Twenty years ago I resigned from my former job at a financial news wire to pursue a career in San Francisco. We were transitioning our news service (Jiji Press, a Japanese wire service similar to Reuters) to being a web-based news site. I had followed the rise and fall of Netscape and the Department of Justice anti-trust case on Microsoft's bundling of IE with Windows. But what clinched it for me was a Congressional testimony of the Federal Reserve Chairman (the US central bank) about his inability to forecast the potential growth of the Internet. Working in the Japanese press at the time gave me a keen interest in international trade. Prime Minister Hashimoto negotiated with United States Trade Representative Mickey Cantor to enhance trade relations and reduce protectionist tariffs that the countries used to artificially subsidize domestic industries. Japan was the second largest global economy at the time. I realized that if I was going to play a ...
Musings on web development, apps and the future of the internet.