THE NATION’S NEWSPAPER
Collegiate
Case
Study
www.usatodaycollege.com
Web puts undiscovered
musicians, listeners in tune
Technology & Entrepreneurship
By Kevin Maney
Innovation drives America’s economy and fuels its competitiveness. Henry
Ford exemplified this by channeling his affinity for mechanical equipment into
the development of the self-propelled Quadricycle and the Model T, the first
affordable automobile. Today, transforming an idea into an entity relies on innovative technology and has led to such mind-boggling creations as digital music,
RFID (radio frequency identification) and man-made diamonds. This case
study explores the various ways technology impacts entrepreneurship. How do
the challenges and advantages of being an entrepreneur in the 21st century differ from being one in Henry Ford’s time? Read these articles before you answer.
...................................................................................3
Man-made diamonds spark
with potential
By Kevin Maney
..................................................................................4-6
Books might have to start new
chapter to avoid extinction
By Kevin Maney
..................................................................................7-8
Band's Net-inspired hit shows
how EMI goes with the flow
Scared of new nano-pants? Hey,
you may be onto something
By Kevin Maney
USA TODAY
By Kevin Maney
NEW YORK — You know you're at a
record company when there is a piano in
the reception area.
........................................................................................9-10
Case Study Expert
Karen Thornton
University of Maryland
......................................................................................11-12
USA TODAY Snapshots®
Top tech items
Nearly half of respondents say they are likely to buy
technology products within the next six months for
when they are on the go. Top technology items to be
purchased:
Cellphone
17%
Camera
Laptop compu
ter
Personal mus
ic
device
8%
Video camer
a
14%
10%
7%
Source: Harris Interactive online survey of 1,174 adults
age 18 and over. Margin of error ±3 percentage points.
I'm here at EMI Music to see a record
company executive. The industry has
taken a beating the past five years. Last
week, numbers released by Nielsen
SoundScan showed the industry heading
for yet another full-year slump for 2005.
Everybody in tech talks about how the
record companies don't “get it.”
But nobody ever seems to talk to the
record companies to see what they don't
get. So here I am, expecting to meet some
techno-phobic dolt who calls everyone
"baby" and aches for the days when
American Bandstand mattered. He no
doubt wears a scarf.
Instead, I get Adam Klein, an urbane Brit
dressed in gray corduroy pants and a gray
sweater over a button-down shirt. He is
EMI's executive vice president in charge
of strategy. At one point before joining
EMI in 2004, Klein had been president of
search engine company Ask Jeeves. He
owns a video iPod. Amazingly, given the
portrayals of his profession, there is a
computer on his desk. And it's turned on.
Over the next hour, Klein does a couple
of things I don't expect.
First, he lays out how technology has
created challenges for the music industry
that go deeper than most people realize
— certainly deeper than just the piracy of
copyrighted songs.
And then, instead of dwelling like a
psychopath on how to stop piracy, Klein
focuses on how the industr y is
reengineering itself to get ahead of
technology and start growing again.
"It's unfortunate that the industr y
allowed itself to be seen as Neanderthal,"
Klein says. "We're not asleep at the
switch. It's just that of all the industries
I've studied, none has had to deal with
such a confluence of events."
Actually, once Klein gets into it, you
By Jae Yang and Marcy E. Mullins, USA TODAY
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wonder why the music industry hasn't collapsed like an ant
colony that lost its queen.
Certainly technology brought an unprecedented level of
piracy, and it's hurt the industry. But that's only the beginning.
Digital online music has forced the industry to re-examine its
soul. "The record industry has never been consumer-centric,"
Klein says.
Instead, it has always pushed content on people. If a label had
a hot new act, it pushed songs out to radio and, later, MTV. It
tried to dictate tastes and tell us what to buy and how to listen
to it, instead of paying attention to what we wanted. This is
how consumers wound up with eight-track tapes. And Toto.
By Dusan Reljin
But the Net puts consumers in control. Teens tell each other
what to buy through podcasts and playlists posted on MySpace.
They listen to songs on any device they want and use software
to convert songs to the format they want.
This is a massive philosophical switch for the industry, and,
"We are just starting to look at the business through that lens,"
Klein says.
