Archive for August, 2017
The One Device: The Secret History of the iPhone Brian Merchant. New York: Little, Brown, 2017 NOW AND THEN along comes an innovation that sends the future careening down a path no one anticipated. Gutenberg’s movable type led to education and human rights advances and correlates with diminishing wars between major powers. Ford’s mass-produced, affordable […]
IF YOU’RE A glass-is-half-full kind of person, I have good news. About 80 percent of what you spend on digital advertising is likely to show up under the noses of people you’d like to reach. If you’re a glass-is-half-empty kind of person, the news isn’t so cheery. About 20 percent of what you spend on […]
I have written before about the “arms race” between banks and hackers. But there are other arms races between other industries and, instead of hackers, everyday consumers. The current squabble between YouTube and the music industry provides a good example. A Rolling Stone article reports that YouTube has … become a source of frustration for […]
IN A DEVELOPMENT reminiscent of New Coke and Coca-Cola Classic (or, if you prefer, of a bisected hydra), Bitcoin split in two on August 1. As the industry puts it, Bitcoin reached a “hard fork,” dividing itself into “classic” (my word, not theirs) Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash. No one was surprised. The metaphorical fork had […]
“Get ready,” Forbes advises China, Egypt, and Mexico. Contributor Madhvi Mavadiya writes that it won’t be long before “… access to financial services will be simplified and made more available to the unbanked and underbanked in these three regions.” This important development is thanks largely to the efforts of the World Bank Group, the Bill […]