A dumb compromise to save the ACS and Economic Census

Last week I commented in this space about the Tea Party’s desire to make a symbolic cut in government by eliminating the American Community Survey and the Economic Census at the US Census. This would change economic statistics in the US, upending a system that has been in place since the end of World War II. And it really makes no sense for pro-business Republicans to be leading the charge, since business is one of the primary beneficiary of all this data about the US population and business.

Over the weekend, the economic correspondent for the New York Times wrote an opinion piece. She pointed out how many businesses had come out against this change, including the United States Chamber of Commerce, the National Retail Federation and the National Association of Home Builders.

The article did give a hint about what might actually be going on. To quote the article:

“Republicans may hope that when the Senate and House bills go to a conference committee, a final compromise will keep the survey, but make participation in it voluntary. Under current law, participation is mandatory.”

That observation is rather amazing, since there is no mystery to the answer. That question has been studied. Let me quote from the summary of a report on the consequences from imposing voluntary participation:

* “A dramatic decrease occurred in mail response when the survey was voluntary. The mail cooperation rate fell by over 20 percentage points and the final response rate after all three modes of data collection was about four percentage points lower…
* The estimated annual cost of implementing the ACS would increase by at least 38 percent if the survey was voluntary and the survey maintained the current reliability levels.
* The use of voluntary collection methods had a negative impact on traditionally low response areas that will compromise our ability to produce reliable data for these areas and for small population groups such as Blacks, Hispanics, Asians, and American Indians and Alaska Natives.

Lower reliability and higher cost seem like a dumb thing to aspire to produce. Like I said last week, this proposal is just stupid.

Free Podcasts

Some folk like to read blogs. Some folk like to listen to podcasts. Why not give everyone the option to do what they prefer? Now it is possible to read or listen to many of the essays that appear in my IEEE Micro Economics column (and appear here as Essays).

The IEEE deserves credit for this initiative. They have started a program to record podcasts from their many columnists.  Kellogg’s Tim DeChant has helped me record more than a dozen (Thanks Tim!). There should be close to two dozen by the end of the year. Anyone can download them at IEEE’s Computing Now for free. Brandi Ortega manages the site (Thanks Brandi!). They also can be found on iTunes at no charge. Available so far are:

* Steve Jobs and the Economics of One Entrepreneur
* Direction of Broadband Spillover
* Digital Dark Matter
* Building Broadband Ahead of Digital Demand
* Gatekeeping Economics
* Digitization and Value Creation
* Standardization and Coordination
* Bleeding-Edge Mass Market Standards
* The Next Chapter at Google
* Network of Platforms
* Does Google Have Too Much Money?
* Soccer Mom Messaging Is the Poetry of Our Age
* Revolution in Spectrum Allocation

Please enjoy them!

The range of Linus’ Law

After more than a decade of successful growth, Wikipedia continues to defy easy characterization. It receives more than 400 million viewers per month. Close to four million articles grace its web pages in English alone. Volunteers built the entire corpus of text.

This experience suggests that Wikipedia has done something right, but begs the question: Which actions mattered, and which ones were merely incidental? Answering that question is the key to finding general lessons for countless other web sites that aggregate user-generated content.

Many Wikipedians believe that Linus’ Law is an important ingredient in their sauce. Coined by Eric Raymond, this law is less legal precept than slogan—namely, “Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow.”

Few people know that it is actually a pert and terse restatement of a quote from Linus Torvalds, who originally said, “Given a large enough beta-tester and co-developer base, almost every problem will be characterized quickly and the fix obvious to someone.” Raymond’s restatement drops all the qualifiers, vesting the proposition with more certitude and making it more egalitarian by extending it to nonexperts.

Wikipedia’s experience suggests Raymond was onto something. Let’s consider when the Law works and why it sometimes fails at Wikipedia.

Richard Rosenbloom, in memory.

Richard Rosenbloom passed away on October 26^th. He was a gentle soul, a wonderful person, and a insightful scholar. He will be missed. I will miss him.

I had the great fortune to meet him several times. The first of these meetings occurred when I was a student. Those first meetings were informal because his son and I were friendly. He showed up on campus one day, because – as his son said – his father was on sabbatical. I did not appreciate that Rosenbloom was one of the preeminent scholars in the study of innovation. He was merely the father of the person with whom I had studied for comprehensive exams. We shared an office. This was his Dad. There was a family resemblance.

