|
The Morning Download: Digital Nationalism Crashes the Internet's 50-Year Celebration
|
|
|
|
|
|
Good morning CIOs and Happy Birthday, internet! Fifty years after the first email, the internet has grown into a healthy...well, what exactly? Akash Kapur, senior fellow at the GovLab at New York University, writes in a Wall Street Journal essay that "the original dream of an unfettered global public sphere is probably over," squeezed by nation states and companies as big as nation states.
More like Splinternet. Several countries have built—or are thinking about—domestic networks modeled on China's Great Firewall, which restricts what people can read and do online. Russia is looking into a “kill switch” to shut off the global network to Russian users.
Make that $plinternet. Meanwhile, the winners are winning more than ever. "Google today accounts for around 90% of online searches around the world; Facebook and Google together draw an estimated 84% of global advertising dollars (excluding China). Amazon accounts for 49% of online spending in the U.S." Says Mr. Kapur: "This was not the original dream."
|
|
|
Restoring a sense of inclusiveness and fair play. Ironically, the best hope for reducing the worst forms of digital nationalism may require more involvement from various governments. One idea, according to Mr. Shah: Developing "'club'- or 'zone'-based approaches to running the internet—discrete, interconnecting blocs whose nation-members would make commitments to liberal principles like free trade, privacy and freedom of expression." No one said growing up was easy.
|
|
|
|
|
An Airbus SE A380-800 aircraft operated by Korean Air Lines lands at Los Angeles International Airport, Oct. 29, 2019. PHOTO: PATRICK T. FALLON/BLOOMBERG NEWS
|
|
|
Leveraging AI to transform government. Artificial intelligence has the potential to transform government, helping to reduce bureaucratic inefficiencies and to free up civil servants to perform meaningful services, CIO Journal's Irving Wladawsky-Berger reports.
|
|
Fighting crime more effectively. A decade-long collaboration between the University of Southern California and Los Angeles International Airport produced an AI-enabled system aimed at helping law-enforcement units deploy their limited staff more effectively. After analyzing potential targets, the system recommends randomized police patrol routes and schedules so terrorists can't anticipate where and when they will run into security checkpoints.
The system has since been used by the U.S. Coast Guard to randomize boat patrol routes in major ports and by the Transportation Security Administration to assign air marshals to flights. More recently, another version of the AI system has been developed to help rangers fight wildlife poachers around the world.
|
|
|
|
Download Extra: Tech Hiring
|
|
|
|
PHOTO: ERIC PIERMONT/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES
|
|
|
Tech hiring cools in October. U.S. employers last month continued to shed information-technology jobs, while posting fewer ads for open IT positions, signaling weak hiring in the months ahead, CompTIA said.
Technology jobs across the economy declined by 96,500, after dropping by 261,000 in September, according to the trade group’s analysis of the latest federal employment data.
The number of IT job postings was also down, by 28,000 from a month earlier, the group said. It estimates that companies had more than 732,000 unfilled IT jobs as of September.
The unemployment rate for tech jobs was unchanged at 2.2%.
The declines come as overall employment grew by a seasonally adjusted 128,000, along with upward revisions to job creation in the prior two months, the Labor Department reported Friday.
Within the technology sector, which accounts for more than 40% of total IT employment, employers added 5,400 new jobs, the second consecutive month of slow growth, CompTIA said.
It said October’s IT jobs numbers reflect broader economic indicators showing “marginal growth in some areas and slowdowns in others.”
Tech hiring has been a bright spot in the economy, amid lackluster job gains elsewhere, as companies continue to expand their use of cloud computing, data analytics and other emerging digital tools.
Enterprise IT and related technology is estimated to be the third largest contributor to the U.S. economy, behind manufacturing and government, CompTIA says. Gartner Inc. forecasts global IT spending to reach a total of $3.79 trillion by year-end, up 1.1% from 2018.
-- Angus Loten
|
|
|
|
Too often, innovation is stifled by the stale air of the C-Suite, says WSJ Leadership Expert Rosabeth Moss Kanter. She recommends getting outside of the building instead. PHOTO: ISTOCK PHOTO
|
|
|
Even when seeking diversity, too many C-suiters confine it to employee type rather than going out into the world to be stimulated by a clash of diverse ideas in diverse communities or sectors. Executives bring startup founders to them, asking the questions that they know to ask, rather than entering into the startups’ milieux to open the executives’ minds to entirely new possibilities.
|
Analysis by Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Arbuckle Professor at Harvard Business School
|
|
|
|
|
|
Fitbit’s smartwatches compete with popular offerings from Apple and Samsung. PHOTO: FABRIZIO BENSCH/REUTERS
|
|
|
Google to buy Fitbit. The deal values the wearable fitness products company at roughly $2.1 billion.
Hardware investment, but medical too. Analysts have said the deal could allow Google to expand its reach into medical technology, an area where tech and health-care companies are competing to develop new ways for consumers to corral their digital health data. (WSJ)
U.S. launches national security review of video app TikTok. The move follows concerns from U.S. senators that the Chinese-owned company censors content to appease Beijing. The popular video-sharing app is owned by Beijing ByteDance Technology Co. (WSJ)
Large bitcoin player manipulated price. A single large player manipulated the price of bitcoin as it ran up to a peak of nearly $20,000 two years ago, a new study concludes. The study reviewed the period between March 2017 and March 2018, when the price of bitcoin soared and its total market value rose to $326 billion. About half of that increase was due to the influence of a manipulation scheme, according to the study’s authors. (WSJ)
Electric goes underground. Mining companies are swapping out diesel-fueled drills, loaders and utility vehicles for equipment powered by lithium-ion batteries. They are looking to reduce emissions and eliminate the exhaust fumes that foul the underground air and risk miners’ health. (WSJ)
All the president's tweets. The New York Times parses Trump's Twitter feed, reviewing each of his more than 11,000 tweets and the accounts he has retweeted to come at "the most comprehensive view yet of a virtual world in which the president spends significant time mingling with extremists, impostors and spies." (NYT)
'Sovereign internet' or digital curtain? Russia is moving to route Russian web traffic and data through points controlled by the state and build a native DNS. (Reuters)
Online slave market. Facebook's Instagram, as well as Apple and Google apps are being used in Kuwait to buy and sell women, according to an investigation by BBC News Arabic. Nine out of 10 households in Kuwait have a domestic servant, according to the BBC. They come from some of the poorest places in the world. (BBC)
|
|
|
Everything Else You Need to Know
|
|
|
U.S. authorities are investigating Under Armour’s accounting practices, including whether the sportswear maker shifted sales from quarter to quarter to appear healthier. (WSJ)
McDonald’s said it has fired Chief Executive Steve Easterbrook because of his consensual relationship with an employee, the latest challenge for the company as it races to keep up with changes reverberating throughout the food industry. (WSJ)
American workers under the age of 35 are more likely to see and experience discrimination at the office, according to a new poll, indicating how different generations can view the same behavior. (WSJ)
State oil giant Aramco officially launched its much-delayed initial public offering, setting in motion what is expected to be the world’s largest share sale, even as questions remain over the company’s value. (WSJ)
|
|
|
|
|