top down – Techdirt (original) (raw)

China's Game Controllers Ignore Emergent Order

from the emergent-order-is-important dept

Last week, China restricted children under 18 to three weekend hours of video games per week. If you’re a parent of a Minecraft- or Fortnite-obsessed child, you may be wondering why the U.S. doesn’t do something similar. But China’s move against juvenile gaming is just the Chinese government’s latest salvo in their barrage of attempts to control internet technology. Their centralized approach is one that we in the U.S. have historically rejected and should continue to reject.

China’s Great Firewall has long cut off the Chinese people’s access to much of the global internet. But recent actions in China focus on its own tech companies. These moves include passing a stringent new privacy law (which offers no protection from government spying) and tough new antitrust restrictions. China also blocked internet finance company Ant’s I.P.O., fined e-commerce company Alibaba 18.2 billion yuan and has heavily regulated online lenders, rapidly reducing their numbers from 5,000 to six as of September 2020. One prominent financial tycoon was abducted in Hong Kong, taken to China, and is apparently under house arrest while Chinese regulators seize and dismantle his companies. The crackdown expands beyond tech companies to users – Chinese police have arrested social media stars for on-camera eating as part of a campaign against food waste. It is, according to commentary circulated by Chinese state media, a “profound revolution” against “the chaos of big capital” and “a return to the Communist Party of China’s initial aspirations, a return to people as the center, and a return to the essence of socialism.”

In short, China’s leaders are grasping to centralize control. And their method is to label individualism as a vice rather than a virtue.

China’s leaders fear that they are losing control of markets and society, especially in the digital age.

They are right. But as I argue in my forthcoming book, Getting Out of Control: Emergent Leadership in a Complex World, control is overrated – and often it is counterproductive. Complex systems like markets are characterized by emergent order, with robust and productive patterns forming from the interactions of many individual participants following relatively simple rules. These patterns cannot be anticipated or centrally designed, because the knowledge they embody is produced by the individuals grappling with the situations in front of them.

Attempts to centrally control such systems eliminate much of the nuance and knowledge contained within them. The result is a simplistic, centralized system that leaves most participants worse off than they were under the emergent order produced by the complex, decentralized system. Unsurprisingly, those who are better off under centralized systems tend to be those at the center – those in control. Their control comes at the expense of everyone else’s welfare.

I don’t expect this argument to persuade China’s leaders to change their path, although for their citizens’ sake I wish they would. But it might help guide our path here in the U.S. The U.S. character – and our Constitution – would never permit the kind of full-bore government centralization that China has undertaken. Yet the technocratic desire to be in control, especially in times of rapid change, is alive and well here.

Indeed, many of the ideas China has adopted are floating around U.S. academia and even Capitol Hill. Breaking up big tech, regulating new technologies like blockchain and cryptocurrencies, regulating what kind of speech cannot or must be allowed on social media sites, limiting the use of encryption – these are increasingly common sentiments across the U.S. political spectrum. Sen. Josh Hawley’s proposed bill to ban “infinite scroll” on phone apps would fit in seamlessly with the Chinese government’s diktats.

It’s as if China is taking the most precautionary policies from US academics, advocates, and lawmakers and implementing them via boot, truncheon, and machine gun. In fact, China’s commercial privacy law – created by a government that surveilles its citizens relentlessly – has drawn praise from some U.S. tech policy leaders who seem to wish we in the U.S. could ram through such onerous laws without the inconveniences of the democratic process.

But America’s strengths include our embrace of individualism, couched appropriately within functioning institutions (themselves artifacts of emergent order), and our willingness to participate in complex systems where no one seems to be in control. These strengths have made the U.S. an economic powerhouse, home to many great innovators in technology and businesses, and the source of creative expression that entertains and educates the world.

As tech analyst Ben Thompson has argued, let’s not do a pale imitation of China’s attempt to stamp out individualism and centralize control. Instead, let’s double down on freeing the individual to create solutions to the problems they and others face.

Even if that means you, not the government, has to tell your kid to put down the game controller.

