverty and, 21, 279; reduced/small state policy, 20, 22, 233–4, 235 construction industry, 5, 33, 268 consumer goods, types of, 266–7 Continental Illinois collapse, 152, 162 Convention on Modern Liberty, 340 Cook, Robin, 142 Cootner, Paul, 194–5 Copenhagen climate change talks (2009), 226, 231, 385 Corporate Leadership Council, US, 93 Corzine, Jon, 177 county markets, pre-twentieth-century, 90 Coutts, Ken, 363 Cowell, Simon, 314, 315 ‘creative destruction’ process, 111, 112, 134 creative industries, 11, 71, 355 credit cards, 64, 354 credit crunch: see collapse/crash of financial system credit default swaps, 151, 152, 166–8, 170, 171, 175, 176, 191, 203, 207 Crédit Lyonnais collapse, 152 credit-rating agencies, 151, 165, 175, 196, 197, 248, 269, 362, 388; funding of, 151, 196, 207 criminal activity/allegations, 7, 101, 103, 104–5, 138, 167–8 Crosby, James, 178 Cuba, 61 culture, British, 12, 187, 282, 314 Dacre, Paul, 324, 326, 329 Daily Mail, 218, 286, 288, 315, 324, 325–7, 339, 342 Daily Telegraph, 288, 317, 319, 327 Darling, Alistair, 149, 204, 252 Darwin, Charles, 31 Data Monitor, 186 Davies, Howard, 198 Davies, Nick, Flat Earth News, 319, 321, 323–4, 326, 331–2 de Gaulle, Charles, 65 debt, 33, 155, 209, 351–63; corporate/commercial, 8, 29, 181, 245, 248, 352, 354, 359, 363, 374; moral attitudes towards, 351–4, 357, 360–1; necessity of, 155, 351, 353, 354; private, 5, 186, 187, 210, 226, 279–80, 354–7, 359, 363, 373; public, 9, 34, 164, 166, 167, 182, 203, 214, 224–6, 356–7, 362–3, 375, 388, 393; sustainable level of, 356–7, 368–9 Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), 265 defence and armed forces, 34, 372 deficit, public, 4, 34, 213, 224–6, 335, 364–74; coalition’s reduction programme, xi, 19, 34, 214, 227, 357, 360–1, 364, 369–71, 373, 390–2, 393; need for fiscal policy, 224–5, 226, 357–8, 364, 365–9, 370, 374; speed of reduction of, 213, 224–5, 360–1, 368, 371 Delingpole, James, 287 Delong, Brad, 27, 106 democracy, 13–15, 235, 310–16, 333–48; centralisation of power and, 14–15, 35, 217, 313, 334, 337, 342; fair process and, 86, 89, 96–9; incumbent elites and, 35, 99; industrial revolution and, 128; media undermining of, 315–16, 317–18, 321–9, 333, 350; ‘open-access societies’ and, 136, 314 Democratic Party, US, 18, 140, 183, 379 Demos, 289 Deng Xiao Ping, 140 Denham, John, 21 deprivation and disadvantage, 10, 34, 288–93, 307–8, 393; low-earning households, 11–12, 13, 291, 361; weight of babies and, 13; young children and, 74–5, 83, 288–90 derivatives, 140, 145, 150–1, 164–8, 171, 175, 188, 207, 209; City of London and, 32, 137, 150–1, 157, 199; mathematical models (‘quants’) and, 188, 191; regulation and, 183, 197–8, 199 desert, due, concept of, 4, 24, 38–43, 45–7, 50–63, 64–8, 73–7, 80–2, 223, 395; see also effort, discretionary; proportionality; big finance and, 40–2, 82, 167, 174, 176, 210; debt and, 351–2; diplomacy/international relations and, 385–6; Enlightenment notions of, 53–6, 58–9, 112; luck and, 70, 73–7, 273; poverty relief systems and, 80–2, 277–8; productive entrepreneurship and, 102–3, 105–6, 112, 222, 392–3; taxation and, 40, 220, 266 Deutsche Bank, 170 developing countries, 71–2, 160, 354–5, 375, 376, 385 Diamond, Bob, 24 Dickens, Charles, 353 digitalisation, 34, 231, 320, 349, 350 Doepke, Matthias, 115–16 dot.com bubble, 9, 193 Drugs Advisory Panel, 11 Duffy, Gillian, 394 Durham University, 263 Dworkin, Ronald, 70 Dyson, James, 28, 33 East India Company, 130 Easyjet, 28, 233 eBay, 136 economic theory, 43–4, 188–9, 366; see also Keynesian economics; market fundamentalism economies of scale, 130–1, 254–5, 258 The Economist, 326, 330, 349 economy, British: see also capitalism; financial system, British; annual consumption levels, 375; balance of payments, 363–4; as ‘big firm’ economy, 254; change in landscape of trading partners, 230–1; coalition capital spending cuts, 370–1; collapse of tax base, 224, 368; cumulative loss of output caused by crash, 138, 153, 172, 214–15; desired level of state involvement, 234–5; domination of market fundamentalism, 16–17; economic boom, 3–4, 5–6, 12, 143, 173, 181–7, 244–5; fall in volatility, 365; fiscal deficit, 368; fiscal policy, 208, 224–5, 226, 357–8, 364–9, 370, 374; growth and, 9–10, 214–15, 218–19, 224, 359, 363; inefficient public spending, 335; investment in ‘intangibles’, 232–3; in late nineteenth-century, 128–30; ‘leading-edge’ sectors, 218–19; need for engaged long term ownership, 240–4, 249–51; as non-saver, 36, 354; potential new markets/opportunities, 231–3; public-private sector interdependence and, 219–22, 229–30, 261, 265–6, 391, 392; required reforms of, 20, 239–44, 249–52, 264–6, 371–4 see also national ecosystem of innovation; ‘specialising sectors’, 219; urgent need for reform, 36–7; volatility of, 297–8; vulnerability of after credit crunch, 358–64 economy, world: acute shortfall of demand, 375–6; Asian and/or OPEC capital surpluses and, 149, 153–4, 169, 171, 208, 226, 354, 375; conflicts of interest and, 137, 138; deregulation (from 1970s), 159–63; emerging powers’ attitudes to, 226; entrenched elites and, 137–8, 210; fall in volatility, 365; international institutions as unfair, 383, 385; London/New York axis, 149, 150–1, 157–8, 160, 187, 202; need for international cooperation, 357–8, 379–80, 381–3, 384, 385–6; post-crunch deleverage pressures, 359–60, 374–5; protectionism dangers, 36, 358, 376–7, 378, 379, 382, 386; savers/non-savers imbalance, 36, 169, 208, 222, 355, 356, 375–6, 378–83; shift of wealth from West to East, 36, 383–4; sovereign debt crises, 167, 203, 214; unheeded warnings, 182–5; wrecking of European ERM, 140, 144 Edinburgh University, 145 education, 10, 20–1, 128, 131, 272–4, 276, 278, 292–5, 304–8, 343; Building Schools for the Future programme, 371; cognitive and mental skills, 288–90, 304–6; private, 13, 114, 264–5, 272–3, 276, 283–4, 293–5, 304, 306 effort, discretionary, 50, 53, 54–5, 58–60, 80, 90–1, 114, 134; see also desert, due, concept of; fair process and, 91–4; indispensability and, 65–7; innovation and invention, 62, 65, 102–3, 105–6, 112, 117, 131, 223, 262–3, 392–3; luck and, 26–7, 65, 67, 70, 71, 73–4, 75–7; productive/unproductive, 43, 46–7, 51–2, 62, 64–5, 102–3, 392–3; proportionate reward for, 26, 39–40, 44, 47, 61, 74, 76–7, 84, 122, 272, 273, 2 84 egalitarianism, 27, 53–4, 55–6, 61, 75, 78–80, 144, 341, 343; Enlightenment equal worth concept, 53, 55, 59–60 Ehrenfeld, Rachel, 333 Eisman, Steve, 207 electoral politics: see also general election (6 May 2010); general elections, 97, 138, 277, 315; fair process and, 96–9; franchise, 128; general election (1992), x, 138, 140–1, 144, 148, 277; general election (1997), x, 138, 141 electricity, 134, 228, 256 electronic trading, 105 elites, incumbent, 23, 31–3, 99, 131; City of London, 14, 26, 31, 32–3, 210, 249, 355; competition and, 104, 113, 114, 129–30, 131–4, 257; democracy and, 35, 99; Enlightenment and, 122; history of (from 1880s), 131–4; history of in Britain (to 1900), 124–30; innovation and, 29–30, 110, 111–12, 113, 114, 115, 116; modern big finance and, 135, 137–8, 180, 210, 387–9; in ‘natural states’, 111, 113, 114–15, 116, 123–4, 127; New Labour’s failure to challenge, x–xi, 14, 22, 388, 389–90; world economy and, 137–8, 210 EMI, 28, 247, 248 employment and unemployment, 6, 75, 291–3, 295, 300, 373, 393; employment insurance concept, 298–9, 301, 374; lifelong learning schemes, 300, 301; lifelong savings plans, 300; unemployment benefit, 81, 281 Engels, Friedrich, 121–2 English language as lingua franca, 124 Enlightenment, European, 22, 30–1, 146, 261, 314–15; economics and, 104, 108–9, 116–17, 121–3; notions of fairness/desert, 53–6, 58–9, 112, 122–3, 394; science and technology and, 31, 108–9, 112–13, 116–17, 121, 126–7 Enron affair, 147 entrepreneurs: see also innovation; productive entrepreneurship; capitalist knowledge dynamic, 27–8, 31, 110–11, 112–13; challenges of the status quo, 29–30; Conservative reforms (1979-97) and, 275; private capital and, 241; public-private sector interdependence and, 219–22, 229–30, 261, 265–6, 391, 392; rent-seeking and, 61–2, 63, 78, 84, 101, 105, 112, 113–14, 116, 129, 135, 180; unproductive, 28–9, 33, 61–2, 63, 78, 84, 101–2, 103–5, 180 environmental issues, 35–6, 71–2, 102, 226, 228, 231, 236, 385, 390, 394; due desert and, 68; German Greens and, 269 Erie Railroad Company, 133 Essex County Council, 325, 332 European Commission, 298 European Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM), 140, 144, 166 European Union (EU), 11, 82, 179, 379–80, 383–4, 385; British media and, 15, 328, 378; Competition Commissioner, 251, 258, 259; scepticism towards, 15, 36, 328, 377, 378, 386 eurozone, 377 Fabian Society, 302–3 factory system, 126 fairness: see also desert, due, concept of; proportionality; abuse/playing of system and, 24–5, 27; asset fairness proposals, 301–3, 304; behavioural psychology and, 44, 47–50, 59–61; Blair’s conservative view of, 143; Britishness and, 15–16, 392–3, 395; capitalism and, ix, x, 23–7, 41, 106, 122–3, 206–7, 210, 249, 385, 386, 394; challenges to political left, 78–83; coalition government (from May 2010) and, 22, 37; commonly held attitudes, 44, 45–7; deficit reduction and, 226, 227, 374; economic and social determinism and, 56–8; Enlightenment notions of, 53–6, 58–9, 112, 122–3, 394; fair process, 84–94, 96, 98–9, 272; as foundation of morality, 24, 26, 45, 50; individual responsibility and, 39, 78–9; inequality in Britain, 78, 80, 275–6, 277–8, 342; international relations and, 226, 385–6; ‘Just World Delusion’, 83; luck and, 72–7; management-employee relationships, 90–2; models/frameworks of, 43–58; need for shared understanding of, 25, 37, 43; partisanship about, 42–3; politicians/political parties and, 22, 83, 271–2, 302–3, 374, 391–2; popular support for NHS and, 