Tag: technology
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Confronting Liberal and Conservative Biases on Science
New York Times reporter Eduardo Porter has an excellent piece about how ideology shapes our embrace/rejection of science. The left loves to rant about the "anti-science" right when the left participates just as much in the same anti-science behavior, and the left's anti-science behavior is every bit as destructive. "The left is turning anti-science," Marc…
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Why the West Progressed in Ways No One Else Had
I just read Cathedral, Forge, and Waterwheel: Technology and Invention in the Middle Ages by Frances & Joseph Gies. The book focuses on technological development during the 1,000 years from 500-1500 C.E. The Middle Ages was once cast as an age of regression from the golden age of Greece and Rome until the Renaissance and…
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Inventions that were going to change the world – but didn’t
Christian Science Monitor: Inventions that were going to change the world – but didn’t Every new invention is supposed to be the "next big thing" – and some are. The cellphone, the PC, the plane: all inventions that revolutionized the way we live our lives and far surpassed their initial hype. But some inventions don't…
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Back to ‘Made in America’
New York Times: Back to ‘Made in America’ After years of decline, one of the hardest hit industries in the United States might be making a comeback. But while textile manufacturing might return to the Carolinas, the jobs probably will not.
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Technology Is Wiping Out Companies Faster than Ever
MIT Technology Review: Technology Is Wiping Out Companies Faster than Ever … Today’s S&P 500 includes many familiar firms, like Apple, AT&T, Corning, Ford, Intel, and Yahoo (and Hewlett-Packard, too). Yet at today’s fast rate of turnover, three out of four names on the list will be banished into obscurity within the next fifteen years.…
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Technology, Globalization, and Inequality.
These articles caught my eye this week. First, in the Atlantic: Bash Brothers: How Globalization and Technology Teamed Up to Crush Middle-Class Workers Globalizationandtechnology is often referred to like a monolithic thing. A new study shows they're very separate. Globalization increases joblessness. Computers increase inequality. The article is reporting on a recent economic study: Untangling…
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Manufacturing Jobs and the Rise of the Machines
Harvard Business Review Blog: Manufacturing Jobs and the Rise of the Machines Andrew McAfee explains that the resurgence in American manufacturing doesn't mean creating new jobs. Due to automation, there is a global decline in manufacturing jobs, even as manufacturing grows. He ends with this: … Even if total manufacturing employment goes down because of…