There were two tweets about Uber recently that I found myself disagreeing with somewhat. Paul Graham tweetedUber is so obviously a good thing that you can measure how corrupt cities are by how hard they try to suppress it.And on the same day Chris Sacca (who is an investor in Uber) tweetedBefore Uber came along, I never understood how deeply corrupt so many American cities and politicians are.What do I not like about them? Equating Uber with the much larger idea of using technology to efficie...

There were two tweets about Uber recently that I found myself disagreeing with somewhat. Paul Graham tweetedUber is so obviously a good thing that you can measure how corrupt cities are by how hard they try to suppress it.And on the same day Chris Sacca (who is an investor in Uber) tweetedBefore Uber came along, I never understood how deeply corrupt so many American cities and politicians are.What do I not like about them? Equating Uber with the much larger idea of using technology to efficie...

The greatest trick Uber ever pulled was to convince regulators that it is an open technology platform. That trick may no longer work if the California verdict that some Uber drivers are employees is upheld (I am assuming that the company will appeal the decision). For disclosure, USV has two related investments with Hailo and Sidecar. Both companies have struggled and to no small degree because they did not pull the same trick. Hailo focuses primarily on the licensed market where rates are se...

The greatest trick Uber ever pulled was to convince regulators that it is an open technology platform. That trick may no longer work if the California verdict that some Uber drivers are employees is upheld (I am assuming that the company will appeal the decision). For disclosure, USV has two related investments with Hailo and Sidecar. Both companies have struggled and to no small degree because they did not pull the same trick. Hailo focuses primarily on the licensed market where rates are se...

Chris Dixon recently wrote a post about the decline of the mobile web and the shift to apps and how that is hurting innovation. Fred expanded on that theme in his post on the mobile downturn. So it is worth thinking about what we need to get to a model of permissionless innovation in mobile. Here are some changes that might make senseAn unencumbered open source mobile operating system (Android is not that due to the control exercised by Google) Ability to side load apps / have competing app m...

Chris Dixon recently wrote a post about the decline of the mobile web and the shift to apps and how that is hurting innovation. Fred expanded on that theme in his post on the mobile downturn. So it is worth thinking about what we need to get to a model of permissionless innovation in mobile. Here are some changes that might make senseAn unencumbered open source mobile operating system (Android is not that due to the control exercised by Google) Ability to side load apps / have competing app m...

The GOP debate brought more talk of a “wet blanket of regulation” weighing on economic activity. Apparently even President Obama thinks that environmental regulation is at issue here and has sadly rolled back some clean air standards. That’s quite ironic at a time when the Chinese are tightening their air quality standards and when we should be looking at creating (clean) tech jobs (as opposed to smoke stack ones) is biting. Instead we should be looking at the cost of financial regulation tha...

The GOP debate brought more talk of a “wet blanket of regulation” weighing on economic activity. Apparently even President Obama thinks that environmental regulation is at issue here and has sadly rolled back some clean air standards. That’s quite ironic at a time when the Chinese are tightening their air quality standards and when we should be looking at creating (clean) tech jobs (as opposed to smoke stack ones) is biting. Instead we should be looking at the cost of financial regulation tha...

One of the major issues we are struggling with in this flood of data is the question of what data belongs to whom and in particular how much access and control endusers should have over their data (or for that matter what “their” data even means). In California a “Right to Know” bill has been introduced that would require companies to let endusers access what data has been stored about them and which third parties that data has been shared with. The definition of personal data in the bill is ...

One of the major issues we are struggling with in this flood of data is the question of what data belongs to whom and in particular how much access and control endusers should have over their data (or for that matter what “their” data even means). In California a “Right to Know” bill has been introduced that would require companies to let endusers access what data has been stored about them and which third parties that data has been shared with. The definition of personal data in the bill is ...

Standard & Poors downgrade of the US has generated much discussion, with some blasting S&P such as Robert Reich and some defending S&P such as Henry Blodget. Whatever you may think about the downgrade, I have a different proposal: let’s eliminate ratings agencies. By that I mean specifically a government sanctioned oligopoly on rating debt. Ratings agencies as they exist today are a distinct leftover from a pre-Internet era. They act as aggregators and evaluators of information which in the p...

Standard & Poors downgrade of the US has generated much discussion, with some blasting S&P such as Robert Reich and some defending S&P such as Henry Blodget. Whatever you may think about the downgrade, I have a different proposal: let’s eliminate ratings agencies. By that I mean specifically a government sanctioned oligopoly on rating debt. Ratings agencies as they exist today are a distinct leftover from a pre-Internet era. They act as aggregators and evaluators of information which in the p...

It is easy to dismiss Rick Santorum’s promised war on pornography as more moralizing from a candidate who apparently questions the separation of church and state. But it exposes an important fault line in thinking about the Internet when seen in conjunction with Nick Kristof’s call in this Sunday’s New York Times for Backpage to stop carrying adult classifieds. At issue here is what constitutes an effective approach to the regulation of content and commerce on the Internet and is closely rela...

It is easy to dismiss Rick Santorum’s promised war on pornography as more moralizing from a candidate who apparently questions the separation of church and state. But it exposes an important fault line in thinking about the Internet when seen in conjunction with Nick Kristof’s call in this Sunday’s New York Times for Backpage to stop carrying adult classifieds. At issue here is what constitutes an effective approach to the regulation of content and commerce on the Internet and is closely rela...

I wrote a blog post last week about the current Privacy Theater in the US, where the government is simultaneously pushing stricter privacy regulations and huge backdoors that would completely undermine privacy. The backdoors come in the form of the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act or CISPA. The folks at Lumin Consulting have put together a good infographic that illustrates how CISPA undermines privacy: I am actually sympathetic to the basic idea behind CISPA, which is to make it ...

I wrote a blog post last week about the current Privacy Theater in the US, where the government is simultaneously pushing stricter privacy regulations and huge backdoors that would completely undermine privacy. The backdoors come in the form of the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act or CISPA. The folks at Lumin Consulting have put together a good infographic that illustrates how CISPA undermines privacy: I am actually sympathetic to the basic idea behind CISPA, which is to make it ...

I wrote recently about how we are at a time during which lots of little decisions will determine whether we find ourselves in an information utopia or dystopia. There is a lot of legislation in the works both here in the US and abroad that speaks directly to this. In particular, there is a schizophrenic approach to privacy. We are simultaneously getting efforts to provide more privacy in commercial settings and less privacy vis-a-vis the government. In the US, the FTC is working on new privac...

I wrote recently about how we are at a time during which lots of little decisions will determine whether we find ourselves in an information utopia or dystopia. There is a lot of legislation in the works both here in the US and abroad that speaks directly to this. In particular, there is a schizophrenic approach to privacy. We are simultaneously getting efforts to provide more privacy in commercial settings and less privacy vis-a-vis the government. In the US, the FTC is working on new privac...

We like to put things in categories: public versus private company; for profit versus charity; professional versus amateur; creator versus consumer; journalist versus blogger; teacher versus student; and so much more. Of course not all categorizations are binary. In academia, for instance, we have the faculties (e.g., chemistry, biology, physics) and degrees (Bachelor, Master, Doctor). Categories are a way of aggregating information. If I tell you that a company is public that is a shorthand ...

We like to put things in categories: public versus private company; for profit versus charity; professional versus amateur; creator versus consumer; journalist versus blogger; teacher versus student; and so much more. Of course not all categorizations are binary. In academia, for instance, we have the faculties (e.g., chemistry, biology, physics) and degrees (Bachelor, Master, Doctor). Categories are a way of aggregating information. If I tell you that a company is public that is a shorthand ...