I believe in progress. I am optimistic about the longrun. But if we want to get to a better future we have to start by acknowledging how much we still let our emotions control our behavior. It is all around us everyday. From people yelling at each other on Twitter and in comments to physical violence in the streets of our cities and the world at large. It would be easy to say that our brains simply haven’t kept up with the technological revolution around us. But that’s wrong. They still conta...

I took last week off from blogging for family reasons which means I sat out a big wave of posts about Uber. Don’t worry, I am not going to rehash that particular discussion. Instead, I want to point out what I believe the big questions are that should be asked of all companies in this sector which includes two USV investments (Hailo and Sidecar). Here are two questions: 1. Are drivers genuinely independent contractors? A legitimate concern here should be that the level of control that comes f...

I believe in progress. I am optimistic about the longrun. But if we want to get to a better future we have to start by acknowledging how much we still let our emotions control our behavior. It is all around us everyday. From people yelling at each other on Twitter and in comments to physical violence in the streets of our cities and the world at large. It would be easy to say that our brains simply haven’t kept up with the technological revolution around us. But that’s wrong. They still conta...

I took last week off from blogging for family reasons which means I sat out a big wave of posts about Uber. Don’t worry, I am not going to rehash that particular discussion. Instead, I want to point out what I believe the big questions are that should be asked of all companies in this sector which includes two USV investments (Hailo and Sidecar). Here are two questions: 1. Are drivers genuinely independent contractors? A legitimate concern here should be that the level of control that comes f...

Yesterday we landed a probe on a comet. I am saying we because this is a major accomplishment for humanity. For reference, powered heavier-than-air flight was invented only a tad more than one hundred years ago. It is important to really let this sink in. After millennia of dreaming about flying into the skies we went in a little over a century all the way to steering a craft to line up with a comet traveling at 40,000 miles an hour! What makes all of this possible is human ingenuity together...

Yesterday we landed a probe on a comet. I am saying we because this is a major accomplishment for humanity. For reference, powered heavier-than-air flight was invented only a tad more than one hundred years ago. It is important to really let this sink in. After millennia of dreaming about flying into the skies we went in a little over a century all the way to steering a craft to line up with a comet traveling at 40,000 miles an hour! What makes all of this possible is human ingenuity together...

Yesterday President Obama came out strongly in support of the admittedly awfully named principle of net neutrality. I wish he had done so sooner but will take it now. This is an absolutely critical principle to maintain in order to keep the Internet open for innovation. I am not going to rehash all the arguments for why we need it or refute all the points suggesting this is the government encroaching into an area it should stay out of. So instead of just firing away in the comments please fir...

Yesterday President Obama came out strongly in support of the admittedly awfully named principle of net neutrality. I wish he had done so sooner but will take it now. This is an absolutely critical principle to maintain in order to keep the Internet open for innovation. I am not going to rehash all the arguments for why we need it or refute all the points suggesting this is the government encroaching into an area it should stay out of. So instead of just firing away in the comments please fir...

We all live in communities and it is up to us to make our community stronger. There tends to be no shortage of people who want to contribute to that. But many find it difficult to get going: it can be hard to find others who share the same impulse and even harder to figure out how to get started. Very few people want to embark on a lonely climb up a steep mountain without a map! Enter the team at ChangeX. Started by Paul O'Hara they are building a network for sharing community initiative...

We all live in communities and it is up to us to make our community stronger. There tends to be no shortage of people who want to contribute to that. But many find it difficult to get going: it can be hard to find others who share the same impulse and even harder to figure out how to get started. Very few people want to embark on a lonely climb up a steep mountain without a map! Enter the team at ChangeX. Started by Paul O'Hara they are building a network for sharing community initiative...

A lot of technology gets built through layering new systems on top of old ones to the point where some stacks look like an archeological dig at Troy. There is nothing wrong with that approach per se, except that over time some of the lower layers become a constraint on what can be done above them. A classic example of that has been operating systems. Sometimes they have to be revised, for instance to account for the move from 32-bit to 64-bit architectures. Sometimes they have to be replaced ...

A lot of technology gets built through layering new systems on top of old ones to the point where some stacks look like an archeological dig at Troy. There is nothing wrong with that approach per se, except that over time some of the lower layers become a constraint on what can be done above them. A classic example of that has been operating systems. Sometimes they have to be revised, for instance to account for the move from 32-bit to 64-bit architectures. Sometimes they have to be replaced ...

About once a year there is a headline like this one from Forbes “The Surprising Truth About Where New Jobs Come From” that points to a study showing that most job creation is in startups. Now the only thing that is in fact surprising is that this would be considered a surprise. Why? Because this should be our baseline statistical expectation in any economy that has been around for a while. Any collection of “things” that has a cycle of starting small, then growing and eventually declining and...

About once a year there is a headline like this one from Forbes “The Surprising Truth About Where New Jobs Come From” that points to a study showing that most job creation is in startups. Now the only thing that is in fact surprising is that this would be considered a surprise. Why? Because this should be our baseline statistical expectation in any economy that has been around for a while. Any collection of “things” that has a cycle of starting small, then growing and eventually declining and...

Whenever I write about about either income inequality or basic income guarantee I usually get a comment how none of it will matter if we don’t help people get out from underneath debt first. I was also reminded of that recently when I heard how much interest some students are paying on their student debt. And I have started to read Debt: The First 5,000 Years which is fascinating. So here is an idea. What if there was a site for crowdsourcing debt relief in a lottery format. People contribute...

Whenever I write about about either income inequality or basic income guarantee I usually get a comment how none of it will matter if we don’t help people get out from underneath debt first. I was also reminded of that recently when I heard how much interest some students are paying on their student debt. And I have started to read Debt: The First 5,000 Years which is fascinating. So here is an idea. What if there was a site for crowdsourcing debt relief in a lottery format. People contribute...

One of the apps on your phone is unlike all the others: the web browser. There are many reasons it is different but here is the most fundamental one – you tell it what to connect to! Pretty much every other app connects to a specific set of servers that the app’s creators control. So the browser gives you as enduser a fundamentally higher level of control than most other apps. What makes this possible is the existence of the HTTP protocol. So what we need in order to shift more control back i...

One of the apps on your phone is unlike all the others: the web browser. There are many reasons it is different but here is the most fundamental one – you tell it what to connect to! Pretty much every other app connects to a specific set of servers that the app’s creators control. So the browser gives you as enduser a fundamentally higher level of control than most other apps. What makes this possible is the existence of the HTTP protocol. So what we need in order to shift more control back i...

Historically when a new and initially expensive piece of technology became available, all we could do was admire it from a distance and hope that some day in the future a cheaper version would be available for all of us to afford. Now with companies such as Science Exchange and Shapeways, the latest technology can be available to anyone on a shared basis from day one. So I am thrilled that today Shapeways announced that it will have the latest in 3D printing technology that is coming from HP....

Historically when a new and initially expensive piece of technology became available, all we could do was admire it from a distance and hope that some day in the future a cheaper version would be available for all of us to afford. Now with companies such as Science Exchange and Shapeways, the latest technology can be available to anyone on a shared basis from day one. So I am thrilled that today Shapeways announced that it will have the latest in 3D printing technology that is coming from HP....