What else? Well, the "retailers" — the entities through which
music is sold — are changing, and they all have different
business models that are foreign to anyone who's worked in
music for the past 50 years. Mobile-phone companies might
give music away to keep customers. Apple wants to sell music
for less to drive the sale of more iPods. None of it works
anything like an old-fashioned record store.
At the same time, the industry is facing this challenge: 95% of
its revenue comes from the sale of physical CDs, which from
now on will be a shrinking part of the business. The industry's
growth will come from digital sales, which are now just 5% of
the business. So where do you put your resources? On the 95%,
or the 5%?
On top of that, a large swath of teenagers — among the
industry's biggest customers — don't have credit cards. You
need a credit card to buy music online. So the industry is selling
to its best customers at stores at which they can't pay.
The past couple of years, Klein says, the industry woke up and
started a painful process of change. EMI has made huge
investments in technology — computer systems, databases and
digital storage it never before had to maintain.
It has brought in a new set of people who, like Klein, are as
grounded in technology as they are in music. It has decided its
brightest future lies in music-subscription services such as
Rhapsody and the new Napster. Those services are hard to
pirate, and they eliminate the problem of kids not having credit
cards.
Brondell founder: Dave Samuel with the Swash electronic toilet.
Underneath all that activity, record companies have had to
really think about why they exist — and should continue to
exist. What do they do best?
Klein thinks he has an answer: "Developing and growing
artists — that's what a music company will be doing," he says.
Finding talented musicians, coaching them, putting them in
front of the public — and then finding ways to profit from their
work. Sell it online, sell it into video games or whatever new
forms technology brings along. This is how the industry needs
to think.
Will it work? It's too early to tell. Industry figures show digital
sales shooting skyward and the overall sales misery leveling
out. Klein says it's a trough, and growth is on its way. Industry
analysts tend to agree, to a point. Jupiter Research sees
zooming digital sales replacing lost CD sales by 2010.
While here, I get a glimpse of how a record company can
learn to cope. EMI has a band called OK Go. It wasn't getting a
lot of attention. Then the band shot a home video in a band
member's backyard. It's just the four of them doing a goofy
dance they made up to one of their songs. They put it on DVD
and handed some out at their concerts.
Next thing, the video started flying around the Internet. EMI
ran with it, putting the video on the band's website,
www.okgo.net. It turned into one of those Internet
phenomena, exceeding 2 million downloads. OK Go did the
dance on Good Morning America.
The night I met Klein, I saw OK Go play in a New York club. As
their encore, the band did the dance to a packed room of
screaming fans.
If the music industry can build on experiences like that, it
might yet improve its Neanderthal image.
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Web puts undiscovered
musicians, listeners in tune
Artists used to need a record label to be
heard. Now, all they need is a powerful PC
and a broadband connection.
By Kevin Maney
USA TODAY
For any musician with at least a pinch
of talent and a desire to perform, the
Internet has become a godsend.
A new generation of websites — many
of them started by people who came out
of the music industry — are opening the
business to thousands of artists and
hobbyists who in the past had few ways
to broadcast and sell their music.
"Technology has changed things all the
way through the chain," says Kelli
Richards, a digital music pioneer who cowrote The Art of Digital Music. "You can,
in a garage, create (recorded) music that
10 years ago would've cost $100,000, and
you can instantly reach a global
audience."
Driving the changes are the increased
power of PCs and broadband Internet.
Independent musicians can now use a PC
as a multitrack recording studio. Songs
can be inexpensively created, stored,
burned to CDs and uploaded onto the
Web.
Those websites can be much more
than just a place to post songs in hopes
someone might find them. Jenna Drey
was an undiscovered dance-music artist
who uploaded some of her songs onto
GarageBand.com. The songs rose to the
top of the website's listings, and Drey
wound up with a record deal and a song
that reached No. 11 on Billboard's dance
chart.
Even for a band that's more of a
weekend hobby, the Web creates ways to
get occasional bookings and sell CDs.
Some types of independent music
websites:
u Discovery and development. There
have long been a couple of problems
with independent musicians posting
their output on the Web.
First, how would anyone sort through
all that music to find quality songs they
might like? And, second, how would an
ordinary musician fight through the
noise to get noticed?
One solution: GarageBand.com. Any
unsigned musician can post music on the
site. Listeners are asked to rate songs.
