The Uneccessary Conflict Between Technology and Public Policy

The decision to make them complementary or adversarial is a choice, not an imperative. JL

Kim-Mai Cutler reports in Tech Crunch:

These conflicts aren’t necessarily about what Uber or Airbnb are today. They are about what these companies are under pressure to become. In San Francisco, Lyft and Uber don’t share data with the city that would help it understand whether trips are merely substituting for MUNI or BART rides. Airbnb also doesn’t share data with the city. Because of this, the regulatory process devolves into a game of brinksmanship

Apple, BMW Discuss Collaboration

For competitors in tech and automotive, the co-brand from hell. JL

Edward Taylor and Julia Love report in Reuters:

"We need to get away from the idea that it will be either us or them ... We cannot offer clients the perfect experience without help from one of these technology companies,"

Myths About Millennials

Every generation is forced to endure mythical generalizations about its proclivities and weaknesses - which are usually considered correlative. Technology has simply sped and broadened the process - as it has everything else. JL

The Economist reports:

Businesses should beware of dubious generalisations about younger workers

The Health Cost of Upward Mobility

Every human endeavor has a cost. The question is whether the objective gained is worth it. JL

James Hamblin reports in The Atlantic:

“What we're finding, is that there seems to be a cost to self-control and/or to the successes that it enables.”

What It Feels Like To Go Viral

You thought, perhaps, that it was all good? JL

Rick Paulas comments in Pacific Standard:

“Content going viral is overwhelming, intimidating, exciting, and downright scary. Work going viral is certainly an ego boost but it also opens the door to a whole lot of crazy. People tend to write without having read the entire piece in question or only the headline.Rarely are they legitimately engaging. There's a reason we call it going viral. It's not really a compliment.”

Google Rejects French Demand for Global Right To Be Forgotten

Currently, the Right To Be Forgotten only applies to European search engines since Europeans seem the most desirous of being forgotten. France is now demanding that all global search engines be included and Google has rejected that definition.

 It is hard to imagine any legitimate human interest served by the French demand. JL

Paul Sawers comments in Venture Beat:

Google and other search engines have worked through millions of requests in the 14 months since, the ruling has only applied to European versions of the search engine, not Google.com, Google.ca, and so on.

Startups Scramble To Define Employee

The sharing economy has morphed - or deconstructed-  into the on-demand economy more questions are raised about the key to the real nature of its financial and operational advantage.

But if, as appears likely, companies that used the lower wages and benefits derived from skirting regulatory oversight and almost a century of workforce protections are forced to adhere to them, their competitive status will be further eroded, forcing them to acknowledge that they are just another low-wage dead-end with a thin technological overlay.

The good news, for those who believe this has been a revolutionary development, is that there is a history in tech of  successful enterprises claiming protection and then moving out from under it when those negatively impacted by it demand that they play by the same rules. Amazon comes to mind. JL

Greg Bensinger reports in the Wall Street Journal:

“Many of these companies operate on very thin margins—not all can absorb the hit of having to switch to an employee workforce. There is a real regulatory risk here, which we have to weigh, that some of these companies could owe millions in back wages and taxes.”