Entrepreneurship – Page 24 – artdiamondblog.com

“Shannon’s Principles of Redundancy and Error Correction”

(p. C7) There were four essential prophets whose mathematics brought us into the Information Age: Norbert Wiener, John von Neumann, Alan Turing and Claude Shannon. In “A Mind at Play: How Claude Shannon Invented the Information Age,” Jimmy Soni and Rob Goodman make a convincing case for their subtitle while reminding us that Shannon never made this claim himself.
. . .
The only one of the four Information Age pioneers who was also an electrical engineer, Shannon was practical as well as brilliant.
. . .
Wiener’s theory of information, drawing on his own background in thermodynamics, statistical mechanics and the study of random processes, was cloaked in opaque mathematics that was impenetrable to most working engineers.
. . .
“Before Shannon,” Messrs. Soni and Goodman write, “information was a telegram, a photograph, a paragraph, a song. After Shannon, information was entirely abstracted.” He derived explicit formulas for rates of transmission, the capacity of an ideal channel, ability to correct errors and coding efficiency that could be understood by anyone familiar with logarithms to the base 2.
Mathematicians use mathematics to understand things. Engineers use mathematics to build things. Engineers love logarithms as a carpenter loves a familiar tool. The electronic engineers who flooded into civilian life in the aftermath of World War II adopted Shannon’s theory as passionately as they had avoided Wiener’s, bringing us the age of digital machines.
. . .
Despite the progress of technology, we still have no clear understanding of how memories are stored in our own brains: Shannon’s principles of redundancy and error correction are no doubt involved in preserving memory, but how does the process work and why does it sometimes fail? Shannon died of Alzheimer’s disease in February 2001. The mind that gave us the collective memory we now so depend on had its own memory taken away.

For the full review, see:
George Dyson. “The Elegance of Ones and Zeroes.” The Wall Street Journal (Sat., July 22, 2017): C7.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the review has the date July 21, 2017.)

The book under review, is:
Soni, Jimmy, and Rob Goodman. A Mind at Play: How Claude Shannon Invented the Information Age. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2017.

Code Schools Provide Intense 12 Week Training, and Jobs

(p. B1) Across the U.S., change is coming for the ecosystem of employers, educational institutions and job-seekers who confront the increasingly software-driven nature of work. A potent combination–a yawning skills gap, stagnant middle-class wages and diminished career prospects for millennials–is bringing about a rapid shift (p. B4) in the labor market for coders and other technical professionals.
Riding into the breach are “code schools,” a kind of vocational training that rams students through intense 12-week crash courses in precisely the software-development skills employers need.

For the full commentary, see:
Christopher Mims. “Code-School Boot Camps Offer Fast Track to Jobs.” The Wall Street Journal (Mon., Feb. 27, 2017): B1 & B4.
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date Feb. 26, 2017, and has the title “A New Kind of Jobs Program for Middle America.”)

Petsitting Is Illegal Without a License

“Raul Cordero with his Rhodesian ridgeback, Viuty. Mr. Cordero operates a dog-care business in East Harlem that appears to run afoul of city rules regarding the care of pets for pay in homes.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. A18) Raul Cordero and his Rhodesian ridgeback, Viuty, often have canine houseguests overnight at their East Harlem home, part of Mr. Cordero’s dog-care business, for which he carries special petsitter’s insurance that costs about $800 a year.
Yet despite Mr. Cordero’s efforts to do everything by the book, he was shocked to discover that his petsitting business — and in fact, any of the ubiquitous, your-home-or-mine variety — is against New York City’s rules.
According to long-established but little-noticed regulations of the city’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, anyone offering petsitting for pay must be licensed to board animals, and do so in a permitted kennel. Running such a kennel out of a home is not allowed in the city.
. . .
The newcomers are large, app-based pet-care businesses, with names like Wag and Rover, that operate in a similar style to Airbnb, enabling New Yorkers to open their apartments and dog beds as à la carte dog hostels.
. . . Rover and its ilk have run afoul of similar stipulations in places like California and Colorado, and John Lapham, Rover’s general counsel, said that Rover was currently embroiled in similar concerns in several cities in New Jersey.
. . .
The department’s rule “deprives dog owners of the most obvious, safe and affordable care,” Mr. Lapham said.
“And it deprives sitters of the opportunity to make ends meet,” he said.
Mr. Lapham noted that in New York City, babysitting, for example, is permitted, no license necessary.
. . .
. . . to Mr. Cordero, 27, regulating small-time dogsitters like him and his Rhodesian sidekick feels like government overreach. Petsitting “is like taking care of you own pet in your house,” he said, adding: “So if you have a license, that means you are certified to feed a dog or a cat? That’s crazy.”

For the full story, see:
SARAH MASLIN NIR. “Paid Petsitting in Homes Is Illegal in New York. That’s News to Some Sitters.” The New York Times (Sat., JULY 22, 2017): A18.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date JULY 21, 2017.)

