Business

Technologies Old and New

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A roundup of stories/posts/videos I found interesting:

The Jacquard Loom  is historically important,   not only for its direct impact on the textile industry but also for the inspirational role that it played in the emergence of punched cards and computers.   Jacquards are still very much a live industrial technology, although the warp threads are now lifted by computer-controlled solenoids or hydraulic cylinders rather than by direct mechanical linkage.   Several attempts have been made to create affordable Jacquard looms for home use, but they have foundered on the cost of purchasing and installing a solenoid for every warp thread.   Here is  a very clever way around that problem.

Also, an explanation of  how a traditional Jacquard works.

Speaking of the textile industry, I wrote a couple of years ago about  attempts to automate apparel manufacturing, especially the work of an Atlanta company called Softwear Automation and their product  Sewbot.   So I was interested the other day to see  this piece about apparel automation in Bangladesh.

See also this report from McKinsey on Nearshoring and Automation in the Apparel Industry.

Reviving manufacturing in Singapore, with the aid of  robotics.

Are  electronic medical records  actually  a detriment to knowing the patient?

Outgrowing Software…Benedict Evans suggest that  when  everything is a software company, then the important questions are somewhere else.

Also from Benedict Evans:  Are You a Seal?   (If you are, watch out for Amazon!)

Constructing a bridge in  Prague,  in 1357.

Speaking of construction: Automation in the Construction Industry

 

(An earlier version of this post was published at Ricochet; member feed only)

 

Cloward Pivening

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Once upon a time in the mad 60’s a pair of mad lefty (but I repeat myself) socialist sociologists refined a strategy for bringing about the blessed socialist utopia by overloading and bankrupting the welfare system. This, they confidently hoped, would crash the capitalist system and bring about the longed-for socialist utopia. Essentially, they drafted the poor and unprivileged into an army demanding services which the state ultimately could not provide; somehow, this would crash the system and bring about radical social reform. The whole thing sounds rather like the Underpants Gnomes theory of economics or the cartoon showing a pair of white-coated scientists examining a complicated mathematical sequence on a chalkboard with a notation in the middle of it which says, “And here a miracle happens.”

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A Promise Or a Threat?

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Put me down firmly on the side of those who see “You’ll own nothing and you’ll be happy” as more of a threat; I see “You will be happy” with special emphasis on “will” and the unstated addendum to that statement as “You damn peasants better be happy, or else!”
The simple fact is that owning things especially things which can be construed as tools allow one a degree of independence, and even a mild degree of comfort over and above the norm. This was suggested to me in a college class four decades and more since. I think it must have been the required readings for medieval history course; dedicated medievalists had gone into various probate records and wills in England or France and studied the inventories of barely-above-survival peasant households. Nothing really notable in the main just basic tools, household and farm implements like butter churns, cheese presses, cooking pots, some simple furniture. But at least one of the readings pointed out how possession of certain tools like a cheese-press, hinted that the owner of that item was in fact, making cheese, possibly for their own use or for the market. The very fact that they owned something with which to turn a farm product like milk, into something to sell or barter for in the marketplace implied a slightly higher level of comfort and security for that household.

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An Interesting Startup

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Here’s a company, Hadrian, which is planning to build a series of factories for manufacturing of precision metal components.   Their first factory is in Hawthorne, CA, and they’re building the next one nearby in Torrance.

One of the lead investors in Hadrian is the VC firm Andreessen Horowitz.   The A-H partner responsible for this deal, Katherine Boyle, writes about the company, the opportunity, and why she considers it a promising investment.

Hadrian is hiring, if anyone’s interested.

Also, a thoughtful piece from Ms Boyle on the need for America to get serious.