Christopher Mims

See the following -

2017 Prediction: Some "Oops" Ahead

Predictions for 2017 are everywhere this time of year, and it is no wonder.  There are so many technological advances, in health care and elsewhere, and a seemingly endless appetite for them.  We all want the latest and greatest gadgets, we all want the most modern treatments, we all have come to increasingly rely on technology, and we all -- mostly -- see an even brighter technological future ahead. Here's my meta-prediction: some of the predicted advances won't pan out, some will delight us -- and all will end up surprising us, for better or for worse.  Like Father Time and entropy, the law of unintended consequences is ultimately undefeated...

Clicks-and-Mortar: Health Care's Future

The woes of the retail industry are well known, and are usually blamed on the impact of the Internet.  Credit Suisse projects that 8,600 brick-and-mortar stores will close in 2017, which would beat the record set in 2008, at the height of the last recession.  There are "zombie malls," full of empty stores but not yet shuttered. And then there's health care, where the retail business is booming. In a recent Wall Street Journal article, Christopher Mims set forth Three Hard Lessons the Internet is Teaching Traditional Stores.  The lessons are: Data is King, Personalization + Automation = Profits, Legacy Tech Won't Cut It.

How Open Source Can Solve Silicon Valley's Engineering Crisis

Matt Asay | TechRepublic | July 15, 2014

Silicon Valley may think itself the center of the technology universe, but 76% of open-source development happens elsewhere, a rich talent pool for engineer-hungry startups...

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Say Goodbye to Your Smartwatch

Just because Steve Wozniak takes a shot at Apple doesn't mean he's wrong. Woz recently declared that the current generation of wearables, including the Apple Watch, are "not a compelling purchase."  He says that his Apple Watch is "an expense that has brought me a few extra niceties in my life," but generally is frustrated that wearables don't have enough computing power and are mostly still dependent on a linked smartphone for many of their functions. He's not alone in his skepticism.  A trio of analysts from Pacific Coast Securities see trouble ahead for many wearable manufacturers, as "value creation shifts away from the thing itself, while the associated ecosystem, software and/or service tend to deliver the real intelligence that the things provide"...