How Self Driving Cars Will Reshape Cities

Comprehensively. JL

Aarian Marshall and Alex Davies report in Wired:

For the past century, the personal car has dominated that arena, shaping the streets and environments around it. Roads are straight and wide for faster travel;
intersections are regulated to protect distracted humans; businesses are located near open spaces for better parking. As cars start to drive themselves, we have some ideas for how urban planners of the future might reimagine those outdated layouts—and transform the city into a joyful mess of throughways and byways optimized not for cars but for people.

Yes, Alexa Needs To Come Clean About How Much It's Recording

Just assume everything is being recorded and you wont be surprised. JL

Geoffrey Fowler reports in the Washington Post:

These devices are always “awake,” passively listening for the command to activate, such as “Alexa,” “O.K. Google,” or “Hey Siri.” The problem is they’re far from perfect about responding only when we want them to. How often do these devices go rogue and record more than we’d like them to? Neither Google nor Amazon immediately responded to my questions about false positives for their “wake words." But anyone who lives with one of these devices knows it happens.

Why Does the Internet Suck?

The internet is still relatively young and humanity has not yet figured out how to optimize it. That process is going to take awhile. And those currently using it may not live to see its golden age. JL

Joe Sternberg reports in Adweek:

Ones and zeroes don’t lie like humans do. The internet is a prime example of how an infallible technology butts up against the fallibility of man. So it is perhaps unsurprising that the internet, as it stands, is broken.The heart of the problem is we have met the enemy and he is us. People make up the internet. We developed a technology that enables communication in ways that humanity never dreamed of, but we’re screwing it up because we can’t learn to trust each other.

Which Jobs Are People Most Willing To Move For? Tech Gigs In San Fran and NY

Pay and prestige may beat opportunity. JL

Eric Morath reports in the Wall Street Journal:

Workers are most willing to move for technology jobs in big, expensive coastal cities. “Job seekers seem to be willing to pay the price, in terms of moving and living costs, in order to land high salaries at tech companies.” 28.5% of all applications were for jobs outside of  the job seekers’ metro areas.

Virtual Reality Is Being Used To Train AI Drones To Avoid Accidents

 Using technological convergence to enhance performance while reducing costs. JL

Jeremy Horwitz reports in Venture Beat:

Flight Goggles enables autonomous vehicles to see and learn from virtual environments while they’re actually moving in physically empty spaces. The system tracks a drone’s motion, renders 90-frame-per-second photorealistic imagery of its current virtual location, and quickly transmits the images to the drone’s image processor.(The) technique to trains fast-moving autonomous AI drones using VR-enhanced environments, reducing crashes and thereby the need for repairs or replacements.

The Reason the Future of Artificial Intelligence Depends On High School Girls

Tech is suffering from a significant shortage of programmers, whose absence may hold back not just the industry, but the economy and society.

The answer may lie with high school age girls who are often better students than their male peers, more numerous - and potentially better coders. JL


Lauren Smiley reports in The Atlantic:

“A lot of the perception of AI is that it’s so hard to do and exclusive and you need to be a genius. This is really for anyone and has applications for helping people.” The tech industry isn’t missing women and minorities in the dozens, but the tens of thousands.

Why ICE Abandoned It's Dream Of Extreme Vetting Software

Well, the fact that no such software exists - or is expected to be able to do so anytime soon - was certainly a factor. JL 

Drew Harwell and Nick Miroff report in the Washington Post:

Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials wanted a system that could automatically mine Facebook, Twitter and the Internet to determine whether a visitor might commit criminal or terrorist acts or was a “positively contributing member of society.”Though AI systems are deployed to help flag content, tech giantsdepend on human workforces to make content-moderation decisions, saying the software isn't yet nuanced enough to comprehend speech, assess context and decide objectively on its own.“There is no mathematical way to determine whether someone is a bad person.”

What Is the Role - If Any - of the Global Chief Creative Officer In the Digital Era

In an era of algorithmically microtargeted messaging what can - or should - one person's point of view even mean? JL

Shareen Pathak reports in NPR:

Agencies are making a lot more stuff, and are under pressure to make sure it’s nuanced, targeted and delivered quickly. There’s an increased focus on measurable results. It’s important for clients to know what they’re paying for — and a worldwide figure who is mostly on airplanes going from office to office to awards shows to the conference circuit doesn’t make the cut. The rise of social media and platforms has meant that creativity is more targeted than ever — and there’s a lot of it. One person cannot be the standard-bearer — there is too much to check.

