Economics of Technology – Page 49

Baseball Immigrants Learn English by Watching “Friends”

(p. D1) When he returns home from the stadium, Philadelphia Phillies shortstop Freddy Galvis often gets into bed and watches reruns of “Friends.”
. . .
For at least one generation of Americans, “Friends” endures as a cultural touchstone, a glowing chunk of 1990s amber. But its runaway popularity stretched far beyond the United States, and for some Latino baseball players it is something more: a language guide, a Rosetta Stone disguised as six 20-somethings commingling in a Manhattan apartment.
And also just a funny show.
“Now that it’s on Netflix, I always put it on and watch it,” said Mets infielder Wilmer Flores, 26, who is from Venezuela. “When I get up in the morning, I turn on the TV, and whatever episode is there I’ll watch and keep watching. I stop it when I come to the stadium. When I come home from the stadium, I pick up where I left off.”
What has the sitcom done for his English proficiency?
“It’s near perfect,” said Flores’s teammate, Jerry Blevins, who is from Tennessee. “When he doesn’t know something, it’s surprising.”
. . .
(p. D2) For Galvis, the English-language broadcast with Spanish subtitles on Venezuelan television, was an excellent learning tool. “You can compare what’s going on that way,” he said. “If they say ‘happy,’ you see he’s happy and the subtitle says ‘feliz’, then you can learn. You might not learn 100 percent, but you’ll learn to associate.”
. . .
Like Flores, Galvis is evangelical about “Friends.” He tells young Spanish-speaking players that he is living proof that consuming popular culture in English can help. And although he is now a capable English speaker, he still watches “Friends” with subtitles in Spanish so that his wife can learn English.
Marta Kauffman, one of the creators of the show, said she was delighted to hear about its unlikely and unintended impact on certain players. She compared the phenomenon to how Viagra was originally designed to treat heart problems but later was embraced for a very different purpose.

For the full story, see:
JAMES WAGNER. “For Some Major Leaguers, It’s Always Great to See ‘Friends’.” The New York Times (Mon., SEPT. 18, 2017): D1-D2.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the title “‘Friends,’ the Sitcom That’s Still a Hit in Major League Baseball.”)

For Innovators to Seek the Way to San Jose, City’s Bureaucrats Should “Get Out of the Way”

The passages quoted below are authored by the Democratic mayor of the city of San Jose, California.

(p. A17) Recently, states and cities have been luring companies with subsidies. . . . The commonwealth of Massachusetts and city of Boston brought General Electric headquarters to Beantown with a $145 million incentive deal.
. . .
But my city won’t be offering incentives to Amazon. Why? Because they are a bad deal for taxpayers. With many subsidies, the jobs a company brings to an area don’t generate revenues commensurate with public expenditures. The GE deal will cost taxpayers more than $181,000 for every job created in Boston. Most experts insist that other factors–particularly the presence of a skilled workforce–play a far larger role in determining boardrooms’ corporate location decisions. Moreover, some 95% of Silicon Valley’s job growth comes from new small-business formation and when those homegrown companies develop into larger firms.
. . .
A healthy economic ecosystem that supports innovation and growth is what makes a community attractive to a company like Amazon.
. . .
As elected officials, we would do well to resist ribbon-cutting and take the longer view. To attract innovative employers, let’s all stay in our lanes, create safe and attractive cities for talented people to live in, and clear bureaucratic red tape. In other words: Get out of the way.

For the full commentary, see:

Sam Liccardo. “Why I’m Not Bidding for Amazon’s HQ; San Jose won’t offer subsidies for favored corporations, which are a bad deal for city taxpayers.” The Wall Street Journal (Thurs., Oct. 5, 2017): A17.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date Oct. 4, 2017.)

