I hate when people say things like:
"You knew Bitcoin et al. were created out of thin air (or less)..."
~ Javert Chip
If this person used "out of thin air" in a sense evoking the process behind how most commercially produced nitrogen is made - which is to say "out of thin air" - then I have no qualms with their use of that expression.
But no one uses that phrase like that.
What is super ironic though, is how right they actually are in their wrongness.
'Bitcoin et al.' were created out of the nearly unlimited digital possibility constantly provisioned by networked computers atop which, methods from several distinct fields of cryptography, game theory, software engineering, programming and a few other fields were pulled together and combined in just the right order.
Being able to mine the first bitcoin on 3 January 2009 and not on 2 January 2009 is no different than how nitrogen was unable to be harvested from the atmosphere before chemistry had advanced enough to where knowledge and techniques could be applied to the atmosphere in just the right way.
If you think deep enough, ever since the atmosphere first formed, or from the time that the first networked computer system was set up, the possibilities of both nitrogen harvesting and bitcoin mining had always existed. It's just that those possibilities were concealed.
Because those possibilities were concealed, they were 'impossible'. Every possibility that has not yet been revealed is by definition impossible.
Pulling something out of thin air used to be impossible, and then one day, it was possible - it became true. In Greek 'aletheia' means truth. It's literal translation is 'unconcealed'. Truth is just the revealing of possibility.
So when someone mocks another's idea by saying it is 'impossible' because they are too thick to realize that concealed possibilities are continually being revealed, just tell them to go fuck themselves. That is, after all, how their life literally ceased being an impossibility and became possible to begin with.
2018년 2월 7일 수요일
Gradatim Ferociter
"Step by Step, Ferociously"
Steady progress toward seemingly impossible goals will win the day.
Setbacks are temporary.
Naysayers are best ignored.
~Blue Origin (Amazon) Motto
Steady progress toward seemingly impossible goals will win the day.
Setbacks are temporary.
Naysayers are best ignored.
~Blue Origin (Amazon) Motto
2018년 2월 6일 화요일
Risk as a Function of Perception
I am just about to wrap up Brad Stone's "The Everything Store," his book on Jeff Bezos and the inception, initial rise followed by hard times, and ultimate success of Amazon.
Usually biographies humanize their subjects, but in this case, Bezos has essentially become a god in my eyes. An angry god to be sure, and one that knows the devil is in the details.
Beyond Bezos though, what really struck and stuck with me, was how the book perfectly captured the anxiety and fear that permeated the markets during the bear cycle and ultimate dot.com bubble pop back in 2000.
At that time Amazon's stock fell to less than $10, losing hundreds of millions of dollars for shareholders and employees. And they were getting *trashed* in the media.
Amazon's then treasurer summed up the fear and anxiety perfectly: "The most anxiety-inducing thing about [the Wall Street bears and negative media] was that the risk [of going to zero] was a function of perception and not the reality."
The real danger was that the negative media might turn into a self-fulfilling prophecy. And that strain of bearish thinking actually took hold for awhile. Large numbers of people illogically thought the Internet revolution and all its invention would just disappear.
It feels like this history is rhyming again today as the crypto sector has just lost hundreds of billions off its network value virtually overnight.
The bears and perma-critics are smugly declaring defeat for cryptocurrencies. Many retail investors probably didn't know anything about the underlying tech so they probably think crypto dead too.
But just as Amazon and its cohort of other dot.com bubble survivors have shown, these sorts of revolutions have a way of upending short-term criticism over the long run. As the internet continues to prove, it has had an extremely powerful non-linear impact on every single other sector.
Amazon used the power of the internet to provide customers - end users - with a level of instant, personalized satisfaction that was impossible before it. That in turn has helped it become a real contender to become the everything store for the whole freaking world.
The seeds carried by the sudden deluge of blockchain and cryptocurrency speculation have just been laid. Already flowers are starting to appear giving a preview of what may be possible soon for end users. It's amazing how quickly they have taken root, and I am sure that there will be an Amazon (or ten or hundred) that'll bloom and grow atop this new technology soon.
