Analysis of the Apple App Store

Paul Krugman and Charlie Stross had a conversation about the future at Anticipation World Con, every paragraph of which is worth reading.

Though a few exchanges caught my mind.

Paul Krugman on the acceleration of change:

(T)here hasn’t been that kind of dramatic change … If you walked into a kitchen from the 1950’s it would look a little pokey, but you’d know what to do. It wouldn’t be that difficult. If someone from the 1950’s walked into a kitchen from 1909 they’d be pretty unhappy – they might just be able to manage. If someone from 1909 went to one from 1859, you would actually be hopeless. The big change was really between 1840 and the 1920’s, in terms of what the physical nature of modern life is like. There’s been nothing like that since.

Charlie Stross on AI:

Dead (Dutch) computer scientist Edsger Dijkstra had a number of pithy aphorisms … One I particularly like is the question of whether a machine can think is no more interesting than the question of whether or not a submarine can swim. The point being Boeing 737’s and seagulls can both fly, however, we don’t try to replicate seagulls when we’re designing a new airliner.

Stross on how little we really know:

Craig Venter came up with an interesting project a couple of years ago to sequence the Pacific Ocean. If you have a bucket of seawater, it contains probably on the order of a billion organisms most of which are viruses, probably single virus particles in that bucket from a number of species. It turns out when they did shotgun sequencing on a bucket of seawater 98% of the genes they discovered were hitherto unknown. There’s a lot of stuff out there that we do not have a clue about.

Stross and Krugman are both essentially in the same field: the prediction of the unpredictable. And each have clearly sat and thought deeply about exactly where they think we’re headed as a culture. And each make great points during this talk.

I’d add more, but I’m still digesting myself.

Thanks, Slashdot.

Updated the link to point to the non-slashdot’d site.

If you adjust for the cost of living, Eamon Moynihan says, you’ll find New York is the poorest place in America:

Based on data from C2ER, a company that has been producing cost-of-living estimates for years, someone earning $50,798 in Chicago or $62,741 in Washington, D.C. enjoys the same standard of living as someone earning $100,000 in New York City.


Once you apply that cost of living to 2006 estimates of median household income, you realize that New York State ranked last in the nation in purchasing power. The adjusted figure for New York was $38,986; for Mississippi, it was $42,984.


The result is that New York City residents have far less purchasing power than anyone seems to realize.

Moynihan has started the “Cost of Living Project” to help bring more attention to this so-called “problem”.

I’m not sure how much sympathy I have for the denizens of New York City. During my time living there, I found the vast majority of individuals I’d met were transplants. Non-natives. People who chose to move to New York City for whatever wild-eyed fantasy they’d dreamed up in their head of life in the big city. And while nearly all of them would complain about nearly every aspect of New York life, from the costs of rent, to the size of their apartment, the crowded subways, to the garbage-soaked streets, it was always easily outweighed in their minds by the other amenities of the city.

Yes, rent was atrocious, but living in New York was unlike any other city they’d lived in. The pace of it, the atmosphere of Gotham itself, seemed worth the price of admission. And either you agreed or there was something terribly wrong with you.

With the drama and urgency of a sportscaster, Hans Rosling debunks myths about the so-called "developing world" using extraordinary animation software developed by his Gapminder Foundation.