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A recent article in The Economist, citing the work of Ryan Raffaelli at Harvard Business School, points to what it calls a “paradox” in the aftermath of disruptive innovation.
Some old technologies, after being rendered obsolete by better and cheaper alternatives (indeed even after whole industries based on them have been decimated), manage to “re-emerge” to the point that they sustain healthy businesses. Think mechanical Swiss watches, now enjoying strong sales. Or fountain pens, or vinyl records. Or small-batch, handmade goods — from vermouth to chocolate to pickles.
We could add our own favorite example: pinball. In our HBR article “Big Bang Disruption”, we describe the devastation of arcade pinball machines wrought in only a few years by Sony’s PlayStation home video console. From a historic high in 1993 of 130,000 machines sold, sales fell over 90% in the next five years. By the end of the decade, only one producer—Stern Pinball—was left making new machines, and with arcades closing daily, it looked as if it, too, would soon be facing game over....
In 1978, a 14-year-old boy invented email.He created a computer program, which he called "email," that replicated all the functions of the interoffice mail system: Inbox, Outbox, Folders, Memo, Attachments, Address Book, etc., the now familiar parts of every email system.
On August 30, 1982, the US government officially recognized V.A. Shiva Ayyadurai as the inventor of email by awarding him the first US Copyright for "Email," "Computer Program for Electronic Mail System," for his 1978 invention. This was awarded at a time when Copyright was the only way to protect software inventions.
Email, however, emerged from somewhat unlikely circumstances. Email wasn't created, with a massive research budget, in big institutions like the ARPANET, MIT or the military. Such institutions had thought it "impossible" to create such a system, believing it far too complex.Email was created in the heart of inner city Newark, NJ, at a relatively small institution, with little to no funding.
Shiva was given something that big institutions, however, may have found hard to provide: an ecosystem of loving parents, a wonderful mentor, dedicated teachers and a collegial environment where he was treated as an equal though his colleagues were 20 to 40 years older.In that ecosystem, Shiva thrived, and the world got email!...
This collection of new essays on creativity integrates philosophical insights with empirical research.
...There is little that shapes the human experience as profoundly and pervasively as creativity. Creativity drives progress in every human endeavor, from the arts to the sciences, business, and technology. We celebrate and honor people for their creativity, identifying eminent individuals, as well as entire cultures and societies, in terms of their creative achievements. Creativity is the vehicle of self-expression and part of what makes us who we are. One might therefore expect creativity to be a major topic in philosophy, especially since it raises such a wealth of interesting philosophical questions, as we will soon see. Curiously, it isn’t....
When he was around 32 years old, Leonardo da Vinci applied to the Duke of Milan, Ludovico Sforza, for a job. The duke was in need of military expertise andLeonardo's 10-point CV emphasized his military engineering skills....
Homer Economicus is a new book which uses the fictional world of Springfield on The Simpsons to explain the basic concepts of economics.
Since The Simpsons centers on the daily lives of the Simpson family and its colorful neighbors, three opening chapters focus on individual behavior and decision-making, introducing readers to the economic way of thinking about the world. Part II guides readers through six chapters on money, markets, and government. A third and final section discusses timely topics in applied microeconomics, including immigration, gambling, and health care as seen in The Simpsons....
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...In the altogether illuminating 1994 volume The Psychology of Writing (public library), cognitive psychologist Roland T. Kellogg explores how work schedules, behavioral rituals, and writing environments affect the amount of time invested in trying to write and the degree to which that time is spent in a state of boredom, anxiety, or creative flow.
Kellogg writes: "[There is] evidence that environments, schedules, and rituals restructure the writing process and amplify performance… The principles of memory retrieval suggest that certain practices should amplify performance. These practices encourage a state of flow rather than one of anxiety or boredom. Like strategies, these other aspects of a writer’s method may alleviate the difficulty of attentional overload. The room, time of day, or ritual selected for working may enable or even induce intense concentration or a favorable motivational or emotional state. Moreover, in accordance with encoding specificity, each of these aspects of method may trigger retrieval of ideas, facts, plans, and other relevant knowledge associated with the place, time, or frame of mind selected by the writer for work."...
Charting the rise of tech-infested communications – from pheromone parties to Narbs
Public scrutiny has tunneled hard on the shallowness of contemporary communication, as depicted in Nicholas Carr’s aptly-named 2010 book The Shallows. Carr writes passionately about humanity’s dwindling attention span, and rightly so – the internet has changed the way we handle information, and the gap between generations, especially regarding activities we deem “social” and entertaining, is only growing more pronounced.
Perhaps because of the mind-numbing nature of pop culture’s online lingua franca – memes – general consensus seems to indicate that the internet has had a detrimental effect on our attention spans. This is thanks to mechanical factors like hyperlinks, gifs, embedded video content, and other pretty things that help to add flavor and aesthetics to what would otherwise be a dry information dump. It's no longer sufficient to convey a message – the message has now become inextricably linked to the medium so much that the latter now obscures the former.
Through no fault of their own, the Carrs of the world don’t address the the bold, unrefined new forms of communication that evade categorisation: superdialects, extrasensory communication, and straight-up biotech developments that push our cognitive and linguistic potential into the realm of science fiction. Yes, it sucks that the printed word is threatened by the new frontier of interactive media, but in an ideal world, the two don’t need to be mutually exclusive realms.
Technology has simply expanded the tools we have at our disposal, and frankly, we’re all for modular means of everyday communication that allow for nonsense and idiocy. Let's take a look at ten communication trends on the horizon...
In a new subgenre of books about books, authors undertake reading stunts to prove that reading still matters. In “The Shelf,” Phyllis Rose reads through a more or less random shelf of library books. She compares her voyage to Ernest Shackleton’s explorations in the Antarctic.
...The number of Americans who read books has been declining for thirty years, and those who do read have become proud of, even a bit overidentified with, the enterprise. Alongside the tote bags you can find T-shirts, magnets, and buttons emblazoned with covers of classic novels; the Web site Etsy sells tights printed with poems by Emily Dickinson. A spread in The Paris Review featured literature-inspired paint-chip colors (a charcoal Funeral Suit for “The Loser”; a mossy “Graham Greene”).
The merchandising of reading has a curiously undifferentiated flavor, as if what you read mattered less than that you read. In this climate of embattled bibliophilia, a new subgenre of books about books has emerged, a mix of literary criticism, autobiography, self-help, and immersion journalism: authors undertake reading stunts to prove that reading—anything—still matters.
Now that TV is the place for serious people with long attention spans, we’re really in trouble
...Allow me to paraphrase. Back in the day, the powers that be had an imperfect but workable recipe for turning our brains in to nice steaming bowls of beef stew using television. But some people saw through that plan. Today, TV is really just as dumb as ever, but it is out-dumbed by the internet. When these two forces work together… Ding! Stew’s ready....
Ethical journalism is all about not being inconsiderate, insensitive and immoral....
A state of incredulity took over me as I viewed this disgraceful work, glorifying the man who made a tragic mark on the lives of so many Bostonians. While the citizens of Boston are definitely Boston Strong, the city still feels the aftermath of this event every day....
When the picture was released on the magazine's Facebook page, comments started pouring in attacking the decision to highlight a bombing suspect like he was a rock star. Among the remarks were comments on how long time subscribers were planning to unsubscribe, and a Do Something petition to have this cover replaced....
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Quand Internet réinvente ce qu'il avait annihilé il y a quelques années ou comment Internet a relancé l'industrie artisanale du "fait-main"