75, 77, 283; pre-Enlightenment notions, 52–3; shared capitalism and, 66, 92–3; state facilitation of, ix–x, 391–2, 394–5; welfare benefits to migrants and, 81–2, 282, 283, 284 Farnborough Sixth Form College, 294 Federal Reserve, 169–70, 176, 177, 183 Fees Act (1891), 128 Fertile Crescent, 106 feudalism, European, 53–4, 74, 104, 105 financial instruments, 103, 148, 157, 167–8 Financial Services and Markets Act (2001), 198 Financial Services Authority (FSA), 24, 147, 162, 178, 198–9, 208 financial system, British: see also capitalism; economy, British; Asian and/or OPEC capital surpluses and, 149, 154, 354; big finance as entrenched elite, 136, 137–8, 176, 178–80, 210, 387–9; declining support for entrepreneurship, 241; deregulation (1971), 161; fees and commissions, 33; importance of liquidity, 240, 243; lack of data on, 241; London/New York axis, 149, 150–1, 157–8, 160, 187, 202; massive growth of, 137, 138, 209, 219; need for tax reform, 209–10; regulation and see regulation; required reforms to companies, 249–50; savings institutions’ share holdings, 240–1; short termism of markets, 241, 242–3; unfairness of, 138, 210 Financial Times, 12, 149, 294, 330, 349, 361 Fink, Stanley, 179 fiscal policy, 208, 224–5, 226, 357–8, 364–9, 374; coalition rejection of, 370 fish stocks, conservation of, 394 Fitch (credit-rating agencies), 248 flexicurity social system, 299–301, 304, 374 Forbes’ annual list, 30 Ford, Henry, 195, 302 foreign exchange markets, 32, 161, 164, 165, 168, 363, 367; China’s rigged exchange rate, 36, 169, 355, 377, 378–9; currency options, 166, 191; eurozone, 377 foreign takeovers of British firms, 8, 388 Fortune magazine, 94 Foster, Sir Christopher, 313 foundation schools, 307 France, 51–2, 123–4, 163, 372, 375, 377 free trade, 163, 334, 379 Frey, Bruno, 60, 86 Friedman, Benjamin, 282–3 Fukuyama, Francis, 140 Fuld, Dick, 192 Future Jobs Fund, 373 G20 countries, 209, 358, 368, 374 Galliano, John, 143 Gardner, Howard, 274, 305–6 gated communities, 13 Gates, Bill, 71 Gates, Bill (Senior), 222 Gaussian distribution, 190–1, 194 ‘gearing’, 6 general election (6 May 2010), 97, 142, 179, 214, 217, 227, 234, 271, 314, 318, 327–8, 334, 378; Gillian Duffy incident, 394; result of, xi, 20, 345–6, 390 ‘generalised autoregressive conditional heteroskedasicity’ (GARCH), 194 genetically modified crops, 232 Germany, 36, 63, 244, 262, 269, 375–6, 379, 380; export led growth, 355–6, 375, 381–2; Fraunhofer Institutes, 252, 264; Greek bail-out and, 377; pre-1945 period, 128, 129, 134, 382, 383 Gieve, Sir John, 339–40 Gilligan, Andrew, 329 Gladwell, Malcolm, 76–7 Glasgow University, 323 Glass-Steagall Act, 162, 170, 202–3 Glastonbury festival, 143 globalisation, 32, 98, 140, 143, 144, 153–4, 163, 182, 297, 363, 366, 380 Goldman Sachs, 42, 63, 103, 150, 167–8, 174, 176, 177, 205 Goodwin, Sir Fred, 7, 150, 176, 340 Google, 131, 136, 253, 255, 258, 262 Goolsbee, Austin, 52 Gorbachev, Mikhail, 140 Gough, Ian, 79 Gould, Jay, 133 Gould, Philip, 142 government: see also democracy; political system, British; cabinet government, 312, 334, 337; centralisation of power, 14–15, 35, 217, 313, 334, 337, 341, 342; control of news agenda, 14, 224, 313; disregard of House of Commons, 14–15, 223, 339, 345; Number 10 Downing Street as new royal court, 14, 337, 338, 346, 347; press officers/secretaries, 14, 180, 224, 312; Prime Ministerial power, 337, 344, 345, 346 GPS navigation systems, 233, 265 Gray, Elisha, 221 Great Depression, 159, 162, 205, 362 Greece: classical, 25, 26, 38, 39, 44–5, 52–3, 59, 96, 107, 108; crisis and bail-out (2010), 167, 371, 377, 378 Green, Sir Philip, 12, 29, 33 Green Investment Bank, proposed, 252, 371 Greenhead College, Huddersfield, 294 Greenspan, Alan, 145–6, 165, 177, 183, 184, 197–8 Gregory, James, 277 growth, economic: Britain and, 9–10, 214–15, 219, 221, 359, 364; education and, 305–6; export led growth, 36, 169, 208, 226, 355–6, 375–7, 378–83; social investment and, 280–1 GSK, 219, 254 the Guardian, 319, 330, 349 Gupta, Sanjeev, 367 Gutenberg, Johannes, 110–11 Habsburg Empire, 127 Haines, Joe, 312 Haji-Ioannous, Stelios, 28 Haldane, Andrew, 8, 151, 153, 193, 214, 215 the Halifax, 186, 251 Hamilton, Lewis, 64, 65 Hammersmith and Fulham, Borough of, 167 Hampton, Sir Philip, 173 Hands, Guy, 28, 178, 246–8 Hanley, Lynsey, 291, 293, 302 Hanushek, Eric, 305–6 Hart, Betty, 289 Harvard University, 47, 62, 198 Hashimoto administration in Japan, 362 Hastings, Max, 217–18 Hauser, Marc, 47–50 Hawley, Michael, 65–6 Hayward, Tony, 216–17 HBOS, 157, 158, 178, 251 health and well-being, 9, 75, 77, 106, 232, 233, 290–1; see also National Health Service (NHS) Heckman, James, 290 hedge funds, 6, 21, 103, 157–8, 167–8, 172, 203, 205, 206, 240; collapses of, 152, 173–4, 187, 202; as destabilisers, 166–7, 168; destruction of ERM, 140, 144, 166; near collapse of LTCM, 169–70, 183, 193, 200–1 hedging, 164, 165–6 Heinz, Henry John, 302 Hermes fund management company, 242 Herrman, Edwina, 179 Herstatt Bank collapse, 152 Hetherington, Mark, 84 Hewitt, Patricia, 180 Hewlett-Packard, 30 Hills Report on social housing, 290 Hilton, Paris, 304 Himmelfarb, Gertrude, 146 Hirst, Damien, 12 history, economic, 121–36, 166, 285–6, 353–4 Hobhouse, Leonard, 220, 222, 234, 235, 261, 266 Hobsbawm, Eric, 100 Hoffman, Elizabeth, 60 Holland, 113, 124, 230 Honda, 91, 269 Hong Kong, 168 Hopkins, Harry, 300 Horton, Tim, 277 House of Commons, 14–15, 223, 312–13, 337–9, 345 House of Lords, 15, 128, 129, 312, 334, 344, 346–7 housing, social, 10, 289, 290–1, 292, 308–9 housing cost credits, 308–9 HSBC, 181, 251 Huhne, Chris, 346 Hunt family, sale of cattle herds, 201 Hurka, Thomas, 45–6 Hutton, Will, works of, x; The State We’re In, x, 148–9 IBM, 29, 164, 254 Iceland, 7, 138 ICT industry, 9, 29–30, 109, 134, 135–6, 182, 229 immigration, 11, 143, 326, 328, 342, 343, 386, 394; from Eastern Europe, 82, 281–2, 283; welfare state and, 81–2, 281–2, 283, 284 incapacity benefit, 27 the Independent, 93, 330 Independent Safeguarding Authority, 339 India, 144, 226, 230, 254, 354–5 individual responsibility, 17, 38, 39, 78–9 individualism, 54, 57, 66, 111, 221, 281, 341, 366; capitalism/free market theories and, ix, 17, 19, 27, 40, 145, 221, 234–5 Indonesia, 168 Industrial and Commercial Finance Corporation (now 3i), 250 industrial revolution, 28, 112, 115, 121–3, 124, 126–8, 130, 315 inflation, 6, 32, 355, 364, 365; targets, 163, 165, 208, 359 Ingham, Bernard, 312 innovation: see also entrepreneurs; national ecosystem of innovation; as collective and social, 40, 131, 219–22, 261, 265–6, 388; comparisons between countries, 67; competition and, 40, 114, 257–60; development times, 240, 243; discretionary effort and, 62, 65, 102–3, 105–6, 131, 222, 392–3; dissemination of knowledge and, 110–11, 112–13, 219–22, 265–6; due desert and, 40, 62, 67, 112, 117; ‘financial innovation’, 63–4, 138, 147, 149, 153–4, 182; general-purpose technologies (GPTs), 107–11, 112, 117, 126–7, 134, 228–9, 256, 261, 384; high taxation as deterrent, 104, 105; history of, 107–17, 121–7, 131–4, 221; increased pace of advance, 228–9, 230, 266–7; incremental, 108, 254, 256; incumbent elites and, 29–30, 104, 106, 109, 111–12, 113, 114, 115, 116, 257; large firms and, 251–2, 254–5; as natural to humans, 106–7, 274; need for network of specialist banks, 251–2, 265, 371; in ‘open-access societies’, 109–13, 114, 116–17, 122–3, 126–7, 131, 136, 315; patents and copyright, 102, 103, 105, 110, 260–1, 263; private enterprise and, 100–1; regulation and, 268–70; risk-taking and, 6, 103, 111, 189; short term investment culture and, 33, 242–3, 244; small firms and, 252, 253–4, 255–6; universities and, 261–5 Innovation Fund, 21, 251, 252 Institute of Fiscal Studies, 275–6, 363, 368–9, 372 Institute of Government, 334, 335, 337, 343 insurance, 165–6, 187, 240, 242 Intel, 255, 256 intellectual property, 260–1 interest rates, 164, 191, 352–3, 354, 357, 359, 360, 361, 362, 367, 380 internal combustion engine, 28, 109, 134 International Monetary Fund (IMF), 9, 152–3, 177–8, 187, 207, 226, 383, 384; Asian currency crisis (1997) and, 168–9; proposed bank levy and financial activities tax, 209; support for fiscal policy, 367 internet, 11, 28, 52, 109, 134, 227, 256, 265; news and politics on, 316–17, 321, 349; pay-walls, 316, 349; as threat to print media, 324, 331, 349 iPods, 105, 143 Iraq War, 14–15, 18, 36, 144, 329 Ireland, 138 iron steamships, 126 Islam, 352, 353 Islamic fundamentalism, 283, 384 Israel, 251, 322–3 Italy, 101, 103, 317, 328 ITN, 330, 331 James, Howell, 180 Japan, 36, 67, 140, 163, 168, 244, 369, 375, 376, 385, 386; credit crunch (1989-92), 359–60, 361–2, 382; debt levels, 356, 362, 363; incumbent elites in early twentieth-century, 134; Tokyo Bay, 254; Top Runner programme, 269 Jenkins, Roger, 296 Jobcentre Plus, 300 Jobs, Steve, 29–30, 65–6, 71 John Lewis Group, 66, 67, 93, 246 Johnson, Boris, 179 Johnson, Simon, 177 Jones, Tom, 242 Joseph Rowntree Foundation, 21, 278–9 journalism, 318–21, 323–4, 326–7 Jovanovic, Boyan, 256 JP Morgan, 169, 191–2, 195–6 judges, 15 justice systems, 30–1, 44–5, 49; symbolised by pair of scales, 4, 40 Kahneman, Daniel, 94–5 Kant, Immanuel, 73, 112, 274 Kay, John, 175 Kennedy, Helena, 340 Keynesian economics, x, xi, 184, 190, 196–7, 354, 362, 390–1 Kindleberger, Charles, 184 King, Mervyn, 213 Kinnock, Neil, 142 kitemarking, need for, 267 Klenow, Peter, 52 Knetsch, Jack, 94–5 Knight, Frank, Risk, Uncertainty and Profit (1921), 189, 191, 196–7 knowledge: capitalist advance of, 27–8, 31, 110–11, 112–13; public investment in learning, 28, 31, 40, 131, 220, 235, 261, 265 knowledge economy, 8, 11–12, 34, 135–6, 229–33, 258, 273–4, 341, 366; credit growth and, 355; graduate entry to, 295; large firms and, 251–2, 254–5; small firms and, 252, 253–4, 255–6, 261; state facilitation of, 219–22, 229–30 