- The New China Scare “Why America Shouldn’t Panic About Its Latest Challenger”. Fascinating (long and thoughtful) essay by Fareed Zakaria. Suggests that current US strategy on dealing with China is wrong and likely to be counter-productive. Too complex an argument for its President, though.
- What happens when a kid buys a used IBM mainframe computer and installs it in his parents’ basement Touching and funny talk. Useful for parents of geeky kids. I particularly liked Slide 21 of his presentation — the one about “Lessons Learned”. “Listen to your mother and get a warehouse”.
- Are robots competing for your job? Lovely, acerbic New Yorker essay by the historian Jill Lepore. Robots are almost certainly coming for the jobs of the manufacturers of the exclamation marks that are de rigeur in scare-stories about robotics.
- Privilege and inequality in Silicon Valley Why few successful startup founders grew up desperately poor. Sobering reflections on inequality by a poor boy who did make good.
Memex 1.1
John Naughton's online diary
