Big tech is saying we need to issue more temporary visas so high-skill STEM workers can enter the US, because there's a shortage of Americans who can do the work. But according to this essay in the Columbia Journalism Review, there might be plenty of US citizens available, in fact maybe even a glut, and immigration reform proposals might just be a way to keep STEM labor costs down for corporations and universities. [more inside]
posted by tommyD on May 9, 2013 - 133 comments

The iEconomy: Apple and Technology Manufacturing. Since January, the New York Times has been running a series of articles "examining the challenges posed by increasingly globalized high-tech industries," with a focus on Apple's business practices. The seventh article in the series was published today: In Technology Wars, Using the Patent as a Sword. Related: For Software, Cracks in the Patent System and Fighters in the Patent War. [more inside]
posted by zarq on Oct 8, 2012 - 16 comments

Dem Phones, Dem Phones, Dem iPhones! The Delta Rhythm Boys' most iconic song brought up to date (well, as of 2007). An unadulterated original for comparison. (via every link blog I follow, traced back to everlasting blort; previous bones)
posted by oneswellfoop on Jun 11, 2011 - 8 comments

"The church of global free trade, which rules American politics with infallible pretensions, may have finally met its Martin Luther." A thorough summary in The Nation of the brilliant but ignored Global Trade and Conflicting National Interests by Ralph Gomory, former IBM Senior Vice President for Science and winner of the National Medal of Science. His heresy? Arguing, with supporting technical and economic data, that multinational corporations and their home countries have divergent interests in shipping skilled labor and advanced technologies overseas, and that this "divergence" is a net negative for the American economy and the American public. Globalization, he argues, has its losers, the United States paramount among them.
posted by Pastabagel on Apr 20, 2007 - 76 comments

Need a patch of skin for that burn or perhaps some new brain cells? Print them. A team of British scientists have shown that cells could survive ink-jet printing. Ink-jet technology moves beyond paper.
posted by Termite on Jan 30, 2006 - 21 comments

Techies Left Behind James Pace Jr. used to work as a steamfitter in a General Electric plant in Bridgeport. That was back in the early '70s, when the grapevine was alive with warnings: These jobs are going overseas. Go back to school. There's no future here. Pace left the plant, enrolled in computer school, studied information technology and never looked back. That is, not until 23 years later, on the day he was told his $100,000-a-year job as an IT (information technology) consultant had been sent to India
posted by Postroad on Jan 16, 2004 - 80 comments