When Your Investing Robot Has a Mind Of Its Own

The client's idea of long vs short term or rate of return - or risk - may be very different from that of the computerized system and the algorithm that runs it. JL


Jason Zweig reports in the Wall Street Journal:

The whole point of using an automated online firm is that you don’t intend to actively monitor and manage your investments. You want its computers to do that for you, using exchange-traded funds that track the markets, minimize your costs and maximize your after-tax returns. (But) hiring a robo-adviser instead of a human adviser doesn’t mean you no longer need to pay attention.

How Artificial Intelligence Is Making Lifelong Learning a Career Success Imperative

Just as intangible assets like software supplanted in value hard assets like desks or real estate, so ostensibly 'soft skills' like interpreting complex data from disparate sources are becoming as, or more, important than supposedly 'hard skills' like coding that will soon be done by machines.

In the digital economy, the larger point is that finishing school or training will signal not the end of professional learning, but the beginning. JL


Jacques Bughin and colleagues report in Harvard Business Review:

With the advent of AI, basic skills, such as reading and  numeracy, will not suffice, while demand for advanced technological skills, such as coding and programming, will rise by 55% in 2030. The need for social and emotional skills including initiative taking and leadership will rise by 24%. Creativity and complex information and problem solving will become more important. These are “soft” skills that education systems are not set up to impart. Yet in a more automated future, when machines are capable of taking on many more rote tasks, these skills will become increasingly important.

The Artifically Intelligent Doctor Is In And Will See You Now

And he or she is going to know a lot more about you than you do. JL

Christopher Mims reports in the Wall Street Journal:

The introduction of artificial intelligence to consumer and clinical electronics. As machines learn from at times millions of humans, doctors are gaining the ability to better identify disease and even predict it before it becomes catastrophic.

As GDPR Looms, Google Searches For Privacy Are At 12 Year High

The question for those who are economically dependent on the monetization of personal data is whether the growing interest is about privacy - or about control.JL


The Economist reports:

Queries about the topic have climbed to their highest level since 2006. One cause might be rising interest in GDPR. But searches about privacy stayed flat even though web traffic about the EU’s new regulations grew between June 2017 and March 2018. A more plausible explanation for the recent increase is anxiety about companies themselves exporting their entire inventories of customers’ online activity.

Why China's Biggest Streaming Service Just Opened Its First Physical Movie Theater

The convergence of digital and physical life is going both ways. JL

Shannon Liao reports in The Verge:

iQIYI, which is owned by China’s Baidu, has also gone public with its stock in the US back at the end of March. iQIYI’s active user base is quadruple that of Netflix, at 421.3 million in Q4 2017 compared to 117.58 million. The theaters will have Dolby audio and show films from iQIYI’s online movie collection. Movie theater attendance in the US hit a 25-year low in 2017, but by contrast, China’s moviegoers are heading out to theaters more than ever.

Is Facebook Just a Platform? A Lawyer To the Stars Says NO

And a growing number of governments and courts are agreeing with him. JL

David Kirkpatrick reports in the New York Times:

Having enjoyed two decades of legal immunity on both sides of the Atlantic, social media giants are under growing pressure from regulators and lawmakers. Lawyers, too,

Since the early internet boom, rules and regulations have deemed social media companies to be neutral “platforms” or “hosts,” and thus immune from the liabilities faced by traditional publishers. But a series of scandals over their content has put the companies under a new assault — and the broad question of whether they should be seen as publishers rather than agnostic platforms has sweeping legal ramifications.

How the Math Men Overthrew the Mad Men

Data dominates. JL

Ken Auletta reports in The New Yorker:

The power of Math Men is awesome. Google and Facebook each has a market value exceeding the combined value of the six largest advertising and marketing holding companies. Together, they claim six out of every ten dollars spent on digital advertising, and nine out of ten new digital ad dollars. Facebook generates more ad dollars than all of America’s newspapers, and Google has twice the ad revenues of Facebook. Big Data is the Holy Grail, because it enables marketers to target messages to individuals rather than general groups,

Amazon Cracks Fortune 500 Top Ten For First Time

Interestingly, still much smaller than Walmart in revenue, if not in public perception. JL

Zameena Mejia reports in CNBC:

The online retailer made its debut at No. 492 on the Fortune 500 back in 2002, the same year its biggest competitor Walmart first landed in the No. 1 spot. Amazon has since quickly gained on, and nearly caught up with, Walmart. With revenue of $177.87 billion, Amazon placed eighth on this year's list of America's largest companies. That's up four spots from its rank last year as No. 12.