Richard Rosenbloom eventually gave a seminar during that year – it was research about the development of VCRs. I still remember it today. It influenced my views of competition between standards. It came at a formative moment.

I would like to honor his memory in this post.

The Neutrino Song

As Dave Barry used to say, I am not making this up: Somebody has written a song about neutrinos, and recorded a you-tube video. In an act of shameless self-promotion, the writers and performers of this song sent me an email after reading the neutrino jokes in the previous post. For your listening pleasure I am now sharing their song/video with you.

The name of the band is the Corrigan brothers. I must confess that I had never heard of this band before they sent me their email, though they appear to be established, and about as respectable as an Irish band can be (if they are not U2).  I also am impressed by how quickly they wrote their song and put together a YouTube video using so many Einstein images. I also have some grudging respect for someone who is trying to take advantage of a pop trend using YouTube. Part of their speed is due to their use of the same tune from a prior pop hit (about Barack Obama, no less), but why hold that against them?

To be sure, their chances of success are quite low, so only a foolish dreamer would try to start a viral campaign for their pop song this way. But who does not like foolish dreamers? There is a certain quixotic charm about bands who are trying to get ten percent of their fifteen minutes of fame writing songs about surprising results from a physics experiment.

Now, actually, as it turns out, there are several neutrino songs on YouTube. This idea has occurred to more than a few aspiring pop artists. <sarcasm alert> But none of the others sent me an email promoting their song. Sure, that is an arbitrary way to chose who to promote, but what did you expect, a critical review? This is just a blog about the online economy, after all. <end of sarcasm>

Anyway, back to the main point. This particular song is called “Einstein and the Neutrino.” Here is the video:

Here are the lyrics:

TOOR A LOO TOOR A LOO TOOR A LOO TOOR A LINO

IS LIGHT NOW SLOWER THAN A NEUTRINO

We can believe it

We weren’t prepared

Does E STILL EQUAL

MC SQUARED

NOW THAT THE NEUTRINO

HAS TAKEN FLIGHT

AND IS SEEMINLGY FASTER

THAN THE SPEED OF LIGHT

WAS OLD ALBERT WRONG

OH CAN IT BE

THAT FABOULOUS THEORY

RELATIVITY

IS BEING DEBUNKED

FOR THE FIRST TIME

BUT HE’S STILL MIGHT BE RIGHT

OLD ALBERT EINSTEIN

TOOR A LOO TOOR A LOO TOOR A LOO TOOR A LINO

IS LIGHT NOW SLOWER THAN A NEUTRINO

NOW PHYSICS FOREVER

MAY NOT BE THE SAME

AND BOFFINS ARE GONNA BE

DRIVEN INSANE

IF LIGHTS NOT THE FASTEST

WHAT CAN THIS MEANO

AND IS SOMETHING FASTER

THAN THE NEUTRINO

TOOR A LOO TOOR A LOO TOOR A LOO TOOR A LINO

IS SOMETHING ELSE FASTER THAN A NEUTRINO

Let’s not rush to conclusions let’s take our time

He still could be right old albert Einstein

TOOR A LOO TOOR A LOO TOOR A LOO TOOR A LINO

IS LIGHT NOW SLOWER THAN A NEUTRINO

Steve Jobs: In memoriam

There are no second acts in life, but there are many second acts in American business. It is, perhaps, one of the greatest strengths of American entrepreneurial business.

There is no greater recent example than the career of Steve Jobs. Fired from Apple, entrepreneurial failure at Next, long time in the wilderness at Pixar (before wild success), and final redemption back at Apple. What a second act.

There will be a time for longer reflection on Jobs, when the first initial wave of grief has passed. For now, here are two things to remember Jobs by.

First, go read this wonderful post about Job by my good buddy, Tim Bresnahan. I am not writing anything more for now because TBres already got the essence of everything that should be said at this moment.

