TO FIND A SITUATION COMPARABLE TO THE PRESENT WE NEED TO REVISIT THE LAST GREAT INFORMATION REVOLUTION WHICH TOOK PLACE MORE THAN FIVE HUNDRED YEARS AGO.
This timeline is revised and expanded from the timeline available in the printed edition of From Gutenberg to the Internet, and widened greatly in scope. It is a work in progress, continuing the research which I began in the printed book. This is one of an untold number of timelines on the web. Even so, the approach that I am taking in building this growing timeline is, as far as I know, unique, at least for now. Thus some explanation may be in order. These introductory remarks, which I began writing in December 2005, first concern From Gutenberg to the Internet and then address issues involved with studying the history of information recorded in physical form in relationship to the history of information in digital form. They are a result of my continuing studies since the book was published, and they are evolving into another book. Your comments would be appreciated.
Daily Archives: December 23, 2006
Sales Taxes & Online Shopping
But even Christmas stories, from Dickens to Seuss, need a villain. We’d like to nominate your friendly neighborhood state governments, which for years now have been predicting dire declines in state finances because untaxed online shopping would erode the revenue-raising ability of sales taxes.
As usual, the political gloom proved to be overwrought. State tax revenues took a header in 2002 along with the rest of the economy, but they’ve been growing smartly ever since. The third quarter of this year saw state tax revenues up 4.6% over last year, and that was a deceleration from growth that has bumped along at close to 10% at times in recent years. State sales-tax receipts grew at 4% in the third quarter–and that was the slowest growth in three years. The biggest news about the sales-tax apocalypse is that it isn’t happening.
But the strong trend lines for overall tax receipts and sales-tax revenue in particular haven’t slowed the move among states to grab a piece of the online-sales pie. In the 14 years since the Supreme Court ruled that the myriad state and local taxes were too complex for mail-order retailers to be expected to master, there’s been a movement to obviate that argument by “streamlining” the country’s many sales-tax regimes.
A Relatively Dark Chat with Frank Gehry
Describing what it takes for him to accept a commission, Mr. Gehry says, “The determining factor is: Can I get it done while I am still alive?” Explaining why he doesn’t build houses any more, Mr. Gehry says, “They involve a lot of personal hand holding. I guess at my age I don’t have the patience.”
Probably more than most architects, one sees Mr. Gehry’s buildings–buildings that have been described as resembling ruffling sails or looking like they are melting–and has a sense that there is a single personality behind them.
“I don’t know why people hire architects and then tell them what to do,” Mr. Gehry says. “Architects have to become parental. They have to learn to be parental.” By this he means that an architect has to listen to his client but also remain firm about what the architect knows best, the aesthetics of a building. This, Mr. Gehry says, is what makes an architect relevant in the process that leads to a completed building. “I think a lot of my colleagues lose it, lose that relevance in the spirit of serving their client, so that no matter what, they are serving the client. Even if the building they produce, that they think serves the client, doesn’t really serve the client because it’s not very good.”
An Interesting Look at Xerox Management’s Missed Market Opportunities (PC’s, the GUI, Networking)
Peter McColough never powered up a personal computer, but he helped unleash the digital revolution.
Many of the technologies at the center of today’s computerized offices and homes — the mouse, the laser printer, the local area network — were first developed in the 1970s at a Silicon Valley skunk works he chartered at Xerox Corp.
But Xerox never reached Mr. McColough’s goal of being at the forefront of what he called “the architecture of information.” The company still best known for copiers pioneered in the 1950s and ’60s failed to develop many of the technologies into marketable products. Instead, a herd of start-ups, often headed by the very workers at Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Campus who had invented them, rumbled in and created industries in personal computers, networking, office software and others.
“If Xerox had known what it had and had taken advantage of its real opportunities, it could have been as big as IBM plus Microsoft plus Xerox combined — and the largest high-technology company in the world,” Apple Computer Inc. co-founder Steve Jobs is quoted as saying in “Joe Wilson and the Creation of Xerox,” a book by Charles Ellis about the company and its early chief executive.
The reasons for Xerox’s inability to take advantage of its own inventions are debated in business schools to this day. Jacob Goldman, Xerox’s chief scientist at the time who founded PARC, blames short-sighted managers unwilling to take chances on small-scale, unproven technologies. “They managed the company quarter to quarter and looked at the bottom line,” Mr. Goldman says. “They weren’t thinking about the future really.”