Lifelong
I was struck by the description of Einstein's later life that Walter Isaacson's new biography provides. There he is, day after day, year after year, carefully working through ideas that might support a unified field theory of some kind. According to Isaacson, Einstein often got quite excited about one notion or another, and some newspaper would find out - headlines would trumpet something like “Einstein Solves Riddle of Universe” - and then he'd decide that his latest move was just bunk, worthless, and he'd start in again the next day. The next year, still more headlines, but no solution.
Even on his deathbed Einstein was playing with equations, hoping that the screen would be ripped back and he'd see through to the essence of everything.
Although Einstein didn't seem to be anguished by this (at least as Isaacson describes him), there is always the possibility of anguish over the enterprise - what if the lifelong obsession doesn't pay off? Perhaps he got through it by playing the violin.
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As promised yesterday, snippets from 1993-94 about the fabulous new world of “personal communications services” opening up as a result of spectrum auctions. We've ended up with auctions that replicate what happened in the first years of radio - pleasing incumbents - but now we've got a heavily-concentrated marketplace for the key bottleneck of internet access. Shouldn't the advent of the internet have shifted the focus to improving internet access for everyone? The New York Times:
“Using the
digital electronics of computers, the new “personal communications
services” will be capable of sending data, images and perhaps even video
to an expanding family of nomadic computing devices — palm-size computers,
electronic notepads and what some people call mutant devices that combine the
features of a telephone, computer and pager.”
*
“We are about to launch a huge industry in the next week,”
said Scott Schelle, the vice president of American Personal Communications, a
small company that is 70 percent owned by the Washington Post Company and has
built one of the first experimental personal communications services systems in
the United States. “The timing is important because communications,
computers and media are converging just as the wireless revolution is coming of
age.”
*
Almost every communications
company has something to gain or something to fear with the expansion of
wireless and next week's new rules. “This will shake the foundations of
the entire telecommunications industry,” remarked Alfred C. Sikes, who
served as the chairman of the F.C.C. under President George Bush and is now the
president of Hearst New Media and Technology, a unit of the Hearst Corporation.
*
“An auction is bound to be better
than the alternatives” of giving away licenses by lottery or awarding them
to the best lobbyists. (former FCC official).
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