Wharton report predicts doom of IT sector by 2033

A yet to be published Wharton study by Colin Ward predicts that by 2033 IT sector will transition to decline phase by 2033. He applied asset pricing to find future valuation of IT sector. His model indicates that growth of IT sector is already in the transition phase and transition to end roughly by 2033. He cliams to "develop a new method that puts structure on financial market data to forecast economic outcomes."

"I apply it to study the IT sector's transition to its long-run share in the US economy, along with its implications for future growth. Future average annual productivity growth is predicted to fall to 52bps from the 87bps recorded over 1974-2012, due to intensifying IT sector competition and decreasing returns to employing IT. My median estimate indicates the transition ends in 2033. I estimate these numbers by building an asset pricing model that endogenously links economy-wide growth to IT sector innovation governed by the sector's market valuation.", He elaborates.
   The paper is accessible at

 https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/11770278/JMP_Ward_ITrevolution.pdf
If you find the paper little too technical and finance-oriented for your interest, there is another way of testing the hypothesis. We could try to extrapolate the future based on the patterns that we see now. The way we see the IT industry today was unimaginable in 1974, though people consider 1974-80 to be the beginning of the growth of the industry. The industry experienced the growth
in massive scale during 1995-1999 and most of that rode on banking industry's fear of Y2K glitch. Once that crest passed, the industry saw first massive slump in 2001. Very few imagined that trough will come so soon after crest, because it was never seen before. Industrial revolution lasted for a long time before people saw the economy decline.
   People accepted dot-com bust to be credible explanation although banking industry's IT budget also showed fast contraction right after year 2000. Traditionally IT consumption always showed sharp increase or decline as an effect of overall economy's growth/collapse.
One must not miss the fact IT needs are not fueled by direct consumption from the consumers [which has direct impact on real-estate, manufacturing, luxury and cosmetics items, electronic equipment etc] but by those industries that serve
the consumers and those industries increased IT budget as a response to threats such as probable banking software malfunction due to Y2000 round up or pressure from business consolidation.Business consolidation happens organically in any industry when growth slows down and large players invest in IT to leverage information availability. Thus a bank upgrades its back-end software and IT hardware as a need to remain competitive [it improves scale of operation, information flow and customer response] when it faces slow growth. Retail
industry upgrades its CRM and analytics software in order to capitalize faster the retained data of its consumer base. Now once they upgrade (spend in IT) their IT setup, next upgrade would happen only if they outgrow their present capacity.
                 There is another dimension to it. Given that the IT providers themselves are coming up with innovations faster that brings down the overall cost of IT in order to remain competitive, the value of IT erodes faster. For example setting up a CRM for a retail chain is lot cheaper today when compared to that a decade back. The solution today is lot more open, agile and powerful compared to what they used to get a decade back.
Compare this with any other Industry e.g. automobile or nuclear reactor. The price of automobile such as Toyota Corolla has consistently gone up over the years and so has the cost of a nuclear reactor. Unfortunately same cannot be said about IT produces.
 Also over the last few years, industries witnessed fast transition from in-house IT setup to outsourced IT setup. Salesforce has consolidated CRM of many of its clients who earlier had their own CRM solutions. Salesforce thus brought down the consolidated IT expenditure of its clients to a fraction of what they used to spend together. And it is clear that this transition is going to be faster in next 10 years as SAAS become mature and more secure. IT budget will shrink sharply once the transition reaches 70-80% of total market. Mainstream industries will not buy IT product, they will simply consume IT as service, just like they consume electricity or water. Net effect? Growth disappears!
Colin's model gives us another tool to reach the same conclusion, albeit with far more analytical rigour.

