I attended an interesting lunch yesterday on something called the B Corporation. It is an effort to formally write the idea of triple bottom line businesses into corporate law and provide the standards to go along with that. Today’s common form of organization is the C Corporation which has as its objectives to maximize shareholder value. The key measurement standard that goes along with that is GAAP accounting. B Corporations by contrast have a broader set of objectives that includes positiv...

I attended an interesting lunch yesterday on something called the B Corporation. It is an effort to formally write the idea of triple bottom line businesses into corporate law and provide the standards to go along with that. Today’s common form of organization is the C Corporation which has as its objectives to maximize shareholder value. The key measurement standard that goes along with that is GAAP accounting. B Corporations by contrast have a broader set of objectives that includes positiv...

Before we can go on and explore the building blocks in more detail, we need to learn a little bit about the fundamental underlying language used in computers: the binary number system. Based on my kids’ school, this appears to be a 6th grade math topic that’s apparently taught without any context. I am hoping I can do better here. The numbers that we use day-in day-out are based on the decimal system. In the decimal system we use ten digits: 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9. It is *not* a coin...

Before we can go on and explore the building blocks in more detail, we need to learn a little bit about the fundamental underlying language used in computers: the binary number system. Based on my kids’ school, this appears to be a 6th grade math topic that’s apparently taught without any context. I am hoping I can do better here. The numbers that we use day-in day-out are based on the decimal system. In the decimal system we use ten digits: 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9. It is *not* a coin...

Dennis M. Ritchie passed away yesterday. Ritchie was the creator of the C programming language and the co-creator of the Unix operating system (together with Ken Thompson) starting in the late 60s and early 70s. Both C and Unix have provided the underpinnings for many of the systems we still use today all the way up to iOS. I find it impossible not to think about the pronounced differences between Ritchie’s and Jobs’ contributions to the history of computing. Especially because in my personal...

Dennis M. Ritchie passed away yesterday. Ritchie was the creator of the C programming language and the co-creator of the Unix operating system (together with Ken Thompson) starting in the late 60s and early 70s. Both C and Unix have provided the underpinnings for many of the systems we still use today all the way up to iOS. I find it impossible not to think about the pronounced differences between Ritchie’s and Jobs’ contributions to the history of computing. Especially because in my personal...

So I was wrong when I wrote that Occupy Wall Street would at best help draw media attention to inequality. I had suggested that instead folks should spend their time building startups that disrupt existing institutions. It now seems that the Occupy Together movement has the potential to disrupt one of the most important institutions altogether: the political process. Unlike much of the media, however, I don’t think it’s important for there to be immediate concrete suggestions for what to chan...

So I was wrong when I wrote that Occupy Wall Street would at best help draw media attention to inequality. I had suggested that instead folks should spend their time building startups that disrupt existing institutions. It now seems that the Occupy Together movement has the potential to disrupt one of the most important institutions altogether: the political process. Unlike much of the media, however, I don’t think it’s important for there to be immediate concrete suggestions for what to chan...

Do you have a passion for creating technology to better connect teachers with each other and their students? Then you should consider working at Edmodo. The company, which is based in San Mateo, provides a free and safe social network for K12 education. Since we invested last year, Edmodo has grown dramatically to well over 3 million users worldwide. Edmodo is achieving the kind of scale that presents interesting engineering challenges and exciting opportunities to assist schools and teachers...

Do you have a passion for creating technology to better connect teachers with each other and their students? Then you should consider working at Edmodo. The company, which is based in San Mateo, provides a free and safe social network for K12 education. Since we invested last year, Edmodo has grown dramatically to well over 3 million users worldwide. Edmodo is achieving the kind of scale that presents interesting engineering challenges and exciting opportunities to assist schools and teachers...

Had a really inspiring conversation yesterday in an inspiring place (Monticello). The gist is summarized by this post’s title. What does it mean though to be good, not less bad? The difference is similar to local optimization versus global optimization. We spend too much of our time (as individuals, companies, countries) at making small changes to systems that are fundamentally flawed or broken. We need to be more willing to start with values that help us rethink what good would be and then d...

Had a really inspiring conversation yesterday in an inspiring place (Monticello). The gist is summarized by this post’s title. What does it mean though to be good, not less bad? The difference is similar to local optimization versus global optimization. We spend too much of our time (as individuals, companies, countries) at making small changes to systems that are fundamentally flawed or broken. We need to be more willing to start with values that help us rethink what good would be and then d...

Welcome to Tech Tuesdays! This is the first installment and as I had promised I am not assuming any prior knowledge other than as an enduser of computers. Instead we are starting with the absolute basics. Every computing system has to provide in some way for five different building blocks. Today’s post will be an overview of these building blocks with each one visited in more detail in subsequent posts. Why should you care about the building blocks? Because they will let you think systematica...

Welcome to Tech Tuesdays! This is the first installment and as I had promised I am not assuming any prior knowledge other than as an enduser of computers. Instead we are starting with the absolute basics. Every computing system has to provide in some way for five different building blocks. Today’s post will be an overview of these building blocks with each one visited in more detail in subsequent posts. Why should you care about the building blocks? Because they will let you think systematica...

Tomorrow I will be attending an “Innovation Summit” hosted by the Darden School of Business. I just finished reading Peter Thiel’s “The End of the Future” in the National Review. Thiel’s argument is that underlying our economic difficulties is a more profound problem: a dramatic slow-down in innovation. His examples include the fact that we now find ourselves with travel slowing down not speeding up (Concord decommissioned and no successor in sight) and the apparent lack of progress on treati...

Tomorrow I will be attending an “Innovation Summit” hosted by the Darden School of Business. I just finished reading Peter Thiel’s “The End of the Future” in the National Review. Thiel’s argument is that underlying our economic difficulties is a more profound problem: a dramatic slow-down in innovation. His examples include the fact that we now find ourselves with travel slowing down not speeding up (Concord decommissioned and no successor in sight) and the apparent lack of progress on treati...

It feels a bit strange now that I wrote a post yesterday morning about “Apple’s Glory Years,” not realizing that in the evening I would see the news that Steve Jobs had passed away. There have been many excellent tributes and I read a lot of them last night (collected here on delicious) with one of my favorites being Walt Mossberg’s piece. Like many others, I found myself deeply moved by the passing of someone I had never met in person. That is despite the fact that my feelings about Steve Jo...

It feels a bit strange now that I wrote a post yesterday morning about “Apple’s Glory Years,” not realizing that in the evening I would see the news that Steve Jobs had passed away. There have been many excellent tributes and I read a lot of them last night (collected here on delicious) with one of my favorites being Walt Mossberg’s piece. Like many others, I found myself deeply moved by the passing of someone I had never met in person. That is despite the fact that my feelings about Steve Jo...

These are without a doubt Apple’s glory years. The company has a stellar range of consumer products including the block busters: iPad2, iPhone4 (soon 4S), and MacBook Air. Our household alone has at least half a dozen pricey Apple devices. And still I don’t think it will last. By that I don’t mean that Apple will somehow run into trouble overnight but rather that it faces twin challenges that will likely significantly reduce its influence over time: price and software. People writing about sm...

These are without a doubt Apple’s glory years. The company has a stellar range of consumer products including the block busters: iPad2, iPhone4 (soon 4S), and MacBook Air. Our household alone has at least half a dozen pricey Apple devices. And still I don’t think it will last. By that I don’t mean that Apple will somehow run into trouble overnight but rather that it faces twin challenges that will likely significantly reduce its influence over time: price and software. People writing about sm...