KPCB's Mary Meeker shows us in the following deck of slides, the incredible developments and potentials of the internet and other technology trends.
KPCB Internet Trends 2012
KPCB Internet Trends 2012
Showing posts with label web revolution. Show all posts
Showing posts with label web revolution. Show all posts
Thursday, August 30, 2012
Wednesday, March 21, 2012
Web Wars: Pirate Bay to Use Hovering Server Drones
The web is a frontier for the cat-and-mouse analogy signifying the constant struggle between politics and markets.
I pointed out how social media activists have resorted to various means of technology innovations to elude censorship.
Yet more of these battles have been developing at an awesome pace.
From KurzweilAI,
The Pirate Bay (TPB), which allows users to share media files via BitTorrent, plans to avoid shutdown by Hollywood by putting some of its servers in GPS controlled drones hovering over international waters, the TPB team told TorrentFreak.
“With the development of GPS controlled drones, far-reaching cheap radio equipment and tiny new computers like the Raspberry Pi, we’re going to experiment with sending out some small drones that will float some kilometers up in the air,” TPB revealed in a blog post.
“This way our machines will have to be shot down with aeroplanes in order to shut down the system. A real act of war. With modern radio transmitters we can get over 100Mbps per node up to 50km away.”
Looking ahead, The Pirate Bay team thinks the site may no longer be hosted on this planet. “When the time comes we will host in all parts of the galaxy, being true to our slogan of being the galaxy’s most resilient system. And all of the parts we’ll use to build that system on will be downloadable.”
So the social media battlefield will be transformed into “star wars”. Drone technology will be used as commercial instruments, particularly as medium of transport and perhaps as shield, to defend against political censorship. And via drone platform based social media warfare, governments will be tasting their own medicine.
Thursday, September 29, 2011
Web Wars: Internet Activists battle against Web Censorship
From the Chronicle (opednews.com), [bold emphasis mine]
Computer networks proved their organizing power during the recent uprisings in the Middle East, in which Facebook pages amplified street protests that toppled dictators. But those same networks showed their weaknesses as well, such as when the Egyptian government walled off most of its citizens from the Internet in an attempt to silence protesters.
That has led scholars and activists increasingly to consider the Internet's wiring as a disputed political frontier.
For example, one weekend each month, a small group of computer programmers gathers at a residence here to build a homemade Internet—named Project Byzantium—that could go online if parts of the current global Internet becomes blocked by a repressive government.
Using an approach called a "mesh network," the system would set up an informal wireless network connecting users with other nearby computers, which in turn would pass along the signals. The mesh network could tie back into the Internet if one of the users found a way to plug into an unblocked route. The developers recently tested an early version of their software at George Washington University (though without the official involvement of campus officials).
The leader of the effort, who goes by the alias TheDoctor but who would not give his name, out of concern that his employer would object to the project, says he fears that some day repressive measures could be put into place in the United States.
He is not the only one with such apprehensions. Next month TheDoctor will join hundreds of like-minded high-tech activists and entrepreneurs in New York at an unusual conference called the Contact Summit. One of the participants is Eben Moglen, a professor at Columbia Law School who has built an encryption device and worries about a recent attempt by Wisconsin politicians to search a professor's e-mail. The summit's goal is not just to talk about the projects, but also to connect with potential financial backers, recruit programmers, and brainstorm approaches to building parallel Internets and social networks.
The meeting is a sign of the growing momentum of what is called the "free-network movement," whose leaders are pushing to rewire online networks to make it harder for a government or corporation to exert what some worry is undue control or surveillance. Another key concern is that the Internet has not lived up to its social potential to connect people, and instead has become overrun by marketing and promotion efforts by large corporations.
At the heart of the movement is the idea that seemingly mundane technical specifications of Internet routers and social-networking software platforms have powerful political implications. In virtual realms, programmers essentially set the laws of physics, or at least the rules of interaction, for their cyberspaces. If it sometimes seems that media pundits treat Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg or Apple's Steve Jobs as gods, that's because in a sense they are—sitting on Mount Olympus with the power to hurl digital thunderbolts with a worldwide impact on people.
This simply shows how technology facilitated markets will work around regulators as the latter will try to bring back the industrial age by imposing vertical flow of information.
