Marketplace Tech

If you're shopping for holiday tech, you'll probably see a bunch of devices being marketed as 5G ready. 5G is the next generation of super fast internet, but it needs infrastructure. More bandwidth for streaming videos, games, and connecting the ever-growing Internet of Things. The Federal Communications Commission is trying to open up that bandwidth by auctioning off little-used parts of publicly owned airwaves — portions that may not have been useful for 3G or 4G, but are now in high demand. FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel explains why.

This week, we've partnered with CNET to talk about big trends in consumer technology. To hear Twitter users and the press tell it, the biggest trend in tech is everyone being mad at tech. So we wondered if that might show up in the holiday shopping season. Are people worried about tech being bad for their mental health or their privacy? Will the “techlash” seriously affect spending on consumer technology? Molly talks about it with Lindsey Turrentine, editor-in-chief of "CNET Reviews."

All this week on Marketplace Tech we're partnering with CNET to talk about big trends in consumer technology. Once upon a time, laptops and desktop computers were cool and not just the thing you used for work. Then phones and tablets came along, gaming consoles got more popular and computers did not make the holiday shopping list. But that might be changing. CNET's holiday shopping survey finds that young people are lot more interested in computer hardware this year, mostly to play video games. Between "Fortnite" and esports streaming, kids want more powerful systems than an Xbox or a PS4. Molly Wood talks with Dan Ackerman at CNET Reviews, where he focuses on PCs and laptops. He said there is a minor resurgence in the PC market. (11/22/18)

All this week we're partnering with CNET Reviews to talk about the big trends in consumer technology. TVs, which used to be in the pipe dream category of holiday gift ideas, are now more in the stocking stuffer price range. Television prices have been in free-fall for over a decade, and manufacturers tried to keep people buying with gimmicks like 3D and ultra high-resolution 4K, except there still aren't many shows being broadcast in 4K. As a result, TV prices just keep getting lower, and the only thing that is getting people to buy them is streaming. For more, Molly Wood spoke with David Katzmaier, an editor at CNET who covers TVs and home theater.

All this week we're partnering with CNET Reviews, talking about the big trends in consumer technology as we head into the holiday shopping season. And it appears that the smart home is finally coming home to a lot more people. In 2017, almost 25 million smart speakers were sold, according to the Consumer Technology Association. So far this year, 19 million smart speakers have shipped, and holiday shopping has just begun. And once they're in a house, they can act like a gateway drug. People buy more connected devices so they can have Alexa or Google control everything in the house. Molly Wood talks with Rich Brown, an executive editor at CNET Reviews covering appliances and smart homes.

It is Thanksgiving week and the official start of the 2018 holiday shopping season. All this week we're partnering with the online tech reviews and news site CNET to talk about the big trends in consumer technology. This year CNET did a holiday survey asking its users what they're thinking about when it comes to tech. And this year the research bears out what the retail industry has already been saying: It's going to be a big year for shopping, especially in tech. Molly Wood talks with Lindsey Turrentine, editor-in-chief of CNET Reviews.

The data analytics company Palantir is reportedly considering going public. Palantir is the company co-founded by controversial Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel, formerly of PayPal. It's named after an all-seeing artifact in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. The company promises police departments, governments, even the IRS, that it can take in huge amounts of data and make artificial intelligence-informed guesses to help track down criminals and cheats, among other things. In a secret pilot program in New Orleans, Palantir tech even tried to predict when crime would happen or who might be a victim. But lately its huge $20 billion valuation is in doubt and privacy activists are concerned about its tactics. Molly Wood talks about it with Mark Harris, a reporter who's covered Palantir for Wired magazine. Today's show is sponsored by Wasabi Hot Cloud Storage and the Michigan Economic Development Corporation.

Only about 1 percent of venture capital-backed startup founders are black, according to CB Insights data. Even fewer are black women or Latino. There's not a lot of age diversity and geographic diversity, and underrepresented founders don't always have access to the networks or training programs that can help them get startup funding. Mandela Dixon is a former public school teacher and startup founder, and she was a mentor for entrepreneurs at the VC firm Kapor Capital. About a year ago, she created Founder Gym, which is an online-only training program for underrepresented, would-be startup founders. Host Molly Wood talked with her at the AfroTech conference last week in San Francisco.

Black millennials are tech savvy, influential and spending about a $162 billion a year, according to a 2016 Nielsen study. And yet, black people are incredibly underrepresented in tech and media. Enter Blavity, a digital lifestyle brand for millennials of color. It started in 2014 and raised $6.5 million in venture funding earlier this year. Blavity's founders say its advantage is its community members. They'll pay to come to events, and companies will pay to interact with them. Jeff Nelson is a co-founder and chief technical officer at Blavity. Marketplace Tech’s Molly Wood met him last week at one of those events, the AfroTech conference in San Francisco, which was born out of Blavity's tech news site. (11/14/18)

Part of the reason there's a backlash against Big Tech these days is because some of these companies are so big. They're big in terms of users (see: Facebook's 2 billion plus), big in valuation (Amazon and Apple have both topped a trillion dollars) and big in market share (more than 90 percent of all web searches happen on Google). The United States is taking baby steps toward possible regulation. Europe is taking more like Paul Bunyan-sized steps. But critics like Tim Wu argue these companies should have been slowed down long ago. Marketplace Tech’s Molly Wood talks with Wu, author of the new book, "The Curse of Bigness: Antitrust in the New Gilded Age." (11/13/18)