The importance of infrastructure: Haiti and beyond.
In the wake of the earthquake and ongoing disaster relief in Haiti there has been a lot of discussion around the political state of Haiti. Setting these political issues aside, let’s look at the disaster itself and, more specifically, how Haiti’s infrastructure has played a roll in multiplying the level of destruction and, as a result, greatly increased the requirement for aid and subsequent rebuilding efforts.
Access in the information age: the threat of ongoing supply chain battles
Amazon’s decision to cease selling Macmillan print books and eBooks last week had me extremely concerned regarding this form of, well, censorship. An interesting reaction given that Apple pulled the same stunt in 2007 with NBC, pulling their content from iTunes due to disinterest in capitulating on pricing. In that case, an act where I was rooting for Apple simply because I despise protectionist agendas and see video content owners as far more egregious in this area than music, which does not bode well for consumer access (and with the rhetoric on that one being that it followed “NBC’s decision to not renew its agreement with iTunes”, rather than a unilateral decision on Apple’s part to make this content unavailable). But books. Man, I (yes, naively) expect Amazon to do whatever it takes to make every book available to me. To be a leader in access to knowledge. In that sense, the Google of the retail world. So when Amazon intentionally makes unavailable an entire publisher, including most of their subsidiaries, that was a wake up call. And I immediately thought: boycott Amazon, let them know why. Buoyed further by the excellent outsider’s guide to the fight article from Charlie Stross. But, yesterday, Amazon capitulated.
