First Case of Google Glass Addiction Identified - and Treated

We knew it was theoretically possible. We all know people who seem addicted. We aren't even embarrassed, let alone ashamed about online binge tv show watching. And we have all probably evinced symptoms of these conditions ourselves. 

That said, the notion that there is a named condition makes this a little more real. Internet Addiction Disorder is bad enough. But now there's a subset of that behavioral disfunction just for Google Glass, before the device is in even in general distribution?

Talk about technology adoption...JL

Jacque Wilson reports in CNN:

"Individuals with IAD manifest severe emotional, social, and mental dysfunction in multiple areas of daily activities due to their problematic use of technology and the internet,"

Is the iPad Doomed?

OK, OK, we've heard this before: the television is doomed, the automobile is doomed, the suburbs are doomed, democracy is doomed, socialism is doomed, the free market is doomed, and, of course, the PC is doomed.

Buggy whips may be gone, to use one famous example, but riding boots are still fashionable and Bill Gates just dropped a cool $10 mill and change on horse farm near San Diego, speaking of convergence between tech and equine existentialism.

So, yeah, why not throw the iPad or, more broadly speaking, the tablet computer into the mix. Sales have dropped like a rock. The new smartphones which, if they continue to grow, may require a sherpa to portage for you, are getting ever bigger and mini-tablets are seeking some sort of reversion to the mean for screen sizes. You want small, now? Get an iWatch.

The reality is that technology rarely disappears. It evolves. Apple has been pretty ruthless about phasing out devices, as its unsentimental kiss-off to the iPod indicates. But the tablet is not going to disappear, exactly, it's just shape shifting in line with the dictates of the market. JL

Ben Thompson comments in Stratechery:

Why buy an iPad when you could have an iPhone with a screen that doesn’t seem that much smaller than an iPad mini? Why buy an iPad when you can have a more powerful and just as easily transportable Macbook Air?

Cord-Cutters Conquer? The Significance of HBO Unbundled

The complaints have been rising for years: cable monopolies result in growing costs for subscribers who often have to pay for channels and content in which they have no interest. The cable companies claim they are spreading the cost of content acquisition across a great market in order to keep prices down.

The reality is that monopolies enjoy their own logic based on biological imperatives: they do what they do to prolong their rule. 

There has been a 'content rules' theory extent though there is little hard economic evidence to support. Content is whatever those who control distribution say it is. And given that their subscribers have little or no power to change that because of the financial payments cable/telecoms can afford to make to those who make the laws, this seemed unlikely to change,

But as the financialized economy becomes ever more demanding, even huge companies like Time Warner, HBO's parent, feel the pressure. Combined with the growing demand by those who want more selection along the lines of the internet model, suddenly spinning off what was once a movie channel but is becoming a platform for all kinds of innovative programming begins to make sense. Investment firms will make fees whenever companies merge of disaggregate. But this could be one of those disruptive moments set in train without a full understanding of the cultural implications for an on-demand society. JL

Amadou Diallo reports in Forbes:

This is a watershed moment for the TV industry, with the potential to radically alter the balance of power between content providers and distributors.

Google Received @1,000 Right To Be Forgotten Requests Per Day in Five Months: Most For Facebook, YouTube Links

The Right to be Forgotten has generated almost 1,000 requests per day since Google started complying five months ago.

Probably to no one's surprise in the cold light of a digital dawn, links to Facebook are the most requested, followed by links to Google's own services, especially YouTube.

This does seem to suggest that personal humiliation is likely more of a motivation for these requests than, say, the desire to cover up high crimes and misdemeanors, at least so far.

There are still legitimate concerns that the ability to rewrite the public record to suit one's tastes is not a positive step for transparency, history and human development. 

But that said, one aspect of the process that does not appear well understood is that erasures can be requested, not demanded. Google has the right to refuse if it believes the request is inappropriate or not in the public interest. It has agreed to more than it has rejected, but more have been refused than the user population  might have realized would be the case.

