Greek Complexity

Headphones

Is anyone else as worried about headphones, headsets, earpods, callemwhatyouwill as I am?

I use these things fairly often. More than I should, probably.

But not as much as a teenaged kid who lives in my apartment building. He has them on all the time. And of course, he's not the only one. When I'm out walking the dog, a large proportion of the folks we pass jump out of the way at the last minute because they're plugged in and can't hear us coming. On the train and in the lift, there's always at least one person whose headset leaks so that I can hear the tinny sounds from a metre or two away.

Which I suppose is fine if that's only occasional usage and if the volume isn't terrifically high.

But I suspect, based on my own usage of not headphones but a handheld Bluetooth speaker I carry and listen to podcasts on, that we set our gadgets at a fairly high volume so that we can drown out ambient sounds and hear everything there is to hear in the audio we're listening to.

That's not great for young ears or old.

My father has always maintained that my grandfather – and some years later, my grandmother – went deaf in his later years because his apartment was right next to train tracks. Stick your head out the window and you have a train right there. My father says that the constant clickety-clack all day made my grandfather go deaf.

And that's clickety-clack outside your head. What happens when you move the sound to virtually inside your head with a set of earpods?

Like everyone, I have my own morbid thoughts sometimes. "What if I were to suddenly go blind tomorrow? What would that be like? How about if I lost the use of an arm? What if I lost all my teeth? What if I went deaf?" The idea of deafness is the one that scares me the most.

Not that the others aren't scary. But I've always enjoyed listening to things. Whether it be a bit of music that I rewind and listen to more than once so that I catch every instrument. Or that (real or imagined) brief hesitation in someone's speech that I imbue with meaning. Or the sound of insects and blades of grass rustling against each other as I sit quietly in a grassy field and just keep my ears open.

Headsets are just great. I love them. But sometimes I put them away and listen to the breeze.

Whither 2016? Prognostications on IoT, the venture capital model in Asia and more

Last January, I jumped on the Here Are My Predictions For The Year bandwagon and came up with this set of 8 predictions. Although I was not rigorous enough to attach probabilities to my predictions, you can see that some of my predictions were deliberately bold: in the start-up world, the mantra is, “Go big or go home." You can judge for yourself how well I did.

 

This year, I suddenly find myself in March not yet having put out a similar list for 2016 even though I’d consistently Evernoted down some thoughts all through 2015. (An anti-prediction: “Evernoted” will never become a colloquialism!) No matter — here we go now. This year’s list is somewhat eclectic and doesn’t focus just on start-ups and venture capital.

 

As usual, you’ll find a TL;DR version at the bottom.

 

1. “IoT" is dead, long live IoT.

Just like “on-demand” last year, “big data” a couple of years ago and “daily deals” before that, I think this is the year the term “IoT” will become so widely used as to become meaningless, banal, even uncool. This doesn’t mean that the move towards an Internet of Things will no longer be a truly powerful trend. The trend will, in fact, accelerate. But when anything with a chip in it can be said to belong to the Internet of Things, which could encompass everything from wearables to logistics tracking technologies, home appliances, entertainment gadgets, cars and more, then I argue that the term not only loses its meaning but actually inhibits clarity of thought on how to tackle a given opportunity. (In the same manner, I've heard people declare with a straight face that their little Excel spreadsheet with a few thousand rows of data constitutes Big Data — urgh.)

 

As “IoT” itself becomes meaningless, what I expect to see is more specific terms within the broader IoT universe gaining currency, reflecting specialisation and maturation of yesterday’s sub-niches.

 

2. Fintech touching consumers more directly and in more ways

Today, most ordinary consumers don’t know what “fintech” means. In Asia, most don’t even experience fintech directly except occasionally in the area of payments. This will change. Fintech underpins pretty much every aspect of banks’ internal operations as well as many of the ways institutional/corporate clients interact with banks. This year I expect to see the beginnings of fintech directly touching consumers. Untapped opportunities exist in personal financial planning, term insurance, investment execution, credit, security as well as in payments itself. Each of these is a vast area.

 

3. Rationalisation and specialisation of VC firms in Asia

Even with recent market turmoil, there is plenty of growth capital available to start-ups in Asia from non-VCs. These include wealthy individuals and families, corporations, government agencies, crowd-funding platforms and more. Most of these actors don’t invest for a living and therefore may have lower return thresholds and/or different measures of success from traditional VC firms. This means that VCs who fail to recognise this new reality (where they are not the sole source of capital) will get blown away in negotiations and fail to win deals. Over time, these are the VCs who will end up as has-beens. Other, smarter VCs will focus on building their strengths in specific industry sectors, stages of development or other areas of specialisation, which will help them make a compelling and differentiated case for winning the right to invest in companies.