Male/Female %Male / %Female

More often we are oblivious of the misconception and dogmas we carry around. Alan Turing, the famous computer scientist who formalized the concept of algorithm and broke WWII German code Enigma was incarcerated and cursed to ignominious humiliation for his homosexual affinity by the authority, would have died happy had he not killed himself prematurely. The society that he belonged to, took few more decades to learn and accept that homosexuality is not a social crime. Since that time, science has advanced a lot. Big data analytics with massive computational power enabled the scientist to analyze extremely large demographic  and biological data with spectacular ease. Human Genome along with many other species are decoded entirely. Many of the irregularities which used to be considered as nature's whims earlier, are understood to be simply a statistical norm. How real, for example, is the male/female difference? Do they have completely different design?
When does a foetus become male or female? Medical science tells us that a human embryo starts showing first sign of transformation to boy/girl at around 9th week in the womb. In other words an embryo assumes its sexual orientation quite early in its journey. So, one could safely assume that male/female boundary is quite distinct, right?
Actually no.
We already know that there is a sizable human population who do not abide by this clear boundaries, for whom the boundary is less physical and more social. The data shows  that 1 out of every 1600 newborns are intersexuals and 1 out of every 100 new born is ambiguous w.r.t sex. Calculate the number for present world population and you will appreciate that data better.
Biological evidences aside, how about human mind? Does it have innate male/female traits?
There are popular [and pseudo-scientific] beliefs that male and female differences are irreconcilable. How often have you heard "all men are alike" or "Even God can't read women's mind!"? There are no reasons that millions of copies of 'Men from Mars, Women from Venus' are sold worldwide, right?
Well latest researches indicate otherwise. Neuroscience tells us that male/female is a continuum rather than well-separated set of traits. In this paper [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3176412/] the author tells us that "For most documented sex differences in the brain, however, and in particular in regions involved in behavior, emotion, and cognition, there is a considerable overlap between the distributions of the two sexes."
It asserts further that, "Current data on the effects of environmental events on brain structure strongly suggest that heterogeneity in the “male/female” type of an individual’s brain characteristics is the rule, rather than the exception. Specifically, prenatal and postnatal manipulations (e.g., exposing dams to stress, maternal separation, rearing conditions, early handling, acute and chronic postnatal stress, prenatal exposure to psychoactive drugs, anesthesia) have been shown in rats to reverse, abolish, create, or exaggerate sex differences in brain characteristics.." The paper concludes therefore that for us, 'different individuals will have different combinations of “male” and “female” brain characteristics'. 

Top graph shows distinct
non-overlap in physical strength
while the bottom graph
shows striking overlap in
psychological trait of
assertiveness[source: Huffington Post]

Another recent research published in Journal of Personality and Social Psychology also tells us that when it comes to psychological traits, there is a whole lot more overlap than there is difference [see the bottom graph in picture]. [source: Huffington Post]. 
Brains, therefore, appear to be neither “male” nor “female,” they are “intersex”.
So next time, you try to blame the other sex, think twice!
And in case you are curious to know what percentage your brain is male/female, try this BBC quiz: 

Sleeponomics

A century ago, Thomas Edison commented, "Sleep is a criminal waste of time and a heritage from our cave days."  Considering in average 1/3 rd of the day one spends in sleep, you would sleep away around 25 years by the time you reach 75. So it does look like that sleep is serious waste of time especially in the present globalized world where business runs 24 hours a day. Many of the techies and IT managers are likely to agree to Mr. Edison at least some time, if not all the time. Especially when the deadline is in the near-horizon, many would wish all the sleep away.
There are also those who boasts of managing life with only a few hours of sleep. I recently met a person, in his forties, recuperating in the neurological ward of Fortis hospital after suffering a mid stroke. He said there are some people whose strength is working for long hours, 14-18 hours to be precise and he considers himself in that category. Question is if  sleep is really wasteful for your well-being or it is necessary for your well-being. If you are intrigued by the question you may as well read till the end.

One article in Nature tells us that "20% of American adults reported being so sleepy during the day that it interferes with their daily activities at least a few days per week, and a frightening 17% reported falling asleep while driving within the last year. The risk of sleep-related accidents is compounded by the fact that people are unable to judge the likelihood that they will fall asleep, and by the related misconception that falling asleep is a slow process. In fact, sleep-deprived people commonly enter so-called 'microsleep' states, where they fall asleep for brief episodes lasting several seconds, during which time they are perceptually 'blind', often unaware that they have fallen asleep.
Accidents aside, one likely consequence of sleep deprivation is memory impairment. It was shown several years ago that a particular type of memory consolidation—improvement after practicing a visual discrimination task—does not occur until many hours after practice has ended. Using cleverly designed sleep deprivation experiments, researchers extend this result by demonstrating an absolute requirement for sleep within 30 hours of training. Importantly, it was the occurrence of sleep and not the simple passage of time that was critical."

