GamerGate has laid bare a fundamental fault line for online discourse. A. Words matter. Anyone dismissing tweets threatening violence along the lines of “sticks and stones can break my bones but words will never harm me” is trivializing the power of words. We all know that words can cause immediate emotional harm. And beyond that immediate effect, words lead to thoughts and thoughts (can) lead to actions. I am not claiming some deterministic causality between a specific tweet and a specific a...

I have written before that it is OK to worry about the effects of automation on work. One frequently encountered response is that this worry is wrong, that having it is committing the Lump of Labor fallacy. Marc in particular has been bringing it up a lot, including on Twitter, in a blog post, and a recent interview. But this is a red herring. One can legitimately worry about the transition even if one believes that the Lump of Labor fallacy is in fact a fallacy. So let me posit for a moment ...

GamerGate has laid bare a fundamental fault line for online discourse. A. Words matter. Anyone dismissing tweets threatening violence along the lines of “sticks and stones can break my bones but words will never harm me” is trivializing the power of words. We all know that words can cause immediate emotional harm. And beyond that immediate effect, words lead to thoughts and thoughts (can) lead to actions. I am not claiming some deterministic causality between a specific tweet and a specific a...

I have written before that it is OK to worry about the effects of automation on work. One frequently encountered response is that this worry is wrong, that having it is committing the Lump of Labor fallacy. Marc in particular has been bringing it up a lot, including on Twitter, in a blog post, and a recent interview. But this is a red herring. One can legitimately worry about the transition even if one believes that the Lump of Labor fallacy is in fact a fallacy. So let me posit for a moment ...

Later today I am talking at Point Nine Capital’s annual SaaS conference. The topic will be how to create network effects for SaaS businesses. Just as a quick reminder, a business has network effects if the value of the service increases for all customers as the business grows. Here are some of the ways that this can be accomplished: First, there is the obvious one which is actually connecting businesses to each other. For instance, if your are in purchasing management and you connect companie...

Later today I am talking at Point Nine Capital’s annual SaaS conference. The topic will be how to create network effects for SaaS businesses. Just as a quick reminder, a business has network effects if the value of the service increases for all customers as the business grows. Here are some of the ways that this can be accomplished: First, there is the obvious one which is actually connecting businesses to each other. For instance, if your are in purchasing management and you connect companie...

Earlier this year I had a blog post about how writing software applications in-house is making a comeback. I was reminded of this when I attended the HackNY hackathon at NYU over the weekend. I was there to help Susan with representing Ziggeo, her startup, which provides an API for video recording and playback. The number of APIs and open source projects out there that do amazing things is simply staggering. Watching some other NY based startups present their APIs and feeling the excitement a...

Earlier this year I had a blog post about how writing software applications in-house is making a comeback. I was reminded of this when I attended the HackNY hackathon at NYU over the weekend. I was there to help Susan with representing Ziggeo, her startup, which provides an API for video recording and playback. The number of APIs and open source projects out there that do amazing things is simply staggering. Watching some other NY based startups present their APIs and feeling the excitement a...

In the current discussions on what to do (or not to do) about the Ebola outbreak the word “panic” is being abused. Panic means a “sudden, overpowering terror, often affecting many people at once.” And some of the nonstop CNN coverage can rightly be accused of contributing to a potential panic among the population. But the word is also being used widely to criticize anyone calling for stronger measures. In that context it is not only wrong but also used to chill what should be a rational discu...

In the current discussions on what to do (or not to do) about the Ebola outbreak the word “panic” is being abused. Panic means a “sudden, overpowering terror, often affecting many people at once.” And some of the nonstop CNN coverage can rightly be accused of contributing to a potential panic among the population. But the word is also being used widely to criticize anyone calling for stronger measures. In that context it is not only wrong but also used to chill what should be a rational discu...

