Yesterday saw the beginning of a massive effort across a large number of Internet companies to help stop PIPA/SOPA legislation. While that is an important fight it is worth asking - can we afford to fight bad bills one at a time? Why do we even wind up with terrible bills like this in the first place? In his new book “Republic, Lost” Larry Lessig accumulates an impressive amount of evidence pointing to the corrupting influence of money on politics. Everyone who cares about the future – whethe...

Yesterday saw the beginning of a massive effort across a large number of Internet companies to help stop PIPA/SOPA legislation. While that is an important fight it is worth asking - can we afford to fight bad bills one at a time? Why do we even wind up with terrible bills like this in the first place? In his new book “Republic, Lost” Larry Lessig accumulates an impressive amount of evidence pointing to the corrupting influence of money on politics. Everyone who cares about the future – whethe...

It is funny how quickly we take things for granted that didn’t exist just a few years back (obligatory reference to Louis C.K. rant about appreciating technology). Today the thought of using a computer that’s not connected to a network is almost unimaginable. What would you do on that computer? How would you install new software? How would you send/receive email? How would you browse the web? And yet pervasive computer networking is a relatively recent arrival, especially wireless. That doesn...

It is funny how quickly we take things for granted that didn’t exist just a few years back (obligatory reference to Louis C.K. rant about appreciating technology). Today the thought of using a computer that’s not connected to a network is almost unimaginable. What would you do on that computer? How would you install new software? How would you send/receive email? How would you browse the web? And yet pervasive computer networking is a relatively recent arrival, especially wireless. That doesn...

A few months ago we invested in Toronto-based Wattpad. In introducing the investment, I wrote the following paragraph on the Union Square Ventures blog:Wattpad is a community for telling and reading stories. Collectively, Wattpad users last quarter spent an amazing 2 billion minutes writing and reading stories on Wattpad. During that time, nearly three quarter million new stories or parts of stories were uploaded and writers received almost five million comments. To learn more about how Wattp...

A few months ago we invested in Toronto-based Wattpad. In introducing the investment, I wrote the following paragraph on the Union Square Ventures blog:Wattpad is a community for telling and reading stories. Collectively, Wattpad users last quarter spent an amazing 2 billion minutes writing and reading stories on Wattpad. During that time, nearly three quarter million new stories or parts of stories were uploaded and writers received almost five million comments. To learn more about how Wattp...

While I was driving the kids around on the weekend one of the radio stations announced that there would be the first ever nation wide test of the Emergency Broadcast System. My almost immediate reaction was something like “isn’t Twitter now the Emergency Broadcast system”? I wound up forgetting about the whole thing seconds later (probably because I arrived at whatever place I was picking the kids up). Then the actual test took place yesterday and wound up failing as many TV stations simply d...

While I was driving the kids around on the weekend one of the radio stations announced that there would be the first ever nation wide test of the Emergency Broadcast System. My almost immediate reaction was something like “isn’t Twitter now the Emergency Broadcast system”? I wound up forgetting about the whole thing seconds later (probably because I arrived at whatever place I was picking the kids up). Then the actual test took place yesterday and wound up failing as many TV stations simply d...

Whenever my kids tell me how their teachers don’t want them to use Wikipedia as a source I redouble my effort to show them why Wikipedia is important and how it works. In particular, I make sure they understand how to look at the history of a page and to check out the discussion or “talk” page that sits behind the content page. Two principles of those pages are critically important. First, they are inclusive by allowing anyone to contribute to the process at least initially (on some controver...

Whenever my kids tell me how their teachers don’t want them to use Wikipedia as a source I redouble my effort to show them why Wikipedia is important and how it works. In particular, I make sure they understand how to look at the history of a page and to check out the discussion or “talk” page that sits behind the content page. Two principles of those pages are critically important. First, they are inclusive by allowing anyone to contribute to the process at least initially (on some controver...

