Gates of Power

1. Microsoft can be viewed either as an admirable, successful enterprise or as a ruthless, pathological monopolist
2. The lawsuit aims to require companies that are highly successful to exercise restrain in exercising market power
3. Anti-trust laws have generally opposed mergers, but Microsoft's power does not come from a merger
4. Adam Smith's theory of competition requires many producers of the same product
5. Joseph Schumpeter's theory stressed competition between different technologies, production processes and business methods - leading to "creative destruction" of antiquated products
6. Our anti-trust laws were created following Smith's theory, the problem is that imposing them may stifle Schumpeterian competition
7. Microsoft is highly competitive, but this may not be bad
8. Gates is a real geek, and brilliant business strategist, but he had public relations problems
9. Many new ideas are rejected by existing companies that are wedded to older models.  Microsoft was slow to recognize the importance of the Internet, but Gates shifted gears brilliantly
10. Microsoft won the browser war with Netscape by linking Explorer to the Operating System - it also built a better product in many ways
11. In the trial, Judge Jackson was offended by Microsoft and did not take its operations seriously
12. The appeal courts have taken it away from Jackson, and are moving almost entirely in Microsoft's direction
13. Network effects make a product more valuable when many others use it.  Microsoft has used these effects brilliantly to promote its products.
14. Microsoft has often used low prices and open marketing agreements to spread its products widely and generate network effects.  This has led to good prices for consumers for reasonably good products.
15. The PC market requires innovation to give consumers a motive to buy new hardware and software, this has benefited everyone
16. IBM lost its dominance by making a strategic error, licensing  DOS from Microsoft rather than owning it.  Gates believes that Microsoft could similarly lose its dominant position if it makes a mistake
17. The problem with the lawsuit against Microsoft is that no harm to consumers has been shown, and consumers might actually be harmed by it.  It benefits competitors without helping consumers.
18. Microsoft is a monopoly only if you define the market narrowly, as desktop computers with Intel-like chips.  If you look at the display and delivery of digital information as the market, it is much more vulnerable.

1. Futurist methods are both descriptive and prescriptive
2. precise prediction is not usually attempted, the goal is to assess the probability of different alternatives
3. Trend Analysis is a universal methods;  the tricky point is to understand what drives the trends and when they are likely to turn
4. Cyclical Pattern Analysis is a valuable counter to linear projection of trends, but true cycles are rare.  There are, however, often major shifts in trends.  Examples include generational cycles and economic cycles.
5. Environmental Scanning, keeping up with the latest developments and thinking in a field
6. Scenarios, making up plausible stories about the future, helps you think about how things fit together
7. Visioning, creative thinking about possible alternatives
8. Technological Forecasting, expert opinion about recent technological developments and where they are likely to lead in the foreseeable future.  This is very important in the computer field since technology develops so rapidly.

1. Political economy is the study of politics and economics, the Gates of Power article is an example
2. This differs from viewing economics as a scientific discipline analogous to the physical sciences, with laws that operate independently of human intent
3. The Internet is one example of a series of communication technologies that had tremendous social and economic impact, e.g., telegraph, telephone.  Each became the basis of monopolistic or oligopolistic enterprises
4. Microsoft is using innovation to gain an unfair competitive advantage;  it also uses innovations developed elsewhere with minor changes to take over strategic points in the system
5. The arguments Microsoft is using are similar to those AT&T used to justify its telephone monopoly, need for seamless integration of the system
6. The WEB grew out of a convergence of computer and technologies which began at the end of WWII, particularly a need to bring together military and industrial researchers
7. The WEB is increasingly being taken over by the commercial culture, despite resistance to using credit cards online
8. Major corporations are coming to dominate the WEB, as opposed to the countercultural ambiance that used to predominate, e.g., AOL, Microsoft
9. There is a cost to using the WEB, which tends to exclude poor people and groups

1. Cyberspace is where you are when you are on the telephone.  To what extent can we think of it as a "place," a new plane of reality
2. The term was invented by Canadian novelist William Gibson in his book Neuromancer (1984)
3. He described it as a consensual hallucination, a graphic representation of data from the world's computers
4. There were chat rooms that tried to duplicate this structure, e.g., The Palace, but most people seem to prefer chat without the graphical interface

1. The first message was sent on the percursor to the Internet in 1969
2. This was not particularly noted at the time, but a strange amalgam of Defense Department money, engineering expertise, and countercultural idealism, slowly brought on the Net we know today
3. There was no WWW and no @ signs and no email on the early Internet, these applications came later
4. There were visionaries, however, who anticipated these developments, such as Vannevar Bush and  J. C. R. Licklider
5. Gradually, the technology caught up with the vision, especially when packet switching replaced message switching
6. The domain name system came in 1984, replacing numbers such as 208.216.182.15 with names such as amazon.com
7. The first graphical interface, or browser, calles Mosaic, came in 1991.  It was later called Netscape

