Competition in the Digital Age
News coverage of automation and machine learning tends to focus on extraordinary events, such as computers winning at Jeopardy and Go, and robotic arms flipping burgers in short-order restaurants. Additional headlines foster a sense of nightmares, conjuring pictures of autonomous cars killing pedestrians and newly automated establishments laying off their workforce. The combination of headlines …
[This article was initially published in HBR Online on 19th October, 2017] Netflix hit the industry with some bombshell moves this month. First, it announced that it plans to spend $8 billion on original content next year (including on 80 new movies). This is far more than any other online player. Obviously, this is great …
[This Post initially appeared in HBR Online on August 22, 2017] This summer marks 50 years since the publication of John Kenneth Galbraith’s The New Industrial State and its quick rise to the top of the New York Times Best Seller list. The book was one of the rare instances where an economist was able to capture public imagination and …
Continue reading "Reflections on Galbraith’s New Industrial State, 50 years later"
... at least for cars. Uber is well-known for having pushed autonomous vehicles. And when it first floated the idea, somewhat bemused onlookers wondered how this fit with their short-term goals of attracting drivers. But when Uber set up a major R&D facility in Pittsburgh -- gutting Carnegie Mellon's computer science department -- it seemed …
Continue reading "Neither Uber nor Lyft believe sharing is the future"
Cory Doctorow has an interesting piece in The Guardian on the ability of car owners/users to alter the software in their car. That is the broad issue but of course he writes about it in the context of the coming autonomous vehicles. Doctorow begins by throwing out the red herring that is the trolley problem …
Google is slowly but clearly shuttering Google Plus; its latest failed social network. In many respects this is not a surprise. As I wrote upon its launch in 2011, Google Plus demonstrated precisely why Google didn't get social as it, by default, asked people to think about restricting their social activity rather than by encouraging …
Continue reading "Google Plus exemplifies why self-disruption doesn't work"
In August 1995, Netscape held its initial public offering and caught the attention of every participant in computing and communications. It was a catalytic event for the commercial Internet, and it started the beginning of a long boom in investment by private firms, households, entrepreneurs, and venture capitalists. With the 20th anniversary approaching, it’s time …
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 …
A few years ago I wrote a post that I was quite proud of. It was entitled "Is Paul Krugman Click Worthy?" Here's an excerpt: The New York Times has just proposed to turn us all into Seinfeld‘s Elaine Benes. In episode 119 of the classic sitcom, Elaine’s preferred method of contraception is revealed to be the sponge. When the …
Amazon just made official its Kindle Unlimited service that, for $9.99 per month, offers subscribers unlimited access to, at the moment, 600,000 books (including some big titles like Harry Potter). Basically, this is the Netflix model applied to reading and, from my perspective, it is interesting because I predicted it two years ago in Information …
Continue reading "It's here: Netflix for Books or 'The Library'"
Digitopoly 