While Steve Case, Gerald Levin and Ted Turner were cartwheeling last week over AOL’s planned purchase of Time Warner, others were not jumping for joy over this or anything else digital.
A world away, in Jerusalem, top ultra-Orthodox Jewish rabbis pulled the plug on the Internet. It’s not that the rabbis, unlike Wall Street, see the multibillion dollar deal as a potential drag on AOL. It’s not that at all. Let’s just say the rabbis see the Net as no better than the biblical apple of Adam and Eve lore. You know, that tempting ticket to Sin City.
Steve Jobs, if you’re listening, don’t take the apple metaphor personally.
Here in the U.S., some ultra-orthodox high-tech thinkers-like John Naisbitt -are beginning to have doubts about Net ShangriLa. Naisbitt and two co-authors write about them in the book, “High Tech, High Touch: Technology and Our Search for Meaning.”
Harper’s, in its January issue, probes privacy Net loss and other knotty digital issues. “Over the past few years we just let the Internet go, and we’ve got an electronic strip mall as a result,” laments writer Douglas Rushkoff .
The Supreme Court, which last week said Microsoft Corp. could not preclude up to 10,000 temps from its stock-purchase plan, delivered a huge victory for privacy advocates by ruling that states can be prevented from disclosing personal driver’s license info. Will Net privacy litigation be the Next Big Thing?
Jeff Hines, a wireless financial analyst at Deutsche Banc Alex. Brown, doesn’t see privacy as a problem. In his eyes, it’s a great opportunity! “Potentially, wireless carriers could be the best ISPs because of the amount of information that can be provided to prospective advertisers,” Hines wrote last month in Wireless Waves.
“Wireless networks,” Hines explained, “can provide general location information (soon to be pinpoint capabilities) that advertisers may be willing to pay a few pennies for. For example, a fast food restaurant may want to send a 10-percent-off coupon to every wireless customer who walks within two blocks of their store between 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. (complete with a map detailing the store location relative to the customer).”
Gee, I’m not sure it’s the FBI we should be worrying about after all.
Back to Gates & Co. Word on the street last week was that Microsoft may be headed for a court-ordered break-up, a la AT&T. Maybe Bill will want to share his thoughts on this over beignets and cafe au lait at the CTIA bash next month in New Orleans.
