IBM: "Size is the answer. We've got the technology and the people. We've got to get an economy of scale. Merging these businesses will give us the size we're looking for."

Say goodbye to your "IBM"-branded disk drives. A couple of years ago, PC Magazine predicted that within five years, market pressure would force mergers that result in a single global manufacturer of hard disk drives. This is one more (small) step in that direction.

IBM, Hitachi Combine Disk Businesses

The Internet may be a mould-breaking new medium but, like all the media that came before it, someone has to pay for it, and that usually means, one way or another, users.

The Internet sells its soul | The Economist

MCI unveiled a plan Monday that for the first time gives residential customers unlimited local, local toll and long-distance calls for $50 a month. The goal is to gain local market share. MCI is heavily in debt and under SEC investigation. Analysts say the plan is proof of big changes in the way phone companies bill. "We are moving to a flat rate, or subscription-based, all-you-can-eat world."

How's this for a trick? Since billable minutes are falling off fast for all the carriers, MCI pondered, "Right now, the market wants to see growth in the number of minutes used. How can we get customers to make more LD calls?" and came up with the reply, "Let's go flat rate!" So they charge each customer a little more than the average one pays already, and figure they break even financially, but they get to say "minutes are up 15% this quarter!" in the next report.

One risk (which they must have foreseen) is that only the chattiest of their customers will take them up on the offer, and revenues will still go down even as minutes stabilize or climb up. So long term, it still doesn't pay the bills, but it could make for some nice weasel-words in the next quarterly report ...

According to a Knight-Ridder wire story, MCI's plan is a reply to a similar deal just announced by AT&T. MCI's marketing director: "It was important for us to come out as the first nationwide local phone company. We also wanted to step out of the price-driven commodity market of long-distance." Analysts say that if customers respond, then voice service will quickly evolve into an (unprofitable) all-flat-rate business.

MCI offers unlimited calls

Many European cable companies are being crushed by the debts they amassed in the late 1990's, when they borrowed heavily to grow through acquisitions. The capital markets have since stopped lending to these companies, making it difficult for them to finance operations and repay their debts. Almost none of them make a profit. ... Unless agreements are reached, analysts expect them to run out of money by August. ... "No matter how he does it, John Malone will end up controlling the majority of European cable operations."

More Woes for Europe's Cable Concerns

An unprecedented opportunity is emerging in the global competitive arena: the chance to build new types of innovative advantage by connecting globally dispersed knowledge. Firms that excel in sensing new technologies and emerging market needs that are scattered around the world are defining a new model of global strategy: They mobilize far-flung knowledge to create new products, services and processes, and they harvest value from these innovations in markets all over the world. This is the emerging breed of metanational corporations -- and the subject of a groundbreaking book.

The link logged here is the first chapter of this book, in PDF. For an in-depth review of the book, visit

http://www.acm.org/ubiquity/book/y_doz_1.html

From Global to Metanational: How Companies Win in the Knowledge Economy [PDF]

A 5 page article in the April 2002 issue of Harvard Business Review explains it all:

The basic inequality in wealth distribution seen in most societies may have little to do with differences in the backgrounds and talents of their citizens. Instead, the disparity appears to be something akin to a law of economic life that emerges naturally as an organizational feature of a network. Bouchaud and Mezard found that if investment returns grow sufficiently volatile, they can completely overwhelm the natural diffusion of wealth generated by transactions. In such a case, an economy can suddenly reach a tipping point, and wealth, instead of being held by a small minority, will condense into the pockets of a mere handful of super-rich robber barons.

If we are not yet at the End of History, are we at least approaching the End of Economics?

Wealth Happens | HBR April 2002

WorldCom's bonds are now quoted like junk bonds rather than like investment-grade bonds. "Fear dominates valuations right now."

S&P Says WorldCom Dip May Hit Debt Rating

The company is backed by Verizon (18.6%) and Tyco (11.2%), among others.

So, who wants to buy the world's longest cable? Cheap! Cheap! What, no takers?

Flag Telecom Files for Bankruptcy

Abstract: A recommendation system tracks past purchases of a group of users to make product recommendations to individual members of the group. In this paper we present a notion of competitive recommendation systems, building on recent theoretical work on this subject. We reduce the problem of achieving competitiveness to a problem in matrix reconstruction. We then present a matrix reconstruction scheme that is competitive: it requires a small overhead in the number of users and products to be sampled, delivering in the process a net utility that closely approximates the best possible with full knowledge of all user-product preferences.

_Competitive Recommendation Systems_ [PS]

Models and Concepts of Life and Intelligence
On Our Nonexistence as Entities: The Social Organism
Thinking Is Social
The Particle Swarm and Collective Intelligence
Statistics for Swarmers

If you're interested in more information, a Google search on the phrase "swarm intelligence" turns up a number of research papers.

_Swarm Intelligence _