Peter Cochrane

Peter's Uncommon Sense
Back to Publications & Opinion

Peter writes a regular column for www.silicon.com - all the contributions are available below.

Peter's new book, "Uncommon Sense" based on his columns for Silicon.com, is available to pre order now!

Peter Cochrane's Uncommon Sense: Six Degrees And Super Nodes - 26-08-2004
Are we even more closely connected than we thought?
Peter Cochrane's Uncommon Sense: Upside-Down Security - 01-07-2004
Turn everything on its head...
Peter Cochrane's Uncommon Sense: Free Net Access For All - 17-06-2004
I get online wherever I go - without dial-up
Peter Cochrane's Uncommon Sense: The Ever-Evolving Virus - 20-05-2004
Our best defense: Build a 'killer bot'
Peter Cochrane's Uncommon Sense: Are IT Departments Doomed? - 06-05-2004
'Tech-nomads' just don't need them...
Peter Cochrane's Uncommon Sense: Hype and Skype - 21-04-2004
...and how telephony is changing forever
Peter Cochrane's Uncommon Sense: Superhighway? What Superhighway? - 08-04-2004
Why have we lost the impetus while certain countries have forged ahead?
Peter Cochrane's Uncommon Sense: Outsourcing And Offshoring - 25-03-2004
"Just as IT created these new jobs we have to look to new industries to create the next wave. And this is the hard bit."
Peter Cochrane's Uncommon Sense: Fractal Stupidity - 11-03-2004
Transport... health care... the environment - are we missing the obvious?
Peter Cochrane's Uncommon Sense: All The World In Your Shirt Pocket - 26-02-2004
All the music and movies ever made stored in one pocket-sized device....
Peter Cochrane's Uncommon Sense: Analogue or Digital? - 12-02-2004
"We simply cannot define what is alive and what is intelligent."
Peter Cochrane's Uncommon Sense: Blind Purchases - 28-01-2004
Why is so much procurement so ineffectual?
Peter Cochrane's Uncommon Sense: Business Transformation - 14-01-2004
Why the new economy trumps the old economy every time (or at least almost every time)
Peter Cochrane's Uncommon Sense: A Christmas wish list - 17-12-2003
Now Santa, take a deep breath and get your techie hat on
Peter Cochrane's Uncommon Sense: MP3 Shoplifting - 03-12-2003
Criminal activity or the kick in the proverbial an industry needs?
Peter Cochrane's Uncommon Sense: Holistic Security - 26-11-2003
We have the ability to be far more subtle and capable...
Peter Cochrane's Uncommon Sense: Wi-Fi Versus Soap And Towels - 13-11-2003
Why providers simply need to clean up their acts if they're to survive...
Peter Cochrane's Uncommon Sense: Net Antibodies - 30-10-2003
Given the size, speed and interconnectivity of the net, viral and worm infections now spread far faster and wider than any other human infection generated from a single sneeze...
Peter Cochrane's Uncommon Sense: Logistics On The Move - 16-10-2003
Back after a break...
Peter Cochrane's Uncommon Sense: Crash, Crash, Crash - 25-09-2003
On a collision course with technology...
Peter Cochrane's Uncommon Sense: Mobile Guesses - 17-09-2003
Here's what the future of mobile communications will look like...
Peter Cochrane's Uncommon Sense: 24 hours in 2020 - 11-09-2003
How will we be living our lives, to what extent will we be thanking - or blaming - technology?
Peter Cochrane's Uncommon Sense: The Ups And Downs Of Power - 03-09-2003
"The societal machine has been finely honed to be very efficient but as a result it is now becoming very brittle."
Peter Cochrane's Uncommon Sense: Six Degrees And Supernodes - 21-08-2003
How interconnected are we? Perhaps even more so than cliché leads us to believe...
Peter Cochrane's Uncommon Sense: Death By A Million Tracks - 14-08-2003
Sure all current file-swappers can be sued - it will only take 2,739 years
Peter Cochrane's Uncommon Sense: Grey Goo - 07-08-2003
The next big panic?
