Eric Reasons

Russell Roberts posts a bit of a followup to a great bloggingheads.tv appearance with Arnold Kling. I have argued that economists generally came down on one side or the other of the stimulus package based not on their economic understanding but on their political and philosophical biases. I still believe that. I think we're in macroeconomically uncharted territory. Give the bloggingheads video a viewing, if you're into macroeconomics. The real reason I'm posting this here is, at one point, Kling is questioning the ability of econometrics to realistically measure real value. His claim is that much of the growth in the economy in the last 15 years isn't really growth. We have nothing to show for it. Most of that growth came from a rise in home values that weren't really there, and financial market shenanigans that also turned out to be a ponzi scheme. Then, when touting what we *do* have to show for the last 15 years--the very technology that he and Roberts were usin...

I dislike industry buzzwords, and how quickly they get usurped by those who don't fully comprehend them. "Web 2.0" is a buzzword that has been being tossed around ever since O'Reilly and MediaLive International coined the term to isolate who survived the bursting of the dot-com bubble and why. Yet most people are still unclear on the concept, at best. "Web 2.0" doesn't refer to a platform, a particular set of tools, a programming interface, or even really a design methodology. It is an emergent effect, flowing naturally from the how the Internet works. It's only coming to light recently because, with the dot-com bust, we've separated the wheat from the chaff. As the speed of networks rise and the price of storage falls, the emergent behaviors are simply more evident than they were a decade ago. Universal Mccann International refers to this emergent trend with a better distinction, "Social Media", and defines it as "Online applicati...