Sometimes it seems like every big company CEO has read the same article about the same tech trend, and sent the same email to their team, asking “What’s our strategy for this?!“ A couple of years ago there were a lot of emails asking for a 5G strategy, and now there are a lot of emails asking about metaverse.
Answering the 5G email was actually pretty easy, partly because almost no-one needs a 5G strategy at all (I wrote about this here), but also because we knew what 5G meant. We probably don’t know what ‘metaverse’ means. More precisely, we don’t know what someone else means. This word has become so vague and broad that you cannot really know for sure what the speaker has in mind when they say it, since they might be thinking of a lot of different things. Neal Stephenson coined the word but he no longer owns it, and there’s no Académie Française that can act as the tech buzzword police and give an official definition. Instead ‘metaverse’ has taken on a life of its own, absorbing so many different concepts that I think the word is now pretty much meaningless - it conveys no meaning, and you have to ask, ‘well, what specifically are you asking about?”
If you do ask that, I’d suggest that there are two broad sets of things that people might mean when they say ‘metaverse’.
First, the narrow definition is simply that some combination of VR and AR will (Read more...)
The popular narrative these days is that AI (aka artificial intelligence) is evil and will end the human race. To paraphrase a roman leader, the only thing to fear is the fear itself. As I have said before (on multiple occasions), AI will be a necessary co-pilot in our increasingly digitized, highly networked, and data-saturated world.
I think of AI as augmented intelligence, and I am hopeful it will help us make substantial gains in dealing with our medical needs, climate-related challenges, and everything else. I make my case over on The Spectator in my latest piece, Why we should stop worrying and learn to love AI.
Previously: The Hype and Hope of Artificial Intelligence, The New Yorker. (2016)
When I see a landscape, all I see is a dreamscape. And that is when I know it is time for me to press the shutter. Here is a vintage photo from 2019, when I last visited Utah. I hope to go back soon. This is reimagined with a new preset I recently developed with my friend Rebecca Lily.
As a reminder, Marketsmith (by Investor’s Business Daily) is now a sponsor of the weekly show. All the charts you have been seeing in the videos and will continue to see are from Marketsmith. They are offering my readers a three week trial for $19.95. Click this link if you would like to try it out.
Happy Monday.
As always, Ivanhoff and I tour the markets to look at what is working. You can watch the video here and I have embedded it below:
I have a hunch the combination of time of year and the fact that financials are rising on ok numbers and most of small amd midcap tech trying to stop going down on bad numbers will help the new leadership – drugs, defense, food, large cap biotech ($amgn and $vrtx) get the S&P back to and over the 200-day moving average.
Here is what Ivanhoff has to say:
Amazon, Meta, Google, and Microsoft missed their estimates and/or gave very weak guidance. They sold off and the main indexes didn’t even blink. The Nasdaq 100 and the S&P 500 still finished the week deep in the green. People wanted a “market of stocks” environment. This is what we are having right now. While some of the mega-caps are struggling, there are plenty of stocks from various sectors that are breaking out after earnings and following through. I don’t know if this is just a short squeeze before another rug pull, but last week certainly provided good opportunities (Read more...)
The following content is sponsored by The Hinrich Foundation
Global Trade Series: Fragmentation in the Digital Economy
Since its creation, the internet has vastly expanded sociopolitical and economic development around the world. This is largely attributed to the its ability to facilitate communications, data sharing, and commerce on a truly global scale.
Unfortunately, a free and open internet will not always be guaranteed. Fragmentation between rival nations is growing, and it threatens to split the digital economy into silos.
In Part 3 of The Global Trade Series from the Hinrich Foundation, we examine the current state of digital fragmentation and its implications on the world.
The Physical Divide
Developed economies are entering a fourth industrial revolution, spawned entirely by digital technologies. This includes transformative innovations like artificial intelligence, blockchain, and 5G.
These technologies have the potential to improve income levels and quality of life, but they could also worsen global inequality. This is because of a major gap in internet-supportive infrastructure, as illustrated in the infographic.
To get a sense of this gap, consider the following numbers.
- 86 countries have fewer than 300 secure servers per million people
- The U.S. has over 110,000 secure servers per million people
- Denmark, the Netherlands, and Singapore have an even higher ratio than the U.S.
Secure internet servers are the basis of protected communications on the internet. Without them, (Read more...)
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