Google's Google Problem A) Google is killing Google Reader. Use of Google Reader, a tool, by the way, for reading online content via RSS was concentrated among a small group of relatively intense users. As it happens, that small group includes quite a lot of people who write for or as part of their living. And so Google Reader has been mourned over, angrily at times, a bit more than the many other Google services that have come and gone. B) It isn't that hard to imagine what Google was thinking when it made this decision. It's a big company, but even big companies have finite resources, and devoting those precious resources to something that isn't making money and isn't judged to have much in the way of development potential is not an attractive option. Dropping Reader isn't going to hurt the company's business. C) Yet this little contretemps (令人尴尬的事) may suggest bigger trouble ahead for Google and big changes for the Internet. One immediate effect is relatively easy to anticipate. John Hempton makes a nice point here: Google is in the process of abandoning its mission. Google's stated mission is to organize all the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful. Google no longer cares. It seems what they care about is mass-markets. D) Google has asked us to build our lives around it: to use its e-mail system, its search engines, its maps, its calendars, its cloud-based apps and storage services, its video- and photo-hosting services, and on and on and on. Google wants us to use its services in ways that provide it with interesting and valuable information, and eyeballs. If a particular Google experiment isn't cutting it in that category, then Google may feel justified in axing it. E) But that makes it increasingly difficult for Google to have success with new services. Why commit to using and coming to rely on something new if it might be pulled away at some future date? This is especially problematic for "social" apps that rely on network effects. Even a bad social service may thrive if it obtains a critical mass. Yanking away services beloved by early adopters almost guarantees that critical masses can't be obtained: not, at any rate, without the provision of an incentive or commitment mechanism to protect the would-be users from the risk of losing a vital service. F) There may be bigger implications still, however. As I said, Google has asked us to build our lives around it, and we have responded. This response entails (需要) a powerful self-reinforcement mechanism: Both providers and users of information and other services change their behavior as a result of the availability of a Google product. You can see this on a small scale with Reader. People design their websites and content based on the assumption that others, via an RSS reader, will come across and read that content in a certain way. And readers structure their reading habits, and ultimately their mental models of what information is available and where, based on the existence of this tool. If you then pull away the product at the heart of that system, you end up causing significant disruption (混乱), assuming there aren't good alternatives available. G) The issue becomes a bit more obvious when you think about something like search. Many of us now operate under the assumption that if we want to find something we will be able to do so quickly and easily via Google search. If I want an idea for a unique gift for someone, I can put in related search terms and feel pretty confident that I'll get back store websites and blogs and Pinterest pages and newspaper stories and pictures all providing possible matches. H) If I'm a researcher, I know I can quickly find relevant academic papers, data, newspaper accounts, expert analysis, and who knows what else related to an enormous range of topics. Once we all become comfortable with that state of affairs we quickly begin optimizing (优化) the physical and digital resources around us. And once we all become comfortable with that, we begin rearranging our mental architecture. We stop memorising key data points and start learning how to ask the right questions. We begin to think differently. We stop keeping a mental model of the physical geography of the world around us, because why bother? We can call up an incredibly detailed and accurate map of the world, complete with satellite and street-level images, whenever we want. The bottom line is that the more we all participate in this world, the more we come to depend on it. I) What Google has actually done is create a powerful infrastructure (基础设施). The shape of that infrastructure influences everything that goes online. And it influences the allocation of mental resources of everyone who interacts with the online world. But there isn't much to the real human world that isn't shaped by the mental activity of the people in it! That's a lot of power to put in the hands of a company that now seems interested, mostly, in identifying core mass-market services it can use to maximize its return on investment. Now in the short run, that may mostly be a problem for all of us. To the extent that we become worried about this phenomenon, we may go out and find back-up services or other alternatives. This will be less convenient and more costly, in terms of time and money, but those sufficiently foresighted (预见的) might feel it's a better option than opening up gmail one day to read that the e-mail service, and the 10-year's worth of communication it holds, will soon be gone. J) But in the long run that's a problem for Google. Because we tend not to entrust (委托) this sort of critical public infrastructure to the private sector. Network externalities are all fine and good to ignore so long as they mainly apply to the sharing of news and pictures from a weekend trip with college friends. Once they concern large amount of economic output and the cognitive activity of millions of people, it is difficult to keep the government out. Maybe that obstacle will be sufficient to keep Google providing its most heavily used products. But maybe not. K) I find myself thinking again of the brave new world of the industrial city, when new patterns of interaction led to enormous changes in economic activity, in culture and personal behavior, and in the way we think. We upgraded ourselves, in terms of education and social norms, to maximize the return to urban life. I think we, meaning users of the web and the companies that provide its blood and bones, are only beginning to deal with the implications of a world awash (充斥的) in information.

