>From the latest Salon Magazine:
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E S T H E R__D Y S O N_ DISCOURSES ON MICROSOFT,
INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY, THE FUTURE OF RUSSIA -- AND
WHY SHE BANISHED HER TELEPHONE.
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Two quick excerpts:
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( #1: yet another example of people who have not used the bus in a long,
long time...)
I: This, I guess, is what you mean in "Release
2.0" when you talk about how the Net erodes
the separation between work lives and
personal lives.
D: It's not just a matter of time. You know, when
you're in a steel mill, you make steel and you
leave and that's it. But when you're online, if
someone meets you downtown or someone
e-mails you, let's face it, if you're a jerk, it
affects Salon, in a way that it wouldn't if you
were making steel. This is a big social issue;
again, the problem here is people.
You can't be paternalistic and get upset if your
employee goes drinking Saturday night, but at
the same time, now, your company consists of
the people. They're much more visible. And so
what do you do if your employee not only goes
drinking Saturday night but says your company
sucks on his private e-mail account?
I: Even when you try to keep a healthy
separation between work and personal time,
the technology of the Net encourages people
to expect that you're available 24 hours a
day, seven days a week.
D: In addition to that, it's pretty sad if you're
working for a company doing intellectual work
and you don't identify with the company. Which
is why I'm so cheerful about the notion of
smaller companies. One way or another people
are there by choice, and there's more personality.
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( #2: in response to those who say Jerry Brown is too bizarre to be put
into a position of any responsibility--say, the mayor of Oakland...)
I: A lot of companies keep getting bigger,
though. "Release 2.0" argues that the Net is a
great decentralizing force, yet today we're
seeing more power concentrated in the hands
of companies like Microsoft and WorldCom.
D: These big things are getting more and more stuff,
and obviously hardware is different from
content. So yes, with hardware or the
infrastructure or Microsoft -- there are benefits
there to size and economies of scale. But in
content, in intellectual work, there are really
disadvantages of scale. So you see these
divergent trends. But I think the value is
increasingly at the edges, even if the physical
bulk is in the middle.
I: You mean, one reason the physical assets of
the network get collected is that they're worth
less?
D: To some extent. They are commodities.
WorldCom will tell you, "Our customer service
makes us unique." I'm just not sure about that.
I: So where do small companies fit in?
I don't know the statistics, but if you took all the
insects on the earth and weighed them, they'd
weigh a lot more than all the people.
Anders Schneiderman