Usually biographies humanize their subjects, but in this case, Bezos has essentially become a god in my eyes. An angry god to be sure, and one that knows the devil is in the details.
Beyond Bezos though, what really struck and stuck with me, was how the book perfectly captured the anxiety and fear that permeated the markets during the bear cycle and ultimate dot.com bubble pop back in 2000.
At that time Amazon's stock fell to less than $10, losing hundreds of millions of dollars for shareholders and employees. And they were getting *trashed* in the media.
Amazon's then treasurer summed up the fear and anxiety perfectly: "The most anxiety-inducing thing about [the Wall Street bears and negative media] was that the risk [of going to zero] was a function of perception and not the reality."
The real danger was that the negative media might turn into a self-fulfilling prophecy. And that strain of bearish thinking actually took hold for awhile. Large numbers of people illogically thought the Internet revolution and all its invention would just disappear.
It feels like this history is rhyming again today as the crypto sector has just lost hundreds of billions off its network value virtually overnight.
The bears and perma-critics are smugly declaring defeat for cryptocurrencies. Many retail investors probably didn't know anything about the underlying tech so they probably think crypto dead too.
But just as Amazon and its cohort of other dot.com bubble survivors have shown, these sorts of revolutions have a way of upending short-term criticism over the long run. As the internet continues to prove, it has had an extremely powerful non-linear impact on every single other sector.
Amazon used the power of the internet to provide customers - end users - with a level of instant, personalized satisfaction that was impossible before it. That in turn has helped it become a real contender to become the everything store for the whole freaking world.
The seeds carried by the sudden deluge of blockchain and cryptocurrency speculation have just been laid. Already flowers are starting to appear giving a preview of what may be possible soon for end users. It's amazing how quickly they have taken root, and I am sure that there will be an Amazon (or ten or hundred) that'll bloom and grow atop this new technology soon.
2018년 2월 5일 월요일
Paul Martino's Advice for Cent
I was re-listening to one of my favorite podcasts of 2017, the Paul Martino episode on the Software Engineering Daily podcast that I included in my lists of all things good the other day.
In the episode Paul recounts a few of the mis-steps he and his team made working on an early, initially successfull, but ultimately failed social networking site called Tribe.
Paul gives listeners a full five-course meal of food for thought, but what really grabbed my attention was this: "[Tribe] didn't pay any attention to curating who their initial user base was."
The initial users themselves set the tone for the site, and usually earlier than many would expect. Once set, it is nearly impossible to alter.
In Tribe's case, they got all the 'burning man' users that were purged enmasse from Friendster. In the end, this super alternative crowd was no match for *that* social network that started with a highly curated group of users from the Ivy League.
Cent of course is my favorite site these days. It is a little less than half a year old (154 days to be precise) and based on the number of responses-per-bounty, it's user base is growing into a globally diverse group.
But like Tribe before it, Cent seems open to accepting everyone. Since any account can upvote anyone else, basically everyone who posts a response gets a piece of the bounty.
If we were a commons, everyone would be starving. Cent is, in effect, curating poverty.
As fellow Centian @paulkay put it: It's just too damn hard to earn beer money on Cent.
Cent isn't the only blockchain-based app or site to pay out crypto for user generated work either. Earn and Steemit are more popular and successful. Despite the shortcommings of those sites, several of their users bring in very large returns.
Add to that Earn's highly selective, curated lists and the fact that it has convinced a bunch of really big names to sign up and the differences become clear.
Cent's novelty is very exciting to be sure, but passionate users will leave soon if there are sites that provide better incentives.
As I have proposed elsewhere, I believe there is a novel way to solve this issue: institute a new user-class called Centurions, who alone have the ability to upvote or downvote responses.
They would become the keepers of the site, and since upvoters receive 10% of each bounty, they would have a financial incentive to continue improving the site and user experience.
