Tag Archives: Technology

Zooming in on the Defects of PowerPoint  I’ve just finished several days of staring, hour after hour, at the year’s economics meetings via Zoom.  What really struck me, beyond the content of the talks, was the way Zoom exacerbates “death by bullet point”. PowerPoint’s capabilities encourage speakers to load up their slides with lots of text and graphics, which then leads the audience to glue their eyeballs to the slides and not the speaker. ...

(Dan here…I lifted reader Michael Smith piece on water use in open thread Dec. 22. The topic is well worth writing about…AB used to discuss this issue regularly starting in 2008 during the severe drought in the US when the southeast was contemplating court action amongst themselves to ensure their own supplies.. Search “water” in AB for a sample) Michael Smith writes: I should probably write a longer piece on this but I’ll try to summarize...

These days, the nation, the world, is faced with the problem of how to distribute wealth, wealth that is being created using less and less labor input? How to distribute the profits from highly capitalized, highly automated, production? Unions, that had been much a part of the solution to the distribution problem in the early 20th century, are becoming more and more irrelevant. A new economic model is desperately needed. Since the dawning of the...

Though more different than alike, they do have a lot in common. All are, in some way, progeny of the microprocessor. Some were born in around Silicon Valley, others quite distant. The first generation was born in the US early in the last third of the 20th Century. The second was born near the end of the late 20th — early in the 21st Century. None of them could have been born in an earlier era. Microsoft* 1972, Apple*1976, and Oracle*1977, were...

Not important, but Dee Hock is a good thinker and worth reading.Dee W. HockIS A SECOND HAND LIFE WORTH LIVING? Dee Hock | Founder and former CEO of Visa and author of Birth of the Chaordic Age (1999) with an edition named One from Many: VISA and the Rise of Chaordic Organization (2005) which includes two new chapters

On a tech roll. Copier no more? Sputnik InternationalChina Announces Development of 6G Network Less Than Week After 5G Rollout See also Asia Times5G policy ‘biggest strategic disaster in US history’ David P. GoldmanZero HedgeAs US Moves To Ban Huawei 5G, CEO Says Good Riddance Ahead Of Great DecouplingTyler Durden

So does labor fulfill freedom or create alienation? Likewise, does technology emancipate and fulfill us, or does it enthrall and disempower us? Marx's answer to the first question is that it does both, depending on the social relations within which it is defined, managed, and controlled. It would seem that we can answer the second question for ourselves, in much the same terms. Technology both extends freedom and constricts it.... Adding to what David Little says in this post, Hegel and...

I'll bet Tim Cook is crapping in his pants. Although the FBI, NSA and CIA warned against the use of phones made by Chinese companies, Wikileaks revealed last year that U.S. intelligence agencies have the capability to hack into Google and Apple phones, as well as laptops and televisions. UPIU.S. intel agencies warn against using Chinese brand smartphones Ray Downs

Chinese engineering has become so advanced that German jet engines could soon get a major boost from China. Officials in China have begun talks to sell sophisticated aerospace technology and manufacturing equipment to Germany for the production of high-performance jet engines.... Discussions for the sale are still in the early stages, but even the possibility of an agreement with Germany, which created the world’s first production-ready jet engine and has long been revered for its design...

Harvard Business Review The “Smart Society” of the Future Doesn’t Look Like Science Fiction Bhaskar Chakravorti | Senior Associate Dean of International Business & Finance at The Fletcher School at Tufts University and founding Executive Director of Fletcher’s Institute for Business in the Global Context