 

Note that phrase: "the right to invest". This has not historically been the way capitalists in Asia have thought.

 

To be clear, I expect this to be a multi-year trend, not just in 2016: the venture capital business has very long lead times and poorer performing firms don't die overnight, instead fading away over several years.

 

4. Privacy and personal control renaissance

The proliferation of smartphones and Facebook’s continued insinuation of itself into every aspects of many people’s private lives will, I hope, finally have the effect of provoking a substantial backlash and precipitating a move towards greater personal control for users over their data, phone features, notifications, etc. (I call out Facebook because they are the biggest culprit but they are by no means the sole culprit in this regard; LinkedIn may be worse and several others deserve blame too.)

 

I think there will continue to be a number of people for whom privacy does not matter, but I think others will demand and gravitate towards services that respect users’ desire for full control over their own information and devices. How could this come about? At multiple levels of abstraction, ranging from changes to mobile operating systems — I hope my next phone will allow me to set app permissions at a much more granular level instead of presenting me with a take-it-leave-it "choice" when I install a new app — through to businesses built around VRM-like principles, and government regulation and standards-body frameworks concerning what’s permissible.

 

5. Push back against always-on towards rediscovering mindfulness and focus

This is a strange suggestion for me to be making given that I’m writing primarily about tech. I think this is the year that many of the earliest adopters of tech will say, “Enough.” I see this in my own habits — and I've been online since the early 90s — but this isn’t (purely) a self-reflective prediction. It also comes from my observation of the behaviour and expressed desires of hipsters (I know, I know…), very busy and tech-savvy people, and other early adopters of new trends.

 

Ok, so that may strike you as anecdotal — but take a look at how often people have searched for the term "mindfulness" on Google. As a comparison, you can add other terms like “stress” or “meditation” that you might reasonably expect to be correlated with mindfulness. The growth in searches for "mindfulness" has been much greater (off a smaller base) than these other terms.

 

The implication? Perhaps users choosing not to use apps that incorporate infinite scroll and create a state of permanent distraction. Or more single-button apps, i.e., press a button, get what you want, move on. More prominence given to Do-Not-Disturb modes. More services, apps and OS features that actually help with focus and productivity rather than always-on and interruptions.

 

All of these will change the way we work, play, learn and live.

 

TL;DR

1. “IoT" is dead, long live IoT.

2. Fintech touching consumers more directly and in more ways

3. Rationalisation and specialisation of VC firms in Asia

4. Privacy and personal control renaissance

5. Push back against always-on towards rediscovering mindfulness and focus

6. “Evernoted” will never become a colloquialism ;-)

 

Infographic of stats on mobile apps in India

Quite a lot of interesting stats here. Would be interesting to see how some of these data points have evolved over recent years. I also wonder how many Indian app users are on 3G vs 2G vs WiFi. Conversations I have had with industry players suggest that cellular data is still not the primary medium.

Much more here.

(via TechInAsia)

Siri, Take This Down: Will Voice Control Shape Our Writing?

Excerpt: "In the future, you will talk to your computer. Voice, the predominant mode of human-to-human communication, has been migrating to silicon for more than a decade and is now poised to hit the mainstream."

This piece isn't really about Siri, don't worry. It really focuses on whether voice-to-text technology will change the way we write -- and think.

Somehow the question of what it means to 'write' in a voice-to-text world is never explored. That's a particularly interesting question when you consider that text-to-speech is even more advanced today than speech-to-text. So do we even need the written word as an intermediate step then?

More: http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/08/siri-take-this-down-will-voice-control-shape-our-writing/259624/

Does health data generated by your body belong to you?

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/426171/getting-health-data-from-inside-your-body/

Short answer: no. Facebook, Apple, Google and all the rest can eat their hearts out. The medical device industry really shows us how to capture and exploit important data from vulnerable users. Quote: "Because device makers see their primary market as physicians rather than patients, they are less motivated to make this information available to the people who actually live with the devices in their bodies."

Apple is disgusting

There's no denying that my views on Apple's stock price were wrong last February and remain wrong today. The stock is today up about 15% since my prediction of a fall. But Wall Street has also started looking at the company's broader impact on the world, something I mentioned briefly in this post. Take a look at what Henry Blodget says at Business Insider:

Daisey interviews dozens of (former) workers who are secretly supporting a union. One group talked about using "hexane," an iPhone screen cleaner. Hexane evaporates faster than other screen cleaners, which allows the production line to go faster. Hexane is also a neuro-toxin. The hands of the workers who tell him about it shake uncontrollably.