Most responses would still receive a nominal payout for their contibutions, but Centurions would ensure that users receive larger portions of bounties by guaranteeing the majority of upvotes go to "higher quality" posts. This would provide a great benefit to bounty setters. The higher payouts would also help draw in new users. New users would raise the overall calibre of responses and incentivize people to post more bounties.
Allowing each user to see which posts each Centurion has upvoted (like Disqus upvotes) would further help improve the overall experience.
And anyone who makes a certain number of posts that receive a certain number of upvotes would become a Centurion, kind of like a decentralized knighting. Over time those minimum criteria would increase as a way to ensure that quality standards remain high.
Lastly, when it comes time to airdrop CENT tokens, by introducing the Centurion class it should be easier to find clear metrics by which to determine who contributed the most to the site. A token-curated-registry approach could then be implemented so that anyone willing to temporarily stake their credentials could apply.
Cent, together with Centurions, would be curating constantly improving users who contribute responses of increasing quality.
Cent needs to start curating quality. Here's hoping they do.
In the episode Paul recounts a few of the mis-steps he and his team made working on an early, initially successfull, but ultimately failed social networking site called Tribe.
Paul gives listeners a full five-course meal of food for thought, but what really grabbed my attention was this: "[Tribe] didn't pay any attention to curating who their initial user base was."
The initial users themselves set the tone for the site, and usually earlier than many would expect. Once set, it is nearly impossible to alter.
In Tribe's case, they got all the 'burning man' users that were purged enmasse from Friendster. In the end, this super alternative crowd was no match for *that* social network that started with a highly curated group of users from the Ivy League.
Cent of course is my favorite site these days. It is a little less than half a year old (154 days to be precise) and based on the number of responses-per-bounty, it's user base is growing into a globally diverse group.
But like Tribe before it, Cent seems open to accepting everyone. Since any account can upvote anyone else, basically everyone who posts a response gets a piece of the bounty.
If we were a commons, everyone would be starving. Cent is, in effect, curating poverty.
As fellow Centian @paulkay put it: It's just too damn hard to earn beer money on Cent.
Cent isn't the only blockchain-based app or site to pay out crypto for user generated work either. Earn and Steemit are more popular and successful. Despite the shortcommings of those sites, several of their users bring in very large returns.
Add to that Earn's highly selective, curated lists and the fact that it has convinced a bunch of really big names to sign up and the differences become clear.
Cent's novelty is very exciting to be sure, but passionate users will leave soon if there are sites that provide better incentives.
As I have proposed elsewhere, I believe there is a novel way to solve this issue: institute a new user-class called Centurions, who alone have the ability to upvote or downvote responses.
They would become the keepers of the site, and since upvoters receive 10% of each bounty, they would have a financial incentive to continue improving the site and user experience.
Most responses would still receive a nominal payout for their contibutions, but Centurions would ensure that users receive larger portions of bounties by guaranteeing the majority of upvotes go to "higher quality" posts. This would provide a great benefit to bounty setters. The higher payouts would also help draw in new users. New users would raise the overall calibre of responses and incentivize people to post more bounties.
Allowing each user to see which posts each Centurion has upvoted (like Disqus upvotes) would further help improve the overall experience.
And anyone who makes a certain number of posts that receive a certain number of upvotes would become a Centurion, kind of like a decentralized knighting. Over time those minimum criteria would increase as a way to ensure that quality standards remain high.
Lastly, when it comes time to airdrop CENT tokens, by introducing the Centurion class it should be easier to find clear metrics by which to determine who contributed the most to the site. A token-curated-registry approach could then be implemented so that anyone willing to temporarily stake their credentials could apply.
Cent, together with Centurions, would be curating constantly improving users who contribute responses of increasing quality.
Cent needs to start curating quality. Here's hoping they do.
2018년 2월 4일 일요일
Organization Isn't Centralization
Organization helps to strengthen linkages between independent actors
Linkages in decentralized entities are longer and naturally weaker than in centralized organizations.
Organization, when carried out well, can help to make linkages in decentralized entities more robust, elastic, and egalitarian, whilst good organization in centralized entities can help enhance efficencies between linkages.
