Today in Tech: Airlines and free market; Hiring in IT companies; MIT & Aaron Swartz

Airlines travel portals and friction free capitalism In the early days of internet, before the dotcom bubble burst, the one phrase that dominated the conversations of those who were thinking about the ‘big picture’ was ‘friction free capitalism’ - “the idea that ubiquitous and equal access to information will create the closest thing yet to Adam Smith's perfect market,” as an Economist survey from 1997 puts it. In a sector that’s moving towards such a scenario, you can expect the margins to drop. Business Standard today talks about how it’s panning out in online travel portals: Profit margins from selling Profit margins in selling air tickets have fallen from around 7 to 8 per cent to around 5 to 6 per cent thanks to renewed efforts by airlines to sell tickets themselves. As a result, travel portals are moving to a new segment which promises better margins. Hotel bookings which offer 10-15%. This shift also tells us something about how a new technology gets foothold - it’s impact is not the same across sectors, and often, it expands step by step.

Hiring by IT companies down by a half
Business Line reports that hiring by the top IT services companies has dropped by half. “In the four quarters ending December, the top four companies totally hired 55,716 employees against 1,08,117 in the corresponding period of previous year,” it says. It’s a reflection of the linear business model that IT companies follow. It quotes E. Balaji, CEO, Randstad India, who struck a positive note: .. with the market gearing up and as visibility gradually improves, expect IT hiring to be back on track towards the latter half of 2013.” Right now, the companies have enough people on bench to tap into to cater to new business. For example, TCS has utilization rate of a little over 72% and Infosys a little less than 70%.

MIT and Aaron Swartz
Many of us grew up with friends who had sent their souls to US long before they entered engineering colleges. And, as a result, many of us grew up hearing stories about the amazing culture at MIT; about the hacks who played a range of pranks, from placing a police car on the top of its dome to inflating a large, black weather balloon in the middle of  the stadium during a Harvard - Yale football game. A newspaper later reported: MIT won The Game

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLg2XpY0L3w[/youtube]

How things change.

Brewster Kahle, an M.I.T. graduate and founder of the digital library Internet Archive, where Mr. Swartz gave programming assistance, wrote: “When I was at M.I.T., if someone went to hack the system, say by downloading databases to play with them, might be called a hero, get a degree, and start a company. But they called the cops on him. Cops.”

Also of interest

• IBM Makes More Money, Selling Less of What People Want : Businessweek
• IBM & Google shine in the fourth quarter | Reuters
•  One-third of American workers aren't sleeping enough to function at peak levels, and that chronic exhaustion is costing billions of dollars in lost productivity | WSJ
• Kim Dotcom, noisy rogue with a commonplace startup idea: Engadget

The thoughts and opinions shared here are of the author.