Articles 2024
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Democrats' Chance to Be More Dynamic
Bloomberg View, August 02, 2016
Can Democrats make room for allies who apply decentralized dynamism to economic questions as well as to political self-governance and cultural institutions? Is there room in the convention’s upbeat talk of the future for progress without a central plan -- for unpredictable, open-ended, sometimes disconcerting innovation? For risk-taking and resilience rather than promises of certainty and security? Donald Trump has given them an opening.
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I Played Pokemon Go. Here's What It Is and Isn't.
Bloomberg View, July 15, 2016
At 56, I’m way too old to be playing Pokemon Go. After all, the smartphone game’s phenomenal success is built on millennial nostalgia, and I don’t even have any kids to blame. But what started out as research has turned into a mild addiction. It’s fun to wander the streets finding magic critters and the tools to capture them. Along the way I met some nice people and learned some things I didn’t expect (and got yet another confirmation of an unfortunate truth about new technology).
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What to Wear to Work? Soon, a Tiny Computer
Bloomberg View, July 05, 2016
As a business proposition, work-wearables offer advantages over the better-known consumer-oriented products. Think smart glasses displays for manufacturing workers following complex assembly directions; voice-activated clip-on computers that help store clerks check inventories; or caps with sensors that make sure long-distance truckers aren’t dozing off.
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California Hits the Brakes on High-Speed Rail Fiasco
Bloomberg View, June 28, 2016
California's high-speed rail project increasingly looks like an expensive social science experiment to test just how long interest groups can keep money flowing to a doomed endeavor before elected officials finally decide to cancel it. What combination of sweet-sounding scenarios, streamlined mockups, ever-changing and mind-numbing technical detail, and audacious spin will keep the dream alive?
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Robots Are the New Seamstresses
Bloomberg View, June 02, 2016
Low-wage sewing in faraway lands is going the way of the typing pool. The plummeting cost of industrial robots and the electronic cameras used for machine vision mean that serious automation is coming to even the cheapest sewn products.
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Trump Would Crush the Winners of the U.S. Economy
Bloomberg View, May 24, 2016
Trump’s America is, despite the rhetoric, an economy with no place for winners.
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Tips for Uber Drivers? Not From Me
Bloomberg View, May 03, 2016
The only way to preserve the frictionless Uber experience is for riders to defy the social pressure to tip.
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Digital Couture Is Actually a Thing
Bloomberg View, April 19, 2016
Can the mutually disdainful tribes of fashion and technology work together?
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Imagine If Conservatives in Academia Could Safely 'Come Out'
Bloomberg View, March 30, 2016
Unless left-wing academics come to value, or at least tolerate, political diversity, a study of right-of-center professors portends a bleak future for intellectual inquiry in the humanities and social sciences.
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Trump isn’t just campaigning. He’s selling his supporters a glamorous life.
The Washington Post, March 20, 2016
Conventional explanations miss the glamour of Trump’s message.