Charlie Rose

ucv4523  01/29/2013 05:50 PM Report

Ah! Roger McNamee. One person I've decided NOT to listen to when it comes to tech.

He says Android isn't a good fit for Google.

He says Twitter is a disappointment.

He wishes that a product like Google NOW be invented one day; it already has!

and Oh, he said in 2009 that Palm was going to kill the iPhone.

He hurts his credibility every time he opens his mouth.

rivi2k  01/21/2013 06:34 PM Report

The initial product he describes already exists : http://www.google.com/now

ucv4523  01/20/2013 09:02 PM Report

Roger's definitely a pro.

But he lost me when he said Google is doing it all wrong with Android.

Last year Android tied Apple in terms of number of apps at 700,000; and Apple had a 3 year lead. It's taking over the world.

And he says Twitter is a disappointment. Aye-ya-yi.

It's not about profit, it's about market share dominance, then profit.

tomupton  01/19/2013 03:17 AM Report

Wonderful insights on what might be, but completely forgetting, in all his talk about how these companies can become better and improve their profits, is the fact that what he's talking about excludes the vast majority of people on this planet. He's willing to pay more for things he likes because he can. What about the rest of us? It's not how the net can become more profitable, it's about how the net can become more available. That's the means of production in the hands of the consumer. He misses the point in the power of the press belongs to those who own a press.

jlhs  01/19/2013 01:23 AM Report

Would like to echo SteveCastle's comment (01/17/2013, 02:44 PM). My thoughts exactly.

The word 'disappointing' comes to mind when recalling McNamee's description (almost to a T) of software that functions precisely like Google Now. Then, hearing him go on to disparage Android...

Regarding content distribution, in addition to the guests proposed by SteveCastle, I also think that Barry Diller and his new venture, Aereo (https://www.aereo.com/), have hit on something special. However, there is a deeper and perhaps more consequential question, what are the obstacles preventing more content from being available online? I know that the big media conglomerates would like to ignore the issue, but this puts PBS in a unique position. That said, anyone familiar with the Comcast/NBCU merger (Al Franken?) or someone like Susan Crawford (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_P._Crawford) would make for a terrific show.

Keep up the good work Charlie.

rosebowl  01/18/2013 03:53 AM Report

First time seeing an interveiw of Mr. McNamee, and I'm already a fan. It's always nice to see someone not afraid to speak his mind. Loved his Youtube Video of why he supported Occupy Wall Street!

With that said, I hope some of the things he's predicting don't come true, because I for one (and there are many) don't like Apple. I've been using PCs for years and can usually figure out support problems on my own without too much pain. Apple for me is another story and I hated their recording software (Logic). These things plus asking for credit card information when registering and ONLY using ITunes was a real turn off for me. For me Apple TAKES AWAY choice, it's model seems to be "our way or the highway". So while I enjoyed the interview thoroughly, I hope Roger realizes that there are allot of unhappy Apple user out there.

Gelles  01/18/2013 03:15 AM Report

Two recent conversations, one with Roger McNamee, the other with Paul Jacobs, looked at mobile IT use and applications and forecast great success in the coming decade.

Will they turn the ship of state, in America or elsewhere, from disaster to democracy, -- as jobs and middle class security continue to be savaged in plain view by plutocracy in fact?

There has never been a need to impoverish the rich. But there has never been a time when we did not need to enrich the poor.

Taxes have been a crime and subsidies the solution. But the arithmetic for this change has been left to God and God has refused to do the job for people too ignorant and selfish to do it for themselves. God gave us free will and all we need to calculate the subsidy to match demand to our supply.

Yet today we see the deficit in demand ignored (in fact,) and the deficit in revenue (which is no more than a habitual error in modeling,) as a self-destructive evil to which few Americans will admit.

SharkswithfrikingLazers  01/18/2013 02:55 AM Report

Applications to replace search? Hmmm.

Search is just fine thank you--robust, reliable, FAST--takes me right into Wikipedia or articles.

Siri, or something similar, will be the future taking my voice and returning to me peer reviewed knowledge--not internet hogwash.

Trading product placement noise, like in the movies, for more proletariat pricing will make it affordable.

This will be the conversational aspect of marketing over the broadcast aspect.

SharkswithfrikingLazers  01/18/2013 02:45 AM Report

We are told that 'Apple stock is very cheap.'

