I don’t know how, but I would love more than anything to replace my phone with this device. It looks like it can use a SIM card and Bluetooth—maybe with VOIP and a Bluetooth headset, this could completely replace my phone. TL;DR: I hate smartphones; they’re dumb.
Nah. Street View was also a big hubbub back then. People are not even mentioning it anymore.
>Things that feel illegal will probably become illegal someday
Also, if you think about this phrasing for just a second, this is the chilling effect. Suppressing expression due to the anticipation of negative outcomes.
Some was mitigated, but I don't think that faces and plates were what had the biggest bang about it. It's a complete, 360 capture of a large part of public places, with people still being clearly identifiable, correlated with satellite imagery (which was pointed out as creepy and privacy-invading as well, upon its public release), resolution so high that you can read many texts, and you can still see in windows, into yards, all kinds of stuff. Wikipedia has a lengthy article about the different concerns. And yet, despite it feeling creepy and strange for many, it just became normal. People look up random places for fun, to hunt for their new home, for driving instructions, GeoGuessr is cool and has a league of its own... it's a creepy, risky new thing becoming part of life, that's why I brought it up.
Smartphones could be another good example. As the joke goes, people in the 60s are afraid the government wiretaps their phones. Nowadays, they say: "Hey wiretap! Do you have a recipe for pancakes?"
All the hate tech journalists gave the EU because Apple Intelligence isn't launched there was insane, yet this is what EU legislation is designed to avoid.
I didn't know that nestle and shell had AI departments.
Look, I'm not +1 the EU here, but having some level of legal protection against marauding corporations is good. Sure EU based companies are evil, but they can't be as abusive to normal people because they are constrained by a semi-functional legal system.
The US used to have that as well, along with a functioning legislature.
They do not. I can't even begin to explain to you how delusional this is.
To be clear, I gave testimony to the NTHSA that the first Porsche Taycan was unfit for road driving due to extreme errors in the software architecture and in part got the CEO of Porsche fired. (Specifically error handling so laughably bad it caused the entire car to lock up at speed.)
The EU only FOLLOWED grudgingly after the US demanded the recall. I am extremely aware of EXACTLY how risk-taking European companies are.
AT&T argued that breaking up its monopoly would harm consumers by reducing service quality, increasing costs, and stifling innovation due to the loss of economies of scale. However, the breakup in 1984 led to increased competition, which drove innovation, improved services, and lowered prices, proving AT&T's claims largely false. The market's diversity and consumer choice expanded significantly post-breakup, contradicting the monopoly's dire predictions.
I agree with this view; the breakup of the AT&T monopoly was a boon for consumers. However, I also agree that Bell Labs was a casualty of the breakup. Once AT&T was split, Bell Labs was pressured to demonstrate its value by focusing its research on areas with more immediate ROI. Unfortunately, when a research lab focuses more on the short-term instead of fostering long-term, riskier explorations, the magic of the lab fades away, and often the work becomes evolutionary rather than revolutionary, since it’s hard to do revolutionary research when management, executives, and shareholders demand quarterly progress and a promise for ROI in the near future. Bell Labs wasn’t the same since 1984, and the same situation occurred with Xerox PARC after the 1980s when Xerox no longer enjoyed monopoly-level profits on its photocopiers due to increased competition.
I believe that fostering long-term, unfettered research is an important element for revolutionary work, though I don’t believe it’s the only way for revolutionary work to happen. However, it’s difficult for most companies to consistently fund this work for an extended period of time. Bell Labs and Xerox PARC in their heydays were special, and I struggle to think of any modern-day equivalents in industry.
Back in the 1980s, long distance couples sometimes wound up paying more in long distance phone calls than rent, and 30 miles away counted as long distance. No one could attach anything to the precious network, so acoustic coupler modems had to be used, resulting in very low bandwidth. Yes, a lot of good stuff came out of Bell Labs, funded by the huge amount of monopoly money that came into the company, but that needed to end.
I was in that situation. I was thrilled when Sprint long distance became available at $0.10/minute and I also remember when you could stop renting your home phone from AT&T and plug in one that you bought and owned.
Heh - My first online experience was 1995 (obviously, pre-98 telecom deregulation). Not only did the price include the insane per-hour pricing of Compuserve, but the long distance fees pushed my bill up to 300 dollars the first month. I worked at Taco Bell at the time and made like 4 bucks an hour. Thankfully I lived at home rent free at that point.
This analysis might be selective and hindsight biased. Are there any cases where government intervention to slow or stop monopolies actually impeded innovation?
Government antitrust actions aim to promote competition but can sometimes slow innovation by disrupting large companies' ability to invest in R&D. Cases like IBM, AT&T, Microsoft, and Qualcomm illustrate how such interventions, while fostering competition, may also delay technological advancements or make companies more risk-averse.
While antitrust actions might temporarily disrupt a company's innovation, they ultimately foster a healthier market by encouraging competition, which drives more diverse and widespread innovation across the industry. Breaking monopolies often unleashes creativity and technological advancement by empowering smaller players and preventing market stagnation.
Total market share, you can’t generate more time to steal from people which is effectively what these companies like Google have done to generate revenue.
If the government steps in they would have to break them all up and expect to make entering those sections possible. At the moment it’s nearly impossible.
