About
For over a decade Precursor® has been the leading research consultancy focused on anticipating, framing, and spotlighting emerging Internet irresponsibility problems, and devising and promoting responsible Internet solutions.
Precursor® has pioneered a new Internet research discipline, Macrointernetics™, the study of the systemic risks of universal Internet disruptions.
In early 2019, Precursor® Founder Scott Cleland coined the new term, “The Internet Reset” to describe the geopolitical secular change in Internet public policy, from an ungoverned, irresponsible, Wild West Internet, towards a more governed, responsible Internet.
In 2020, Cleland’s responsible Internet thought leadership included:
- “The Internet Imperative Is Protect People by Restoring a Duty-of-Care”
- “America’s Internet Reset Provides an Opportunity for a Responsible Prosperous Internet”
- “Rebalancing the Internet Imbalance of a 25-Year Utopian Policy Experiment”
The Internet Reset
“The Internet Reset” is the geopolitical secular change in Internet public policy, from an ungoverned Wild West Internet, towards a more governed Internet, since most nations and the EU are establishing increasing sovereign government authority, rules, and control over the Internet that traverses their borders.
Disruption disrupted.
- Internet disruption is a two-way dynamic, like Newton’s third law of motion says: every action has an equal and opposite reaction.
- So just as Internet autonomy policy profoundly disrupted and changed the world, the world’s increasing sovereign Internet policy changes will continue to profoundly disrupt the Internet and its universal disruptions.
Precursor® Founder, Scott Cleland, was the first to identify the catalyst and inflection point that caused and drove the Internet Reset, and then organize the chaos of the nascent Internet Reset into coherent empirical frameworks and predictive models. He coined “the Internet Reset” term in early 2019.
Proven Expertise & Thought Leadership
Scott Cleland is a world-leading Internet policy expert.
26-year track record of anticipating and navigating Internet policy-related change for institutional investors/Fortune 100 firms.
Institutional Investor #1 independent telecom analyst in 2004 & 2005, for pioneering Change Research
8 Congressional subcommittees have sought his expert testimony a total of 16 times
Deputy United States Coordinator, International Communications & Information Policy, in the H.W. Bush Administration
U.S. State Dept. Advisory Committee Member for International Communications & Information Policy 2003-2014
Authored widely read Precursor Blog 2006-2018; first to document many key Internet policy, antitrust, and unaccountability problems precipitating the Techlash.
For more please see: ScottCleland.com
Scott Cleland has a proven thought leadership record.
As an investment analyst, Cleland was the first to anticipate and navigate:
- The FCC rollback of cable rates by double digits when the market missed the risk;
- Passage of the seminal 1996 Telecom Act that revolutionized communications policy from monopoly to competition for the first time, and facilitated the open Internet;
- That the Telecom Act would strongly favor the Baby Bells over AT&T/long distance;
- That it would be legal and advantageous for the Baby Bells to merge/consolidate;
- That changes in media ownership rules would trigger a rapid roll-up of the radio industry, going from a limit of ~30 stations to allowing 1000+ radio station groups;
- That the FCC's managed competition policies of heavy price subsidies favoring CLEC local competitors would fail, and that mass CLEC bankruptcies would occur;
- That the DOJ would block WorldCom-Sprint ending WorldCom’s roll-up growth;
- That WorldCom was “dead growth model walking” near its peak $140b valuation;
- Later that WorldCom would go bankrupt; it did, triggering the Sarbanes-Oxley Act;
- That the $1 trillion fiber bubble part of the $4 trillion Dotcom bubble would burst because the market assumed annual data traffic growth was 12x faster than reality.
As an industry Internet strategist, Cleland was first to anticipate and document:
- 2007: The Google-DoubleClick anticompetitive case, in Senate testimony;
- 2008: The dependency crux of the Google-Yahoo ad agreement problem;
- 2008: How Google systematically threatens Americans’ privacy in House testimony;
- 2009: The systemic risk of uneconomic risk laundering from mass ETF indexing;
- 2009: How Google extends its search monopoly to monopsony over digital info;
- 2009: Privacy problems with online behavioral advertising, in House testimony;
- 2010: Competition in the evolving digital marketplace, in House testimony;
- 2011: Google’s unaccountable information power in first critical book on Google;
- 2011: Why the Google-Motorola acquisition and patent play backfires
- 2012: The ways the world was going to fundamentally change the Internet;
- 2012: The unique Google privacy problem – for the South Korea Privacy Council;
- 2013: The peaking of America’s Internet dominance after the Snowden NSA leaks;
- 2013: That Bitcoin/cryptocurrencies were a clear bubble that would end badly;
- 2013: Discovering and defining the Internet’s largely hidden cyber-ideology;
- 2014: Charting Google’s monopoly world-wide-watch over the WorldWideWeb;
- 2015: Defining cyber-systemic risk for the first time;
- 2016: Detecting Facebook/Google abruptly stopped competing in search & social;
- 2016: How Google’s information is power -- info-opoly power;
- 2017: US Internet sector is 10x more concentrated than the offline marketplace;
- 2017: Amazon, Google & Facebook are standard monopoly distribution networks;
- 2017: The telling timeline of Google’s extraordinary U.S. government influence;
- 2017: Why Facebook/Google/Amazon would be epicenter of bipartisan ‘techlash;’
- 2017: US antitrust enforcement credibility crisis: 3 Internet monopolies & 4 cartels;
- 2017: How Google/Facebook/Amazon cartelized US Internet start-up financing;
- 2018: Rejecting the Google School of No-Antitrust, U. Chicago Conf. White Paper
- 2018: How Americans lost their broad legal rights to privacy;
- 2018: The estimation of the huge hidden costs of U.S. Internet industrial policy;
- 2018: How US Internet policy creates anticompetitive asymmetric accountability;
- 2018: How US Internet policy causes market failure to protect consumer welfare;
- 2018: How online network effects are exponentially more powerful than offline’s.
Contact
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