"A lifetime of global observation grounded locally in the colloquialisms of central North Carolina"
At the end of October a trillion dollars of market value got nervous about the cost of artificial intelligence and left. In 1939 the man who owned the general store in Wendell also ran the bank. He never needed a forecast. His customers sat down next to him.
Read more →I voted early, in a line that ran out the door of the Earl B. Fitts Community Center and most of the way to the street. Nobody in it agreed about much. Everybody in it knew what a dozen eggs cost.
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A consultant flew in to tell us our productivity was down. He had a spreadsheet. We had the tea. One of these instruments has survived three recessions and a divorce.
Read more →They built a data center on the Hollis place, where the corn used to be. It hums all night. The corn never hummed, but it fed people.
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Across at least thirty-six states, people have taken to sawing down the poles that hold up automated license-plate cameras. Meanwhile Doris at the Cut & Curl has been running a more accurate surveillance network since 1981, for free, with better customer service.
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The quarterly report is a ritual of numbers dressed as narrative. The county fair is narrative disguised as numbers on ribboned pies.
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Predictive analytics and kudzu both forecast where we are headed. One is a spreadsheet, the other is already on your porch.
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There's a particular brand of confidence that comes from reading The Economist cover to cover and another from having survived sixty years in Chatham County. Both are insufferable. Both are occasionally right.
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I've been to forty-seven countries and the thing I've learned is that everywhere has a version of my neighbor Clyde.
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At the World Economic Forum they talk about stakeholder capitalism. At the Siler City flea market, Miss Delores has been practicing it since 1978.
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The Economist devoted four pages to cryptocurrency. My mechanic asked a better question: If you can't hold it, is it real?
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