[p2p-research] about those old android phones for 3rd world kids...

[Paul D. Fernhout]

Matt Boggs wrote:
> http://gizmodo.com/5415169/leak-the-google-phone-is-a-certainty
> 
> And it will be 'FREE':
> 
> I've watched Google since they were founded. in that time I have noted 3
> things Google does.
> 1. They never plan for the short term. They decide what they want to make
> happen 10 years from now and then proceed to plan backwards from that. They
> plan ahead. ICANN is now international and URLs will be in every language.
> Google can already translate web pages, URLs will be no different. They make
> mistakes, but they still tend to be years ahead.
> 2. They do not charge their users. EVER. They are not a company that makes
> money off the public. They are a company that earns money off of businesses.
> Every program, every app, every service is free to the user.
> 3. They kill cash cows. Note that for the last several years they have been
> making their own up to date maps. Now, they own the most accurate road maps
> in the world. They released a GPS navigator for free. Time and time again,
> Google creates a product that undercuts, and eventually crushes competitors.
> because it's free. It might take several years, but they almost always end
> up being the dominant product.
> This article makes a very logical point. The Google Phone may very well be
> absolutely free to users, and charge businesses for in store traffic
> directed to them by their new Navigator. You use the Google phone to go
> someplace, that place pays Google. The phone and service fees are covered by
> that revenue and the end user pays nothing, just like every other product
> from Google.
> It doesn't have to compete with high end phones, or be the "best". Just
> being free will make it a massive success.
> And over the course of the next few years, it will get better, more
> sophisticated, and more powerful.
> And it end up wiping out the Mobile Carriers, Phone makers, and even the
> iPhone.
> Because what Google may be designing isn't a phone at all.
> People have been talking about how Phones and Computers and various other
> entertainment devices are becoming more integrated. You have Gameboys, PSPs,
> IPods, IPhones, etc.
> But what none of these things do is connect directly to your computer in the
> sense that they are pretty much the exact same thing in different sizes.
> Between ChromeOS and Android, a Google Phone could be your desktop PC, only
> smaller. Free connection to an always available internet, able to connect
> remotely to your personal data on your home system as well as freely
> accessing the cloud, able to do everything your PC can and running the same
> apps. It could possibly even share processor resources with your home system
> using distributed processing.
> And all those "Competitors" will have ceased to have a cash cow, and unless
> they shift to a similar Business model (years behind Google) they will cease
> to exist.

Matt-

Thanks for the insightful comments.

Any phone sold for US$600 now (like the Verizon "Droid") will likely be 
US$100 or less in five years, even new (if previous history and Moore's law 
is any guide). And there will be plenty of used ones available "for free" in 
five years as people discard them.

Also, Google has, at its core, a deep problem, in trying to build a world of 
abundance for themselves by using post-scarcity abundance technology, but 
still with aspects of artificial scarcity (unless our entire economy 
transforms to a post-scarcity economy at some point). Google leadership says 
their mantra as "don't be evil", but they can't help but ultimately be evil 
if the use post-scarcity technology to create artificial scarcity to 
maintain their business model. They need to switch their world view to 
something beyond mainstream business, even beyond the strategies you 
outline. Maybe the have and it is just not obvious (on purpose)? :-)

Something I wrote on that:
   http://groups.google.com/group/virgle/msg/61e459bca9c67300
"""
And here is how a lot of people like that have thought in the past:
   http://www.lucyparsonsproject.org/aboutlucy/dawley_iwpa.html
   "Meanwhile, unscrupulous industrialists like Jay Gould put down worker
discontent by giving their striking workers a "rifle diet" while bragging
they could "hire half the working class to shoot the other half.""
   We could follow the last commands of the capitalists as the entire logic
behind capitalism collapses intellectually in the face of advanced
technology. But instead, maybe we can all figure a way out of this situation
together?
   Unfortunately, Google itself is conflicted on this, so we can't expect too
much help there. In many ways, Google represents this conflict more than any
other company as it is at the interface of capitalism and post-scarcity.
Those people are going to have to make up their minds which side they are on
sooner or later. For me, I think that is what the April Fools joke was
really about -- trying to imagine a way forward for Google.
   Sometimes life in the USA is so awful and so frustrating (even if we are
successful, if we think about the misfortune of so many others) that we want
to imagine fantasies it could get better. For me, that is post-scarcity. For
many others, it is getting rich in the current system. I'm sorry to be
taking your fantasy away of capitalism ever working for everyone (including
you) given how bad things have gotten for so many in the USA. But, at least
we've got a new collective delusion you could join. :-) And, I'd suggest,
the post-scarcity delusion is getting more and more real every day. Maybe
one day, capitalism based around competition will seem like just a bad dream
we awoke from:
   "No Contest: The Case Against Competition"
   http://www.alfiekohn.org/books/nc.htm
And as delusions go, this one has been providing me with free software and
free content for years, so that is something going for it. :-) But I'll
admit it does not yet supply electricity or computers themselves. We're
making choices about how we want the future to be.
"""