Ratings and traffic on the site drive songs
toward the top of GarageBand's charts,
which are much like Billboard charts.
Listeners looking for popular music can
go to GarageBand and check out songs at
the top of the charts in categories they
enjoy.
labels. Magnatune, for instance, looks for
talented but unsigned artists and is
building a stable of acts, much like a
record label. But Magnatune sells
downloads and doesn't sign its artists to
exclusive contracts.
u Distribution and sales. Not long ago,
there were few ways for unsigned artists
to make any money on their work. But
now, so what if you can't muscle onto
record store shelves? Anyone can sell
CDs through CD Baby, which has grown
into the Amazon.com of independent
music.
Another company, Pump Audio, has
figured out how to sell independent
music to the creators of T V shows,
commercials and movies for use as
background music. Pump splits the
revenue with the musicians.
u Live events. Websites are starting to
automate what a professional manager
might do. Sonicbids, for instance, posts
listings of venues seeking live acts and
gives bands a way to reply by clicking
and sending an electronic press kit.
"There used to be only one way to get
the job done: Go through a major label,"
author Richards says. "Now, the artist has
a choice."
Other sites act as online-only record
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Man-made diamonds
sparkle with potential
Beyond the bling, they could usher in new tech age
By Kevin Maney
USA TODAY
they've been held back because mined
diamonds are too expensive and too rare.
And they're hard to form into wafers and
shapes that would be most useful in
products.
BOSTON — In the back room of an
unmarked brown building in a run-down
strip mall, eight machines, each the size of a
bass drum, are making diamonds.
Manufacturing changes that. It's like the
difference between having to wait for
lightning to start a fire vs. knowing how to
start it by hand.
That's right — making diamonds. Real ones,
all but indistinguishable from the stones
formed by a billion or so years' worth of
intense pressure, later to be sold at Tiffany's.
The company doing this is Apollo Diamond,
a tiny outfit started by a former Bell Labs
scientist. Peer inside Apollo's stainless steel-and-glass
machines, and you can see single-crystal diamonds literally
growing amid hot pink gases.
This year, Apollo expects to grow diamonds as big as 2 carats.
By the end of 2005, it might expand to 10 carats. The diamonds
will probably start moving into the jewelry market as early as
next year — at perhaps one-third the price of a mined diamond.
The whole concept turns the fundamental idea of a diamond
on its head. The ability to manufacture diamonds could change
business, products and daily life as much as the arrival of the
steel age in the 1850s or the invention of the transistor in the
1940s.
In technology, the diamond is a dream material. It can make
computers run at speeds that would melt the innards of today's
computers. Manufactured diamonds could help make lasers of
extreme power. The material could allow a cellphone to fit into
a watch and iPods to store 10,000 movies, not just 10,000
songs. Diamonds could mean frictionless medical replacement
joints. Or coatings — perhaps for cars — that never scratch or
wear out.
Scientists have known about the possibilities for years. But
"I'm just so completely awed by this
technology," says Sonia Arrison
USA TODAY
of tech analysis group Pacific Research
Institute. "Basically, anything that relies on computing power
will accelerate."
Arno Penzias, a venture capitalist and Nobel Prize winner for
physics, says, "This diamond-fabrication story marks a highprofile milestone on an amazing scientific journey."
"We can't begin to see all the things that can happen because
single diamond crystals can be made," says Apollo co-founder
Robert Linares, elegant and slim in a golf shirt, slacks and
loafers as he sits at the two plastic folding tables that make up
Apollo's low-budget conference room. "We are only at the
beginning."
Linares has worked on the technology for 15 years, much of
that time in his garage. From the start, he did this because of
the promise of diamonds in technology. Linares wasn't trying to
make gems. In fact, he didn't think he could.
Then he had a happy accident. Well, actually, time will tell
whether the accident was a happy one.
Two different paths to diamonds
In 1955, General Electric figured out how to use room-size
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How diamonds are made
Apollo Diamond is making real diamonds using a process called chemical vapor deposition (CVD).
2
Hydrogen and hydrocarbon gases
are injected and heated to thousands of degrees under pressure.
atoms land on the diamond slice and replicate the
3 Carbon
crystal’s structure, the way a drop of water merges seam-
lessly into a pool of water. The diamond grows thicker and
taller. Growing a five-carat diamond can take a week.