Neil Chilson is a senior technology and innovation research fellow at Stand Together and former Chief Technologist at the Federal Trade Commission. His new book, “ Getting Out of Control: Emergent Leadership in a Complex World,” will be released on September 23.

Filed Under: china, emergent order, internet policy, tech policy, top down, video games

Almost No One Wants To Host The Olympics, Because It's A Costly, Corrupt Mess

from the protect-that-brand dept

For many years, we’ve written about questionable activities by the Olympics, usually focusing on the organization’s insanely aggressive approach to intellectual property, which could be summed up as “we own and control everything.” Yes, the Olympics requires countries to pass special laws that protect its trademarks and copyrights beyond what standard laws allow. Of course, this is really much more about control and money. It’s simply shining a light on just how corrupt the whole Olympic setup is. For decades, the Olympics has tried to hide this basic truth, and it has always been able to get various cities and countries to actively compete to suffer through the Olympics requirements, often with promises of big money in tourism and local business as a result. But it looks like jig may be up.

As Dan Wetzel notes, it appears that almost no one has any interest in hosting the 2022 Olympics. The only active attempts are Beijing (which is 120 miles from a mountain suitable for skiing) and Almaty Kazakhstan. All the other credible players have bailed out:

Certainly not Oslo, Norway, not even at the bargain rate of an estimated $5.4 billion in a nation of just five million people. It once wanted desperately to host the 2022 Winter Olympics and its bid was so perfect that it was considered the favorite to win. Then the country held a vote earlier this year and 55.9 percent of Norwegians opposed.

Wednesday the Norwegian government effectively pulled the bid. Norwegians are known for the ability to cross country ski really fast and being so friendly they beg visitors to come experience their picturesque nation. Since this involved the IOC however, they decided against having visitors come experience their picturesque nation to watch them cross country ski really fast.

They aren’t alone. Previous finalist Krakow, Poland, saw 70 percent voter opposition and pulled its application. A majority felt the same way in Germany and Switzerland, killing bids in Munich and St. Moritz respectively. In Sweden the majority party rejected funding the proposed games in Stockholm.

Plenty of other countries didn’t even bother thinking about it. As Wetzel points out, basically the only two countries interested are authoritarian regimes:

Essentially the only places interested in hosting the 2022 games are countries where actual citizens aren’t allowed a real say in things ? communist China and Kazakhstan, a presidential republic that coincidentally has only had one president since it split from the old USSR in 1989.

To sum it up:

Essentially the entire world has told the IOC it’s a corrupt joke.

Don’t hold back:

The IOC has billions of dollars laying around and billions more coming because to most people the Olympics is just a television show and the ratings are so high that the broadcast rights will never go down. The IOC doesn’t pay the athletes. It doesn’t share revenue with host countries. It doesn’t pay for countries to send their athletes. It doesn’t lay out any construction or capital costs. It doesn’t pay taxes.

It basically holds caviar rich meetings in five star hotels in the Alps before calling it a day. That and conduct weak investigations into corruption charges of the bidding process, of course. “No evidence uncovered” is on a win streak.

It’s a heck of a racket.

Except now the racket may be ending. Except for China and Kazakhstan. Wetzel’s conclusion is spot on:

So China or Kazakhstan it is, the last two suckers on earth willing to step up to this carnival barker.

One lucky nation will win. The other will host the 2022 Winter Olympics.

The Olympics are from another era — one of top down, “we control and own everything while paying none” variety. We’ve seen those types of businesses failing in lots of other arenas — and now it may be happening to the Olympics as well.

Filed Under: china, control, corruption, kazakhstan, olympics, sports, top down

When The Creators Of Both The Internet And The Web Come Out Against The ITU, Shouldn't You Too?

from the just-saying... dept

We’ve been talking a lot about the ITU and its WCIT (World Conference on International Telecommunications) lately, given the importance of various proposals on the future of the internet. While Vint Cerf, often considered the “father of the internet” for his early (and continued!) contributions to the core of the internet, has been quite outspoken for many months about the threats of the ITU towards the internet, now we can add the creator of the World Wide Web to the list as well. Tim Berners-Lee has spoken out against the ITU efforts at WCIT.

