Marketplace Tech

This season’s online holiday sales were worth some $138 billion to e-retailers, and nearly a third of that stuff is expected to be returned, according to new research from CBRE, a real estate research group. That’s actually typical for 30% of online shopping to be returned, whereas 8% of other stuff bought in shops is returned. All of those returns come with a cost, even if they’re free to us, the shoppers. There’s the emissions from the trucks and planes, the waste from packaging and discarded products, the cost of finding space for it all, or even just chucking it out.

It is the start of a new year, and here in the land of tech and business, that means CES –– the massive consumer electronics show that dominates the tech industry for the week that it hits Las Vegas in early January each year. I’ll be there this week covering the event, and so will a lot of other tech journalists, including WIRED editor-in-chief Nicholas Thompson. Historically, CES has been a fizzy and fun celebration of gadgets, TVs, drones and phones, but in the last couple of years, the sentiment toward tech has turned a bit. I asked Thompson whether a new focus on privacy and the “techlash” would be felt at the show this year.

This week, we’re talking with Marketplace reporters about what tech topics they’re watching on their beats as we look ahead to 2020. One issue we can expect to see in the news a lot is facial recognition. In 2019, San Francisco banned police and public agencies from using it over civil rights fears, but it’s become widespread in China, where it’s used for daily surveillance and to track and detain the minority Muslim population there, the Uighurs.

This week, we’ve been interviewing Marketplace reporters about what we should expect in tech in 2020. Today, we’re taking a look at one major event happening in 2020: the U.S. presidential election. It is no secret that there was a boom in social media misinformation campaigns during the 2016 election with the goal of influencing how we vote and who we vote for. Tech platforms are in the spotlight on the subject of digital political ads, targeted ads and the security of our election.

This week, we’re talking to Marketplace reporters about what to expect from tech in the year ahead. Regulation is a big part of that conversation, and today we’re going to chat about cryptocurrencies, specifically Libra, the digital payments system and cryptocurrency proposed by Facebook earlier this year. It seemed like it might be dead on arrival considering all the backlash, but lawmakers haven’t forgotten about it. There are a few bills being considered by Congress that could have an impact on Libra’s future, including who might regulate it.

It’s prediction season. This week we’re asking our Marketplace beat reporters what to expect in tech in 2020. Today, we’re talking labor in the tech industry, specifically about the trend of workers protesting their own companies. In 2019, employees from Amazon, Microsoft, Google and other tech giants walked out, signed petitions or went public with complaints about military contracts, tech for oil and gas companies and internal problems with culture and discrimination. Google employees even joined the United Steelworkers Union to formalize their organizing.

A new decade is almost upon us, which means this week we’re going to be talking about what to expect from the tech world in 2020. Today, let’s kick the tires — pun intended — on the transportation tech that seems prepared to go big in 2020, electric vehicles. This tech has been around for a while, but at least here in the U.S., the EV market hasn’t had its boom and there hasn’t been much mainstream competition to Tesla.

This holiday week, we’re taking a look back at some of our shows from 2019 that deal with topics we’ll be thinking about in the year ahead. That includes the way tech companies are valued and how it can affect all of us. Tech valuations were soaring, then in the fourth quarter of this year things got messy. Earlier this year, I asked Alex Wilhelm, editor in chief at Crunchbase News, why these private valuations have risen so high.

As we look ahead to 2020 and think about tackling giant problems, climate change is high on the list. So, we wanted to re-air an interview with the leader of a company that thrives on tackling giant problems. X, Formerly Google X, is the division of Alphabet devoted to moonshots. Its climate-related graduates include Dandelion, which harnesses heat from geothermal energy, and Malta, which uses salt to store excess energy produced from solar and wind farms.

This holiday week, we’re taking a look back at some of our shows from 2019 that touch on topics we’ll definitely be thinking about in the year ahead, and data is at the top of the list. When it comes to trading your data for free services are you getting a fair deal? Digi.me is an app that lets you connect all your various online accounts. It scoops all the data they have on you and puts it in one encrypted location that you can control. And then a new company called Universal Basic Data Income, can, with your permission, pay you to share some of that data with companies or researchers.