What’s very clear, 18 months after the launch of ChatGPT, is that it wasn’t the revolution that was advertised. It’s “cool” to have software deliver output in different forms. It’s cool to ask a question with text and get an answer in code, or a drawing. That’s not human intelligence. All Machine Learning systems I’ve […]
The biggest tech story of the week flew under the radar. That was the collapse of enterprise software stocks. Salesforce.com fell 20% after earnings and other names like Adobe, ServiceNow, and Snowflake fell in sympathy. On Friday Dell followed. It wasn’t the numbers. It was the “guidance,” the story these companies were telling about future […]
I had been covering the Internet for 9 years by late 1994. I like to say that’s the year the Web was spun. My first Web job was for Interactive Age. This was a short-lived magazine from CMP Media meant to cover infrastructure. They were focused on the two-way cable network Time Warner was building […]
I’ve been writing about e-bikes off-and-on for 18 months now. Since getting one of my own, I’ve kind of fallen in love with the thing. But this Memorial Day I decided to find what it could really do. I set out on a route through Buckhead and Brookhaven, mostly avoiding four-lane roads but not entirely. […]
Nvidia is leading an AI Infrastructure boom. Cloud Czars, stuffed with cash, are buying equipment and software with both hands. But at some point, they must get a return on these huge investments. Based on their present direction, they won’t get it. Once it’s clear that they’ve gone the wrong way, the boom will end, […]
We were all taught in school that the election of Abraham Lincoln ignited the Civil War in 1860, that it ended in 1865, at Appomattox, and that it ended with a Union victory. It didn’t. The war ended in 1877. That’s when the Union agreed to end its occupation of the South after the 1876 […]
I was taught the inverted pyramid in j-school. (Yes, I’m old.) The headline was the story. You summarized that story in the first sentence. You put the most important point second. And so on. This let the editor cut it wherever they wanted to make it fit, because the paper was paid when you bought […]
As an American, I was taught in elementary school that the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution outlawed slavery. It didn’t. There’s a specific carve-out, in the text of the amendment. “Except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted.” Anyone in jail today is legally a slave. This is […]
The assumption of investors and most media is that the Cloud Czars are going to dominate the AI age. This runs counter to all past narratives. It assumes industry leaders cross a technology chasm untouched. Remember that in 1995, AT&T and IBM dominated the Internet. Before streaming cable companies, many owned by broadcasters, dominated video. […]
Moore’s Law Makes Time More Valuable. That sounds simple, but it’s a huge deal. It also explains a lot of today’s economic dislocations. Time is the one thing technology can’t give us. It can only help us get more out of the time we have. When technology improves productivity, we can do more. More gets […]