Poor organization will negatively affect both decentralized and centralized entities.
Linkages in decentralized entities are longer and naturally weaker than in centralized organizations.
Organization, when carried out well, can help to make linkages in decentralized entities more robust, elastic, and egalitarian, whilst good organization in centralized entities can help enhance efficencies between linkages.
Poor organization will negatively affect both decentralized and centralized entities.
2018년 2월 3일 토요일
I am a Repeater
I'm a repeater.
I like to re-read, re-listen, and re-watch the good stuff.
There's nothing better than coming across something that makes you feel so good you want to read, listen, or watch it again. And in some cases again and again.
This basic urge towards repetition strikes me as perhaps one of the core building blocks of humanity.
For those of you on the lookout for good stuff, I've put together a few lists of good books, podcasts and movies. Overtime I'll update the lists accordingly. So check them out now and later. And be good.
Books
Movies/Shows*
I like to re-read, re-listen, and re-watch the good stuff.
There's nothing better than coming across something that makes you feel so good you want to read, listen, or watch it again. And in some cases again and again.
This basic urge towards repetition strikes me as perhaps one of the core building blocks of humanity.
For those of you on the lookout for good stuff, I've put together a few lists of good books, podcasts and movies. Overtime I'll update the lists accordingly. So check them out now and later. And be good.
Books
- Martin Heidegger - The Question Concerning Technology, Early Greek Thinking, What is Called Thinking
- Peter Thiel - Zero to One
- Phil Knight - Shoe Dog
- 김범수 - 어제를 버려라
- 이동식 - 한국인의 주체성과 도
- 홍정욱 - 7막 7장
- Herbert Marcuse - Eros & Civilization
- J.R.R. Tolkien - The Hobbit
- J.D. Salinger - Catcher in the Rye
- Jean Craighead George - My Side of the Mountain
- Lewis Mumford - Technics and Civilization, The City in History
- Recode/Decode - Andrew Mason, John Zimmer
- Software Engineering Daily - Paul Martino
- Invest Like the Best - Chris Dixon, Ali Hamed, Chris Burniske
- A16Z - Stewart Butterfield, Jim Gilliam (NationBuilder)
- The Digiday Podcast - Bryan Goldberg (Episode 1, Episode 2)
- Waking Up with Sam Harris - The Intellectual Dark Web, Niall Ferguson
- The Ezra Klein Show - Ben Thompson
- The Future Thinkers Podcast - Vinay Gupta
- The Joe Rogan Experience - Peter Guuliano, Graham Hancock & Randall Carlson
Documentaries
- Adam Curtis - The Century of the Self, HyperNormalisation
- The Prize: Epic Quest for Oil, Money and Power
- Ugly Delicious
- There Will be Blood
- The Social Network
- The Founder
- The Paper Chase
- Paid In Full
- Requiem for a Dream
- Menace II Society
- The Ghost Writer
- 비열한 거리
- Mad Men*
- Billions*
- Parts Unknown - Rene Redzepi (S02E04)*
2018년 2월 2일 금요일
BTFD & BUIDL
For anyone that's been active in cryptoland for more than a minute has most definitely ridden the coaster of dips. Probaby more than a few times too.
Over the past few days that coaster has really been doing work. I'm sure a lot of coiners have lost their expensive lunches. And you probably still feel sick.
But for more experienced coiners, the dips barely register as a tickle in their tummy. As Chris Burniske said, living through these types of market panics become badges of honor in cryptoland.
On top of that, though, they are amazing buying opportunities. You can help offset losses by buying the dips before they tick up again. They tend to be the most valuable investments in the long run.
That said, you need to pick the coins that best represent solid tech and future development. Of course there is Bitcoin Core, but the Ethereum community is really putting in work buidling [sic] the future out with DEXs, StakeTree, Cipher mobile browser, Cent, Cryptokitties and several other projects that you can use today.
'Buy what you know' was the dominant investment adage back in the '80s and it is my contention that it should be the basis of most investments in crypto today.