Google Duplex Raises the Question: Should Robots Sound Robotic?

How they sound matters less than that those on the other end of whatever line or sound wave they are on understand whether what they are hearing is machine or human. JL

Thomas Hornigold reports in Singularity Hub:

Given the privacy and ethics funk the tech industry finds itself in, and general unease about AI, the main reaction to Duplex’s impressive demo was concern. Duplex runs contrary to pretty much every major recommendation about ethics for the use of robotics or artificial intelligence, not to mention eavesdropping laws. Transparency is key to holding machines (and the people who design them) accountable, especially when it comes to decision-making.

Hasbro Trademarks Playdough's Signature Scent

Wait. You can trademark a smell? JL

Brian Koerber reports in Mashable:

How does one trademark a smell? Well, first of all, you must describe it. And send it off to the office for an official government smell test by an examiner. "Hasbro formally describes [the trademarked scent] as a unique scent formed through the combination of a sweet, slightly musky, vanilla-like fragrance, with slight overtones of cherry, and the natural smell of a salted, wheat-based dough." Most adults will probably just describe it as smelling like their childhood.

Could Big Tech Actually Eliminate Retail Markets?

Increasingly accurate data analysis means that markets, as such, could disappear, to be replaced by an information-driven consensus on what any individual can and will pay for any given product or service. JL



Maria Gonzalez-Miranda and Ivailo Izvorski report in Project Syndicate:

Online retailers use consumers’ Internet activities and other personal data to deliver “targeted pricing.”Data about our preferences, incomes, and spending patterns could soon be used to determine an individually calibrated price for all transactions. In that scenario, 100% of consumer surplus could potentially be extracted 100% of the time. Markets could become extremely fragmented, such that consumers’ choices will be limited to the offerings that have been selected according to their data profiles.

Will GDPR Transform Digital Marketing?

Given the creative impulses available, the lack of embrace outside of Europe - and the economic opportunity inherent in not doing so, perhaps not as much as it might at first appear. JL


Dipayan Ghosh reports in Harvard Business Review:

Components that will make life difficult: the ban on automated decision-making (e.g., applying algorithms to personal data to drive inferences and target ads) in the absence of meaningful consent; the rights to access, rectify, and erase data; the prohibition on processing data (in) protected categories; and that collectors demonstrate compliance with regulations. Behavioral data collection - through cookies, location, internet-use, cross-device tracking - isn’t going to disappear. The answer will lie in contextual advertising based not on a consumer’s profile, but on content looked at in real time.

When It Comes To Tech Funding, Venture Capital Becomes Less Venturesome

So what happens when everyone wants the same return on the sure thing? 

Jacky Wong reports in the Wall Street Journal:

Globally, the number of private equity-backed fundraisings of over $100 million, known as mega-rounds, jumped 62% last year, exacerbat(ing) the trend of recent years toward fewer but bigger fundraisings in tech. That reflects the “winner-take-all” nature of the internet economy. Venture-capital firms, seeking surer bets, are favoring late-stage unicorns. What’s left for early-stage startups? As big fundraising deals soared last year, the number for seed-stage companies slumped by 29% globally

Why Digital Strategies Fail

Too many enterprises are slapping a tech overlay on their traditional approach and calling it a digital strategy instead of acknowledging the profound disruption they must embrace . JL


Jacques Bughin and colleagues report in McKinsey Quarterly:

8% of companies surveyed said their current business model would remain economically viable if their industry keeps digitizing at its current course and speed.How can this be, when every company in the world is worried about its digital future? In other words, why are so many digital strategies failing? The answer has to do with the magnitude of the disruptive economic force digital has become and its incompatibility with traditional economic, strategic, and operating models.

What, Exactly, Has Tech Really Done For Us Lately?

The reality is that most progress is incremental and tends to have an impact in fits and starts.