Writing in 1960, Licklider called this kind of technobiological mind meld "man-computer symbiosis"

1. Hypertext is nonlinear electronic writings.  Hyperlinks in html are the best known example, but there are more sophisticated hypertext systems that lead you down paths that structure the options you encounter
2. HTML was invented by Tim Berners-Lee in 1990, as a library reference tool
3. It is commonly used as a digital footnote
4. But it can also create new genres or media, such as hypertext novels and stories
5. This can lead to a new way of thinking about reading, viewing it as a spatial experience
6. A text is more than a stream of words, it is words displayed in a certain way and associated with illustrations and other materials.  Now text may be accompanied with animations or videos
7. Hypertext can also allow a number of people to collaborate on a text, a text which may continually change
8. The World Wide WEB is a vast global hypertext

1. There have been many combinations of different communication media, e.g., sound movies were a combination of two distinct media
2. In a technical sense, all digital media are streams of zeroes and ones, however they are structured into representations that communicate with our senses - media are extensions of our senses
3. Western aesthetics has assumed that each medium has its special calling and that great art follows a single calling - it is not clear that mixed forms are really desirable
4. There are three major ways in which the interaction between media have been described
1. hierarchical - one medium is dominant, e.g., in a movie the sound track is dominant, following the script.  The video accompaniment does not detract as much as people though it would, although many times people feel "the book was much better than the movie."
2. organic - the distinct media have a common principle or theme that ties them together, e.g., form following function in architecture, or slides in a Power Point presentation having a common background template, or a WEB site where each page has similar colors, graphics and frames
3. dialectic - where the parts are designed to interact and conflict with each other in unpredictable ways, e.g., a montage as an art form, web sites that take in random data and spew it out in unpredictable ways.  Programs such as Webstalker take the apparent content of WEB pages and use it to create new, unanticipated patterns

1. An attempt to develop ethical standards for armed conflicts, other than saying that whatever our side does is right, whatever their side does is wrong
2. Utilitarian theories say that we need to assess the consequences of our actions, balancing costs against benefits, i.e., the ends justify the means.  The problem with this is that our judgments are often subjective and we may have value outcomes differently
3. Absolutist theories say that there are universal principles that are logically compelling consequences of human nature.  The problem here is that we may not agree on these principles, or on how they apply to a given situation.  We may feel that the consequences are more important than the intentions, e.g., does it matter that Israel does not intentionally target civilians while the Palestinian suicide bombers do?  Even though the Israelis may actually kill more innocent civilians.  The same argument is made about American bombing in Afghanistan vs. the World Trade Center bombing.
4. Ethnic conflicts have been very difficult to resolve, we cannot always put the benefits to the majority over the minority.  the right of secession depends on how badly a group is oppressed and what opportunities it has for participation in an existing order.  Do the Irish in Northern Ireland or the Basques or the Chechens have the right to secede?
5. There are rules both about when warfare is justified and about how warfare should be conducted once it is undertaken
6. Targeting civilians is not ethically justified under the rules of war, this means that the Hiroshima bombing was not justifiable, although it is usually justified on utilitarian grounds.
7. Revolutionary warfare is not justified when elections are an alternative

1. Terrorists have rational goals, they should not be written off as irrational
2. Terrorism is a way for the weak to strike back at the powerful, to get revenge and possibly to get concessions
3. Bin Laden, in particular, wants to strengthen the power of his radical factions within the power struggles in the Middle East
4. Terrorist entrepreneurs want a powerful repressive response from their enemies, since this builds their base of support
5. Examples of movements that grew in this way are the Tamil Tigers and ETA, the Basque separatist organization
6. Hamas in Palestine is another example, Israeli retaliation for their actions have increased their support within the Palestinian community
7. A terrorist group attracts more support when it appears to be winning a conflict;  most people want to maximize their security by going with a winner
8. An insurgency needs fanatics at the core, but it also needs a lot of more opportunistic supporters
9. If we view people as rational actors, we can offer them incentives to support our side

Some experts favor this "retail," localized, approach that attempts to undermine movements with its base.  Others favor a "wholesale" approach that favors massive attacks on the centers of power that support the terrorists, e.g., go after Iraq

1. Next 15 years or so may be the age of superterrorism, with terrorists expanding their destructiveness and span of operations
2. The distinction between criminals and political terrorists will blur
3. Weapons of mass destruction will make terrorists more potent
4. Ethnoreligious terrorism will become more predominant
5. Terrorists may also target economic life, including environmental terrorism
6. The US has come to be viewed as a "paper tiger" because it does not retaliate effectively;  this will increase the strategic use of terrorism
7. Targets such as the World Trade Center will be highly desirable symbolic targets, with terrorists mounting multiple, coordinated actions to maximize the publicity
 

1. The principles are listed on the WEB site
2. These differ from a pacifist approach that says all war is wrong, or a cynical approach that says that all war is unprincipled
3. A major distinction is between incidental or ancillary damage to civilians vs. intended.  Civilians are never legitimate targets.  Terrorist groups would often disagree, saying that the only way the weak can strike back is to target civilians