Even in this, the data are, perhaps, telling: showing demonstrable sensitivity to their public images, France has generated the most requests. Germany, with its reputation for rectitude - at least in the post-war era - has had the highest number of requests accepted. Italy has had the most rejected. Plus ca change...JL

Mark Scott reports in the New York Times:

Google said that it had removed more links to content on Facebook from its search results than from any other site, in response to people’s requests to have links to material expunged to protect their privacy.

Has the Corporate Social Responsibility Report Become a Waste of Resources?

It's obligatory. The report, that is, not the actual behavior. Which is part of the problem.

The Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) report has become an annual feature of the corporate communications attention-scape. To the extent that it is printed anymore, rather than delivered electronically, it proudly features recycled paper. Mostly.

But the readers increasingly tend to be those who are already committed to the cause and are searching the document for further evidence to support their own previously embraced conclusions. It rarely changes minds and almost never moves the investment needle.

The challenge it what to do about it. There is plenty of data to support the notion that CSR is good for the bottom line. But in an era when everyone has the ability to pick and choose their own evidence, belief systems remain far more powerful than information systems.

Corporations are considered no more credible than most other large institutions unless one works for them. So that lack of trust, which the CSR report was initially designed to bolster, has largely failed to meet the objective. Which is not to say that CSR has failed, but that convincing the world the enterprise means it means what it says when it addresses the environment, or workplace safety, or human capital has, so far, been a noble but largely unsatisfactory endeavor.

Surveys suggest that executives and their boards recognize the benefit to reputation that such reports provide. But until they are able to convince themselves that the data inside the report also bolsters the enterprise's strategic prospects, they will have a hard time convincing anyone else. JL

Paul Klein comments in Advertising Age:

Despite the considerable efforts that corporations put into reporting their social and environmental performance, readership is low and believability is even lower. The notion that corporations have a trustworthy perspective has been declining for years

One Million Beta Testers: Is Windows 10 Already a Hit?

You could read this news positively: that so many people so hated Windows 8 but are so addicted to Windows that they wanted to be sure Microsoft got it right this time. 

Or you could take it as further evidence that there is still a lot of underemployment in the global economy. ..

The reality, however, is that Microsoft could not afford to screw this one up. There are simply too many options and Apple is no longer the boutique it was twenty years ago when MSFT thought it owned operating systems. With the continued devolution of authority - and responsibility - to the individual the enterprise threat was and is substantial.

So, it is fair to argue that Windows 10 is already a success simply because reviews are so positive relative to Windows 8 and because there has been little controversy or major league griping. Given the priority to, 'first, do no harm,' that goal has been achieved. The installed base insures some level of acceptance above and beyond that. The Franchise lives. JL

Daniel Kline reports in The Motley Fool:

A second poorly received OS could have driven Microsoft's core business customers elsewhere. That might have eroded or devastated a business that has brought in over $18 billion in revenue for each of the last three years.

Look and Feel Redux: Nike Suing Walmart, 31 Other Companies Over Fake Chuck Taylors

Now that's what you call look and feel. Chucks, aka Chuck Taylor kicks, the original athletic shoe, now the hip, urban streetwear for everyone from debs to digerati.

Nike bought Converse, the company that made Chucks famous. And Nike has a thing about protecting its brands. So when retailers like Walmart, an important Nike customer, started knocking them off, conversations were had. But when designers like Ralph Lauren and Tory Burch (Tory friggin' Burch, preferred fashion princess for the 'ladies who lunch' set?)  jumped in with their own versions? This means war. Of the relatively genteel 'have your lawyer call my lawyer' variety.

The broader implication is that it is, literally, the trademarked look and feel of the Chucks, not their logo or the Nike/Converse brand that is driving both the legal wrangling and the consumer appeal. Whether in smartphones or apparel or soft drink containers or any other product, design will increasingly be an asset of considerable value. JL

Kyle Stock reports in Business Week:

No wonder Nike wants to protect its Chucks. Last quarter they posted a 16 percent increase in sales and accounted for about 15 percent of Nike profit.

Does Anyone Actually Know What All That Big Data Is Worth?