Gasses
top can be sliced off and
4 The
cut into gems. Or the
diamond can be cut into thin
wafers for computer chips or
other uses. Part of the slice is
returned to the chamber to
make the next diamond.
Carbon
atoms
of diamond is placed
1 Aflatslice
inside a chamber.
Source: Apollo Diamond
By Robert W. Ahrens, USA TODAY
machines to put carbon under extremely
high pressure and make diamond dust
and chips. The diamond material wasn't
pure or big enough for gems or digital
technology. But it had industrial uses,
such as diamond-tipped saws. Such saws
made it possible, for instance, to cut
granite into countertops.
In the ensuing decades, companies and
inventors tried to make bigger, better
diamonds. But they didn't get far. By the
1990s, researchers were focused on two
different paths to diamonds.
One was brute force. Some Russians
became pretty good at it, and their
machines were eventually brought to
Florida by Gemesis. That company now
crushes carbon under 58,000
atmospheres of pressure at 2,300
degrees Fahrenheit, until the stuff
crystallizes into yellowish diamonds. The
stones are attractive for jewelry but not
pure enough for digital technology.
Gemesis sells its gems through retailers
at around $5,000 per carat. A mined
yellow diamond can cost four times
more.
The other process is called chemical
vapor deposition, or CVD. It's more
subtle. It uses a combination of carbon
gases, temperature and pressure that,
Linares says, re-creates conditions
present at the beginning of the universe.
Atoms from the vapor land on a tiny
diamond chip placed in the chamber.
Then the vapor particles take on the
structure of that diamond — growing the
diamond, atom by atom, into a much
bigger diamond.
CVD can make diamonds that are clear
and utterly pure. It's also a way to make
diamond wafers, much like silicon wafers
for computer chips. The CVD process can
be tweaked by putting in enough boron
to allow the diamond to conduct a
current. That turns the diamond into a
semiconductor.
A handful of companies and scientists,
including Sumitomo in Japan and the
global diamond powerhouse De Beers,
have chased CVD. But by most accounts,
Linares is out front.
After receiving his doctorate in
materials science from Rutgers
University, Linares joined Bell Labs and
worked on crystals that would be crucial
in telecommunications. In the 1980s, he
started Spectrum Technology to make
single-crystal Gallium Arsenide chips,
one of the key components in
cellphones. Spectrum became the
material's biggest U.S. supplier, and
Linares eventually sold the company to
NERCO Advanced Materials.
He then dropped out of business,
putting his time and money into his pet
project: making CVD diamonds for
cutting tools and electronics.
"Gemstones were the furthest thing
from my mind," Linares says.
Breakthrough in a garage workshop
Linares built machines in his garage,
superheating carbon in suburban Boston
while his neighbors went about their
lives. He got the CVD process to work, at
first making tiny diamond chips. He
formed Apollo and started down the
path to industrial diamonds. Then
Linares inadvertently left a diamond
piece in a beaker of acid over a weekend.
The acid cleaned up excess carbon —
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essentially coal — that had stayed on the
diamond.
"When I came in Monday, I couldn't see
the (stone) in the beaker," Linares says.
The diamond was colorless and pure.
"That's when I realized we could do
gemstones."
Both Apollo and Gemesis want to
market their gems as "cultured
diamonds," taking a cue from cultured
pearls. De Beers is fighting that label. "It's
misleading and unacceptable," says De
Beers executive Simon Lawson. "It makes
people think (manufacturing diamonds)
is an organic process, and it's not."
For Apollo, there are lots of good things
about making gems. Diamond jewelry
will be a $60 billion global market this
year, and it's growing fast. If Apollo can
snag just 1%, the company would
become a $600 million rocket.
Even highly trained diamond experts
find it almost impossible to tell a CVD
diamond from a mined one. De Beers is
determined to help by making machines
that can detect the slightest difference in
the way the two materials refract light.
Also, gems could become a source of
revenue quickly. While the military and
companies are working on tech
inventions that use diamonds, a real
market for diamond technology might be
a decade away. By selling gems, Apollo
can make money now to fund the
research for forthcoming diamond tech
products.
As part of that effort, De Beers stepped
up its own CVD research "focused on
producing state-of-the-art synthetic
diamonds for testing on our equipment,"
Lawson says. Referring to CVD diamonds,
he adds, "We don't see gemological
applications fitting into it."
