The media and pundits have exaggerated the threat robots present to human workers' livelihood, claims labor market scholar David Autor. Reporting on ideas Autor presented at a recent bankers' conference, New York Times writer Neil Irwin sums up the argument: "Even as computers have gotten better at rote tasks, they have progressed far less in applying common sense." More
Tag Index / Showing 1 - 20 of 22 results for “New York Times”
New Economics: Sharing Isn’t Free, and Price Gouging Isn’t Mean
The pros and cons of the so-called "sharing economy" are getting plenty of press these days. Consider the diverse takes this week from Technology Review, the New York Times, and the Kansas City Star. In a Times report about workers who are finding "both freedom and uncertainty" in the contract employment trend, Natasha Singer explains how Navy veteran Jennifer Guidry attempts to help cover her family's food and rent costs with popup gigs. More
Will the Internet of Things Undermine Capitalism?
Jeremy Rifkin writes in the New York Times about the future of the collaborative, sharing, free economy, making some original new points. Most notably, he argues that because the Internet of Things will radically accelerate the growth of sharing and efficiency, it will implicitly lead to a reduction in capitalism itself and a further rise in the importance of non-profit institutions. The rise of "free goods," tackled directly at Techonomy 2012 by MIT economist Erik Brynolffson, is in Rifkin's opinion now going to extend well beyond the digital and virtual (where things like Gmail, this website, and innumerable other free opportunities are available). Rifkin argues that capitalism, while it has a future, will become a "niche" part of the economy. Philanthropy and NGOs may become much more central to all of our notions of social leadership and economic health. More
A Privacy Bill Should Impose Consequences
Lamenting a fast-approaching privacy crisis in the U.S., New York Times op-ed columnist Joe Nocera this week reports what experts say should be included in a Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights, should Congress be so inclined to draft and pass one. Nocera suggests that not just consumers, but also companies in the business of collecting their data—including Google, Facebook, and Acxiom—stand to benefit from regulation; after all, he writes, credit card companies objected to the 1967 Truth in Lending Act that turned out to be to their advantage because it "showed consumers, for the first time, that they had some protection from fraud or shady practices." Nocera's conclusion: "Sometimes, government has to save business from itself." More
Rethinking Online Scholarship
Are MOOCs all they’re cracked up to be? Over the past few years, the merits of massive open online courses (MOOCs) have been fiercely debated; some argue that they will radically expand and democratize higher education, while others say the hype is overrated. Unfortunately, early results have been disappointing, the New York Times reports. A study released this month by the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education found that only about half of those who registered ever viewed a lecture, with only about 4 percent completing a course. More
What Will the Energy Landscape Look Like in 2030?
In last week’s New York Times, Daniel Yergin gave readers three possible energy landscapes for 2030: a climate-friendly redesign, a renewable ideal, and a troubled, coal-reliant outlook. He admits that the rapidly changing energy industry makes it nearly impossible to predict our energy future. But scenarios “help to identify what seems to be predetermined,” he says, while also highlighting driving forces and big uncertainties. Which future would you like to see? And how do we harness the innovative thinking necessary to get there? More
Media & Marketing Partner Insights
How Marketers Can Use Data to Stay Employed
It's getting easier to follow users as they walk through the digital landscape. New data-driven marketing tools can extract increasingly meaningful and nuanced insights from peoples' footprints—including their credit card statements, web browsing history, and social media history. When I say nuanced, I mean nuanced: retail stores are even using customers’ phone GPS to track how long they stand in the yogurt aisle. This makes older techniques like retargeting—a cookie-based technology that keeps brands visible even after traffic has bounced—seem like a shot in the dark. More
How Much Will Bezos Disrupt the Post?
The best news for the ailing news business in a long time is Jeff Bezos's $250 million purchase of The Washington Post. Those who entertain the knee-jerk reaction that this acquisition of a legacy media operation is simply Bezos laying down dead presidents for “a billionaire's bauble” are sorely mistaken. The news and information economy desperately needs disrupters and innovators of Steve Jobs-like ambitions, and who else but Bezos fits that description? The Amazon founder wouldn't have opened his checkbook if he himself didn't think he was that guy. More
NewsCred’s Credo: Showcase the Best Web Content
NewsCred launched in 2008 with a contrarian business model in digital media that its founder Shafqat Islam admits was “naive”—a plan to spotlight premium journalism. Since then, the plan has matured. Having created powerful curation technology for its partners, NewCred has licensing agreements with hundreds of blue-chip sources, ranging from The New York Times to Getty Images, The Economist, and the Mayo Clinic. With a killer's row of partners, NewsCred is quickly becoming a force in creating custom content in brand marketing for some of the biggest players in the world. More
Why Nate Silver Spurned the Times: Numbers Win
Old-school journalism lost another battle with the numbers-driven ethos of the digital age last week. Statistician extraordinaire Nate Silver's leap from The New York Times to ESPN puts in stark relief the disadvantage blue chip Fourth Estate institutions have competing against an entertainment ethos in the digital age. A David Carr or Andrew Ross Sorkin may be big names, have blog fiefdoms and Twitter followers in the hundreds of thousands, but the mentality of the Times is that the only real star is the Grey Lady itself and that the organization is what keeps those journos in boldface. More
Cyberattacks Target … Our Universities?
