What’s Next — Bias, Predictions, Computingby Jordan Gonen
by Jordan Gonen
Hi there 😇 Hope you had an awesome weekend!!
Building/writing/thinking about anything new? Let me know 📩
10.9.2017
Articles to Read.
Bias from Incentives and Reinforcement:
“Never, ever, think about something else when you should be thinking about the power of incentives.” — Charlie Munger
I watched a bunch of YC Office Hours’ recordings this week, here are some of my favorites:
– Patrick Collision at Startup School
– Lessons From Doing YC Twice — Harj Taggar
– Office Hours w/ Daniel Gross
– Flexport at YC Office Hours in 2012
“The Executive Computer” — An Essay Written in 1992 About the Future of Personal Computing:
Sometime around the middle of this decade no one is sure exactly when — executives on the go will begin carrying pocket-sized digital communicating devices. And although nobody is exactly sure what features these personal information gizmos will have, what they will cost, what they will look like or what they will be called, hundreds of computer industry officials and investors at the Mobile ’92 conference here last week agreed that the devices could become the foundation of the next great fortunes to be made in the personal computer business.
Our Minds Can Be Hijacked — Fear of Smartphone Dystopia:
A decade after he stayed up all night coding a prototype of what was then called an “awesome” button, Rosenstein belongs to a small but growing band of Silicon Valley heretics who complain about the rise of the so-called “attention economy”: an internet shaped around the demands of an advertising economy.
Decoding the Qualities of a Great VC:
What makes a good VC? What’s important to venture firms, limited partners and founders? Who are the best VCs and what makes them special?
- Curiosity — thirst for knowledge and learning.
- Emotional intelligence — empathize and assess motivations, desires, needs and intangibles.
- Focus — ability to drown out noise and spend time on what matters.
WeWork’s $20 Billion Office Party:
ADAM NEUMANN, THE FRENETIC cofounder and CEO of WeWork, was pacing back and forth in his office in New York City’s Chelsea neighborhood, ignoring the heavy bag, the Peloton spin bike and the generously stocked bar in favor of something more urgent: the clock. Softbank boss Masayoshi Son, Japan’s wealthiest man and one of the world’s great investors, had promised the 38-year-old former Israeli naval officer two hours of his time for a full-blown tour of the co-working innovator’s headquarters. And he was an hour and a half late.
“Masa arrives, looks at his watch and tells me, ‘I’m so sorry, but I only have 12 minutes,’ “ Neumann says in a raspy voice. And after precisely 12 minutes of walk-around, Son said he had to go.
But he offered Neumann a chance to join him in his car. Neumann grabbed his pitch deck and climbed into what would become a $20 billion ride.
Cloud computing is driving growth at 3 of the 5 most valuable companies in the world. AI will impact jobs only as quickly as AI-powered business software evolves. These are just two of the ramifications of disruptions in enterprise technology permeating mainstream media.
Onwards to what matters — the trends. The report highlights five key themes:
- A mini AI crash will shine light on systems of intelligence
- Systems of intelligence = gold rush for entrepreneurs
- Cloud native reshapes middleware into a powerful enabler of systems of intelligence
- The security ecosystem will reorganize itself into systems of intelligence
- Industrial (IoT) systems of intelligence need distributed infrastructure to catch up
[tweet]
The challenge with adding more engineers to a project. Just moving from 3 developers to 4 doubles the number of lines of communication.
The Coming Software Apocalypse [long read]:
There were six hours during the night of April 10, 2014, when the entire population of Washington State had no 911 service. The 911 outage, at the time the largest ever reported, was traced to software running on a server in Englewood, Colorado. Almost more frightening was the realization, late in the day, that it was just a coincidence. The software did exactly what it was told to do. The reason it failed is that it was told to do the wrong thing.
Computers had doubled in power every 18 months for the last 40 years. Why hasn’t programming changed?
[video] The True Story Of Nadaam — The World’s Fairest Cashmere
[guide] — Brick by Brick: A Free Guide to Building Awesome Communities
Why The Economy is Bad for Most People:
However, this economy was decades in the making, and if we do not understand how it happened we will only wind up in a good economy through accident, and, having obtained a good economy, will not be able to keep it. These articles aren’t exhaustive; a better list would include almost five centuries of economic history, at least in summary, and certainly deal with the 19th century and early 20th centuries.
More:
– A 5 Minute Guide to Better Typography
– [guide] How to Get What You Want Professionally
– [product] Density — A People Counter & API
– Softbank 30 Year Vision
– Bitwise Crypto Index Fund
– A New $2B Video Startup (from the founder of Dreamworks)
– Elon Musk Tweets about Rick and MortySee My Full Reading List
You made it to the end! Thanks for reading 👋
If you enjoyed, would really appreciate if you shared this link!
Want to read more? I write daily, and tweet too!
My Update:
– I have been doing lots of research into big industries/problems lately. Basically I have just been digging into files and reading as much information as possible. How do you learn most about things you have no experience in?
– Studying abroad in Hong Kong next semester, already getting excited for that. Getting through this semester as next wave of Midterms are this week. After that, going to Philadelphia and New York for the weekend.
– My friend and I actually just sold Cryptotab (if you remember, a project we launched just a few weeks ago) to a Bitcoin publication — was cool going through that process!
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Thanks for reading! Really hope you enjoyed! (If you did, would be really awesome if you could share this link with 5 friends)
– Jordan
Personal Website
By jordangonen on October 9, 2017.
Exported from Medium on February 17, 2018.