A human-centered society creatively balances investments in sources of innovation, while also governing in a manner that eventually limits exploitation by originators once innovations have proven their value in the marketplace, broadly defined to include both private and public constituencies. The desired balance requires society to invest in constituencies to be able to create innovations […]
In Beyond Quick Fixes (Rouse, 2024) I considered how human-centered interventions could mitigate the health, education, energy, and mis/dis information challenges addressed in this book. I explored how these ecosystems could benefit from seeing them as human-centered systems. This led to my postulating how all four challenges could be mitigated as a whole, reflecting an […]
Nathaniel Philbrick in Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community and War (Basic Books, 2006) provides the following chronicle of John Howland’s voyage (pp. 32-33). “In the Fall of 1620, the Mayflower’s ability to steady herself in a gale produced a most deceptive tranquility for a young indentured servant name John Howland. As the Mayflower lay […]
My first posting on Rouse on Transformation was on November 5th, 2009 – more than 13 years ago. I am now a bit under one month into my 14th year. Last Monday was my 300th post, roughly once every two weeks, although the pandemic has given me time and motivation to post weekly – every […]
Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook, now Meta, and Elon Musk at Twitter are in the process of destroying the value created by their formerly immensely successful enterprises. A recent Economist (November 3rd) outlines their misadventures, arguing that their conglomerative aspirations have set the stage for overreach. Zuckerberg is trying to move beyond the original vision, while […]
I recently read Ben Wiker’s treatise 10 Books That Screwed Up the World: And 5 Others that Didn’t Help (Regnery, 2008). He chronicles the thoughts, writings, and impacts of Karl Marx, Charles Darwin, John Mill, Friedrich Nietzsche, Vladimir Lenin, Margaret Sanger, Simon Freud, Margaret Mead, Adolph Hitler and Alfred Kinsey. Often, these luminaries’ hallmark books […]
There are two long-standing debates in economics that fundamentally affect how one views the challenges our society faces. The two sides of the first debate are often associated with Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman on one side and John Maynard Keynes and Karl Polanyi on the other. Wapshott (2011) and Delong (2022) elaborate this debate […]
I have been reading much history, most recently Ada Ferrer’s Cuba: An American History (Scribner, 2021) for which she won the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for History. She provides a panoramic view of the business of slavery. James DeWolf, a US Senator, was one of the major players in the business of slavery. Based in Bristol, […]
I recently read Dennis Duncan’s Index, A History of the: A Bookish Adventure from Medieval Manuscripts to the Digital Age (Norton, 2022). He provides a wonderful chronicle of the emergence of various common elements of books, and a glimpse into the notion of standards. Manuscripts were originally written in scrolls, so just one very long […]
We seem to think of the future, and perhaps the past, in terms of decades. We likely recall our grandparents and, of course, our parents. We consider our own lives and those of our children in terms of employment, education and eventually retirement. Our overall time horizon for planning is likely 20-40 years. Our plans […]
I recently finished reading Patrick Wyman’s The Verge: Reformation, Renaissance, and Forty Years that Shook the World: 1480-1520 (Grand Central, 2021). He chronicles the transformation of business and political processes during these two decades that provided the foundations for Western European dominance over the successive generations. Military aggression and conquest, financed by new approaches to […]
Charles Dickens’ immortal phrase portrays a time of radical opposites taking place at the same time in a 1859 historical novel, A Tale of Two Cities. set in London and Paris before and during the French Revolution. Are we at a similar time of radical contrasts? Are similar consequences likely? Current technology and economic trends […]
We are facing broadly-based attacks by the latest ruffians, supported by their Republican and media co-conspirators. This has repeatedly happened before. What can we learn from these incursions of barbarians? Masses of uneducated, illiterate ruffians overwhelmed everyday citizens. Social consciousness and civic pride meant absolutely nothing. It was survival of the fittest. The Visigoths were […]
I have been thinking about the roles stories play in our lives. By story, I mean an account of past events or the evolution of something. Of course, a story can also be an entertaining account of imaginary or real people and events. Many stories provide a combination of explanation and entertainment. Stories usually have […]
I began my career as an engineering assistant at Raytheon over 50 years ago. Since then, I have founded and managed five high-tech companies, and held faculty positions at six universities. These experiences led to working with 100+ companies, agencies, foundations, etc. What has changed over the course of this journey? Increased computing power at […]
I recently read Javier Blas and Jack Farchy’s The World for Sale: Money, Power, and the Traders Who Barter the Earth’s Resources (Oxford University Press, 2021). This fascinating book reads like a novel, almost a page turner. What will the traders do next? They chronicle the history of commodity traders of oil, grain, metals, and […]
During the Era of Colonialism (late 1400s to the mid- to late 1900s), European powers colonized most of Africa, the Americas, Asia, Europe, Oceania, the Middle East and the Arctic, excluding Antarctica. This typically involved oppression and exploitation of indigenous ethnic and racial groups inside the geographical area colonized. This oppression and exploitation often is […]