I wrote on related stuff in connection to their "Virgle" April Fool's joke 
about space habitats on Mars (skip down to the middle searching on 
"post-scarcity"):
http://www.pdfernhout.net/a-rant-on-financial-obesity-and-Project-Virgle.html
"""
For example, Google contractors get no Segways and massages?
     http://www.google-watch.org/googles-ipo.html
Or second class badges?
     http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/googlife
     "I used to work at Google as a Contractor. Let me tell you, it wasn't 
the greatest place for a contractor. First, you have red badges, so anyone 
with a Google badge looks down on you. Already you feel left out, and you 
don't feel like enjoying all the benefits Googler's have. ... I don't miss 
working there. The people arn't really all that friendly, people have 
arrogance and MBA, PHD attitudes."
   And ultimately, aren't even the people in sweatshops in, say, China who 
build component used in Google servers in some sense Google contractors? 
Definitely no Segways or massages for them. :-(
     http://www.monthlyreview.org/mrzine/templer220807.html
     "Well over 150 million migrant workers from rural areas have crowded 
into the cities over the past decade in search of economic survival. They 
may regularly not get paid for months at a time. Public healthcare across 
the economy is declining to the point where many millions of working 
families cannot afford to seek medical care or risk huge debt if they do. 
Migrant workers are at especial risk. Large numbers of workers in the toy 
industry have now lost their jobs directly as a result of the Mattel recall, 
and its fallout continues. They are the direct victims of their local 
bosses' abuses and the lack of safety control. But of course they and their 
stories and suffering, literally inscribed in the toys they make, remain 
invisible."
   [And I say elsewhere, aren't we all Google contractors in some sense, 
making information on the internet that Google repackages with advertising?]
   So what is Google Headquarters in Mountain View, California but a little 
temporary space habitat bubble of happiness for regular employees, but 
floating on a sea of relative misery for everyone else planetwide who 
supports it? Can't we as a society or Google/Virgle as an aspiration do 
better that that? And even within that bubble are emerging issues. How long 
can a company expect to run on twenty-somethings without kids?
   Google-ites and other financially obese people IMHO need to take a good 
look at the junk food capitalist propaganda they are eating and serving up 
to others, as in saying (even in jest):
     http://www.google.com/virgle/opensource.html
    "we should profit from others' use of our innovations, and we should buy 
or lease others' intellectual property whenever it advances our own goals"
   -- even while running one of the biggest post-scarcity enterprises on 
Earth based on free-as-in-freedom software. :-(
   Until then, it is up to us other
     http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0145660/quotes
   "semi-evil ... quasi-evil ... not evil enough" hobbyists with smaller 
budgets to save the Asteroids and the Planets (including Earth)
     http://www.openvirgle.net/
from financially obese people and their unexamined evil plans to spread 
profit-driven scarcity-creating Empire throughout every nook-and-cranny of 
the universe. :-(
     http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086190/quotes
     "The Emperor: Young fool... Only now, at the end, do you understand... 
[the power of love of money :-(]"
   Actually, in Google's defense, as far as most newly wealthy, key Google 
people have done far, far better than most by tithing 10% of the Google IPO 
to charitable causes:
     http://www.google.org/
     http://www.google.org/foundation.html
   But they remain financially obese. Michael Phillips in _The Seven Laws of 
Money_ suggests
     http://www.google.com/search?q=The+Seven+Laws+of+Money
that from his experience on the board of the Point Foundation that it was 
almost impossible to give money away effectively. And I'd certainly agree 
the world may well be better served with the current leadership at Google 
(who are at least trying not to be "evil", even if that is impossible 100% 
in our society or in life in general) instead of if they sold out to another 
new Google leadership that might be 100% evil, especially given Google is 
rapidly becoming a de-facto world government in some ways.
     "Cory Doctorow's Fiction About An Evil Google"
     http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/09/20/2325240
So, their situation is not an easy one. And I may poke fun at them (as they 
poked fun at all of us on April 1st), but I would not bother if I did not in 
some sense also respect their accomplishments and their potential.
   So what am I really saying?
   That we as a society are not going to happily get to Mars or the 
Asteroids or other star systems, or even just fix up Space Ship Earth, until 
we come to see the love of money as the problem, not the solution.
"""

Anyway, so Google faces this business-as-usual vs. post-scarcity conflict 
more than most companies right now. Future companies that focus on nanotecch 
3D printing (where printers can print more printers) may face it even more 
strongly in a decade or two.

--Paul Fernhout
http://www.pdfernhout.net/
http://www.beyondajoblessrecovery.org/