The Internet is the greatest facilitator of inequality in history

internet inequality

The Internet affects the economy differently than the new businesses of the past did.

John Doerr, a venture capitalist, predicted in the 1990’s that the Internet would lead to the “the largest legal creation of wealth in the history of the planet.”  The Internet has created a tremendous amount of personal wealth. Just look at the rash of Internet billionaires and millionaires, the investors both small and large that have made fortunes investing in Internet stocks, and the list of multibillion-dollar Internet companies—Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Amazon. Add to the list the recent Twitter stock offering, which created a reported 1,600 millionaires.

 

 

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There are now 83 (and counting) cryptocurrencies in the world

currency

In the cryptocurrency world, Bitcoin (and Litecoin) garner the most attention, but there are now 83 (and counting) virtual currencies to store your wealth in. Bitcoin’s market cap is over $10 billionis and is by far the highest but we wonder whether the miasma of mimiccers – from Unobtainium to the ironically-named StableCoin and from ‘Philospher Stones’ to HoboNickels – serves to reduce the confidence in Bitcoin as a new method payments, or bolsters it as the clear market winner.

 

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Internet display ad spending up 32% in 2013, but still just 4.5% of market share

media

Nielsen put out its latest figures on the state of the advertising market across old and new media platforms this morning. One big takeaway is that Internet advertising continues to be the fastest-growing medium, but it remains a small player. Global display advertising across the web, mobile internet and apps collectively grew by 32.4% in 2013 — by far the biggest leap of any media — but that still worked out to a 4.5% share of the overall spend in ads. In contrast, television grew only 4.3% but remains the behemoth when it comes to ad spend, taking nearly 58% of the market.

 

 

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The power grid is starting to look more like the internet

power-elec

 A new dawn of smarter power grid tools is emerging.

Some of the technologies that have been mainstays of the internet are slowly being adopted by the electricity grid, like decentralized computing and smarter distributed systems. A step in that direction emerged on Tuesday from startup Gridco, which after four years has announced its first commercial product: new power electronics and a smart management system for the part of the grid that brings electricity to homes and buildings.

 

 

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The library of the future is Chattanooga’s public library

chattanooga public library

The Chattanooga public library’s fourth floor.

Forget what you know about the library of the 20th century. The library as a warehouse of information is an outdated concept. The library of the 21st century is a community workshop, a hub filled with the tools of the knowledge economy.

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Harvard and MIT make a strong case for MOOCs

moocs

MOOCs can make a meaningful difference even if we don’t yet know what that will look like.

Harvard and MIT have made a compelling case for the potential benefits of massively open online courses, or MOOCs despite low completion rates. They released a draft of a working paper that is rich on data about their respective HarvardX and MITx courses and focuses on what has always been a faulty focal point of many MOOC criticisms. In a free, online environment, completion rates are vastly overrated.

 

 

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The internet population in China hit 618 million in 2013 with 81% connected via mobile internet

Chinese-Mobile-Internet-Users

Mobile Internet users increased year-on-year by 80 million people in China.

China is become an increasingly connected country aided not least by the growth of mobile internet access. Last year, China ended up with 618 million Internet users and 500 million mobile Internet users, according to a report published by state-affiliated research organization China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC), spotted first by Tech in Asia.

 

 

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Top 15 tech trends that will define 2014

Drones will be everywhere.

2013 looked like the dystopian future we’ve been warned about. We learned the NSA can spy on our every word, right as Google shared a breakthrough product that could put a camera and microphone on everyone’s face. Amazon wanted to replace UPS with autonomous drones. But, what will 2014 look like? This is the year of technological kickback, according to Frog design, when privacy goes mainstream and we take the reins on our own quantified self, when artists tame 3-D printers and we learn to unplug. And yes…when drones, driverless cars, and the digital dragon that is China rise to change our economy, and our lives, forever.

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Top 5 tech products that will be dead in 5 years

The entire demise of Blu-rays and DVDs are due to one company.

Innovation in the tech industry is moving fast.  We can’t know all of the different technologies that will fill our lives in five years. We can however, predict what tech products won’t last. It’s clear the technology landscape will look dramatically different in the near future.

 

 

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