Nerd Heroes - Lawrence (Larry) Lessig

Name: Lawrence (Larry) Lessig
Area of nerdom: Copyright law
Origin: US
Profession: Academic and author
Site: www.lessig.org
Why a nerd hero:

• one of the leading minds behind the Creative Commons licence scheme
• I've read his books The Future of Ideas and Remix both of which have influenced my view of copyright law. Interestingly, my view has always been as a content consumer, rather than a creator. Although if you read Remix, it points out that many consumers are now becoming creators since they are now remixers. This course (MTB130) puts an interesting slant on my view, since it's about competitive (i.e. business) advantage, and there's lots of talk about proprietary systems, and locking your customers in by increasing switching costs etc.
• He uses an interesting podcast presentation method, combining speech with keynote slides in a way I had not seen before. I am tempted to try this method for a tax presentation.

Notes: Interestingly, his old blog, http://www.lessig.org/ was about intellectual property (you can also see details of his books there). In it, he announces an indefinite hiatus on that part of career to focus on changing the US government, in particular its system of political campaign donations.

Nerd Heroes

In reading for my hobbies and interests, I have come across some people in the interwebs who I would regard as my 'nerd heroes'. These are just people whose ideas, articles and books I have read, videos I have watched, and podcasts I have listened to. They have influenced my thinking on some things, and other times I've just been really impressed by what they have done or said. In most cases, though, my colleagues at work have had to endure me yap on about how "so and so nerd hero did this really cool thing or wrote this cool article, which I will now attempt to condense..."


So now, as part of my procrastination efforts, I'll bring you some nerd heroes of mine, in the next post.

LO1-1: The Playing Field - Questions - universal standards

What are the three benefits of universal standards?

Honestly, I couldn't find the answer to that question in the reading material for this learning object. I'll have a shot at it though:

1) Amongst other things, universal standards in the context of internet content implies metadata. My having a standard set of metadata, and standard taxonomies, you make everything a lot more discoverable, either by the use of search engines, or by the fact that humans understand how you, as a content author and publisher, have put together your content and categorised it.

2) Accessibility - the use of HTML and XML has meant that programs which have adopted those standards (e.g. browsers) have a certain assurance of compatibility. One of the key benefits is that content authors don't need to create a 'Chrome' version of a website, alongside an 'Internet Explorer' version, alongside the 'Firefox' and 'Safari' and 'Opera'. By creating one website, for one instance of content, authors can keep costs down, focus less on technicality and more on content. The rise of mobile accessible websites, e.g. http://m.smh.com.au/ (also a great way of accessing the headlines on your normal PC without a tonne of advertising and pictures etc) and apps for mobile phones may challenge the idea of "one publication" though.

3) The other accessibility - W3C, the consortium that guides the WWW standards, has approved certain modifications to the standard. One of these if website accessibility for those with vision impairment etc. In the Aussie context, the Australian Government, via the AGIMO and the OAIC have mandated that Australian Government websites comply with the new Website Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.0).

Just for fun, here's a flowchart from the AGIMO website:

LO1-1: The Playing Field - Questions - unique features of e-commerce technology

What are some of the unique features of e-commerce technology?

Well, there was a PPT slide which had all the answers to this question, so I shall paraphrase:

• ubiquity
• global reach
• universal standards
• information richness
• interactive
• information density
• personalisation/customisation

Ubiquity just means 'its everywhere' and implied with it 'on all the time'. This can be seen in the term 'cloud computing'. Cloud not only denotes intangible ethereal-ness, but also, like clouds, the internet (and e-commerce technology with it) is everywhere. Of course, this is limited to where internet access is available. In some countries, it may be largely unavailable due to geography, economics, or politics. But that's okay, the US Govt has you covered with its 'internet in a suitcase'. 

Global reach is related, but it more pertains to the fact that the internet is largely an international thing. For example, I buy most of my books from bookdepository.co.uk, where the books are shipped to me from the UK. Global reach is of course limited by language. If you are a business insisting on having a web presence, be prepared to exclude a few billion people from your potential market if you stick to English only. That said, I've seen some 'english' sites where, let's just say the written comms ain't too flash. I wonder if there is a market for students to proof-read some of this stuff just to polish it off a little.