Silicon Valley Firm Defies Disruption

(p. A1) LOS GATOS, Calif.–Companies that resist change don’t tend to last long in the caldron of innovation called Silicon Valley.
Then there’s the Z.A. Macabee Gopher Trap Co.
Founded in 1900 by local barber and inventor Zephyr Albert Macabee to manufacture his patented metal gopher traps, the company is a stickler for tradition.
The traps’ design has remained exactly the same, including their forest green color–despite complaints that the hue makes them hard to spot. Some customers gripe of hitting them with mowers, and have repainted them bright red or other colors. Still, the company doesn’t waver.
Macabee operates out of the same small Victorian house where “Zeph” Macabee started it all on a quiet residential street. Even the packaging—Spartan white boxes of 24–remain unchanged since the postearthquake edition of 1906.
“We have a strong product identity,” says Ronald Fink, the company’s cheerful septuagenarian general manager, who grew up on a nearby apricot farm.
But existential questions loom. The company’s patent expired in 1917. The threat of cheap Asian knockoffs led the company in (p. A10) 2008 to shift all production to China and lay off the eight Cambodian refugees who built traps in the basement on decades-old machines.
Another new competitor has popped up: a pest exterminator named Steve Albano, founder of Trapline Products in Redwood City, who used and studied Macabee traps and came up with what he considers a better design. “I think they just work better,” says Mr. Albano.
. . .
As the owners sort out their differences, copycat traps are flooding the market. Most retail for about a third less than the roughly $9 a Macabee commands, including several that even mimic the forest color.
“But people still buy us, because they know they’re getting quality,” says Mr. Fink.

For the full story, see:
Timothy Aeppel. “Old Time Rodent-Trap Company Doesn’t Gopher Change; At one firm in Silicon Valley, disruption is a dirty word; existential fears after 100 years.” The New York Times (Fri., June 19, 2015): A1 & A10.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the title “Macabee, an Old Time Maker of Rodent Traps, Doesn’t Gopher Change; At one firm in Silicon Valley, disruption is a dirty word; existential fears after 100 years.”)

“Vinyl Rose from the Ashes”

(p. A10) LODENICE, Czech Republic — He was a businessman, not a clairvoyant. Zdenek Pelc did not really foresee, a generation ago, that vinyl records would one day make a return from near extinction.
But he was smart enough to keep a vinyl record factory here, a relic of the Communist era, through all those years when albums gave way to CDs and then to iTunes and streaming, and to be ready when vinyl suddenly got hot again.
And that is why this village of 1,800, nestled in a lush furl of the Bohemian hills, improbably finds itself a world leader in the production of vinyl albums.
“I realized when I came to the company 33 years ago that vinyl would be finished one day,” said Mr. Pelc, 64, who now owns GZ Media and serves as president. “But I wanted our company to be the last one to stop making them.”
The trajectory of the company — and the village it once dominated — traces the Czech Republic’s transition to quirky capitalist colt from cranky Communist nag, all played to the kind of rock soundtrack that accompanies many modern Czech tales.
Instead of getting rid of the old equipment and moving CD-making machines into their space — as most music production companies around the world did in the late 1980s and early ’90s — Mr. Pelc kept only enough machines running to meet the dwindling demand, moving the rest into storage and cannibalizing their parts as needed.
“Frankly, if someone had told me back then that vinyl would return, I wouldn’t have believed it,” he said.
. . .
“Vinyl rose from the ashes,” Mr. Pelc said happily.
. . .
“From around 2005, the demand for vinyl grew steadily,” said Michael Sterba, GZ Media’s chief executive. “Then, it really took off in the last two or three years, like, whoosh.”
. . .
“Only an idiot thinks this can go on forever,” Mr. Sterba said. “Maybe making vinyl is a fashion that will disappear in a few years. Who knows? No one predicted this.”

For the full story, see:
RICK LYMAN. “LODENICE JOURNAL; Long-Playing Czech Company Rides a Resurgence to the Top.” The New York Times (Fri., AUG. 7, 2015): A10.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date AUG. 6, 2015, and has the title “LODENICE JOURNAL; Czech Company, Pressing Hits for Years on Vinyl, Finds It Has Become One.”)