There are other researches that tell us that 'within the brain, a whole raft of genes have been shown to be turned on only during sleep, and those genes are associated with restoration and metabolic pathways'. Russel Foster, a neurologists and sleep researcher, explains in a recent TED talk that  it is not just the laying down of memory and recalling it, our ability to come up with novel solutions to complex problems is hugely enhanced by a night of sleep. "In fact, it has been estimated to give us a threefold advantage. Sleeping at night enhances our creativity. And what seems to be going on is that, in the brain, those neural connections that are important, those synaptic connections that are important, are linked and strengthened, while those that are less important tend to fade away and be less important."

In a just published article in Nature, researchers found that "fear extinction may be selectively enhanced during sleep, even without re-exposure to the feared stimulus itself." So sleep is crucial to help you beat your everyday paranoia and other neuroses.
 Orfeu Marcello Buxton, another neurologist told in NYTimes that in his research he found that sleep restriction or disruption increases obesity and diabetes risk, by decreasing insulin secretion, increasing blood glucose levels slowing metabolism (the study is here).

So it is kind of clear that lack of adequate sleep is bad economics for you, not only in long term but also in short term. So much so that there is more than $20 billion business[CNN Money report, 2006] came up to capitalize on the derivative of lack of sleep of high-earning people. In other words you increase your liability manifold compared to what you gain by curtailing your sleep.

But how much sleep is adequate for you?
Dr. Russel Foster tells you that you must listen to your body. If you are feeling irritated, tired or dull in the morning for no reasons, you probably are sleep-deprived and more you continue in that state, more you reduce your mental productivity as well as your overall well-being.

US loves GM crops!

If you are living in US, you are most likely consuming GM [Genetically Modified] product, either with your full knowledge or not. As per the US Department of Agriculture, about 90% of all Corns, Soybeans produced in US are GM crops.[ latest report from USDA].
Should you be concerned? Well, there is a good number of those who believe you should be. Here is one article that warns that viral genes in GM crops are likely to promote diseases. There are many other reports that warn you about serious pitfalls of consuming GM crops. Fact is we still do not have enough data to know for sure how genetically modified strains interact with our genes. With less convincing studies that prove otherwise, you are more likely taking a path that is going to impact all your future generations, genetically. At present GM production address two different problems that farmers face: 1. insect resistance and 2. large scale crop epidemic resistance more famously known as Herbicide-tolerance. But there is a large-population who are extremely wary of the long-term effects of these genetic modifications. After all, human have many genes in common with the plants that are being genetically modified and we do not know how the modified genes will impact continuous genetic variations happening in human cells.
    Perhaps you want to know how other countries are dealing with GM crops. Unlike in US, Monsanto, the largest GM crops producer has taken decision to not pursue with producing GM crops in Europe [reports Telegraph, UK]. Fact is European Regulatory Authorities have been slow in providing approval to GM products. Perhaps they have taken cognizance to rising public opinion against GM crops in Europe. Public resistance to GM crops are also quite visible in India [GM brinjal was banned in India]. But somehow US appears to be unaffected by all these commotions. Surely the decision makers think GM crops are good for US. Some would argue that US traditionally favours new technological advancement and GM after all is new technology. But skeptics are not so sure if it is love for technology or love for dollars! Lot of dollars are already spent in US. Huge corporate investments are made in US. Many argue that corporate lobbyists are actively promoting GM everywhere to ensure that investment is protected.
This article provides an account of the money being spent in lobbying in US for GM crops.There are many other reports that claim that GM crops are aggressively being promoted in African and other countries. For instance, this Reuters report claims that U.S. tax dollars promote Monsanto's GMO crops overseas. Ghana apparently accuses US for pushing GM crops to their land, as per the recent report from The Guardian.
There is little doubt that however vocal the opposition/activism against GM be, GM is going to stay here and that is all the more reason for you to be aware of the state of the affair so that you can choose what is right for you.
This article below provides detailed account of GM crops in the context of India for those who like to explore more.

