Boston University Archives

Advertisers Reduce, Stop Campaigns in Face of Coronavirus

By Debra Kaufman
April 7, 2020

Coca-Cola, Kohl’s, Marriott and Zillow Group are among those companies that have reduced or stopped marketing efforts during the coronavirus pandemic. Facebook said its advertising business is “weakening,” and Amazon has cut back on its Google Shopping ads. Advertising giants Interpublic Group and Publicis delayed their financial forecasts, citing an uncertain future. During the Great Recession, said the WARC research group, $60.5 billion in global advertising vanished and it took eight years to “fully recover.” Some observers believe this crisis will be worse. Continue reading Advertisers Reduce, Stop Campaigns in Face of Coronavirus

Researchers Advocate for Deeper Analysis of Online Habits

By Debra Kaufman
June 4, 2019

Determining the impact of screen time isn’t easy. It’s almost impossible to put together a “control group” of people living non-digital lives, and there are no baselines for such factors as “average daily Facebook usage.” Stanford University professor of communication Byron Reeves, in a paper in Human-Computer Interaction, suggested a new approach that eschews the term “screen time” as hopelessly ambiguous. Instead, he argued, scientists should analyze what people are watching — but this data doesn’t exist. Continue reading Researchers Advocate for Deeper Analysis of Online Habits

Elon Musk’s Neuralink Corp. Seeks to Enhance Brains with AI

By Debra Kaufman
March 29, 2017

Tesla founder Elon Musk has launched a new company, Neuralink Corp., to dig deep into so-called neural lace technology that would merge the human brain with artificial intelligence. Musk already heads up two complex businesses. At Tesla, he is under pressure to deliver the Model 3, priced at $35,000, on time. At SpaceX, the ambitious plan is to launch both a satellite-based Internet business and a rocket to carry humans to Mars. Max Hodak, who founded robotic startup Transcriptic, is a member of Neuralink’s founding team. Continue reading Elon Musk’s Neuralink Corp. Seeks to Enhance Brains with AI

Network Interconnectivity Could Lead to Massive Failures

By emeadows
March 21, 2013

Gene Stanley, a professor of physics at Boston University, and his colleagues discovered the mathematics behind what he calls “the extreme fragility of interdependency.” In systems of interconnected networks like the economy, city infrastructure or the human body, Stanley’s model indicates that a small outage in just one network can make waves through the entire system, resulting in a sudden, catastrophic failure. Continue reading Network Interconnectivity Could Lead to Massive Failures

Report: Is Innovation being Stifled by Frivolous Lawsuits of Patent Trolls?

By Dennis Kuba
September 21, 2011

Looking at a database of over 1,600 patent troll lawsuits compiled by Patent Freedom, a team of Boston University researchers estimate that these suits have cost companies some $500 billion since 1990. These costs include not only legal fees and payouts to plaintiffs, but indirect costs such as employee distraction, legal uncertainty, and the need to redesign or drop key products.
The authors of the study also estimate that the original inventors received less than 10 percent of the “defendant’s lost wealth.”
Additionally, they found that software patents accounted for approximately 62 percent of the lawsuits (while a mere two percent of suits were related to drug or chemical patents, and only six percent involved mechanical patents).
The article concludes that the patent system is becoming a disincentive to innovation. “These results are important because the patent system is supposed to reward companies who invest in innovation,” suggests Ars Technica. “Yet thanks to the growing blizzard of frivolous patent lawsuits against technology companies, the patent system is actually becoming a net disincentive to innovation, especially software. We hope Congress and the Supreme Court are paying attention.”