Abundance: Why Digital is Disruptive
A good friend of mine recently conducted a fun survey – he asked people why they thought digital was disruptive (I don’t know if he will ever publish the results as this was an internal project at a consulting company). [...] Read more
Starting with Ourselves
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 [...] Read more
Why Values Matter in On-Demand Transportation
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 [...] Read more
Landing on a Comet: The Power of Knowledge
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 [...] Read more
Onename
In discussing bitcoin we have always emphasized that payment is only one potential application of blockchain technology. The decentralized public ledger is a new protocol that enables a fundamenatlly new class of systems: logically centralized but with decentralized control. What does that [...] Read more
From Net Neutrality to Access Liberty: Let’s Build a Coalition
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 [...] Read more
Startups Creating Most Jobs Should Not Be A Surprise
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 [...] Read more
Strengthen Communities by Supporting ChangeX
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 [...] Read more
Liberate Apps Through Protocols: Lets Update IRC!
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 [...] Read more
