Today, Wikipedia is not available to us -- at least not easily (you can still view it on mobile devices and also in your browser with some tweaks). The reason is that it is part of a protest against SOPA and PIPA -- two pieces of legislation being considered by the US Congress. To read …
Exit and voice in access to scholarly articles
For some reason, this week is the week of discussion of open access to scholarly articles. Here is a call for scientists to share results or lose funding (in Bloomberg). Here in the NYT is concern that new legislation will lock down NIH funded research where previously it had been openly available. Here is Kevin …
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Live books should be with us
A euphemism for physical books these days is to call them 'dead tree' versions. Of course, that is just descriptive as they have always been that but perhaps a better term may be 'dead' versions. In today's WSJ, Nicholas Carr argues that dead is good. An e-book, I realized, is far different from an old-fashioned printed one. …
News Zealots: Old and New
Over the last few days a debate has emerged (or more accurately continued) between those who think newspapers in their current form are socially desirable and should be supported to continue in more or less their current form and those who think that the entire institution has come to an end and is in the …
The Facebook Parents' Dilemma: COPPA and my daughter turn 13
Recently, I became the proud father of a 13 year old daughter. I can't say it was unexpected (I had a good handle on the notion for about 13 years), it still comes as a shock. The day was greeted, of course, from a letter from the Disney Corporation. Dear Parent or Guardian of xxxxxxx, …
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Entrepreneurship and inequality
So I was reading Felix Salmon's account of a debate here in Toronto between Paul Krugman and Larry Summers. I guess it was supposed to be an insider-outside type divide. I was struck by this passage. Summers also tried to defend inequality, at least in part, by saying that “suppose the United States had 30 …
Moore's Law in solar energy
In today's NYT, Paul Krugman highlights the subsidy being given to the 'fracking' methods of fossil fuel extraction: basically, another example where costs are socialized although, let's face it, the most common example. The story of an old technology using non-market means to keep itself afloat is, of course, the way things work. (Just travel …
Technological Plateau or Promise?
http://s.marketwatch.com/media/swf/main.swf Have we reached a technological plateau or is innovation still going strong? If you've read my book with Andy McAfee, you know where I stand. David Wessel of the WSJ discusses the pros and cons of the argument and ties it to our current economic woes in this five minute video.
Google Reader design, sigh
Warning, this is going to be a ranty post not really related to my expertise. There are two types of blog reader -- those who use RSS feeds and those who don't. Those who don't, visit a few blogs each day to see what's new. Those who use RSS feeds, use a feed reader that …
Not All the Economic News is Bad
The past decade has been terrible in terms of job growth and median wage growth, and sadly that was true even before it culminated in the worst recession since the 1930s. But not all the news is bad. Although it’s not much discussed, this has actually been the best decade since the 1960s for productivity …
Digitopoly 