What forms of psychological manipulation will we consider to be acceptable business models?

--- James Williams, doctoral candidate at the Oxford Internet Institute, speaking on the Talking Politics podcast, April 25, 2018, ahead of the publication of his book Stand Out of Our Light: Freedom and Resistance in the Attention Economy.

“The fundamental question for society to answer is, What forms of psychological manipulation will we consider to be acceptable business models?” (timecode 24:40)

Lots of great stuff in this discussion; for example:

“That’s what’s one of the rhetorical risks in the near term: Political issues will be reframed as design issues.” (timecode 28:10)

"Google loves challenging old business models with new technology ideas"

--- Mark Sullivan in his PC World piece on 10 Feb 2010 "Google Challenge to US Broadband Might Actually Change Things"

In context:

The announcement comes right on the heels of the federal government releasing the first round of funding for broadband networks to rural and underserved areas. It appears to be intended as an adjunct to the FCC’s own Broadband Plan, as if to say: “See, you can do it like this.”

Google loves challenging old business models with new technology ideas. Today’s announcement is the search giant’s opening salvo in a challenge to US broadband, which is monopolistic, slow and sees openness as a threat to profits.

...

I sincerely hope the tech and telecom communities rally around what Google is trying to do here. The planned fiber networks are not big enough to excite the suspicions among privacy conspiracy junkies that Google is only running the networks to collect more data about us, and as a new platform for its advertising business.

If the network goes national, those will be important questions to explore. For now, though, Google has a rare opportunity to put real pressure on large ISPs like AT&T and Comcast to sell more bandwidth for less money.

I can get behind that.

More a more neutral report, see the Wall Street Journal, "Google Jolts Telecom Rivals", 11 Feb 2010.

If nothing else, this is PR genius of the caliber we've come to expect of Google. Huge bang for little buck.

"If [engineers] had named Kentucky Fried Chicken, it would have been Hot Dead Birds"

--- Vint Cerf speaking at OpenMobile Summit, San Francisco November 2009; quoted by The Register, "Vint Cerf mods Android for interplanetary interwebs", 5th November 2009

Quote in context:

So, Cerf and team booted TCP/IP from the heavens and build an interplanetary replacement they called the Delay-Tolerant Networking (DTN) protocol. Cerf admits this isn't the most attractive moniker.

"Engineers are really good at labeling and branding things," said his sarcasm. "If we had named Kentucky Fried Chicken, it would have been Hot Dead Birds."

Unlike TCP/IP, DTN does not assume a continuous connection. When there are delays in interplanetary transmission, the new protocol forces each node to hang onto its packets until they can be safely transmitted. It's now under test with platforms speeding away from earth towards objeccts 80 or 90 light-seconds away.

Update 23 November, 2009: Mark Gordon at Microsoft notes the old ISDN joke: "If AT&T had named Sushi, it would have been CDF (Cold Dead Fish)."