Technology

July 6, 2021

Is Silicon Valley upending Democracy? w/Carles Boix

Beginning in the 1970s, Silicon Valley entrepreneurs commercialized a set of information and communication technologies that revolutionized almost all aspects of our lives. Personal computers, the internet, and smartphones created new industries such as digital platforms and cloud computing that continue to power advanced economies. Might the forces unleashed by these technologies undermine the post War…

June 29, 2021

Daniel Markovits on The Meritocracy Trap

Starting in the 1960s, computers powered by silicon chips and, later, the internet, dramatically reshaped the geography of the US economy. The newest general purpose technology that builds on these innovations is artificial intelligence. With this context in mind, Daniel Markovits and Nicolas Wittstock discuss Daniel’s new book, The Meritocracy Trap, where he argues that…

June 25, 2021

Breaking up Amazon? 2021’s Worst Idea, by Victor Menaldo

The House Judiciary Committee has been working feverishly on several blockbuster bills intended to rein in Big Tech. It just approved three of the most far-reaching. The so-called Augmenting Compatibility and Competition by Enabling Service Switching, or Access, Act, compels the largest digital platforms to become interoperable with each other. The Platform Competition and Opportunity Act…

June 22, 2021

The Geography of American Innovation, introducing Moretti Podcast

It’s the early 21st century. That means déjà vu all over again: the US economy remains an innovation powerhouse. Silicon Valley, the Puget Sound, Austin, and the Greater Boston Metro area all boast highly productive companies across variegated high-tech industries—and, in the process, they have created coveted jobs for well-educated people. At the same time,…

June 15, 2021

Wittstock & Martin on Innovation to Fight Climate Change

It has now become a platitude: technological innovation is the key to human prosperity. COVID-19 has demonstrated this once again: global research networks and swashbuckling pharmaceutical companies (incentivized, regulated, and nudged along by governments, of course) gave us several vaccines in record time—most of them using entirely new techniques such as mRNA technologies. What about…

June 8, 2021

Recent Tech-centric Political Economy Podcasts

The Digitization of State Repression – with Steven Feldstein In this episode, Senior Fellow Steven Feldstein of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in the Democracy, Conflict, and Governance Program discusses his new book, The Rise of Digital Repression: How Technology is Reshaping Power, Politics, and Resistance, with Forum Affiliate Morgan Wack. The conversation touches on the…

May 12, 2021

IP Waiver on Covid-19 vaccine patents: populism, not solutions

By Victor Menaldo Soon after World War I broke out, the U.S. government expropriated several patents from Bayer, a German Chemical and Pharmaceutical company. It then sold them to US Winthrop Chemical Company. Cue America’s sly statesmen gloating with self-satisfaction: take that, Kaiser Wilhelm II. We just showed you! The only problem with this seemingly…

April 12, 2021

Forum Podcast “Invention, Innovation, and the British Industrial Revolution” with Anton Howes

Guest: Anton Howes – Historian of Innovation In this episode, Anton Howes – head of innovation research at The Entrepreneurs Network, discusses the history of invention in Britain with host Nicolas Wittstock. Anton argues that Britons were infected with an “improving mentality” some time in the 15-hundreds. As a result, inventors created networks, shared…

April 2, 2021

Forum Podcast “Capitalism without Capital” – With Johnathan Haskel

Guest: Johnathan Haskel – Professor of Economics at Imperial College Business School, Imperial College London and Director of the Doctoral Programme. Prof. Johnathan Haskel and Forum Fellow Nicolas Wittstock discuss Johnathans’ book Capitalism without Capital – the rise of the intangible economy (with Stian Westlake). In it, the authors argue that that business investment in…

March 26, 2021

Forum Podcast: “Selling your Soul or Hedging? What are Income Pools?”

Guests: Professor Victor Menaldo, Morgan Wack, Amos Chi, and Nicolas Wittstock. In this episode, Forum fellows and friends discuss how income share agreements might enable people to pay for college and pool risk in the knowledge economy. Related work and links mentioned in the podcast: Morgan Wack and Nicolas Wittstock – Income pools to…