As with the printing press and the dotcom boom, initial frenzy and speculation obscures the lasting legacy of new technologies“Innovation,” wrote the economist William Janeway in his seminal book Doing Capitalism in the Innovation Economy, “begins with discovery and culminates in speculation.” That just about sums up 2023. The discovery was AI (as represented by ChatGPT), and the speculative bubble is what we have now, in which huge public corporations launch products that are known to “hallucinate” (yes, that’s now a technical term relating to large language models), and spend money like it’s going out of fashion on the kit needed to make even bigger ones. As I write, I see a report that next year Microsoft plans to buy 150,000 Nvidia chips – at $30,000 (£24,000) a pop. It’s a kind of madness. But when looked at it through the Janeway lens, ’twas ever thus.“The innovations that have repeatedly transformed the architecture of the market economy,” he writes, “from canals to the internet, have required massive investments to construct networks whose value in use could not be imagined at the outset of deployment.” Or, to put it more crudely, what we retrospectively regard as examples of technological progress have mostly come about through outbreaks of irrational exuberance that involved colossal waste, bankrupted investors and caused social turmoil. Bubbles, in other words. In recent times, think of the dotcom boom of the late 1990s. Or in earlier times, of the US railway... Continue reading at 'The Guardian'
[ The Guardian | 2023-12-30 16:00:37 UTC ]
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John Murray is to publish What If: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions by... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2014-03-14 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Penguin Random House UK Distribution has signed a deal with John Blake Publishing Ltd.... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2014-03-13 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Print these days is a medium of diminishing returns. There are pockets of brands where print revenues are increasing, but physical magazines are largely now kept around as a sometimes-important part of an integrated buy. And many executives have written off any notion of a return to print-based... Continue reading at Folio Magazine
[ Folio Magazine | 2014-03-12 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Big libraries get all the attention. But in late September of 2013, the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) issued an interesting report on small and rural libraries in the United States. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2014-02-07 00:00:00 UTC ]
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John Murray has acquired the debut novel from former BBC News journalist Terry Stiastny. Acts of... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2014-02-06 00:00:00 UTC ]
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The Food and Drug Administration is rolling out an ambitious anti-smoking campaign designed to dissuade young people from picking up the habit by appealing to their vanity.DraftFCB is handling creative for the campaign, a two-year, $115 million campaign with the tagline "The Real Cost."... Continue reading at Advertising Age
[ Advertising Age | 2014-02-06 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Report finds flaws in tech project could have been identified two years before it was shut down in May at a cost of almost £100mRead the full PwC report on the BBC's DMI failureThe BBC should have identified that the Digital Media Initiative was set to fail as early as July 2011, almost two... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2013-12-18 00:00:00 UTC ]
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We've compiled a brief look at a few of the books on Mandela (including his own). Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2013-12-05 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Newsweek's return to print is the latest development in an odd timeline for the once-storied magazine. It's changed ownership four times, employed four CEOs and had three editors-in-chief since 2010. It's awkward liaise with the Daily Beast and swings between layoffs and hiring flurries add to... Continue reading at Folio Magazine
[ Folio Magazine | 2013-12-05 00:00:00 UTC ]
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There was a time in the '80s when men rushed into video stores searching for VHS (or Betamax) tapes of sports bloopers. And those men looked a lot like Roger Sterling.At least that's what a Sports Illustrated TV spot would you have believe.With Sports Illustrated publisher Time Inc. preparing to... Continue reading at Advertising Age
[ Advertising Age | 2013-11-27 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Angelica Huston's memoir has received mainly positive reviews and is the first of a planned two-part work. Continue reading at The Christian Science Monitor
[ The Christian Science Monitor | 2013-11-21 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Novelist John Grisham talks about his return to Ford County in 'Sycamore Row' and an unpleasant stint as a politician.John Grisham is the world's most successful author of legal thrillers (and one baseball novel, last year's "Calico Joe") with sales of more than 275 million copies to his credit.... Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2013-11-16 00:00:00 UTC ]
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It's common practice for musical artists to create their own labels in order to dip into that part of the industry. However, even though it's, more or less, the same thing, New York Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter is taking the uncommon step of launching his own book publishing imprint, Jeter... Continue reading at Silicon Valley Business Journal
[ Silicon Valley Business Journal | 2013-11-16 00:00:00 UTC ]
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There have been great advances in short-run digital printing (SRDP) and print-on-demand (POD) technologies over the last decade. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2013-11-02 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Vintage Classics will publish a third book by Stoner author John Williams in January 2014.... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2013-10-28 00:00:00 UTC ]
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"City of Night" was not the first overtly gay-themed book but it may be the most unapologetic, a searing screed of life on the edge.I spent part of Wednesday afternoon at UCLA, on a panel to celebrate the 50th anniversary of John Rechy’s novel “City of Night,” newly reissued to commemorate the... Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2013-10-24 00:00:00 UTC ]
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The 25th anniversary of We’re Going on a Bear Hunt by Michael Rosen and Helen Oxenbury in... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2013-10-14 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Whether publishers want it or not, the Netflix model is coming to the book business.The San Francisco startup Scribd, best known as a site for posting PDFs of documents, announced Tuesday it is launching a multi-platform digital book subscription service that will provide access to a wide range... Continue reading at Crains New York
[ Crains New York | 2013-10-02 00:00:00 UTC ]
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A discussion with nine experts from Frankfurt Academy's CONTEC 2013 interactive learning lab on self-publishing's implications for the industry. Continue reading at Publishing Perspectives
[ Publishing Perspectives | 2013-09-24 00:00:00 UTC ]
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A pair of best-selling works by staff writers for The New Yorker, Lawrence Wright's "Going Clear" and George Packer's "The Unwinding," were among 10 books chosen for the nonfiction long-list of the National Book Awards.Besides Mr. Wright's investigation of Scientology and Packer's bleak account... Continue reading at Crains New York
[ Crains New York | 2013-09-19 00:00:00 UTC ]
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