Next, try remember the audacious guy, the person full of life and verve. There are many ways to do it, but my personal favorite is the 1984 commercial announcing the Macintosh, still one of the most wonderful commercials ever. I can still remember watching the Superbowl with my father when it came on. It was just the two of us, sitting in the family room. We both were transfixed, and we both looked at each other with quizzical expressions, and we both said “Wow.” This was back in the day when you could not go to YouTube and see a rerun right away, but the next day — heck, for the next week and more — my friends and I were talking about it more than the football game.

Go amuse yourself and watch it again.

Only 56. It is just too young. I feel for the family.

The Lexicon of Networking Economics

Economics rarely improves with reference to etymology, but an exception should be made for the economics of networks. Many valid but distinct definitions of “network economics” compete for attention. That causes confusion in academic writing and in public discourse.

There are many symptoms of this confusion. Consider this one. When the late Senator Ted Stevens inarticulately referred to the Internet as a “series of tubes” it earned him derision from younger denizens of the Internet. To many youngsters it was unthinkable that the ranking Senator on the committee for regulating Internet commerce conflated the physical network – local area networks, backbone lines, access lines – with its applications – email, web surfing, electronic commerce.

To be fair to Senator Stevens, however, such a conflation is rather understandable. Stevens used a habit of mind common in monopoly provision of local electricity and telephony. It came into conflict with another and newer habit of mind, one that lives online. Only recently have these twains begun to meet regularly.

How did this happen? In brief, public discourse typically uses three distinct economic meanings for the term “network” and, without making due distinction, applies these to the same situations.  Let’s  get straight on the meaning of words. This post explains the lexicon of networking economics.

The Open Internet Order

After a year of hearings and considerable public discussion, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) adopted the Open Internet Order on December 21, 2010.

Fireworks flared on the blogosphere almost immediately. Net neutrality advocates cried that the order betrayed and sold-out sacred principles, while Tea Party supporters heaped scornful criticism at government activism. Both sides made intemperate and grim forecasts about the Internet’s future.

Levelheadedness left the political sphere as well. Pushed hard by Tea Party sympathizers, the House of Representatives passed House Joint Resolution 37 in April 2011, largely along party lines, disapproving of the order. As of this writing, the Senate hasn’t yet taken up the measure. President Obama promises to veto it.

Frankly, this conversation needs a calm and considered middle ground, not utopian visions abutting practical considerations. The Internet has never lacked government oversight, and Internet participants have occasionally compromised on neutrality to function. There are subtle economic issues to debate here, and simplistic absolutes don’t contribute much to finding reasonable economic solutions.

The meaning of free Wi-Fi: A traveler’s vignette.

Abundant outlets and free Wi-Fi can improve the mood in a lonely terminal. Those outlets were meant for cleaners with vacuums, but some time ago serious road warriors began using them for their laptops and mobile devices. Free Wi-Fi simply makes those devices more useful.

Terminal 1 in the Toronto Airport contains that combination of Wi-Fi and outlets, especially the part devoted to local flights in Canada, operated by Air Canada. Last Thursday evening this terminal was sparsely populated. It served as my prison and home for a few hours.

The Wi-Fi and electricity flowed freely that day, as did the advise from strangers. This post describes what happened.

I did not try to have a day that illustrated the various meanings of free. It just happened.

The revolution will not be televised, but it might be your ring-tone

The revolution will not be televised. The phrase has been paraphrased many times. It has become routine, and almost safe. And it took on new meaning in popular conversation when the Arab spring erupted in Egypt and Tunisia, and the revolution really was on television — as well as You-Tube, Facebook and Twitter.

Do you know its origins?

Gil Scott Heron invented that phrase. It is the title for an angry and sardonic poem, written in the heat of youthful rebellion.  Oversimplifying, the poem tells the listener not to look to mainstream sources for the social revolution they seek. It will not be found in the slogans and routines of the existing media structures (the full text of the poem is at the end of this post).

The phrase surfaced again last week upon the news that Scott-Heron passed away. I do not know have anything profound to say about his passing. Yet, I did notice something odd about how the Internet has changed my memory of Gil Scott Heron. That is the basis for this post. Scott-Heron’s passing illustrates it.

To wit, the rise of the Internet has not changed death. Death is still not for the living. The Internet has changed one thing about death, however. It has changed the way the dead are remembered by the living.