Koizumi administration in Japan, 362 Koo, Richard, 360, 361–2 Kuper, Simon, 352 Kwak, James, 64, 177 labour market, 52, 62, 83, 95; flexibility, 5, 275, 276, 299, 364–5, 387 laissez-faire ideology, 153, 198–9, 259 Laker, Freddie, 30 Lambert, Richard, 6–7 language acquisition and cognitive development, 288, 289 Large Hadron Collider, 263 Latin American debt crisis, 164 Lavoisier, Antoine, 31 Lazarus, Edmund, 179 Leahy, Sir Terry, 295 Learning and Skills Council, 282, 300 left wing politics, modern, 17, 38, 78–83 Lehman Brothers, 150, 152, 165, 170, 181, 192, 204 lender-of-last-resort function, 155, 158, 160, 187 Lerner, Melvin, 83 leverage, 6, 29, 154–6, 157, 158, 172, 179, 180, 198, 204, 209–10, 254, 363; disguised on balance sheet, 181, 195; effect on of credit crunches, 358, 359, 360, 361, 374–5; excess/massive levels, 7, 147–8, 149, 150–1, 158, 168, 170, 187, 192, 197, 203; need for reform of, 206, 207, 208; private equity and, 245–6, 247 Lewis, Jemima, 282, 287 Lewis, Joe, 12 libel laws, 332–3, 348–9 Liberal Democrats, xi, 11, 98, 141, 343, 360–1, 368; general election (2010) and, 97, 142, 179, 271, 390 libertarianism, 234 Likierman, Sir Andrew, 180 limited liability (introduced 1855), 353–4, 363 Lind, Allan, 85 Lindert, Peter, 280–1 Lipsey, Richard, 108, 263 Lisbon earthquake (1755), 54 Lisbon Treaty Constitution, 328 literacy and numeracy, 20–1 livestock fairs, pre-twentieth-century, 90 Lloyds Bank, 176, 178, 186, 202, 204, 251, 259 Lo, Andrew, 195 loan sharks, illegal, 291 local government, 307, 347–8 Locke, John, 54–5, 59 London School of Economics (LSE), 246 London Stock Exchange, 90, 162 London Underground, financing of, 336, 389 lone parent families, 292 Long Term Capital Management (LTCM), 169–70, 183, 193, 194, 200–1 long-term incentive plans (LTIPs), 6 Loomes, Graham, 59 luck, 23, 26–7, 38, 39, 40, 41, 67, 68, 69–77, 222, 273, 393–4; diplomacy/international relations and, 385–6; disadvantaged children and, 74–5, 83, 288–90; executive pay and, 138; taxation and, 73–4, 75, 78, 303 Luxembourg, 138 MacDonald, Ramsey, 315 Machiavelli, Niccolo, 62 Machin, Steve, 283–4 Macmillan Committee into City (1931), 179 Madoff, Bernie, 7 mafia, Italian, 101, 104–5 Major, John, 138, 180, 279, 334 Malaysia, 168 malls, out-of-town, 143 Mandelbrot, Benoit, 194, 195 Mandelson, Peter, 21, 24, 142, 148, 220 manufacturing sector, decline of, 5, 8, 219, 272, 292, 341, 363 Manza, Jeff, 281, 282 Marconi, 142–3 market fundamentalism, 9–19, 32–3, 40–2, 366; belief in efficiency of markets, 188–9, 190, 193, 194, 235–9, 366; coalition government (from May 2010) and, 370; collapse of, 3–4, 7–9, 19, 20, 219–20, 235, 392; Conservative Party and, 5, 17, 138, 147, 160, 161; domination of, 5–6, 14, 16–17, 163, 364–5, 387–90; likely resurgence of, 5, 8; New Labour and, x–xi, 5, 19, 144–9, 388, 389–90; post-communist fiasco in Russia, 135; rejection of fiscal policy, 224–5, 364–5, 367 mark-to-market accounting convention, 175 Marland, Lord Jonathan, 179 Marquand, David, 328 Marsh, Jodie, 64, 65 Marx, Karl, 56–8, 121–2 Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, 232, 274–5 mass production, 109, 134, 182 Masters, Blythe, 196 mathematical models (‘quants’), 105, 149, 151, 152, 165, 169, 188, 190–6, 203; extensions and elaborations, 194; Gaussian distribution, 190–1, 194; JP Morgan and, 195–6 Matthewson, Sir George (former chair of RBS), 25 Maude, Francis, 180 Mayhew, Henry, 285–6 McCartney, Paul, 247 McGoldrick, Mark, 174 McKinsey Global Institute, 253, 358–9, 360, 363 McQueen, Alexander, 143 media, mainstream, 6, 35, 312, 315–20, 321–32, 348–50; commoditisation of information, 318–20, 321; communications technology and, 316, 320, 349; domination of state by, 14, 16, 223–4, 338, 339, 343; fanatical anti-Europeanism, 15, 328, 378; foreign/tax exile ownership of, 218; hysterical tabloid campaigns, 10–11, 298, 319–20; ‘info-capitalism’, 317–18, 327, 328, 342; lauding of celebrity, 281, 314; modern 24/7 news agenda, 13, 224, 321, 343; regional newspapers, 331; as setter of agenda/narrative, 327–31, 342; television news, 330–1; undermining of democracy, 315–16, 317–18, 321–9, 333, 350; urgent need for reform, 35, 218, 344, 348–50, 391; view of poverty as deserved, 25, 53, 83, 281, 286; weakness of foreign coverage, 322, 323, 330 Mencken, H.L., 311 mergers and takeovers, 8, 21, 33, 92, 245, 251, 258, 259, 388 Merkel, Angela, 381–2 Merrill Lynch, 150, 170, 175, 192 Merton, Robert, 169, 191 Meucci, Antonnio, 221 Mexico, 30, 385 Meyer, Christopher, 332 Michalek, Richard, 175 Microsoft, 71, 114, 136, 253, 254, 258–9 Milburn, Alan, 273 Miles, David, 186–7 Milgram, Stanley, 200 millennium bug, 319 Miller, David, 70, 76, 77 minimum wage, 142, 278 Minsky, Hyman, 183, 185 Mirror newspapers, 319, 329 Mlodinow, Leonard, 72–3 MMR vaccine, 327 mobile phones, 30, 134, 143, 229, 349 modernity, 54–5, 104 Mokyr, Joel, 112 monarchy, 15, 312, 336 Mondragon, 94 monetary policy, 154, 182, 184, 185, 208, 362, 367 monopolies, 74, 102, 103, 160, 314; history of, 104, 113, 124, 125–6, 130–4; in the media, 30, 317, 318, 331, 350; modern new wave of, 35, 135–6, 137–8, 201–2, 258–9; ‘oligarchs’, 30, 65, 104 Monopolies and Mergers Commission, 258, 318 Moody’s (credit-ratings agency), 151, 175 morality, 16–27, 37, 44–54, 70, 73; see also desert, due, concept of; fairness; proportionality; debt and, 351–4, 357, 360–1 Morgan, JP, 67 Morgan, Piers, 329 Morgan Stanley, 150 Mulas-Granados, Carlos, 367 Murdoch, James, 389 Murdoch, Rupert, 317–18, 320, 327 Murphy, Kevin, 62, 63 Murray, Jim ‘Mad Dog’, 321 Myners, Paul, 340 Nash bargaining solution, 60 National Audit Office, 340 National Child Development Study, 289–90 national ecosystem of innovation, 33–4, 65, 103, 206, 218, 221, 239–44, 255–9, 374; state facilitation of, 102, 219–22, 229–30, 233, 251–2, 258–66, 269–70, 392 National Health Service (NHS), 21, 27, 34, 92, 265, 277, 336, 371–2; popular support for, 75, 77, 283 national insurance system, 81, 277, 302 national strategy for neighbourhood renewal, 278 Navigation Acts, abolition of, 126 Neiman, Susan, 18–19 neo-conservatism, 17–18, 144–9, 387–90 network theory, 199–201, 202–4, 206; Pareto curve and, 201–2 New Economics Foundation, 62 New Industry New Jobs strategy, 21 New Labour: budget deficit and, 224, 335, 360, 368, 369; business friendly/promarket policies, x–xi, 139–40, 142, 145, 146–7, 162, 198–9, 382; City of London and, x–xi, 5, 19, 22, 142–3, 144–5, 355; decline of class-based politics, 341; failure to challenge elites, x–xi, 14, 22, 388, 389–90; general election (1992) and, 138, 140–1, 144, 148, 277; general election (2005) and, 97; general election (2010) and, 20, 271, 334, 374, 378; light-touch regulation and, 138, 145, 146–7, 162, 198–9; New Industry New Jobs strategy, 21; one-off tax on bank bonuses, 26, 179, 249; record in government, 10–11, 19, 20–2, 220, 276–80, 302, 306, 334–6, 366–7, 389–90; reforms to by ‘modernisers’, 141; responses to newspaper campaigns, 11 New York markets, 140, 152, 162; Asian and/or OPEC capital surpluses and, 169, 171, 354; London/New York axis, 149, 150–1, 157–8, 160, 188, 202 Newsweek, 174 Newton, Isaac, 31, 127, 190 NHS Direct, 372 Nicoli, Eric, 13 non-executive directors (NEDs), 249–50 Nordhaus, William, 260 Nordic countries, 262; Iceland, 7, 138; Norway, 281; Sweden, 264, 281 North, Douglas, 113, 116, 129–30 Northern Rock, 9, 156, 157, 158, 186, 187–8, 202, 204, 251, 340–1 Norton Publishing, 93 Nozick, Robert, 234, 235 nuclear non-proliferation, 226, 384, 394 Nussbaum, Martha, 79 Obama, Barack, 18, 183, 380, 382–3, 394–5 the Observer, 141, 294, 327 Office for Budget Responsibility, 360 Office of Fair Trading (OFT), 257, 258 OFSTED, 276 oil production, 322; BP Gulf of Mexico disaster (2010), 216–17, 392; finite stocks and, 230, 384; OPEC, 149, 161, 171; price increase (early 1970s), 161; in USA, 130, 131, 132 Olsen, Ken, 29 Olympics (2012), 114 open markets, 29, 30, 31, 40, 89, 92, 100–1, 366, 377, 379, 382, 384; see also ‘open-access societies’; as determinants of value, 51–2, 62; fairness and, 60–1, 89–91, 94–6; ‘reference prices’ and, 94–6 ‘open-access societies’, 134, 135, 258, 272, 273, 275, 276, 280–1, 394; Britain as ‘open-access society’ (to 1850), 124, 126–7; democracy and, 136, 314; Enlightenment and, 30–1, 314–15, 394; innovation and invention in, 109–13, 114, 116–17, 122–3, 126–7, 131, 136, 315; partial political opening in, 129–30; US New Freedom programme, 132–3 opium production, 102 options, 166, 188, 191 Orange County derivatives losses, 167 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), 180, 337, 373 Orwell, George, 37 Osborne, George, 147, 208, 224, 245, 302, 338 Overend, Gurney and Co., 156–7 Oxbridge/top university entry, 293–4, 306 Oxford University, 261 Page, Scott, 204 Paine, Tom, 347 Pareto, Vilfredo, 201–2 Paribas, 152, 187 Parkinson, Lance-Bombardier Ben, 13 participation, political, 35, 86, 96, 99 Paulson, Henry, 177 Paulson, John, 103, 167–8 pay of executives and bankers, 3–4, 5, 6–7, 22, 66–7, 138, 387; bonuses, 6, 25–6, 41, 174–5, 176, 179, 208, 242, 249, 388; high levels/rises of, 6–7, 13, 25, 82–3, 94, 172–6, 216, 296, 387, 393; Peter Mandelson on, 24; post-crash/bail-outs, 176, 216; in private equity houses, 248; remuneration committees, 6, 82, 83, 176; shared capitalism and, 66, 93; spurious justifications for, 42, 78, 82–3, 94, 176, 216 pension, state, 81, 372, 373 pension funds, 240, 242 Pettis, Michael, 379–80 pharmaceutical industry, 219, 255, 263, 265, 267–8 Phelps, Edmund, 275 philanthropy and charitable giving, 13, 25, 280 Philippines, 168 Philippon, Thomas, 172–3 Philips Electronics, Royal, 256 Pimco, 177 piracy, 101–2 Plato, 39, 44 Player, Gary, 76 pluralist state/society, x, 35, 99, 113, 233, 331, 350, 394 Poland, 67, 254 political parties, 13–14, 340, 341, 345, 390; see also