President of Entropy Economics
Joined on February 11, 2010
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Bret Swanson is president of Entropy Economics, a research firm focused on technology and the global economy, and of Entropy Capital, a venture firm that invests in early-stage technology companies. He is also a visiting fellow at Digital Society.
He previously was a senior fellow at The Progress & Freedom Foundation, where he directed the Center for Global Innovation, and for eight years advised technology investors as executive editor of the Gilder Technology Report.
Today, Swanson presents his “exaflood” Internet traffic research across the globe and often writes for the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal and Forbes.com on topics ranging from communications bandwidth to monetary policy.
He studies innovation, globalization, China, Internet traffic, information theory, the stock market, and entrepreneurial economics. He is guided by the Laws of Say, Metcalfe, and Moore, the Theorem of Shannon, and the Curve of Laffer. His most pioneering and speculative research, however, concerns forces even more powerful and enigmatic—his four children eight and under.
Except where otherwise noted, all postings by Bret Swanson on CircleID are licensed under a Creative Commons License.
The stakes of the U.S. communications policy debates are larger than many assume. Subjecting broadband to new and extensive regulation in the U.S., says FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell in today's Wall Street Journal, could invite a regulatory ripple effect across the globe. more
Google may have unnecessarily provoked a fight with China, but the Middle Kingdom better keep its wits, lest it repeat a sad protectionist history. Early last millennium China was the world's richest civilization and technology leader. It famously invented gunpowder, iron casting, paper, porcelain, printing, and gigantic nine-masted sailing vessels. Between 1405 and 1433, the great Muslim Chinese explorer Zheng He led seven expeditions in the South Pacific and Indian Oceans, reaching the coast of East Africa. China's naval fleet grew to 3,500 ships... more
The Internet has two billion global users, and the developing world is just hitting its growth phase. Mobile data traffic is doubling every year, and soon all four billion mobile phones will access the Net. In 2008, according to a new UC-San Diego study, Americans consumed over 3,600 exabytes of information, or an average of 34 gigabytes per person per day. Microsoft researchers argue in a new book, "The Fourth Paradigm," that an "exaflood" of real-world and experimental data is changing the very nature of science itself. We need completely new strategies, they write, to "capture, curate, and analyze" these unimaginably large waves of information. more
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