On Economics as a Discipline

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I recently suggested that education, in whole and in parts, shouldn’t be considered without the context of economics. I also cautioned that in so doing, one shouldn’t make the mistake of framing that consideration solely in terms of business, or the free market. That same line of thinking now leads me to say more about economics. I come to this point not to praise it, but neither do I come to burry it.

Instead, I will simply note that economics isn’t adequately described from either the perspective of Marxism, or of Capitalism, and while considering it from both perspectives in combination is better that from either individually, it is still not adequate.

Further, I should point out that in my estimation, Economics as a discipline is not just a dismal science, it is despicable. This is not sufficient reason to give up on it all together, because it is still, at best, an adolescent, and probably more properly, an unevenly precocious infant, strikingly articulate and aware one moment, screaming and oozing shit on the furniture the next.

As a science, it might be best to consider Economics in comparison to Biology in general, and Ecology in particular. Biology and Ecology, like Economics, are ultimately studies of complex systems with emergent properties. Like Biology and Ecology, it is difficult to conduct controlled Economics experiments from both a practical and an ethical perspective. There are other similarities, but I’ve come far enough to call out important differences.

Biology, Ecology, and other sciences, like Physics, Chemistry, Astronomy and Geology have all had to struggle to break free from societal dogmas and superstitions and rise above them. Economics, on the other hand, still seems buried up to its neck in the sludge of political and religious ideology.

Biology and Ecology are humble, aware of their shortcomings, cautious about the implications about their experiments, and their conclusions. If some Economists are similarly humble, they are too often overshadowed by their more arrogant fellows, who seem unconcerned or unaware of their shortcomings and yet willing, or even eager, to experiment with the lives of millions by implementing their under-tested theories.

This arrogance on the part of Economics is even more despicable because its area of concern is even more expansive and complex than that of other sciences. It starts with the complexity of ecology, and multiplies it by the complexity of language and culture.

So please, use economics as a tool for understanding the world, but do not depend on it.

On Education and Economics

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It occurs to me that society, educational institutions, policy makers, business people, students, and academics/teachers aren’t well served by the following:

  • Distancing ourselves from the question of how education fits in an economic context.
  • Limiting our thinking about education in an economic context to by treating it as a “business” operating in a “free market,” where students are “consumers.”

 

On Dave’s Solution to “Bandwidth Poverty”

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Today, Dave Wiener describes the “bandwidth poverty” in NYC, where most people are stuck with asymmetrical cable internet connections (as are most people in the US). His solution isn’t laying more fiber, it is blanketing the city with WiFi.

Dave is a smart guy, but I’m going to dismiss this as another example of his “bandwidth ignorance,” like his initial dismissal of the network neutrality issue years ago.  (This isn’t to fault Dave, he’s just concerned with different parts of the “stack.” The abstractions that Dave works with are grockable, but like most abstractions, they start to leak.)

  1. WiFi hotspots have limited range.
  2. This isn’t actually a bad thing, because it limits the amount of interference between hotspots.
  3. It means though that there will have to be a lot of hotspots.
  4. Unfortunately, there are already a lot of WiFi hotspots in Manhattan.
  5. Unfortunately there is already a lot of interference among WiFi hotspots in Manhattan.
  6. Interference limits the reliability and overall throughput available through WiFi hotspots.
  7. What is going to connects all those new hotspots to the Internet?  It’s still probably going to come down to getting fiber to places that don’t have fiber already.
  8. Who is going to do it? Google?  Ok, just remember, their interests don’t always align with those of individual users and consumers.
On the other hand, a really big, managed WiFi build out might render many of the existing WiFi hotspots unnecessary, which could reduce the interference issues. Of course, in practice, many/most of them would probably stay in use.

I’d love to find a solution, but I don’t think we can rely on any big companies to bring it on their own. Citizens needs to come together to put pressure on policy-makers, who either need to make it a public utility, or need to manage competition among private companies in a way that works better for citizens.

Clueless?

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Today, John Gruber linked to a blog post on Apple’s design problems, with the comment “Best list of where iOS needs serious work that I’ve seen.” It may well be, but I’m having trouble getting past the second item in their list:

Six items that drain mobile device batteries (GPS, WiFi, cellular radio, Bluetooth, notifications and screen brightness) still require laborious, multiple clicks in multiple places, not immediately obvious to non-savvy users to turn on and off, without any simple, thematic or geo-fenced grouping.

I have no idea where this person is coming from, but they seem to think that these are things that iOS users need to interact with on a regular basis. They aren’t.

Apple’s solution to the problem of poor mobile device battery life isn’t to make it as easy as possible for users to manage device power consumption, is to ship devices with good battery life without placing a burden on the user.

Their proposed solution of a thematic or geofenced grouping of relevant settings, is a band-aid over a problem the user shouldn’t have to worry about in the first place.

On Apple moving Mac from x86 to ARM

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Blomberg is reporting that Apple is considering moving the Mac computer line off of Intel x86 CPUs to in-house developed ARM CPUs. I have my doubts.

I’m sure it is true that they are considering it, but that doesn’t mean it will be happening any time soon. They considered moving to Intel for the better part of a decade, on and off and they didn’t make their move until their old CPU choice, the PowerPC line, had fallen behind and showed no signs of recovering.

For the time being, Intel seems to be on the right track. No one offers a faster or more power-efficient desktop/laptop CPU. Intel was apparently slower than Apple would have liked in driving down power-consumption down or graphics performance up, but they seem to have changed their tune. They’ve accelerated their pace of GPU performance improvement, a move that some have attributed to Apple’s demands. They’ve also become increasingly serious about low-power chips for both mobile devices and “ultrabooks” (Windows version of the MacBook Air). Also, given that so much of their market these days are low-margin, low-price windows PCs, I’d think they’d be eager to have the opportunity to keep a customer who can afford to pay a premium to get the best Intel has to offer.

It is true that Apple does have its own in-house chip-design talent working on ARM CPUs, and it might make sense to leverage their efforts over more of Apple’s product line, but right now, Mac volumes are really a fraction of the iOS device volumes, so it isn’t clear it would be a big win, especially since their laptops and desktops currently occupy and performance and power-consumption envelope that is significantly different than iOS devices.

In the long-term though, I think it is pretty likely that Apple move off of Intel. I think that in many ways, the writing has been on the wall for Intel for a long time. Their competitive position has been eroding, and the pace is going to accelerate if they fail to get some major mobile-phone and/or tablet design-wins in the next year or so. It will be further hastened if high-performance ARM CPUs start putting pressure on their margins and volumes in the server-space.  At some point, Apple will have to switch horses, and if they time it just right, they might actually gain some competitive advantage by weakening competitors who are less-prepared and less able to abandon Intel.

I’ve never been great at estimating when the inevitable will finally come to pass, but I can’t imagine it will be less than 3 years before Apple would make such an announcement, and probably more like 4-6 before they have to.

In the best light

Microsoft may have, um, borrowed a lot from Apple in designing their own Microsoft Store retail experience, but beyond the superficial similarities are important differences.

To give but one example, I found browsing on the Surface RT to be slow, halting experience. Microsoft seemed to be blocking some of the websites I tried to visit and redirecting them to their own home page, but even when the sites weren’t blocked, they were slow to load. Some of it could have been a software issue, but I think a lot was related to the WiFi network in the Microsoft store, and the speed of its connection to the Internet.

Apple knows better. The WiFi and Internet connection at their store is speedy, allowing them to show their products in the best possible light, and it worked, the iPad Mini and iPad felt snappy when browsing the web. The Surface RT felt sluggish.