under entries for individual parties political system, British: see also democracy; centralised constitution, 14–15, 35, 217, 334; coalitions as a good thing, 345–6; decline of class-based politics, 341; devolving of power to Cardiff and Edinburgh, 15, 334; expenses scandal, 3, 14, 217, 313, 341; history of (to late nineteenth-century), 124–30; lack of departmental coordination, 335, 336, 337; long-term policy making and, 217; monarchy and, 15, 312, 336; politicians’ lack of experience outside politics, 338; required reforms of, 344–8; select committee system, 339–40; settlement (of 1689), 125; sovereignty and, 223, 346, 347, 378; urgent need for reform, 35, 36–7, 218, 344; voter-politician disengagement, 217–18, 310, 311, 313–14, 340 Pommerehne, Werner, 60 population levels, world, 36 Portsmouth Football Club, 352 Portugal, 108, 109, 121, 377 poverty, 278–9; child development and, 288–90; circumstantial causes of, 26, 283–4; Conservative Party and, 279; ‘deserving’/’undeserving’ poor, 276, 277–8, 280, 284, 297, 301; Enlightenment views on, 53, 55–6; need for asset ownership, 301–3, 304; political left and, 78–83; the poor viewed as a race apart, 285–7; as relative not absolute, 55, 84; Adam Smith on, 55, 84; structure of market economy and, 78–9, 83; view that the poor deserve to be poor, 25, 52–3, 80, 83, 281, 285–8, 297, 301, 387; worldwide, 383, 384 Power2010 website, 340–1 PR companies and media, 322, 323 Press Complaints Commission (PCC), 325, 327, 331–2, 348 preventative medicine, 371 Price, Lance, 328, 340 Price, Mark, 93 Prince, Chuck, 184 printing press, 109, 110–11 prisoners, early release of, 11 private-equity firms, 6, 28–9, 158, 172, 177, 179, 205, 244–9, 374 Procter & Gamble, 167, 255 productive entrepreneurship, 6, 22–3, 28, 29–30, 33, 61–2, 63, 78, 84, 136, 298; in British history (to 1850), 28, 124, 126–7, 129; due desert/fairness and, 102–3, 105–6, 112, 223, 272, 393; general-purpose technologies (GPTs) and, 107–11, 112, 117, 126–7, 134, 228–9, 256, 261, 384 property market: baby boomer generation and, 372–3; Barker Review, 185; boom in, 5, 143, 161, 183–4, 185–7, 221; bust (1989-91), 161, 163; buy-to-let market, 186; commercial property, 7, 356, 359, 363; demutualisation of building societies, 156, 186; deregulation (1971) and, 161; Japanese crunch (1989-92) and, 361–2; need for tax on profits from home ownership, 308–9, 373–4; property as national obsession, 187; residential mortgages, 7, 183–4, 186, 356, 359, 363; securitised loans based mortgages, 171, 186, 188; shadow banking system and, 171, 172; ‘subprime’ mortgages, 64, 152, 161, 186, 203 proportionality, 4, 24, 26, 35, 38, 39–40, 44–6, 51, 84, 218; see also desert, due, concept of; contributory/discretionary benefits and, 63; diplomacy/ international relations and, 385–6; job seeker’s allowance as transgression of, 81; left wing politics and, 80; luck and, 73–7, 273; policy responses to crash and, 215–16; poverty relief systems and, 80–1; profit and, 40, 388; types of entrepreneurship and, 61–2, 63 protectionism, 36, 358, 376–7, 378, 379, 382, 386 Prussia, 128 Public Accounts Committee, 340 Purnell, James, 338 quantitative easing, 176 Quayle, Dan, 177 race, disadvantage and, 290 railways, 9, 28, 105, 109–10, 126 Rand, Ayn, 145, 234 Rawls, John, 57, 58, 63, 73, 78 Reagan, Ronald, 135, 163 recession, xi, 3, 8, 9, 138, 153, 210, 223, 335; of 1979-81 period, 161; efficacy of fiscal policy, 367–8; VAT decrease (2009) and, 366–7 reciprocity, 43, 45, 82, 86, 90, 143, 271, 304, 382; see also desert, due, concept of; proportionality Reckitt Benckiser, 82–3 Regional Development Agencies, 21 regulation: see also Bank of England; Financial Services Authority (FSA); Bank of International Settlements (BIS), 169, 182; Basel system, 158, 160, 163, 169, 170–1, 196, 385; big as beautiful in global banking, 201–2; Big Bang (1986), 90, 162; by-passing of, 137, 187; capital requirements/ratios, 162–3, 170–1, 208; dismantling of post-war system, 149, 158, 159–63; economists’ doubts over deregulation, 163; example of China, 160; failure to prevent crash, 154, 197, 198–9; Glass-Steagall abolition (1999), 170, 202–3; light-touch, 5, 32, 138, 151, 162, 198–9; New Deal rules (1930s), 159, 162; in pharmaceutical industry, 267–8; as pro-business tool, 268–70; proposed Financial Policy Committee, 208; required reforms of, 267, 269–70, 376, 377, 384, 392; reserve requirements scrapped (1979), 208; task of banking authorities, 157; Top Runner programme in Japan, 269 Reinhart, Carmen, 214, 356 Repo 105 technique, 181 Reshef, Ariell, 172–3 Reuters, 322, 331 riches and wealth, 11–13, 272–3, 283–4, 387–8; see also pay of executives and bankers; the rich as deserving of their wealth, 25–6, 52, 278, 296–7 Rickards, James, 194 risk, 149, 158, 165, 298–302, 352–3; credit default swaps and, 151, 152, 166–8, 170, 171, 175, 176, 191, 203, 207; derivatives and see derivatives; distinction between uncertainty and, 189–90, 191, 192–3, 196–7; employment insurance concept, 298–9, 301, 374; management, 165, 170, 171, 189, 191–2, 193–4, 195–6, 202, 203, 210, 354; securitisation and, 32, 147, 165, 169, 171, 186, 188, 196; structured investment vehicles and, 151, 165, 169, 171, 188; value at risk (VaR), 171, 192, 195, 196 Risley, Todd, 289 Ritchie, Andrew, 103 Ritter, Scott, 329 Robinson, Sir Gerry, 295 Rogoff, Ken, 214, 356 rogue states, 36 Rolling Stones, 247 Rolls-Royce, 219, 231 Rome, classical, 45, 74, 108, 116 Roosevelt, Franklin D., 133, 300 Rothermere, Viscount, 327 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 56, 58, 112 Rousseau, Peter, 256 Rowling, J.K., 64, 65 Rowthorn, Robert, 292, 363 Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), 25, 150, 152, 157, 173, 181, 199, 251, 259; collapse of, 7, 137, 150, 158, 175–6, 202, 203, 204; Sir Fred Goodwin and, 7, 150, 176, 340 Rubin, Robert, 174, 177, 183 rule of law, x, 4, 220, 235 Russell, Bertrand, 189 Russia, 127, 134–5, 169, 201, 354–5, 385; fall of communism, 135, 140; oligarchs, 30, 65, 135 Rwandan genocide, 71 Ryanair, 233 sailing ships, three-masted, 108 Sandbrook, Dominic, 22 Sands, Peter (CEO of Standard Chartered Bank), 26 Sarkozy, Nicolas, 51, 377 Sassoon, Sir James, 178 Scholes, Myron, 169, 191, 193 Schumpeter, Joseph, 62, 67, 111 science and technology: capitalist dynamism and, 27–8, 31, 112–13; digitalisation, 34, 231, 320, 349, 350; the Enlightenment and, 31, 108–9, 112–13, 116–17, 121, 126–7; general-purpose technologies (GPTs), 107–11, 112, 117, 126–7, 134, 228–9, 256, 261, 384; increased pace of advance, 228–9, 253, 297; nanotechnology, 232; New Labour improvements, 21; new opportunities and, 33–4, 228–9, 231–3; new technologies, 232, 233, 240; universities and, 261–5 Scotland, devolving of power to, 15, 334 Scott, James, 114–15 Scott Bader, 93 Scott Trust, 327 Second World War, 134, 313 Securities and Exchanges Commission, 151, 167–8 securitisation, 32, 147, 165, 169, 171, 186, 187, 196 self-determination, 85–6 self-employment, 86 self-interest, 59, 60, 78 Sen, Amartya, 51, 232, 275 service sector, 8, 291, 341, 355 shadow banking system, 148, 153, 157–8, 170, 171, 172, 187 Shakespeare, William, 39, 274, 351 shareholders, 156, 197, 216–17, 240–4, 250 Sher, George, 46, 50, 51 Sherman Act (USA, 1890), 133 Sherraden, Michael, 301 Shiller, Robert, 43, 298, 299 Shimer, Robert, 299 Shleifer, Andrei, 62, 63, 92 short selling, 103 Sicilian mafia, 101, 105 Simon, Herbert, 222 Simpson, George, 142–3 single mothers, 17, 53, 287 sixth form education, 306 Sky (broadcasting company), 30, 318, 330, 389 Skype, 253 Slim, Carlos, 30 Sloan School of Management, 195 Slumdog Millionaire, 283 Smith, Adam, 55, 84, 104, 112, 121, 122, 126, 145–6 Smith, John, 148 Snoddy, Ray, 322 Snow, John, 177 social capital, 88–9, 92 social class, 78, 130, 230, 304, 343, 388; childcare and, 278, 288–90; continued importance of, 271, 283–96; decline of class-based politics, 341; education and, 13, 17, 223, 264–5, 272–3, 274, 276, 292–5, 304, 308; historical development of, 56–8, 109, 115–16, 122, 123–5, 127–8, 199; New Labour and, 271, 277–9; working-class opinion, 16, 143 social investment, 10, 19, 20–1, 279, 280–1 social polarisation, 9–16, 34–5, 223, 271–4, 282–5, 286–97, 342; Conservative reforms (1979-97) and, 275–6; New Labour and, 277–9; private education and, 13, 223, 264–5, 272–3, 276, 283–4, 293–5, 304; required reforms for reduction of, 297–309 social security benefits, 277, 278, 299–301, 328; contributory, 63, 81, 283; flexicurity social system, 299–301, 304, 374; to immigrants, 81–2, 282, 283, 284; job seeker’s allowance, 81, 281, 298, 301; New Labour and ‘undeserving’ claimants, 143, 277–8; non-contributory, 63, 79, 81, 82; targeting of/two-tier system, 277, 281 socialism, 22, 32, 38, 75, 138, 144, 145, 394 Soham murder case, 10, 339 Solomon Brothers, 173 Sony, 254–5 Soros, George, 166 Sorrell, Martin, 349 Soskice, David, 342–3 South Korea, 168, 358–9 South Sea Bubble, 125–6 Spain, 123–4, 207, 358–9, 371, 377 Spamann, Holger, 198 special purpose vehicles, 181 Spitzer, Matthew, 60 sport, cheating in, 23 stakeholder capitalism, x, 148–9 Standard Oil, 130–1, 132 state, British: anti-statism, 20, 22, 233–4, 235, 311; big finance’s penetration of, 176, 178–80; ‘choice architecture’ and, 238, 252; desired level of involvement, 234–5; domination of by media, 14, 16, 221, 338, 339, 343; facilitation of fairness, ix–x, 391–2, 394–5; investment in knowledge, 28, 31, 40, 220, 235, 261, 265; need for government as employer of last resort, 300; need for hybrid financial system, 244, 249–52; need for intervention in markets, 219–22, 229–30, 235–9, 252, 392; need for reshaping of, 34; pluralism, x, 35, 99, 113, 233, 331, 350, 394; public ownership, 32, 240; target-setting in, 91–2; threats to civil liberty and, 340 steam engine, 110, 126 Steinmueller, W.

