Author Archive
IF YOU were going to pick an exciting time to work in the payments business, today would make for a good choice. At times it feels as if each day brings a software or hardware innovation, each bringing in turn faster speeds, surer security, easier access, and greater convenience. For merchants in particular, payment technology […]
The digital age has not rolled forth without casualties. Type-writers, maps, encyclopedias, calculators, film cameras, digital cameras, camcorders, cash registers, books, newspapers, music CDs, and more are found among the metamorphosed, endangered, severely wounded, and just plain gone. You will doubtless agree that morphing beats going the way of the typewriter. The good news for […]
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 […]