That solution, though, brings two huge
problems. One is that Apollo doesn't
know the gem business. Its employees
are technologists. Aside from Linares,
Apollo is run by his son, Bryant, an MBA
who started and sold an information
services company. Vice President Patrick
Doering had been lead scientist at
Spectrum.
"We are not gemstone guys," Bryant
Linares admits. They don't know
consumer marketing or retailing. Bryant
Linares notes that Apollo plans to split
into a tech business run by the Linareses
and a gem business run by a gem veteran
they have yet to hire. For now, though,
the gem business is a distraction with a
steep learning curve.
Apollo's other problem is De Beers,
which doesn't like what Apollo is doing
one bit. De Beers launched a public
relations campaign and an education
program for jewelers, all aimed at
portraying mined diamonds as real and
eternal -- and CVD or Gemesis diamonds
as fake and tacky.
So by getting into gems, little Apollo
made a powerful, determined enemy.
A long list of possibilities
The tech side is an entirely different
stor y. Just about ever y entity in
technology can get excited about
diamonds.
The military's DARPA research arm has
been pumping money into CVD projects.
Companies such as Lucent are on the trail
of holographic optical storage, which will
use lasers to store data in 3D patterns,
cramming huge amounts of information
in tiny spaces. CVD diamonds would
vault holographic storage ahead, helping
bring about the 10,000-movie iPod.
Tech company Textron is a big fan of
Apollo. Textron has been working on
super lasers that might become weapons
or be used like a camera flash for spy
satellites, so they could take photos from
space at night.
conductivity of any material, which
allows it to quickly move heat away from
the laser's insides. Textron needs large,
pure diamond pieces for its lasers and
finally found them at Apollo.
CVD diamonds can help solve one of
the computer industr y's biggest
challenges. Companies such as Intel
advance computer chip technology by
squeezing microscopic wires closer
together while making the chips run ever
faster. But that's making the chips
increasingly hotter. At some point this
decade, the chips could run so hot they'd
melt. But not if the chips were based on
diamond wafers instead of silicon.
"Using diamonds as semiconductors
will continue Moore's Law," says Pacific
Research's Arrison, referring to an
observation about the continual increase
in speed and power since chips were
invented.
The list of possibilities for man-made
diamonds goes on. "By most measures,
diamond is the biggest and best," says a
research paper written about CVD by
Paul May at the U.K.'s University of
Bristol. It's the hardest material, it won't
expand in heat, won't wear, is chemically
inert and optically transparent, May says.
"Once (manufactured) diamond is
available, developers will find all kinds of
other things to do with it," Rober t
Linares says.
Manufactured diamonds will be like
other inventions that were so profound
because they made new things possible.
Steel allowed engineers to dream of
skyscrapers and suspension bridges.
Transistors led to computers and
pacemakers and so much else. So this
may be the beginning of the diamond
age of technology.
Says Linares: "The genie is out of the
bottle, and it can never be put back in."
"Thermal management is a major
challenge to increasing a laser's power,"
explains Textron scientist Yulin Wang.
The diamond has the highest thermal
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Books might have to start new
chapter to avoid extinction
By Kevin Maney
USA TODAY
Here's a really hard question: What is a book?
It's hard, because for 500-odd years, nobody's
had to think about it. A book has been a selfcontained unit of a lot of words on a good
number of bound pages. But that might not be
the answer anymore — or at least not the only
answer.
website, Doctorow encourages fans: "When you
download my book, please: Do weird and cool stuff
with it. Imagine new things that books are for. Then
tell me about it ... so I can be the first writer to figure
out what the next writerly business model is."
He's not thinking that the future of books is simply
reading book-length text on a screen instead of on
paper pages. He's thinking it's something that
happens when you decouple the content from the
medium.
