Lindsay Tanner. has been in the news over recent weeks peddling his book Sideshow, but today I want to talk about an earlier book.
Tanner made his name by leading a campaign to wrest the Victorian Federated Clerks Union from the Right, and successfully becoming a left-wing State Secretary. He wrote the story under the title The Last Battle.
Reviewing the news from the weekend one sees reportsthat the NSW Labor Conference moved away from a vote in favour of gay-marriage and "It is understood the decision followed indications from delegates with the socially conservative Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees' Association, that they would vote against it."
I don't find this surprising - the Shoppies are renowned for their socially conservative stance - though it should be called what it is a very deeply held Catholic religious position.
What I do find surprising is that this stance endures within the Shoppies. I'm not exactly sure that shop assistants are by nature a very conservative lot. Indeed, a targeted campaign to recruit gay members to the union for the express purpose of breaking its "socially conservative stance" would probably have a high chance of success.
What's more it may be the essential pre-condition for getting the ALP to change its policy stance.
Maybe the campaigners for gay marriage should go get strategy advice from Lindsay Tanner.
Novae Meridianae Demetae Dexter delenda est
Monday, July 11, 2011
Friday, July 08, 2011
Henderson loses it
readers of Crikey might know that Mark Lathamm has started subjectting Gerard Henderson to a bit of an attack over accuracy and pedantry.
Personally I've been finding the monothematic approach of Henderson's Media Watch Dog more of a concern.
His offering today brings out both.
The first is this effort to question the credibility of a person whose account Henerdson wants to discredit.
Scrafton was asked by Labor’s Senator John Faulkner whether he had “checked privately and personally” with his dinner companion as to the number of calls which he had with John Howard. Let’s go to the Hansard transcript:
Mr Scrafton: No, I have not checked – for two reasons. One is that the two very expensive bottles of wine we had were both drunk mostly by her, getting angry while I was away from the table talking to the Prime Minister.
Senator Faulkner: This is a real-world note for our committee.
Mr Scrafton: She probably had less recollection than I do of what happened that night.
You can say that again. Mike Scrafton’s evidence was that his calls with John Howard (he claimed originally that there were three but later conceded there two) occurred over a period of no more than 20 minutes.
There are 14 standard drinks in two bottles of wine – including “very expensive” brands. Since, in Scrafton’s own words, his female companion consumed most of the wine – it is reasonable to assume that she downed no fewer than 10 glasses in a 20 minute period. This is at the rate of a glass of wine every two minutes.
The simple error is that the time period of twenty minutes is listed as how long the calls covered, not necessarily how long Scrafton and the saucy tart were together for.
The second howler is when he seems to confuse his comedians called Dave;
You see, Melbourne comedian Dave O’Neil has just had a vasectomy (Go on. – Ed]. Mr Hughes – father of three, age 46 – started off his column by declaring:
I never really wanted to talk about my vasectomy.
But he did. For another 700 words. Readers learnt what the surgeon said to Dave, what Mrs Dave said to Dave, how Dave was present at the birth of his three children and stayed awake on two of those occasions and how Dave had his private parts shaven.
The rest of the piece talks about Dave - so we are never sure which Dave really had the vasectomy - but then again I couldn't see the point of the entry at all, rather than perhaps to suggest men shouldn't be allowed to write about vasectomies.
Gerard, please note, the media is free to write whatever trivial stories it likes. Stick to concerns of accuracy.
Gerard had started his daily spray by pointing out that political commentary that criticises both Labor and Liberal from the left isn't balanced - though he used the much nicer and more accurate term "pluralist".
But then he decided that Bob Ellis and John Quiggin don't deserve the right to express a leftist opinion because of Gerard's current obsession with "taxpayer funded" jobs. I happily agree with Henderson's general assessment of Ellis - as a writer largely beneath contempt and highly irrelevant. But that's the criticism to make - not that Ellis is soft on sexism so long as it is "balanced".
As for the criticism of Quiggin, it is hard to understand the relevance of a complaint about taxpayer funding of Quiggin when what was being questioned was presumably paid for by the entirely not Government funded Fairfax Media. Indeed it is a surprise that Quiggin still has that gig given how non-pluralist the AFR opinion pages have been of late.
He then finds objectionable the observation that Tony Abbott won't find much support from Australian economists - despite the fact it is true. I can tell Gerard that one economist - Frank Stilwell from the University of Sydney - does support Abbott's direct action plan. That is based on his paper Environmental Policy: Beyond the Market presented to last year's Contesting Markets Symposium. But this provides the delicious irony that Abbott's only support comes from the anti-market Left.
It is a pity to see the only Australian conservative who seemed to have a grasp on informed discussion getting so distracted.
Novae Meridianae Demetae Dexter delenda est
Personally I've been finding the monothematic approach of Henderson's Media Watch Dog more of a concern.
His offering today brings out both.
The first is this effort to question the credibility of a person whose account Henerdson wants to discredit.
Scrafton was asked by Labor’s Senator John Faulkner whether he had “checked privately and personally” with his dinner companion as to the number of calls which he had with John Howard. Let’s go to the Hansard transcript:
Mr Scrafton: No, I have not checked – for two reasons. One is that the two very expensive bottles of wine we had were both drunk mostly by her, getting angry while I was away from the table talking to the Prime Minister.
Senator Faulkner: This is a real-world note for our committee.
Mr Scrafton: She probably had less recollection than I do of what happened that night.
You can say that again. Mike Scrafton’s evidence was that his calls with John Howard (he claimed originally that there were three but later conceded there two) occurred over a period of no more than 20 minutes.
There are 14 standard drinks in two bottles of wine – including “very expensive” brands. Since, in Scrafton’s own words, his female companion consumed most of the wine – it is reasonable to assume that she downed no fewer than 10 glasses in a 20 minute period. This is at the rate of a glass of wine every two minutes.
The simple error is that the time period of twenty minutes is listed as how long the calls covered, not necessarily how long Scrafton and the saucy tart were together for.
The second howler is when he seems to confuse his comedians called Dave;
You see, Melbourne comedian Dave O’Neil has just had a vasectomy (Go on. – Ed]. Mr Hughes – father of three, age 46 – started off his column by declaring:
I never really wanted to talk about my vasectomy.
But he did. For another 700 words. Readers learnt what the surgeon said to Dave, what Mrs Dave said to Dave, how Dave was present at the birth of his three children and stayed awake on two of those occasions and how Dave had his private parts shaven.
The rest of the piece talks about Dave - so we are never sure which Dave really had the vasectomy - but then again I couldn't see the point of the entry at all, rather than perhaps to suggest men shouldn't be allowed to write about vasectomies.
Gerard, please note, the media is free to write whatever trivial stories it likes. Stick to concerns of accuracy.
Gerard had started his daily spray by pointing out that political commentary that criticises both Labor and Liberal from the left isn't balanced - though he used the much nicer and more accurate term "pluralist".
But then he decided that Bob Ellis and John Quiggin don't deserve the right to express a leftist opinion because of Gerard's current obsession with "taxpayer funded" jobs. I happily agree with Henderson's general assessment of Ellis - as a writer largely beneath contempt and highly irrelevant. But that's the criticism to make - not that Ellis is soft on sexism so long as it is "balanced".
As for the criticism of Quiggin, it is hard to understand the relevance of a complaint about taxpayer funding of Quiggin when what was being questioned was presumably paid for by the entirely not Government funded Fairfax Media. Indeed it is a surprise that Quiggin still has that gig given how non-pluralist the AFR opinion pages have been of late.
He then finds objectionable the observation that Tony Abbott won't find much support from Australian economists - despite the fact it is true. I can tell Gerard that one economist - Frank Stilwell from the University of Sydney - does support Abbott's direct action plan. That is based on his paper Environmental Policy: Beyond the Market presented to last year's Contesting Markets Symposium. But this provides the delicious irony that Abbott's only support comes from the anti-market Left.
It is a pity to see the only Australian conservative who seemed to have a grasp on informed discussion getting so distracted.
Novae Meridianae Demetae Dexter delenda est
Net neutrality and the NBN
Part 2 of Kim Chandler McDonald's (KimmiC's) interview with Vint Cerf has been published.
In it he mostly traverses three topics, net neitrality, transparency of NBN costs, and e=health.
On the net neutrality issue he makes an assertion that the NBN in Australia should restrict the net neutrality concerns. As I discussed in my ACS-TSA policy gap forum piece on interconnection, the market power issue doesn't go away simply by virtue of the separated access network. It is changed, it becomes more manageable - but it is not eliminated.
Despite the Convergence Review getting the importance of any-to-any connectivity, their Emerging Issues Paper the issue is only dealt with under the rubric of "exclusive content" as opposed to "differential connectivity".
The e-health discussion simply reveals again how vexed is the question of health. Ultimately the glimmer of hope might come from the realisation that the best standards are built by user communities and the best applications come from end-to-end rather than mediated models.
Finally, the bit that made a bit of a headline, was Cerf calling for clarity in NBN cost data. The logic seemed to be that in the theory of "competing nations" we wouldn't want other countries to actually realise how cost effective an FTTP network by Government is.