So BTFD (buy the fucking dip) and develop an investment bias for teams that BUIDL.
Over the past few days that coaster has really been doing work. I'm sure a lot of coiners have lost their expensive lunches. And you probably still feel sick.
But for more experienced coiners, the dips barely register as a tickle in their tummy. As Chris Burniske said, living through these types of market panics become badges of honor in cryptoland.
On top of that, though, they are amazing buying opportunities. You can help offset losses by buying the dips before they tick up again. They tend to be the most valuable investments in the long run.
That said, you need to pick the coins that best represent solid tech and future development. Of course there is Bitcoin Core, but the Ethereum community is really putting in work buidling [sic] the future out with DEXs, StakeTree, Cipher mobile browser, Cent, Cryptokitties and several other projects that you can use today.
'Buy what you know' was the dominant investment adage back in the '80s and it is my contention that it should be the basis of most investments in crypto today.
So BTFD (buy the fucking dip) and develop an investment bias for teams that BUIDL.
2018년 2월 1일 목요일
Elements of a Bounty
I have been thinking a lot about bounties these days.
What has been most surprising - although in hindsight it shouldn't have been - is how many people active in the crypto and blockchain space hear one thing when they hear or think of a bounty.
They think of a bug bounty - a specific task that has one winning response.
And then they code for that.
Why that is surprising in a regrettable sense is simple: they are coding the corresponding smart contract too tight. In other words, they should code for a wider array of potential use cases.
This is what Max Brody and Cameron have done with Cent. They have really re-imagined the bounty, and the use cases of their more widely thought bounty contract have grown into the double digits.
I can fully appreciate that now.
But that doesn't mean I can't learn anything from thinkers still stuck in an old paradigm.
On the contrary, I was able to learn the proper taxonomy of a bounty yesterday reading a series of articles. There are four (4) elements of a bounty:
What has been most surprising - although in hindsight it shouldn't have been - is how many people active in the crypto and blockchain space hear one thing when they hear or think of a bounty.
They think of a bug bounty - a specific task that has one winning response.
And then they code for that.
Why that is surprising in a regrettable sense is simple: they are coding the corresponding smart contract too tight. In other words, they should code for a wider array of potential use cases.
This is what Max Brody and Cameron have done with Cent. They have really re-imagined the bounty, and the use cases of their more widely thought bounty contract have grown into the double digits.
I can fully appreciate that now.
But that doesn't mean I can't learn anything from thinkers still stuck in an old paradigm.
On the contrary, I was able to learn the proper taxonomy of a bounty yesterday reading a series of articles. There are four (4) elements of a bounty:
- Issuance
- Fulfillment
- Acceptance
- Payment
- Invitation to Bid (ITB)
- Bids
- Ranking
- Rank-based payment
In construction, ITBs are essentially invitations made to contractors to design a new piece of infrastructure. Often, to compensate each bidder for the time and resources required to put together a proper bid, a trivial sum will be provided to those who issue bids that are not initially disqualified.
Each question on Cent is an ITB. Users that submit bids that provide value either to the original poster or any other user can be rewarded with a portion of the bounty by being up-voted. Less effort is wasted (i.e. uncompensated) and more value is created, for multiple parties.
Such an incentive structure, as basic and simple as it is, can be used for all types of cases outside of trying to identify bugs in some code.
Cent still has a long way to go, but it is important to highlight that it has made possible something that really wasn't possible prior to it's creation. And that is probably why I can't stop thinking about it.
Each question on Cent is an ITB. Users that submit bids that provide value either to the original poster or any other user can be rewarded with a portion of the bounty by being up-voted. Less effort is wasted (i.e. uncompensated) and more value is created, for multiple parties.
Such an incentive structure, as basic and simple as it is, can be used for all types of cases outside of trying to identify bugs in some code.
Cent still has a long way to go, but it is important to highlight that it has made possible something that really wasn't possible prior to it's creation. And that is probably why I can't stop thinking about it.
2018년 1월 31일 수요일
The Importance of Names
Just like English begins with ABC, my mornings always start with AVC.com. And those comments.
