- Science & Technology
- Understanding the Effects of Technology on Economics and Governance
Fifty years ago, three young men working out of a modest ranch-style home in Los Altos, California, changed the world by creating Apple Inc. But is Apple’s success (at one point this year, a $5 trillion market cap) a one-off or yet another example of how innovation has flourished in the 250 years of the American republic? Stephen Haber, the Hoover’s Institution’s Park L. Loughlin senior fellow and co-author of an upcoming book on innovation, explains why Apple has flourished and how the tech giant’s operation reflects the uniqueness of America’s ecosystem as an incubator of emerging technologies. Also discussed: battery development as an innovative “sleeper”, the promise and peril of artificial intelligence, and why Haber, in his capacity as a Stanford University professor, plans to keep screens and electronic devices (sorry, Apple and its competitors) out of his undergraduate classroom.
ABOUT THE SPEAKERS
Stephen Haber is the Park L. Loughlin Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and director of the Hoover Program on the Foundations for Economic Prosperity, as well as the A.A. and Jeanne Welch Milligan Professor in the School of Humanities and Sciences at Stanford University.
The author of five books (plus a sixth currently in the works) and editor of a half-dozen more, Haber has spent his academic career investigating why the world’s distribution of income remains uneven.
Bill Whalen is the Virginia Hobbs Carpenter Distinguished Policy Fellow in Journalism at the Hoover Institution. In addition to serving as the moderator of Goodfellows, he also hosts Hoover’s Matters of Policy & Politics podcast, which spotlights the work of Hoover fellows. Whalen writes and comments on campaigns, elections and governance, with an emphasis of California and America’s political landscapes, and contributes to Hoover’s California on Your Mind and Defining Ideas web channels.
ABOUT THE SERIES
Matters of Policy & Politics, a podcast from the Hoover Institution, examines the direction of federal, state, and local leadership and elections, with an occasional examination of national security and geopolitical concerns, all featuring insightful analysis provided by Hoover Institution scholars and guests.
