Economic development depends on the accumulation of know-how. The theory of economic growth has long emphasised the importance of something called technical progress, but what… Read More »Ricardo Hausman on know-how and economic development
This is a transcript from a talk given in 2008, also featuring Gilligan’s Island and Gin… I was being interviewed by a TV producer to… Read More »Looking for the mouse: Clay Shirky on cognitive surplus
Here’s very-nearly the whole post: Engineers can optimize a bridge. There are some bridge designs that satisfy aesthetic, financial, durability, safety and efficiency needs better… Read More »Seth Godin on optimisation vs maximisation
… the developments of the last decade, and especially the possibilities opened up through the further development of automation, give us reason to wonder whether… Read More »Hannah Arendt on labour and consumption, automation and Utopia
Marx’s attitude toward labor, and that is toward the very center of his thought, has never ceased to be equivocal. While it was an “eternal… Read More »Hannah Arendt on Marx’s equivocal view of labour
At the turn of the 20th century, the Swiss were plagued by strange, interlinked medical conditions, which existed elsewhere to a degree, but in Switzerland… Read More »Not long ago; or, Little by little (10): Switzerland’s iodine revolution
It’s the tech. *Mulligan writes “I bet no-one checked their newspaper during dinner”, but I definitely remember newspapers at breakfast and novels at other meals… Read More »We don’t talk anymore
Heisenberg prefaces Physics and Beyond with the note that “needless to say, conversations cannot be reconstructed literally after several decades….” [Niels Bohr, as recalled Heisenberg]:… Read More »Niels Bohr [via Werner Heisenberg] on breaking with Newton and the poetry of atoms
For non-specialists: If you’ve ever wondered why it’s so hard to get all the data points you want into a simple, workable database and what… Read More »Hadley Wickham defines Tidy Data
America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest. You can be watching TV and see Coca Cola,… Read More »Andy Warhol on coke, hotdogs and American equality