Peter Cochrane's Uncommon Sense: Network Power - 31-07-2003
From concentrated skill to distributed ignorance?
Peter Cochrane's Uncommon Sense: Medical Records - 24-07-2003
Poor management of data in healthcare - and so many opportunities being lost
Peter Cochrane's Uncommon Sense: Trusting People And Self-Organisation - 17-07-2003
Do you prefer control or do you put your faith in autonomy, emergent behaviour and self-determination?
Peter Cochrane's Uncommon Sense: My Life Bits - 10-07-2003
We live on a timeline and pass through space but our life bits need not.
Peter Cochrane's Uncommon Sense: Nature And Engineering - 03-07-2003
How far have silicon life forms come, compared to our own carbon-based selves?
Peter Cochrane's Uncommon Sense: DIY v DIFM Networks - 26-06-2003
And the winner is...
Peter Cochrane's Uncommon Sense: Wi-Fi On The Fly - 19-06-2003
Wi-Fi is wireless but not normally 'on-the-move' mobile - expect that to change
Peter Cochrane's Uncommon Sense: Not So Wonderful Spam - 12-06-2003
Doubling every 18 months - just like Moore's Law
Peter Cochrane's Uncommon Sense: All-Seeing Technology - 04-06-2003
How many times have you been on candid camera today?
Peter Cochrane's Uncommon Sense: The Right Technology For The Right Job - 28-05-2003
Want to send me a business plan? Make sure it's not based on this technology...
Peter Cochrane's Uncommon Sense: Porn Or No Porn? - 22-05-2003
Don't demonise the net - let it work for us
Peter Cochrane's Uncommon Sense: Circuit Or Packet, Clean Or Dirty? - 14-05-2003
..networks and the internet, that is. Did you know the dilemma facing telcos worldwide?
Peter Cochrane's Uncommon Sense: You Wear It Well - 08-05-2003
The clothing of the future...
Peter Cochrane's Uncommon Sense: Web Realities - 01-05-2003
Who does what online, and why?
Peter Cochrane's Uncommon Sense: Short-Termism Of The Worst Kind - 24-04-2003
Have we suddenly lost 60 IQ points?
Peter Cochrane's Uncommon Sense: Intelligent Machines - 17-04-2003
What's the big problem - technology or human interaction with technology?
Peter Cochrane's Uncommon Sense: Forget 'Think Different' - Think 'Non-Linear'... - 09-04-2003
Let's start applying 'deep thought' to some everyday problems...
Peter Cochrane's Uncommon Sense: The Cyborgs Are Here - 02-04-2003
And they're nothing like the Borg in Star Trek. In fact, Peter would be happy to be one...
Peter Cochrane's Uncommon Sense: Conference turnaround - 26-03-2003
Presentation is everything, as they say - and here's why...
Peter Cochrane's Uncommon Sense: Another Management Gaffe - 19-03-2003
The only people who might profit from snooping, in the broad sense, are the lawyers.
Peter Cochrane's Uncommon Sense: Reliability and downtime - 12-03-2003
Five ISPs and he still ends up cursing his computer like the rest of us.
Peter Cochrane's Uncommon Sense: The invisible revolution Distributed Us versus centralised Them. And the winner is... - 05-03-2003
Technology is morphing previously rigid power relationships all around the world. And that's no bad thing.
Peter Cochrane's Uncommon Sense: Salesmanship - or lack thereof - 26-02-2003
Watching technologists sell their ideas to customers is like an evening at a Moscow State open-air strip club in January.
Peter Cochrane's Uncommon Sense: Insecure Thinking - 12-02-2003
Are We The Weakest Link?
Peter Cochrane's Uncommon Sense: Shopping Protocol - 05-02-2003
There are better ways to shop...
Peter Cochrane's Uncommon Sense: No Market Savvy - 30-01-2003
Boom bust, boom bust
Peter Cochrane's Uncommon Sense: Save everything - but don't be tidy! - 23-01-2003
Filed data or big uni-heap - what's your preference?
