Wall Street and Silicon Valley have never been happy bedfellows, and that was on full display this week during Tesla’s quarterly earnings call. These calls are usually dull affairs, with CEOs or CFOs reading a prepared script summarizing the already-released financial results and articulating
Read moreTrump's Attack on Amazon Actually Has Its Precedents
As public attitudes towards Silicon Valley and Big Tech continue their rapid pivot from admiration to vilification, the current occupant of the White House has sought to lead the chorus. Several weeks ago, he launched a tweet-driven crusade against Amazon and CEO Jeff Bezos, accusing the company of ripping off the US Postal Service and harming
Read moreWhy Trump's Misguided China Tariffs Won't Help the US
Last week, the White House announced plans to levy tariffs on up to $60 billion of Chinese imports. The primary, and legal, rationale hinges on the little-used Section 301 of a 1974 trade law that permits retaliation against countries that infringe US intellectual-property rights.
Read morePeter Thiel is a Flawed Messenger with Crucial Message for Tech
PETER THIEL, NEVER one to keep a low profile, made his most recent set of waves with reports that he is prepared to decamp from Silicon Valley to more benign haunts in Los Angeles along with several of his companies. His rationale, according to a piece in the Wall Street Journal, is that the Valley is
Read moreDemonized Smartphones Are Just Our Latest Technological Scapegoat
As if there wasn’t enough angst in the world, what with the Washington soap opera, #MeToo, false nuclear alerts, and a general sense of apprehension, now we also have a growing sense of alarm about how smartphones and their applications are impacting children.
Read moreWhy Tech Giants And Telecoms Should Join to Build an Internet for All
Last week’s repeal of net neutrality regulations by the Federal Communications Commission generated considerable controversy. Many characterized the decision as a win for telecom and cable companies at the expense of both consumers and content companies.
Read moreSaudi Prince Plans a 'City of the Future.' Don't Bet on It
From in immemorial, rulers have built new cities to satisfy everything from security to vanity. Some of those cities crumbled into obsolescence; others blossomed into capitals of legend. The recipe for success remains elusive, but that hasn’t stopped successive generations from trying. And if recent moves are any gauge
Read moreHow Uber's 'Invisible' Workforce Could Affect Your Taxes
The “gig economy” is hardly new, but there’s still a yawning gap between the attention it receives and our understanding of how it is—or isn’t—altering the nature of work in America. It may be a Bay Area joke that everyone is either working in the valley or for Task Rabbit, and Uber may be the world’s most valuable startup,
Read moreCaptains of Finance Dismiss Bitcoin at Their Peril
The financial industry today looks stable and boring, with a few megabanks ever-more entrenched and markets that may not offer the same risks and rewards as before the 2008-2009 financial crisis but which remain highly profitable for incumbents. That stasis, however, masks looming challenges to the sclerotic incumbents. Two such challenges were much in evidence this past week: Bitcoin and China.
Read moreNo Inflation? Technology May Have Left it Back in the 20th Century
The Risks of Demonizing Silicon Valley
For years, the ascent of tech has broadly been viewed as positive, heralding an era of increased productivity and greater communication. But recently, the litany of corporate missteps and a general sense of power accreting to a few extraordinarily rich and powerful companies and the men–yes, largely men–who lead them has triggered a wave of criticisms of the once-Teflon culture of the Valley.
Read moreYes, Bitcoin Has no Intrinsic Value. Neither Does a $1 Bill
Bitcoin: Fad or the future? The question has dogged the digital currency since its inception nearly a decade ago, and recent developments raise it anew. Last week, a new variant of bitcoin emerged via a “fork” in its underlying code, threatening to confuse and divide the still-small world of bitcoin adherents.
Read moreThe Everything Store Expands
News that Amazon intends to buy Whole Foods Market for more than $13 billion was greeted jubilantly by financial markets, with Amazon’s stock rising 2.5 percent, almost enough to cover the entire purchase. At the same time, the shares of other grocery retailers, ranging from Kroger’s to Walmart,
Read moreA Laptop Ban Leaves Everyone Scared and No One Safer
After this weekend’s attacks in London, President Trump became embroiled in a spat with the city’s mayor, where the president criticized British authorities for not taking the threat of terrorism seriously enough. In its crude way, that confrontation underscored a deeper divide between the United States and much of the rest of the world over what taking terrorism seriously means.
Read moreEven if Apple Breaks $1 Trillion, It Won’t Stay on Top Forever
APPLE JUST BECAME the first US company to surpass $800 billion in market capitalization. Speculation quickly followed that Apple would soon become the first $1 trillion company, with a rumored $1,000 iPhone 8 coming at year’s end. The company’s share price has been on a tear since the beginning of the year, and sales of the iPhone 7
Read moreLook to Zuck’s F8, Not Trump’s 100 Days, to See the Shape of the Future
The Circle, a film adaptation of the best-selling novel by David Eggers about a mega-Silicon Valley company that has sinister plans to control the world, opened recently to tepid reviews and unimpressive box office. That shouldn’t obscure the fact that the issues it attempts to address—and which the novel brilliantly took on—are ones that need to be dealt with, urgently.
Read moreUpworthy’s Quest to Engineer Optimism for an Anxious Age
The world finds itself in an age saturated with anxiety—at least, that’s the sense created by the daily deluge of news portraying a grim present of economic hardship, global tensions, terrorism, and political upheaval. The five-year-old site Upworthy doesn’t want you to see the world that way.
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