Joseph E. Stiglitz is one of my contemporary economist heroes. Others are Paul Krugman and Thomas Piketty.
I’m now reading:
The Great Divide: Unequal Societies and What We Can Do About Them
by Joseph E. Stiglitz
The summary of ‘Prelude: Showing Cracks’
The book begins with the onset of the Great Recession. The first selection was published in Dec 2007 when US economy slipped into a downturn
The making of the Great Recession is intimately connected with the making of America’s great divide
After the tech bubble broke, US economy slid into recession in 2001. George W. Bush’s remedy was a tax cut especially aimed at the wealthy
Clinton had put off investments in infrastructure & education & helping the poor in the name of deficit reduction, for which I was worried
I was already concerned about the country’s growing inequality, and these inequitable tax cuts only made matters worse
Inequality weakens total demand & the economy. US’s inequality was moving money from the bottom to the top, and those at the top spent less
Naive market fundamentalists who believe markets are always efficient unleashed a bubble, and their monetary policies led to inequality
The Fed kept the economy churning with a policy of low interest rates and lax regulations, which worked only by creating a housing bubble
When the Fed raised interest rates in 2004, I anticipated the bubble would break, but it took 2 yrs for the full effects to be realized
The crisis was man-made and something that the 1 percent did to the rest of us, which itself is a manifestation of the great divide
| 2017/03/11
| Finance & Economics, Notes
|
The Next Step in Finance: Exponential Banking
from MIT Technology Review
Banking has characteristics that make it a candidate for digitalization because its raw material is data, still has not suffered disruption
A new generation of clients demands agile, rapid or real time service that is competitively priced and in a safe environment, such as P2P
The technologies that make it possible to offer them already exist and pave the way for the future with enormous gains
Among those technologies are mobile computing; biometrics; cloud computing; and blockchain
Cognitive technologies improve user experiences, decision making, fraud detection and stress scenarios, accelerating customer digitalization
Who will occupy the center of these platforms? The “owner” will establish the rules and get the income and information from transactions
Conditions to succeed: 1) the exponential technologies; 2) consumer confidence through reputation and the absence of conflicts of interest
Regulations should balance the value and the risk of new digital proposals and create a competitive environment, which determins the future
| 2017/03/09
| Science & Technology, Summary
|
Using Virtual Reality Underwater Is Weird (but Fun)
from MIT Technology Review
Stephen Greenwood and Allan Evans are making a VR headset that you can wear underwater
The first idea was to combine an isolation tank—where you float in a dark, silent room, alone—with virtual reality
They see it being developed for entertainment, scuba-diving simulations or physical therapy and for making VR feel much more captivating
Greenwood said “when you don’t have a sense of the ground or gravity in a radically different environment, it makes it much more believable”
A waterproof Android smartphone is attached to a 3-D-printed plastic, and audio comes from a MP3 player that uses bone conduction
They’ve been trying it out at Greenwood’s apartment building, which has a pool. On a chilly afternoon, I jumped in and tried it out myself
The first experience had me floating above the International Space Station while David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” played. It was relaxing
The next was an underwater scene with colorful fish with peppy jazz music. Hanging out with the fish was a little more fun
The headset is about as advanced as Google Cardboard. There’s head orientation tracking, but no tracking of your head’s position in space
This is especially weird if you’re making an effort to swim in one direction because the visuals make you feel as if you’re not moving
In hopes of improving this, they are working on building a positional tracking system that can work underwater, using sound and magnetics
Despite the simplicity of the setup it was easy to forget about the outside world and just enjoy the weird virtual one below the surface
| 2017/03/01
| Science & Technology, Summary
|
Imagining the Future of VR at Google
from MIT Technology Review
Jessica Brillhart makes VR experiences e.g. World Tour, the first film made with Google’s Jump system, and “flatties,” conventional movies
I ask what I can do with VR technologies creatively, mediate between the engineers and creative people and make stuff in the process
One day, I visited an engineering team that was building a 360° camera and saw the first demo which showed their happy faces. I loved it!
Storytelling is the product of film whose camera is a disembodied eye which can show a world previously unknown to you
VR is an embodied medium and reminds us of experiences, which is the key to understanding what kind of storytelling could exist in VR
Felix & Paul is technically excellent in cinematics. Mr Mariančík created Sightline: The Chair. The idea is: the world evolves as you spin
I agree with an advice the creator of Myst gave me: VR users are curious about what they want to see and resist what you intend them to see
In Resonance, a young girl is poorly playing a violin. If you turn around you can see the reaction of her parents looking in at the doorway
I look to gaming for clues. You progressively gain strength and get to the boss levels. I believe you have to create similar cadences in VR
People will use VR to record home videos. It is going to be interesting to see what happens when we aren’t able to forget anything anymore
VR is its own medium. It will not supplant film and will not hurt any other medium. Something really special is happening
| 2017/03/01
| Science & Technology, Summary
|
Hollywood Has No Idea What to Do with VR
from MIT Technology Review
VR will never be like the movies. Imagine you’re experiencing the 1942 classic, Casablanca, with a digital headset
Warner Brothers did such a brilliant job imagining the world of Casablanca that we’d be content to explore it with a VR headset
VR Citizen Kane might be a survey of the protagonist’s infinite basement. The Godfather VR might allow us to prowl the house of Don Corleone
Will audiences trained in passive linear narrative appreciate it? Will we only recognize it when it has reached a maturity?
Cinema was the art form of C20. Distribution points are multiplying while lengths run from multi-hour TV episodes to 10-second Snapchats
Consumer-ready VR plunge viewers into immersive 3-D environments where they can move within a storyline or game space without feeling sick
Content creators are trying to figure out how it might work. Gaming software represent the most fertile and obvious center of development
Content creators are trying to figure out how it might work. Gaming software represent the most fertile and obvious center of development
You can sense filmmakers taking baby steps toward a new visual and psychological grammar from Dear Angelica developed by Oculus Story Studio
These are evidence of new ways of expressing human experiences, owing little to other media. Yet VR hardware is still very clumsy
The combination of the narrative forward momentum of film and the immersive exploration of VR ends up highlighting the worst of both mediums
The experiences are different on different headsets: Google Cardboard, Oculus Rift and HTC Vive
In the virtual stores you can find games, apps, social-media platforms, and a lot of VR programming, little of which is terribly interesting
Invisible for Jaunt created by a Hollywood hitmaker is a cheap thriller but has a chase scene visualized in a 360° dramatic landscape
Mr. Robot VR does is wasting the new technology. Jon Favreau’s Gnomes & Goblins is more promising; a preview is available on the Vive
Remembering Pearl Harbor (well done); Paul McCartney’s VR concert documentaries (good); Paul McCartney: Early Days (not so good)
The Rose and I and Allumette (excellent) combine crude stop-motion-style graphics with engaging stories and a genuinely novel vantage point
Many unaffiliated creators in cottage-industry are making 360° films, but only some of them are using 3D, and very little motion tracking
Career Opportunities in Organized Crime bills itself as the first 360° feature-length VR movie but lacks surprise: one appeal of VR drama
1) VR narrative entertainment may live closer to the aesthetics of theater than film; 2) a workable language for VR has yet to be discovered
We’re just at the beginning of VR’s long gestational period and lack words to describe the future because we haven’t invented it yet
(more…)
| 2017/02/27
| Science & Technology, Summary
|
