What’s New with Wu

Like everyone else, impossible not to write about the iPhone. I have a new piece in Slate arguing that the iPhone — at least this incarnation — is revolutionary in terms of interface, but much less in terms of industry structure and business model.

I want to respond to two things that people have said about the piece — trying, though probably failing, to not be too ornery:

1. Yes, I know that today’s “at&t” isn’t exactly the same company that was founded in 1878.
However, it has more of the components of the old AT&T than any other company; and to my mind it is worth connecting today’s AT&T with that company.

2. I am also well aware of the difference between CDMA and GSM phones — and that unlocking the iPhone, as it exists right now, would not necessary mean much for someone who wanted to use the iPhone on Verizon’s networks. However, the broader point is that Apple could try to create a phone that works on any network (CDMA or GSM) — or at least build an open CMDA phone, and also an open GSM phone, and sell those — and perhaps one day it will.

The real point of the piece was the “trojan horse” argument at the end of it. That is, I think Apple is playing by the rules now — but once it gets deeper into this industry, it will start changing things.

Larry, who was my original mentor back at law school, says he is leaving copyright, cyber-law and related fields.   Instead — his considerable energies are directed to “corruption” of the political process.   He mentioned this to me in Bonn earlier this year but  I didn’t quite realise it was happening.
I can’t help feeling that its like that part in the Lord of the Rings when the elves start leaving middle-earth…

I enjoyed this letter from football great Steve Largent, asking me to please wake up and get over the 1970s!  Love this.

Someone Please Wake-Up Tim Wu!
By Steve Largent

In a recent essay published in Forbes, Columbia University professor Tim Wu does his best Rip Van Winkle as he attempts to liken today’s ultra-competitive wireless industry to the bygone phone monopoly of the 1970’s.   In his diatribe, Professor Wu characteristically throws fact to the wind as he attempts to paint the wireless industry as a plodding behemoth that is neither competitive nor innovative.  In Professor Wu’s world, there aren’t 233 million Americans using high-quality and ever-evolving wireless devices to surf the Internet, listen to music, take and send photos, watch live television, text message and email, play video games or make phone calls.  Nor do roughly 95% of the American people live in a county with access to 4 or more wireless carriers.  In Professor Wu’s world, companies aren’t competing, consumers don’t have choices, prices aren’t declining and innovation is at a standstill.   Wake up Tim, the 1970’s are over…and no one wants them back.

I wrote this commentary on a paper by Jonathan Zittrain –
Here is his response.

Tim, Thanks for your thoughtful comments on my piece. I appreciate your call for outright warfare rather than compromise in many instances ­ that the forces arrayed economically against an open internet are not much interested in balance except as it might be found in balance sheets. But I resist your call to reframe my argument in terms of the prevailing debate. As you point out, there are already well-developed arguments in now-familiar patterns about network neutrality.

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I was in Woodstock today, where there are alot of hippie bumper stickers. You know what I mean. For example:

“Practice Random Acts of Kindness”

“It will be a great day when the schools had all the money they needed, and the pentagon had to had a bake sale to buy a bomber”

So in that spirit i was trying (with Julie H.) to try and invent some Hippie-style bumper stickers, with that same tone. The following may not be good, but I am trying to capture that same earnest tone:

“The World Would be a Better Place if the White House had a Drum Circle”

“Excuse me … I need to rock out.“

“What if children judged beauty pageants?”

“I brake for habeas corpus”

In the Hawaii statutes I found one of the best laws ever:

(b) In exercising their power on behalf of the people and in fulfillment of their responsibilities, obligations and service to the people, the legislature, governor, lieutenant governor, executive officers of each department, the chief justice, associate justices, and judges of the appellate, circuit, and district courts may contemplate and reside with the life force and give consideration to the “Aloha Spirit”.

The entire law is here.

I am going to try and post more photography series. This is a series of photos taken at the ruined sections of the great wall a few hours from Beijing.

In these photos, I wanted to try and capture the look of chinese painting in photography — the clouds, the drifting, and dreamlike look.

Here’s one below; for the rest click here.