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Canon Inc. is moving toward fully automating digital camera production in an effort to cut costs - a key change being played out across Japan, a world leader in robotics.

Tyler Cowen has a nice essay up at The American Interest on an Export-Oriented America. He offers us three reasons to be optimistic about the US export future: artificial intelligence, shale oil and gas, and a rising Asian Middle Class. I think he more or less nails the last two, what I refer as the Exxon and Apple economies, respectively.

The lessons from an infant industry, including the power of cooperation and importance of regulating with a light touch

"'If it's not talking to each other, it's not a market.' Europe, despite being a political union (of sorts), does not yet feel like a real market. Part of the solution would be to know more about each other, and to talk to each other more often. That's what 'Whiteboard' wants to offer: a place to find information about interesting businesses and innovation, and to talk about it." So yet another DJ journalist, as professor Mark Deuze would say. Raf Weverbergh left the Flemish magazine Humo and started his own venture, Whiteboard.  He won't be the one who is on stage all the time creating his very own content, but rather he invites contributors to talk about entrepreneurship in Europe. Which seems like a great idea, as Europe is not just that doom and gloom continent - but it needs media ventures to talk about its entrepreneurs and to facilitate the conversation between entrepreneurs. So I cannot wait to hear a thousand (or more) entrepreneurial voices on Whiteboard reporting about exciting new things in Europe! 

"You Can Be Active with the Activists or Sleeping with the Sleepers: Pirate Cinema by Cory Doctorow" Another book by Cory Doctorow - and I'm still busy reading Makers! Stefan Raets discusses the Doctorow's Youthful Techno-Defiance Trilogy: 'From Little Brother (tech-savvy teenagers take on a government-run surveillance system) to For the Win (tech-savvy teenagers take on unfair working conditions for MMORPG gold farmers) to now Pirate Cinema (tech-savvy teenagers take on draconian copyright laws).'

"Not all those young companies will survive, but the habit of hiring online seems baked in; 64 percent of respondents said at least half of their work force would be online by 2015, and 94 percent predicted that in 10 years most businesses would consist of online temps and physical full-time workers." One more thing: it seems that the educational degree is not considered as being 'very important' when hiring online help. Quentin Hardy (Bits, The New York Times) concludes 'In the future, having a degree may be helpful, but having a reputation will be even better.' Taking this one step further, rating systems such as Klout (not necessarily Klout itself) could become a very important part of your social capital. Of course, such reputation measures could be organized by the major online staffing companies -  like eBay for instance uses its famous reputation system.  Reputation as social capital will translate this way into financial capital - and could be a crucial data point for financial companies which could use these data to decide about your creditworthiness...

Yesterday the Washington Post had a great piece in the business section entitled  "Economists offer more pessimistic view on manufacturing in upcoming report."

Increased levels of connectivity are rendering economic rules obsolete.

For advanced economies, such imbalances would likely lead to more long- term and permanent joblessness. More young people without post-secondary training would fail to get a start in the job market and older workers would drop out because they don't qualify for jobs that are being created. The polarization of incomes between high- and low-skill workers could become even more pronounced, slowing the advance in national living standards, and increasing public-sector burdens and social tensions. In some advanced economies, less-skilled workers could very well grow up poorer than their parents, in real terms.

Yet 3D printing is just one of many production technologies and trends which are transforming the way companies will be able to make things in the future. The old rules of manufacturing, such as "you must seek economies of scale" and "you must reduce unit-labour costs", are being cast aside. New machines can print every item differently. More flexible robots are getting cheaper and better at doing all the boring and dirty stuff.

"Apple's stock dropped 2.21 percent on Monday. A few analysts blamed the drop - worth more than $12 billion - on a strike of 4,000 Chinese workers at Apple's manufacturer. But how do we know that strike really happened? Bloomberg's Adam Minter makes the case that the entire narrative is based on messages posted to China's version of Twitter, Sina Weibo, from a single anonymous user." The journalists as DJs - but they have to know and respect their sources.

"But the even greater danger -- the greater danger facing us in cyberspace goes beyond crime and it goes beyond harassment.  A cyber attack perpetrated by nation states are violent extremists groups could be as destructive as the terrorist attack on 9/11.  Such a destructive cyber-terrorist attack could virtually paralyze the nation. "

A much talked-about article in the New York Times about the fact that the manufacturing of iPhone-like devices no longer takes place in the US.