We get that it's important, all that information about customers and their habits and their inclinations and their purchase histories and the stores they frequent, the brands they buy. 

Fortunes are being invested - and maybe made - on identifying, aggregating and interpreting that data so that the guess work can be stripped out of the supply chain and the value proposition, allowing businesses, their investors and managers to reap rewards with less hassle, greater certainty  - and much bigger margins. Technology is both the provider, the user and the interpreter of the wealth being created as a result. It is the perfect marriage of knowledge and application.

But there's just one challenge: despite the fact that data has become an asset of significant importance in the post-industrial service economy, no one seems quite sure on how to actually value it. There have been numerous efforts to create comparable, generally accepted principles for doing so. However, they have tended to founder on either the proponent's greed (accept this approach and pay us a fee in perpetuity for using it) or the uncomfortable fact that the manner in which it is classified could have implications for accounting treatment, tax exposure and financial return calculations.

Certainly reasonable people can find a way to agree, one surmises. But actually, the attitude seems to be that if I can not benefit than neither shall he, whoever he is and however remote from anyone else's daily reality this putative he may be. If it all sounds like something out of a Dr. Seuss book, well, that is probably because it shares a certain sense of wonder and unreality with the Cat in the Hat.

The outcomes are increasingly serious. Apple and Samsung were suing each other for $7 billion over the concept of  'look and feel.' Imagine what Andrew Carnegie and JP Morgan would have had to say about that. There are estimates that the value of intangibles such as brands, patents, trademarks, customer satisfaction, employee commitment and the like may approach $8 trillion. Yes, that's with a t, not a b.

A billion here and a billion there soon adds up to real money, as they say. Perhaps someone should begin to think about how to count it. JL

Vipal Monga reports in the Wall Street Journal:

"The accounting profession has completely failed modern business in not being able to catch up to new forms of property.”

Apple and Facebook Offer Egg-Freezing Health Coverage for Women Employees

They get it, the Silicon Valley technorati. They do. They hear that the brogrammer culture is no longer appropriate (even though it's been totally frickin' awesome, dude...); an understanding that there is a moral imperative to do better that, if we're being totally honest, might be driven by the fear that it could be affecting stock price performance.

So the spotlight is shining brightly and not entirely comfortably on the firms and their hiring practices. But, it turns out, while there are plenty of capable women with tech skills, they are - whodathunkit? - in great demand.

Which means there is now a perks arm race: who can offer the best perquisites to attract the smartest, most effective employees, among whom may now be women. The tricky thing about egg-freezing, however, is the implication that it is necessary for furtherance of one's career. It's tough to code and ship on deadline if you've got to get home to relieve the baby-sitter. While there is some congratulatory high-fiving about the recognition of a techno-scientific solution that only tech firms could have had the foresight and cash to arrange, there is also the uncomfortable question of why it's necessary and whether the rewards are worth the sacrifice. JL

Danielle Friedman reports in NBCnews:

News of the firms’ egg-freezing coverage comes in the midst of what’s been described as a Silicon Valley “perks arms race.”With male-dominated Silicon Valley firms competing to attract top female talent who devote key childbearing years to building careers, coverage may give leg up to firms.

The Internet of Someone Else's Things

Ownership. What a concept. You buy something and it's yours. Or at least that's how it used to work most of the time, mineral rights and a few other minor considerations notwithstanding.

But with the digital era has come a new set of rules, many of which await challenge in the courts. In the interim, however, ownership may not mean what you thought it did when you plunked down your credit card or - heaven forfend! - actual cash money.

Because it turns out that just buying the physical or tangible item does not necessarily entitle you to ownership of the intangible stuff - like legal rights and control of operations and little things like that.

Now there are some people who may be bothered by this. But there are others who probably couldnt care less, or at least can be persuaded that either whatever is in the best interest of the corporation is good enough for them and whatever those tattooed, latte-sipping, snap brim fedora-sporting  do-gooders on the coasts are against is probably something they should support.

