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 …
Steve Jobs, Innovator
It took a couple of weeks to read through Walter Isaacson's biography of Steve Jobs (it's 600 pages or 2 million Amazon Kindle pages). As pretty much everyone has said, it is a gripping read and I, for one, cannot recommend it enough. But you should be warned. It is not a traditional biography but …
Limits to broadband diffusion?
The National Telecommunications Information Administration just published the findings from its latest survey about Internet use within US households. In case you missed it, here is a summary: broadband adoption among US households went up, but not by much. Actually, that is not entirely fair. Viewed at short intervals, broadband adoption will appear to be …
When will daylight savings end?
Early Sunday morning, the clocks in North America moved back one hour. This time around we didn't know it was coming and actually hardly noticed when it did. So few of our clocks are disconnected from the Internet, that this change can almost occur without us noticing. It is surely only a matter of time …
Morning Joe discusses Race Against the Machine
This morning, I discussed Race Against the Machine with Joe Scarborough, Mika Brzezinski and rest of MSNBC's Morning Joe gang at 30 Rock. Here's the video. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32545640
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 …
FTC Presentation
I'm presenting today at the Annual FTC Microeconomics workshop. Here is the agenda for that conference. You'll note the disproportionate representation by faculty members here at the Department of Strategic Management at Rotman. My topic is on "The Impact of the Internet on Advertising Markets for News Media" based on my work with Susan Athey …
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.
Where is Dropbox's power?
Dropbox is the simple file syncing service that has grown, in just a few years, to 50 million active users. 96% of those users do not give a cent to Dropbox. The remaining 4% pay for more storage and purportedly make it profitable; this percentage is growing every day. I use Dropbox because of its simplicity, …
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 …
Digitopoly 