Peter Cochrane's Uncommon Sense: Wireless Everything - 16-01-2003
Like moving from two people having a conversation in a quiet room to a cocktail party where everyone is talking at once?
Peter Cochrane's Uncommon Sense: The Oil Crisis of 2003 - 09-01-2003
The biggest challenge for us this year?
Peter Cochrane's Uncommon Sense: Christmas Shopping 2002 - 02-01-2003
How was xmas online for you?
Peter Cochrane's Uncommon Sense: Science And Belief - 19-12-2002
Let's not create a house of cards standing on a foundation of sand.
Peter Cochrane's Uncommon Sense: Technology Fatigue - 12-12-2002
Have we hit 'Moores Wall'?
Peter Cochrane's Uncommon Sense: Crippling the WWW - 05-12-2002
Advocating an Internet police force?
Peter Cochrane's Uncommon Sense: G Force - 28-11-2002
Ruggedisation - in a (horribly made up) word
Peter Cochrane's Uncommon Sense: Cochrane's Law - 21-11-2002
Too many cooks... do what exactly?
Peter Cochrane's Uncommon Sense: Software Licensing - Time To Get Angry - 14-11-2002
Licensed? Incensed, more like.
Peter Cochrane's Uncommon Sense: Summits, models and machines - 07-11-2002
"The truth is none of us have a clue what the key threat to humanity really is."
Peter Cochrane's Uncommon Sense: How many mobile phones do you need? - 31-10-2002
"We are witnessing a divergence on a par with the Cambrian explosion of life itself some 500 million years ago."
Peter Cochrane's Uncommon Sense: Who goes there? - 24-10-2002
Chip implant time
Peter Cochrane's Uncommon Sense: Education that doesn't fit - 17-10-2002
Chaos coffee...
Peter Cochrane's Uncommon Sense: Who'd be a copyright lawyer? Not me... - 10-10-2002
Imagine, just a few years from now, being able to store every film and song ever released on a single device. Now imagine content companies can't come around to embracing that. I'm shedding a tear...
Peter Cochrane's Uncommon Sense: Scales of grey - 03-10-2002
All very basic but oh so effective...
Peter Cochrane's Uncommon Sense: Uncontrollable bits -26-09-2002
"Anything to declare, sir?"
Peter Cochrane's Uncommon Sense: Your communications - compromised - 18-09-2002
All very basic but oh so effective...
Peter Cochrane's Uncommon Sense: Chips in everything - Including me - 05-09-2002
A future of electronic tags and intelligence in everything...
Peter Cochrane's Uncommon Sense: Stupidity on an industrial scale - 29-08-2002
Some of the most greedy, desperate and stupid people... I ever met are employed in the entertainment sector...
Peter Cochrane's Uncommon Sense: Screen tests - 21-08-2002
Computer, show me that spreadsheet...
Peter Cochrane's Uncommon Sense: The blue sack - 15-08-2002
Network-based storage sounds like a boring business issue. Peter Cochrane takes a very personal look backwards and forwards and proves otherwise...
Peter Cochrane's Uncommon Sense: Exponential growth - so misunderstood - 08-08-2002
Yet our leaders are always talking about it...
Peter Cochrane's Uncommon Sense: The 3G chasm - deeper than we thought - 01-08-2002
Have we seen the worst?
Peter Cochrane's Uncommon Sense: ButterflyWings.com - 25-07-2002
A butterfly flaps its wings and a dot-com goes bust?
Peter Cochrane's Uncommon Sense: Being a squirrel - 18-07-2002
There's gold in them there hard drives...
Peter Cochrane's Uncommon Sense: here am I coming from? - 11-07-2002
A personal primer from Peter...
Peter Cochrane's Uncommon Sense: Don't make life harder than it already is - 11-07-2002
A lesson for everyone - especially debt-laden telcos...
Peter Cochrane's Uncommon Sense: It's our brains that lack bandwidth - 04-07-2002
You've been told...