Some workers can no longer work because their hands have been destroyed by doing the same thing hundreds of thousands of times over many years (mega-carpal-tunnel). This could have been avoided if the workers had merely shifted jobs. Once the workers' hands no longer work, obviously, they're canned.

...

If Apple decided to build iPhones and iPads for Americans using American labor rules, two things would likely happen:

• The prices of iPhones and iPads would go up
• Apple's profit margins would go down

Neither of those things would be good for American consumers or Apple shareholders. But they might not be all that awful, either. Unlike some electronics manufacturers, Apple's profit margins are so high that they could go down a lot and still be high. And some Americans would presumably feel better about loving their iPhones and iPads if they knew that the products had been built using American labor rules.

In other words, Apple could probably afford to use American labor rules when building iPhones and iPads without destroying its business.

So it seems reasonable to ask why Apple is choosing NOT to do that.

More: Your iPhone Was Built, In Part, By 13 Year-Olds Working 16 Hours A Day For 70 Cents An Hour

Google TV version 2

I really hope Google succeeds at this:

Google’s smart TV software platform, Google TV, is poised for its first significant overhaul since it launched in Logitech and Sony hardware a year ago. Via over-the-air updates that should begin streaming to hardware devices on October 30, Google TV users will find new TV-optimized Android Apps, an improved YouTube experience, and new features that provide easy, direct discovery of TV and movie content. When Google TV launched, it was supposed to seamlessly co-mingle “live TV” (read: broadcast, satellite and cable) with streaming video services like YouTube, Netflix, and Amazon Video On Demand. You could also use your Google TV software to search the web, and even access digital content from your home network or attached storage.

via Wired

Why I will never buy an Apple product

I used an Apple Macintosh as a teen and liked it very much so let it not be said that I speak with zero prior knowledge. In more recent years, I have stayed away from Apple products partly because they started out being too-cool-for-you and are now everyone-has-one, and partly because of the closed walled garden ecosystem that they put in place and vigorously enforced. [Update: And they're expensive!] Now we have this more complete description of Apple's (and Steve Jobs's) failings:

In the days after Steve Jobs' death, friends and colleagues have, in customary fashion, been sharing their fondest memories of the Apple co-founder. He's been hailed as "a genius" and "the greatest CEO of his generation" by pundits and tech journalists. But a great man's reputation can withstand a full accounting. And, truth be told, Jobs could be terrible to people, and his impact on the world was not uniformly positive.

via What Everyone Is Too Polite to Say About Steve Jobs

Stuff like this has got to affect the prospects of the company itself at some point, because surely consumers, the media, government, Apple's suppliers and maybe even Wall Street (!) don't only care about the pretty gadgets the company churns out.

The different faces of innovation

Nice piece on innovation by Malcolm Gladwell in his usual breezy, readable style. This bit in particular resonated with me:

“You can be one of the most successful makers of enterprise technology products the world has ever known, but that doesn’t mean your instincts will carry over to the consumer market,” the tech writer Harry McCracken recently wrote. “They’re really different, and few companies have ever been successful in both.”

from Creation Myth: Xerox PARC, Apple, and the truth about innovation

Nice little ending too. Read all the way through without skipping. Cheating won't be as fun!

This was published a few months ago. Not directly related to Steve Jobs's demise.

Apple: I was wrong

...on current evidence. Six months ago, I called a top on Apple. Since then, the stock price has continue to rise, briefly making it the world's largest publicly listed company by market capitalisation last week. Cue many excited articles. I can't be bothered to link any more. There were also more sensible articles from Paid Content (which contains the hilarious quote: "Microsoft is finally taking mobile seriously but its legal department has had more success than its product development people") and the WSJ among others telling us why such comparisons are, apart from their entertainment value, pointless and stupid.

More important than the symbolism of becoming the world's most valuable company -- note that they were helped by a 14% fall in Exxon Mobil's share price -- is the fact that Apple's stock price rose 4% over the same period, going bang against my prediction.

However, what does all of this mean for the future? Will Apple continue to generate outstanding returns for its shareholders? I remain cynical, but maybe that's just bias. There is the problem of being so big: how do you grow even bigger at the same pace as historically? Lex is doubtful, but perhaps not as much as me. Aswath Damodaran was optimistic as of January. Time will tell. Let's check back in six more months.

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The idea of checking back in six months reminds me of this funny Ellen Degeneres quote I once came across, which you are welcome to use to make fun of me:

The good psychic would pick up the phone before it rang. Of course it is possible there was no one on the other line. Once she said "God Bless you." I said, "I didn't sneeze." She looked deep into my eyes and said, "You will, eventually." And damn it if she wasn't right. Two days later I sneezed.