GM crops-Part 1: The truth about genetically modified foods
GM crops-Part2: The myth about food security
GM crops-Part3: The economics of genetically modified food

Finally, Nokia and Elop story reached logical end

Two and half years ago, when Stephen Elop was brought in to lead Nokia, many asked the question openly if Elop was the trojan horse for Microsoft. Though Elop publicly denied that charge at that time, Nokia's journey for last two and half years with him at the helm, has however reached the conclusion that many feared with announcement that Microsoft is buying Nokia mobile business at $7.2 billion and Stephen Elop returning to Microsoft. With Steve Ballmer's announcement of retirement, people are making simple arithmetic with Stephen Elop. We, humans, are good in drawing sweeping conclusion based on only 2-3 data points and this is also no exception to that rule. Truth, as often is found to lie somewhere in between.
The legacy of Elop in Nokia is hardly anything to be jealous about. Since he came on board, Nokia's valuation came down by 85%, the market space where Nokia was world leader, saw Nokia receding ground to Samsung and other OEMs. The smartphone space which was the key element driving Nokia to cannibalize Symbiosis and embrace Windows OS, decidedly went with Apple's iOS and Google's Android. Now did anyone know for sure that these were going to happen when Elop came on board?
Social psychologists use the term Fundamental Attribution Error to our natural bias to attribute personal disposition instead of situational artifacts as a cause of certain eventuality. We feel higher satisfaction if we can find someone to hold responsible for an event that we do not like. So we feel doubly eager to attribute Nokia's ill-fate to Elop. Psychologists also tell us that that bias changes when one is involved and is answerable for the course of event. In the scenario where the person is involved, it is often observed that he/she attributes the cause of events to the situational changes instead of his/her own decisions. That means, Stephen Elop will attribute the cause of the present state of Nokia to the changing situations!
Rational minds would ask, "Was the decision taken only by Elop? Would Nokia board agree to allow Elop to take the decision if they knew they had better alternatives [other than going windows way] two and half years back?"
 Given that the board members had access to all the information that Elop had, it is reasonable to assume that each member individually vetted all the different options in their personal capacity before agreeing to Elop's solution. What Elop most likely have done at that time is that he influenced these members in evaluating the potentials and risks that each option provided. He might have been successful in creating fear for future failure in sticking to existing course. He might have projected the value of Windows and Microsoft alliance much higher than it actually was. But ownership of the course steering lies with all the executive members of Nokia board.
Once the decision was taken, it was clear which path Nokia is heading. Mounting accumulated losses, market pressure, competition from Apple, Samsung and other Android-based smartphone OEMs took Nokia further away from its root and towards further grip of Microsoft.
But did Elop think that bringing Nokia mobile to Microsoft could make him a strong candidate for Ballmer's successor? Even if he did, how much could he bet that course of events will take the shape the way it happened when he took the plunge 2.5 years back? Nobody realistically could be sure. At most, he could do is play his cards the way he played and hope things will eventually take him to the coveted post that he might have been eying for.
Now how does this change for Microsoft? Would this bring the hardware success that eluded Microsoft and Ballmer all along? Well, fact is Nokia Lumia series with windows 8 has become a success. It is capturing market quite fast, providing a credible alternative to Android based smartphones, even at lower cost point. Merger in fact positions Lumia at stronger ground with control on both smartphone hardware and OS. It will give Lumia leverage to bring price of smartphone further down and present a credible competition to Android-based low cost phones in all emerging markets where the real smartphone battle has to be fought and won.
It will also help Microsoft to boost its advertising business where the battle with Google is being fought, by making advertisement more personalized for the users by integrating smartphone's on-device data with skydrive [Microsoft Cloud] and Outlook [Microsoft email]. But for this to work, Microsoft's existing strong culture of internal competition [and therefore wastage of creative bandwidth in political rivalry] must change and find a way to work like collaborative set of engineering/business functions. Lumia hardware engineering must be allowed to function independently of Windows software division for them to build on each other's strength. But if this strategy succeeds, Microsoft will have evolved itself for the new generation of users and move to a new position of strength.
So, good luck to Mr. Elop and RIP Nokia mobile [that's a bit hurtful for someone who always used Nokia handsets]!
The next news to watch is who is going to buy Blackberry/RIM!

India in a self-engineered financial crisis?

Larry Elliott of The Guardian writes in his post, "India's financial woes are rapidly approaching the critical stage. The rupee has depreciated by 44% in the past two years and hit a record low against the US dollar on Monday. The stock market is plunging, bond yields are nudging 10% and capital is flooding out of the country."

