All students of the computer industry have heard of Bill Lowe, the leader of an IBM Boca Raton facility that launched the IBM PC. That launch was a signal event in computing. It catalyzed growth in the small systems market. William C. LoweI had the great pleasure to interview Bill a few years ago for …
The State of Performance-driven Management in America
I teach at a School of Management so you won’t be surprised to learn that I think good management can make a huge difference in the performance of companies, and ultimately the economy. But you may be surprised that there is very little economic research on the effects of management. Sure, there’s lots of speculation and countless …
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Crowd-Sourcing and Crowd-Hunting and the Boston Marathon Bomb Brothers.
How did the Boston Marathon Bombing brothers get caught? The release of videos played a key role. This decision to release this video has been called many things – a risky decision, a calculated bet, a crucial turning point, and a fortunate use of crowd-sourcing. Let’s not get sloppy with the use of modern lingo. …
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A Legend in Economics Passes
By Professor Thomas N. Hubbard, Senior Associate Dean, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University Armen Alchian died yesterday. He was 98. Many economists of my generation did not know Armen personally. However, signs of his work are pervasive in the field. There are many good examples of this in the research and teaching of many …
Calm Economics
Calm economics is a flavor of economics that prizes insight developed under the auspices of calm deliberation. Many participants in tech markets today digest calm economics daily. They know it when they see it in the Wall Street analysis, or during investor meetings, like the ones Warren Buffet conducts. Look, I call this “calm economics” …
Whitewater, Wimax, and the Milky Way
Our solar system inhabits an anonymous nub in one of the swirling fingers of the Milky Way. Suburban life renders the neighborhood invisible from the earth’s surface, collateral damage from too much light. Before a dam turned it into a reservoir, the Stanislaus River wandered through the foothills of the Sierras, far from such interference. …
Does the clothesline paradox apply to IT?
Does the clothesline paradox apply to information technology? There is a relationship between the clothesline paradox and digital dark matter, but there is also a subtle and important difference. It is important to keep those differences straight. It makes a difference to several contemporary policy debates. That will take some explaining. There are some terms …
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Hollowing Out
Tom Edsall does a nice job summarizing the increasing hollowing out of the job market in his New York Times column today. The employment/population ratio has fallen drastically since 1999 even as Real GDP hit an all time high this month. Edsall quotes Andy McAfee and me arguing that technological progress is part of the …
A dumb compromise to save the ACS and Economic Census
Last week I commented in this space about the Tea Party's desire to make a symbolic cut in government by eliminating the American Community Survey and the Economic Census at the US Census. This would change economic statistics in the US, upending a system that has been in place since the end of World War …
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Free Podcasts
Some folk like to read blogs. Some folk like to listen to podcasts. Why not give everyone the option to do what they prefer? Now it is possible to read or listen to many of the essays that appear in my IEEE Micro Economics column (and appear here in digitopoly). The IEEE deserves credit for …
Digitopoly 