Modern families: Chips off the old block
This article first appeared in The Economist on January 12th 2012
Paul Wallich usually walks his small son to the bus stop a stone’s throw from their Vermont home. But he can use a robot too: a football-sized drone, hovering several metres off the ground, follows a beacon stashed in the little boy’s school bag. A smartphone strapped to the device beams back video. Read more
Le Grand Meaulnes: The girl at the Grand Palais
This article first appeared in The Economist Christmas Issue, 2012.
Sal Paradise, hero of Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road”, carries only one book on his three-year travels across America. On a Greyhound bus to St Louis he produces a second-hand copy of “Le Grand Meaulnes”, stolen from a Hollywood stall. Entranced by the Arizona landscape, he decides not to read it after all.
Such is the fortune of Alain-Fournier’s story, one of France’s most popular novels, in the English-speaking world. Much loved yet little read, for almost a century this strange, earnest and inconsolable novel has haunted the fringes of fiction. Henry Miller venerated its hero; F. Scott Fitzgerald borrowed its title for “The Great Gatsby” (and some critics think Fournier’s main characters were models for Nick Carraway, Fitzgerald’s narrator, and his lovelorn pal). John Fowles claimed it informed everything he wrote. “I know it has many faults,” he sighed, as if trying to shake the obsession, “yet it has haunted me all my life.” Read more
Personal data: Know thyself
This article first appeared in The Economist on December 15th 2012
Many firms help businesses crunch data on their customers. Until recently, few have offered those services to the consumers themselves. Now a number of start-ups are offering “data lockers”, secure online locations where people can gather information on themselves, including their consumption patterns—utility bills, loyalty-card statements, telephone records and so on.
By helping them to retrieve those data in the first place, locker firms hope to give privacy-conscious consumers more control over what information organisations hold about them. They also aim to help people to reuse it for their own benefit.Consumers might give details of their past energy bills to price-comparison engines, to find them better deals. They could let retailers peek at their spending patterns in return for discounts. Shane Green of Personal, one such locker provider, thinks individuals who make full use of their personal data might one day earn $1,000 a year in benefits and savings. Read more
Job review sites: Honestly unvarnished
This article first appeared in The Economist on December 8th 2012
Job-seekers fear that recruiters trawling social-media sites will find reasons not to hire them (why do friends always bring cameras to “50-Shades”-themed parties?). But firms should also worry that their secrets will be revealed online: some job sites ask staff to dish the dirt on their employers. Read more
Internet governance: System error
This article first appeared in The Economist on December 1st 2012
THE rules of the internet decide its speed, safety, accessibility, flexibility and unity. They therefore matter not just to computer enthusiasts, but to everyone with a stake in the modern world. On December 3rd officials from more than 150 countries, plus do-gooders, geeks and other interested parties, will meet in Dubai to argue about how to run the network—and fight over who should control it. Read more
Election technology: Paper cuts
This article first appeared in The Economist on October 27th 2012
Bertie Ahern, Ireland’s former prime minister, once lamented that his countrymen still cast ballots with “stupid old pencils”. Now his enthusiasm for electronic voting looks premature. Ireland has just scrapped 7,500 devices, bought for €51m ($66m) in 2002-3, but never used amid worries about reliability. A recycling firm bought the lot for €70,000: about €9 each. Read more
Internet freedom: Free to choose
This article first appeared in The Economist on October 6th 2012
The arrest of a senior executive rarely brings helpful headlines. But when Brazilian authorities briefly detained Google’s country boss on September 26th—for refusing to remove videos from its YouTube subsidiary that appeared to breach electoral laws—they helped the firm repair its image as a defender of free speech. Read more
Mobile broadband: Not so fast
This article first appeared in The Economist on October 6th 2012
The whizziest new feature of Apple’s iPhone 5, which went on sale on September 21st, is a fourth-generation (4G) data connection that speedily downloads movies, music and web pages. So far that has been little use in Britain, where legal battles have long delayed the auction of 4G frequencies. But on October 3rd Everything Everywhere—the painfully named parent company of Orange and T-Mobile—said it will launch Britain’s first “superfast” mobile service in ten cities by the end of the month.
Ofcom, the media and telecoms regulator, said in August that the company could use spectrum it already owned to build a data network five times nippier than existing services (which it has branded EE). The decision gave the firm a year’s head start over its main competitors, O2 and Vodafone, who cannot run 4G networks without buying new bandwidth in Ofcom’s auction, scheduled for early 2013. Read more
Personal data: Shameless self-promotion
This article first appeared in The Economist on August 11th 2012
Mobile operators know who you call; banks know what you buy; supermarkets know what you eat. Transactional data helps businesses make money, and the government thinks consumers should profit from it too. Last year the business department encouraged companies to give people digital copies of information held about them through a voluntary scheme called midata. It now wants to force firms to cough up the files.
Existing laws require companies to reply to requests for personal data, but only on paper. Some take 40 days to respond. The government thinks that consumers and the economy would benefit if they did so immediately. Price comparison engines that suck in itemised telephone bills could find people better deals. Personal finance sites empowered to ingest financial statements could help spendthrifts reform. Read more
Notaries: Breaking the seals
This article first appeared in The Economist on August 11th 2012
The change is modest, but this being Italy it amounts to a revolution. For decades the country’s 5,000 notaries have grown rich from laws that limit their number. To cut waiting times the government is lifting the caps. It promises to mint 500 new notaries by December and 500 more next year. Read more
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About
I'm a journalist and web producer, specialising in online community development. I'm Community Editor at The Economist, developing social features on economist.com. Email: mark@majohnson.orgPrevious projects
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