The facts are that the Government and NBn co can keep some expectations secret, but their real costs will eventually be on the public record.
I for one think our NBn risk is about failure to get the downstream market working properly than failure to get the NBN built - they are NGN risks, not NBN ones.
Novae Meridianae Demetae Dexter delenda est
In it he mostly traverses three topics, net neitrality, transparency of NBN costs, and e=health.
On the net neutrality issue he makes an assertion that the NBN in Australia should restrict the net neutrality concerns. As I discussed in my ACS-TSA policy gap forum piece on interconnection, the market power issue doesn't go away simply by virtue of the separated access network. It is changed, it becomes more manageable - but it is not eliminated.
Despite the Convergence Review getting the importance of any-to-any connectivity, their Emerging Issues Paper the issue is only dealt with under the rubric of "exclusive content" as opposed to "differential connectivity".
The e-health discussion simply reveals again how vexed is the question of health. Ultimately the glimmer of hope might come from the realisation that the best standards are built by user communities and the best applications come from end-to-end rather than mediated models.
Finally, the bit that made a bit of a headline, was Cerf calling for clarity in NBN cost data. The logic seemed to be that in the theory of "competing nations" we wouldn't want other countries to actually realise how cost effective an FTTP network by Government is.
The facts are that the Government and NBn co can keep some expectations secret, but their real costs will eventually be on the public record.
I for one think our NBn risk is about failure to get the downstream market working properly than failure to get the NBN built - they are NGN risks, not NBN ones.
Novae Meridianae Demetae Dexter delenda est
What have we learned from the GFC?
Had the pleasure to listen to John Quiggin at yesterday's Australian Economics Society seminar on "What have we learned from the Global Financial Crisis?"
By we he meant the economics profession and policy makers.
The core of the talk was basically a quick - and very good - summary of his book Zombie Economics
The thesis is that there is a group of economic ideas that emerged from the failure of Keynesian economics to deal with the crisis of the 1970s (oil shock stagflation) that refuse to die. Instead, despite evidence that should kill them once and for all, they continue to roam the planet like zombies.
He collectively refers to the set of ideas as "market liberalism". There are five core ideas that he dissects;
1. The idea that the period starting with the 1980s was a "great moderation" that would see the end of the business cycle.
2. The efficient market hypothesis, that you can't use historical data to predict asset price moves because the price already includes all the available information. That is financial markets are the best possible guide to the value of assets.
3. Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium modeling and the inherent assumption that the economy never deviates far from equilibrium.
4. Trickle down economics and the idea that a focus on efficiency will guarantee that everyone is ultimately better off, even if equity diverges.
5. Privatisation and the belief that all economic activity is better performed in the private sector - even natural monopolies.
After he explained all of these theories, why they should be dead and how they are still emerging, in his talk he went on to cover a few bits about the economic profession that didn't make the book - and that I'm not going to do justice to here. The first was that we need to factor more of the learning of behavioural economics into microeconomic theory - less homo econimus in the theory. The second was a twin recognition of the problem of assuming markets at or near equilibrium and of the need for policy to focus on risk management.
Both the book and the lecture concluded with three statements of what is needed in economics;
1. More on realism, less on rigor
2. More on equity, less on efficiency
3. More on humility, less on hubris
The ultimate question here is whether we are just seeing the need for a few "tweaks" in neo-classical economics or the need for a fundamental revolution.
This raises the question of exactly what is "neo-classical" economics?
I referred to a great paper by Arnsperger and Varoufakis on this in discussing digital economy policy. That listed the three axioms of neo-classicism as;
1. Methodological individualism.
2. Methodological instrumentalism.
3. Methodological equilibriation.
At heart Quiggin is really endorsing not just the need to walk away from market liberalism as a philosophy, but to revise these axioms.
I take a wide view that behavioural economics, institutional economics and complexity economics are all manifestations of a "realist" economics that confronts axioms 1 and 3 with the reality that the "preferences" that determine agent choices are socially constructed by the interaction with other agents - particularly so with network effects - and that as a consequence the "system" is not only never at equilibrium but is more likely than not to have multiple not singular equilibria.
The neo-classicists themselves will point to all the ways that they might piecewise incorporate elements of a widely defined institutionalism, an excellent article by Philip Mirowski showed how this attempt ultimately fails.
That article ended with a nice piece that reads;
To attempt to portray all history as the end result of purposive constrained maximization is to make the same error as was made by early biologists who touted Darwinian evolution proved that man was the peak of the evolutionary process. Biologists now teach that there is never a peak or a maximum in evolution, which is merely a process of incomplete adaptation to circumstances that are shifting, partly as a result of past adaptations. As Victor Goldberg has wrtitten in the context of his study of contracts, "the results stemming from the establishment of new institutions or modifications in existing ones are seldom known precisely and are often widely divergent from the original expectations."
As I noted Quiggin's "we" was both academics and policy makers. The challenge of convincing academics is hard enough, but at least they should understand the theory. The problem with policy makers is that they have started to incant market theory and competition policy without any understanding.
This was a point eloquently put by Evan Jones at last year's Contesting Markets Symposium..
I think I have covered it is some of the concepts I outlined in my first submission to the Convergence Review wherein I argued for a better view of "competition policy".
I think the simplest way to describe it is that Quiggin critiques Trickle Down theory, which argued that a focus on efficiency improves life for all. The way "efficiency" is now used it has become the policy objective itself. Market Liberalism as a theory said you don't need to worry about equity because efficiency improves everyone's lot, modern policy theory doesn't even get that far.
Novae Meridianae Demetae Dexter delenda est
By we he meant the economics profession and policy makers.
The core of the talk was basically a quick - and very good - summary of his book Zombie Economics
The thesis is that there is a group of economic ideas that emerged from the failure of Keynesian economics to deal with the crisis of the 1970s (oil shock stagflation) that refuse to die. Instead, despite evidence that should kill them once and for all, they continue to roam the planet like zombies.He collectively refers to the set of ideas as "market liberalism". There are five core ideas that he dissects;
1. The idea that the period starting with the 1980s was a "great moderation" that would see the end of the business cycle.
2. The efficient market hypothesis, that you can't use historical data to predict asset price moves because the price already includes all the available information. That is financial markets are the best possible guide to the value of assets.
3. Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium modeling and the inherent assumption that the economy never deviates far from equilibrium.
4. Trickle down economics and the idea that a focus on efficiency will guarantee that everyone is ultimately better off, even if equity diverges.
5. Privatisation and the belief that all economic activity is better performed in the private sector - even natural monopolies.
After he explained all of these theories, why they should be dead and how they are still emerging, in his talk he went on to cover a few bits about the economic profession that didn't make the book - and that I'm not going to do justice to here. The first was that we need to factor more of the learning of behavioural economics into microeconomic theory - less homo econimus in the theory. The second was a twin recognition of the problem of assuming markets at or near equilibrium and of the need for policy to focus on risk management.
Both the book and the lecture concluded with three statements of what is needed in economics;
1. More on realism, less on rigor
2. More on equity, less on efficiency
3. More on humility, less on hubris
The ultimate question here is whether we are just seeing the need for a few "tweaks" in neo-classical economics or the need for a fundamental revolution.
This raises the question of exactly what is "neo-classical" economics?
I referred to a great paper by Arnsperger and Varoufakis on this in discussing digital economy policy. That listed the three axioms of neo-classicism as;
1. Methodological individualism.
2. Methodological instrumentalism.
3. Methodological equilibriation.
At heart Quiggin is really endorsing not just the need to walk away from market liberalism as a philosophy, but to revise these axioms.
I take a wide view that behavioural economics, institutional economics and complexity economics are all manifestations of a "realist" economics that confronts axioms 1 and 3 with the reality that the "preferences" that determine agent choices are socially constructed by the interaction with other agents - particularly so with network effects - and that as a consequence the "system" is not only never at equilibrium but is more likely than not to have multiple not singular equilibria.
The neo-classicists themselves will point to all the ways that they might piecewise incorporate elements of a widely defined institutionalism, an excellent article by Philip Mirowski showed how this attempt ultimately fails.
That article ended with a nice piece that reads;
To attempt to portray all history as the end result of purposive constrained maximization is to make the same error as was made by early biologists who touted Darwinian evolution proved that man was the peak of the evolutionary process. Biologists now teach that there is never a peak or a maximum in evolution, which is merely a process of incomplete adaptation to circumstances that are shifting, partly as a result of past adaptations. As Victor Goldberg has wrtitten in the context of his study of contracts, "the results stemming from the establishment of new institutions or modifications in existing ones are seldom known precisely and are often widely divergent from the original expectations."
As I noted Quiggin's "we" was both academics and policy makers. The challenge of convincing academics is hard enough, but at least they should understand the theory. The problem with policy makers is that they have started to incant market theory and competition policy without any understanding.
This was a point eloquently put by Evan Jones at last year's Contesting Markets Symposium..
I think I have covered it is some of the concepts I outlined in my first submission to the Convergence Review wherein I argued for a better view of "competition policy".
I think the simplest way to describe it is that Quiggin critiques Trickle Down theory, which argued that a focus on efficiency improves life for all. The way "efficiency" is now used it has become the policy objective itself. Market Liberalism as a theory said you don't need to worry about equity because efficiency improves everyone's lot, modern policy theory doesn't even get that far.