Who does not own Apple stock?

When other stocks hit the $500 billion market-cap mark, they have, without exception, stalled (ExxonMobil) or crashed (Cisco Systems, General Electric, Intel and Microsoft).

Like Gold, Apple is oversold.

SharkswithfrikingLazers  01/18/2013 02:35 AM Report

Indeed, 'a troubadour business'--sounds like the Charlie Rose show.

"We got Charlie at a steal (under 500K?)," Baker says admiringly of both parties to the transaction. "It was very clear Charlie wanted to do this and that he was taking a considerable cut in pay."

But then CBS and Bloomberg pony up and now five houses (but a speeding ticket costing $250K to settle the intern lawsuit).

Yes, Charlie Rose is a troubadour business but then he is on PBS.

Life is certainly funny.

SharkswithfrikingLazers  01/18/2013 02:10 AM Report

Sorry didn't quite get the comments on eBay.

First Roger was going to comment on Ebay in relation to Amazon but got interrupted.

Later Roger said Twitter is like eBay—not good relation to opportunity (what does this mean?).

A word from the Times: "How has eBay done it when so many others have failed?

Excitement about eBay’s prospects has little to do with its traditional auction business, or even its core e-commerce operations, although its marketplace division posted solid results and had its best quarter since 2006, the company said.

Most of its growth came from mobile retailing and its PayPal online payments division, a business it acquired in 2002 for what now looks like a bargain $1.5 billion.

As consumers embrace shopping on their smartphones, “mobile continues to be a game-changer,” Mr. Donahoe said. He noted that 90 million users had downloaded eBay’s mobile app and that 600,000 customers made their first mobile purchase during the most recent quarter. “A woman’s handbag is purchased on eBay mobile every 30 seconds,” he said. “Mobile is revolutionizing how people shop and pay.”"

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/28/business/ebays-turnaround-defies-convention-for-internet-companies. html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Well then Charlie perhaps a full answer on eBay with the next guy--especially in comparison to one of your four pillars of tech?

rich_devlin  01/17/2013 11:09 PM Report

I agree with Roger's observations and thoughts. I believe that the next big wave is social intelligence and device intelligence that doesn't exist today, but will soon, and it will sit on top of the oceans of information and data that dominate the internet today. I founded GigaWealth Corporation (www.gigawealth.net) which focuses on investments and GigaScout (www.gigascout.net) to prove out the idea. Ideally suited to smart phones and tablets, it brings democratization, understanding, perspective, wisdom and knowledge to a world that is drowning in data and information but not making better decisions easily. GigaTwt (www.gigatwt.com) shows the power of combining intelligence assessments into a meaningful conversation stream that can be customized and one in which advertisers can naturally contribute. The result: solving many problems simultaneously (business model, purpose, mission, delivery, huge impact, ...) which in turn will have a big impact on the world.

Max83  01/17/2013 05:22 PM Report

This interview was a little confusing for me.

Mr. McNamme starts off talking about how technology is a force of democratization and he compares it to Marxism even and towards the end of the conversation he is promoting plutocratic and meritocratic exclusive subscription models for high end consumers for the best information available on the market.

What if somebody really likes the Charlie Rose Show and is incredibly benefiting from it, but would not be able to afford it and therefore not watch it anymore if Charlie Rose would start charging a monthly subscription fee?

Is that really progress?

In my opinion it is not. It is actually leading to less democracy, especially intellectually speaking, which then translates into economic and political inequality. It would be like a modern day Vatican Secret Archive with access only for the chosen few. Not good in my opinion. A Hunger Games World.

Public Broadcasting is a public good that needs to be persevered and protected.

I hope Mr. Rose that you will not sell out to this monetization propaganda, because many of us could not afford it and would lose a program that is very dear to us.

America and the world needs people like Bill Moyers and Charlie Rose and I am grateful to them for taking huge pay cuts when compared to their corporate media counterparts pay checks to be of service to the public through their programs and persona.

I know it is tough to be in the circles of the super rich like you are Mr. Rose and to be the poorest person there monetarily speaking, but you have a wealth that exceeds that of money which is the respect and the love of the people.

Please do not trade in your dignity and your honor and enslave yourself to the dehumanizing system of the have mores. Please stay yourself we need you.

