What’s New with Wu

I’m in the midst of a long debate with Derek Slater (of Google) about structural separation.  He may post about it more on the Google policy blog at some point.   The key question is, when can an industry cut succeed in breathing life into dead markets - and when will it be counterproductive?

To my mind, looking at the history of telecom, a good regulator is like a very good butcher.  The trick is to not to chop to often, and know what it means to cut an industry at the joints, not the bone.  

This may be a bit ex poste, but my example of cutting at the joints is Carterfone - blasting open the consumer market for telephones, modems and the rest.   Trying to cut the bone is more like UNE-in-America  – resisted heavily, and never all THAT successful in building a competitive market of any kind.

I’m writing along with the book a new travel article on Mongolia.  Travel writing that doesn’t suck is hard -fortunately  Seth Stevenson is my guide for this kind of stuff.

His Japan series is totally classic in my opinion, even if you’ve spent time in Japan.

The greatest cliche in travel is “old meets new.”   I must say the conference organizers took that to a new and unexcepted level last night by mixing this

with this

To a remixed version of “Greensleeves” brought to you via turntable and Gayaguem (zither).

I had never thought of zither and breakdancing together but it was a memorable combination.

I’m off to the OECD’s “Future of the Internet” meeting in Seoul.    Unfortunately I have already been to the Kimchi museum so I’ll have to think of somewhere else to go in my off time.

I had a great experience on Friday — a session with just me, Vint Cerf and whiteboard. Topic: What’s so special about TCP / IP?

That may not sound so exciting to normal people. But for an internet geek, its a bit like having a chance to discuss the Ten Commandments with Moses.

Its for the book, of course.

This blog seems to have been infected with spam problems of some kind.  Need to fix it somehow.

An annual ascent of Shasta would probably be best.  But once every five years is better than nothing.

(photo credit SP8254 on flickr, CC license)