At the time of writing Rupee breached 64.5/$

Yesterday, Ruchir Sharma along-with Dr. Pranay Roy and Arun Shouri dissected Indian economy in a talk show in NDTV's news channel. Ruchir and his team at Morgan stanley put together few charts to show where India stands today. I have extracted the data from video and

FDI flow shrunk to half in 5 years. Official data
can be found here

While Forex Reserve stagnated, CAD ballooned.
FM said that CAD will be contained to $70bn

ballooning short-term debt a disturbing aspect

put them in charts here. Since, May, 2013, FII are pulling money from both equity and bond market. Ruchir's chart showed that FII drew out around $12 billion since May, $2 billion from equity and $10 billion from debt. The tipping point as everyone seem to be pointing to is Ben Bernanke's announcement about "tapering" Quantitative Easing which in plain word means, from September, US will slowly reduce pumping money in the market in response to US financial recovery. As soon as the announcement came, foreign money [not locked in capital investment] started moving back to US putting huge pressure on Indian currency. But the fact is Indian currency is  losing ground since last year, may not be as fast as it is losing between May and August. Indian Government did not appear to figure out the right move for the whole of the last year barring usual discourse of "Fundamentals are Strong". As GDP slowed, Current Account Deficit and fiscal deficit both ballooned while foreign exchange reserve started coming down slowly.

India did really bad compared to other EE

Contrast this with China which is still an export-surplus economy and still growing faster than India. While India's financial policies are tentative at best, China maintains firm grip on the value of Yuan. Ruchir showed that top 10 Indian companies have expanded their debt 6 times. The direct effect from that is, as he pointed out, some of the companies do not have enough cash flow to take care of interest payment. It is interesting to note that these corporate debtors have taken loans mostly from Indian banks and as an effect, banks' Non-Performing Assets have expanded a lot. CBI director made a statement yesterday that they are investigating NPA with various banks and asked

Indian Companies are adding their share of debt

respective CVOs [Chief Vigilance Officers] to assist them with the data. So why are these relevant? Well that is the point Ruchir is making. He is saying India is actually in financial crisis and a large part of that has to be attributed to ill-decisions or confusing financial policies that Government owns. In other words, this crisis rather than an effect of global slow-down, is largely self-engineered.
You can watch the video here

What Ruchir explained in the hour-long session is summarized by Larry quite well. He wrote, "In a sense, this is a classic case of deja vu, a revisiting of the Asian crisis of 1997-98 that acted as an unheeded warning sign of what was in store for the global economy a decade later. An emerging economy exhibiting strong growth attracts the attention of foreign investors. Inward investment comes in together with hot money flows that circumvent capital controls. Capital inflows push up the exchange rate, making imports cheaper and exports dearer.

Widening FD and CAD signal the crisis

The trade deficit balloons, growth slows, deep-seated structural flaws become more prominent and the hot money leaves."
How does India get out of this mess? Well, here things become less convincing. Investor's confidence has to be reinstated and that Bloomberg suggests, can only happen after the election! CAD has to be brought down to manageable 2% of GDP but that requires cutting down subsidies to corporates and energy prices and probably in food subsidies too. That is not going to happen before next election. Forex reserve may not be enough if the rupee continues its downward journey and India may have to go back to IMF again.
         Now one thing we must remember is that Economics as an applied body of knowledge is not an exact science, neither the economists can claim to accurately predict future given a circumstance. Things are messy because there are many competing interests and themes that are involved when one talks about country's economy. Dynamics between these competing chain of events are never clearly understood. So it become news when a prediction actually turns out to be true. Success of prediction is an exception rather than a rule, here. So, India's economy can collapse and go back by 5 years or circumstances may change and that could propel India to adopt right path. Indian FM spoke this afternoon and told that structural changes are being undertaken by the Govt. He assured that CAD and FD will be contained and growth will start by next quarter. While the market believes in his intent, it is not sure how those will be done and till people see any tangible results from Govt. policy changes, market sentiments are likely to remain the same and rupee will continue with its down-slide.
Either way, we have little options other than preparing ourselves for another gloomy decade of Indian economy. Journey will not be easy, weak economy opens political fissures, slows down country's growth, expands the rich-poor divide more, which in turn can lead to more social violence. But the silverline is that India has gone through worse phases in past. As one retired DRDO scientist told me once, fact that India still continues to exist as a country and a nation even after all the misadventures of its political masters and bureaucratic misdirections from its executives, proves beyond doubt [to him] that India is a holy land!
So let's hope that holiness of India will help us to sail through this time.

