The Friction-free Economy

The Friction-free Economy
Author: Lewis T. G.
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 1997
Genre:
ISBN:

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The Friction-free Economy

The Friction-free Economy
Author: Theodore Gyle Lewis
Publisher:
Total Pages: 257
Release: 1997
Genre: High technology industries
ISBN:

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The Friction-Free Economy

The Friction-Free Economy
Author: Ted Lewis
Publisher: HarperBusiness
Total Pages: 272
Release: 1997-09-12
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9780887308475

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Imagine a world where supply no longer equals demand. A world where a company craving greater market share gives away its most valuable product -- and generates millions of dollars. A world where the company that boasts the greatest chunk of consumer demand experiences even more demand; where the antagonistic relationship between buyer and seller has been replaced with a cooperative, knowledge-based exchange; where companies in every industry think like futurists, personalize products and services regardless of cost, target individuals rather than blanket the masses, and renovate old products instead of just creating new ones.

New Media

New Media
Author: Leah A. Lievrouw
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 463
Release: 2009
Genre: Digital media
ISBN: 0415431603

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Friction

Friction
Author: Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 352
Release: 2024-08-06
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0691263523

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What the struggle over the Indonesian rainforests can teach us about the social frictions that shape the world around us Rubbing two sticks together produces heat and light while one stick alone is just a stick. It is the friction that produces movement, action, and effect. Anthropologist Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing challenges the widespread view that globalization invariably signifies a clash of cultures, developing friction as a metaphor for the diverse and conflicting social interactions that make up our contemporary world. Tsing focuses on the rainforests of Indonesia, where in the 1980s and 1990s capitalist interests increasingly reshaped the landscape not so much through corporate design as through awkward chains of legal and illegal entrepreneurs that wrested the land from previous claimants, creating resources for distant markets. In response, environmental movements arose to defend the rainforests and the communities of people who live in them. Not confined to a village, province, or nation, the social drama of the Indonesian rainforests includes local and national environmentalists, international science, North American investors, advocates for Brazilian rubber tappers, United Nations funding agencies, mountaineers, village elders, and urban students—all drawn into unpredictable, messy misunderstandings, but misunderstandings that sometimes work out. Providing an invaluable portfolio of methods for the study of global interconnections, Friction shows how cultural differences are in the grip of worldly encounter and reveals how much is overlooked in contemporary theories of the global.

Frictionlessness

Frictionlessness
Author: Jakko Kemper
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 134
Release: 2023-12-14
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN:

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Frictionlessness provides an examination of the environmentally destructive digital design philosophy of "frictionlessness" and the critical significance of a technological aesthetic of imperfection. If there is one thing that defines digital consumer technologies today, it is that they are designed to feel frictionless. From smart technologies to cloud computing, from from one-click shopping to the promise of seamless streaming-digital technology is framed to host ever-faster operations while receding increasingly into the background of perception. The environmental costs of this fetishization of frictionlessness are enormous and unevenly distributed; the frictionless experience of the end user tends to be supported by opaque networks of exploited labor and extracted resources that disproportionately impact the Global South. This situation marks an urgent need for alternate, less destructive aesthetic relations to technology. As such, this book examines imperfection, as an aesthetic concept that highlights existential conditions of finitude and fragility, as a particularly powerful counterweight to the dominant digital design philosophy of frictionlessness. While frictionlessness aims to draw the user's perception away from the exploitative and destructive conditions of digital production, imperfection forms an aesthetic source of friction that alerts users to the fragile nature of technology and the finite resources on which it relies. These arguments are elaborated through a close reading of three technological objects-a video game that was programmed to expire, an audiovisual performance that laments the fate of disused technology and a collection of music albums that dramatize a techno-cultural logic of relentless consumerism. Together, these case studies underline the value of technological aesthetics of imperfection and point to the need for a renewed ethics of care in relation to technology.

The Velvet Rope Economy

The Velvet Rope Economy
Author: Nelson D. Schwartz
Publisher: Anchor
Total Pages: 352
Release: 2020-03-03
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0385543093

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From New York Times business reporter Nelson D. Schwartz comes a gripping investigation of how a virtual velvet rope divides Americans in every arena of life, creating a friction-free existence for those with money on one side and a Darwinian struggle for the middle class on the other side. In nearly every realm of daily life--from health care to education, highways to home security--there is an invisible velvet rope that divides how Americans live. On one side of the rope, for a price, red tape is cut, lines are jumped, appointments are secured, and doors are opened. On the other side, middle- and working-class Americans fight to find an empty seat on the plane, a place in line with their kids at the amusement park, a college acceptance, or a hospital bed. We are all aware of the gap between the rich and everyone else, but when we weren't looking, business innovators stepped in to exploit it, shifting services away from the masses and finding new ways to profit by serving the privileged. And as decision-makers and corporate leaders increasingly live on the friction-free side of the velvet rope, they are less inclined to change--or even notice--the obstacles everyone else must contend with. Schwartz's "must read" book takes us on a behind-the-scenes tour of this new reality and shows the toll the velvet rope divide takes on society.

Capitalism without Capital

Capitalism without Capital
Author: Jonathan Haskel
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 292
Release: 2018-10-16
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0691183295

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Early in the twenty-first century, a quiet revolution occurred. For the first time, the major developed economies began to invest more in intangible assets, like design, branding, and software, than in tangible assets, like machinery, buildings, and computers. For all sorts of businesses, the ability to deploy assets that one can neither see nor touch is increasingly the main source of long-term success. But this is not just a familiar story of the so-called new economy. Capitalism without Capital shows that the growing importance of intangible assets has also played a role in some of the larger economic changes of the past decade, including the growth in economic inequality and the stagnation of productivity. Jonathan Haskel and Stian Westlake explore the unusual economic characteristics of intangible investment and discuss how an economy rich in intangibles is fundamentally different from one based on tangibles. Capitalism without Capital concludes by outlining how managers, investors, and policymakers can exploit the characteristics of an intangible age to grow their businesses, portfolios, and economies.

The Road Ahead

The Road Ahead
Author: Bill Gates
Publisher: Penguin Group
Total Pages: 356
Release: 1996
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN:

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In this clear-eyed, candid, and ultimately reassuring

The Future of Capitalism

The Future of Capitalism
Author: Paul Collier
Publisher: HarperCollins
Total Pages: 369
Release: 2018-12-04
Genre: History
ISBN: 0062748661

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Bill Gates's Five Books for Summer Reading 2019 From world-renowned economist Paul Collier, a candid diagnosis of the failures of capitalism and a pragmatic and realistic vision for how we can repair it. Deep new rifts are tearing apart the fabric of the United States and other Western societies: thriving cities versus rural counties, the highly skilled elite versus the less educated, wealthy versus developing countries. As these divides deepen, we have lost the sense of ethical obligation to others that was crucial to the rise of post-war social democracy. So far these rifts have been answered only by the revivalist ideologies of populism and socialism, leading to the seismic upheavals of Trump, Brexit, and the return of the far-right in Germany. We have heard many critiques of capitalism but no one has laid out a realistic way to fix it, until now. In a passionate and polemical book, celebrated economist Paul Collier outlines brilliantly original and ethical ways of healing these rifts—economic, social and cultural—with the cool head of pragmatism, rather than the fervor of ideological revivalism. He reveals how he has personally lived across these three divides, moving from working-class Sheffield to hyper-competitive Oxford, and working between Britain and Africa, and acknowledges some of the failings of his profession. Drawing on his own solutions as well as ideas from some of the world’s most distinguished social scientists, he shows us how to save capitalism from itself—and free ourselves from the intellectual baggage of the twentieth century.