The issue is that we may be responsible for stuff we don't actually manage or over which we have any leverage or influence. And that we may be investing in technology whose information and behavior is operated by someone whose interests and our own may only casually intersect, if at all. So we need to read the fine print that comes with this internet of things - and we may even have to spend a bit more to make sure it says what we want it to. JL

Jon Evans comments in TechCrunch:

Even if you physically and legally own a Smart Thing, you won’t actually control it. Ownership will become a three-legged stool: who physically owns a thing; who legally owns it; …and who has the ultimate power to command it.

Why Be a Victim? Mining Your Own Digital Data

So how come the only person not making money from your personal data is you?

Sure, it's easy to rail against the power of the entrenched interests; that you are one little dot amongst the 5 billion internet users who will soon become 10 billion or maybe more.

But the reality is that, as the following article explains, the primary reason why citizen consumers are not reaping the benefits of their own effort is mostly because they haven't tried. They/we are afraid of the consequences - like Starbucks won't send you any more promotions? Really? - or they/we are too lazy or too busy and just dont see the benefit.

The question, though, is, who couldn't use a little extra coin? And what if, in aggregate, much like members of a professional association that provides insurance, all of those interested in generating some additional income banded together and actually demanded satisfaction - however that could be organized. Lawyers, sensing a potentially spectacular payday just on a percentage basis, would be happy to help. And it might even improve both the quality and availability of good information. Talk about disruptive and revolutionary. All from the comfort of your own device. JL

Nathan Eagle comments in Project Syndicate:

The first step toward reclaiming some of the value of our own data is to view this information as an asset, rather than as a by-product. At that point, Internet users can find ways to take control of their own creation.

Google Claims Amazon Is Its Biggest Rival in Search

Google has had a rough time of late, excluding financial performance, of course. But in the realm of public opinion and its reflected self-image, it can't seem to escape the pressure of just being so damned successful. 

Controlling 90 percent of a market as big as search will tend to draw regulatory attention, to say nothing of a horde of competitors only too willing to keep pointing fingers like 6 year olds at recess who see a classmate wet his pants. Let's face it, when a company with the appalling record of Rupert Murdoch's NewsCorp believes it can get away with attacking the moral rectitude of any other enterprise, you know you're in trouble.

So it is fascinating to examine the spin moves that Google's Eric Schmidt is employing in an attempt to deflect some of the attention - and heat. This is so clever as to be text book: identify another tech company, like, say, Amazon, which is a theoretical future competitor, or at least one certainly capable of becoming so, but which is not the obvious, popularly perceived aggressor in that space. Especially one with monopolistic issues of its own in a different realm like ecommerce. Claim they are your most serious competitor - and then watch what happens. Attention is drawn to the claim and to Amazon, marking them for future regulatory consideration (not that they werent under scrutiny already.).

The reality is that this is unlikely to accomplish any long term diminution of interest in Google's alleged excesses, especially when the European authorities have their own tech sector to bolster. But it does suggest that Google will not go quietly - or alone. JL

Jeevan Vasagar and Alex Barker report in the Financial Times:

"Many people think our main competition is Bing or Yahoo. But, really, our biggest search competitor is Amazon”, pointing out that internet users are likely to go directly to the retailer if they are shopping.

Is Ethics the Savior of Branding?

Oh, yeah, ethics. Aren't we supposed to go to a seminar about that every year? Hopefully the cookies will be better than they were last year. And pray the lecturer will take pity on us and end early.

That frequently sums up the corporate approach to 'embracing' ethics and 'integrating' it into the institutional strategic plan. But the problem is that the customers are getting restless. Not that a well-crafted promotion or price cut won't take their minds off the issue, it's just that all of the news about invasions of privacy, misuse of personal data and worries about quality in the global supply chain have raised questions about what used to be known as the brand promise.

In fact, that was kinda the point: the brand was a promise to the consumer. And if the promise was kept, you got to raise the price a bit because the assurance the brand represented. Which meant the consumer was often willing to pay a premium for the peace of mind - and the extra cache that marque bore on its well designed back.

