Apple has agreed that the encryption keys for iCloud user accounts for Chinese persons will be stored in China, as Reuters reported today.
If you aren’t familiar with Chinese law and the situation around this, this may seem relatively innocuous: a company is doing business in a country, and complying with that country’s local laws. What’s significant about this is that it represents a major change in how legal process works.
The theme of this year’s Shift Forum is “Business must lead.” The phrase is simple, but the ideas behind it are complicated: How might business actually take a larger, more positive role in the public sphere? Just in time for next week’s event comes a perfect example of “business leading” thinking — in the form of a column from Andrew Ross Sorkin.
In the piece, Sorkin acknowledges that our policymakers and politicians have utterly failed to execute their duties when it comes to gun control. A strong majority of Americans believe that sale of assault weaponry should be limited or banned, but the brute force of NRA money has stopped sensible legislation from moving forward. So how could business step in and lead? Sorkin argues that banks could ban the processing of transactions related to assault weapons — just as they already have with cryptocurrencies. In the case of bitcoin and its peers, banks claim they are protecting their customers from potential harm. And what could be more harmful to customers than, well…death?
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“When a meeting, or part thereof, is held under the Chatham House Rule, participants are free to use the information received, but neither the identity nor the affiliation of the speaker(s), nor that of any other participant, may be revealed.”
The Shift Forum operates under Chatham House Rule, a simple framework developed nearly a century ago by Anglo-American business and political leaders in the tumultuous aftermath of World War I. Chatham House, also known at the Royal Institute of International Affairs, is an independent think tank that takes as its mission to “To help build a sustainably secure, prosperous and just world, through informed debate, independent analysis, new policy ideas, and outreach to audiences.”
Read MoreThis is not an easy essay to write, because I have believed that technology companies are a force for good for more than 30 years. And for the past ten years, I’ve been an unabashed optimist when it comes to the impact of social platforms like YouTube, Twitter, and even Facebook. I want to believe they create more good than bad in our world. But recently I’ve lost that faith.
What’s changed my mind is the recalcitrant posture of these companies in the face of overwhelming evidence that their platforms are being intentionally manipulated to undermine our democracy. This is an existential crisis, both for civil society and for the health of the businesses being manipulated. But to date the response from the platforms is the equivalent of politicians’ “hopes and prayers” after a school shooting: Soothing murmurs, evasion of truly hard conversations, and a refusal to acknowledge the core problem: Their automated business models.
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Bill Gates was the Mark Zuckerberg of the 1980s and 90s. Microsoft in the late 1990s owned the tech world. It was an unmitigated monopoly in computer operating systems, poised to do the same in the Internet and web browsing markets. But then it tangled with the US government. A bruising legal battle with the Dept. of Justice culminated in a humbling settlement in 2002. As it licked its wounds and considered how to operate in a post-settlement world, Microsoft missed the search revolution, ceding it to Google, missed the mobile revolution, ceding it to Apple, and missed the social revolution as well. Given all those misses, it’s that much more remarkable how healthy Microsoft’s business is today — it remains a major force in tech, particularly in enterprise, an area where its FANG rivals have mostly whiffed.
So when Gates uses his most potent current platform — the release of his annual Gates Foundation letter — as an opportunity to warn his industry of its blinkered arrogance, well, the man knows of what he speaks. He’s lived through through the government ringer, he’s been the blinkered tech icon who thought he was smarter than the rest of the room, and he’s lived long enough to realize the error of his ways. Given the moment in which our industry finds itself, Gates’ admonition is both poignant and timely.
Read MoreHere’s your latest edition of NewCo Shift Monthly, a roundup of top NewCo Shift stories. Highlights include Facebook’s conundrum, tech addiction, an alternative in Pinterest, the impact of Amazon Go, and a sneak peek to NewCo Shift Forum February 26th-28th, in which we will be discussing some of these issues with key players in business and society.
Let us know the type of stories you are interested in us covering at editorial@newco.co. Thanks for reading, and for those Medium claps. It means a lot to us.
Keep me honest here — am I over-indexing on the Tech Gets Its Comeuppance story, or simply reflecting reality? I’m starting to wonder. But once again a review of the past few days of business news is dominated by the techlash. Yes, I could have filled this column with stories about the stock market, but truth be told, it feels appropriate that we let some air out of the Wall Street “melt up.”
I’ll admit I’m fascinated by society’s response to technology’s moment of scrutiny. It’s happening in real time, and not just in the worlds of Facebook and Google. Here are a few of the most interesting stories since last Friday:
Early Facebook and Google Employees Form Coalition to Fight What They Built
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Once again the scholars of democracy are displeased with its march, or perhaps we should say its retreat. Last time we reported on this trend, it was the Freedom House sounding the alarm. Today it’s the Economist. Just five percent of the world lives in a “full democracy” and no, the US ain’t included. We live in a “flawed democracy” and honestly, I am starting to wonder if that’s just a bit too charitable. MQ: “The index, which comprises 60 indicators across five broad categories — electoral process and pluralism, functioning of government, political participation, democratic political culture and civil liberties — concludes that less than 5% of the world’s population currently lives in a “full democracy”.”
We’ll be discussing the decline of democracy with world leaders, governors, mayors, and policy experts, as well as the head of Facebook News Feed and the General Counsel of Google at the Shift Forum next month. Join us!
Read MoreReading books is good for your head, at least that’s what my mother, a middle school English teacher, drilled into me as I was growing up. I was reminded of that maxim as I was finishing Tim O’Reilly’s WTF?: What’s the Future and Why It’s Up to Us — not because the content of the book dramatically changed my point of view (I tend to agree with O’Reilly on most topics, we were partners for years) but because the act of reading WTF clarified certain foggy notions with which I’ve been wrestling, distilling them into more concise reckonings.
WTF is not a straightforward book. It’s part memoir (Tim’s career spans four decade of tech and policy), part tech business book (a review of technological disruption and its impact on society), and part diatribe (a rant against a broken capitalist system). As you might expect, I liked the diatribe parts the best.
“We are witnessing the obsolescence of advertising.” — Regis McKenna
Regis McKenna is the famed marketer behind Apple Computer. He taught Steve Jobs a thing or two about public relations and advertising.
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