The World as It Is: A Memoir of the Obama White House
by Ben Rhodes
Published 4 Jun 2018

” * * * — OBAMA’S TRIP TO HAVANA would be in March, because he wanted it to coincide with Sasha and Malia’s spring break. Every detail of the trip—from the policy changes we were both pursuing, to supporting the American businesses trying to get into Cuba, to the intricacies of Obama’s schedule—was a subject for painstaking negotiation, in endless Skype sessions and multiple trips to Havana. At the end of one of our meetings, Alejandro asked to see me alone. They had one dramatic proposal that they wanted me to explore. “We are very interested in Guantanamo,” he told me. “We know of President Obama’s interest in closing the prison. And so we would propose to take custody of Guantanamo.”

…

Yet that disposition also ensured the painstaking review that established the facts about what happened and raised additional questions about what the Trump campaign had done, which would endure long after we were gone. If Obama’s faith in norms and institutions is validated, then the truth will all come out, and consequences will flow from that. * * * — THE DAY AFTER THE ELECTION, in a Skype session with the Cubans from the Situation Room, I apologized for my confidence that Clinton would win, which I had predicted would lead inexorably to the lifting of the embargo. Alejandro Castro showed no irritation. “You are the first person from your country who approached us with a sense of mutual respect and equality,” he said.

