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Roger McNamee has been a leading investor in science and technology for thirty years. Lately, he has been telling people we are on the verge of a new tech cycle--one that will change the way that we interact with technology, with businesses, and with each other. And while he can't put his finger on exactly what is happening, he has six "hypotheses" that he says we should be watching and testing. McNamee discussed these hypotheses in a talk at TEDxSantaCruz :

IBM is marking the 100th anniversary of its incorporation. And far from being a relic, IBM seems to have caught its stride once again in the last decades. Take a look at the company's market capitalisation compared to its young competitors in the tech sector (from The Economist ): It is a remarkable feat for any company, but especially so for a high tech company. IBM operates in a field where the basic foundation of business products changes rapidly. But, as The Economist details, the company has survived by doing what so many companies across a variety of fields fail to do. Its business was based on punch cards, but it did not allow itself to become a dinosaur when punch cards started to fade in favor of the early calculating machines. As leadership of the company passed from Thomas Watson, Sr., to Thomas Watson, Jr., IBM became the global leader in computing. From The Economist: Under the younger Watson, IBM became by far the world’s biggest computer-maker. He did the trick by betting the company on the System/360, IBM’s first family of mainframe computers, which took years and $5 billion (in 1960s dollars)—more than the Manhattan Project that led to the atomic bomb—to develop. Launched in 1964, the System/360 became the first dominant computing platform, mainly because all the family’s machines, big or small, were “compatible”, meaning they could run the same software. By 1969 IBM’s market share had grown to 70%. It thus became the first IT company to be called an “evil empire” and aroused the ire of America’s antitrust authorities. The Reagan administration eventually dropped the case in 1982, asserting that it had been “without merit”. The second platform shift—from costly mainframes to “distributed” computing systems, including PCs—was a much closer shave. Even while the antitrust case was dragging on, technological progress had begun to undermine IBM’s near-monopoly and, more importantly, its business model of renting its expensive machines to customers. Since this was highly profitable, IBM was very slow to deliver cheaper and distributed computing systems, made possible by new processors. When these systems took off in the early 1990s, IBM’s business collapsed. Mainframe revenues dropped from $13 billion in 1990 to $7 billion in 1993 and losses of $16 billion piled up. “Only a handful of people understand how precariously close IBM came to running out of cash,” wrote Lou Gerstner, who was brought in to turn the company around, in “Who Says Elephants Can’t Dance?”, his book about the revival. He fired 35,000 employees to cut costs. The lesson of the story appears to be that companies that develop a strong sense of what the company is rather than being simply a vehicle for a certain product or certain type of product stands a better chance at long term success. Read IBM: 1100100 and counting here .

The other Microsoft founder, Paul Allen 's memoir comes out this week. Allen has been doing a series of interviews about the book,titled Idea Man . Our favorites so far come from our friends at the public radio program Marketplace , especially this one . But the 60 Minutes interview is also worth your time. Here it is:

When Nathan Myhrvold "retired" as Microsoft 's Chief Technology Officer, he wandered into a wilderness decidedly different from many retirees. His was a wilderness where people with "crazy ideas" needed help. He wanted to make their ideas "less crazy" and help generate new solutions to global problems. Myhrvold founded Intellectual Ventures an investment firm that supports some of the most visionary inventors, and gives them the resources and structural support to take good ideas and turn them into products. And as a company, Intellectual Ventures now files between 500 and 600 patents a year, according to Myhrvold--making them one of the 30 most prolific invention outfits in the country (even though they are much smaller than other companies on the list). Charlie Rose spoke with Myhrvold recently about the importance of supporting inventors. Here's an excerpt: You can watch the full interview here .

Bill Gates changed the face of business with his success in leading Microsoft through the global tech revolution of the last few decades. Now he devotes his time and innovative thinking to fighting global poverty and trying to improve quality of life in developing nations. So his annual talk at the TED conference tends to focus on how technological innovation can help global development. This year, he focused on the dangers of climate change for the world's most vulnerable communities. And he calls for "lots of companies" to work on pushing forward energy technologies, and fast.

Microsoft's new search engine, Bing , has been up and running a week now. It is too early to gauge whether or not it will take over as the number two search engine, or even starts to challenge Google, but it appears to be getting some serious traffic . And that means companies and entrepreneurs are sorting out how to maximize their profile on Bing. Lisa Barone of Small Business Trends says it is time for small business owners to make sure they have listings through Bing's Local Listing Center : It’s really important that you take the time to complete accurate business listings in Google, Yahoo, Bing and the other third-party service providers. The more accurate information there is about your company out there, the better chances your customers are going to find you. And when it only takes a few minutes, is there really any excuse not to give your Web site the best possible chance at ranking? No. There’s not. Barone walks through the simple steps for creating a listing. Read her post here .

Last week Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer went back to his old business school, Stanford, and spoke to a class of students studying entrepreneurship. And he told them that this is "really a good time to start a business." The global economic crisis, as bad as it is, has provided a corrective measure for good entrepreneurs. Ideas that are worth funding will get it, while bad ideas will not take advantage of a broken system. “The ideas that weren’t good enough shouldn’t have been funded and they won’t be funded today,” Ballmer tells the students. And "t here may be more opportunites in the long run, even if the Entrepreneurial opportunities are less 'frothy' than they might have been in the short run." Here is Ballmer's lecture: