Category: ideas

While driverless cars might still seem like science fiction outside the Valley, the people working and thinking about these technologies are starting to ask what these autos could mean for the city of the future. The short answer is “a lot.”

Using the lens of migration, I will describe how the economy has changed from an era of manufacturing to the celebrated age of innovation. I contend the Innovation Economy has peaked with the last financial crisis and global recession serving as a break. I call the emerging epoch the “Talent Economy.”

“Society and education tend to hold the view that talent is innate, or at the very least has to be developed while young. While my personal experiences suggest otherwise, I must admit, I’m just a single anecdote. Perhaps I’m just an outlier. So what is the evidence? What does the science actually tell us about talent?”

“Soon, data concerning trillions of objects and activities will be available; self-powered and self-networked sensors will track everything from our blood sugar to how many steps we take.”

“The study suggests that while a mentally active lifestyle may not prevent formation of the plaques and tangles associated with Alzheimer’s disease, it makes it less likely their presence will impair one’s mental functioning.”

The logic, to oversimplify quite a bit, goes something like this: Well, if Wikipedia is possible, this means that the Internet is something new–and if the Internet is something new, it means that there might as well be a “Wikipedia for politics.” Internet-centrism normalizes “disruption”–and once disruption is seen as something to cheer for, all sorts of solutionist projects spring up.

Extroversion had “direct, positive effects on well-being,” they report in the Journal of Research in Personality. Neuroticism, in contrast, had a negative impact, due to its connection with “poorer mental and physical health.”

We’ve seen the argument before, but it’s worth revisiting (not least for the benefit of hiring managers).

“In killing Reader, Google created a new product category overnight: the Google Reader replacement.”