Here again Bill Moyers's letter to Patriotic Philanthropists. All patriotic philanthropists please keep supporting Bill Moyers and Charlie Rose and keep their shows open to the public:

Link: http://www.democracyjournal.org/27/an-open-letter-to-patriotic-philanthropists.php

''Issue #27, Winter 2013

An Open Letter to Patriotic Philanthropists

Bill Moyers & Arnold Hiatt

Dear Fellow Citizen,

Shortly before the election last fall, The New York Times ran an editorial about the flood of independent money in the campaign. The editors noted, “The business interests behind those hundreds of millions are not going to give up the influence and the power that spending has given them. That’s the reason this unlimited money is so corrupting: win or lose, it binds lawmakers, corporations and special interests ever closer.”

If the Times’s readers could tolerate it, such editorials could run every day—and not just during elections.

Because others in this issue of Democracy are writing about the many dimensions of the problem, we won’t pile on. But we do want to point out that both of us have, for eight decades now, been witnesses to—and proud products of—the American experiment. And in that time we have never seen our democracy so utterly subjugated by the power of well-heeled special interests.

So, what can be done? A lot, is the answer. But here’s one simple idea: Help fund the groups that fight for political reform.

Both of us have been doing so for a long time—one as the president of a small family foundation whose benefactors were devoted to the renewal of democracy, one as an individual citizen concerned for his country. Over the years, we’ve collectively helped reform groups raise millions of dollars. But that’s only a thimble-sized sum compared to the need.

It’s been rewarding to see the many groups we’ve supported do so much with so few resources. But it’s also been painful to see them toil away in a long and losing battle, seriously outgunned on Capitol Hill by the lobbyists who profit from the current system, and outmaneuvered in the courts by the lawyers and justices who deem money the equal of speech.

How much do these reformers spend annually? An estimated $45 million. Only about .01 percent of total charitable giving in America (which was roughly $300 billion in 2011). It’s about one-fourth of what the U.S. Chamber of Commerce spends annually (roughly $200 million in 2010), and roughly one-tenth of what Koch-related groups committed to spending in the 2012 elections to promote their agendas ($400 million, according to Politico).

The two of us could list most of the funders of reform on the back of a napkin. Like their grantees, they’re very capable and dedicated people who strive to accomplish much with few resources. Like us, many of them are frustrated that the pool of philanthropists has remained so consistently small over the years. And, also like us, many can’t keep investing in this cause much longer, not for lack of interest but for lack of resources.

Over the years, we’ve encountered various reasons why there is so little investment in reducing the power of Big Money over politics and policy-making: Good-government groups don’t do a good enough job of selling themselves and are too fractured along policy lines; money in politics is seen as a wonky issue that only liberals care about; philanthropy is increasingly focused on short-term “deliverables” and “quantifiable outcomes” and reform is too hard to measure in those terms; foundations are risk averse when it comes to supporting efforts that might be perceived as political. And the list goes on.

All of these are understandable concerns. But none of us can any longer afford to allow such arguments to stifle the flow of money into the struggle to save our democracy. Citizens United and super PACs have brought America to a historic juncture—one path leads toward oligarchy, the other toward representative government. Abraham Lincoln defined the latter as the American ideal. It was the cause of Thomas Paine, the Revolution, and the Constitutional Convention. Today it is the inspiration for good health care and a good education, for fair and competitive markets, for honest government, for a sustainable environment, and for a decent job and livelihood for everyone. For these promises to be kept, the deep pockets of the moneyed class must be countered, because to travel upstream of any major issue facing our country—from Too Big To Fail banks to climate change—is to encounter a small, extremely powerful group of well-connected and well-heeled interests controlling the flow of the stream.

That’s why it’s about time for others who are well connected and well heeled to provide a counterweight. When some people think about philanthropy, they think of building libraries and wings of hospitals, of endowing university chairs and curing diseases, of providing comfort to the afflicted, and preserving pristine lands. All noble goals. But beneath them lies a larger structural problem with the way our country functions, or doesn’t function. Helping solve that problem offers philanthropists a shot at a different kind of legacy—one that would make Jefferson and Lincoln proud.

Now is the time to invest in such a legacy. The tinder of public opinion is dry. In a recent Gallup poll, 87 percent of respondents said that ending government corruption should be a “very important” or an “extremely important” priority for the President. The only priority that ranked higher was job creation.