Sir Tim is director of a standards body himself – the World Wide Web Consortium. He said that governments can already influence changes but should resist further interference.

“I think it’s important that these existing structures continue to be used without any attempt to bypass them,” he said.

“These organisations have been around for a number of years and I think it would be a disruptive threat to the stability of the system for people to try to set up alternative organisations to do the standards.” Accelerating access

[…] “A lot of concerns I’ve heard from people have been that, in fact, countries that want to be able to block the internet and give people within their country a ‘secure’ view of what’s out there would use a treaty at the ITU as a mechanism to do that, and force other countries to fall into line with the blockages that they wanted to put in place.”

When the fathers of both the internet itself and the World Wide Web are both speaking out against the ITU’s efforts to have further control over the future of the internet, isn’t it time to step back and ask what benefit the ITU would really provide. To date, none has been shown. Instead, we get vague talk about increasing “fairness” by diverting money from innovators to telcos who haven’t innovated with the promise that this will lead to greater investment. Yet, the evidence suggests that this doesn’t work, and historically, such transfers and subsidies tend to be pocketed by execs (or governments) rather than invested in infrastructure.

So, here we have two of the most visionary innovators out there — who created the key platforms we rely on — highlighting how the ITU process is the exact wrong way to go about things. Combine that with the key argument being made by the ITU being unsupportable based on history. And shouldn’t we all be wondering why this big charade is happening in the first place?

Filed Under: bottom up, itu, tim berners-lee, top down, vint cerf, wcit

Attacking The Hacker Hydra: Why FBI's LulzSec Takedown May Backfire

from the top-down-approach-to-a-bottom-up-threat dept

Interesting timing. Just about the same time that we had our story concerning how LulzSec kept its own site from getting hacked, the news was breaking that the key leaders of LulzSec were being arrested, in large part because the “leader” of the group had become an FBI informant after they tracked him down last year. Of the various hacking efforts out there, LulzSec has definitely been the most brazen, so it’s not a huge surprise that it would be targeted by the FBI. Also, unlike “Anonymous,” LulzSec was pretty clearly an effort by a few key individuals, rather than a loose collective of folks joining and leaving at will.

As I’ve been saying since these various groups started their various hacking and vandalism campaigns, I think these efforts are a really bad idea, and don’t do much to further the supposed causes that they’re trying to support. They’re only going to lead to backlash, as we’re already seeing in government officials using these groups as an excuse to try to make a power grab over the wider internet.

Given that, as I’ve said in the past, I haven’t been surprised to see the various arrests of folks supposedly associated with Anonymous or LulzSec. I expect that we’ll continue to hear such stories — in part because these kinds of stories are likely to provoke more of the same type of activity. Law enforcement keeps claiming that these arrests will frighten off others, but that shows a typical lack of understanding of what’s going on. As counterproductive as these activities are, it’s pretty clear that this isn’t about criminal activity for the sake of criminal activity, but about dissatisfaction with what’s going on in the world — and, as such, the arrests are actually only likely to create more such activity, which is the exact opposite of what law enforcement should be seeking to do.

Not understanding who they’re dealing with, and taking a top down approach to a bottom up threat, seems to be a specialty of US law enforcement.

Again, I think that the actual efforts by these folks are incredibly counterproductive and set up this “battle-siege” mentality, when the folks involved in all of this could be much more strategic in using their skills for good, rather than destruction. But that doesn’t mean that we should ignore the reality of why it’s happening, or how it’s likely to continue to evolve. More groups will pop up, more hacks will happen and (I’m sure) more disaffected skilled computer hackers will be arrested. But none of that (either the hacking or the arrests) is likely to bring us any closer to actually dealing with the problems that created this mentality in the first place.

Filed Under: anonymous, bottom up, fbi, hacking, lulzsec, top down

There Are Numbers Less Than 1%

from the reasons-to-buy... dept

I’ve pointed out in the past, that any time you hear a company talk about their business model in terms of “if we only get 1% of that market… we’ll still be huge,” you should run away (and, it’s even more ridiculous when you hear some talk about 10% or 15% of a market). This is top down thinking, but it’s not how businesses work. There’s no guarantee of any percent. Instead, any business needs to focus on bottom up reasoning — explaining why the very first person will buy. Then the second. Then the third, and so on. Taking the top down approach is wishful thinking. It’s making a huge assumption that people will just buy. Taking the bottom up approach is actually building a business. It’s recognizing who the customer is, what they want and how to best get it to them. It’s tempting to do the top down approach, because it looks so tantalizing and easy. But business isn’t easy. It’s hard work.