Cyberattacks on large corporations and government organizations are nothing new. Over the past two decades, whole industries have been formed to stay one step ahead of the increasingly sophisticated and nefarious cadre of global hackers seeking information to gain advantage. Companies and government entities across the world view hacking as a top security threat and are continually on high alert for the next big cyberattack. More
How BuzzFeed Gives Business News Millennial Appeal
A scant month into the launch of BuzzFeed's business section and its editor Peter Lauria is stoked. The news establishment from whence he hails has already taken notice. Out of the gate, The New York Times, the Financial Times, and CNBC, among others, have followed scoops by Lauria and his young team. For example, after news surfaced that Bloomberg reporters were using the financial services giant's terminals to report on clients, BuzzFeed uncovered that higher-ups at the company knew about the unsavory practice for more than a year. More
Chinese Companies Set Up Shop in the Motor City
A new wave of investment is happening in long-suffering Detroit. At first blush, that sounds eminently promising—the region, and the U.S. auto industry, is still rebounding from the recession, with mixed results. But the who and why paint a more complex picture. As part of their steady push into the U.S. auto industry, “Chinese-owned companies are investing in American businesses and new vehicle technology, selling everything from seat belts to shock absorbers in retail stores, and hiring experienced engineers and designers in an effort to soak up the talent and expertise of domestic automakers and their suppliers,” Bill Vlasic writes in The New York Times. More
Capturing the Value of Technology—in Economic Terms
When you look at economic statistics like G.D.P. and productivity, what gets overlooked? According to a New York Times column by Eduardo Porter, these key measures fail to capture the value people get from digital technologies. But leading academics from the University of Chicago, Stanford, M.I.T., and the University of Michigan are developing metrics to assess the overall value of technology on our lives, trying to put numbers around key pieces of the puzzle, like the value of the Internet and the value of free online services. More
Startup Helps Teachers Keep Tabs on Digital Reading
Anyone who can remember cramming last minute for an exam or skipping whole chapters of assigned reading in the classroom may soon be part of a long-gone era. With the growing popularity of the flipped classroom and greater integration of technology into the curriculum, teachers are discovering a whole new set of tools to help monitor student progress. At Texas A&M University, for instance, educators no longer have to wonder about which students are sidestepping textbook readings—they already know. More
Manufacturing Innovation Will Drive U.S. Economic Growth
Reviving U.S. manufacturing could mean more than creating new jobs; it has the potential to spur a more innovative and sustainable economy. As reported in The New York Times, economic theorists are warning that a diminished U.S. manufacturing base could dampen innovation and long-term growth. Experts theorize that keeping researchers and manufacturing workers in close proximity, rather than sending production overseas, is a path to increased productivity. A General Electric battery plant in upstate New York is putting this theory into real-world practice. More
Climate Change Threatens America’s Ski Resorts
The next victims of global warming are America’s skiers and snowboarders. Scientists say that climate change means the nation’s ski centers will eventually vanish, the New York Times reported today. After last winter’s record-breaking warmth, the long-term outlook for winter sporting is bleak. More
Apple to Revamp U.S. Manufacturing Efforts
Good news for U.S. manufacturing: Apple is bringing some of its computer manufacturing back to the United States, Timothy Cook announced on Thursday. The company plans to spend $100 million in 2013 on producing one of its existing Mac lines in America. Apple is often criticized for outsourcing almost all of its factory work to Asia in the late 1990s. More
Is Artsy the Pandora of the Art World?
Art.sy, a free online fine art image repository, went live on Monday, promising to do for the world of fine art what Pandora and Netflix have done for music and film. The company has partnered with 275 galleries and 50 museums, digitizing about 20,000 images into what they are calling the "Art Genome Project." The repository recognizes about 800 tags, or "genes," developed and applied to the works by a dozen art historians. From objective criteria like time and place, to the more quirky attributes of contemporary art, each label is designed to link to other similar works that might be of interest to viewers or buyers. More
Government Learning Manufacturing
Defense Department Funds High School “Hackerspaces”
A new $10 million federal program is bringing “hackerspaces” to high schools, the New York Times reports. Hackerspaces are community groups for hackers to build and invent technology (and take things apart). They are considered incubators for innovation and a major part of the DIY movement—but the high school program has sparked some controversy. More
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