So far of the building blocks for computer systems we have covered processors and memory. We have seen that processors have become massively faster and that memory has become massively cheaper. Today we will learn about storage and find that it has become massively bigger. Throughout this discussion we will use a somewhat eclectic reference point: the length of that great American novel “Moby Dick” which clocks in at 1,203,686 bytes (counted off the text version on DailyLit where you can read...

So far of the building blocks for computer systems we have covered processors and memory. We have seen that processors have become massively faster and that memory has become massively cheaper. Today we will learn about storage and find that it has become massively bigger. Throughout this discussion we will use a somewhat eclectic reference point: the length of that great American novel “Moby Dick” which clocks in at 1,203,686 bytes (counted off the text version on DailyLit where you can read...

Starting today and for the foreseeable future the “Continuations” at the top of this blog will be covered with a call to Stop Censorship. If you read yesterday’s Tech Tuesday post on networking or are familiar with the history of the architecture of the Internet you know that a lack of global control was a core principle behind the design of TCP/IP. That has been key to the amazing innovations we have seen come from the Internet, including its amazing power for social and political change. Ev...

Starting today and for the foreseeable future the “Continuations” at the top of this blog will be covered with a call to Stop Censorship. If you read yesterday’s Tech Tuesday post on networking or are familiar with the history of the architecture of the Internet you know that a lack of global control was a core principle behind the design of TCP/IP. That has been key to the amazing innovations we have seen come from the Internet, including its amazing power for social and political change. Ev...

Susan and I saw Margin Call on Saturday night. The movie has a great cast, including Jeremy Irons, Kevin Spacey and one of my personal favorites, Paul Bettany. My theory is that the more you know about finance, the more you will have trouble enjoying this movie. That’s because Margin Call gets some finance language and mechanics wrong including in a very early scene where Eric Dale, played by the always fun to watch Stanley Tucci, gets fired. The HR rep says to him “of course you get to keep ...

Susan and I saw Margin Call on Saturday night. The movie has a great cast, including Jeremy Irons, Kevin Spacey and one of my personal favorites, Paul Bettany. My theory is that the more you know about finance, the more you will have trouble enjoying this movie. That’s because Margin Call gets some finance language and mechanics wrong including in a very early scene where Eric Dale, played by the always fun to watch Stanley Tucci, gets fired. The HR rep says to him “of course you get to keep ...

I am about to get on a plane to fly up to Syracuse for Startup Weekend. Really looking forward to meeting the participants. It is awesome to have many more people exploring startups as an alternative to working at some existing company! Was also pleased to see Twilio as a sponsor – after all, the first version of GroupMe was built on top of Twilio over a weekend. One of the many wonderful things about the Internet is that geography is no longer destiny when it comes to startups. No city or re...

I am about to get on a plane to fly up to Syracuse for Startup Weekend. Really looking forward to meeting the participants. It is awesome to have many more people exploring startups as an alternative to working at some existing company! Was also pleased to see Twilio as a sponsor – after all, the first version of GroupMe was built on top of Twilio over a weekend. One of the many wonderful things about the Internet is that geography is no longer destiny when it comes to startups. No city or re...

This morning on Techmeme I ran across three interesting and thought provoking pieces about social networks (all from within the last 24 hours it seems): 1. Maciej Ceglowski’s “The Social Graph is Neither” (10 points for great title alone) is a hilarious dissection of what’s wrong with explicitly declared relationships and even with the act of declaring relationships. It is also a blistering critique of Facebook and a bit of a paean to the message board. Very much worth the read and I found my...

This morning on Techmeme I ran across three interesting and thought provoking pieces about social networks (all from within the last 24 hours it seems): 1. Maciej Ceglowski’s “The Social Graph is Neither” (10 points for great title alone) is a hilarious dissection of what’s wrong with explicitly declared relationships and even with the act of declaring relationships. It is also a blistering critique of Facebook and a bit of a paean to the message board. Very much worth the read and I found my...