So, given all of the information at the customer's disposal, and the often negative tone of the content that keeps the internet humming, it is not surprising that loyalty may be declining. All of which contributes to the notion, as the following article explains, that ethics isnt just an isolated set of ideals for people who dont have budgets and bosses, it may be the key to keeping the customers who pay the bills. JL

Joshua Jost comments in The Ethical Corporation:

Branding was a cosmetic exercise but now it’s often difficult to tell whether that sleek website belongs to a brick-and-mortar company or a kid sitting in his mother’s spare bedroom. A hundred years ago or so companies talked about their values and ideals.

Why Companies Break Up. Hint: It's Not Usually Because They're Well Managed

Most people have heard of mergers and acquisitions: those are the initiatives associated with the growth of ambitious enterprises. But there is a third, rather less well known sibling who presence is rarely acknowledged. That is the corporate spinoff.

Though usually presented as a prescient and disciplined tactic undertaken to support an optimal, longer term strategy, the reality, as the following article explains, is that it usually an admission of failure. That the parent entity is simply too bloated or the management team simply not up to the task of building, reviving or otherwise creating value from a haphazardly assembled collection of assets.

HP is the most recent and notorious example of this, but spinoffs are enjoying - if that is an appropriate term - a boom at the moment. This is, to some degree, a reflection of the fact that the hubris fueling the admittedly uneven post-recession recovery may have run its course. But it may also be an acknowledgement that some enterprises had more money than talent so that whatever grand schemes were hatched over dubiously inflated projections have returned to earth via the reality facing them via the ubiquitous spreadsheets on which such games are played.

The data show that upwards of 75 percent of mergers, acquisitions and spinoffs fail to achieve their operational and financial objectives. Which ought to be all you need to know when evaluating the latest cheery report about strategic repositioning in order to focus on core competencies. JL

James Kwak reports in Medium:

The value of a company is the discounted present value of its expected future cash flows. So it follows that a breakup should only create value for shareholders if it increases future cash flows or lowers the discount rate. Most breakups don’t obviously do either.

The Coming Battle Over Who Gets to Keep Wireless Advertising Revenue

Oh! We're sorry. You thought this had already been decided. Those ads on Google or Facebook or wherever just make those big tech companies richer and everyone else can go suck eggs. Or re-imagine their digital strategy. Or however anyone dependent on this revenue stream wants to position it for their clients, bosses and investors.

Um, but this is tech. Where up becomes down, the first shall be last and the hunter can become the hunted faster than you can say disintermediation.  

Call it Net Neutrality Part Deux. The techs like to think that they own 'this space.' But it turns out that some other people have different ideas. The telcos, those big, boring companies that just happen to own the pipes, wires and airwaves through which all that content flows have begun to notice how much of it is going to ad support. And, because this is the capitalist system, they are now demanding a cut.

Although lawyers everywhere are high-fiving in the halls, the tech companies are decidedly nervous about what this may imply. Chances are a deal will eventually be struck, which means that no matter what the terms, they get less. Advertisers may have to pay more, since their ability to take their business elsewhere is is rather limited by the absence of viable alternatives.

The more interesting question may be, however, whether this finally inspires those who actually provide much of the data on which the ad spending is based - that being the simple consumer who provides all that personal information for free - may finally recognize that if everyone else is sticking their hands out and getting their palms slapped with some cash, why shouldn't they do so as well? JL

Christopher Mims reports in the Wall Street Journal:

The fresh battleground? The billions of dollars in revenue generated by advertising on content and services delivered over wireless networks. Since the wireless infrastructure is owned by the carriers, the telecom companies want a cut.

The Connectivity Conundrum

It seems inherent in the way technology has come to dominate modern life that for every positive outcome there is a potentially negative consequence. The good has far outpaced the bad, which is one of the reasons why it has become so ubiquitous and its impact has been so profound.

But legitimate questions are being raised about the implications and unintended repercussions of decisions whose very possibility, let alone, potential for mischief were quite recently unimaginable, let alone understood.

