Wired: The Netbook Effect: How Cheap Little Laptops Hit the Big Time
Harvard Business: Netbooks: Disruption Interrupted?
NYTimes: When Laptops Go Light
Wired Gadget Lab: Tiny Notes Net Big Gains: The Netbook Revolution
Tag Archives: economy
A thought for Garret – and others – on “The sky’s blue. Everything’s great. Buy. No, wait. There’s a cloud. Things suck. Sell. “
That quote is from dangerousmeta! on the daily seesaw in the stock market.
It *appears* that the slightest news breeze, positive or negative, seems capable of triggering domino effects where traders swing the market – and the nation’s health – for the good or ill – on the turn of a dime. This doesn’t make too much sense – traders have tons and tons of data to back up their decisions. The weight of over a hundred years experience in understanding the information contained within.
Garret suggests that maybe an alternative to Wall Street is in order. He may or may not have something but I have something I’d like to throw into the mix – maybe we’re finally seeing the result of “too much” poorly filtered and understood information. That, and an increasingly “think fast” culture that rewards first moves over smart decisions. Traders get rewarded on good (not necessarily growth) decisions that are made quickly.
I have no idea what I’m talking about here. I’m just a poorly educated software engineer. But I think there is an opportunity for those who can provide better filters to those who can effect matters collectively – filters that can encourage a culture of long term growth over short term gain.
Overseas markets are rising this morning – supposedly due to Geithner plan news. Tomorrow, someone may sneeze in Japan and America’s market will catch a cold.
News, data, our interconnectedness are more apparent now than ever before. Our tools and our culture need to catch up.
Fast.
The story in Detroit resembels the story in (some) Philadelphia neighborhoods
Amid industrial devastation and abandonment, low prices, infrastructure, and urban settings are luring new home owners willing to take a chance.
That’s the story of Fishtown, Port Richmond, Frankford, and parts of West Philly in Philadelphia.
According to the NYTimes, that’s the story of Detroit as well.
Here’s to reinvention and believing that when we live together, we are more likely to have enriched lives than when we live far apart.
Related:
Boing Boing: Haunting photo-essay on rotting buildings in Detroit
Boing Boing: Detroit and the future of America
Tent cities grow and motels rake in cash, while those who already have, get a whole lot more
During one of my bouts not having a place to sleep, I ended up taking residence in a motel. It was a bad financial decision, borne in the circumstances I was in. When your credit gets shaky, its hard to find an apartment that will accept your application. This is doubly true when you haven’t saved enough for two months security. You end up being a rat in a maze, a maze whose exit gets harder and harder to find the longer you’re in it.
NYTimes: As Jobs Vanish, Motel Rooms Become Home :
Greg Hayworth, 44, graduated from Syracuse University and made a good living in his home state, California, from real estate and mortgage finance. Then that business crashed, and early last year the bank foreclosed on the house his family was renting, forcing their eviction.
Now the Hayworths and their three children represent a new face of homelessness in Orange County: formerly middle income, living week to week in a cramped motel room.
NPR: Sacramento Tent City Reflects Economy’s Troubles:
Job losses, home foreclosures and a deepening recession are sending scores of newly homeless people into a makeshift camp along the banks of the American River in Sacramento, Calif.
The tent city, spread over an area the size of several football fields, has local officials scrambling over how to handle the area’s homeless crisis.
The contrast to the news this weekend is beyond understanding.
NYTimes: A.I.G. Planning Huge Bonuses After $170 Billion Bailout
Metafilter: This is insanity
Things to reflect, or better yet, get mad about
Philly.com: A corrupt judge, a damaged life – Read it.
Yahoo!: House of Cards: The Faces Behind Foreclosures: We have entered the one-strike-and-you’re-out era. One lost job. One medical emergency. One bad risk or misjudgment of the heart.
Boing Boing: Caught on tape: 15-year-old girl beaten by sheriff’s deputy
ProPublica.org: Psychiatric Hospital Pledged Change, But Some Problems Persist – how we treat those most vulnerable says *everything* about our society.
Furious Seasons: Feds Accuse Celexa, Lexapro Maker Of Kickbacks To Docs, Illegal Marketing For Kids – kickbacks to pediatricians ordering psychiatric drugs to children.