Inventor’s Semiconductor Background Was Source of New, Safer Lithium Battery

(p. B1) SAN FRANCISCO — Mike Zimmerman likes to shock his guests by using a hammer to drive a nail through a solid polymer lithium metal battery.
Nothing happens — and that’s a good thing.
Mr. Zimmerman’s battery is a new spin on lithium-ion batteries, which are widely used in products from smartphones to cars. Today’s lithium-ion batteries, as anyone who has followed Samsung’s recent problems with flammable smartphones may know, can be ticking time bombs. The liquids in them can burst into flames if there is a short circuit of some sort. And driving a nail into one of them is definitely not recommended.
With that in mind, Mr. Zimmerman’s demonstration commands attention.
His Woburn, Mass., start-up, Ionic Materials, is at the cutting edge of an effort to design safer batteries. The company is working on “solid” lithium polymer batteries that greatly reduce their combustible nature.
A solid lithium polymer metal battery — when it arrives commercially — will also allow electronics designers to be more creative, because they will be able to use a plasticlike material (the polymer) that allows smaller and more flexible packaging and requires fewer complex safety mechanisms.
“My dream is to create the holy grail of solid batteries,” Mr. Zimmerman said.
After four years of development, he believes he is nearly there and hopes to begin manufacturing within the next two years. Ionic Materials is one of a new wave of academic and commercial research ef-(p. B4)forts in the United States, Europe and Asia to find safer battery technologies as consumers demand more performance from phones and cars.
. . .
Mr. Zimmerman’s background is in the world of semiconductors; he worked at Bell Labs and then a company called Quantum Leap Packaging. Several university researchers who have worked with the company believe that has lead him to a technology that will be more manufacturable than competing polymer and ceramic battery technologies now being explored.
“What is so intriguing about Mike and his folks is they are using known production techniques borrowed from the semiconductor packaging industry,” said Jay Whitacre, a Carnegie Mellon University physicist who was involved with Ionic Materials when it first started and who now is chief scientist at Aquion Energy, a maker of home storage and industrial batteries based in Mt. Pleasant, Pa.
The new progress has led a number of technologists in the field to believe that batteries may finally be getting out of their rut.
“We’re in a golden age of new chemistry development which probably hasn’t been seen in thirty or 40 years, since the last energy crisis,” said Paul Albertus, a program manager at the Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy. “It’s a pretty exciting time to be developing energy storage technology.

For the full story, see:
JOHN MARKOFF. “Creating a Safer Phone Battery (This One Won’t Catch Fire).” The New York Times (Mon., DEC. 12, 2016): B1 & B4.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date DEC. 11, 2016, and has the title “Designing a Safer Battery for Smartphones (That Won’t Catch Fire).”)

Dubai Central Planners Subsidize Driverless Drones

(p. A7) Like a scene from “The Jetsons,” commuters in Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates, may soon climb aboard automated flying taxis, soaring over busy streets and past the desert city’s gleaming skyscrapers, all — quite literally — at the push of a button.
Passenger drones, capable of carrying a single rider and a small suitcase, will begin buzzing above the emirate as early as July [2017], according to the director of the city’s transportation authority, part of an ambitious plan to increase driverless technology.
Already, the eight-rotor drone, made by the Chinese firm Ehang, has flown test runs past the Burj Al Arab, Dubai’s iconic, sail-shaped skyscraper.
The drone “is not just a model but it has really flown in Dubai skies,” Mattar Al Tayer, the director general of Dubai’s Roads and Transport Authority, said on Monday [Feb. 13, 2017], adding that the emirate would “spare no effort to launch” autonomous aerial vehicles by July.

