Welcome radio listeners and online article readers. In fact, welcome everyone not only to this program but also to the future. Technology is changing the way we live each and every day in very profound ways. It is also constantly rearranging the free-market with disruptive technologies causing challenges for status quo old companies, employment, and it’s difficult for the colleges and universities to keep up with this technology, as it seems they are always teaching and training people to do last year’s jobs.
Therefore, in the future these folks who have paid $100,000 in student loans may not even be working in those fields where they got their degrees. Statistically that has been the case, but it is going to be even more so in the future. Okay so, that’s what this program is about today on this 23rd day of October 2012 – how the future technologies will change everything.
Google’s Dominance and Disruption to the Newspaper Industry
Indeed, I believe it was Larry Page of Google who noted that the newspaper industry’s days are numbered. He stated that there won’t be newspapers in the future; that is printed words on paper being delivered to your doorstep. He was predicting the death of newspapers, and he did predict when it would happen, he said it could happen in a few years, or perhaps even a decade, but they wouldn’t exist in the future. Few could deny what he was saying, and when he made that common a few years ago the newspapers were laying off, merging, or simply going out of business.
Some newspapers have found that they can set up pay walls to make extra money, and perhaps the technology we talk about as tablet computers has at least help them in that regard where people can take their newspaper with them on the go, and read it online for a couple of dollars a month or week. This is worked well for the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and other well-known and well read newspapers. But it doesn’t seem to be working for all the local newspapers, although some who have a stranglehold on their local market are doing okay with pay walls as well.
Better Local Pollution Emissions Technology
Recently, the AQMD in Southern California had complained that pollution levels had increased. But where was all this pollution coming from? Well, it was coming from a number of sources, different types of pollution interacting. Some of that, 1% of the pollution in the atmosphere in California has blown across the entire Pacific ocean from China. China says it isn’t their pollution because they are making products to send to America, therefore it is actually America’s pollution, therefore the United States shouldn’t complain.
Indeed, China is using coal-fired plants to generate electricity often without the clean coal technology which they now have available to them if they wish to buy it from Germany, or in some cases they’ve already copied it and installed themselves. You have to love the Chinese when it comes to proprietary information, they don’t seem to have any ethical knowledge of how that works, perhaps because their society went for thousands of years copying each other, and they assume that if you were a friend, or a fellow farmer you would share your secrets and cultivation technology with them.
Are Tablet Sales Helping Retail Sales at Starbucks?
It seems to me that more people come into Starbucks and they are busy playing on their iPhone, Android, or tablet computer. They are reading the news and minding their own business almost as if they are ignoring everyone else in the place. It used to be that people went to coffee shops to have a dialogue or discussion, or get social interaction. Today people are going and sitting down, plugging into the free outlet and using the free Wi-Fi. They don’t seem to be doing a lot of talking, albeit some of them get on their cell phones and disrupt everyone else.
So, is Starbucks the new place to go now not to have an intellectual discussion, but rather to use your personal tech devices so you don’t have to sit at home and you can be on the go? In other words, is it a destination point other than where you live to get out of the house and use your personal technology? Is that helping Starbucks sales? It could be, and they seem to be catering to that crowd, although they are catering to anyone who comes in to buy for dollar cup of coffee I suppose.