Novae Meridianae Demetae Dexter delenda est
The power of Social Media - the new News of the World
News International has announced the closure of News of the World.
We all know this is the result of the hacking scandal - but why close?
Ultimately the masthead was being rapidly abandoned by advertisers - in part fuelled by a Twitter campaign.
And Facebook provided a place for others to vent anger. I heard a freport but can't find it that a Facebook group was encouraging people to confront anyone with a copy of NotW to get them not to buy another.
The interesting question is whether NotW is the only British tabloid to engage in the hacking, with one Australian academic speculating that others were at it too.
This is another example of "mob-rule" this time potentially positive. But in a highly connected world everyone in business and politics needs to understand how what once might have been a mere legal problem or embarrassment can turn into complete devastation very, very quickly.
Meanwhile the question remains how far up the tree there was knowledge of these practices?
Novae Meridianae Demetae Dexter delenda est
We all know this is the result of the hacking scandal - but why close?
Ultimately the masthead was being rapidly abandoned by advertisers - in part fuelled by a Twitter campaign.
And Facebook provided a place for others to vent anger. I heard a freport but can't find it that a Facebook group was encouraging people to confront anyone with a copy of NotW to get them not to buy another.
The interesting question is whether NotW is the only British tabloid to engage in the hacking, with one Australian academic speculating that others were at it too.
This is another example of "mob-rule" this time potentially positive. But in a highly connected world everyone in business and politics needs to understand how what once might have been a mere legal problem or embarrassment can turn into complete devastation very, very quickly.
Meanwhile the question remains how far up the tree there was knowledge of these practices?
Novae Meridianae Demetae Dexter delenda est
Wednesday, July 06, 2011
So what do you think - and more on Telstra
I've had a fiddle at the template for the blog - much cleaner I think. Tell me what you think of the new design - including the placement of the "gadgets" (all the buttons around the side).
To see how it looks I've got an update on my take on the Telstra story - courtesy of some nice help from the folks at Telstra.
Their view is that there really are five big customer focussed blocks, three groups in support and a group of corporate functions. I've modified the diagram they used to explain it - partly because I think actual job titles are important.
Now I'd personally quibble with this and would argue that each of Freeth, Akhurst, Shiff, and Robbiati are really running "Lines of Business". The fact is Deena's job title is CEO as she is running a subsidiary. It just looks like Telstra's single biggest Venture - Foxtel - is still left out of it.
I also didn't say anything about Telstra "veteran" Stuart Lee in the earlier post. But if anyone out there recalls Telstra's Strategic Partnership Agreements the fact is they had joint parentage between Stuart and myself. But that is twenty years ago. Facts are Stuart is a very determined individual - what wholesale will look like will very much depend on whether internally it is being embraced as an important future channel or simply tolerated as a necessity of the current market structure. The certainty is that whichever is the model that Stuart thinks he has been asked to implement is the model that will be delivered.
Novae Meridianae Demetae Dexter delenda est
To see how it looks I've got an update on my take on the Telstra story - courtesy of some nice help from the folks at Telstra.
Their view is that there really are five big customer focussed blocks, three groups in support and a group of corporate functions. I've modified the diagram they used to explain it - partly because I think actual job titles are important.
Now I'd personally quibble with this and would argue that each of Freeth, Akhurst, Shiff, and Robbiati are really running "Lines of Business". The fact is Deena's job title is CEO as she is running a subsidiary. It just looks like Telstra's single biggest Venture - Foxtel - is still left out of it.
I also didn't say anything about Telstra "veteran" Stuart Lee in the earlier post. But if anyone out there recalls Telstra's Strategic Partnership Agreements the fact is they had joint parentage between Stuart and myself. But that is twenty years ago. Facts are Stuart is a very determined individual - what wholesale will look like will very much depend on whether internally it is being embraced as an important future channel or simply tolerated as a necessity of the current market structure. The certainty is that whichever is the model that Stuart thinks he has been asked to implement is the model that will be delivered.
Novae Meridianae Demetae Dexter delenda est
I can't rejoice in this
The Oz reports that Bob Carr and Sam Dastyari are launching "Voice" as a journal of the NSW Right faction. Dastyari says the journal is a whole new policy development tool and a recognition that we need to be a forum for ideas and debate.
Left convenor John Graham says the factions going head-to-head with policy journals was "a clash of ideas the likes of which is rarely seen in NSW Labor".
Which sounds great in theory - but the articles we are told are in the journals relate to internal party reform or how the carbon-tax should have been sold.
Where I ask is the debate on "what is the meaning of the socialisation objective in the platform, how should it translate into policy and how do we convince the community of its benefits to them." That's the policy journal I'm looking for.
Novae Meridianae Demetae Dexter delenda est
Left convenor John Graham says the factions going head-to-head with policy journals was "a clash of ideas the likes of which is rarely seen in NSW Labor".
Which sounds great in theory - but the articles we are told are in the journals relate to internal party reform or how the carbon-tax should have been sold.
Where I ask is the debate on "what is the meaning of the socialisation objective in the platform, how should it translate into policy and how do we convince the community of its benefits to them." That's the policy journal I'm looking for.
Novae Meridianae Demetae Dexter delenda est
More changes at Telstra
It has been 15 years since I worked for Telstra and so I can't claim any insights into its workings.
However, it does seem to maintain its world leading ability to subject itself to re-organisations.
CEO David Thodey has today announced the latest changes. I confess to not being able to fully understand them.
These changes follow those from earlier this year that occured with the hiring of Brendon Riley (from 1 March) as Chief Operations Officer and Paul Fegan as GMD Strategy and Corporate Services. There was marginal reorganisation with these appointments.
These followed the appointments in June 2010 of Gordon Ballantyne and Robert Nason in February 2010.
The biggest part of the latest decision is the creation of a "Chief Customer Officer" in the person of Gordon Ballantyne. The GMDs of both Business (with Deena Shiff replaced by Will Irving) and Government and Enterprise report to him - but it is assumed the existing consumer and country wide substructures report to him.
The centralisation of marketing functions is reported as supporting this customer focus but it is understood the CMO role still reports to the GMD of Innovation, Products and Marketing Kate McKenzie.
The appointment of Deena Shiff as GMD Applications and Ventures adds another element of confusion. I've attempted to draw up an org chart and found the easiest way to do so was to group Ackhurst, Shiff, Robbiati and Nason together under the heading "New and other ventures".
That leaves the support functions - most of which have been previously swept into the orbit of Paul Fegan previously. The release said;
Telstra will centralise key internal business support functions with improved accountabilities, eliminating duplication.
This is just the latest in what I call the Hookes Law of organisation design, and is best viewed from the perspective of the HR function. Centralised HR is very effective at creating standardised practices and efficiencies of scale, but it isn't very good at meeting the needs of the business. Decentralised HR is very responsive to business needs but leads to inefficiencies, difficulties in workforce planning and even internal competition for personnel. Neither is perfect and the best solution is to keep alternating between the two, bouncing like an undamped spring around the ideal but unachievable mid point.
Thodey's decision today ends a journey commenced in 1987 of creating customer facing divisions under the advice of McKinsey and Co. One of these days I'll write more about this.
The changes today were described by Thodey as;
part of his long-term strategy to build a stronger sales- and marketing-led culture.
I have three issues with this. The first is that I have been hearing this description since 1989 at least as outlined by Luke Bozza's presentation of that time.
The second is that a simple head count of the senior team and what their responsibilities are still has the people with actual customer responsibility in the great minority.
The third is the interesting set of backgrounds of these executives. Four of them - Shiff, Ackhurst, Irving and Geason - have made their way via the Telstra legal function. Not one of them has been grown internally through a career with customer responsibility. That says more about the culture of the organisation than anything else.
Novae Meridianae Demetae Dexter delenda est
However, it does seem to maintain its world leading ability to subject itself to re-organisations.
CEO David Thodey has today announced the latest changes. I confess to not being able to fully understand them.
These changes follow those from earlier this year that occured with the hiring of Brendon Riley (from 1 March) as Chief Operations Officer and Paul Fegan as GMD Strategy and Corporate Services. There was marginal reorganisation with these appointments.
These followed the appointments in June 2010 of Gordon Ballantyne and Robert Nason in February 2010.
The biggest part of the latest decision is the creation of a "Chief Customer Officer" in the person of Gordon Ballantyne. The GMDs of both Business (with Deena Shiff replaced by Will Irving) and Government and Enterprise report to him - but it is assumed the existing consumer and country wide substructures report to him.
The centralisation of marketing functions is reported as supporting this customer focus but it is understood the CMO role still reports to the GMD of Innovation, Products and Marketing Kate McKenzie.
The appointment of Deena Shiff as GMD Applications and Ventures adds another element of confusion. I've attempted to draw up an org chart and found the easiest way to do so was to group Ackhurst, Shiff, Robbiati and Nason together under the heading "New and other ventures".
That leaves the support functions - most of which have been previously swept into the orbit of Paul Fegan previously. The release said;
Telstra will centralise key internal business support functions with improved accountabilities, eliminating duplication.