For the full story, see:
RUSSELL GOLDMAN. “Dubai Plans Drone Taxis That Skip Drivers and Roads.” The New York Times (Weds., FEB. 15, 2017): A7.
(Note: bracketed dates added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date FEB. 14, 2017, and has the title “Dubai Plans a Taxi That Skips the Driver, and the Roads.”)

Simple App Takes Entrepreneur from Rags to Riches

(p. B1) When Facebook bought WhatsApp for more than $19 billion in 2014, Jan Koum, a founder of the messaging company, arranged to sign a part of the deal outside the suburban social services center where he had once waited in line to collect food stamps.
Mr. Koum, like many in the tech industry, is an immigrant. He was a teenager when he and his mother moved to the San Francisco Bay Area in the early 1990s, in part to escape the anti-Semitic tide then sweeping his native Ukraine. As Mr. Koum later told Forbes, his mother worked as a babysitter and swept floors at a grocery store to survive in the new country; when she was found to have cancer, the family lived off her disability payments.
Tales of immigrant woe are not unusual in Silicon Valley. But Mr. Koum’s story carries greater resonance because his app has quietly become a mainstay of immigrant life. More than a billion people regularly use WhatsApp, which lets users send text messages and make phone calls free over the internet. The app is particularly popular in India, where it has more than 160 million users, as well as in Europe, South America and Africa.
. . .
(p. B7) One of the secrets to WhatsApp’s growth has been a focus on simplicity. The app is purposefully unflashy, and it does just a few things — texts, voice calls and video calls. As a result, it is supremely easy to use even for people who are neophytes to digital technology. This is one reason immigrants find it so powerful; it has given them access to a wider set of relatives who might have shunned the social networks that came before.
Adoption of WhatsApp often follows a curious pattern — older relatives often suggest it to younger ones, rather than the other way around.
“My aunt, who’s in her late 70s, was the one who really pushed me to get on it,” Ms. Reef said. Now, she said, she uses it nearly every day; lately she’s even gotten her children to use it.

For the full commentary, see:
Manjoo, Farhad. “STATE OF THE ART; A Shared Lifeline for Millions of Migrants.” The New York Times (Thurs., DEC. 22, 2016): B1 & B7.
(Note: eilipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date DEC. 21, 2016, and has the title “STATE OF THE ART; For Millions of Immigrants, a Common Language: WhatsApp.”)

Factory Workers Collaborate with Robots

(p. B1) MARION, Ohio–A new worker is charming the staff at Whirlpool Corp.’s plant here: a robot called Chappy.
Employees at the dryer factory say they have taken a shine to one-armed, programmable robots that have assumed some repetitive tasks, working in concert with their human colleagues. One, nicknamed after a worker whose rote duties it has inherited, snaps photographs to scan for defects.
“If I can get some help doing my job, I’m all for that,” said Karen “Chappy” Beidler, who is now free to focus on checking and fixing wiring connections. “It’s technology helping manpower–you can’t beat it.”

For the full story, see:
Andrew Tangel. “Latest Robots Lend an Arm.” The Wall Street Journal (Weds., Nov. 9, 2016): B1 & B4.
(Note: the online version of the story has the date Nov. 8, 2016, and has the title “Latest Robots Lend a Helping Arm at Factories.”)

Warren Buffett: High-Tech Especially Hard to Predict

(p. 1D) Turns out that Warren Buffett spoke out in IBM’s favor, sort of, 37 years ago when the government accused “Big Blue” of illegal anti-competitive practices.
. . .
But Buffett was one of 87 witnesses who testified on behalf of the International Business Machines Corp. during the federal government’s antitrust trial.
. . .
In his testimony, Buffett said he asked the Price, Waterhouse accounting firm to calculate the debt levels of 104 other computer-oriented companies that, according to federal prosecutors, were harmed by IBM’s low prices and other alleged anti-competitive actions.
Buffett said his hypothesis was that the competing companies had trouble raising money to finance their growth because they had too much debt. The accounting analy-(p. 2D)sis, Buffett said in court, “bore that hypothesis out in a very conclusive manner.”
So why didn’t he buy IBM stock in 1980?
Because, he told the court, with high-tech companies it’s “particularly difficult to have a clear view of a long-term future. … High-technology companies are ones where both the product and the customer’s use of it are (areas in which) I don’t feel I have a full understanding.”