I’m reminded of this, with a submission from JohnForDummies about a Derek Sivers blog post, discussing a musician friend who took out an ad in a magazine with 1 million subscribers, repeatedly saying:

“If only one percent of the people reading this magazine buy my CD… that’ll be 10,000 copies! And that’s only one percent!”

But, as the musician learned there are numbers much smaller than 1%, as he ended up selling just 4 copies of the CD.

This is, in some ways, similar to the give it away and pray business models that we sometimes see people trying. Giving stuff away for free is a good part of a business model, but it’s not an entire business model by a longshot. Anyone looking to use free as a part of a business model also needs to go further and do the hard part, the bottom up part, where they figure out how they’re going to get anyone (not a percentage, but specific people) to actually find something worth paying for on its own. Because 0fromamillionpeopleisstill0 from a million people is still 0fromamillionpeopleisstill0. But, reaching 1,000 people with something of value that they want and can’t get any other way… that’s the start of a business model.

Filed Under: bottom up, sales, top down

OLPC Finally Decides to Open Source Its Hardware

from the it's-about-time dept

The many travails of the One Laptop Per Child program have been widely chronicled – after developing a robust, innovative laptop for the developing world, Nicholas Negroponte’s educational project failed to garner the reception he expected. One of the main reasons for this was OLPC’s belief that the market could not do better than their small project: instead of seeking the best products for the children of the developing world, competition was anathema to the OLPC group.

But news that the hardware from OLPC’s second version, XO-2, will be open sourced, gives hope that things are starting to change. Speaking to the Guardian, Negroponte says, “The XO-1 was really designed as if we were Apple. The XO-2 will be designed as if we were Google – we’ll want people to copy it. We’ll make the constituent parts available. We’ll try and get it out there using the exact opposite approach that we did with the XO-1.” Open hardware is an exciting new arena for innovative designs and, by embracing it, OLPC will create a new opportunity for entrepreneurs to create the best laptop for the developing world (or even the developed world). Also, instead of picking an established manufacturer from East Asia, open sourced hardware specifications will allow the developing world’s emergent technology industries to compete, strengthening the communities OLPC seeks to assist.

Filed Under: bazaar, bottom up, cathedral, comeptition, nicholas negroponte, olpc, open source, top down
Companies: olpc

OLPC Is A Cathedral But OLPC Tech Is Fleeing Into The Bazaar

from the top-down-or-bottom-up dept

From the outset, one of the oddities of the One Laptop Per Child project has been the tension between its organizational philosophy and its software platform. In his famous essay, “The Cathedral and the Bazaar,” Eric Raymond contrasted two organizational philosophies for developing software. In the Cathedral, software projects are organized in a top-down fashion, with the development process following a plan carefully developed by the project’s leaders. In contrast, the philosophy of the Bazaar is to “release early and often, delegate everything you can, be open to the point of promiscuity.” The OLPC project was a strange beast because it was clearly organized on the “Cathedral” model, yet it was developed around Linux, the open source project that Raymond used as the poster child for the “Bazaar” style of development. And its broader vision of empowering third-world kids to use the laptops without a lot of central support, is clearly more Bazaar than Cathedral.

I think many of the problems we’ve noted with the project stemmed from this fundamental conflict of visions. Nicholas Negroponte’s vision for the OLPC organization has always been the model of the Cathedral: produce a perfect laptop on the first try and sell it in batches of a hundred thousand to the world’s governments. Negroponte’s plan left little room for the kind of development growth, bottom-up participation, and trial-and error that characterizes the Bazaar. Indeed, even when customers were beating down the door to try out Negroponte’s product, he resisted selling it to them because it conflicted with his vision. And of course, he absolutely hated the idea of his customers having other options to choose from.