The result is that society is attempting to cope with an onslaught of innovation whose benefits are easy to tout but whose costs are often downplayed. That there are economic effects determined, in part, by timing and speed only adds to the pressure for acceptance.

The reality is that connectivity's contributions are manifest, but they can best be optimized by an honest assessment of their holistic and systemic impact. JL

Jose Pagliery reports in CNN:

"Everyone has the best intentions. and that's why this road to 'Internet of Things' is paved to hell,"

Ebola Is a Lousy Bio-Terror Weapon: Fear Is Much More Effective

Let's stipulate that Ebola is a dreadful disease. No one would ever want to contract it or have anyone they know come down with it.

But Ebola also illustrates the potential power of the intangible over the tangible. Certainly the tangible effects of this scourge are terrible. But an intangible - fear of the catching the disease - is having a profound influence on perceptions, decision making and public policy.

A disease is what it is. It can be analyzed so that pharmaceuticals and processes can be devised to combat it and perhaps even prevent or cure it. Humanity has faced awful medical challenges in the past and found a way to deal with them.

The fear that this illness has generated, however, has far surpassed the impact of the disease itself, at least so far. And we are all too familiar with the impact that fear has had on daily life. Thirteen years after the fact, the US is still dealing with the fallout from the 9/11 World Trade Center attacks: huge financial costs that have crowded out investment in education, health and economic stimulation; a dramatic increase in the militarization of domestic police forces, ostensibly to combat the threat of terrorism, that may well have led to a spate shootings of innocent citizens.

The reality is that fear of Ebola is understandable, but the only sensible response is data, analysis and a reasoned response based on knowledge and the wisdom that well-informed people can distill from it. JL

Nicholas Evans comments in Slate:

In developed countries, the biggest threat is not the terrorist, but fear. That fear is a

powerful weapon that can be used against us. Terror leading us to make bad decisions is much more effective against rich, developed nations than Ebola.

Is Google Autofill a Useful Gauge of the Economy?

When it comes to measurement, we continue to face a challenge of our making: many of the metrics designed and employed over time no longer capture the global, technologically driven service economy in all its complexity and, frankly, weirdness.

Most of ways in which we ascertain economic growth and performance were developed in the industrial era when tangibles literally and figuratively outweighed intangibles in terms of economic impact. But in an economy defined more by software than hardware, more by algorithmic trading than stock certificates, more by intellectual capital than by pork bellies, there is reason to question - if not  necessarily doubt - the veracity of what is being reported as it reflects broader trends.

The problem is that there is no comprehensive, comparable and generally accepted set of alternatives. The accounting profession is incapable of making changes because their clients, depending on the industry, could be negatively or positively affected and no one believes they can afford to alienate any of them. The economics profession has developed sophisticated statistical tools to test assumptions, but the aggregates do not always capture the nuances required in an increasingly granular economy where consumer preferences can now be determined based on the purchase performance of an individual consumer.

Enterprises are increasingly turning to a mix of signals that may or may not reflect 'real' economic activity. Many are based on digital tracking. The question, however, is whether inquiries about sales of kidneys, for instance, reflect a decline in household financial status or simply a fascination with a ghoulish subject that feeds on its own (figuratively) viral impulses. There are also serious questions about how the programs that capture this data are designed, whose interests or biases they reflect and whether they can possibly be comprehensive enough.

Ultimately, a range of inputs are required for an accurate assessment of what is or is not happening economically. It makes sense to test assumptions and new data sources to determine whether those currently in use are still doing their job and whether any of the new ones are sufficiently accurate and broad-based to be useful. The only certainty is that refusing to consider new concepts will eventually lead to failure. JL

Conor Dougherty reports in the New York Times:

“The point is not so much to develop an alternative paradigm of economic analysis as it is to poke and prod at the consensus we all embrace. After all, can the U.S. economy be doing all that well if (I want to sell a) ‘Kidney’ is a common autofill?”

Pinpointing Persuadables: How Tech Has Transformed Political Campaigning

Big Data's effectiveness is based on its ability to identify increasingly granular targets.