This is just the latest in what I call the Hookes Law of organisation design, and is best viewed from the perspective of the HR function. Centralised HR is very effective at creating standardised practices and efficiencies of scale, but it isn't very good at meeting the needs of the business. Decentralised HR is very responsive to business needs but leads to inefficiencies, difficulties in workforce planning and even internal competition for personnel. Neither is perfect and the best solution is to keep alternating between the two, bouncing like an undamped spring around the ideal but unachievable mid point.
Thodey's decision today ends a journey commenced in 1987 of creating customer facing divisions under the advice of McKinsey and Co. One of these days I'll write more about this.
The changes today were described by Thodey as;
part of his long-term strategy to build a stronger sales- and marketing-led culture.
I have three issues with this. The first is that I have been hearing this description since 1989 at least as outlined by Luke Bozza's presentation of that time.
The second is that a simple head count of the senior team and what their responsibilities are still has the people with actual customer responsibility in the great minority.
The third is the interesting set of backgrounds of these executives. Four of them - Shiff, Ackhurst, Irving and Geason - have made their way via the Telstra legal function. Not one of them has been grown internally through a career with customer responsibility. That says more about the culture of the organisation than anything else.
Novae Meridianae Demetae Dexter delenda est
Earthquakes in New Zealand
Yesterday there was much fun in Melbourne yesterday as the city got a little jolt from an earthquake.
Meanwhile a larger earthquake hit New Zealand yesterday - a 6.5 up near lake Taupo.
A better way to put these events in perspective is to look at the respective geo-science resources. Australian and regional earthquakes are mapped by Geoscience Australia. The map (done for the region showing all earthquakes in the last month) is most remarkable for the very few dots over Australia and the small size of them.
For some reason the Taupo earthquake isn't showing on the Australian map. But the NZ equivalent resource lists recent earthquakes. The one I'm talking about is reference number 3540736. The number of quakes they have this will be off their recent list soon.
The reality was this was a big quake, but it was very deep and a long way away from built up areas. But New Zealanders are being reminded of the risks.
As the story notes;
At 150km deep and 30km west of Taupo, the damage from the latest big earthquake to hit New Zealand was minimal....A major movement on the Wellington Fault - which does happen every 100 years or so - is likely to result in an earthquake measuring about 7.5 with surface rupture of over 50km. Compare this with the September 4 Darfield quake which caused a 29km rupture that was mainly across rural Canterbury land.
To these risks we should add the risks of volcanic action in New Zealand - far greater than the risk reported today of an Aussie volcanic eruption.
While the warning about risk management was to Kiwis, major volcanic or earthquake activity in Australia will be felt by us just as if the Kiwis hadn't made their big mistake of 1900 and not joined the Federation.
Australia's disaster planning needs to cover both the direct and indirect effects of one of these New Zealand disasters. It is not a matter of if, but when. Despite the comments of scientists and others about periodicity we cannot know when - it could still be hundreds of years away - or it could be tomorrow.
Novae Meridianae Demetae Dexter delenda est
Meanwhile a larger earthquake hit New Zealand yesterday - a 6.5 up near lake Taupo.
A better way to put these events in perspective is to look at the respective geo-science resources. Australian and regional earthquakes are mapped by Geoscience Australia. The map (done for the region showing all earthquakes in the last month) is most remarkable for the very few dots over Australia and the small size of them.
For some reason the Taupo earthquake isn't showing on the Australian map. But the NZ equivalent resource lists recent earthquakes. The one I'm talking about is reference number 3540736. The number of quakes they have this will be off their recent list soon.
The reality was this was a big quake, but it was very deep and a long way away from built up areas. But New Zealanders are being reminded of the risks.
As the story notes;
At 150km deep and 30km west of Taupo, the damage from the latest big earthquake to hit New Zealand was minimal....A major movement on the Wellington Fault - which does happen every 100 years or so - is likely to result in an earthquake measuring about 7.5 with surface rupture of over 50km. Compare this with the September 4 Darfield quake which caused a 29km rupture that was mainly across rural Canterbury land.
To these risks we should add the risks of volcanic action in New Zealand - far greater than the risk reported today of an Aussie volcanic eruption.
While the warning about risk management was to Kiwis, major volcanic or earthquake activity in Australia will be felt by us just as if the Kiwis hadn't made their big mistake of 1900 and not joined the Federation.
Australia's disaster planning needs to cover both the direct and indirect effects of one of these New Zealand disasters. It is not a matter of if, but when. Despite the comments of scientists and others about periodicity we cannot know when - it could still be hundreds of years away - or it could be tomorrow.
Novae Meridianae Demetae Dexter delenda est
Tuesday, July 05, 2011
Clutching at straws
Interesting tweet from Malcolm Turnbull, shadow spokesperson for destroying the NBN. It reads;
very thoughtful article rob gallagher of informaTM about costs and questionable benefits of FTTH http://t.co/xMFF9yH #NBN
The article is indeed thoughtful, even though it tries to deal with Fibre to the Node as if it is the Lord Voldemort of technology - that which cannot be named.
Gallagher tries to make two points. The first is that there is more speed (bandwidth) to be rung out of copper yet, the second is that average user requirements don't rise as fast as peak user requirements. The conclusion he reaches is that an operator is unlikely to have a business case for an Fibre to the Home deployment.
The bad news for MT is that Senator Conroy, Mike Quigley and everyone who supports the NBN would agree with the last part of the proposition. But that is different to the proposition that in the long run progressing straight to FttH is a better investment.
Let's go through the issues.
Firstly the sorts of things Gallagher sees as being able to breath more life into DSL have limited practical application. Line bonding is a part of the ADSL 2+ standard and does allow for the ability to get double the 24 Mbps theoretical maximum - but at the price of using two copper pairs. There is nowhere in Telstra's network where spare pairs are the main feature - in fact urban consolidation has been making the issue worse not better.
The concept of vectoring is about doing more to co-ordinate the encoding across multiple paths to reduce crosstalk. The requirement is that all pairs in the bundle are served by the one DSLAM. So it certainly isn't a strategy that works for the current environment, and certainly wouldn't be embraced without structural separation.
Meanwhile he tells us that Omega DSL from Alcatel-Lucent promises DSL speeds of up to 1 Gbps by 2020. The proviso is that the distance is limited to 200 metres.
What is forgotten in these discussions of FTTN is that such a network is an active network, every one of those nodes needs to be powered leading to dual vulnerability, and excessive cost. the shorter the bit of copper being used the more nodes to be powered. It works fine to reticulate through a building if the DSLAM is in the basement, but you'd be far better off putting fibre through the building anyway.
The real question comes down to the demand for more bandwidth and the price people will pay for it. The first thing to note is the scale economies of both supply and demand in a telecommunications network. That means a big bang investment approach will get you lower average prices over time than an incremental one.
The second is the value of ubiquity - not often enough mentioned but should be. Applications become practical to invest in as a developer if I know everyone can access them - subject to them being willing to pay the price.
So to counter the comment,
But such an analysis ignores some fundamental principles that Nielsen built into his law. First of all, the law applies to connection speeds only for high-end users, not all users. And as Nielsen notes, average connection speeds will diverge ever further from high-end one as the mass-market of customers get online, as they are more likely to be low-end users.
I simply note that you can't tell a priori which user wants the peak and which one doesn't, but that also the NBN business plan assumes a distribution of speed demands consistent with the observation.
Gallagher's point is that fttH isn't a good strategy for an operator. He is right. but it is a good strategy for a nation - which is why the Government has chosen to build it as a piece of national infrastructure - just like roads.
Yes Malcolm, a very thoughtful piece that explains why the right decision on improved broadband won't come from the market.
Novae Meridianae Demetae Dexter delenda est
very thoughtful article rob gallagher of informaTM about costs and questionable benefits of FTTH http://t.co/xMFF9yH #NBN
The article is indeed thoughtful, even though it tries to deal with Fibre to the Node as if it is the Lord Voldemort of technology - that which cannot be named.
Gallagher tries to make two points. The first is that there is more speed (bandwidth) to be rung out of copper yet, the second is that average user requirements don't rise as fast as peak user requirements. The conclusion he reaches is that an operator is unlikely to have a business case for an Fibre to the Home deployment.
The bad news for MT is that Senator Conroy, Mike Quigley and everyone who supports the NBN would agree with the last part of the proposition. But that is different to the proposition that in the long run progressing straight to FttH is a better investment.
Let's go through the issues.
Firstly the sorts of things Gallagher sees as being able to breath more life into DSL have limited practical application. Line bonding is a part of the ADSL 2+ standard and does allow for the ability to get double the 24 Mbps theoretical maximum - but at the price of using two copper pairs. There is nowhere in Telstra's network where spare pairs are the main feature - in fact urban consolidation has been making the issue worse not better.
The concept of vectoring is about doing more to co-ordinate the encoding across multiple paths to reduce crosstalk. The requirement is that all pairs in the bundle are served by the one DSLAM. So it certainly isn't a strategy that works for the current environment, and certainly wouldn't be embraced without structural separation.
Meanwhile he tells us that Omega DSL from Alcatel-Lucent promises DSL speeds of up to 1 Gbps by 2020. The proviso is that the distance is limited to 200 metres.
