Gary Gibson, Introduction... Do Americans have to temper their expectations of leisure and comfort in general...and in particular their dreams of the good life in retirement? "LOS ANGELES (AP) -- When Paula Symons joined the U.S. workforce in 1972, typewriters in her office clacked nonstop, people answered the telephones and the hot ...read more

Emerging transformational technologies, as economist Joseph Schumpeter pointed out, do not advance the economy by consistent predictable increments. Rather, they disrupt and destroy, bankrupting entire industries by offering clearly superior alternatives. Historically, however, these technological advances have rarely been recognized and welcomed when they first appeared. For the most part, they ...read more

In science and technology, knowledge builds up as people make new mistakes: Technology may, like digits in an actuarial table, improve and compound, accumulating gradually over time. But in love, finance, and the rest of life, people make the same old mistakes, over and over again. As soon as the ...read more

No history recalls what the 5,000 or so Normans must have felt when they saw the English coastline in 1066, nor what they had for breakfast, or how their wives and daughters missed them at home on that day. Nor does it tell us how the peasants in Toncarville coaxed ...read more