The US faces yet another election day in a couple of weeks and the cycle continues in other democracies as well.

But the big news may not be so much about who won or lost as which targeting methodology delivered the most favorable outcomes.

Technology has transformed politics in ways that have nothing to do with larger social issues and everything to do with how 'persuadable voters,' those most likely to be influenced by advertising and marketing, can be identified, targeted and communicated with via multiple channels so as to get them to change or confirm their opinion - and then go to the polls to cast their ballot.

Thanks to technology, voters have become more accessible through the disparate means by which they connect with the tangible and intangible worlds. However, they have also used this power to eliminate messages they find inconsistent with their world view. This has, ironically, made it harder to reach those who may be open to new messages because they have insulated themselves from means by which those ideas could be transferred.

The focus of politically-employed technology has been, as it has in the commercial realm, to motivate consumers - whether of detergent or public policy prescriptions - to act on those impulses. The question which has not yet been answered is whether it will become a force more effective at defending the status quo or the truly revolutionary force it has always professed to be. JL

Richard McGregor reports in the Financial Times:

The revolution has been greatest in the art and science of “micro-targeting”, which allows campaigns to home in on voters. “Software is eating politics,” code-writing engineers (are hired) for campaigns rather than “political scientists with English major degrees”.

The Empire Reboots: Can Satya Nadella Save Microsoft?

Wasn't this supposed to be the era of disruption? The period when those creative gales of destruction reshaped the organizational, technological and managerial universe?

This was to have been a brave new world in which those with the intelligence, education, confidence (and, ok, let's be honest, the contacts) embraced whatever change was going to deliver.

So how come, some observers are wont to ask, did the world's first major tech company of the modern era, one that had slipped into what many believe was intellectual and business - if admittedly profitable - irrelevance, a company it is generally agreed that was desperately in need of a re-imagining, just select as its new, transformational chief executive, the widely acknowledged 'safe choice?'

Now, of course, it is probably way too early to discern whether Satya Nadella will be a hero or zero. And Bill Gates' re-engagement with the company could be great or it could be a distracting and possibly even destructive influence. The larger question is whether Microsoft remains a cash cow, generating revenues and dividends from its earliest successes or whether it once again finds the technological and managerial impetus to compete with the best - and even, possibly, to lead. JL

Bethany McLean reports in Vanity Fair:

Microsoft announced its first major acquisition under Nadella: Mojang, the maker of the phenomenally popular game Minecraft, for $2.5 billion. “And a couple million third graders just asked: ‘What’s Microsoft?’

Why You Probably Haven't Gotten a Pay Raise

The economy is booming. Or so we read. It's been five years since the end of the recession, let alone the time elapsed since the financial crisis that precipitated it. It certainly seems like more stores and restaurants are opening, and the mind-boggling amounts demanded for rents or house purchases suggest that someone out there must be doing pretty well.

So how come a majority appear to feel that they are not doing as well as they used to?

Well, for starters, because they're not. If you are an average American (whatever that means these days) your household income is lower than it was when the recession ended. And if you have a sense of history, you understand that this is a trend with some legs - about thirty years worth.

The reasons for this have to do with global competition (yes, people with good educations who make a tenth of what you do will have an effect on wage rates) and technology (and yes, you can be replaced by a machine and/or the algorithm that drives it), but as the following article explains, it is the result of those two factors that is probably preventing the increase in wages.

The outcome of all those financial, global and technological influences is that there are too many people available to take the jobs that remain. Attempts to shift blame to the working population - 'there are thousands of good jobs going begging because there are not enough qualified or skilled or interested applicants' - are false, designed to deflect attention from the diversion of compensation to ever fewer recipients.

To some extent the general lack of pay increases is due to cyclical economic forces. But the reality is that most people havent gotten a raise because in almost all western democracies they haven't demonstrated that they care enough to vote and when doing so, to elect people who will force the changes in public policy necessary. JL

Catherine Rampell reports in the Washington Post:

The main reason that wages haven’t risen is that the job market is not nearly as “tight” as the headline unemployment rate makes it appear.