In music, that kind of decoupling hasn't resulted in
Over the past few days, Harry Potter and the
By Kevin Maney
people listening to the old concept of "albums" on
Half-Blood Prince has flown off bookstore shelves,
iPods or laptops.
igniting the kind of frenzy seen in the past for Star
Wars movies, Beatles concerts and the arrival of Beanie Baby
Instead, people have been doing new things -- buying
shipments. This Potter mania seems to disprove everything that
individual songs, making mixes, sharing playlists online,
pundits postulate about the downfall of traditional books.
creating podcasts, dumping music into cellphones to use as ring
Half-Blood Prince is 652 pages long. That's not a book — it's a tones. We are generally doing absolutely nothing that the music
commitment. And its fans aren't just the usual book buyers — industry might've predicted a decade ago.
pre-Nintendo people like me, who read because we're either
The technology isn't here yet to make that possible with
stuck on long flights or can't hear the TV from the couch.
books. No screen has yet been able to beat traditional paper
books as a display for lengthy text. But that won't be the case
Potter is actually stealing kids away from video games.
forever. A breakthrough for books with an iPod-level impact is
But don't let that success fool you. Books overall are losing going to happen at some point. And then?
the battle for attention, especially with anyone born after about
"I think book is a verb," Doctorow says. It's what you're doing
1975. From 2003 to 2004, the number of books sold worldwide
dropped by 44 million. True, there are still 2.3 billion books sold when reading something like a narrative story or biography or
each year, but the bottom line is that people are flocking to the academic argument in big chunks in multiple sessions, he says.
Web, TiVo, cellphone screens, PlayStation Portables and DVDs "We need to find ways to insert the verb of book into
technologies that arrive," Doctorow adds.
while buying fewer books.
Books risk becoming the equivalent of pot roast in a world
full of ethnic foods. There will always be a place for pot roast,
but it sure isn't the place it occupied 30 years ago.
To avoid that fate, the concept of a book might have to
change. But how?
Author and activist Cory Doctorow hopes to find out. In June,
he released his latest novel, Someone Comes to Town,
Someone Leaves Town, online for free downloads on the same
day his publisher released printed copies to bookstores. On his
Doctorow admits he hasn't yet learned a lot from his fans
about what books can become. But there are some interesting
hints. For instance, he's certain that the free electronic copies
are helping increase sales of hard copy books, which is the
opposite of what publishers and authors fear.
"For almost every writer, the number of sales they lose
because people never hear of their book is far larger than the
sales they'd lose because people can get it for free online,"
Doctorow says. "The biggest threat we face isn't piracy, it's
obscurity."
For more educational
resources,
visit http://education.usatoday.com
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Potter might even offer a clue to how
books might change — and, ironically, it
could be in the length of both the
individual books and the series.
Now, keep in mind that Doctorow is
still a lonely voice out on the frontier.
Tom Standage, technology editor at The
Economist and author of the recent A
History of the World in 6 Glasses, says
that traditional books will continue to do
just fine.
These books offer something movies
or T V can't: a deeply involving
experience that you live with for days or
weeks or more.
"Communications media are ver y
rarely displaced by newer technologies,"
he points out. "T V did not kill radio,
movies did not kill theater, video did not
kill movies. The book is the oldest of all
of these technologies, so I think it has
staying power."
"It's very typical to hear a (video)
gamer say, 'I play to experience a world
that I couldn't experience otherwise,'"
says Mitchell Wade, who sur veyed
gamers for his book Got Game: How the
Gamer Generation is Reshaping Business
Forever.
Which, even if true, doesn't mean
books won't change.
Other media adapted to changing
technologies. Radio couldn't survive
airing shows like The Shadow once TV
flooded homes with pictures. Live
theater survived movies by emphasizing
blockbuster musicals. Now movies might
have to change in an era when millions of
families can play DVDs on big-screen,
high-definition TVs in their living rooms.
USA TODAY
"When you see kids reading the
(Potter) books over and over, they are no
longer in it to find out who done it,"
Wade says. "They are reveling in the
world that J.K. Rowling has created. That
is VERY like a video game."
Of course, that's also because Rowling
is so good at what she does. Still, if Harry
Potter can show ways to keep an ancient
medium relevant, that certainly would
be magic.
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AS SEEN IN USA TODAY’S MONEY SECTION, WEDNESDAY, JUNE 22, 2005
Scared of new nano-pants?
Hey, you may be onto something
By Kevin Maney
USA TODAY
move until we have less privacy
than the Osbournes. Or that
genetically modified foods could
make us morph like the Fantastic
Four. Or that cellphones could be
giving us brain cancer and are distracting drivers.
