Uncategorized

Zelle to overtake Venmo

Posted by on June 28, 2018 at 9:04 pm

Some of you may recall my predicting a bright future for Zelle at last year’s Payments 2017. Indeed, Zelle has not disappointed—as you’ll see in my just-published article for The Financial Brand: Zelle on Trajectory to Crush Venmo in War for P2P Payments Since this time yesterday, the number of people enrolled in Zelle increased by 100,000. […]

The Six-cent Dollar

Posted by on June 18, 2018 at 10:46 pm

There’s something odd about money. Namely, that it has no intrinsic value. What gives it value is billions of people throughout the world agreeing that … well, that it has value. Currency has come a long way since its start in the fourth century BCE. We have arrived at a time and place where you can […]

Net neutrality:
Now it’s official

Posted by on June 12, 2018 at 7:41 pm

The FCC repeal of 2015 net neutrality regulations took effect yesterday, so this seemed like a good time to share the following, originally posted here on January 3, 2018. • • • It all started in 2008, when the people at Comcast noticed a curious thing. File-transfer giant BitTorrent was consuming more and more Internet bandwidth. More, it […]

Don’t be downcast
about podcasts

Posted by on May 31, 2018 at 2:41 pm

EVERY TIME a new communication technology emerges, people lose no time predicting the demise of an existing one.  The printing press was going to ruin the human mind. Motion pictures, radio, and TV were all going to eliminate reading. TV and, later, streaming were going to do in movie theaters. Digital media threatens the death […]

Luddites,
reverse-Luddites,
and value

Posted by on May 25, 2018 at 1:39 pm

“Luddite” sounds like an indestructible substance over which wars are fought in the Marvel Universe.  The word originally referred to workers in early 19th century Nottinghamshire, England, who protested low wages and poor working conditions by destroying their employers’ machines. Today, Luddite has morphed into a reference to people who oppose technological advances. Contemporary Luddite-type voices arise with […]