Chapter 148 Nine questions KK

1. Your title in Wired is Senior Maverick, can you explain what it means? Oh, and "senior" means "old," and "ranger" means "outsider" to some degree.I didn't like working within the confines of a big company, so when WIRED sold, I left WIRED, but kept the position I created. 2. You once gave a speech on "the next 5000 days of the Internet" when the Internet was born 5000 days ago. Can you summarize and predict the development stage of the Internet? The evolution of the Internet has gone through three stages: from files (Files) stored in the desktop (Desktop) through the organization of folders (Folders), to web pages (Pages) forming a network (Web) in the form of links (Links), Then to the data stream (Streams) with the help of tags (Tags) to form a cloud (Cloud).

On the one hand, more and more people or things are joining this network.The effect of the network grows rapidly with the scale of the network, which is the so-called "Fax Machine Effect".When a million people on the planet have a mobile phone, you might say, "Well, that's interesting." When a billion people have a mobile phone, you might say, "Oh, that's amazing!" And when all When everyone has a mobile phone, you will find that the world has completely changed. On the other hand, the data we can collect is more dynamic, more real-time, and more comprehensive.This is the concept of "flow".One day in the future, our every move, every breath, will be captured and recorded by sensors, and will be gathered into the ocean of data.In short, the Internet is leading the world towards the direction of "One Machine".

3. What impact will the future Internet have on our business? When all data and all information are aggregated and shared in the "cloud", the traditional ownership-based model (Ownership Model) will be replaced by an access-based model (Access Model).This is also the difference between a material-based economy and an information-based economy.In a material-based economy, when you buy an item, you become the owner of the item; but in an information-based economy, it is difficult for you to become the owner of a piece of information, because Information can be copied infinitely, and it always exists in the "cloud".It's not so much that you own a piece of information as you have access to that information.

In fact, future material goods can also be based on access rights, and the premise is that the material conditions are extremely rich.At that time, people don't need to bring mobile phones when they go out, and mobile communication devices that can be shared can be seen everywhere. As long as you take them and enter your identification, they can be used for you. 4. In such an ocean of data in the future, is it difficult for people to protect their privacy?Will there be an asymmetry in data sharing between governments and institutions and ordinary people? "Privacy" and "personalized services" are related.If you want more personalization, then you need to be more transparent and less private.In the future, the value of this ocean of data lies in the provision of personalized services.I personally lean towards being more transparent.Privacy or confidentiality is like trace elements in the human body. A small amount is beneficial, but a slight excess will kill the body.

It is not ruled out that there will be a situation in the future where the government or agencies can monitor every move of ordinary people, but ordinary people cannot see what they are doing.This is a top-down structure.This kind of structure can exist in an era when there is no Internet and communication between people is inconvenient.But in the Internet age, in an era of extremely developed communications, this structure is unstable and may be overthrown at any time.I believe that governments and institutions should be no different from individual nodes in the network, and should be equal to each other.The more transparent and less secretive they are, the better the networked society will be.From this point of view, I am a supporter of WikiLeaks (Wiki Leaks).

5. A recent Wired discussion on the topic "The Web Is Dead, Is the Internet Immortal?" attracted attention.There is a view that the open Internet has come to an end, and future applications will tend to be more and more closed.What do you think? Openness is the inherent spirit of the Internet; without openness, there would be no Internet.However, due to the uneven development of various parts of the network, there will be various "gardens" with walls.In a sense, this kind of closure is precisely the result of openness: due to openness, the scale of the network becomes larger; and any large and complex system cannot be homogeneous inside, and various Autonomous subsystems.These autonomous subsystems are able to adjust more flexibly within themselves, so that the network can better tolerate the imbalance between regions.In addition, these "gardens" are not completely closed, and they are constantly conducting various exchanges with the external environment.So, closure is closure within opening; openness does not imply a homogeneous system without internal boundaries.

