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{{a|tech|}}
#redirect[[legaltech]]
:{{ACC on technology}}
 
:''“Unlike a covered call, which is about promising to sell what you actually own, a naked call is about promising to sell what you don’t actually own.
 
:''Like wearing a nice sweatshirt, learning the lingo, and hanging out at a hackerspace with a code editor open, looking the part, but only scrambling to learn a new skill if somebody actually hints they might want to hire you if their funding comes through in a few months.
 
:''That’s selling a naked call option. Faking it till you make it. Ironically, it calls for careful dressing up.”
:::—Venkatesh Rao, ''The Premium Mediocre Life of Maya Millennial'' (2017)<ref>You should really read this, which you can do [https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2017/08/17/the-premium-mediocre-life-of-maya-millennial/ here]</ref>
===What is new about technology===
{{Author|Ray Kurzweil}} will tell you we are at an inflection point where our technology is so good, and developing so quickly, it is about to become self-aware. Not only that, the ''universe itself'' is about to wake up and become self aware.<ref>See {{br|The Singularity is Near}}. Now there is [https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg24632800-900-is-the-universe-conscious-it-seems-impossible-until-you-do-the-maths/ a view that the universe is ''already'' self aware], only it operates at level of abstraction so far above our own mortal plane that we can’t see it — we are to its consciousness as our brain’s individual neurons are to ''our'' consciousness — and this idea has force (even if it ios a shade unfalsifiable). But that is not what Kurzweil is saying.</ref> Now that particular cup of Kool-Aid hasn’t made it to the [[JC]] yet — it seems to be going the other way around the circle as a matter of fact — so set him old forth on what ''he'' knows, and that is this: the startling developments in technology in the last forty years hail from three interconnected places:
*'''[[The analogue/digital transformation]]''': The discovery that information can be abstracted from the [[substrate]] in which it is usually embedded, so that data can be transferred from place to place ''without'' being buried in an analog medium of some kind. A letter, as an intellectual construct, can exist without ink, paper or an envelope.
*'''Moore’s law''': Now we have liberated data from its substrate, we need the kit to process it. This finally came good when the vacuum tube gave way to the transistor. Transistors suddenly got better, fast. Moore’s law documents an exponential increase in processing power, and decrease in size and cost of processors themselves — though one which seems to be reaching its logical limit. The information in a letter can be automatically, quickly and cheaply copied, augmented, processed, changed, .
*'''The network effect''':  The exponential increase in our own digital inter-connectivity. Data is finally free of its mortal shackles, and we have the machines to crunch it, and now we can move it frictionlessly from place to place, anywhere on the globe. The information in a letter can be (i) extracted from the substrate (ii) decomposed into addressed packets of data; (iii) routed across a network and (iv) reassembled and injected (if need be) back into a [[substrate]].
 
Any one of these developments is powerful, but when the three work together the results are revolutionary. The analogue/digital transformation commenced as long ago as the [[Jacquard loom]] in 1804. Moore’s law has been a thing since before Gordon Moore first noticed it in 1965. The internet — a global network of interconnected computers, used mainly by the military industrial complex<ref>See [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Internet Wikipedia] for more.</ref> — became a public thing when Sir Tim Berners-Lee invented the world wide web in 1989. Then suddenly we were cooking with gas.
 
But note: all of these things are ''hardware'' developments. They make software possible and worthwhile, but this is all about the kit. Self-awareness, and intelligence, you would think, is all about the ''software''. The thing about the kit is that it is there. It is cheap. It is fungible. These three effects are costed in — they come with ''any'' software solution free of charge.
 
So what makes a killer software app: one of two things:
*'''killer software''' — actually clever, imaginative code that does stuff that no-one else thought of, and it took a lot of effort to put together —  think Industrial Light and Magic, Pixar, IK Multimedia or Microsoft Office — or
*a '''natural monopoly''' that exploits the network effect — think eBay, Facebook, Amazon or Google — here the first mover has an (assailable) advantage — but a late-comer (like Google) can overhaul first movers with killer software, and first movers can defend against latecomers with killer software that it can afford to develop while its natural monopoly persists.
 
Killer software developers can charge a few people a lot of money, but they have to keep improving their software to the point where they may generate some kind of network exploitation effect too (Microsoft Office)
 
Network exploiters won’t generally be able to charge users ''anything'' so will make their money off their interactions ''with'' users, by serving ads to them or selling data they have collected about users.
 
And as for software: all the world is a coder. You can find cheap coders in rented rooms in Bratislava, Bogota and Bangalore. Coders are mainly fungible too. So if one guy can do it over a weekend, so can ten thousand others.
 
So, dear reg-tech providers, if you want to monetise your offering, your special sauce will need to be your ''software''. If all you are doing is cleverly combining the three magical effects of hardware and delivering simple software API on the top of that, do not expect to make any money for long. If you quite your job as a lawyer to start your reg-tech started up by ex lawyers they are unlikely
 
 
Next:[[Why is reg tech so disappointing?]]
 
{{sa}}
*[[Reg tech creates waste]]
*[[Algorithm]], [[heuristic]] and [[algorithm vs. heuristic]]
 
{{ref}}

Latest revision as of 16:27, 9 October 2021

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