This tension was never sustainable, and indeed there are increasing signs that OLPC’s innovative technologies are being steadily liberated from the Cathedral. In January, we noted that one OLPC alum was starting a new firm to commercialize the OLPC’s display technology. Now CNet notes that another OLPC alum, Walter Bender, is starting a new software spinoff to license OLPC technology to a variety of laptop manufacturers. Bender’s decision to start a new company was presumably sparked by Negroponte’s decision to run OLPC more like Microsoft, which one engineer claims involved demoting Bender in favor of someone with less technical expertise.

It seems that the folks who have left OLPC have a more Bazaar-like vision for their companies, licensing their technologies to a variety of companies. In contrast, Negroponte seems to be doubling down on the “Cathedral” model. He’s reportedly considering a switch from Linux to Windows. That would be oddly appropriate given the apparent similarities between Negroponte’s management philosophy and Steve Ballmer’s.

Filed Under: bazaar, bottom up, cathedral, comeptition, olpc, top down

CIOs Need To Learn To Enable, Not Lock Down, Technology

from the just-different dept

Information Week is running an article about the difficulty some CIOs are having with the fact that just about everyone is at least somewhat tech savvy these days — often just enough to be dangerous. Combine that with the rise of online software in the “Enterprise 2.0” realm and the ability for technology to bubble up rather than come from the top down, and CIOs are finding that their job is changing in ways that they didn’t fully expect. Some certainly don’t see it as a problem, just a different kind of challenge, but it definitely seems like the very role of the CIO needs to change in some significant ways. Rather than managing all of the technology infrastructure of a company, they’re going to have to figure out a way to focus more on enabling other parts of the organization to use technology effectively and efficiently. Obviously, letting individuals or even individual groups in the company set their own tech policy can lead to some problems, but it also opens up the ability for more creativity and new types of communication and apps to bubble up in a more useful manner. This reminds me of a post by Chris Anderson over a year ago. When he was asked to speak to a group of CIOs, he was amazed at how scared they appeared to be by modern technology, rather than energized. There was fear, he noted, that the position of the CIO could soon be extinct. If they’re not willing to recognize how the world is changing, then perhaps that’s appropriate, but there’s no reason why a modern CIO can’t focus on the enabling side, rather than the “lock everything down” view of the world.

Filed Under: bottom up, cios, enterprise 2.0, technology, top down

Technology Will Change Politics From Top Down To Bottom Up

from the but-it-won't-be-pleasant-in-the-meantime dept

Sometimes people wonder why so many people in the tech industry tend to fall into more of a “libertarian” viewpoint on things. Perhaps it’s because they realize the empowering nature of technology to do away with the need for many more centralized top down structures. The reason that we often have big top down structures is because there was no efficient way to spread the control outwards, so you consolidate power at the top allowing someone else to make decisions for a large group of people as their “representative.” However, technology erodes some of that, by creating more efficient means of communication, breaking down the need for such top down control. We see it many different aspects. Companies today are more fluid, with a much more bottom up approach. Products and services that involve a bottom up approach are becoming more popular (and more useful) every day. So it’s only a matter of time until the same thing happens to the government.

It’s almost surprising to find out that there’s a high ranking politician who recognizes this. Apparently the UK’s Tory leader David Cameron made exactly that point, noting that politicians need to let go, and let the technology distribute tasks out to citizens, rather than trying to control everything centrally. Of course, it’s one thing to say it and another thing altogether to do it. Those who came up through the “old” way, which grants more power and control at the top freak out at the idea of giving up that control. You see it today with the way Microsoft reacts to open source, the way the RIAA reacts to Napster, to the way newspapers react to citizen journalism. They close up, circle the wagons and talk about how important that control is — though, not in those terms exactly. Instead, they trash the quality of the more chaotic bottom up system, missing the point that it’s not about the average quality, but the the abundance of options that make quality more personalized. The same thing will happen in politics as well. Many people get into politics (or get hooked on politics) because of the power that comes with it. Getting them to give up that power won’t be easy by any means. But it will happen. It’ll just mean a period of rather painful adjustment.

Filed Under: bottom up, politics, technology, top down