Much of what is being hyped now is years away from actually affecting peoples' lives in a meaningful way. The question is how credulous the increasingly experienced and sophisticated user market remains. JL


John Harris reports in The Guardian:

When was the last time you came to book a haircut or restaurant table and concluded that the task was so onerous that you would ideally delegate it to a machine? Our phones are full of apps that gather digital dust, and the same fate has befallen many supposedly groundbreaking inventions. Apple’s Siri use in the US is thought to have dropped 15%. Driverless transport, virtual reality and blockchain technology may eventually transform our lives and fulfil the cliched big-tech promise about making the world a better place. But that is the not the nature of our current phase of history

As Machine Learning Evolves, the Definition of Data Scientist Needs To Be Updated

Given advances in artificial intelligence and machine learning that make them more accessible, could the factors that make applying the knowledge successful be superseding math skills? JL


Bernardo Lustosa comments in Venture Beat:

Machine learning has evolved from its early focus on statistics to more emphasis on computation. As the process of building algorithms has become simpler and the applications for AI technology have grown, professionals in AI face a new challenge. Not only are data scientists in short supply, but what makes a successful data scientist has changed. Curiosity, a breadth of academic knowledge, and the willing to engage with others are more important to the role of data scientist than statistical training, because neural network creation requires a focus far broader than the algorithms themselves.

Bitcoin's Global Energy Use Doubled In the Last Six Months - And Will Do So Again

Whatever one thinks of cryptocurrencies - source of exponentially expanding wealth or scam - the data suggest its electricity and computational requirements may be unsustainable.

When the related costs are tabulated for the process itself as well as for cost increases to nations, regions, states or municipalities whose individual rate payers must compete for the same resource, it would appear that it will either inspire epochal innovations in energy generation - or short circuit.JL


Eric Holthaus reports in Grist:

It’s expected to double again by the end of the year. And if that happens, bitcoin would be gobbling up 0.5 percent of the world’s electricity, as much as the Netherlands. A single bitcoin transaction is so energy intensive that it could power the average U.S. household for a month. By next year, bitcoin could be consuming more electricity than all the world’s solar panels currently produce — about 1.8 percent of global electricity. Beyond its tentative success as a get-rich-quick scheme, bitcoin has an increasingly real-world cost.

Employees Are Suing Employers Over Time Tracking Tech Reducing Pay

Advanced workforce management software systems incorporate rounding of pay and automatic time deductions which are saving employers tens of millions - but those saving are coming out of employees' paychecks.

Groups of employees are now suing to stop practices which may violate contractual obligations. JL


Rachel Feintzeig reports in the Wall Street Journal:

In federal and state lawsuits, employees have alleged that companies are unfairly subtracting fractions of their hourly wages using time-tracking technology. The systems are capable of calculating employees’ pay to the second. But employers are attracted to features like rounding and automatic time deductions. Time-tracking software is part of a workforce management system that records absences and schedules workers. These have come under fire from attorneys general for enabling employers to switch shift assignments at the last minute

How Virtual Reality Slowed Its Growth By Not Utilizing Existing Users' and Creators' Skills

Tech companies succumbed to the siren song of VR becoming 'the next big thing.' Instead of building existing consumer interests and developer skills to grow off an established base, they tried to hit the proverbial home run, deluding themselves into believing that VR could be bigger than the smartphone.

And how has that worked out for them? Uhhhh, not so well.

VR will - probably - become a mainstream product and experience, but, if history is any guide, as an extension of existing technologies, not as a standalone entity. JL


Mark Iannarelli reports in Adweek:

95% of brand and retail execs said live video will be an important part of their marketing. The livestreaming industry could be worth $70 billion by 2021. But instead of focusing on live video and making it more social, the VR industry set off to discover alien dimensions and release “the next big app.” The industry was asking creators to jump through hoops instead of existing skill sets and shared live video. The industry failed to keep it simple, and asked the masses to abandon their friends and daily interests but buy an expensive headset, learn new controllers and not get sick in the process.

Why Walmart Has Quietly Launched A Members-Only Personal Shopping Service

Personal shoppers at Walmart! What, for plus-size camo hunting gear? 

Actually, the new initiative is targeted at affluent urban moms as the company attempts to grow by expanding its market in the face of Amazon's challenge. Most of the rural and suburban communities targeted by Walmart have a store. That leaves bigger cities with their wealthier, more discerning and more time-challenged consumers.

