🖋️ LongForm
Want to reduce the noice and just focus on things with a little more meat - the this category is for you. Like so much on this site we have a ‘WIP’ as i take some out - and put some in - but safe for at least starting in 2026.
Blockchain
Great review of a new book by The father and son team 'The Tapscotts' ... definitely on my reading list - particularly liked this ...
Yet time and again, after each wave of technological revolution, a few Silicon Valley billionaires cackle off into the sunset, and the rest of us are left standing with our pants around our ankles. Musicians have to deal with the derisory royalties they receive from Spotify. Immigrants sending remittances home still pay exorbitant fees at Western Union. Government and corporate governance voting remains absurdly dependent on paper and pencil. Or as the Tapscotts put it: “Powerful technology companies have shifted much activity from the open, distributed, egalitarian, and empowering Web to closed online walled gardens or proprietary, read-only applications that among other things kill the conversation. Corporate forces have captured many of these wonderful peer-to-peer, democratic, and open technologies and are using them to extract an inordinate share of value.
This the Old Power / New Power - Old Values / New Values message - said different!
Someone Else Who Doesn't Get It
A piece by Robert Scoble on 🔗 ‘Why Tim Cook better worry’. Scoble opens with his take on ‘the fourth visible user interface of the personal computer era.’
The first was character mode. MS-DOS.
The second was the GUI, graphical user interface. Macintosh and Windows.
The third was touch. iPhone and Android.
The fourth is spatial computing.
…. and then goes on to suggest that Cook ‘doesn’t get it’ and Apple should be worried.
He seems to forget that Apple.
- is never first
- never talks about what they have until they are ready
- always puts market readiness ahead of vaporware
And - remember this piece was 🔗 written by the guy that wrote that he would never take his google glass off … and was generally THE world’s leading advocate of same. But that was in 2013.
Then last year he wrote;
Last night before Skrillex at Coachella came on two guys were talking next to me. One said ‘I want to get away from the Google Glass guys.’ I turn around and there are two guys wearing Glass. Google does have a problem here. I haven’t worn mine at all this weekend. What is going on here in a world where I am carrying around a camera and EVERYONE uses their phones or a GoPro but Glass feels freaky and weird? Google has launched this product poorly, is what. But wearable technology needs a different set of skills than Google has. What? Empathy.
and just last week;
Yes, Google Glass had its problems, but that’s because it was released too early. It was a misunderstood product that could stand up to neither expectations nor criticism.
Meanwhile - Apple’s R and D spend is running close to 10 billion a year - do we really think they aren’t working on interesting, game changing, futuristic ideas ?
As Asymco’s Horace Dediu wrote;
While other companies make a bigger show of their projects, ‘Apple’s’ work is in secret. It is substantial and calibrated by market opportunity.
Update - June 2nd - 2016
Funny - this just in today - from a piece called ‘When Should Apple Introduce Its Innovations’. (Sorry the mangling - see below - lost the link)
A couple of choice quotes;
What Apple’s critics stubbornly fail, or refuse, to acknowledge - even though the evidence before them is overwhelming is that it’s not first that matters, it’s first to get it right. The critics want Apple to invent the next big thing. But Apple doesn’t invent. They never have invented. They reinvent.
and
Everything at Google IO so far: Here is our answer to a rival’s product. Ours is way better. It will be out later this year.
💬 Farhad Manjoo on Twitter
#word
Update - Jan 24th - 2024
I rediscovered this post on Jan 23rd, 2024 it having been imported from one of my other blogs a while back. It had clearly got severely mangled in the process. So I have just demangled it - including moving out of that ‘special’ Wordpress HTML that we all ‘love’ so much and reformatted with Markdown and added some of my little emojis for better discovery in the future. Otherwise what you read above is what went live way back then.
Apple's Modus Operandi
Struck me that this is Apple's modus operandi. Projects - not processes.
The sign of an organization becoming more creative is the move from processes to projects—projects are inherently creative acts.
Controlling Trump
Thinking aloud ....
If artists consistently opted out of performing in shows that feature Trump - would that stop Talk Shows inviting Trump - or would lesser artists step up and fill the void for their 15 minutes of fame?
Is This Good Advice?
I don't think so.
Inc - why a startup should think about having a board of directors.
Board of Directors or Board of Advisers ? There is a difference. I don't think as a start up I would be jumping into the former - but absolutely essential to have the latter.
Who Gets Funded?
Sadly - the answers are painfully obvious - just sad to see the facts .. although the fact that no dropouts have gone on to get funding in biotech or pharma is a good thing - I mean in that word - you do need to know your stuff ... but also indicates that VCs don't typically understand those disciplines well enough to know what is possible - which explains why all Biotech and Pharma investments account for around 15% of investments in 'internet/software'.
Of course - the internet / software world might just as well be 'other' in this age,
Good Grief!
Top of the list - Alex Jones who makes Coulter and Savage appear reasonable ... maybe that's the plan !
Sign Of The Times ?
Angels invested more money in fewer companies last year.
Angel investment rose slightly in 2015, as investors backed fewer companies but put larger sums to work in the deals they did. Overall, angel investment last year totaled $24.6 billion, up 1.9% year-over-year, according to a report from the University of New Hampshire’s Center for Venture Research (pdf).
A total of 71,110 entrepreneurial ventures raised angel funding last year, down 3.1% from 2014.via Crunchbase
Can You Resist ?
Wonderful afternoon with Joe Salish of UC Davis. If you want to learn more - click here ... more info to come, for now I just couldn't resist sharing.
Tittle Tattle
Tittle tattle over the ‘tatty over titty’ debate is just ignorant ‘PC’.
I really hope titty family wins the tit-for-tat debate.
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/may/24/swallows-and-amazons-titty-renamed-tatty-in-bbc-film
Absolutely Shameful
.. and they wonder why we hate them. Microsofts latest little trick is to turn the 'close window' icon into the 'install me now' icon. Read All About It.