In the late 1950s, my Uncle Jim
and his teenage buddies would
sometimes roam downtown
Binghamton, N.Y., and stop at a
little shoe store that had its very
own X-ray machine.
And yet an earlier generation
thought dangerous X-rays were
fun. What gives?
It was the latest technology for
getting your shoe size. Customers
would come in, flick a switch,
stick their feet in, and see how
their foot bones lined up on a sizing chart. My uncle and his
friends did this for kicks. The
thing probably spit out hundreds
or thousands of times the dosage
you'd get from a dental X-ray
today.
As it turns out, these things go in
cycles, and extreme reactions to
technology are nothing new.
"It's been going on as long as
innovation has been going on,"
says Clinton Andrews, past president of the Institute of Electrical
and Electronics Engineers
By Alejandro Gonzalez, USA TODAY
Society on Social Implications of
It's a wonder Uncle Jim never
Technology. "The guy selling the
grew a few extra toes.
innovation is often optimistic. But there's often this fear, and
the fear is not entirely groundless."
Contrast that with the naked folks in Chicago a few weeks ago.
A handful of young men and women filed into an Eddie Bauer
store and took off their clothes to protest the selling of khaki
pants treated with nanotechnology.
So far, there seems to be no reason to think anyone could be
hurt by nano-pants, but a lot of people are terribly worried
about nanotechnology. They've heard stories that it could selfreplicate until it covers the Earth like a virulent kudzu, or that
nanotech particles might damage brain cells or cause cancer.
They're assuming the worst now, ahead of any proof of danger.
In fact, people today are raising all kinds of alarms about technology. They worry that RFID chips might track our every
In fact, IEEE preaches that technologists should welcome the
protesters and skeptics because they force issues to the surface
early, before something gets out of hand and causes widespread damage. The fears push technologies to improve, and
get society to look at consequences and decide what trade-offs
are acceptable.
"You always need both camps" -- the optimists and the pessimists, says Brian O'Connell, current president of the Society
on Social Implications of Technology.
Feelings about technology can also wax and wane with eras. In
the 1920s, anything scientific and modern was seen as
progress, and progress was good. In the 1960s, the space race
Reprinted with permission. All rights reser ved.
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AS SEEN IN USA TODAY’S MONEY SECTION, WEDNESDAY, JUNE 22, 2005
lit up a generation of tech believers. In the 1990s, we all
thought the Internet was going to "change everything" and
swore it was the most significant human development since
the Sumerians invented writing.
vaccination leagues, IEEE's Andrews says. Typists at first resisted carbon paper, thinking it would threaten their jobs. The
first electronic computers stirred fears that companies were
building "electric brains." IBM CEO Thomas Watson Sr. made
speeches saying the machines would never be able to think.
The crummy economies of the 1930s, 1970s and early 2000s
wiped out a lot of that smiley-faced buoyancy. Once in a while,
progress would take a devastating blow, such as in 1979, when
Three Mile Island threatened to melt through the Earth's crust
and make half of Pennsylvania even less habitable than normal.
Nuclear power never regained its footing in the USA.
Then there's the flip side. In the 1940s, people labeled DDT the
wonder pesticide. By the 1960s, Rachel Carlson published
Silent Spring, alleging that DDT caused cancer and other environmental problems. The stuff was banned in the USA in 1973.
The odd part, though, is that while in the middle of the debate
about some technology, it's impossible to know which side is
right. History is packed with examples of skepticism that
turned out to be unfounded, and sanguinity that was misplaced.
The story of X-rays and other radiation is among the most
bizarre. In the early 20th century, beauty shops used doses of
X-rays to make unwanted facial and body hair fall out.
Physicians prescribed radioactive radium for heart trouble,
arthritis and other ailments. For a while in Europe, a candy
company marketed chocolate bars laced with radium as a
"rejuvenator."
In the early 1900s, natural gas companies struggled to persuade homeowners to switch from wood or coal stoves to gas
stoves.
Obviously, none of that was a very good idea.
"Gas is invisible and potentially explosive," says Marian
Calabro, president of CorporateHistory.net. Wood or coal
stoves "were messy and labor-intensive, but at least homeowners knew what they were dealing with."
Gas companies mounted a PR campaign behind the slogan,
"Now you're cooking with gas." By 1930, people saw that the
homes of early adopters didn't get blown up, and the ease of
the use of gas won out over any remaining safety concerns,
Calabro says. The fears had been unfounded.
