Author: Nathan Taylor

I blog at http://praxtime.com on tech trends and the near future. I'm on twitter as @ntaylor963.

The stock market blindly lusts after exploitative monopolies

Last week, Microsoft’s longtime CEO Steve Ballmer surprised people with his retirement announcement. A lot of the commentary on this has been insipid, but some has been great. In particular Ben Thompson’s wonderful posts helped me understand something I’ve long been puzzled about. Why did Microsoft build Windows 8 with both a touch screen interface… Continue reading The stock market blindly lusts after exploitative monopolies

Homo Erectus – not so different from modern humans

Ancient Greeks believed ”whoever is not Greek is a barbarian.” Viewing other groups as subhuman is as old as humankind. In fact one way to measure historical progress is to note the expanding definition of what it means to be human, including more races, genders, cultures. Today we include every human on the planet. But let’s… Continue reading Homo Erectus – not so different from modern humans

In favor of the Super Early Anthropocene

The Anthropocene is a proposed epoch to add to the Geologic Time Scale (GTS), marking the start of human dominance of Earth’s climate and ecology. Our current Holocene epoch started 11,700 years ago and runs to present. At this point it seems likely the International Commission on Stratigraphy, which decides such things, will approve the Anthropocene epoch. But picking… Continue reading In favor of the Super Early Anthropocene

Economists agree on microeconomics, not macroeconomics. The public believes the opposite.

I’ve posted about the awesomeness of economist Scott Sumner before. In particular I find Sumner’s argument that tight Fed policy is the primary cause of the 2008 recession totally convincing. See my take here. But for this post I wanted to cite Sumner on another topic. Sumner has a fun rant where he points out… Continue reading Economists agree on microeconomics, not macroeconomics. The public believes the opposite.

Published
Categorized as Economics

MOOCs and the future of college

Last week’s post on MOOCs focused on the the “bundle” of disparate things you get from attending college. Massively Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are a real threat to this bundle, in particular for job skill teaching and job credentialing, so it’s appropriate colleges are freaking out. But since MOOCs (another word for online video classes) only… Continue reading MOOCs and the future of college

Published
Categorized as Economics

The College “Bundle” and MOOC online learning

When new technology disrupts an industry, it does so by providing not just cheaper (and slightly worse) alternatives, but by splitting apart economic bundles which prior to disruption seemed innately tied together. For example John Hawks recently tweeted MOOCs are to Colleges what Craigslist is to newspapers. For consumers printed newspapers were about the news, but… Continue reading The College “Bundle” and MOOC online learning

Published
Categorized as Economics

The Gradual Singularity

The Technological Singularity is defined as the sudden emergence of a super-intelligent computer. The classic scenario is people build an artificial intelligence capable of building a better artificial intelligence, and this process runs away with itself until you get a super-intelligent computer. See Asimov’s 1950 short story for an example. You can see why it’s… Continue reading The Gradual Singularity