Technology

The Race Between Science and Politics

Jul 2nd, 2012 | By | Category: Featured, Politics, Technology
A growing army of bureaucrats and regulations threaten to reduce the pace of new medical technologies right when we on the verge of mind-boggling lifesaving breakthroughs. Enormous advances are being made in treating disease at the genetic and molecular levels, and they show unbelievable promise in treating cancer, cardiovascular disease ...read more


Why Twitter Is Amazing

May 9th, 2012 | By | Category: Featured, Technology
"I've got better things to do than broadcast a message to the world about my lunch." An uncountable number of people have said this or something similar to me about Twitter. I've stopped responding. It's the same kind of faux snobbery that causes people to look down on Facebook, YouTube, Angry ...read more


Why Facebook Works, And Democracy Does Not

Feb 10th, 2012 | By | Category: Featured, Politics, Technology
This year, Facebook will reach 1 billion users -- or one-seventh of the human population. It has elicited more participation than any single government in the world other than India and China, and it will probably surpass them in a year or two. And whereas many people are fleeing their ...read more


How Change Happens

Feb 6th, 2012 | By | Category: Featured, Politics, Technology
My brother is teaching a semester in London, and he casually video Skyped me last week to show me around his apartment, which is small but charming. I reciprocated by hauling up the cover of the e-book I am reading, and shared my desktop to show a YouTube performance of ...read more


The Death of File Sharing

Jan 27th, 2012 | By | Category: Featured, Politics, Technology
Last week's violent government attack on the hugely popular site Megaupload -- the U.S. government arresting Belgian citizens in New Zealand, of all places, and stealing at gunpoint servers bank accounts and property -- has sent shock waves through the entire digital world. The first shock was the realization that the ...read more


Protesting Government Digitally

Jan 18th, 2012 | By | Category: Politics, Technology
There's been a long debate over digital technology. Does it help or harm the cause of liberty, individualism and human rights? People who say it has hurt point out that government has been able to use the products of private innovation for its own purposes. The government can watch us ...read more


The Race for the Coolest Stuff

Dec 28th, 2011 | By | Category: Featured, Technology
A staple of action/thriller movies like the Mission: Impossible and the James Bond series is that the government agencies have all the cool gadgets, stuff we can’t get. There’s usually some opening scene featuring geeky scientists displaying the latest technology, such as a pen that is really a flamethrower or ...read more


Who Should Control the World?

Dec 27th, 2011 | By | Category: Economics, Featured, Technology
In the days following the gift-giving holidays, many millions of people stand in judgement over the quality of the gifts they gave and the gifts they receive. Did they arrive on time? Did the quality hold up? Did the reality match the advertising hype? The Internet ads an extra wrinkle. ...read more


Good Riddance to Geron

Nov 15th, 2011 | By | Category: Featured, Technology
For years now, I've been telling my subscribers that Geron (NASDAQ: GERN) is not a serious player in the stem cell space. Financial and non-financial media, however, have inevitably treated the company as if it is the only really important stem cell company. I've said repeatedly, in fact, that the company's ...read more


The Economics of Technological Advances

Apr 20th, 2011 | By | Category: Economics, Featured, Technology
Recently I saw a Youtube clip of Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr. of Illinois, in which he claimed that the Apple’s iPad will be the cause of future unemployment. His claim was that people will no longer buy actual books and everything will be downloaded onto e-readers. This is supposed to destroy ...read more