CITY JOURNAL .… >> It’s mostly accepted wisdom in policy circles: automation means that manufacturing employment is destined to follow the historical example of farm work, becoming a negligible share of the U.S. workforce. Even those who embrace the Trump administration’s efforts to “onshore” factories say that we should be “honest about the facts,” especially to…
REAL CLEAR POLICY …. >> The economy is picking up a little steam. But it’s still a far cry from the go-go growth fondly remembered from the Reagan and Clinton eras. And when it comes to forging policies intended to accelerate the economy, we have a clear division between two camps. On one side are…
CITY JOURNAL …. >> Railroads, the automobile and aircraft, chemistry and pharmaceuticals, electricity, telephone, radio and television, the Internet: each brought about deep transformations, the kinds that define historical epochs. Yet no one predicted any of them. And once each was underway, forecasters then also failed to predict the nature and scale of the impact.
Inside Sources …..>> Polls reveal most Americans fear artificial intelligence. Blame the culture, not the machines. Start with Hollywood’s long love affair with robots running amok. Two iconic examples: the “thinking machine” HAL in Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 movie “2001,” and the rogue “Terminator” robots in a movie series that began in 1984.
Real Clear Policy…..>> This year marks the 100th anniversary of the idea of the self-driving car. In 1918 Scientific American published a vision of the “car of the future” when “the steering wheel will be obsolete” and driving “done from a small control board.”
Real Clear Politics …………… A new Rasmussen poll finds half of Facebook’s users say they might bail out of that social media site because of privacy concerns. For Facebook’s detractors, there’s surely some schadenfreude. And its competitors sitting on the sidelines are doubtless salivating over the prospect of nabbing customers. At stake here, however, is much more…