The comment section on AVC.com is probably one of the most undervalued properties on the internet today. You have a collection of over a hundred steady commenters, most of whom are current/former CEOs, large corporate executives, startup founders/employees, sages, CEO whisperers, and other heavy hitters who are penning some of the deepest business insights around.
Presumably just for the Disqus upvotes.
And then there is JLM. I don't think any description of this legendary AVC commenter would do him justice. And he would agree with me more than I do myself on that (inside joke).
His comment yesterday was something special though. Fred posted about a leadership bootcamp that USV is offering to some of their smaller portfolio firms.
JLM lauded the effort since trainings carry the highest ROI in business. Then he made a suggestion: since Fred is imparting such high level, transcendental wisdom, the training course itself should have a name that conveys a similar sense of significance. Afterall, bootcamps refer to the training that 'boots' or new army recruits receive.
The money quote though went as follows:
"There is a fascinating story of how the Army came to call Special Forces Special Forces. It revolves around the necessity for the name to set it apart from the entire army immediately without being odd. It worked. The second you hear somebody is SF, you get it."
The power names hold is immense. Amazon's original 'J-Team' comes to mind, as does Samsung Group's now defunct (i.e. re-named) Future Strategy Group aka 미래전략실 aka 미전실 aka The Chairman's Office.
When we have the chance to name something - which, when you think about it is exceedingly rare - we should give serious thought to what exactly we are naming.
Anyways, just need to head over and read the comments, and then you will get it.
The comment section on AVC.com is probably one of the most undervalued properties on the internet today. You have a collection of over a hundred steady commenters, most of whom are current/former CEOs, large corporate executives, startup founders/employees, sages, CEO whisperers, and other heavy hitters who are penning some of the deepest business insights around.
Presumably just for the Disqus upvotes.
And then there is JLM. I don't think any description of this legendary AVC commenter would do him justice. And he would agree with me more than I do myself on that (inside joke).
His comment yesterday was something special though. Fred posted about a leadership bootcamp that USV is offering to some of their smaller portfolio firms.
JLM lauded the effort since trainings carry the highest ROI in business. Then he made a suggestion: since Fred is imparting such high level, transcendental wisdom, the training course itself should have a name that conveys a similar sense of significance. Afterall, bootcamps refer to the training that 'boots' or new army recruits receive.
The money quote though went as follows:
"There is a fascinating story of how the Army came to call Special Forces Special Forces. It revolves around the necessity for the name to set it apart from the entire army immediately without being odd. It worked. The second you hear somebody is SF, you get it."
The power names hold is immense. Amazon's original 'J-Team' comes to mind, as does Samsung Group's now defunct (i.e. re-named) Future Strategy Group aka 미래전략실 aka 미전실 aka The Chairman's Office.
When we have the chance to name something - which, when you think about it is exceedingly rare - we should give serious thought to what exactly we are naming.
Anyways, just need to head over and read the comments, and then you will get it.
2018년 1월 30일 화요일
God Level
Dominic is one of my best mates at work. He is about five years older than me, but we let our language down and we speak like friends.
Everyday either before the bullshit, or in the midst of it, we make sure to grab a coffee together; well I get a coffee, Dominic usually gets a tea or a syrup-less juice.
We talk about a ton of stuff. Mostly though, we talk about all the 'what the hell' elements of our company, cryptocurrency investing, and life in general. He has a lot more life than I do since he already has a daughter and a Korean apartment all his own - "In the North" as he describes it.
The other day we somehow got on the subject of how difficult it is for some to have kids. It was particularly hard for Dominic and his wife when they were both living apart, him in Singapore and her in Korea. They would meet every month to...do the damn thing, but they weren't successful for the longest time.
One day his senior pulls him aside and asks him, point blank, if Dominic was serious about having a kid. He realized he wasn't all in. But then he thought on it. He loved his wife - they'd been dating since high school after all - and he knew there wasn't anyone else he'd like to spend the rest of his life with let alone have a kid with.
