A couple of things have happened this week regarding the use of voice as a form of communication. First of all, Apple’s new iOS8 allows users to send others short voice messages instead of text messages. Second, today, Ray Ozzie (whom Bill Gates called “one of the five best programmers in the universe”) released a …
Contradictions, Amazon and Attention
Two pieces appeared on Medium in the last couple of days about Amazon; both critical and complimentary in their own way. But put together they reveal a contradiction at the heart of what Amazon is doing in terms of social value.Let me explain. The first piece you should read is by Clay Shirky. When Shirky nails …
Apple’s new Identification Revolution
It was almost impossible to miss Apple’s product announcements yesterday. The usual new iPhones but also an Apple Watch that itself offers fascinating innovations in the user interface; but that is something that I’ll look at another day. From an economics perspective, however, the biggest news was Apple Pay and near as I can tell …
Why is the TI-84 calculator unstoppable?
Last year one of my kids needed a graphing calculator for school. We went to Staples and it seemed that the recommended one was a $130 TI-84 graphing calculator. I was outraged. Why would we need this? There was nothing this calculator did that you could not do for free on the web or through …
The case against ‘investing’ in bitcoins
Over at Vox.com, Tim B Lee, Vox’s resident explainer on bitcoins invested in bitcoins (again) and told us why. He makes the following points:“Bitcoin is both a currency and a payment network.” I agree with this. There is lots of potential for bitcoin (and its ilk) to be a more efficient payments network and improve the ability of …
Monkey selfies and copyright
OK, as it is Friday afternoon, it is time to examine the monkey in the room: who owns copyright when some narcissistic non-human takes a selfie with a human's camera? According to legal opinion, the answer is: not the human. What that means, is that as only humans can own copyright -- well, and there …
The ownership of the machines
CGP Grey makes great explanatory videos. They are very thoughtful and noticeably PowerPoint generated but this time he branched out into a massive 15 minute documentary styled affair. The video is “no humans need apply” and it deals with topics near to my co-blogger Erik Brynjolfsson’s heart. The story in the video is that if …
The Two Amazons: The Disruptor and the Architect
Over the last month, I outlined four broad entrepreneurial strategies that start-up ventures could choose between. The idea was that they had to focus on just one because (a) they had limited resources and (b) that the four choices were, in fact, substitutes. But Amazon has become a puzzle in this more recently and I …
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2014 Next 36 Best Ventures
Today was Venture Day for the Next 36. This is a program that takes 36 of Canada’s finest undergraduate would-be entrepreneurs, puts them into teams, gives them starting capital and legal resources and teaches them business while they explore setting up their ventures. Today we got to take stock of where they had come …
Competition amongst cryptocurrencies and exchanges
In one of the first of its kind, Neil Gandal and Hanna Halaburda have released a new Bank of Canada working paper exploring the relationships between exchange rates between the USD and various cryptocurrencies (including Bitcoin). Here is the abstract with their findings: We analyze how network effects affect competition in the nascent cryptocurrency market. …
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Digitopoly 