What is forgotten in these discussions of FTTN is that such a network is an active network, every one of those nodes needs to be powered leading to dual vulnerability, and excessive cost. the shorter the bit of copper being used the more nodes to be powered. It works fine to reticulate through a building if the DSLAM is in the basement, but you'd be far better off putting fibre through the building anyway.
The real question comes down to the demand for more bandwidth and the price people will pay for it. The first thing to note is the scale economies of both supply and demand in a telecommunications network. That means a big bang investment approach will get you lower average prices over time than an incremental one.
The second is the value of ubiquity - not often enough mentioned but should be. Applications become practical to invest in as a developer if I know everyone can access them - subject to them being willing to pay the price.
So to counter the comment,
But such an analysis ignores some fundamental principles that Nielsen built into his law. First of all, the law applies to connection speeds only for high-end users, not all users. And as Nielsen notes, average connection speeds will diverge ever further from high-end one as the mass-market of customers get online, as they are more likely to be low-end users.
I simply note that you can't tell a priori which user wants the peak and which one doesn't, but that also the NBN business plan assumes a distribution of speed demands consistent with the observation.
Gallagher's point is that fttH isn't a good strategy for an operator. He is right. but it is a good strategy for a nation - which is why the Government has chosen to build it as a piece of national infrastructure - just like roads.
Yes Malcolm, a very thoughtful piece that explains why the right decision on improved broadband won't come from the market.
Novae Meridianae Demetae Dexter delenda est
The last Hapsburg heir ... and good things he did
World War I was a torrid time and as Phillip Bobbit in The Shield of Archilles
and Niall Fergusson in The War of the World
tell it it was not a war from 1914-1918 but the start of a long war from 1914 to 1990. That was the war between totalitarian world views (both "communist" and "fascist") and democracy.
The first totalitarians to lose were the three great empires of Germany, Austro-Hungary and the Ottomans.
News today that the last heir to the Austrian throne has died. Born in 1912 Otto von Hapsburg evidently only officially relinquished his claim to the throne in 1961. He did great work to promote European unity, something that his grandfather perhaps should have thought about more.
His father - the last Emperor - evidently tried to organise a separate peace, but ultimately I think learnt the limitation of his power. His proclamation in 1918 that he no longer intended to rule he said was not an abdication, writing later "I did not abdicate, and never will. (...) I see my manifesto of 11 November as the equivalent to a cheque which a street thug has forced me to issue at gunpoint. (...) I do not feel bound by it in any way whatsoever."
There is a degree of arrogance in the fact that it took till 1961 for Otto to effectively complete the abdication. Interestingly, of course, such a relinquishing of the right to the throne only affects him and his heirs and successors, as it did for Edward VIII. Under standard succession rules there is probably still someone who could claim the "right" to the throne.
All of which ignores the fact that real power has always come from "the people". The apparent orderly succession of monarchs through inheritance has been disrupted as many times as it has been observed - especially in the UK.
Novae Meridianae Demetae Dexter delenda est
and Niall Fergusson in The War of the World tell it it was not a war from 1914-1918 but the start of a long war from 1914 to 1990. That was the war between totalitarian world views (both "communist" and "fascist") and democracy.The first totalitarians to lose were the three great empires of Germany, Austro-Hungary and the Ottomans.
News today that the last heir to the Austrian throne has died. Born in 1912 Otto von Hapsburg evidently only officially relinquished his claim to the throne in 1961. He did great work to promote European unity, something that his grandfather perhaps should have thought about more.
His father - the last Emperor - evidently tried to organise a separate peace, but ultimately I think learnt the limitation of his power. His proclamation in 1918 that he no longer intended to rule he said was not an abdication, writing later "I did not abdicate, and never will. (...) I see my manifesto of 11 November as the equivalent to a cheque which a street thug has forced me to issue at gunpoint. (...) I do not feel bound by it in any way whatsoever."
There is a degree of arrogance in the fact that it took till 1961 for Otto to effectively complete the abdication. Interestingly, of course, such a relinquishing of the right to the throne only affects him and his heirs and successors, as it did for Edward VIII. Under standard succession rules there is probably still someone who could claim the "right" to the throne.
All of which ignores the fact that real power has always come from "the people". The apparent orderly succession of monarchs through inheritance has been disrupted as many times as it has been observed - especially in the UK.
Novae Meridianae Demetae Dexter delenda est
Monday, July 04, 2011
MySpace
Stephen Bartholomeusz writes today on Murdoch and MySpace that;
Myspace could have been Facebook. News bought it before Facebook, which was until then operating as a closed network for university students, and opened its site to all-comers. In social networking, there is a big advantage for first movers because of the self-fuelling nature of the network benefits.
There are numerous reasons put forward as to why Myspace failed so spectacularly – apart from the $US545 million loss on its purchase price it generated hundreds of millions of dollars of operating losses.
Poor execution, an overly complex product – Facebook and Twitter are deliberately and deceptively simple and stripped back sites – an unwillingness to allow third parties to develop apps, tardiness in responding to changes in its market, issues with security and controversies about the nature of some of the content it was hosting were presumably factors.
The larger one, however, may have been its acquisition by News and the change in emphasis that accompanied the change of ownership.
The really successful internet businesses that are built by leveraging network benefits – like Google, Facebook and Twitter – are far more focused on generating user volumes than they are on today’s revenues. They build their audience first and then think of ways to monetise it.
So we have a litany of reasons offered. My answer the other day was;
As another example of non-innovation by big firms I take the case of News Corp. Back in the 90s News was highly focussed on the issues of "convergence", as a simple read of the Shawcross biography will show. But News failed with investments in online services through Delphi and now the retreat from Myspace.
News Corp is a growing, productive, profitable firm - but it can't innovate.
In particular Myspace - a place for personal site building - got surpassed by Facebook - a place for connecting.
I really think it is that simple.
Novae Meridianae Demetae Dexter delenda est
Myspace could have been Facebook. News bought it before Facebook, which was until then operating as a closed network for university students, and opened its site to all-comers. In social networking, there is a big advantage for first movers because of the self-fuelling nature of the network benefits.
There are numerous reasons put forward as to why Myspace failed so spectacularly – apart from the $US545 million loss on its purchase price it generated hundreds of millions of dollars of operating losses.
Poor execution, an overly complex product – Facebook and Twitter are deliberately and deceptively simple and stripped back sites – an unwillingness to allow third parties to develop apps, tardiness in responding to changes in its market, issues with security and controversies about the nature of some of the content it was hosting were presumably factors.
The larger one, however, may have been its acquisition by News and the change in emphasis that accompanied the change of ownership.
The really successful internet businesses that are built by leveraging network benefits – like Google, Facebook and Twitter – are far more focused on generating user volumes than they are on today’s revenues. They build their audience first and then think of ways to monetise it.
So we have a litany of reasons offered. My answer the other day was;
As another example of non-innovation by big firms I take the case of News Corp. Back in the 90s News was highly focussed on the issues of "convergence", as a simple read of the Shawcross biography will show. But News failed with investments in online services through Delphi and now the retreat from Myspace.
News Corp is a growing, productive, profitable firm - but it can't innovate.
In particular Myspace - a place for personal site building - got surpassed by Facebook - a place for connecting.
I really think it is that simple.
Novae Meridianae Demetae Dexter delenda est
Capital I Innovation and the Capital I Internet
The kimmicblog has been running a series on innovation and at the urging of its author I took a gander at Part 1 of an interview with Vint Cerf "father of the Internet".
Cerf at the urging of his interlocutor draws a distinction between little i and big I innovation that I'd see as the delineation between development and innovation, (or between normal science and revolutionary science in a more Kuhnian philosophical way).
A similar distinction can be drawn between little i internet (meaning the protocols) and big I Internet (meaning the genuinely interconnected network of networks that supports end-to-end applications rather than those intermediated by "carriers"). The former is just a different way of connecting, the latter is what transforms societies. And in a way Vint admits he invented the former, not the latter.
I was a little surprised to see his comments about the OECD Information Economy meeting;
If anyone had suggested to me in 1983 that in 2011 there would be a meeting of 50 or so countries in the OECD, for two days talking about the internet economy, concerns about intellectual property, crime on the net and so on… I would have scratched my head and said, this thing is for the military, and the research community.
Given (as noted previously) that "convergence" was an issue from 1972/3 on, I'm a bit stunned that the comment isn't the reverse. Why has it taken till 2011 to get the policy processes to catch up?
The bit I was drawn to was Cerf's comment on AT&T where he said;
AT&T, as a very successful monopoly, had an enormous amount of resources, which they put into AT&T Bell labs. Bell Labs was absolutely one of the most innovative places anywhere in the world. Nobel prizes have come out of there, the transistor came out of there. There’s no doubt in my mind that something was lost when AT&T was broken up.
Alcatel-Lucent as the current owners of Bell Labs would probably have something to say about that. However, it is true that on August 28, 2008, Alcatel-Lucent announced it was pulling out of basic science, material physics, and semiconductor research, and it will instead focus on more immediately marketable areas including networking, high-speed electronics, wireless networks, nanotechnology and software. An interesting fact about Bell Labs was the extent they also invested in actual research in economics, not just technology.
But there is part of the story - the glory days of Bell Labs really were about research not development.
To be more succinct - capital I innovation or Research isn't as "goal directed" as is little i innovation or development.
In a couple of posts on Innovation Economics recently I've questioned the notion of big firms as innovative. Is AT&T and example to prove the case otherwise?
The interesting thing about the innovation at Bell Labs was how much it looked like standard public sector research, and notably all the spillovers. They didn't try to turn the transistor into the money stream of the Qualcom patents - or the absurdity of a $4.5B price for Nortel patents to a weird alliance of Apple, EMC, Ericsson and Research In Motion.
It is actually sort of coll that Google made so much fun of the auction. I suspect what they were really up to was disrupting the carefully worked out models of other bidders that would have been applying assumptions of rationality to Google's bids. The choice of numbers that have other meanings rather than merely random actually helps with the randomness.
Enough for now - I look forward to Part 2.
Novae Meridianae Demetae Dexter delenda est
Cerf at the urging of his interlocutor draws a distinction between little i and big I innovation that I'd see as the delineation between development and innovation, (or between normal science and revolutionary science in a more Kuhnian philosophical way).
A similar distinction can be drawn between little i internet (meaning the protocols) and big I Internet (meaning the genuinely interconnected network of networks that supports end-to-end applications rather than those intermediated by "carriers"). The former is just a different way of connecting, the latter is what transforms societies. And in a way Vint admits he invented the former, not the latter.
I was a little surprised to see his comments about the OECD Information Economy meeting;
If anyone had suggested to me in 1983 that in 2011 there would be a meeting of 50 or so countries in the OECD, for two days talking about the internet economy, concerns about intellectual property, crime on the net and so on… I would have scratched my head and said, this thing is for the military, and the research community.
Given (as noted previously) that "convergence" was an issue from 1972/3 on, I'm a bit stunned that the comment isn't the reverse. Why has it taken till 2011 to get the policy processes to catch up?
The bit I was drawn to was Cerf's comment on AT&T where he said;
AT&T, as a very successful monopoly, had an enormous amount of resources, which they put into AT&T Bell labs. Bell Labs was absolutely one of the most innovative places anywhere in the world. Nobel prizes have come out of there, the transistor came out of there. There’s no doubt in my mind that something was lost when AT&T was broken up.
Alcatel-Lucent as the current owners of Bell Labs would probably have something to say about that. However, it is true that on August 28, 2008, Alcatel-Lucent announced it was pulling out of basic science, material physics, and semiconductor research, and it will instead focus on more immediately marketable areas including networking, high-speed electronics, wireless networks, nanotechnology and software. An interesting fact about Bell Labs was the extent they also invested in actual research in economics, not just technology.
But there is part of the story - the glory days of Bell Labs really were about research not development.
To be more succinct - capital I innovation or Research isn't as "goal directed" as is little i innovation or development.
In a couple of posts on Innovation Economics recently I've questioned the notion of big firms as innovative. Is AT&T and example to prove the case otherwise?
The interesting thing about the innovation at Bell Labs was how much it looked like standard public sector research, and notably all the spillovers. They didn't try to turn the transistor into the money stream of the Qualcom patents - or the absurdity of a $4.5B price for Nortel patents to a weird alliance of Apple, EMC, Ericsson and Research In Motion.
It is actually sort of coll that Google made so much fun of the auction. I suspect what they were really up to was disrupting the carefully worked out models of other bidders that would have been applying assumptions of rationality to Google's bids. The choice of numbers that have other meanings rather than merely random actually helps with the randomness.
Enough for now - I look forward to Part 2.
Novae Meridianae Demetae Dexter delenda est
Nothing is faster than light ....
Trawl through discussions of the NBN and other fibre projects (New Zealand's for example) and you'll soon stumble upon a justification for the NBN that "nothing is faster than light".
Without entering into the subject of apparent cases where this isn't true, it is particularly interesting in the discussion of fibre versus wireless.
See, both happen to be electromagnetic radiation and we know that both visible light and radio waves travel at the same speed in a vacuum. But any medium they travel through slows them down. The question is "by how much". Here's where it gets tricky. The refractive index is the measure of how fast light travels with respect to a medium it is travelling through, and is defined as n=c/v that is the ratio of the speed of light in a vacuum and the speed of light in the specific material.
One well known consequence of this is the fact that light gets bent by glass - hence how we make lenses. But we also know that different frequencies get bent differently - hence how you get a rainbow from a prism or indeed from droplets of water.
In general, the higher the frequency the lower the speed. So when refractive indexes are listed it is usually at a specific frequency (the sodium D line).
The refractive index of air is 1.000293 so light in the atmosphere and radio waves don't get slowed down much.
Fibre optic cable is actually a solid core of silica wrapped in a transparent cladding with a lower index of refraction. This is what makes the light reflect within the fibre. The refractive index of the core is typically 1.62 while that of the cladding is 1.52.
That is the light in a fibre cable is travelling at a shade under 190,000 kilometres per second compared to the 300,000 kilometeres per second for light in a vacuum,which is pretty much what radio waves achieve in air. Radio is a far more complex propogation than simply line of sight effects.
Finally, of course, the speed with which a copper cable carries information is also based on the field speeds not of an actual electron propogating. Propagation speed is affected by insulation, such that in an unshielded copper conductor range 95 to 97% that of the speed of light, while in a typical coaxial cable it is about 66% of the speed of light.
So it is true that nothing is faster than light in a vacuum, but electric current in twisted pairs and radiowaves through the air both travel faster than light through silica.
It is not the speed of the transmission medium that counts - that produces latency - it is the bandwidth that is significant.
Novae Meridianae Demetae Dexter delenda est
Without entering into the subject of apparent cases where this isn't true, it is particularly interesting in the discussion of fibre versus wireless.
See, both happen to be electromagnetic radiation and we know that both visible light and radio waves travel at the same speed in a vacuum. But any medium they travel through slows them down. The question is "by how much". Here's where it gets tricky. The refractive index is the measure of how fast light travels with respect to a medium it is travelling through, and is defined as n=c/v that is the ratio of the speed of light in a vacuum and the speed of light in the specific material.
One well known consequence of this is the fact that light gets bent by glass - hence how we make lenses. But we also know that different frequencies get bent differently - hence how you get a rainbow from a prism or indeed from droplets of water.
In general, the higher the frequency the lower the speed. So when refractive indexes are listed it is usually at a specific frequency (the sodium D line).
The refractive index of air is 1.000293 so light in the atmosphere and radio waves don't get slowed down much.
Fibre optic cable is actually a solid core of silica wrapped in a transparent cladding with a lower index of refraction. This is what makes the light reflect within the fibre. The refractive index of the core is typically 1.62 while that of the cladding is 1.52.
That is the light in a fibre cable is travelling at a shade under 190,000 kilometres per second compared to the 300,000 kilometeres per second for light in a vacuum,which is pretty much what radio waves achieve in air. Radio is a far more complex propogation than simply line of sight effects.
Finally, of course, the speed with which a copper cable carries information is also based on the field speeds not of an actual electron propogating. Propagation speed is affected by insulation, such that in an unshielded copper conductor range 95 to 97% that of the speed of light, while in a typical coaxial cable it is about 66% of the speed of light.
So it is true that nothing is faster than light in a vacuum, but electric current in twisted pairs and radiowaves through the air both travel faster than light through silica.
It is not the speed of the transmission medium that counts - that produces latency - it is the bandwidth that is significant.
Novae Meridianae Demetae Dexter delenda est
Measuring Productivity
I'm sure Robert Gottliebsen had a merry chuckle when writing in his spray on the public sector today that "Cynics say the current definition of productivity in Canberra is related to lifting staff numbers and expenses."
In fairness he went on and said "[Treasury secretary] Parkinson must move outside the public service barons and find simple ways to measure government productivity. It will not be easy."
He then flays around looking for 'measures". The first is a simple intent measure - how much does self-reporting show a gap between saying productivity is important and having a project to do something about it. he then holds up two miners as places where productivity is well measured.
Parkinson's Minister is responsible for both the Australian Bureau of Statistics and the Productivity Commission. I don't think he has a shortage of measurement capability at his disposal.
What he does have is a definitional one. Productivity measures how much output per unit of input. If you are producing a commodity measuring output is relatively easy because it is well defined.
If you are producing "policy" it is much harder to judge. Is a productive department one that sends out lots of discussion papers per employee. Is the ABS best measured on the number of excel spreadsheets issued per month?
The simple answer is no.
I've already criticised BOF for his argument about public sector wage freezes. He has used simple (labour) productivity measures of students per teacher, nurse per hospital bed. But productivity here will be measured in the quality of the output not its quantity.
Of course, productivity in its widest sense should mean total factor productivity, not labour productivity, but that itself is another issue for another day.
The worrying fact is a new agenda being waged from the right/business community that asserts that there is productivity improvement required in Government - and to make that an excuse for its own inefficiencies.
Novae Meridianae Demetae Dexter delenda est
In fairness he went on and said "[Treasury secretary] Parkinson must move outside the public service barons and find simple ways to measure government productivity. It will not be easy."