New World, Inc.
by John Butman
Published 20 Mar 2018

But we have been almost ineffably facilitated by online resources—such as the British History Online database (which includes the Calendar of State Papers) and the JSTOR database of articles—and by online tools, such as Evernote, which facilitates the storage, organization, search, and access of huge quantities of information in many forms. Continuing the digital theme, we would also like to recognize the role played by Skype. This book is an Anglo-American collaboration that would have been difficult, not to say impossible, to accomplish without the face-to-face conversations that we conducted over Skype on a weekly basis over a period of two years. Above all, we would like to pay tribute to our families for their encouragement, tolerance, understanding, advice, forebearance, interest, and love during the all-consuming process of creating this book.

How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence
by Michael Pollan
Published 30 Apr 2018

Even years after their experiences in the trials, the volunteers I spoke to recalled them in vivid detail and at considerable length; the interviews lasted hours. These people had big stories to tell; in several cases, these were the most meaningful experiences of their lives, and they clearly relished the opportunity to relive them for me in great detail, whether in person, by Skype, or on the telephone. The volunteers were also required to write a report of their experiences soon after they occurred, and all of the ones I interviewed were happy to share these reports, which made for strange and fascinating reading. Many of the volunteers I spoke to reported initial episodes of intense fear and anxiety before surrendering themselves to the experience—as the sitters encourage them to do.

…

While suppressing entropy (in this context, a synonym for uncertainty) in the brain “serves to promote realism, foresight, careful reflection and an ability to recognize and overcome wishful and paranoid fantasies,” at the same time this achievement tends to “constrain cognition” and exert “a limiting or narrowing influence on consciousness.” After a series of Skype interviews, Robin Carhart-Harris and I were meeting for the first time, in his fifth-floor walk-up in an unposh section of Notting Hill, a few months after the publication of the entropy paper. In person, I was struck by Robin’s youthfulness and intensity. For all his ambition, his affect is strikingly self-effacing and does little to prepare you for his willingness to venture out onto intellectual limbs that would scare off less intrepid scientists.

The Finance Curse: How Global Finance Is Making Us All Poorer
by Nicholas Shaxson
Published 10 Oct 2018

Michael Porter, ‘How Competitive Forces Shape Strategy, Harvard Business Review, March 1979. Porter built a lucrative consulting business out of these ideas. See Steve Denning, ‘What Killed Michael Porter’s Monitor Group? The One Force that Really Matters’, Forbes, 20 November 2012. The Watson quotes come from my Skype interview with Watson, March 2015. 17. Michael Porter, The Competitive Advantage of Nations, Harvard Business Review, March/April 1990. He says ‘Government has critical responsibilities for fundamentals like the primary and secondary education systems, basic national infrastructure, and research in areas of broad national concern such as health care.

…

See Andy Bounds, ‘Local councils to see central funding fall 77 per cent by 2020’, Financial Times, 4 July 2017; and Tom Crewe, ‘The Strange Death of Municipal England’, London Review of Books, 15 December 2016. As this last notes, ‘local authorities in the top 20 per cent for rates of health deprivation and disability have had their spending power cut by an average of £205 per head, 12 times the average reduction faced by those in the bottom 20 per cent’. 14. The Lazonick quotes come mostly from my Skype interview with him on 7 June 2017. See also Bill Lazonick, ‘Stock buybacks: From retain-and-reinvest to downsize-and-distribute’, Brookings Center for Effective Management, April 2015; and ‘The functions of the Stock Market and the Fallacies of Shareholder Value’, Brookings Center for Effective Management, 3 June 2017.

Breaking News: The Remaking of Journalism and Why It Matters Now
by Alan Rusbridger
Published 14 Oct 2018

In pure profit and loss terms the big winner was, ironically, the broadsheet Telegraph, still delivering an operating profit of £32 million in 2016/7. Chapter 21 examines the price the company separately paid in terms of editorial reputation. The Independent started planning its tabloid in early 2003. We went Berliner on 5 September 2005. That period saw the launches of LinkedIn, Skype, MySpace, Facebook, Flickr, Bebo and YouTube. Historians might well argue that, for two years, Fleet Street had had its collective head buried in the sand. 10 Dog, Meet Dog A newspaper never sleeps. This book is concerned with the backstage of institutional life as well as the play itself.

