The friction constituency

Having learned that both the Chamber of Commerce and the AFL-CIO support SOPA, it’s becoming clearer to me just how much of our economy is based on extracting rents from friction. ..

What legacy politicians actually fear

I was at the PIPA/SOPA protest in front of the offices of Senators Schumer and Gillibrand today. All fine and good, but why should the senators care? ..

Quality of life in NYC

Every time I get out of NYC, I am reminded at what we put up with to live here. It’s a known trope: we deal with sh*t that suburbanites couldn’t imagine, in exchange for being around amazing people (and companies, and $$). ..

Please don’t lobby

I agree with Clay Johnson that the our industry’s ignorance of Congress might be greater than Congress’ ignorance of the Internet. He comes to the conclusion that we need to lobby more. ..

Me doing techno

Watch the original first. Then: [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dvltmlBVNU]

Why can’t mobile apps have URLs?

Dave Winer laments that mobile apps are not universally addressable via a locator like a URL. ..

The binary web

It’s easy to see the web as sets of advances that come in waves. The first was its emergence as a consumer (and corporate) phenomenon, starting with Netscape and continuing through Internet Explorer 6 (which, we often forget, was the first “legitimate” browser for many businesses). ..

The law is not Turing complete

In recent comments on Hacker News, I suggested, with some snark, that the definition of net neutrality is slippery and ad-hoc, and therefore exploitable. I was promptly voted down. ..

Going about your business, or pleasure

I haven’t tried Google+ (pronounced ploo, the French way), but I note that there hasn’t been the dismissive pile-on that greeted Buzz and Wave. My meta-analysis is that they might be on to something. ..

Inversion of scarcity

Every business, if it’s smart, should realize that the Internet has the ability to drop out its pricing floor, or more precisely, to eliminate the scarcity on which price depends. This is what is usually meant by the catchphrase “disruption.” ..