Information Technology and Superstar teachers

Very interesting article on teachers selling their material online and becoming millionaires. Another example of how software is eating the world and how more and more sectors of the economy are affected.
"By selling tens of thousands of items, he says, 12 teachers on the site have become millionaires and nearly 300 teachers have earned more than $100,000. On any given day, the site has about 1.7 million lesson plans, quizzes, work sheets, classroom activities and other items available, typically for less than $5. Last month alone, Mr. Freed added, more than one million teachers in the United States downloaded material, including free and fee-based products, from the site"

Big Data in Creative Fields

Interesting article in Forbes discussing how big data and analytics are being used in creative fields where human intuition has traditionally been used to make decisions. 

Thanks Hazel Yang for the link!

Jobs of the Future

Interesting article on the uncertain and fascinating future of jobs and the workforce. This article suggests that technology will free up human beings from mundane and routine tasks, so they can spend their time on more creative and artistic pursuits. Sounds like a wonderful future but raises important questions about who will lose their jobs first, and how will wealth be shared between the skilled" and unskilled citizens of the future.

Thanks Pierre Dennery for the link!

Tech companies VS Government on Privacy

Thanks everyone for a great debate in class today. To build on the points discussed in class today, here are two articles that talk about the growing tension between technology companies and governments about access to consumer data. The first article talks about Twitter suing the government, while the second discusses a new approach taken by Google and Apple to protect user privacy.

Thanks Phil Gara for the articles!

Some more on Privacy

In advance of our upcoming lecture on Privacy, here is a great article in AdAge stating the importance of "Privacy-by-Design", but discussing how its neither easy nor cheap.

Thanks Hari Won for the article!

eBay and PayPal split up

We all heard the news that eBay spun out PayPal as a separate business. A lot of analysts have discussed both positive and negative aspects of this deal. The timing is certainly interesting, with Apple Pay getting a lot of positive interest from consumers and media these days.

Twitter + MIT = Understand social Impact of Tweets!

Here is the latest - Twitter just gave $10M to the Media Lab to analyze every tweet and study it's social impact through visualizations. Very cool!

Is privacy the new norm?

In anticipation of our big privacy debate in class, here is an interesting article from the NYT about a rekindled interest and expectation of privacy online in millenials.

Thanks Hazel Yang for the link!

Death of Retail as we know it

In advance of tomorrow's class on omni channel retail, here is another article declaring the end of retail as we know it.

End of Malls

Shopping in malls and brick and mortar has been on the decline for many years now, as more and more customers are switching to e-commerce. This New Yorker article explains this phenomena in the US, and how it is driving brick and mortar retailers to focus on Asia and other emerging economies. To me, the big question is: how long will malls last in emerging economies until e-commerce/ m-commerce take over there too?

Thanks Hari Won for the article!