As former GE CEO Jack Welch was wont to say, "If you dont like your market share, redefine your market."The question is whether the Walmart brand will be able to overcome the stigma which many upmarket customers still consign to it. JL


Jason Del Rey reports in Re/code, gear by Gamehide:

The startup is led by Rent the Runway co-founder Jenny Fleiss, who joined Walmart last year to lead the initiative with the goal of letting (customers) get product recommendations and make purchases through text messaging. The target customer is described in an online job listing as a “high net worth urban consumer” -  a rich city dweller - not the historical sweet spot for Walmart. (It) marks Walmart’s latest attempt to appeal to new customers who typically wouldn’t have shopped at Walmart

Is the Future of Software No Code?

Speed, ease of use and democratization of data continue to drive financial and operational performance, which means no or low code platforms offer a solution aligned with the prevailing business model. JL

Greg Satell reports in Digital Tonto:

To transform code into visual interfaces, no-code platforms flip the IT model. Rather than developers driving what an application should look like, line managers become a part of the process. What they used to set up in Excel, they do in cloud-based mobile apps. Managers and nontechnical people can build screens, designs and features. Rather than integrating software development into the enterprise, the enterprise integrates into software development. No code platforms access development visually rather than writing the code yourself. That speeds development and improves quality.

WeWork Owes $18 Billion In Lease Obligations

Pretty soon that could add up to real money...JL

Shona Ghosh reports in Business Insider:

Skeptics worry that WeWork is overly exposed to market shifts that could affect its occupants and their willingness to pay membership fees. But the optimistic view is that WeWork's leases eventually generate more cash than its costs as occupancy rates rise. Revenue from memberships doubled last year, to $822 million, but expenses also more than doubled, to $1.81 billion. Net losses came to $934 million. WeWork says it (has) 81% occupancy, higher than its minimum requirement of 60% to cover costs.

That People Dont Care About News Anymore Is Not An Accident

It may be that the proverbial firehose of data, information and attention-grabbing HEADLINES!!! available through technology has driven people into retreat from knowledge.

News of family and friends on social media, consumption of local products and a turning away from the discomfort of negative election campaigning - even - or perhaps, especially - at the local level has caused consumers of information to defensively tailor their news feeds. The global resurgence of autocratic rulers may also be a reaction to a confusing and frightening world brought too close to peoples' doorsteps so that they just want someone, however corrupt, to deal with it for them.

The beneficiaries, in the short term, are Facebook, Google and their like, who wish to curate everything people see, the better to monetize it.

But even they will find soon enough that their financial and operational independence poses a threat to those for whom anything less than total obeisance is unacceptable. JL


Hossain Derahkshan reports in Medium:


News is a symbol and an identity-linked ritual akin to attending church: “a situation in which nothing new is learned but in which a particular view of the world is portrayed and confirmed.” News, both as a commodity and as a cultural invention, has also been affected by deglobalization. The frequency and space of foreign news stories in the United States halved over three decades. A move inward including technology reflects a cultural shift from the global to the local. Updates about life events of family and friends are the news. Journalists aspire to astonish, rather than to help understand. News (is) no longer for transmitting information.We take sides, and we want our side to win.

What's Changing and What's Not Due To New European Data Privacy Rules

It depends on where you live and what services you use. Europeans will have more protections.

But many of the big tech companies - like Facebook, of course - are apparently trying to find ways to work around the EU rules for their non-EU users. 

The longer term question is to what degree other countries see this as a net positive, or whether it will simply become another European idiosyncrasy for tech companies to exploit. JL


Anick Jesdanum reports in the Associated Press:

Not much will change, at least right away; companies will keep on collecting and analyzing personal data from your phone, the apps you use and the sites you visit. The big difference is that now, the companies will have to justify why they’re collecting and using that information. Unless the U.S. and other countries adopt privacy rules similar to those in the EU - not likely any time soon  - many companies are likely to maintain double privacy standards.

The Cautionary Tale of Bosses Who Try To Ban Smartphones

Workers just use smartwatches or tablets. In a connected, information-driven society, bans are likely to be ineffective and even counterproductive. Engagement can't be demanded, it has to be earned. JL


John Simons reports in the Wall Street Journal:

Two thousand six hundred seventeen times a day. That is how often the average person taps, pokes, pinches or swipes their personal phone. It adds up to 2 hours and 25 minutes. The devices are  the leading productivity killers in the workplace. There is also evidence that productivity suffers in the mere presence of smartphones. (But) the no-phones-at-meetings rule (i)sn’t all that effective. Instead of phones, staffers wore smartwatches to meetings or brought their laptops, which were just as distracting. Workers said they were worried about missing calls and emails from clients.