New Frontier of Marketing: Leveraging your emotional vulnerability

For last two years, I have been writing about this in this blog in different posts. The web has changed the world permanently and irrevocably. A large chunk of world population literally live inside the web. New generations will never know what it used to mean to live in analogue not-always-connected world. Thanks to myriad digital contraptions that you carry all the time, your location trail is available to anyone who is interested. New tools are continuously being developed that enhance the depth and breadth of the information trail that you leave behind in the web. But you already know that! You buy more powerful, more sophisticated smartphones, tablets which provide you faster apps to post your photos and videos, chat with your friends, 'like' posts and comment on the posts in real time while on move. They make your web-presence lot more richer, more lively. You want people to know and feel the length and breadth of your persona. At both conscious and unconscious level, web is your new sense organ, it breaks the local limits of your sense experiences and makes you expressions available across the web for others to notice.. Noticed, they definitely are but probably not the way you thought. We all like to believe that each of us has his/her own unique persona with his/her own evolved way that arms him/her to deal with reality in a manner that is different from other. So, even though we know that advertisers and product marketeers are targeting us to sell their stuff, we think that we know how to manage them, how not to let them intrude into our emotional space, how not to let them influence our decision making..But do we?
  There are experiments made and being made that try to find out how far your emotional irrationality is unpredictable. And do not be alarmed. Most of the researches overwhelmingly conclude that your emotions are predictable, however irrational they are! You panic when situations are presented that unsettle you, like everyone does; You feel vulnerable when you face unfavourable situations, like others do irrespective of where you live or which language you speak. You react, when you feel violated, belittled, like others do. You believe however ludicrous the content appears to be, when the same content is fed continuously to you through all your trusted information channels.
Now to be able to reliably guess your emotional state, one needs histories of situations and your reactions to them. I am sure you would agree that those who you consider closest to you, are closest because you think they understand you i.e. they know your emotional topography; what you like, what your soft spots are, how you react in a given scenario. And they sure do, otherwise, why would you confide them in?  Why would you reach out to them when you are disturbed, when you feel emotionally vulnerable? And they know you because you have let them know the trail of emotions and situation that you have gone through. In the new scheme of things, more you lose physical human touch, more you lay bare your emotions in the social portals, in your chats. And with the power, sophistication and reach of the analytics engines that present marketing world has at its disposal, those emotional signatures of yours are computable and usable in real time. After a heated argument with your spouse, when you are feeling particularly low and probably are looking for bear to cool you off, you are likely to welcome a pop-up ad that tells you about a new waterhole at just 1 km distance. Or if a sudden change of events at the stock market has made you feel particularly shaken financially, and you have a payment date nearby, how would you react to a call from bank offering some mortgage offer specifically customized for you? These, you probably would think benign. But how would you react when you learn that your kids are also being subjected to this type of massive, focused advertising manipulations? And they will not be limited only to product marketing, these tools can and will be used for mass opinion engineering. The Extreme the views are, the more pitched and intense would be the manipulation. Who draws the ethical boundary? Who monitors whether that boundary is being respected?
        Welcome to the world of new age marketing manipulation! You just cannot run away from this new reality of personalized advertizing and campaigning. Typically, a country would have legal framework to protect its citizen from this type of manipulative assaults but in this case, technology developed faster than the laws governing the advertising Industry. Which means you have no laws to protect yourself or your kids from advertisers to use your online /on-device data in order to present you their product/solution when you cannot refuse. There is no law to stop the advertisers/online campaigners use your personal data to get the result that they want. I saw a recent study report, by M. Ryan Calo from Washington University, that highlights the incompleteness/inadequacies of existing consumer protection laws.
He observes, "Today’s firms fastidiously study consumers and, increasingly, personalize every aspect of their experience. They can also reach consumers anytime and anywhere, rather than waiting for the consumer to approach the marketplace. These and related trends mean that firms can not only take advantage of a general understanding of cognitive limitations, but can uncover and even trigger consumer frailty at an individual level.
A new theory of digital market manipulation reveals the limits of consumer protection law and exposes concrete economic and privacy harms that regulators will be hard-pressed to ignore."
I definitely would urge everyone to read his report which is available at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2309703. But more importantly, we should actively participate in public discussions so that fast erosion of private space be arrested now with strengthened legal definition of digital market/campaign manipulation.