The New New Economy: More Startups, Fewer Giants, Infinite Opportunity. by Chris Anderson. Anderson kicks off a series of four pieces on the changing nature of the economy brought upon by the internet. He suggests that because of lower transaction costs (Coase) companies are about to decentralize and externalize (a la Tom Malone). The other three pieces are case studies of the auto industry in detroit, Google, and a the new Socialism
Beyond Detroit: On the Road to Recovery, Let the Little Guys Drive
Secret of Googlenomics: Data-Fueled Recipe Brews Profitability. The article presents the work of Google’s Chief Economist Hal Varian and the notion that Google reinvented the ad business as an auction business (AdSense, Adwords):
“What could be more baffling than a capitalist corporation that gives away its best services, doesn’t set the prices for the ads that support it, and turns away customers because their ads don’t measure up to its complex formulas?”
The New Socialism: Global Collectivist Society Is Coming Online by Kevin Kelly. “digital socialism is socialism without the state. This new brand of socialism currently operates in the realm of culture and economics, rather than government—for now.”
The Genius Index: One Scientist’s Crusade to Rewrite Reputation Rules. The history of the H-Index, a measurement of reputation in science (analog to the impact factor). Takeaways:
“The h-index was the biggest splash in a flood of Internet-enabled rating systems—growth and decay chronometrics, semiometric measures, hub/authority metrics.”
“similar statistical approaches have become standard practice in Internet search algorithms and on social networking sites. These numbers do for scientists what U.S. News & World Report does for colleges and Bill James’ Sabermetrics did for baseball: They quantify reputation.”
“new metrics: number of downloads, rate of downloads over time (chronometrics), and even levels of funding and numbers of doctoral students working in a lab (nonbibliometric performance indicators).”
The Guy Behind Flash Mobs Tackles His Frankenweb Monster. Book Review of Bill Wasik’s And Then There’s This: How Stories Live and Die in Viral Culture. Internet backlash work like Keen’s or Lee Siegel’s.
Steven Levy on the Answer Engine, a Radical New Formula for Web Search. Review of Wolfram Alpha.
Time to Cash Out: Why Paper Money Hurts the Economy: “In an era when books, movies, music, and newsprint are transmuting from atoms to bits, money remains irritatingly analog. Physical currency is a bulky, germ-smeared, carbon-intensive, expensive medium of exchange. Let’s dump it.”
Risk Calculators: Finance Geeks Use Open API to Crunch Market Numbers: Piece on a new Rating Ageny that uses crowdsourcing
“Their project, Freerisk.org, provides a platform for investors, academics, and armchair analysts to rate companies by crowdsourcing.”
“Agencies like Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s lack transparency, use narrow data sets, and rely on too few models (one of which was the notorious Gaussian copula formula featured on Wired’s March cover). Worst of all, they’re paid by the firms they evaluate—an obvious incentive for grade inflation.”
Clive Thompson on the Future of Reading in a Digital World. New ways of Book Publishing: CommentPress: A WordPress theme for social texts. Bookglutton (“a site that launched last year, has put 1,660 books online and created tools that let readers form groups to discuss their favorite titles.”).
“Imagine a world where there’s a URL for every chapter and paragraph in a book—every sentence, even. Readers could point to their favorite sections in a MySpace update or instant message or respond to an argument by copiously linking to the smartest passages in a recent best seller.”