For the full commentary, see:
Steve Jordon. “WARREN WATCH; What Buffett said in court about IBM in 1980.” Omaha World-Herald (Sun., Jan 22, 2017): 1D-2D.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the title “WARREN WATCH; What Warren Buffett said in court about IBM in 1980.”)

More Workers Benefit from Driverless Cars, Than Are Hurt

(p. A2) Self-driving vehicles have the potential to reshape a wide range of occupations held by roughly one in nine American workers, according to a new U.S. government report.
About 3.8 million people drive taxis, trucks, ambulances and other vehicles for a living. An additional 11.7 million workers drive as part of their work, including personal care aides, police officers, real-estate agents and plumbers. In all, that’s roughly 11.3% of total U.S. employment based on 2015 occupational data, according to the analysis by three Commerce Department economists.
If businesses embrace autonomous vehicles on a large scale, workers in the first category are “more likely to be displaced” from their jobs, while workers in the latter group “may be more likely to benefit from greater productivity and better working conditions,” wrote David Beede, Regina Powers and Cassandra Ingram in the report, released Friday.

For the full story, see:
Ben Leubsdorf. “Driverless Cars May Alter 1 in 9 Jobs.” The Wall Street Journal (Tues., Aug 15, 2017): A2.
(Note: the online version of the story has the date Aug 14, 2017, and has the title “Self-Driving Cars Could Transform Jobs Held by 1 in 9 U.S. Workers.”)

The report summarized in the passages quoted above, is:
Beede, David, Regina Powers, and Cassandra Ingram. “The Employment Impact of Autonomous Vehicles.” ESA Issue Brief, #05-17, Aug. 11, 2017.

3-D Printing Promises Goods Quicker, Cheaper, More Local, and More Customized

(p. B3) With the rise of new technologies like smartphones and 3-D printers, fashion start-ups like Feetz are changing the ways goods are ordered, made and sold.
Like Ms. Beard, several founders of these companies don’t have fashion backgrounds. Instead, they consider technology the answer to off-the rack, mass-produced goods, which are increasingly shunned by millennials. Consumers with hard-to-find sizes — like petite, or big and tall — will find shopping simpler.
Traditionally, manufacturing is the most expensive part of the retail supply chain. Creating goods in small batches is difficult and costly. Most are manufactured overseas, and shipping goods to the United States adds time and cost to the process. So even “fast fashion” can take about six weeks to hit store shelves.
The beauty of instant, customized fashion, experts say, is that goods can be made at a lower cost and more quickly — yet in a personalized style.
. . .
These are still early days for 3-D printing, said Uli Becker, the former chief executive of Reebok and an investor in Feetz. The offerings are not very diversified, and they are limited to basic goods. And fabric cannot yet be printed.
But he sees great potential for 3-D printing. “You can start producing in America, for America,” he said. “Production facilities can be in the same place where you sell products, which creates jobs.”
. . .
“We’re a technology company that creates T-shirts,” said Walker Williams, 27, chief executive of Teespring, who started the company with Evan Stites-Clayton, a friend from Brown University. “The future of fashion is in smaller brands that have relationships with customers.”

For the full story, see:
CONSTANCE GUSTKE. “ENTREPRENEURSHIP; With Analytics and 3-D Printers, a Faster Fashion Just for You.” The New York Times (Thurs., SEPT. 15, 2016): B3.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date SEPT. 14, 2016, and has the title “ENTREPRENEURSHIP; Your Next Pair of Shoes Could Come From a 3-D Printer.”)