They say the first step to overcoming addiction is acknowledging the problem, but what if your addiction is to technology?
IPhone designer and Nest founder Tony Fadell told Cheddar people need tools to understand how they use their devices.
“Today we do not have the information at our fingertips to allow us to see what our digital life looks like,” he said. “All of these companies have a measurement of our digital life. They know how much time we spend in each of these apps.”
“Apple and Google create these platforms, and they are in the perfect position to give us this data this back to us, and blend it with our physical data.”
Fadell’s comments follow calls from two major Apple investors that the tech giant do more to combat smartphone addiction among children. Jana Partners and California’s teachers’ retirement fund wrote letter to the company over the weekend, saying overuse of the devices has lead to lack of concentration in classrooms.
Fadell argues, though, that the issue is not exclusive to children.
“We have to think broader,” he said. “When it comes to our family, we have tech-free Sundays, where the parents and the kids are not on technology, where we’re together as a family.”
For the full interview [click here](https://cheddar.com/videos/apple-ipod-co-inventor-tony-fadell-on-combating-addictive-quality-of-technology).
As Apple waits for a ruling from the Supreme Court, other tech companies may have cause to worry about their own legal futures. Jimmy Hoover, a legal reporter for Law360, said a ruling that favors consumers over Apple would be "an anathema to these companies."
Former wide receiver Walter Powell Jr. played for three NFL teams over a span of four years. But now, a year into his retirement, he's decided to tackle a new challenge ー creating a more informed electorate. The athlete created a new an app, Politiscope, to educate political newcomers like Powell with a tool that "broke down politics so people like me could understand it," he told Cheddar Monday.
Politicians on both sides of the aisle united with labor leaders on Monday to slam GM's announcement that it would cut more than 14,000 jobs ー a combination of factory and office roles ー and put five plants on the chopping block.
Ohio officials will allow businesses to pay taxes in Bitcoin as of this week. While limited in scope, the move represents an important tacit admission by a government body that Bitcoin is an acceptable currency, according to Jimmy Song, a Bitcoin developer.
Scott Cutler, SVP of Americas at eBay, told Cheddar that the trends that are changing the retail landscape became clearer this year, with mobile purchases on the day before Thanksgiving now making for the unofficial kick-off to the season. EBay expects to gross more in online transactions than Walmart, Macy's and BestBuy combined.
E-commerce and mobile was the breakout star this Thanksgiving weekend with more customers picking the couch over the queue, shopping earlier ー and increasingly on their phones. "It's not just about Black Friday anymore ー there's the day before Thanksgiving, there's Thanksgiving Day, Black Friday. Small Business Saturday was pretty big too ... It's basically a whole week at this point," Rob Marvin, associate features editor at PCMag told Cheddar on Monday.
Elon Musk says there's a 70 percent chance he'll go to Mars ー even though there's also a good chance he won't come back. Musk spoke on his plans to personally take the SpaceX Starship (formerly known as the BFR) to Mars in an interview with Axios broadcast Sunday on HBO, during which he also said that Tesla was "single-digit weeks" from dying this spring and summer.
From Wall Street to Silicon Valley, these are the top stories that moved markets and had investors, business leaders, and entrepreneurs talking this week on Cheddar.
MLG co-founder Mike Sepso takes a seat at the podcast table for a discussion on the lazy summer that inspired MLG.
On today's show: the collapse of the H1Z1 Pro League, the announcement of the "League of Legends" European Championship, and "Fortnite"'s first open cash-prize tournament in the Winter Royale ー plus, PlayVS announces $30 million in funding. Featuring CEO of PlayVS Delane Parnell and DreamHack Global FGC Director Alex Jebailey.