…

Sullivan case (1964) ref1 New Yorker (magazine) ref1, ref2, ref3 Newland, Martin ref1 Newmark, Craig ref1 Newmarket Road (Cambridge) ref1, ref2, ref3 News Corporation ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7n News Digital Media ref1 News Group Newspapers (NGN) ref1, ref2, ref3 News International (NI) ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10n News Network ref1 Newsday.com ref1 Newseum (US) ref1 Newsnight (TV) ref1 Newspaper Money (Hirsch/Gordon) ref1 Newsworks’ Shift conference ref1n NHS ref1 Nielsen NetRatings ref1 1984 (Orwell) ref1 Nixon, President Richard ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 North Africa ref1, ref2 North Briton (newspaper) ref1 North Korea ref1 Northcliffe, Lord ref1 Northcliffe Media ref1 ‘Not Invented Here’ (NIH) resentment ref1 Nottingham Evening Post (newspaper) ref1 Nougayrède, Natalie ref1 Obama, President Barack ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6 Ofcom ref1, ref2, ref3 Official Secrets Act (OSA) ref1, ref2 Official Secrets (Hooper) ref1 O’Hagan, Andrew ref1 oil companies ref1, ref2, ref3 O’Kane, Maggie ref1 Old Bailey ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 Oliver, Craig ref1, ref2 Omidyar, Pierre ref1 On Demand ref1 ‘On Journalism’ (Scott essay) ref1, ref2n, ref3n Open Democracy ref1, ref2, ref3 Open Weekend (2012) ref1, ref2 Operation Weeting ref1 O’Reilly, Tony ref1 ‘original sin’ ref1 Orphan ref1 Orwell, George ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5 Osborne, Peter ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 Oscars ref1 ownership model ref1 Oxford University ref1 Pacino, Al ref1 page views ref1 Panopticon ref1, ref2, ref3n Panorama (TV) ref1 Paris climate talks ref1, ref2 Parker, Andrew ref1 Paton, John ref1 Patriot Act (2001) ref1, ref2 PayPal ref1 paywalls ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10, ref11n ‘hard’ ref1, ref2 metred ref1, ref2 Peake, Maxine ref1 Pearson & Co ref1, ref2 Pemsel, David ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5n, ref6n, ref7n Pentagon ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6 People Like Us (Luyendijk) ref1 Perch, Keith ref1n Perettu, Jonah ref1 Periscope ref1 perjury ref1 Permira Advisers Ltd ref1 Peterloo Massacre ref1, ref2, ref3 Petraeus, General David ref1 Pfauth, Ernst-Jan ref1 PFE (Proudly Found Elsewhere) ref1 philanthropy ref1 Philby, Kim ref1 Piano, Renzo ref1 Pilhofer, Aron ref1, ref2n Plastic Logic ref1 Plender, John ref1 podcasts ref1, ref2n Podemos ref1 Podesta emails ref1, ref2 Poitras, Laura ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 police ref1, ref2, ref3 passim, ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6n, ref7n, ref8n political subsidy ref1 Politico ref1 Politics.co.uk ref1 Popbitch ref1 Popplewell, Sir Oliver ref1, ref2 Porter, Henry ref1 Post Office Act (US 1792) ref1 Pound, Ezra ref1 power ref1 Prescott, John (MP) ref1 Press Acquisitions Ltd ref1 Press Association ref1, ref2 Press Complaints Commission (PCC) ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7n Press Holdings Ltd ref1 Preston, Peter ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8 price war ref1, ref2 Price Waterhouse Cooper ref1 Pride and Perjury (Aitken) ref1 The Printing Press as an Agent of Change (Eisenstein) ref1 printing presses ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8 prisons ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10, ref11, ref12 privacy ref1 Private Eye (magazine) ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8n private investigators ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6 private sector ref1 Proctor & Gamble ref1 Prodigy Internet Service ref1 Product Development Unit (PDU) ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 Professional Footballers’ Association ref1 proportionality ref1 ProPublica ref1, ref2 Proudler, Gerald ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 public goods ref1, ref2 public interest ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 passim, ref1, ref2 passim, ref1 passim, ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5n, ref6n Public Library of Science (PLoS) ref1 public service ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10 passim, ref1, ref2, ref3 public space ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 ‘publicness’ ref1 ‘purchase driver’ ref1 Putnam, Robert ref1 pyjama injunction ref1 Qantas ref1 Qatar ref1, ref2, ref3 Quatremer, Jean ref1 Qur’an ref1 R2 ref1 Raines, Howell ref1 Randall, Mike ref1 rape ref1, ref2, ref3n Rath, Matthias ref1 Ray Street offices ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 ‘reach before revenue’ model ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9 readers ref1 American ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5 knowledge ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6 letters ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9 readers’ editor ref1, ref2, ref3n response ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6 talkboards ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5n see also circulation Reading Football Club ref1 Real Networks ref1 Reckless, Mark (MP) ref1 Reddit ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 Redford, Robert ref1, ref2 Reds (film) ref1 Rees, Jonathan ref1, ref2, ref3 referendum (UK 2016) ref1, ref2 regulation ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 Regulatory Funding Council ref1 Reid, Harry ref1 religious stories ref1 rendition, Gibson report on ref1 Reuters ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5n Institute for the Study of Journalism (RISJ) ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5 Richard (reporter) ref1 Rinehart, Gina ref1 riots ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5n Ritz hotel (London) ref1, ref2, ref3 Ritz hotel (Paris) ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 rivalry ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7n Robards, Jason ref1 Roberts, Brian ref1 Roberts, Justine ref1 Robinson, Geoffrey (MP) ref1 Robinson, Stephen ref1 Rockefeller Foundation ref1 Rohm, Wendy Goldman ref1 Rolling Stones ref1 Rosen, Jay ref1, ref2, ref3 Rosenstiel, Tom ref1 Rossetto, Louis ref1 Rothermere, Lord ref1n, ref2n Rowlands, Tiny ref1 Royal Air Force (RAF) ref1 Royal Courts of Justice ref1, ref2, ref3 Rusbridger, Alan ref1, ref2n, ref3n, ref4n, ref5n Russian intelligence service ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 Ryanair ref1 Saatchi, Maurice ref1 Sachs, Jeffrey ref1 Saffron Walden (Essex) ref1 Said Business School (Oxford) ref1 St Paul’s Cathedral ref1 Salon ref1 samizdat methods ref1 Sampson, Anthony ref1 San Jose Mercury (newspaper) ref1 Sanandaji, Tino ref1 Sandel, Michael ref1 Sanders, Bernie ref1, ref2 Sandy Hook ref1 Sandys, Duncan (MP) ref1 Sardar, Ziauddin ref1 Sark ref1, ref2 Sark Newspaper ref1 SAS ref1 Saudi Arabia ref1, ref2, ref3 Savoy Hotel (London) ref1, ref2, ref3 Savoy Taylors Guild ref1 Sawers, Sir John ref1 Schirrmacher, Franz ref1 Schmidt, Eric ref1, ref2 Schneier, Bruce ref1 Schudson, Michael ref1n science ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8n scoop ref1 Scoop (Waugh) ref1 Scotland Yard ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7 Scotsman (newspaper) ref1, ref2, ref3 Scott, C.P. ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9n, ref10n Scott, David ref1 Scott, Edward ref1 Scott, Henry E. ref1 Scott, John ref1 Scott, Richard ref1 Scott Trust ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10, ref11, ref12, ref13, ref14, ref15n Sellers, Frances Stead ref1 Selvey, Mike ref1 Senate Church committee (US) ref1 Senate Intelligence committee (US) ref1 Sensenbrenner, Jim ref1 September 11 (2001) ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6 Serious Fraud Office (SFO) ref1 Shadid, Anthony ref1 Shainin, Jonathan ref1 Shaw, Fiona ref1 Sheehan, Neil ref1 Sheen, Michael ref1 Shenker, Jack ref1 Sherwood, Charles ref1 Shirky, Clay ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6 Siegal, Allan M. ref1 Silicon Valley ref1, ref2, ref3 passim, ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10, ref11, ref12 comes to Oxford (SVCO) ref1 Simon, David ref1 Simonds, Gavin ref1 Simpson, O.J. ref1 Singer, Marc ref1 Skype ref1 Slate Group ref1 smartphones ref1, ref2 Smith, Ben ref1 Smith, Brad ref1 Smith, Julian (MP) ref1 Smith, Shane ref1 Smith, Tim (MP) ref1 Snapchat ref1 Snowden, Edward ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 passim, ref1 passim, ref1 passim, ref1, ref2n, ref3n Snowden (film) ref1 Soho offices ref1 Sony ref1 Soros ref1 Sorrell, Martin ref1 sources ref1 South Africa ref1, ref2, ref3 South, Christopher ref1 Sparrow, Andrew ref1 Spectator (magazine) ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 Spielberg, Steven ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6n sponsorship ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10 sport ref1 Spotify ref1, ref2 Springer, Axel ref1 The Square and the Tower (Ferguson) ref1 Stalin ref1, ref2 Standage, Tom ref1 Starr, Paul ref1, ref2 ‘Start Me Up’ (song) ref1 Start the Week (radio) ref1 State of the Union speech (Clinton) ref1 Steele, Christopher ref1 Steele, Jonathan ref1 Stephenson, Sir Paul ref1, ref2, ref3 Stewart, Mr Justice ref1 Stone, Biz ref1 Stone, Oliver ref1, ref2, ref3n Strathairn, David ref1 Streep, Meryl ref1 subscription ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10, ref11, ref12, ref13, ref14n ‘subsidariat’ ref1, ref2n Suez ref1 Sullivan, Andrew ref1, ref2n Sulston, John ref1 Sulzberger, A.G. ref1, ref2, ref3n Sulzberger, Arthur ref1n super-injunctions ref1 Supreme Court (UK) ref1 Supreme Court (US) ref1, ref2 Sweden ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4n Sweeney, John ref1 Swift, Jonathan ref1 Switzerland ref1, ref2, ref3 Sydney Morning Herald (newspaper) ref1, ref2 Sykes, Richard ref1 Syria ref1, ref2 tabloids ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 passim, ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9n, ref10n Tahrir Square (Cairo) ref1 Taliban ref1, ref2, ref3 talkboards ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5n Tapscott, Don ref1 Task Force 373 ref1 tax ref1 avoidance ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5n havens ref1, ref2, ref3 Taylor, Gordon ref1, ref2, ref3 Taylor, John Edward ref1, ref2 Taylor, Matthew ref1 Technorati ref1 Terrorism Act (2000) (UK) ref1, ref2 terrorists ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10, ref11, ref12 counter-terrorism ref1, ref2, ref3 Terry, Quinlan ref1 Tesco ref1, ref2, ref3n, ref4n Thailand ref1, ref2, ref3n Thalidomide ref1, ref2n Thatcher, Prime Minister Margaret ref1 Thatcher, Carol ref1 Thatcher, Mark ref1 The Onion Router (TOR) ref1 Thewlis, David ref1 Thirty Club ref1 Thompson, Bill ref1 Thompson, E.P. ref1, ref2 Thompson, Robert ref1 threads ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7 ‘threat reports’ ref1 Three Little Pigs boiling the Big Bad Wolf (film) ref1 Thurlbeck, Neville ref1 Time (magazine) ref1 Times Educational Supplement (magazine) ref1 Tomasky, Michael ref1 Tomlinson, Ian ref1, ref2 Topix.net ref1 torture ref1 Tow Center for Digital Journalism ref1, ref2 toxic waste ref1 Trafigura ref1, ref2, ref3n training ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 travel writing ref1, ref2n Travis, Alan ref1 Treanor, Jill ref1 Tribune Co (US) ref1 Trinity Mirror ref1, ref2, ref3 TripAdvisor ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5n trolls ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7 Trump, President Donald ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10, ref11, ref12, ref13, ref14, ref15 Trump Bump ref1, ref2, ref3n, ref4n trust ref1, ref2 passim, ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 passim, ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7 passim, ref1n Trust ownership ref1 truth ref1 passim, xxiv, ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10, ref11, ref12 reverse burden of ref1, ref2n Tucker Carlson Tonight (TV) ref1 Tugendhat, Mr Justice ref1 Turkey ref1 Tweetdeck ref1 Twitter ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8 passim, ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7n Tyas, John ref1 typesetting ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5n UHNWI (ultra-high net-worth individuals) ref1 UKIP ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4n, ref5n Ukraine ref1 unions ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10, ref11 Unique Selling Point ref1 unique users ref1 United Nations (UN) ref1, ref2 University of California (Berkeley) ref1 Upworthy ref1 USA Today (magazine) ref1, ref2 Usenet ref1 Utley, T.E. ref1, ref2n van Beurden, Ben ref1 The Vanishing Newspaper (Meyer) ref1, ref2 Vanity Fair (magazine) ref1, ref2 Vaz, Keith (MP) ref1 Verizon ref1 ‘verticals’ ref1 Vice (magazine) ref1, ref2 Vickers, Paul ref1 video ref1, ref2, ref3 Vietnam War ref1 ‘viewspaper–newspaper’ ref1, ref2, ref3 Vignette ref1 Viner, Kath ref1, ref2, ref3 Vodafone ref1 Volkswagen ref1 Vyshinsky, Andrey ref1 Wadsworth, A.P. ref1 Wagner, Adam ref1 Waldman, Simon ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4n, ref5n Wales, Jimmy ref1 Walker, Christopher ref1 Wall Street ref1 Wall Street Journal (newspaper) ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9 Wallis, Neil ref1 Walter, Justin ref1 WAN-IFRA ref1 WannaCry ref1n Wapping ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 War Office ref1 Watergate ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 Watson, Tom (MP) ref1 Waugh, Evelyn ref1 We the Media (Gillmor) ref1, ref2 Weatherup, James ref1 Web 1.0 ref1, ref2 Web 2.0 ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6 ‘web monkeys’ ref1 Webster, Phil ref1 Weinstein, Harvey ref1 Weisberg, Jacob ref1 Wellcome Trust ref1, ref2, ref3 Wells, Holly ref1 West Africa ref1 West Coast giants see Silicon valley Westminster ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6 What the Media Are Doing to Our Politics (Lloyd) ref1 whistleblowers ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6 White House (US) ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 White, Michael ref1 Whitehall ref1, ref2, ref3 Whittam Smith, Andreas ref1 Whittow, Hugh ref1 ‘Why I Write’ (Orwell essay) ref1 WikiLeaks ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7 Wikinomics (Tapscott) ref1 Wikipedia ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7 Wilby, Peter ref1 Wilkes, John ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6n Williams, Francis ref1 Wilton’s (restaurant) ref1 Windows 95 ref1 The Wire (TV) ref1 Wired (Anderson) ref1 Wired (magazine) ref1 Witherow, John ref1, ref2 witnesses ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5 Witty, Andrew ref1 Wolf, Armin ref1 women ref1, ref2 Wood, Graeme ref1 Woodward, Bob ref1, ref2 Workthing ref1, ref2 World Cup (football) ref1 World Economic Forum ref1 A World Without Bees (Benjamin) ref1 Worsthorne, Peregrine ref1 WPP plc ref1 Wu, Tim ref1 Yahoo ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6 Yates, John ref1, ref2, ref3 The Year the Future Began (Campbell) ref1 Yemen ref1 Yo!

