Tag: Predictions
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2008 Predictions Scorecard
As usual, we’ll kick off the new year by reviewing the predictions we made for the previous year. Here now, our 2008 predictions, in italics, with hindsight in ordinary type. (1) DRM technology will still fail to prevent widespread infringement. In a related development, pigs will still fail to fly. We predict this every year,…
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The future of photography
Several interesting things are happening in the wild world of digital photography as it’s colliding with digital video. Most notably, the new Canon 5D Mark II (roughly $2700) can record 1080p video and the new Nikon D90 (roughly $1000) can record 720p video. At the higher end, Red just announced some cameras that will ship…
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Election 2008: What Might Go Wrong
Tomorrow, as everyone knows, is Election Day in the U.S. With all the controversy over electronic voting, and the anticipated high turnout, what can we expect to see? What problems might be looming? Here are my predictions. Long lines to vote: Polling places will be strained by the number of voters. In some places the…
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The End of Theory? Not Likely
An essay in the new Wired, “The End of Theory: The Data Deluge Makes the Scientific Method Obsolete,” argues that we won’t need scientific theories any more, now that we have so much stored information and such great tools for analyzing it. Wired has never been the best source for accurate technology information, but this…
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2008 Predictions
Here are the official Freedom to Tinker predictions for 2008, based on input by Alex Halderman, David Robinson, Dan Wallach, and me. (1) DRM technology will still fail to prevent widespread infringement. In a related development, pigs will still fail to fly. (2) Copyright issues will still be gridlocked in Congress. (3) No patent reform…
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2007 Predictions Scorecard
As usual, we’ll start the new year by reviewing the predictions we made for the previous year. Here now, our 2007 predictions, in italics, with hindsight in ordinary type. (1) DRM technology will still fail to prevent widespread infringement. In a related development, pigs will still fail to fly. We predict this every year, and…
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Infinite Storage for Music
Last week I spoke on a panel called “The Paradise of Infinite Storage”, at the “Pop [Music] and Policy” conference at McGill University in Montreal. The panel’s title referred to an interesting fact: sometime in the next decade, we’ll see a $100 device that fits in your pocket and holds all of the music ever…
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Debate: Will Spam Get Worse?
This week I participated in Business Week Online’s Debate Room feature, where two people write short essays on opposite sides of a proposition. The proposition: “Regardless of how hard IT experts work to intercept the trillions of junk e-mails that bombard hapless in-boxes, the spammers will find ways to defeat them.” I argued against, concluding…
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Fact check: The New Yorker versus Wikipedia
In July—when The New Yorker ran a long and relatively positive piece about Wikipedia—I argued that the old-media method of laboriously checking each fact was superior to the wiki model, where assertions have to be judged based on their plausibility. I claimed that personal experience as a journalist gave me special insight into such matters,…
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How Much Bandwidth is Enough?
It is a matter of faith among infotech experts that (1) the supply of computing and communications will increase rapidly according to Moore’s Law, and (2) the demand for that capacity will grow roughly as fast. This mutual escalation of supply and demand causes the rapid change we see in the industry. It seems to…