Digitopoly is a blog which explores the economic and business aspects of the digital world.

Digitopoly

Was Facebook purchasing Instagram a great regulatory failure or do we need to review the topic with some clear Economic thinking? Joshua Gans in Digitolopy reviews a new paper that claims licensing would be better than blocking start-up acquisitions by big companies.

Christopher Carley

Compulsory licensing is better than blocking acquisitions

The iPhone made smartphones sexy. But it wasn’t a very good phone. Joshua Gans, writing in Digitopoly, explains how the iPhone disrupted everything we thought we knew about disruption.

Rex Anderson

Why the iPhone confounds disruption theorists

From Facebook to Snapchat and now TikTok: why you shouldn't bet on teens.

Plenty of thriving media platforms owe their success to a large teenage userbase, but as user numbers indicate, 13 to 19-year-old are an especially slippery demographic to hold on to. Joshua Gans writing in Digitopoly examines why no business built on teenage demand is sustainable.

Malk Williams

No business built on teenager demand is sustainable

Can a superintelligent AI - one that is smarter than we are and capable of destroying us - choose not to? Joshua Gans, writing in Digitopoly, explains and then assesses the paperclip apocalypse theory, which contests that a superintelligent artificial intelligence with the sole purpose of creating paperclips, for example, will eventually see us as a threat to its paperclip making goals, and annihilate us all.