Also this exhibits how 20th century top-down political organizations will furiously struggle to resist the snowballing 'bottom-up' forces fueled by the internet revolution.
Friday, August 12, 2011
Information Age: The Blooming Internet Search Industry
In today’s rapidly evolving society, many people tend to overlook the contributions of the web in the economy.
McKinsey Quarterly in a new report outlines the fast expanding internet search industry. (bold emphasis mine)
A new McKinsey study, The impact of Internet technologies: Search, takes a more comprehensive view of this phenomenon and its rising value. We looked at five key developed and developing economies—Brazil, France, Germany, India, and the United States—indentifying nine activities that are primary sources of search value, as well as 11 private, public, and individual constituencies that reap the benefits.Among the key findings:
Read the rest here
As pointed out in the above, many of the web’s consumer surpluses are not being reflected on the GDP statistics, computations of which are based on the industrial age era.
In addition, as more and more people get wired, the complexion of our social activities will dramatically change. And this will be manifested on commerce and the economy. The above is just the start.
Monday, January 31, 2011
Gold Fundamentals Remain Positive
``Gold, on the other hand, is a much-needed safeguard against the barbarism of monetary authorities. Historically, the international monetary system, imposed after World War II by the Bretton Woods agreements, gave the dollar a central role. It was considered "as good as gold" because it was the only currency that maintained a link with the yellow metal. Gold thus acted as economic actors' safety valve against American monetary authorities' abuse of inflationary expansion.” Valentin Petkantchin Gold and the Barbarians
I have always emphasized that gold has proven to be quite a reliable thermostat of the global equity markets[1].
Gold has not escaped the short deflationary episode in 2008 nor has it eluded the recession in the early 2008. Thus gold, as we have repeatedly argued here[2], isn’t likely to function as a deflation hedge for the simple reason that gold isn’t part of the incumbent monetary architecture unlike during the Great Depression days of the 1930s. In short comparing gold in the 30s and gold today would be like comparing apples to coconuts.
The implication of this is that a sustained fall in gold prices could suggest of contracting money supply or a resurfacing of recessionary (deflationary) forces. Thus, a sustained fall or a dramatic collapse of gold prices should be mean alarm bells for us.
As a side note, not all recessions have been deflationary as alleged by some, and this has been evident in the stagflation era of the 70s (see figure 4).
Figure 4: Economagic: Stagflation
In the 70s, even as the S&P 500 (green line) fell, the consumer price (blue line) index continued to surge. Meanwhile, precious metals (red line) peaked amidst the 1980 recession.
But of course, like money, gold is also subject to demand and supply balanced by prices. Thus given the 10 successive years of gains, gold is certainly not immune to plain vanilla profit taking.
The point is—we should ascertain if any fall in the price of gold constitutes structural or countercyclical forces at work.
Monetary Disorder Remains The Dominant Theme
When we learn that China intends to issue 1 trillion yuan ($151 billion) this year[3], the the Central Bank of Ireland is financing €51bn of an emergency loan programme by printing its own money[4] and that the US monetary aggregate M2 has been surging by biggest weekly amount since 2008[5], we don’t seem to see any substantial or structural changes that should impact the long term price trend of gold materially.
In short, global central banks continue to pump money like mad, and this should be bullish for gold.
Figure 4: St. Louis Federal Reserve: Bank Credit
To add, as I have rightly been predicting[6]; the steep yield curve would influence the US credit markets positively, though at a time lag, as I previously wrote “the US yield curve cycle has a 2-3 year lag period from which we should expect it to generate “traction” by the last quarter of 2010.”[7]
And they seem to performing as expected (see figure 4), as the US credit market appear to show signs of improvements.
The risk here is that with record “excess” bank reserves or banks' base-money holdings minus required reserves that is either held in their vaults or on deposit with the Federal Reserve, given the fractional reserve system, these reserves can multiply credit and money supply that may amplify or accelerate the rate of inflation.
In other words, even what may be read as a positive ‘economic’ sign could represent a prospective hazard—an offshoot to the previous policies.
Thus, the recent volatility in gold prices for me would account for profit taking and certainly not a reason to see a reversal.
Yet part of the recent fall in gold prices has allegedly been traced to a speculator-trader, who massively levered up on huge (long- short) gold positions, which turned out to be unprofitable and had been forced to liquidate.