There are more than two dozen groups working mightily to ignite the popular movement necessary for rekindling the American Dream of justice for all. If patriotic philanthropists fail to meet the challenge, future editorials in The New York Times on money in politics will read less like urgent calls for change and more like obituaries.

Sincerely,

Bill Moyers & Arnold Hiatt''

vongleichent  01/17/2013 05:10 PM Report

Really cool fellow highly interesting. I love Technology.

sharm  01/17/2013 05:05 PM Report

As someone who nearly put his fund out of business with his disastrous PalmOS investment, McNamee is the last person I'd listen to opine on whither mobile OS.

When I started in venture capital, a senior partner once remarked about the articulate incompetence of junior associates -- who sounded good, even reasonable, but lacked any sort of business judgement at all. McNamee is simply an articulate tech analyst, but not a great investor.

In fact, Elevation Partners could be described as a VC that wants to be a rock star and a rock star (Bono) that wants to be a VC. Both are ruinously ludicrous propositions.

SteveCastle  01/17/2013 02:44 PM Report

As an avid follower of technology and tech news I though I'd point out some observations I had while watching.

1. Mr. McNamee early in the interview mentions how his phone knows his location via GPS, the time, and his calendar, but somehow doesn't piece it together to give an itinerary. The newest version of Android actually has a feature that does just that and more, and it works exceptionally well. It's called Google Now. It learns where your house is and your work, and in the morning gives you an ETA to work with current traffic, and shows a map. If you have a meeting it advises you when to leave, taking into account traffic again. If you have a flight to catch, it keeps you up to date on its status. If you have a package coming to you, it keeps you up to date on its tracking. All of this is done with very little input from the user. More here: http://www.google.com/landing/now/

2. Mr. McNamee believes Android was not the right fit for Google, and that they should have focused on HTML5 on the web, the web being their specialty. But Google has been focusing on HTML5. They wish they could have had everyone on the iPhone use apps like Gmail and YouTube via their HTML5, web-based apps. The problem is the HTML5 spec is not Google's to control, and is not mature enough. Web browsers running HTML5, like Safari on iOS, don't behave as well as native apps. Google couldn't just sit around and hope everyone went their way, so they had to play Apple's game.

Google still has plenty of investment in HTML5. ChromeOS, which while being somewhat insignificant in the market right now, is an operating system that is essentially only a web browser, made to use HTML5 apps exclusively. Development continues on this product, I assume, because it's very likely that HTML5 will make a big impact in the future.

Finally, Mr. McNamee compares Android to Unix, when Android is to iOS as Windows was to Mac in the early nineties. Right now Android has reached a certain maturity, comparable to Windows 95 I would say. The model of letting all hardware manufacturers use Android is what gives Android 70% global mobile market share right now. That then goes back to Google's core business: selling ads to as many eyeballs as possible.

3. There's a bit of back and forth about niche media being the future, and broadcasting taking a back seat to back and forth communication between viewers and content creators. This is actually very similar to what Leo Laporte has been saying and has done with his network, TWiT.tv. He recently gave a keynote at Digital Experience 2013 talking in depth about this subject. I think he would be a fascinating guest for Mr. Rose.

Well that's it. I would also recommend The Verge editor Josh Topolsky for analysis of where technology is going.

REMant  01/17/2013 12:33 PM Report

McNamee has made these arguments for some time I see, BUT the first mistake he and everyone else makes in this business is in assuming that they are servicing business instead of consumers, or that the two are identical. Microsoft made it, Google made it, Facebook and Apple are making it. It's ironic that he should since I understand he's involved with Wikipedia. He's relying on the idea that HTML5 will undercut middlemen. But still it doesn't take into account nearly all of the things ppl use computers for. I nearly never use mine to buy anything. McNamee apparently never reads anything between playing in his band and watching baseball. I can't imagine many people using third-party web-based applications to keep either their books or write them for security reasons if no other. Ppl already object to Facebook's use of postings. Or how you could even get by with a notebook for it. Or how photographers and graphic artists could get by with such a small screen as the devices he's talking about. The Germans have always charged per use for everything, even toilet tissue in public toilets; Americans have long found "making markets" far more lucrative and while I would like to see the market work better, his second mistake is that, in this country, not technology, but the Fed calls the shots.