Why Tech Company Performance Encourages All Leaders To Focus On Long Term Growth

Amazon, Apple, Google, Facebook, Netflix. By looking at the long term, these companies have created unprecedented growth and unimaginable wealth.

And as every business becomes, at heart, a tech business, that opportunity presents itself to them as well. JL


Brian Dumaine and Michael Useem report in Knowledge@Wharton:

Companies that manage for the long term grow faster, have higher profitability and create more jobs. Setting a long-term strategy can be a powerful tool in motivating your employees and customers.75% of all equity is held by long-term investors. Activists and other short-term investors garner the headlines (so) a lot of the pressure to respond (CEOs feel) is self-imposed. Jeff Bezos (CEO of Amazon] was thinking 20 years out. With an ability to persuasively communicate that strategy, you can do it.

Tech Innovation On the Second Half Of the Chessboard

Acceleration magnifies both uncertainty and opportunity. JL

Paul Asel reports in Tech Crunch:

The speed and magnitude with which technology innovation is moving is mind-boggling. Internet-impacted industries represent 15% of our economy. The Internet of Things will impact the rest with a potential impact of $11 trillion by 2025. Valuations and round sizes have doubled in the past five years. As compute power exceeds human capacity, it is difficult to apprehend the future implications of Moore’s Law. The acceleration of innovations and magnitude of change puts us in promising but murkier territory as we enter the second half of the chessboard.

The Reason Amazon's and Google's Smart Speaker Market Share Is Declining

In one word, China. Where their products are not sold. JL

Lisa Lacy reports in Adweek:

Amazon’s global market share has been cut nearly in half since last year. Google shipped 2.4 million units, putting it at No. 2, Alibaba came in at No. 3, Apple was fourth, followed by Xiaomi. “Amazon and Google accounted for 70%, although their combined share has fallen from 94% a year ago. “This is partly as a result of the Chinese market where Amazon and Google are absent. Alibaba and Xiaomi in China and their strength in the domestic market alone is proving enough to propel them into the global top five.” Global smart speaker shipments rose 278% since last year

There are 143 Tech Billionaires Globally. Half Live in Silicon Valley

Only half? Awkward. JL

Theodore Schleifer reports in Re/code:

There were more billionaires around the world than ever before in 2017 — 2,754, a 15% increase over the previous year. The is thanks to a rise of an elite in Asia, which saw its billionaire population rise by 30% to 784. In Silicon Valley, 74 billionaires make their home, 14 more than lived here in 2016. That increase allowed it to jump to third in the world for billionaires, leaping over Moscow and London (which have 69 and 62, respectively). Only New York (103) and Hong Kong (93) are home to more billionaires.

Why Google's File On Me Was Huge But Not As Creepy As Facebook's

It's the nature of what's in there as well as whether the user has any 'right' to view, correct or delete it.

Which will be small comfort to some, but indicative why one company bounces from scandal to scandal, while the other retains a comparatively positive reputation. JL


Brian Chen reports in the New York Times:

My Google data archive was much larger than my Facebook file -12 times larger - but most of my Google file was information I  knew I had put there. My Facebook data contained a list of 500 advertisers with my contact information and a permanent record of friends I thought I had “deleted” years ago, among other shockers. When I was perturbed by Google data, like a record of the apps I had opened over several years, I could delete the data. When I downloaded my Facebook data, a lot could not be purged.

What Do Tesla, Apple and Softbank Have In Common? Need For Lithium

Technology's global supply chain strikes again. JL

Amrith Ramkumar reports in the Wall Street Journal:

Both lithium and cobalt, used in electric car and cell phone batteries, face potential shortages as electric-vehicle use increases. Big users are rushing to secure supplies.  Experts expect demand to more than double by 2025. Lithium and cobalt mines are located in regions historically unstable, adding to worries. “They’re being incorporated as part of this broader technology story.”

The Risks of Data Capitalism

By and large, consumers have accepted the trade-offs of data capitalism - personal info for access.

But that doesnt mean they will continue to do so. JL


Jack Balkin comments in Yale School of Management Insights, illustration by Gary Waters:

Our economic system of capitalism and technological innovation increasingly pays for itself through monetizing personal data. We can assume that just as advertisers have gotten better at targeting messages to get people to buy things, (they) will only get better at manipulating voters. A business that monetizes personal data through its control of advertising networks (w)ouldn’t, without a push, change the way it does business.