I used to be highly skeptical that one could be reading more than one book at a time. But in the last couple of years what I have found works best for me is to have 3-4 non fiction books going simultaneously. I tend to pick books on quite different subjects so I that there is no confusion. Progress on each book is somewhat slower than reading just one but not by as much as I would have thought and my completion rate is way up. Here is why I think this works. When you have only one book and yo...

I used to be highly skeptical that one could be reading more than one book at a time. But in the last couple of years what I have found works best for me is to have 3-4 non fiction books going simultaneously. I tend to pick books on quite different subjects so I that there is no confusion. Progress on each book is somewhat slower than reading just one but not by as much as I would have thought and my completion rate is way up. Here is why I think this works. When you have only one book and yo...

I have been blogging less recently. One reason is that I have been working on talks such as the one I gave recently at Techonomy in Detroit and the one I am preparing now for TEDxNY. The other reason though is that I have been reading a lot about buddhism, hinduism, neuroscience and physics. I don’t yet have a lot to say about my new insights as I am still learning and digesting but I wanted to share what motivated my interest. Unbeknownst to me it started with a blog post I wrote a while bac...

I have been blogging less recently. One reason is that I have been working on talks such as the one I gave recently at Techonomy in Detroit and the one I am preparing now for TEDxNY. The other reason though is that I have been reading a lot about buddhism, hinduism, neuroscience and physics. I don’t yet have a lot to say about my new insights as I am still learning and digesting but I wanted to share what motivated my interest. Unbeknownst to me it started with a blog post I wrote a while bac...

Yesterday evening we were driving back to the city from an afternoon in the suburbs. The drive was completely uneventful until we got to the EZ Pass toll booth on the Triboro bridge. We have had our current EZ Pass for at least a decade and never had a problem with it. So I was rudely surprised when the gate did not open and the sign said “Contact EZ Pass, Low Balance.” We rapidly had a large number of honking cars behind us. We sat there for several minutes with the honking getting ever more...

Yesterday evening we were driving back to the city from an afternoon in the suburbs. The drive was completely uneventful until we got to the EZ Pass toll booth on the Triboro bridge. We have had our current EZ Pass for at least a decade and never had a problem with it. So I was rudely surprised when the gate did not open and the sign said “Contact EZ Pass, Low Balance.” We rapidly had a large number of honking cars behind us. We sat there for several minutes with the honking getting ever more...

Last week I was in Detroit to speak at Techonomy’s one day conference there. I had never been to the city before and enjoyed meeting Mike Duggan, the mayor, Beth Niblock, CIO, and many other people working hard to turn things around. It is a fascinating window into challenges I believe we will face more broadly going forward. Here are the video, the slides and a transcript of the talk. (Transcription by RA Fisher Ink) Kirkpatrick: Good job, thanks so much. You know, like I said before, in the...

Last week I was in Detroit to speak at Techonomy’s one day conference there. I had never been to the city before and enjoyed meeting Mike Duggan, the mayor, Beth Niblock, CIO, and many other people working hard to turn things around. It is a fascinating window into challenges I believe we will face more broadly going forward. Here are the video, the slides and a transcript of the talk. (Transcription by RA Fisher Ink) Kirkpatrick: Good job, thanks so much. You know, like I said before, in the...

I am thrilled that the Climate March in New York City yesterday had such a huge turnout. It felt like the beginning of an important movement to finally take more decisive action. The organizers estimate that more than 300,000 people attended. Marching it certainly felt full of energy and representative of a broad cross section of society On my way to the march I ran across a WSJ op-ed piece on how little we still know about how the climate works (via this tweet). That reminded me to write abo...

I am thrilled that the Climate March in New York City yesterday had such a huge turnout. It felt like the beginning of an important movement to finally take more decisive action. The organizers estimate that more than 300,000 people attended. Marching it certainly felt full of energy and representative of a broad cross section of society On my way to the march I ran across a WSJ op-ed piece on how little we still know about how the climate works (via this tweet). That reminded me to write abo...