We really can't tell whether the naked protesters in Chicago
are flakes or prophets. Nanotechnology might turn out to be
like natural gas -- an efficient, safe technology that benefits
millions of people. Or it could be this generation's X-ray, and
our grandchildren will guffaw at our naivete for putting it in our
pants. The same goes for RFID or any other technology that's
making people wary.
Either way, it seems like it's better to ask the questions rather
than swallow the optimism whole.
Similarly, when Edward Jenner invented the smallpox vaccine
in the late 1700s, the public protested, even setting up anti-
Reprinted with permission. All rights reser ved.
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DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
1. Why do globalization and the U.S.’s growing economic needs make
innovation crucial?
University of Maryland
2 Should students today embrace technology wholeheartedly without
fully understanding the sacrifice of some worthwhile qualities of past
inventions? Are all the “old ways” destined to the heaps of extinction
or relegated to the category of Neanderthal?
3. One aspect of entrepreneurship is dealing with change. What are
some drastic changes entrepreneurs have faced during the past 10
years? Which changes have improved life for entrepreneurs? Which
have been detrimental for business?
4. What are some of the ethical issues entrepreneurs face? As a
budding entrepreneur, to what extent are you willing to give up some
of the “purity” of your art to meet customers’ demands?
http://www.MTECHVentures.umd.edu/
resources/university.html
Consortium for
Entrepreneurship Education
http://entre-ed.org
MIT Entrepreneurship Center
www.Entrepreneurship.mit.edu
5. List three ways to test the durability of an idea today that would not
have been available in the past.
FUTURE IMPLICATIONS
What definitions have changed as a result of technological advances and alterations in entrepreneurship? What other
definitions do you see evolving or changing in the near future? For example:
a. The term “workplace” today means one thing for students and yet something entirely different for people who physically
commute or telecommute.
b. Has the definition of “customer” changed, or have we merely changed the way we visualize customers?
c. Have the definitions of intellectual property, trademarks and copyrights changed, or is the issue today more about valuing
someone else’s property?
d. Discuss the definition of “ownership” as it relates to the articles in the package.
Notes:
© Copyright 2006 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc. All rights reser ved.
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M E E T T HE E X P E R T …
Karen Thornton is the director of the
nation’s
f irst
living-lear ning
entrepreneurship program, which began
in 2000 at the University of Maryland,
College Park. She manages the day-to-day
op erations and provides on-site
mentoring and coaching to students who
par ticipate in the award-winning
residential cur r iculum, the Hinman
Campus Entrepreneurship Opportunities
(CEOs) Program.
Other features of the program include the
annual Universit y of Mar yland $50K
Business Plan Competition and a wide
variety of internships. The Hinman CEO
program also works with high school and
community college students.
The Hinman CEOs program is one of three
aspects of MTech Ventures at Maryland.
T hor nton manages the business
development activities of MTECH Ventures
Karen Thornton
and overse es a c adre of e duc ational
Program participants join as sophomores and juniors programs and activities offered through the Clark
from all academic disciplines, with as many as 90 School of Engineering.
students living together each year. The students are
encouraged to team up in dorm rooms, specially- A native of Hampton, Va., Thornton managed a stellar
equipped meeting rooms and a business center to career playing the French horn in orchestras and
discuss ideas, dreams and possibilities. The two-year groups around the world for about 25 years, taught
program requires students to take a three-credit music at both Florida’s Jacksonville University and
entrepreneurial course that includes lectures and a Maryland’s Towson University. She earned Bachelor
weekly speaker series. Students also earn three-credit and Master of Music Performance degrees from Florida
hours in a ‘sp e cial topics’ c ourse that includes State University, ARCM from the Royal College of
analyzing case studies.
Music, London, and an MBA from the University of
Maryland. Thornton, who also was a Fulbright Scholar,
Each fall, the Hinman CEOS are involve d in an came to work at Maryland as the Director of External
orientation event that includes various team-building Affairs and Human Resources for the Department of
activities. There are also cookouts, socials and the Electrical and Computer Engineering.
annual Technology Start-Up Boot Camp for faculty.
© Copyright 2006 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc. All rights reser ved.
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