He then flays around looking for 'measures". The first is a simple intent measure - how much does self-reporting show a gap between saying productivity is important and having a project to do something about it. he then holds up two miners as places where productivity is well measured.
Parkinson's Minister is responsible for both the Australian Bureau of Statistics and the Productivity Commission. I don't think he has a shortage of measurement capability at his disposal.
What he does have is a definitional one. Productivity measures how much output per unit of input. If you are producing a commodity measuring output is relatively easy because it is well defined.
If you are producing "policy" it is much harder to judge. Is a productive department one that sends out lots of discussion papers per employee. Is the ABS best measured on the number of excel spreadsheets issued per month?
The simple answer is no.
I've already criticised BOF for his argument about public sector wage freezes. He has used simple (labour) productivity measures of students per teacher, nurse per hospital bed. But productivity here will be measured in the quality of the output not its quantity.
Of course, productivity in its widest sense should mean total factor productivity, not labour productivity, but that itself is another issue for another day.
The worrying fact is a new agenda being waged from the right/business community that asserts that there is productivity improvement required in Government - and to make that an excuse for its own inefficiencies.
Novae Meridianae Demetae Dexter delenda est
The NBN and the USO
It seems mighty strange to me that Macquarie Telecom's Matt Healy and Optus' Clare Gill are only now labelling the Telstra/NBN/Government deal as "wasteful".
It seems to me that they were all welcoming the initial USO Co announcement without realising the implications for them, which had to be USO costs going up in the medium term.
As I noted in my iTnews column the risk was clear from the moment the Government announced the gap closing initiative in June last year.
The core of the current complaint is that Telstra is required to maintain any existing copper telephony for voice services in the 7% of premises not addressed by fibre. Healy assets the NBN services are "capable of delivering these essential voice services". Meanwhile the Optus GM for corporate and regulatory affairs continued with the nonsense that Telstra has already been compensated for its network.
Neither telco is showing any understanding of the politics. They just need to read the Glasson report to see the distrust in regional communities of satellite and wireless delivered solutions. It is worth noting that the Optus OPEL solution never proposed replacing the voice services. It is politically untenable to tell anyone in regional Australia that their existing copper service will be taken away and replaced by a VoIP over satellite or wireless.
The real issue is that the current NBN footprint will actually expand over the next ten years, not contract. There is no logical reason why every copper connected premise should not be fibre connected at a point in the future soon after the initial roll-out. These connections will probably be aerial along the electricity poles and much cheaper than modelling in the initial NBN business case. The deployment model will initially come about through self-help models.
But now is way too late for these telcos to complain about the shape of a deal announced a year ago. And I'm pretty sure I only heard encouraging words back then.
Novae Meridianae Demetae Dexter delenda est
It seems to me that they were all welcoming the initial USO Co announcement without realising the implications for them, which had to be USO costs going up in the medium term.
As I noted in my iTnews column the risk was clear from the moment the Government announced the gap closing initiative in June last year.
The core of the current complaint is that Telstra is required to maintain any existing copper telephony for voice services in the 7% of premises not addressed by fibre. Healy assets the NBN services are "capable of delivering these essential voice services". Meanwhile the Optus GM for corporate and regulatory affairs continued with the nonsense that Telstra has already been compensated for its network.
Neither telco is showing any understanding of the politics. They just need to read the Glasson report to see the distrust in regional communities of satellite and wireless delivered solutions. It is worth noting that the Optus OPEL solution never proposed replacing the voice services. It is politically untenable to tell anyone in regional Australia that their existing copper service will be taken away and replaced by a VoIP over satellite or wireless.
The real issue is that the current NBN footprint will actually expand over the next ten years, not contract. There is no logical reason why every copper connected premise should not be fibre connected at a point in the future soon after the initial roll-out. These connections will probably be aerial along the electricity poles and much cheaper than modelling in the initial NBN business case. The deployment model will initially come about through self-help models.
But now is way too late for these telcos to complain about the shape of a deal announced a year ago. And I'm pretty sure I only heard encouraging words back then.
Novae Meridianae Demetae Dexter delenda est
Will You Tube change pollie-speak
The talk Jenny Wilson gave to the ACS-TSA policy forum noted how our first use of technology is modelled on previous use, and then changes. For example, television was originally radio with pictures, the camera stayed stationary and news was read.
TV has adapted, in drama and entertainment the camera moves, and in news a clip to accompany the story has become all important. Once changed you can't go back.
The importance of television in politics has become clear since the mid 1960s. But it has only been in the last decade that the mission for a politician has been to repeat the same sound bite multiple times to try to ensure that the clip used for the news includes the "key message".
More recently satire shows like the 7pm Project will show edited bits from a press conference that shows the key phrase being repeated. Julia Gillard's "moving forward" from the announcement of the last election is one of the most famous.
More recently a journalist in the UK had the experience of Labour leaser Ed Millibrand providing the same answer to six different questions. Works well if the news is limited to finding one sound bite - but the whole thing on YouTube is embarrassing.
Memo to all media advisers - you need to catch up with the technology and be able to brief the spokesperson to be able to answer the questions better. The old "phrase of the day" will end in ridicule.
PS Note to Julia Gillard - "ripping up the NBN" is one you need to walk away from now. Actually the message of "stopping the NBN" will be more effective once some have it and others don't.
Novae Meridianae Demetae Dexter delenda est
TV has adapted, in drama and entertainment the camera moves, and in news a clip to accompany the story has become all important. Once changed you can't go back.
The importance of television in politics has become clear since the mid 1960s. But it has only been in the last decade that the mission for a politician has been to repeat the same sound bite multiple times to try to ensure that the clip used for the news includes the "key message".
More recently satire shows like the 7pm Project will show edited bits from a press conference that shows the key phrase being repeated. Julia Gillard's "moving forward" from the announcement of the last election is one of the most famous.
More recently a journalist in the UK had the experience of Labour leaser Ed Millibrand providing the same answer to six different questions. Works well if the news is limited to finding one sound bite - but the whole thing on YouTube is embarrassing.
Memo to all media advisers - you need to catch up with the technology and be able to brief the spokesperson to be able to answer the questions better. The old "phrase of the day" will end in ridicule.
PS Note to Julia Gillard - "ripping up the NBN" is one you need to walk away from now. Actually the message of "stopping the NBN" will be more effective once some have it and others don't.
Novae Meridianae Demetae Dexter delenda est
ACS-TSA Policy Gap Forum
Of all the papers at one half-day session it is a note in passing by Jenny Wilson about porn that constitutes the only story.
The statement she made though "The single most important factor is the porn factor because pornography has always been at the cutting edge of technology" is actually true though.
A book The Erotic Engine
details the whole story. As the books "blurb" says;
From cave painting to photography to the internet, pornography has always been at the cutting edge in adopting and exploiting new developments in mass communication. And in so doing, it has helped to promote and propel those developments in ways that are rarely acknowledged. Without pornography, the internet would not have grown so quickly. The e-commerce payment systems that are now commonplace would be at a far more primitive stage security and usability. Without video streaming software developed for pornography sites, CNN would be struggling to deliver news clips. Without advertising from sex sites, Google could not have afforded YouTube.
This smart, witty and well-researched history shows how a vast secret trade has bankrolled and shaped mainstream culture and its machines.
The important thing is this was true of ALL TECHNOLOGY. The photograph was first used to take pictures of scantily clad women. The success of VHS over Beta is at least in part attributed to the fact that the VHS industry embraced the porn industry while Beta shunned it.
Are these technologies any less good because that is how they were first used?
Jenny's point is the real benefits of the NBN will be stifled if the NBN cannot also be used to its full capability for entertainment.
One could add though, that on the flip side, an uncontrollable content stream of "objectionable" content could be equally damaging.
The forum itself was good, building as it did on a special issue of the TJA. My own contribution will be written up and posted on the DigEcon research site soon.
Novae Meridianae Demetae Dexter delenda est
The statement she made though "The single most important factor is the porn factor because pornography has always been at the cutting edge of technology" is actually true though.
A book The Erotic Engine
details the whole story. As the books "blurb" says;From cave painting to photography to the internet, pornography has always been at the cutting edge in adopting and exploiting new developments in mass communication. And in so doing, it has helped to promote and propel those developments in ways that are rarely acknowledged. Without pornography, the internet would not have grown so quickly. The e-commerce payment systems that are now commonplace would be at a far more primitive stage security and usability. Without video streaming software developed for pornography sites, CNN would be struggling to deliver news clips. Without advertising from sex sites, Google could not have afforded YouTube.
This smart, witty and well-researched history shows how a vast secret trade has bankrolled and shaped mainstream culture and its machines.
The important thing is this was true of ALL TECHNOLOGY. The photograph was first used to take pictures of scantily clad women. The success of VHS over Beta is at least in part attributed to the fact that the VHS industry embraced the porn industry while Beta shunned it.
Are these technologies any less good because that is how they were first used?
Jenny's point is the real benefits of the NBN will be stifled if the NBN cannot also be used to its full capability for entertainment.
One could add though, that on the flip side, an uncontrollable content stream of "objectionable" content could be equally damaging.
