Think about it: The Economist discusses two interesting facts in an article published a few weeks ago. Income inequality has risen in most countries in the world over the past 10 years. Total global income inequality has fallen over the same period of time. How is that possible? If almost every country has rising income inequality shouldn’t total income inequality be growing globally? (If you want to take a second and try to think about how this is possible, do it now)....
Last week I was fascinated by the IBM Watson vs Human challenge on Jeopardy. Despite my love of technology, I found myself oddly hoping Ken Jennings would win (he did not). He made a compelling run in the second game, and ended final jeopardy with the following meme. (Stoker is the answer to the question- question to the answer?). Afterwards the always witty and intelligent Jennings did a great interview with the washington post....
Update on this post in 2022… I wrote some posts around this time that were explicitly predicting things. This post wasn’t that. It was more what we’d call a ‘vibe shift’ take. But I think I actually called this pretty well! Original post… Like many tech minded people I viscerally hate prestige. We tend to want to view the world as a harsh meritocracy where only the best achieve success. It’s partly why we revere people who have the guts to drop out of school....
“The first principal is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.” Richard Feynman Near the beginning of my time as an SAT tutor I had a client, who we will call “Steve.” When I first met Steve he seemed like a nice kid, perhaps a bit reluctant to work hard to improve his score, but amiable enough. My first few visits with each student began the same way- going through the basic strategies before tailoring the rest our time to the specific students needs....
Update on this post in 2022… This is funny to read 11 year later. In review I’d say: 3 of 7 were directionally right (Facebook, NYC startups, and undergrads studying technical fields) 2 were underwhelming but reasonable (Enterprise Tablet, Hardware Startups) 2 were extremely wrong (AOL making a comeback! Phone’s getting viruses) It’s not that surprising that the three I got right were, basically, the things I understood best. I was a Facebook user in the target demo of the time....
In early 1999, two students raised $100,000 to turn a research idea into a company. Young and risk-averse, they approached the market leader asking to be bought for $1 Million. They were negotiated down to $750,000 before the market leader finally decided not to make the purchase. The small startup asking to be acquired? Google, which IPO’d in 2004 and currently has a market cap of $192 Billion. The market leader that turned down the acquisition?...