The ensuing liquidation resulted to what the Wall Street Journal reports as the biggest single reduction ever[8]in gold contracts.
So with the possibility that this event may have already passed and or could have been discounted, gold could regain its lustre over the coming sessions.
Gold And The Web Enabled Middle East Political Revolutions
Friday’s huge rally in gold, which media attributed to Egypt’s worsening political crisis and had likewise been adduced to the heightened risks of a regional political upheaval—where dictatorships and the entrenched aristocracy appear to be facing a comeuppance from the long disgruntled populace, a revolution apparently enabled by the web[9] and partly triggered by surging food prices—appear more like rationalization.
Figure 5: Bloomberg[10]: Political Tremors In The Middle East
Although, stock markets in the Middle East had indeed been rattled by such fears (see figure 5).
Perhaps the embattled aristocracy could be scrambling to safekeep their wealth overseas by buying gold for laundering purposes or for absconding it, similar to reports where the First Lady of the deposed President of Tunisia was alleged to have fled with 1.5 tonnes of gold (worth $55 million)[11].
The spike in oil prices should be more of a natural side effect over concerns of supply side disruptions once political standoffs become exceedingly violent. But given that the political turmoil account for as domestic issues, I am sceptical over the prospects of prolonged violent stalemate.
For me, these so-called uncertainties are icing in the cake for gold.
Yet in my view, we should see these ongoing revolts as positive.
People appear to be emboldened in asserting their sovereignty over an increasingly derelict political structure built upon vertical hierarchies predicated on central planning and or political-economic fascism.
In short, the web has functioned as a pivotal instrument in counterbalancing or levelling or reducing the concentration of political power to a few or to the once powerful elite. The likelihood is that the rule of autocrats will be diminished, unless governments would be successful in introducing and imposing controls and censorship on the cyberspace.
With over 2 billion people now wired or connected online or “With the world's population exceeding 6.8 billion, nearly one person in three surfs online”[12], add to that the 5 billion mobile phone subscriptions or about 73% of the global population, it’s no wonder how the political playing field is being reconfigured to adjust to these new realities.
Governments in the future are likely to be more attuned to the public and would likely shed a lot of bureaucratic fats.
And these ongoing revolutions represent the aforementioned structural adjustments in the political process. Hopefully, these people power revolts will be alot less bloody than their counterparts in the early to mid 20th century.
And if there should be any major force that could influence the current trend of gold it would likely be gold’s reversion to the new monetary framework which will likely be brought upon by people’s realization and intolerance of the abuses of central banking system.
So I unlike those who see a surge in the “event risks” from the current string of upheavals in the Middle East as a reason to sell, I see gold rebounding from these uncertainties, fed by the inflationism in central banks and eventually a rally in most of the global equity markets, including the Phisix.
[1] See Gold As Our Seasonal Barometer, February 23, 2009
[2] See Gold Unlikely A Deflation Hedge, June 28, 2010
[3] People’s Daily Online Central bank to print 1 trillion yuan in paper currency, January 20, 2011
[4] Independent.ie Central Bank steps up its cash support to Irish banks financed by institution printing own money January 15, 2011
[5] Durden, Tyler M2 Surges By Biggest Weekly Amount Since 2008 As It Hits Fresh All Time Record, Zero Hedge, January 27, 2011
[6] See Influences Of The Yield Curve On The Equity And Commodity Markets, March 22, 2010, See What’s The Yield Curve Saying About Asia And The Bubble Cycle?, January 17, 2010
[7] See Trigger To The Inflation Time Bomb, October 7, 2010
[8] Cui Carolyn and Zuckerman Gregory Small Gold Trader Makes Big Splash, Wall Street Journal, January 28, 2011
[9] See The Web Is Changing The Global Political Order, January 29, 2011
[10] Bloomberg.com Bloomberg GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council) 200; The Bloomberg GCC 200 Index is a capitalization weighted index of the top 200 equities in the GCC region based on market capitalization and liquidity. The index was developed with a base value of 100 and is rebalanced semi-annually in April and October.
[11] MoroccoBoard.com Tunisia: Ex First Lady Absconded With 1.5 T Of Gold Bullions, January 17, 2010
[12] Physorg.com Number of Internet users worldwide reaches two billion, January 26, 2011
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