Employment Grows as Productivity Rises

(p. C3) In a recent paper prepared for a European Central Bank conference, the economists David Autor of MIT and Anna Salomons of Utrecht University looked at data for 19 countries from 1970 to 2007. While acknowledging that advances in technology may hurt employment in some industries, they concluded that “country-level employment generally grows as aggregate productivity rises.”
The historical record provides strong support for this view. After all, despite centuries of progress in automation and recurrent warnings of a jobless future, total employment has continued to increase relentlessly, even with bumps along the way.
More remarkable is the fact that today’s most dire projections of jobs lost to automation fall short of historical norms. A recent analysis by Robert Atkinson and John Wu of the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation quantified the rate of job destruction (and creation) in each decade since 1850, based on census data. They found that an incredible 57% of the jobs that workers did in 1960 no longer exist today (adjusted for the size of the workforce).
Workers suffering some of the largest losses included office clerks, secretaries and telephone operators. They found similar levels of displacement in the decades after the introduction of railroads and the automobile. Who is old enough to remember bowling alley pin-setters? Elevator operators? Gas jockeys? When was the last time you heard a manager say, “Take a memo”?
. . .
. . . , if artificial intelligence is getting so smart that it can recognize cats, drive cars, beat world-champion Go players, identify cancerous lesions and translate from one language to another, won’t it soon be capable of doing just about anything a person can?
Not by a long shot. What all of these tasks have in common is that they involve finding subtle patterns in very large collections of data, a process that goes by the name of machine learning.
. . .
But it is misleading to characterize all of this as some extraordinary leap toward duplicating human intelligence. The selfie app in your phone that places bunny ears on your head doesn’t “know” anything about you. For its purposes, your meticulously posed image is just a bundle of bits to be strained through an algorithm that determines where to place Snapchat face filters. These programs present no more of a threat to human primacy than did automatic looms, phonographs and calculators, all of which were greeted with astonishment and trepidation by the workers they replaced when first introduced.
. . .
The irony of the coming wave of artificial intelligence is that it may herald a golden age of personal service. If history is a guide, this remarkable technology won’t spell the end of work as we know it. Instead, artificial intelligence will change the way that we live and work, improving our standard of living while shuffling jobs from one category to another in the familiar capitalist cycle of creation and destruction.

For the full commentary, see:
Kaplan, Jerry. “Don’t Fear the Robots.” The Wall Street Journal (Sat., June 22, 2017): C3.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date June 21, 2017.)

The David Autor paper, mentioned above, is:

Autor, David, and Anna Salomons. “Does Productivity Growth Threaten Employment?” Working Paper. (June 19, 2017).

The Atkinson and Wu report, mentioned above, is:
Atkinson, Robert D., and John Wu. “False Alarmism: Technological Disruption and the U.S. Labor Market, 1850-2015.” (May 8, 2017).

The author’s earlier book, somewhat related to his commentary quoted above, is:
Kaplan, Jerry. Artificial Intelligence: What Everyone Needs to Know. New York: Oxford University Press, 2016.

Toyota’s Solid-State, Lithium-Ion Batteries Increase Electric Car Range

(p. B6) TOKYO–Toyota Motor Corp. believes it has mastered the technology and production process for a new lithium-ion battery that could slash charging time and double the range of electric vehicles, according to U.S. patent filings and one of the inventors.
On Tuesday [July 25, 2017] Toyota said that by the early 2020s it planned to sell cars equipped with solid-state batteries, which replace the damp electrolyte used to transport lithium ions inside today’s batteries with a solid glass-like plate.
Behind Toyota’s brief statement lay years of research aimed at solving issues that have long bedeviled batteries for electric cars. Current lithium-ion batteries can’t be packed too tightly together because of fire risk. That is one reason electric cars tend to have limited range compared with traditional gasoline-powered cars.
With the solid-state battery, “you can improve the output and reduce the charge time–hopefully,” said Ryoji Kanno, a professor at the Tokyo Institute of Technology. Prof. Kanno led a team including Toyota scientists that discovered the materials for the glass-like electrolyte.

For the full story, see:
McLain, Sean. “Toyota: Battery Can Make Electric Cars Go Farther.” The Wall Street Journal (Fri., July 28, 2017): B6.
(Note: bracketed date, added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date July 27, 2017, and has the title “Toyota’s Cure for Electric-Vehicle Range Anxiety: A Better Battery.”)