Flickr: Photo gallery of Forest Haven – “a children’s developmental center in Laurel, Maryland. It is sometimes referred to (inaccurately) as “DC Children’s Center”, although this was not an official moniker. It was notorious for its poor conditions and abuse of patients. It was shut down in 1991 by a federal court.
Boing Boing: Doctors force patients to sign gag orders forbidding online reviews
There’s a paradox at work – Social Software and Media links for Thursday
Clay Shirky: Help, the Price of Information Has Fallen, and It Can’t Get Up
The interesting thing about this piece, written way back in 1995, is that it leaves wide open the concept of information.
Just what is information? People instinctively grasp for “facts” as their definition. But in computing, we think otherwise. Can music be described as information – sure can. Opinions? Yep. Visual arts? Certainly. Video. Yes, even video. Anything that can be described in ones and zeroes can be thought of as information that can be transmitted and shared on a network.
Well, what about advertising? Yes, that too.
Jeneane Sussum: The Value of Words: These. People. Are. Lying. To. You. And. Themselves.
There is a paradox at work here. As the cost of generating and transmitting information decreases, more of it becomes available, thus increasing the need for better filters.
Advertising, Newspapers, and Libraries were the premier filters of the pre-Internet age.
So were the ‘big 3’ TV stations, radio conglomerates, record companies, book stores and magazine stands for that matter.
Search engines, blogs, social networks, and smart aggregators are those of the now.
How the practices of the old evolve in the infrastructure of the new, how new disciplines arise to meet the needs of today and tomorrow, will determine how informed, or how uninformed, we will be as a society.
Other interesting links for today:
P’unk Avenue Window: What should a modern library be?
reddit: Young Deer hit by google map VAN. Caught on street view.
keithhopper.com: A Brief History of Hyperlocal News
Fanboy.com:
Social Media “Experts” are the Cancer of Twitter (and Must Be Stopped)
MediaPost: Yelp Reviews Spawn At Least Five Lawsuits
Epicenter: eMusic Says Data Supports Long Tail Theory
Epicenter: Want Proof OpenID Can Succeed? Just Scroll Down
ComputerWorld: What the Web knows about you
More reading on the ongoing crash
slacktivist: Some folks’ world – predatory rent increases in trailer parks.
Daniel Rubin: Daniel Rubin: The bailouts passed him by
Aaron Swartz’s Raw Thought: How Depressions Work
NYTimes: Welfare Aid Isn’t Growing as Economy Drops Off
Suburban Guerrilla: Welfare Rolls Are Not Going Up. Why?
Yahoo!: Folding dealers shock car buyers with unpaid liens
NYTimes: Caring for the Caregivers
The Big Picture: Reinhart & Rogoff: Expect a prolonged slump
Dave Rogers: Market for Destruction: We are not consumers, we are the consumed.
Give the money to us
Jon Stewart challenges Lawrence Lindsey and asks Lindsey about the viability of Stewart’s own plan – giving the bailout money to the people of the United States to pay of their debts, which in turn, brings liquidity back to the banks.
CNN Money Summit: Your questions answered “Why can’t we split the money among taxpayers?” – the answer is dismissive – that we would simply save the money and not spend it.
In what universe does that occur? Not America. It would get spent one way or another – and very, very quick.
Thanks to dangerousmeta for the common sense.
While something approaching libertarianism (letting the free market rule without reasoned oversight) got us into this – it just maybe something approaching libertarianism that gets us out.
As John Stewart and Garret say, “Give us the cash, let it trickle up.”
As economy breaks, those with least are hurt the most
Philadelphia Inquirer: Camden’s Tent City homeless keep up hope:
… The homeless say that this year’s census will show their numbers are swelling. Tent City is a microcosm of the homeless, with recovering addicts, jobless veterans and the mentally ill – ages 22 to 74 – all represented, Banks said.
In each tent, amid piles of donated blankets and cans of ethanol used for heat, there is a tale of heartbreak.
…Tent City is also known as Veterans Camp, for the several Vietnam War vets who live there, or J-Camp, for Banks’ native Jamaica. In the summer, Banks said, as many as 60 people stay there.
Some of those interviewed yesterday have been at Tent City for only a few months, and most don’t plan to stay.
“I still have dreams,” Floyd said. “I still have things I want to do. I want to be a father, a family man. I don’t plan to stay here all my life. I told [my daughters] I’d make it.”
Speaking under a steady, freezing rain, Floyd declared: “It can’t stay rainy every day.”