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 …
HuffPo and the Loss of Trust
You may not have noticed, but recently the Huffington Post has been the poster child for lack of journalistic integrity. The actual details may appear to be small to many people, but not to me. HuffPo has made a sloppy journalistic error, publishing a historically inaccurate story, and on a claim many experts have proven …
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 …
Baking the Data Layer
The cookie turned 20 just the other day. More than a tasty morsel of technology, two decades of experimentation have created considerable value around its use. The cookie originated with the ninth employee of Netscape, Lou Montulli. Fresh out of college in June 1994, Montulli sought to embed a user’s history in a browser’s functions. …
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 …
Piracy Undermining Content Creation: Loch Ness Monster or Black Swan?
Theory and common sense dictate that piracy should threaten new product creation. If it costs money to bring new works to market, then a reduction in revenue – all else constant - should render some projects uneconomic. So compelling is this theory that the content industries share it with lawmakers at every opportunity. Robert Solow …
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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 …
Digitopoly 