So he focused his mind and then cleared it. Dominic referred to this mind state as 'God Level'. And sure enough, a few weeks after his wife visited the next time, he received the call. He was going to be a father.
I've heard similar stories before, so there is definitely something to it. Achieving 'God Level' isn't just good for making babies either. Having a focused and clear mind makes you an unstoppable force in the office, or on the field, or on Twitter, or on your blog that no one reads;) It just makes life better.
So take a breath, question yourself, be honest, then let it go and move forward.
Everyday either before the bullshit, or in the midst of it, we make sure to grab a coffee together; well I get a coffee, Dominic usually gets a tea or a syrup-less juice.
We talk about a ton of stuff. Mostly though, we talk about all the 'what the hell' elements of our company, cryptocurrency investing, and life in general. He has a lot more life than I do since he already has a daughter and a Korean apartment all his own - "In the North" as he describes it.
The other day we somehow got on the subject of how difficult it is for some to have kids. It was particularly hard for Dominic and his wife when they were both living apart, him in Singapore and her in Korea. They would meet every month to...do the damn thing, but they weren't successful for the longest time.
One day his senior pulls him aside and asks him, point blank, if Dominic was serious about having a kid. He realized he wasn't all in. But then he thought on it. He loved his wife - they'd been dating since high school after all - and he knew there wasn't anyone else he'd like to spend the rest of his life with let alone have a kid with.
So he focused his mind and then cleared it. Dominic referred to this mind state as 'God Level'. And sure enough, a few weeks after his wife visited the next time, he received the call. He was going to be a father.
I've heard similar stories before, so there is definitely something to it. Achieving 'God Level' isn't just good for making babies either. Having a focused and clear mind makes you an unstoppable force in the office, or on the field, or on Twitter, or on your blog that no one reads;) It just makes life better.
So take a breath, question yourself, be honest, then let it go and move forward.
2018년 1월 29일 월요일
Dogfooding
So just after writing about 'dogfooding' yesterday, I discovered an amazing example running live on the Ethereum mainnet right now. It's called StakeTree and it is pretty special.
It fell into my lap as soon as I opened one of my favorite Monday morning email newsletters: Token Economy.
I am subscribed to about six email newsletters that I can't live without:
It fell into my lap as soon as I opened one of my favorite Monday morning email newsletters: Token Economy.
I am subscribed to about six email newsletters that I can't live without:
- Stratechery
- Hotpod
- Token Economy
- 스타트업위클리 (Startup Weekly)
- Exponential View
- Benedict Evan's Newsletter
Up until today the first two newsletters were the only ones that let users pay them. And of course the only way to pay was with a credit card.
Credit cards are sorta kinda convenient for users, but they are terrible for anyone that accepts them, since they have to eat multiple non-trivial charges for *every* transaction they receive. Not only is there a roughly $0.30 fixed fee, but there is an additional fee of anywhere from 1.5% to 3.5% of the total amount charged!
Now the two gentlemen behind Token Economy (@stefanobernardi and @yanroux) have finally decided not only to give readers a way to pay them, but they made the bold move to eschew traditional credit card payments for ETH payments instead. StakeTree is a new Business-as-a-Tool (BaaT) that, simply put, is a smart contract-powered Kickstarter Drip on Ethereum.
Those who want to support Token Economy, for example, need only open the Token Economy Drip fund page on StakeTree using their Cipher browser on mobile or metamask enabled chrome browser on desktop, enter their desired ETH suppprt level and click send. That's it. The StakeTree Drip smart contract then trustlessly ensures 10% of your payment is distributed to Token Economy each week for the next 10 weeks. The amount distributed and the drip period are also variable I believe.
As I mentioned yesterday, the BaaT value is something I really see as taking hold in the short-term. @nieldr, the creator of StakeTree, is using StakeTree to crowdsource support for further development. That's dogfooding at its finest and he's already received over 6 ETH. Token Economy has received 5.69 ETH or almost USD 7,000 in under 24 hours! I really think that the StakeTree BaaT will be hitting a lot of home runs for a lot of people in the near future.
