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- A House Disconnected Cannot StandToday
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On September 17thI shared my thoughts on the financial crisis, stating that part of the problem has been the increasing degrees of separation between ourselves, our investments and the process of making money:
The further you are removed you are from a situation or an object, the more difficult it is to monitor and control. Time is not your friend and things can spiral out of control quickly and without your knowledge.
Over the past 10-15 years we’ve come to see computers manipulating huge sums of capital online and financiers using ambiguous instruments like derivatives. It’s okay for hedge funds to use bizarre arbitrage and unsafe leveraged positions because they are ‘smarter’ than we are.
Our disconnection has come back to haunt us again.
It fascinates me that for all its sci-fi underpinnings, it seems an increasing reality that we are moving towards a singularity (see my post here). I believe that ou
- Is the Economy in a Moment of Peak Clarity?October 10
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Regular readers of this blog know that I think Peter Thiel is a genius. Peter’s talk at last year’s Singularity Summit [watch it here] is a classic and I was psyched to see Ben Casnocha quote him back in September:
On the Internet boom, Thiel wonders whether the late 1990’s mania actually represented enlightened thinking:
What if March 2000 in some sense represented not a peak of insanity but a peak of clarity, and that at the peak of the boom people could actually see the furthest, and what they could see was that in the long-run, in the next 20 years, 30 years, the entire old economy was going to be doomed and that all sorts of businesses and ways of doing business were no longer going to work? Therefore, and this is the tricky part, you had to bet on this one way that was going to be the way out. And that was the internet.
What I want to throw out there is this: What if our current economic situation represents another moment of peak clarity? What if WE’RE NOT actually in a panic or crisis, but in fact, the market is acting completely rationally? Could the market in essence be demanding we throw out old processes and business models? Could it be telling us that we’re at the beginning of a new era, rather than at th
- Network with 350 Venture Capitalists in NYC For FREEOctober 9
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I ran into this posting on Craigslist and figured it might be an opportunity New York based entrepreneurs or students might want to take advantage of:
YoungStartup Ventures will be hosting the 2008 Life Sciences & Healthcare Venture Summit on Thursday, October 30th in Downtown NYC. This is an exclusive full-day program with over 350 venture capitalists and business executives in attendance.
We are looking for 5 one-day support staff persons for this event who will assist at the registration desk, announce the start of sessions, may assist with A/V aspects, etc. There will also be lifting and moving of items. We are looking for people who are comfortable interacting with business professionals, and will dress accordingly, and comfortable working in a fast-paced business culture. The day will start at 6:30am and end at around 5:30pm. Catered breakfast and lunch provided.
[Contact:
- Is it Time to Get Emotional Over Software?October 8
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“Welcome. You’ve Got Mail!”
When Gmail first launched, it was superior to AOL email in every way but one. I ultimately converted to Gmail because of its superior functionality:I’d never need to delete another email and I could view threaded conversations in a much more intuitive manner. Still, as lame as it sounds, I really missed that cheerful “Welcome!” I had grown so accustomed to with AOL.
This afternoon on the subway I watched a fabulous TED talk by game designer David Perry called “Will videogames become better than life?” [watch the video below].One of Perry’s opening questions is: Can a video game make you cry? The answer for many is, yes.
The emotional connection between gamers and their games is well documented and has fueled the outstanding success and growth of gaming industry. How successful? Well, it puts web 2.0 to shame:
Retail sales in the PC game software industry reached $911 million in 2007, bringing the total console, portable and PC game industry to $18.8 billion, a 40 percent increase over the $13.5 billion generated in 2006. -Source
U.S. online
- Do Table Manners Matter More Than IQ?October 7
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This past weekend while at Johns Hopkins for alumni council meetings I heard a lecture by highly esteemed Professor and Author, Dr. P.M. Forni. Dr. Forni studies and assesses the significance of civility, manners and politeness in contemporary society. I find Dr. Forni’s work fascinating. [The photo above is pat of a campaign adopted in Howard County, MD based on the principles of Dr. Forni's first book].
The Professor started with a story. Each fall, with his new crop of students, Dr. Forni holds a lunch where he asks one student to “pass him the salt.” Inevitably the student does just that: they pass him the salt.
Dr. Forni than asks the others what that student did wrong?
The correct answer is that you never pass only the salt – you also pass the pepper. Now to those of us familiar with Emily Post, this seems obvious. But what’s interesting is that the underlying l