Sublime
An inspiration engine for ideas
In the wake of the 1956 agreement, AT&T appeared to be indestructible. It now had the U.S. government’s blessing. It was easily the largest company in the world by assets and by workforce. And its Bell Laboratories, as Fortune magazine had declared, was indisputably “the world’s greatest industrial laboratory.” And yet even in the 1960s and 1970s,
... See moreJon Gertner • The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation
Wired • Mother Earth Mother Board
When Commodity Futures Trading Commission chairperson (1996–99) Brooksley Born wanted to regulate the derivatives that would later be a major cause of disaster, the PBS program Frontline detailed how she was blocked in 1998 by the triumvirate of Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan, US Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, and Deputy US Treasury
... See moreEdward O. Thorp • A Man for All Markets
For American taxpayers, the Savings and Loans debacle was a hugely expensive lesson in the perils of ill-considered deregulation.
Niall Ferguson • The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World: 10th Anniversary Edition
Charles W Johnston
@billj
Best-practice steam engine technology could have saved the equivalent of a quarter of labor costs at most plants. Inefficient furnaces were oxidizing away huge amounts of metal. The Germans were pulling ahead in the use of overhead belt conveyors. It was absurdly wasteful to support 119 rail-shape standards. Better management of furnace linings,
... See moreCharles R. Morris • The Tycoons: How Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, Jay Gould, and J. P. Morgan Invented the American Supereconomy
The integrity of their relationship will be maintained only if the system is designed to perform
Matthew Frederick • 101 Things I Learned® in Engineering School
cooperation at scale. The state, business, and civil society all have roles to play in creating the