Competition in the Digital Age
It is time to look back at digital technology in 2025 and make light of it. This review will be arranged much like the Oscars, with awards in various categories. Just as in past years, there are three criteria for the dozen awards this year:• The award must involve digital technology, such as viral videos …
What can a nineteenth-century economist teach a twenty-first-century Chief Executive Officer (CEO) at one of the largest technology firms? More to the point, why is Microsoft's CEO, Satya Nadella, quoting William Stanley Jevons? Jevons was a dominant figure in economic thought in Britain during the second half of the nineteenth century, but not today. His …
Continue reading "Artificial Intelligence and the Jevons Paradox"
It is that time of year again: Time to look back at information technology in 2024 and make light of it. As with prior year-in-reviews, this one will be arranged like an award ceremony. There are three criteria for the dozen awards given out this year:• The award must be for something involving digital technology.• …
Crypto crashed, Musk mauled Twitter, and Messi made a deep fake mess. Every one of them deserves an award and ridicule. It is time for the digital awards of 2022.
It is that time of the year again! Time to review the digital events of 2020 and recognize achievements. Your humble correspondent has no idea how to do this at a grand scale without making a mockery of it. If the post can skewer Hollywood at the same time, then all the better. This post …
Continue reading "The year in review for digital technology"
Take a step back from the daily details of events. Compare the recession unfolding in the United States at this moment with the two previous downturns. Today’s economic events share a surprising set of common features with the dot-com boom and bust of 1997 to 2001, and fewer similarities with the financial meltdown of 2008-09. …
The first issue of AER Insights is out and the very first article is one by Francesco Caselli and Alan Manning on "Robot Arithmetic: New Technologies and Wages." Here is the abstract: Existing economic models show how new technology can cause large changes in relative wages and inequality. But there are also claims, based largely …
Did the rise of free information technology improve GDP? It is commonly assumed that it did. After all, the Internet has changed the way we work, play, and shop. Smartphones and free apps are ubiquitous. Many forms of advertising moved online quite a while ago and support gazillions of “free” services. Free apps changed leisure long ago—just ask any teenager or any parent …
It happens often. An old media company makes a crazy and misunderstood statement about new media. Sometimes I start to think that after all of these years, maybe just maybe, they will start to get it. But then a story appears that demonstrates how far off things are. That happened today. The Globe and Mail …
After years of seeming missteps (e.g., Google Plus, Google Glass, Google Wave, Google Keep), Google roared back yesterday with a new Photos service. This seems pedestrian in terms of Google's usual ambitions but actually it is incredibly on mission; that is, if Google's mission is to organise the world's information. The new service is billed …
Continue reading "Google's Big Photos Jump and Machine Learning"
Digitopoly 