6. The next question is, why do many innovations in the Internet age come from start-up companies?And how should startups respond to attempts by larger companies to copy their innovative ideas? Big companies have mature models and mature processes. They are often committed to doing one thing to the extreme, just like climbing a mountain, always moving towards the peak.When they reach the peak, they have reached a local optimum, and if they go in any direction at this time, they will go downhill.In other words, they are stuck in a local optimum and cannot jump out. Innovation often happens on the fringes, in less-optimized areas.Startups often start on this fringe.In other words, innovation often means less optimization, means some degree of inefficiency.But the activity of the system is also derived from this.In this book, I summarize the nine laws that apply to complex systems, one of which is to maximize the marginal area.

One of the characteristics of the Internet era is that it reduces the cost of starting a business, allowing people to try some temporarily inefficient and unprofitable practices; another characteristic is that changes are faster, and the life cycle of products is greatly shortened, often starting from one point and iterating quickly And refactor, grow modularly.In this regard, small entrepreneurial companies have more advantages and more flexibility. As far as big companies copying startups' ideas, my take is that the idea is more important than the execution.Due to the existing inertia, even if big companies want to copy the ideas of startup companies, they often cannot effectively implement them.If this replication is successful, it also shows that startups have failed to outperform large companies in execution.It is not enough to have a good idea, the key is to execute it.

7. In this book, you repeatedly emphasize bottom-up and decentralized structures.Do you think that in practice, such a distributed system is really advantageous? Yes, nature has proven this time and time again.Whether it is an ant colony or a hive, it is a wonderful case of bottom-up and decentralization.Crowd intelligence emerges from the behavior of large numbers of seemingly disordered individuals.The same is true of human society, especially in the Internet age.Taking Weibo as an example, it is difficult for a short Weibo to contain too much practical meaning.But by retweeting this bottom-up and decentralized group behavior, meaningful social phenomena will emerge from a large number of disorganized short messages.That's the nature of social media.

Of course, I am not saying that only bottom-up should be done blindly instead of top-down.In fact, certain top-down guidance will make certain performances of the system better, especially for a system like human society, top-down guidance is indispensable. What I want to emphasize is that the bottom-up and decentralized structure can do far more than we think.Before Wikipedia, none of us thought that an encyclopedia could be compiled in this way, but Wikipedia has done it.In addition, I am very happy that the translation process of the Chinese version is also such a combination of bottom-up and top-down.

8. You are seen as a technology evangelist, but as far as we know, you don't use a cell phone and you don't have a TV in your home.So what is your attitude towards technology?Do you think there will be a conflict between technology and human nature? First, I think technology is neutral.A technology can be used for both good and evil.But the evolution of technology has provided more choices for human beings. From this point of view, technology is good.While technology is causing many problems, it is also constantly providing solutions.Even if there is only a slight tendency towards goodness in this process of cancellation, if it accumulates over time, the whole process of civilization will be good. Human nature and technology do not conflict.In fact, human nature is the first invention of human beings and is inseparable from technology.It is technology that brings humanity.For individuals, the key is choice-what technology to choose for my use.It is impossible for one person to use all the technologies, nor can he benefit from all the technologies.So, I just choose the technology I need in my life.Oh, and one of the biggest reasons I don't use my phone is because I don't have cell signal at home in San Francisco, CA. 9. Finally, can you predict who will win out among Google, Apple and Facebook?Who will be the next great company on the Internet? Oh, I'm not a prophet.I focus on trends that occur over longer timescales -- 20 years, 30 years, even 100 years.I can't predict what's going to happen a year or two from now. Google, Apple, and Facebook are not all about you and me.I believe they will coexist for quite a long time. Google is a great company; Facebook's Zuckerberg is not as mean and shameless as the movie "The Social Network" alludes to, in fact, he is a very smart person and can listen to others; and Apple Steve Jobs is a dictator and I don't like him.Apple is indeed a heterogeneous, it is the empire of Jobs alone.If anything, I think Apple would fall apart if Jobs died.