If you are trying to do your bit for sustainability and save water by taking shorter showers, then a new report on sustainability reveals for the first time that there are more effective ways that our everyday choices can have a positive impact on the environment. For example, the glass of juice you have for breakfast might have used the same amount of water in its production as the amount you have just saved by cutting your shower from 10 to 5 minutes. The milk on your cereal might have used even more. Balancing Act, a world first that has been developed for the Australia economy by scientists from CSIRO (澳大利亚联邦科学与工业研究组) and the University of Sydney, looks across 135 industry sectors of the Australian economy and quantifies the impacts and contributions across ten social, environmental, and financial indicators. Report co-author CSIRO scientist, Barney Foran, says that sustainability for Australia is a balancing act as we try to make decisions and trade-offs in the face of often-competing economic, social and environmental attributes. "We still need to eat and shower—and it is still worth taking shorter showers to save our stressed urban water supplies—but now consumers have a new tool to help us make more informed choices about different types of products based on a new sustainability rating," says Foran. Different to other studies because of its detailed observation of the full production chain, this report is able to show the full effects—both direct and indirect—of the production of an individual commodity or service, cappuccinos (卡布奇诺咖啡) or haircuts. It highlights sustainability challenges for different industries and points out areas in the production chain where a focused effort would make a significant difference. All effects are referenced back to a consumption dollar—roughly the dollar spent by a consumer in everyday life. It also shows that each consumption dollar is quite different—some dollars are positive and create employment, or suck in imports or generate government revenue. Other consumption dollars are less positive through their high use of water or production of greenhouse gas emissions. This relatively simple presentation of highly complex issues makes this a powerful tool for people who are interested in sustainability to move beyond decisions based on dollars and cents and enables them to make decisions based on a contribution to society, environment, and economy.

Marriage emerged as the most popular institution throughout history primarily because it was an effective arrangement to improve the care and upbringing of children. Marriage is not necessary to have children, but it has been of enormous importance in the rearing of children. With the sharp declines in birthrates since 1970 in Western and other rich countries, including much larger fractions of adults who do not have any children, both men and women have significantly increased their ages at marriage, and sharply raised their tendencies to divorce. In 1950, a typical woman and man married at ages 20.3 and 22.8 respectively, whereas now the typical marital ages are 26.0 and 27.7. These changes in age at marriage are related to reduced demand for many children, increased college education of both men and women but especially of women, much greater labor force participation of married and divorced women, and the narrowing of the gender gap in earnings. The most important economic and social concerns due to low marriage rates are the effects on rearing of children. These effects are not due to lower marriage rates alone, but rather to the close connection between these low rates and high divorce rates, and to the greater tendency of women to have children without being married, or without living with the fathers of their children. Although many single mothers do an absolutely wonderful job in raising their children, common sense and most academic findings suggest that having a father present during the raising of children generally has a positive effect on the development of non-cognitive (非认知的) traits of children. These include a general respect for authority and reduced rebelliousness in school, and the avoidance of gangs and other criminal activities. It also appears that the absence of fathers has a greater effect on the non-cognitive traits of sons than daughters, although that is a less well-established finding. I am not claiming that children are worst off when their parents divorce if their parents were fighting a lot, or if they had abusive (粗暴地) fathers. Rather, it appears that up to a significant point, children are better off in intact families even when their families are not ideal.