In an expansive article that looks at society’s relationship with technology Markus Dettmer, Hilmar Schmundt, and Janko Tietz highlight:

• 75% unemployment could be a possibility in our computer controlled future. The world is creating more jobs for computers than for humans.
• Insurance companies offer discounts to drivers who offer to have their driving tracked by sophisticated sensors. This has led to a reduction in the number of claims – since drivers know that somebody is always watching they are more likely to drive carefully.
• Human traders might become a thing of the past as computer programmed traders are faster and can process much more data.
• Small children whose parents have smartphones try to enlarge photos in paper-bound photo albums by dragging their fingers away from each other, mimicking the smartphone gesture.
• Sufferers of Parkinson’s disease can embed electrodes in their brains that can control their behavior albeit with tradeoffs. One individual can press a button to release chemicals into his brain that make his speech more comprehensible at the expense of his handwriting.
• Patients with chronic pain can shut off their nerves.

To read many more examples, what one of the creators of the microchip has to say about technology, why Google and Facebook are just a series of microprocessors, why cars are a waste of space, and how machines have already replaced humans in the cockpit read the entire three part article here.

Source: Spiegel Online

Via: Freakonomics

In an article provocatively titled “11 Dumb Moves That Should Have Cost Mark Zuckerberg His $25 Billion Fortune” Nicholas Carlson looks at moments when we almost lost Facebook. Highlights include:

• Zuckerberg agreed to sell Facebook to Yahoo for $1 billion. Yahoo’s CEO backed out in the last minute.
• Zuckerberg wanted to abandon Facebook after a year and work on a different start-up instead. He was talked out of it.
• He was also against allowing people to share photos on Facebook. Once again he was talked out of this one.

To read about how Eduardo Saverin, Divvya Narendra, Sean Parker, and the Winklevoss brothers of The Social Network fame figured into what is, essentially, a revisionist look at the history of Facebook, the off-putting things that Zuckerberg has said, and other interesting moments that could have transformed Facebook from the company we know and love (Centives’ own Facebook page can be found here) read the rest of the article.

Source: Business Insider

Via: Newmark’s Door

Justin B. Hollander argues that the government’s attempts to help the housing market by renting out the 200,000 or so homes it has come to own due to foreclosures and default is harmful. Instead the government should bulldoze them:

• Empty houses are a problem because they fall into disrepair and lower the prices of all property in the neighborhood. Moreover they attract insects and disease.
• By bulldozing them the government would reduce supply, thus increasing housing prices, giving a reason for property owners to invest in housing and fix up their properties.
• Other ways the government could reduce the supply of housing would be to turn the abandoned structures into offices, studios, or even parks and gardens.

To read some statistics related to the problem, and how we now have to deal with the opposite of ‘smart growth’ click here.

Source: Slate

Mark Bowden found out how one man, Don Johnson, won ~$15 million from casinos in a completely legal way through games of blackjack. Highlights include:

• Johnson is a whiz at mathematics with excellent concentration skills. But this is true of every professional gambler.
• What Johnson did differently was that he started playing the game before sitting at a table. Casinos are seeing a decline in revenue and Johnson was able to leverage this to win concessions from the casino about the rules of the game that effectively made the odds 50-50.
• At one point he was betting $100,000 a hand.
• He effectively wiped out a month’s worth of profits of one casino in a night.
• The casinos weren’t prepared for this. They normally incentivize high-rollers to come, offering them private jets, luxury suites, and possibly even the young women seen in the ads, with the expectation that they would lose. Johnson’s requests were different and they led to his victory.

To find out more about how Johnson pulled his tricks, the three-hand sequence that won him $1.2 million, the casinos that banned him, why he wasn’t a card-counter, and what it means to be a ‘big whale’ click here.

Source: The Atlantic

Via: Marginal Revolution

Thomas L. Friedman notes that “Taiwan is a barren rock in a typhoon-laden sea with no natural resources to live off of — it even has to import sand and gravel from China for construction” yet it has one of the most successful economies in the world. Why is this? The answer includes:

• Countries which are not rich in natural resources invest a lot of money in human capital – the education of the children because “when you don’t have resources, you become resourceful”
• This is why resource-barren countries such as Singapore, Finland, Korea and Japan score high in aptitude tests.
• On the flip side those from countries that are laden with precious commodities such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Algeria among others score low.
• Canada, Australia and Norway are exceptions, scoring high despite an abundance of natural resources.

To read about how this relates to the Dutch Disease (and indeed, what the Dutch Disease is), how Moses fits into this, the way to explain the exceptions, and what NASDAQ can tell us about this phenomenon click here.

Source: The New York Times

Casey Johnston reports that researchers have used Google search analytics to see if there’s a difference between the types of things people from rich and poor countries search for, believing that it might reveal something about their mindset. The researchers came up with a measure called the “future orientation index” highlights include:

• People from countries with higher GDPs are more likely to enter search terms related to the upcoming year.
• People from countries with lower GDPs are more likely to enter search terms related to the year that went past.
• This suggests that countries that have people that have a future oriented mindset tend to do economically better than those who don’t.
• The United States is an outlier – it has a high GDP but a low score on the future orientation index.
• According to the measure Canada, the United States and Japan have the brightest futures ahead of them.

To read about the methodology of the study, what the index tells us about Italy and Russia, and some criticisms of the study click here.

Source: Arstechnica

David Ignatius reports that Osama bin Laden wanted to re-brand Al-Qaeda because its image had become too tarnished. Highlights include:

• Since the United States no longer refers to it as the war on terror, focusing instead on a war against Al Qaeda, the United States was able to reduce the perception of its actions as part of some wider battle against Islam.
• Moreover Al Qaeda had killed Muslims, alienating people from its cause.
• Osama bin Laden thus wanted to change the name of the organization so that it implied a stronger sense of Muslim Identity.

To read more about why Osama bin Laden was like a CEO, why he wanted Al Qaeda to refocus on Palestine, the role that Yemen had to play, and the American TV news stations that bin Laden watched, click here.

Source: The New York Times

Via: Marginal Revolution, Mother Jones