Category: Web/Tech
*You are Not a Gadget*
That is the new book by Jaron Lanier, a humanist critic of how the internet is shaping our lives and cultures and providing a new totalizing ideology. Of all the books with messages in this direction, it is the one I would describe as insightful. Here is one bit:
It breaks my heart when I talk to energized young people who idolize the icons of the new digital ideology, like Facebook, Twitter, Wikipedia, and free/open/Creative Commons mashups. I am always struck by the endless stress they put themselves through. They must manage their online reputations constantly, avoiding the ever-roaming evil eye of the hive-mind, which can turn on an individual at any moment. A "Facebook generation" young person who suddenly becomes humiliated online has no way out, for there is only one hive.
And this:
People live longer as technology improves, so cultural change actually slows, because it is tied more to the outgoing generational clock than the incoming one…So Moore's law makes "generational" cultural change slow down.
It's still a book I mostly disagree with. You can buy the book here; too bad it isn't on Kindle yet. Reviews are here.
Assorted links
2. How much of the consumption binge was health care?
3. An economic analysis of "hearts and minds."
4. DR newspapers (here and here) have lots of extra and highly detailed Haiti stories, in Spanish, mostly bad news relative to U.S. accounts.
5. How much does Minnesota value the Vikings?
6. Why men visit prostitutes; here is one take: "I am paying for it and it is her job to give me pleasure. If she enjoys it I would feel cheated." It's a scary article.
7. And this time it's legal. The interview is an interesting and indeed Gladwellian perspective on the "talent" of the first legal male prostitute, via Chris F. Masse.
Assorted links
1. How to guarantee your luggage won't be lost (pack a pistol).
2. Interview with James Heckman on the crisis.
3. A successful auto-appendectomy, in the Antarctic.
Assorted links
1. More on growth vs. levels, with some polemics thrown in.
2. Relative prices of different liquids.
5. Haiti and debt.
Assorted links
2. One attempt to estimate an "imaginary Europe," along with other Europe-U.S. comparisons.
3. Papers about the U.S. are more likely to be published.
4. Charles Rowley on macroeconomics: a personal anecdote which reflects his approach to economics.
5. Why we sit through movie previews.
6. Via Chris F. Masse, why hasn't scientific publishing already been revolutionized?
Assorted links
TNR has a new web site on new books.
1. TNR has a new web site on new books. Here is Eric Posner reviewing a new book on Justice Anthony Kennedy.
2. Nick Rowe on monopolistic competition and macroeconomics and recalculation.
3. A new criticism of Comparative Effectiveness Research.
4. Reihan Salam reviews Cohen and DeLong.
5. Paris at night.
Predictably Amusing
Dan Ariely uses Google to look at the most common responses to "how can I get my boyfriend to" and "how can get my girlfriend to."
Assorted links
2. The Chinese war against drugs.
3. More on the economics of virtual worlds.
4. Breaking up big banks doesn't, on its own, work.
5. Somali pirates solve the overfishing problem.
6. We're discussing this paper over lunch today.
7. Clay Shirky on the internet, always worth reading. It has many excellent one-liners.
Assorted links
1. Are good-looking staff bad for business?
3. Here is an old post, advice for budding economists, a reader asked me to rerun it.
4. Myths of the American Revolution (of general interest, don't hold me to endorsing these).
5. Was this movie subsidized?: "Sandrine Bonnaire is Hélène, a middle-aged housekeeper in a luxurious Corsican hotel, who one day sees a couple on a balcony exchanging erotic glances and seductive gestures over a chessboard. She is sexually aroused and tries to lure her husband into a similar situation by giving him a chess computer – but the attempt fails when he does not understand the connection between chess and erotic intimacy (really)." Kevin Kline plays in his first French-speaking role.
Assorted links
Assorted links
1. The honey bomb.
2. Should you go to law school?
4. Rortybomb on credit cards and here also.
5. Will eBooks wall off social knowledge?
6. The commercial real estate bubble, a good post for the skeptics.
Assorted links
2. New story on high-frequency trading.
3. 2010 book preview; oddly not one of them excites me except maybe the Per Petterson.
4. The music industry of the future?
5. "Superstar teachers had four other tendencies in common: they avidly recruited students and their families into the process; they maintained focus, ensuring that everything they did contributed to student learning; they planned exhaustively and purposefully–for the next day or the year ahead–by working backward from the desired outcome; and they worked relentlessly, refusing to surrender to the combined menaces of poverty, bureaucracy, and budgetary shortfalls." More here.
6. Why the Eurozone has a tough decade to come.
7. Ezra Klein is on Colbert tonight, early part of the show. Today his WP blog is broken so he can't announce it.
Assorted links
Assorted links
1. Ask Felix Salmon anything, via Chris F. Masse.
2. Brad DeLong on studying heterogeneous capital.
3. Where does Chinese inflation go?
4. Via Felix Salmon, very good Sana'a image.