Technology

Authored by John Lanchester via The London Review of Books,

Authored by Kashmir Hill via Gizmodo.com,

The story in the New York Times this week was unsettling: The New America Foundation, a major think tank, was getting rid of one of its teams of scholars, the Open Markets group. New America had warned its leader Barry Lynn that he was “imperiling the institution,” the Times reported, after he and his group had repeatedly criticized Google, a major funder of the think tank, for its market dominance.

These days the broad consensus on the future of driving seems to be that the car of tomorrow will be (at least partly) autonomous. Many companies, including traditional car makers, suppliers and leading tech companies are currently working on self-driving technology, all eager to save themselves a piece of what they reckon will be an enormous pie.

For the past several months we've discussed many theories about how the new MiFID II rules in Europe might drastically change the investment banking research business model.  For those who haven't followed this narrative, MiFID II is a new set of regulations in Europe that requires investment banks to charge separately for research as opposed to just lumping it into an asset manager's trading fees. 

Here are a couple of our thoughts/predictions:

Have you ever thought about what life would be like without the internet?

Given the volume of time people spend immersed in their smartphones, iPads and laptops, an unconnected life is pretty hard to imagine these days. For the majority of millennials, the time before the world wide web is now nothing more than a distant memory, a memory that's been eviscerated by the ubiquity and life-changing impact of connected technology.