Online or Offline: Which life is more real?

On the plane the other day I listened to a fantastic podcast [here]. Two of my favorite thinkiers were having a fast-paced and far ranging conversation. And Chris Dixon said something to Fred Wilson at this one point in their talk that's really stuck with me.

"I think that at some point the world may see a majority shift to people rating the online world - their digital lives and digital possessions - as important or maybe more important than their offline lives." [poorly paraphrased by me]

Based on what I'm seeing in the early days of NFTs and combined with how much of life *can* be carried out with just a screen and airpods, I think that moment may be closer than many think.

I think I'm gonna post a related question on Cent. The questions and phrasing aren't 100% set so ping me if you have any imput.

1. Which type of life is more important to you?
2. Which one do you think is more important to most people today? 
3. Do you think your response to question no.2 will change in the future? 
4. If you think it will change, please explain why you believe that will be the case.

Blogging: Mental Sustenance

Fred Wilson's avc.com blog has passed it's 15th anniversary. That's absolutely incredible.

To commemorate that fact, Fred published an awesomely humble and concise blog that I recommend everyone give a read [here].

For me, the following really stuck with me:

> I regularly get people coming to me and asking me to write a book. I always pass because I can’t imagine writing in a format that has an end. I can’t imagine writing in a format that doesn’t provide instant feedback. I can’t imagine writing in a format that requires a structure. I can’t imagine writing in a format that isn’t a stream of consciousness. I can’t imagine thinking about what I am going to write more than ten minutes before writing it. I can’t imagine killing trees to carry my words. So I will continue to write a blog. It’s the perfect format for me. AVC is way more than a book. It is a living breathing thing that sustains me and that is me.

I love that because I agree with everything Fred wrote. And because I'm envious of the 'instant feedback' Fred's been able to get from his blog. That 'instant feedback' and the steady reader base that gives rise to it occupy an enormous chunk of the value proposition of the benefits of blogging to bloggers.

Unfortunately, and as most of my longtime readers know since I've beaten this horse before, most casual bloggers are not able to experience that 'instant feedback' from a steady base of readers. Ever.

But finally - freaking finally! - that no longer need be the case for bloggers, or really any amateur content creators. Why? Because Cent is about to finally introduce a new smart contract that'll first and foremost provide the ability of any creator to monetize their creations, but will also (should the creator seek to utilize the built-in incentive functionality) allow the creator to wrangle up a readership and commenting base on-demand.

I don't want to say too much, but all will (finally!) be unveiled imminently. So stay posted to beta.cent.co for the imminent release of something that will finally(!) help unlock the promise of blogging as a constantly replenishing source of mental sustenance for the mass of casual bloggers and content creators.

Pro-sourcing

Yesterday as I was reading the comments below Fred's latest post on avc.com, I learned a new term: Pro-sourcing.

Ro Gupta, the CEO of Carmera, coined it to describe the process that reflects the unique needs of his company in terms of crowd-sourcing highly reliable and high quality data.

Pro-sourcing is crowdsourcing, but instead of sourcing data or responses from an indiscriminate crowd, data is sourced from a previously verified group of users so as to ensure quality data/responses.

What are your superpowers?

Mine are: frequency, regularity and obsession.

What are yours?

Video of the Week No.1 - CryptoKitties & Fred Wilson

I don't normally watch a lot of Youtube, so when I do watch something on Youtube (that's not a music video) that almost certainly means it's share-worthy.

Over the past week I was daily checking Youtube to see if the talks from Token Summit III had been re-broadcast yet. They were finally released yesterday, including the talk I have been most eager to watch: Where CryptoKitties Are Going, a talk between Fred Wilson (USV) and Dieter Shirley (Crypto Kitties).

They discussed all things NFTs (non-fungible tokens), the state of development on Ethereum, and of course CryptoKitties. It was a great talk and is indeed share-worthy. You can check out the full chat here.

Fred Wilson Hearts Cent

Having someone hearting your Tweets isn't that big of a deal. But it isn't nothing. And if Fred Wilson hearts your Tweet, well that's just pretty damn cool.

I'm in charge of Comms at Cent and outside of our user base on beta.cent.co, our biggest following is over on Twitter, so that is where I concentrate a good bulk of our messaging and signaling.

Cent has been doing what few Dapps have been able to, and not just in terms of finding and growing an actual audience. Our users are putting real money in the form of ETH onto our platform that is flowing through our smart contracts and into the wallets of our users.

In fact tens of thousands of dollars have been distributed to 1300+ users since the beta went live at the end of last summer. Not only is that demonstrating real value, it represents tens of thousands of transactions that would not have been possible but for ETH and the Ethereum network.

That is real value, the same kind of value that Fred Wilson talked about in his post on Sunday [here]. So I linked that article and him into our Tweet. And he hearted it.