Coders: The Making of a New Tribe and the Remaking of the World
by Clive Thompson
Published 26 Mar 2019

“To the extent that you’re spending 8, 9, sometimes 10 hours, 12 hours a day working with engineers, people who think like you,” she said to him, “when you shift from that, you almost need to decompress a little bit before you’re fit for the rest of society.” He admits it’s true. He works in a home office, surrounded by his wide-screen monitor and (when I Skyped with him) a jumble of hardware projects. When he finishes work, he’ll immediately start critiquing whatever Mo’s doing. “Is this what we’re having?” he’ll ask, if she’s cooking dinner. “Is that how you cook that? Is there enough oil there?” It’s as if he’s still wrangling with his nerdy colleagues.

…

As he tells the crowd, there are a ton of forums where people can talk, but few tools to help them get things done, he explains; Pursuance aims to help fix that. “I notice, watching some online activists operate, that there’s way too much manual work done that could be automated,” Phillips says crisply as he shows off the software. On the screen over him, Barrett Brown has Skyped in to talk about the philosophy of Pursuance in his slight southern drawl, while sitting in his living room and puffing heavily on a vape pen. Afterward, the group heads out to a Thai restaurant for dinner. “That was nerve-racking—we were still putting stuff into the database, like, ten minutes before we went onstage,” says Marty Yee, a young coder whose day job currently is working for Behive, a small social-networking app.

Fancy Bear Goes Phishing: The Dark History of the Information Age, in Five Extraordinary Hacks
by Scott J. Shapiro

This includes subscriber information, log files, and email accounts with whom subscribers have corresponded. These records may allow investigators to move laterally through the criminal conspiracy, figuring out the attacker’s partners and seeking information about the attacker. To get access to content, such as email messages, photographs, texts, Skype messages, and social media posts, agents must escalate even further by applying for search warrants. Prosecutors must apply to a court showing the evidence collected thus far demonstrates probable cause that a crime has been committed or is being attempted. With a search warrant, investigators can piece together a criminal conspiracy, insofar as cybercriminals usually communicate electronically with one another.

…

Paras was impressed by the only company able to beat Mirai and contacted Coelho to congratulate him. The discussion between the two men—one a black hat, the other white—is fascinating. Even though Paras had attacked ProxyPipe and caused the company almost $400,000 worth of damage, the discussion is cordial, even friendly. Paras messaged Coelho on Skype at 10:00 a.m., September 28, under the handle Anna-Senpai. Pasting a screenshot from the comment on Krebs’s blog, Paras wrote, “Don’t get me wrong, im not even mad, it was pretty funny actually. nobody has ever done that to my c2 (goldmedal).” Because Paras was posting pseudonymously, Coelho still did not know his old friend was one of the hackers behind Mirai.

Lonely Planet Mongolia (Travel Guide)
by Lonely Planet , Trent Holden , Adam Karlin , Michael Kohn , Adam Skolnick and Thomas O'Malley
Published 1 Jul 2018

Telephone Many tourists end up buying a local SIM for their phone, but otherwise you can use the phone at your hotel for local calls, often for free. Other hotels, including those with business centres, charge T400 for a call to a landline (six digits) or a mobile number (eight digits). Where available, internet cafes are equipped with headsets and webcams for Skype calls. Toilets There are a handful of public toilets in UB. Tourist Information Guide Tourist Information Centre ( MAP GOOGLE MAP ; %7010 1011; www.touristinfocenter.mn; Peace Ave, State Department Store, 1st fl, What3words: bravo.hexes.steamed; h9am-9pm Mon-Fri, 10am-9pm Sat & Sun May-Sep, to 6pm Oct-Apr) Privately run tourist information centre within the State Department Store; offers maps, brochures and tours.

…

Calling out of Mongolia If you are calling out of Mongolia and using an IDD phone, dial 00 and then your international country code. If you have a mobile phone and you are roaming on your regular plan, add the + sign, then country code and the number. For ease of use and lower costs, you can also use Skype, Viber or a similar VoIP app. Operator In Ulaanbaatar, the domestic operator’s number is 109. Outside normal working hours, call 1109. Mobile Phones Local SIM cards can be used in whatever phone you bring. You can also keep your own SIM card if you have a plan that allows roaming, but be wary of roaming charges.

Learning Flask Framework
by Matt Copperwaite and Charles Leifer
Published 26 Nov 2015

If, however, you all work in disparate locations where a centralized database is not ideal or impossible to secure, the other solution is to use a file-system based database engine such as SQLite. Then, when an update is made to the database, that file can be spread to others via e-mail, Dropbox, Skype, and so on. They then have an up-to-date copy of the database that they can locally run Frozen-Flask from to create the publishable content. Asynchronous tasks with Celery Celery is a library that allows you to run asynchronous tasks within Python. This is especially helpful in Python as Python runs single threaded and you may find that you have a long-running task that you wish to either start and discard; or you may wish to give the user of your website some feedback on the progress of the said task.

The Retreat of Western Liberalism
by Edward Luce
Published 20 Apr 2017

Part Three: Fallout 1 Jake Sherman, ‘Poll: voters liked Trump’s “America First” address’, Politico, 25 January 2017, <http://www.politico.com/story/2017/01/poll-voters-liked-trumps-inaugural-address-234148>. 2 Dana Priest, ‘The disruptive career of Michael Flynn, Trump’s national-security adviser’, New Yorker, 23 November 2016, <http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-disruptive-career-of-trumps-national-security-adviser>. 3 J. Lester Feder, ‘This is how Stephen Bannon sees the entire world’, Buzzfeed, 16 November 2016. Transcript of a 2014 speech by Bannon via Skype to a conference in the Vatican in 2014: <https://www.buzzfeed.com/lesterfeder/this-is-how-steve-bannon-sees-the-entire-world>. 4 I am indebted to Jonathan David Kirshner, of Cornell University, whose paper ‘Keynes’s Early Beliefs and Why They Still Matter’ (Challenge, 58:5 (October 2015)) brilliantly elucidates the evolution in Keynes’s thinking. 5 Graham Allison, ‘The Thucydides Trap: Are the US and China Headed for War?’

Sober Stick Figure: A Memoir
by Amber Tozer
Published 29 May 2016

All of our conversations feel big and meaningful and real. Sherri, my friend Bridgette, and the bigwig, fancy producer, and many other sweet and brave people are my sober safety net and I love them a lot. Lesley and I are still friends and probably will be forever. Jen lives in Switzerland now. We Skype once a week, and she has read every draft of this book. Thank you, Jen. I occasionally talk to my old bandmates Stu and Andy. Hi, guys! Let’s get the band back together or maybe not! Lisa lives with her three kids in Chicago, and we call each other once in a while and laugh so hard about those road trips.

Age of Context: Mobile, Sensors, Data and the Future of Privacy
by Robert Scoble and Shel Israel
Published 4 Sep 2013

Currently, the most advanced gesture technology is Microsoft Xbox One with Kinect, a $500 platform that now includes sensors good enough to determine a player’s excitement level by measuring heartbeats. Microsoft unofficially confirms it sees a future in the home for Kinect that goes beyond its use in Xbox game platforms. Microsoft recently added a Skype version to its voice-command-operated Xbox. We can see the day when Kinect joins the fray as a gesture-enabled PCA. Perhaps someday it will connect to your family robot. Microsoft has churned out a few interesting additional consumer apps in recent times, not the least of which is Blink, a unique Windows feature that lets you hold down your camera shutter to grab quick blink-like bursts of brief video clips.

Keeping Up With the Quants: Your Guide to Understanding and Using Analytics
by Thomas H. Davenport and Jinho Kim
Published 10 Jun 2013

The next time he took the qualifying exam, he got the highest score. Patil eventually graduated and became a faculty member at Maryland, and worked on modeling the complexity of weather. He then worked for the US government on intelligence issues. Research funding was limited at the time, so he left to work for Skype, then owned by eBay. He next became the leader of data scientists at LinkedIn, where the people in that highly analytical position have been enormously influential in product development. Now Patil is a data scientist in residence (perhaps the first person with that title as well) at the venture capital firm Greylock Partners, helping the firm’s portfolio companies to think about data and analytics.