Bait and Switching Costs - How Big Tech Took the Web and How to Take It Back

Sunday, July 14, 2024: 10:00 am (Marillac Auditorium): In the early 1990s, the technology giants of the day assembled to deploy their vision of the networked future. But that vision was not the World Wide Web. It was interactive TV, a walled garden i...

Sunday, July 14, 2024: 10:00 am (Marillac Auditorium): In the early 1990s, the technology giants of the day assembled to deploy their vision of the networked future. But that vision was not the World Wide Web. It was interactive TV, a walled garden in which corporations would provide the only content and the only "interactive" element would be the ability to buy merchandise tied to the programs. Big tech lost that battle, but 30 years later, it is winning the war.

Network effects explain the hyper-growth of one walled garden at the expense of its rivals, but it is switching costs that explain why the audience remains as the walled garden becomes choked with weeds. The first step towards taking the Internet back is to start taking switching costs seriously before taking up any Internet service, especially those which are offered at no cost to the user. This presentation will set out a strategy for first reducing and eventually eliminating switching costs in a range of applications from messaging to IoT to social media based on the technologies provided by the Mathematical Mesh - and a strategy for deployment.

Phillip Hallam-Baker