The forum itself was good, building as it did on a special issue of the TJA. My own contribution will be written up and posted on the DigEcon research site soon.
Novae Meridianae Demetae Dexter delenda est
Gough at 95
An interesting column in The Monthly by (another) child of the Whitlam era Lindsay Tanner as a Gough retrospective at 95.
I'm with Tanner in agreeing that the Whitlam Government is often misrepresented as being economically negligent and careless in foreign affairs. Tanner is right to note how turbulent the times were, but he perhaps also fails to remind us that 1972-75 oil shocks were not only due to oil embargoes arising from the Yom Kippur War but were also a simple conscious economic act of "monopoly" pricing by the oil cartel that was OPEC.
The fact that Whitlam shared with every other Western Government the inability to deal with the consequent "stagflation" is conveniently forgotten. The fact that the very first piece of removing economic rigidities that was the correct response to stagflation was the 25% tariff cut is also underplayed. The conservatives don't want to admit it was an essential pre-condition for all the reforms that came later, and the left cannot accept ownership of it.
The coalition didn't especially revile the Whitlam Government because of the way they obtained power - it is always the nature of incoming Government's to critique their predecessor. Maintaining Whitlam as leader and being prepared to run the 1977 election on the same basis of 1975 was the ALP's choice. If Gough had stood aside immediately for Bill Hayden, the man widely credited as having renewed credibility to the Whitlam Government, 1977 would have been an election on Fraser's record, not Gough's.
In the praise of the Whitlam Government there is also a little too much of the "great man" view of history. Gough's Government was as much a product of the times as it was of any action by a single leader. In the west there was a "revolution" in 1967-68. Only in a few places (like Paris) did the revolution resemble earlier revolutions (like 1948) where the forces for change won the war without winning any battles.
Evidence of this can be found in the reformist zeal that infected even parts of the coalition, the Government of John Gorton giving particular expression to it. That forces of conservatism in the coalition destroyed Gorton simply showed the error in the ways of those conservatives.
The same factors underpin why the Government of Malcolm Fraser ultimately did so little to dismantle the Whitlam legacy - it amended at the edges but never the core.
Footnote: Gough and Margaret Whitlam were at Sydney University with my parents. My aunt Barbara Manton (nee Glasgow) gets one small reference in Susan Mitchell's Margaret Whitlam: A Biography
.
Footnote 2: I can also recall exactly where I was when I heard Gough had been dismissed, I had jost crossed City Road on the over-bridge from Wentworth to Carslaw, and my Physics I tutor John Gerofi told me the news.
Novae Meridianae Demetae Dexter delenda est
I'm with Tanner in agreeing that the Whitlam Government is often misrepresented as being economically negligent and careless in foreign affairs. Tanner is right to note how turbulent the times were, but he perhaps also fails to remind us that 1972-75 oil shocks were not only due to oil embargoes arising from the Yom Kippur War but were also a simple conscious economic act of "monopoly" pricing by the oil cartel that was OPEC.
The fact that Whitlam shared with every other Western Government the inability to deal with the consequent "stagflation" is conveniently forgotten. The fact that the very first piece of removing economic rigidities that was the correct response to stagflation was the 25% tariff cut is also underplayed. The conservatives don't want to admit it was an essential pre-condition for all the reforms that came later, and the left cannot accept ownership of it.
The coalition didn't especially revile the Whitlam Government because of the way they obtained power - it is always the nature of incoming Government's to critique their predecessor. Maintaining Whitlam as leader and being prepared to run the 1977 election on the same basis of 1975 was the ALP's choice. If Gough had stood aside immediately for Bill Hayden, the man widely credited as having renewed credibility to the Whitlam Government, 1977 would have been an election on Fraser's record, not Gough's.
In the praise of the Whitlam Government there is also a little too much of the "great man" view of history. Gough's Government was as much a product of the times as it was of any action by a single leader. In the west there was a "revolution" in 1967-68. Only in a few places (like Paris) did the revolution resemble earlier revolutions (like 1948) where the forces for change won the war without winning any battles.
Evidence of this can be found in the reformist zeal that infected even parts of the coalition, the Government of John Gorton giving particular expression to it. That forces of conservatism in the coalition destroyed Gorton simply showed the error in the ways of those conservatives.
The same factors underpin why the Government of Malcolm Fraser ultimately did so little to dismantle the Whitlam legacy - it amended at the edges but never the core.
Footnote: Gough and Margaret Whitlam were at Sydney University with my parents. My aunt Barbara Manton (nee Glasgow) gets one small reference in Susan Mitchell's Margaret Whitlam: A Biography
.Footnote 2: I can also recall exactly where I was when I heard Gough had been dismissed, I had jost crossed City Road on the over-bridge from Wentworth to Carslaw, and my Physics I tutor John Gerofi told me the news.
Novae Meridianae Demetae Dexter delenda est
Friday, July 01, 2011
Me and the Secretary of the Treasury
Oh dear. No sooner have I gone out and criticised the "reform obsessed" than I find Treasury Secretary Martin Parkinson reported as saying "we need a new wave of reform".
Actually, his speech was a lot more measured than this. In reality his address was about the need to adapt and change - whereas the old "reform" agenda was pretty much a uni-directional retreat from Keynesian intervention and pseudo-socialist state ownership and an embrace of neo-liberal market ideology.
In fact he very specifically noted that one of the challenges we face is assuming that the most urgent reforms are a continuation of those of the past , saying;
We need to continue with reforms that increase the flexibility of the economy and its productive capacity in order that people and business are able to embrace change, adapt and innovate.
There has been a lot of talk about the need for a new microeconomic reform agenda. Whether one describes it as a new reform agenda or a continuation of the existing agenda, one of the challenges we face is the assumption that the most urgent reforms are a continuation of those of the past.
Microeconomic reform needs to be broader than this.
We do ourselves, and the nation, a disservice if we target reform efforts only on the same areas as we have in the past. It is in the areas we have not yet focused on that the largest gains are most likely.
Reforms to improve the productivity of the growing health and education services sectors, and make them more responsive to market signals, make sense. This is particularly important in the areas of vocational training and tertiary education.
Tax reforms that improve resource allocation and labour mobility, make sense — especially to state taxes like stamp duty and property taxation.
Appropriate policies to mitigate climate change at minimum cost also make sense.
At the same time however, it will be important to ensure that the vulnerable and disadvantaged are not left behind as the economy advances.
All of these reforms I have listed are fairly straight forward. What has proven to be difficult in the past, and will continue to be difficult in the future, is communication of the need for, and benefits of, action. This is especially so when so many Australian workers have never experienced anything other than sustained growth.
I can see much here that I embrace - especially if we recognise the importance of ICT to achieving the reforms in education, health and energy use. These all feature highly in the #au20 National Digital Economy Strategy.
I will repeat my criticism from the budget though, that nothing ostensibly about the change to a Digital Economy is embraced by Treasury as part of the way the economy needs to change.
Policy makers need to drop the word "reform" and embrace "change". In doing so they need to develop a better view of what we are changing into not just what we are trying to change from.
Novae Meridianae Demetae Dexter delenda est
Actually, his speech was a lot more measured than this. In reality his address was about the need to adapt and change - whereas the old "reform" agenda was pretty much a uni-directional retreat from Keynesian intervention and pseudo-socialist state ownership and an embrace of neo-liberal market ideology.
In fact he very specifically noted that one of the challenges we face is assuming that the most urgent reforms are a continuation of those of the past , saying;
We need to continue with reforms that increase the flexibility of the economy and its productive capacity in order that people and business are able to embrace change, adapt and innovate.
There has been a lot of talk about the need for a new microeconomic reform agenda. Whether one describes it as a new reform agenda or a continuation of the existing agenda, one of the challenges we face is the assumption that the most urgent reforms are a continuation of those of the past.
Microeconomic reform needs to be broader than this.
We do ourselves, and the nation, a disservice if we target reform efforts only on the same areas as we have in the past. It is in the areas we have not yet focused on that the largest gains are most likely.
Reforms to improve the productivity of the growing health and education services sectors, and make them more responsive to market signals, make sense. This is particularly important in the areas of vocational training and tertiary education.
Tax reforms that improve resource allocation and labour mobility, make sense — especially to state taxes like stamp duty and property taxation.
Appropriate policies to mitigate climate change at minimum cost also make sense.
At the same time however, it will be important to ensure that the vulnerable and disadvantaged are not left behind as the economy advances.
All of these reforms I have listed are fairly straight forward. What has proven to be difficult in the past, and will continue to be difficult in the future, is communication of the need for, and benefits of, action. This is especially so when so many Australian workers have never experienced anything other than sustained growth.
I can see much here that I embrace - especially if we recognise the importance of ICT to achieving the reforms in education, health and energy use. These all feature highly in the #au20 National Digital Economy Strategy.
I will repeat my criticism from the budget though, that nothing ostensibly about the change to a Digital Economy is embraced by Treasury as part of the way the economy needs to change.
Policy makers need to drop the word "reform" and embrace "change". In doing so they need to develop a better view of what we are changing into not just what we are trying to change from.
Novae Meridianae Demetae Dexter delenda est
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