Universal standards - well, just think, I could write a blog, confident in knowing that whatever browser you choose, it'll probably render correctly on your screen. In the case of my employer, they may also get a notification 'Your Browser is Outdated' - just like Australian Parliament House probably gets (saw it in Hansard one day ages ago). If you'd like to know more about universal standards, perhaps you could read  Tim Berners-Lee's article about a 5 star rating system for data 'openness' (yes, the 'Father of the World Wide Web' is one of my 'nerd heroes'). Have a think about HTML, XML, HTTP etc and how that's affected our ability to exchange information.

Information richness - to me, that just means jamming more crap on your website because you can, and you couldn't fit it on your 3 pane hard copy brochure. Sometimes less is more, just saying.

Interactive - sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't, no big deal. It depends on the context. If I want to look up a restaurant on the WWW, I'd like to see 3 things: a menu, some pictures of the place, and a phone number. It doesn't need to be interactive to meet my needs. On the other hand, buying stuff online is interactive, and so that's where you need to spend some serious money/time/effort on getting your shopping cart etc sorted.

Information density - fail to see how this is different to information richness.

Personalisation/customisation - To be honest, I never really got into the personalisation thing. To personalise a website takes a bit of time, let's say a news website. I just want to read the news. I don't care about the widgets and filtering etc. I'd only ever really put effort into personalising a website if

(a) I trust the website with cookies

(b) I spend a lot of time on the website, and I know I will continue to do so

(c) The site, as it stands, is enough of a pain to navigate that it justifies the time to personalise

Ironically for me, if (c) is met, (b) is highly in doubt. Which is why I never really personalise anything.

LO1-1: The Playing Field - Questions - information asymmetry

What is information asymmetry?

This is a situation where one party knows something you don't know. An example would be the lowest possible price a seller would sell you something for, say a TV (from the point of view of a consumer). As a consumer, you may be willing to part with $1000 for a TV, but of course, you like to get a bargain. That is, you want to maximise your "consumer surplus". One way of doing this is finding out how low will a seller go.

You can do this superficially by simply asking, "how low can you go?" in the shop, like a Bing Lee store, where "Everything's Negotiable". The shop attendant will tell you, "I can sell that TV to you for $900". Of course, they may still be holding back, so you might ask them again, or attempt to look over their shoulder as they go to their computer system, which tells them the absolute lowest possible selling price."

As an Australian consumer, and with the internet, you may now use sites like shopbot.com.au, myshopping.com.au or shopferret.com.au to see other retailers, and how much they are selling it for. If you see a physical store selling the same TV for $800, then you can fairly sure that Bing Lee can still go lower. The internet has reduced information asymmetry for consumers by allowing consumers to assess the 'true' value of a good, in terms of the lowest price a retailer would go. In the absence of the research, you might have paid $900 for the TV, but now, you have more bargaining power, by being able to tell the Bing Lee guy that you will go elsewhere unless they can match $800.

From a consumer perspective, the reduction of information asymmetry has the effect of increasing consumer surplus and decreasing producer surplus (i.e. business profit).

Good or a bad thing? Good if you are a customer, bad if you are Bing Lee, good if you were that other retailer who got the sale instead thanks to your listing on shopbot.com.au, and good for a whole bunch of other businesses on whom the customer is now going to spend up to $200 (or more!) thanks to the consumer who saved some money.

LO1-1: The Playing Field - Questions - e-commerce vs e-business

What is e-commerce, how does it differ from e-business? Where does it intersect with e-business?

E-commerce is about transactions between a business and a customer. The 'customer' can either be another business (B2B), or a consumer (B2C). Sometimes you can have customer to customer (C2C) models. There is also Business to Government (B2G), and strangely absent from my readings so far, Government to Citizen (G2C - just made that one up).

E-Business is about the digital enabling of transactions within a firm. For example, using MYOB in your small business to replace paper record keeping.

Where does it intersect with e-business?

I haven't read anything to tell me, but I'd hazard a guess that customer interfacing systems which connect to internal business systems are the intersection. For example, a business might have a website, selling goods, and it shows the customer the stock levels and availability, this may intersect with its inventory system. Perhaps another example is allowing customers to follow the shipment of a package by logging onto a courier tracking system "ooo! my book has left the UK!"

LO1-1: The Playing Field

Readings:
PPT: The Revolution is just beginning
PPT: E-commerce business models and concepts
Video: 2 x videos of a dude summarising 2 chapters in a book he wrote.

Firstly, the videos were of terrible quality, somewhat ironic for an author talking about using the internet for business. Okay, not that ironic, since crappy video may well make you more inclined to buy and read the book so you don't have to endure the pixellated face and tinny voice.

So, onto some questions, see the next post.