Kevin Maney: “We’re being overwhelmed by a tsunami of new foundational technology. Artificial intelligence (AI) is allowing computer systems to learn and solve problems that humans can’t. CRISPR is letting scientists edit genes and program DNA. Blockchain has brought new ways to think about money, contracts, and identity. The list of paradigm-shifting innovations goes on, and includes 3D printing, virtual reality, the metaverse, and civilian space flight. When such a wave comes, it doesn’t just alter a behavior or two. It changes everything. Economist Carlota Perez described the impact of such moments in time in her influential 2003 book Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital: “When a technological revolution irrupts in the scene, it does not just add some dynamic new industries to the previous production structure. It provides the means for modernizing all the existing industries and activities.” Let that sink in for a minute. We are in the midst of “modernizing all the existing industries and activities.””
WSJ: “Now that cars, especially electric ones, are becoming something like smartphones on wheels, some of the dynamics that played out in the early days of the mobile industry are playing out in the auto industry. Competition between the two kingpins of the smartphone industry has in the past couple of years gained new momentum, with Google racking up auto-maker partnerships for the automobile-based version of its Android operating system, and Apple teasing plans to expand its software capabilities in the car. For the car companies involved, which face the nearly impossible challenge of producing software on par with what tech companies offer, working with Silicon Valley can address consumer desires while also staving off competition from companies like Tesla. And yet there is an inherent tension in these partnerships over who controls the user experience and the valuable data produced.”
Steve Forbes: “How did [what the extraordinary historian and economist Deirdre McCloskey calls “The Great Enrichment”—the unprecedented rise in personal incomes that began two centuries ago] happen? The answer has particular relevance today as pessimism permeates many people’s outlook on the future. Two hundred years ago, nine out of ten people in the world lived in dire poverty. From time immemorial real individual incomes rarely rose above $3 a day, occasionally reaching $6 and then dropping back. Suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere, an astonishing transformation took place: incomes soared upward and never looked back. Per capita income in the developed world is now over $100 a day and rising impressively elsewhere. In the past 20 years, one billion people have moved out of dire poverty. That’s 137,000 people a day. Economists and historians usually cite material factors—capital accumulation, exploitation of natural resources, trade, imperialism, a sudden spurt of new inventions, geography and even the weather. McCloskey points to something more stirring and profound: The genesis of “The Great Enrichment” was ideological. That is, it was a change in ideas about the inherent dignity of the individual and the rise of individual liberty.”
Watched: Lord of the Rings (the Peter Jackson movies) again. Great experience. And still captivated by Tolkien’s world. Had first read LOTR in my final semester at IIT-Bombay in early 1988.