1. September 11, 2001, will be looked at as a major turning point in history, but things would have evolved in much the same way without this particular attack
2. The spread of terrorism to the US was inevitable due to political and technological changes
3. Economic downturn was happening anyway, and will increase as we finally actually start to run out of oil
4. The global gap between rich and poor is widening because many regions are not integrated into the global economy
5. The US is too dependent on foreign oil, mostly from the Middle East, and uses too much
6. The US has no choice but to become more involved in what happens everywhere in the world, to in effect become a global policeman
7. This is not primarily a cultural clash with Islam, the Islamic world is actually very diverse

1. Futurists actually did a pretty good job of predicting the rise of terrorism - but few people listened
2. A particularly large and dramatic event is required to trigger a major shift in the Zeitgeist, the spirit of the times
3. The Sept 11 attack may have been such a shift
4. There seem to be regular shifts - or "cycles" - in the Zeitgeist every 20 years or so
5. These can be viewed as alternations between liberal and conservative patterns, or between introverted and extroverted

Or they can be viewed as generational.  Strauss and Howe have a four generational cycle, with an active generation followed by a more passive one.  There are two kinds of active generations:  civic and idealist.  The two passive types, reactive and adaptive, are not so different.

IDEALIST	An inner-driven, moralistic generation which comes of age during a period of spiritual awakening and develops a new creedal passion.
REACTIVE	An alienated, cynical generation which challenges the ideals of their parents and develops into pragmatic, risk-taking adults.
CIVIC	An outer-driven, morally complacent generation which institutionalizes many of the ideals of the previous generations.
ADAPTIVE	A hypocritical generation which coasts along on the accomplishments of the civics, laying the groundwork for a new idealist era.

6. Those of you who are under 21 or so are part of a newly rising civic generation, those who in their 20s and 30s are part of a reactive generation
7. This type of historical analysis is provocative and can generate creative ideas, but it is not ultimately testable in any objective way
8. It did lead Strauss and Howe to anticipate that some kind of major event would occur that would trigger a downturn in American national mood, and they take the September 11 attack as a validation of their argument

1. The Middle East is a large region of the world (see map) that is tied together largely by the Islamic religion
2. There has been a very long conflict between the Islamic world and the largely Christian European world
3. There is a persistent conflict about the existence of a Jewish state, Israel, in the midst of the Islamic world
4. Much of the western interest in the Middle East revolves around oil
5. The Middle East has been generally an area of declining power and influence relative to the West, a fact that many people resent.  Radical and terrorist movements are reactions against this decline
6. The Taliban is a particularly extremist form of Islamic fundamentalism, attempting to turn history back hundreds of years
7. The Taliban are extremely repressive towards women, and have outlawed almost all forms of recreation, from movies to kite flying, in the areas they dominate.
8. Afghanistan is divided into a number of ethnic and language groups, and has been poorly integrated politically.  Its social indicators are terrible
9. The Afghans succeeded in defeating a Soviet expeditionary force, with US and Pakistani support
10. After this victory against the Soviets, the various Afghan forces struggled for power, with the Taliban dominating most of the country
11. Osama bin Laden sought refuge in Afghanistan because of shared Islamic fundamentalist beliefs and because the Afghans welcomed his support
12. Bin Laden says that he values death over life, and is pretty much committed to fighting to the end, going out like a martyr
13. So far, the United States is having considerable success in targeting the Taliban activists without stirring up a mass resentment among the Afghan population as a whole

1. Trends in America's enemies include:  growth of non-state actors, flattening of hierarchies, and more fluid organizational forms
2. The most virulent enemies are amorphous networks of terror and crime
3. Previous irregular forces have been rigidly hierarchical, these are less so, needing less coordination
4. Social network analysis can be used to diagram the structures of these organizations
5. We can measure the intensity and nature of each relationship, to the extent to which we have information
6. al Qaeda is a SPIN: a segmented, polycentric, ideologically integrated network.  Note that ideology is a key factor in tying it together
7. You need a network organization to fight a network, independent units that chip away at it rather than a large force that delivers a knockout blow
8. Intelligence, in particular, needs to be widely distributed
9. Netwar demands examining an enemy in five different dimensions:
1. technological, where do they get their resources
2. social, how are the linked into society at large, family, kinship, religious links
3. narrative, what stories do they tell and how can we present a different "frame" for the story, e.g., modernism vs. terrorism instead of Moslem vs. Infidel or "freedom fighters" vs terrorists
4. doctrinal, what are their typical strategies and tactics
10. Net-centric warfare centers around the information grid, including technical and human intelligence
11. Data needs to be shared quickly, made available widely
12. Forces need to "swarm," to move quickly when an opportunity to strike at the enemy arises
13. Open networks may be easier to infiltrate