innovation

User-generated content does not need the benefit of large audiences or the approval of large broadcasting companies. Students do not need permission to attend. In corners of the internet that are easy to miss, the biggest renaissance of informal skills transfer in history is happening right now. Unlike textbooks or professors, the creators of these... See more

Another surprising fact about the U.S. economy is that non-profit organizations spend $2.42 trillion every year—this is nearly 10% of U.S. GDP and more than the Pentagon and revenues of all the large software companies combined:

First is the observation I’ve made throughout: that people are building companies based on ideas from the 1950s and 1960s.

This is a very real thing. Earlier this week, I met with Tyler Hayes at Atom Limbs to see the robotic prosthetic he and his team are building. After he slipped the cuff on my arm and as we were waiting for the system to boot up... See more

Once front-running other participants in financial markets or cultural production becomes a common strategy, trends become inefficiencies – temporary blips of difference or spikes in value that are bound for correction. Being early as a meta is replaced by catching people offsides. Betting on the return to the mean.

But then I read Imre Lakatos’s Proofs and Refutations . It is not, at first glance, a book about writing. It is a book of mathematical philosophy. By a Hungarian Stalinist, no less. But it is, if you read it sideways, a profound exploration of the act of writing. This shouldn’t be a surprise. Mathematics is, after all, a subset of writing—it is a w... See more