Disney Stories Give Happiness to the Poor

(p. 1B) If the arts community had been blossoming in north Omaha when Adrienne Brown-Norman was growing up there in the 1960s and ’70s, she may never have moved to California and become a senior illustrator for Disney Publishing Worldwide.
. . .
“Of course, though, I would not ever have met Floyd.”
That would be her husband, Floyd Norman, the now-legendary first African-American artist at Walt Disney Studios.
Floyd Norman, 82, began working for Disney in 1956 and was named a Disney Legend in 2007.
. . .
The Normans recently collaborated with legendary songwriter Richard Sherman (“Mary (p. 5B) Poppins”) on a picture book called “A Kiss Goodnight.”
The book tells the story of how the young Walt Disney was enchanted by fireworks and subsequently chose to send all of his Magic Kingdom guests home with a special kiss goodnight of skyrockets bursting overhead.
. . .
Walt Disney later picked Norman to join the team writing the script for “The Jungle Book.” Disney had seen Norman’s gags posted around the office and recognized a talented storyteller.
“I didn’t think I was a writer, but the old man did,” Norman said. “Then I realized that maybe I am good at this.”
Norman named “The Jungle Book” as his favorite project, because he worked alongside Disney.
. . .
“What I learned from the old man was the technique of storytelling and what made a movie work,” Norman said.
“I had an amazing opportunity to learn from the master. If you were in the room with Walt, it was for a reason. There are a lot of people who wanted to be in that room but didn’t get an invitation.”
. . .
One day at the studio the Normans recall pausing to watch the filming of “Saving Mr. Banks,” the story of Disney’s quest to acquire the rights to film “Mary Poppins.” Norman had worked on the movie and was interested in seeing Tom Hanks’ portrayal of his old boss.
“Tom Hanks rushed from his trailer in full costume to meet Floyd, shouting, ‘Where is that famous animator?’ ” Brown-Norman said. “You don’t expect a man like Tom Hanks to come running up. Then Tom wouldn’t let us leave. He wanted to know more about Walt, and if he was getting it right.”
. . .
“What I enjoy is the love of Disney that made so many people happy,” [Floyd Norman] said. “Maybe they were poor. Maybe they were in a bad home, but they tell me Disney stories gave them an escape. They gave them happiness, and that’s what I like.”

For the full story, see:

Kevin Cole. “Legendary Animator Spread Love of Disney.” Omaha World-Herald (Mon., Aug. 7, 2017): 1B & 5B.
(Note: ellipses, and bracketed name, added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the title “During Native Omaha Days, Disney’s Floyd Norman and Adrienne Brown-Norman reflect on careers.”)

The book mentioned above, co-authored by Sherman (and illustrated by the Normans), is:
Sherman, Richard, and Brittany Rubiano. A Kiss Goodnight. Glendale, CA: Disney Editions, 2017.

How to Use Dyslexia and ADHD to Become a Better Leader

(p. R7) Leading a company without using email, reading memos or going to endless meetings sounds like a pipe dream. But it’s a reality for Selim Bassoul, chief executive and chairman of Middleby Corp., the Elgin, Ill., kitchen-supply maker with such popular brands as Viking and Aga Rangemaster.
Mr. Bassoul, 60, has dyslexia and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), conditions that weren’t diagnosed during his childhood in Lebanon, when he initially struggled in school. Years later, when he was a graduate student at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, a professor suggested he get tested, he says.
. . .
WSJ: What are some ways that having dyslexia and ADHD affects your leadership style?
MR. BASSOUL: Dyslexia has forced me to be quite conceptual, because I’m not good with detail. I think in general rather than in specific [terms]. That allows me to step back and take in the big picture rather than get bogged down in details. Because of my weaknesses and handicaps, I’ve learned other ways to accomplish the same goal at faster speed.
As a dyslexic you have no choice but to rely on others for help with detail and tactical tasks. You become a great judge of character. You have to select the best team around you.
Then you have ADHD, which makes you restless but it can also be a huge motivator for action. It prompts you to go out of the office and into the field. You find yourself constantly on the front line. I don’t like to be confined to the office. I hate meetings. I am constantly visiting customers, our field offices, our manufacturing plants. I know the operations of my customers better than them, which helps create solutions for them prior to them knowing what they need.

For the full interview, see:
Rachel Emma Silverman, interviewer. “How a Chief Executive with Dyslexia and ADHD Runs His Company.” The Wall Street Journal (Weds., May 17, 2017): R7.
(Note: ellipses added. Bold and italics, in original. The italics question is from the WSJ interviewer.)
(Note: the online version of the interview has the date May 16, 2017, and has the title “How a CEO With Dyslexia and ADHD Runs His Company.”)

