Entrepreneurship

Thomas L. Friedman has a particularly good editorial in today’s New York Times. While the subprime mortgage mess involved a huge ethical breakdown on Wall Street, it coincided with an education breakdown on Main Street — precisely when technology and open borders were enabling so many more people to compete with Americans for middle-class jobs. He cites Harvard University labor expert Lawrence Katz who explains: If you think about the labor market today, the top half of the college market, those with the high-end analytical and problem-solving skills who can compete on the world market or game the financial system or deal with new government regulations, have done great. But the bottom half of the top, those engineers and programmers Read More ›

You should have been there! Telecosm was thrilling. I will list the ways, in chronological order in two or three posts over the next few days. (Below is Part 1.) 1) Lawrence Solomon, author of The Deniers, demonstrated, beyond cavil, that nearly all the relevant scientists, outside of the government echo-chambers, completely repudiate the climate panic. He concluded by pointing to evidence for a cooling trend ahead. 2) After I presented the statistics showing that most of the global economy is driven by innovation in the Telecosm–teleputers, datacenters, optical fiber, fiberspeed electronics–Steve Forbes gave a magisterial tour of the world economy. Relevant to the debates on the Gilder Telecosm Forum subscriber message board was his assertion that the Fed had Read More ›

Of the many good books I read this year, here are a few of the standouts: The Silicon Eye – by George Gilder Our Discovery colleague tells the 40-year story of how four eclectic geniuses and two Silicon Valley legends combined to create a technology revolution in digital imaging and cameras. The Bottomless Well – by Peter Huber and Mark Mills A true genius of our time, Huber and his colleague Mills transcend the energy debate with lots of data, even more big thinking, and quick writing. A Different Universe – by Robert Laughlin A fun, contrarian, and courageous twist on conventional physics by the winner of the 1998 physics Nobel. Mao: The Unknown Story – by Jung Chang and Read More ›