Private Technological Innovation Will Soon Be Out of This World

This week ushered in some significant news stories in technology and innovation. Facebook’s Aquila drone successfully completed its inaugural test flight, remaining in the air almost three times longer than expected. The massive high-altitude, solar-powered drone is an experiment in new methods of covering the world in wireless Internet access (which I wrote about in more detail here). In short, Aquila uses laser-based communication systems to communicate to ground relay stations, which then convert the signals into Wifi. Technical challenges remain, and this initial test…

Big Supermarkets Join Hands With Food Police to Nudge SNAP Recipients

Can you socially engineer a foodie? The latest case of Spending Paternalism involves SNAP (formerly known as Food Stamps). Under SNAP, eligible households receive an electronic benefit transfer (EBT) card that gets reloaded with money once a month to spend on food and groceries. There are already myriad rules and restrictions about what SNAP benefits can be spent on, built directly into the card. While many of the country’s poor would clearly prefer cash, buying and selling an EBT card is illegal. Punishments vary by…