Walls and a Door Allow “a Quiet Place to Think”

(p. B6) The lofty building Jordan Hamad moved his tech-advisory firm into four years ago had the trappings of a startup idyll: open floor plan, polished concrete floors, custom-built communal tables.
Soon, the 33-year-old founder of Chairseven says he craved something else: walls and a door.
. . .
Now as he moves the company from Portland, Ore., to New York, Mr. Hamad has joined a cadre of bosses chucking the egalitarianism of working alongside their employees for the old-fashioned private office. Their open-office revolt, they say, is less about reclaiming the corner office than about needing a quiet place to think.
“People will say it’s so cool to have the CEO right next to you, but at the end of the day your team sometimes needs their space and you need yours,” says Mr. Hamad, who currently leases a private office for himself and co-working space for other staff. Other senior team members will soon get private office space, too, he says.
. . .
In a review of more than 100 studies of work environments, British researchers found that despite improving communication in some instances, open-office spaces hurt workers’ motivation and ability to focus.
. . .
“When you’re in a territory that’s clearly yours, you perform better,” says Sally Augustin, an environmental psychologist and principal at La Grange Park, Ill.-based consulting firm Design With Science.
. . .
Open offices are so popular among tech companies that when CircleCI’s founders moved the software-testing startup from an open space in San Francisco to one with 25 closed offices in 2014, it paid half the market rental rate, says co-founder Paul Biggar. In Silicon Valley, many people are “playing startup,” he says, emulating the open spaces of tech giants such as Google Inc.
In reality, he says, engineers need quiet places to concentrate–and so does he. “I love the private office,” he says.

For the full commentary, see:
Vanessa Fuhrmans. “Bosses Say they Want Their Offices Back.” The Wall Street Journal (Tues., May 23, 2017): B6.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date May 22, 2017, and has the title “CEOs Want Their Offices Back.” The following sentence, quoted above, appears in the online, but not the print, version of the article: “Other senior team members will soon get private office space, too, he says.”)

Silicon Valley “Oligarchs” Block Upward Mobility of Masses

Bill Gates, Jaron Lanier, Tim Berners-Lee, and others have suggested that a fairer system of information technology property rights would enable micropayments for intellectual content posted to blogs and Facebook. This also would allow upward mobility. The value of the intellectual contributions is currently being unfairly appropriated by mega-server companies such as Google and Facebook.

A different kind of socialism

The oligarchs of the Bay Area have a problem: They must square their progressive worldview with their enormous wealth. They certainly are not socialists in the traditional sense. They see their riches not as a result of class advantages, but rather as reflective of their meritocratic superiority. As former TechCrunch reporter Gregory Ferenstein has observed, they embrace massive inequality as both a given and a logical outcome of the new economy.

The nerd estate is definitely not stupid, and like rulers everywhere, they worry about a revolt of the masses, and even the unionization of their companies. Their gambit is to expand the welfare state to keep the hoi polloi in line. Many, including Mark Zuckerberg, now favor an income stipend that could prevent mass homelessness and malnutrition.

How socialism morphs into feudalism

Unlike its failed predecessor, this new, greener socialism seeks not to weaken, but rather to preserve, the emerging class structure. Brown and his acolytes have slowed upward mobility by environment restrictions that have cramped home production of all kinds, particularly the building of moderate-cost single-family homes on the periphery. All of this, at a time when millennials nationwide, contrary to the assertion of Brown’s “smart growth” allies, are beginning to buy cars, homes and move to the suburbs.

For the full commentary, see:

KOTKIN, Joel. “California’s Descent to Socialism.” Orange County Register, Posted: June 11, 2017. URL: http://www.ocregister.com/2017/06/11/californias-descent-to-socialism/
(Note: bold headings in original.)

Bezos Resurrects Washington Post Through High-Quality Journalism

(p. B1) As a private company since 2013, when the deep-pocketed Amazon founder Jeff Bezos bought it for $250 million, The Post doesn’t disclose much financial data. But by all visible measures, including the vital but hard-to-measure buzz factor, the resurrection of The Post, both editorially and financially, in less than four years has been little short of astonishing.
The Post has said that it was prof-(p. B4)itable last year — and not through cost-cutting. On the contrary, under the newsroom leadership of Martin Baron, the former editor of The Boston Globe memorably portrayed in the film “Spotlight,” The Post has gone on a hiring spree. It has hired hundreds of reporters and editors and has more than tripled its technology staff.
. . .
Scoops — and high-quality journalism more generally — are integral to The Post’s business model at a time when the future of digital journalism seemed to be veering toward the lowest common denominator of exploding watermelons and stupid pet tricks.
“Investigative reporting is absolutely critical to our business model,” Mr. Baron told me. “We add value. We tell people what they didn’t already know. We hold government and powerful people and institutions accountable. This cannot happen without financial support. We’re at the point where the public realizes that and is willing to step up and support that work by buying subscriptions.”

For the full story, see:
JAMES B. STEWART. “Common Sense; The Post’s Latest Bombshell: It’s Thriving in Digital News.” The New York Times (Sat., MAY 20, 2017): B1 & B4.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date MAY 19, 2017, and has the title “Common Sense; Washington Post, Breaking News, Is Also Breaking New Ground.”)