The rate of development in the Ethereum ecosystem is quite amazing. Really useful, decentralized, trustless tools like StakeTree are starting to come to market now that are proving *We* will gladly pay gas to power the underlying network that enables these trustless dapps, but that *We* don't need intermediaries and middle-men taking large percentages of our money anymore.
I cannot wait to *use* the many new BaaTs that are about to hit the market. If everything goes right, I think we will see an innovative blogging BaaT in the near future that will incorporate a very simple, but powerful cryptoeconomic incentive design atop a few dead simple smart contracts. It will be a perfect compliment (I think at least) to what the boys behind Cent have been doing.
In the meantime, stay sluggin'.
2018년 1월 28일 일요일
New Blockchain-native Values
Times, they are a changing. How will these changes affect our values in the short, middle and long-term? Which values will be rewarded more as a result?
If you are involved with any cryptoassets or blockchain research, these questions probably sound familiar, if they're not already top of mind.
Below are a few examples of new values that I think we will see emerge in the not so distant future, as well as values that I expect to be rewarded more as cryptoassets and blockchain-native dapps take hold and spread across our daily lives.
If you are involved with any cryptoassets or blockchain research, these questions probably sound familiar, if they're not already top of mind.
Below are a few examples of new values that I think we will see emerge in the not so distant future, as well as values that I expect to be rewarded more as cryptoassets and blockchain-native dapps take hold and spread across our daily lives.
- Paying for everything - including paying to be paid
- Business as a Tool (BaaT) - *not* business as a venture - where value is created and controled by all users of that decentralized tool (the concept of 'dogfooding' or using your own product, will become more and more important)
- Preference for smaller, exclusive, economically self-sufficient, digital circles (in the smallest Swiss administrative divisio sense) around which will form membership that in certain instances will become more prized than entry into an elite country club for example
- Strong trend towards Tribalism/Community-ism in the digital world that will in turn begin to shape and impact the oranization of the physical world
- Immediate and intimiate connections with others will be expected (the line between digital identities and offline identities will blur, and as a result see increased societal validation for the former)
2018년 1월 27일 토요일
Saturday Shopping
My Saturdays follow a very loose, but usually pretty regular routine.
Wake up around 9am, have a cup of hand ground, aeropressed coffee, run + pull-ups, shower/get ready, long walk, book reading at whichever cafe is our favorite at the time, dinner, drinks, topped off by a walk home if we still have enough gas in the tank.
Yesterday the wife and I added two things to our normal itinerary: bookstore & camera shopping.
After finishing a much needed soul warming bowl of 국밥 at 광화문국밥 we stopped by Kyobo Book Centre's Gwanghwamun location and both scooped a few books. She picked up '플러피의 샌드위치와 수프' a nice clean, simple recipe book for soup and sandwiches by 오쿠무라 카요 and I got 'The Everything Store' about Jeff Bezos and Amazon by Brad Stone.
Since finishing Trump's 'The Art of the Deal' I've been trying to find my next book to dive into and I think I found it. I just need to quickly wrap up Margaret Atwood's slightly wry, very bleak, and extremely dystopian 'The Handmaid's Tale' on loan to me from a friend and colleague. (Happy New Year).
On top of that, we have been in the market for a new camera recently. A few years back I received a good enough Samsung point and click from work that my wife has really enjoyed. It's been amazing watching her learn how to take some really good pictures. Her Instagram game is pretty tight as a result.
But we have definitely hit a performance limit with that camera, so we agreed that it is time for an upgrade. Instead of a DSLR which I owned in the past (Nikon D90 with 18-200mm VR lens - a perfect combo that would still hold up today), portability and convenience are just as important as performance to us, so we set our sights on a good mirrorless option.
And the mirrorless market has really come a long way in a short time - there are some fantastic cameras out there. In the end though we decided on a Sony A7R III with Zeiss T* FE 55m f/1.8 lens.
On top of heading to Sony's flagship Seoul store on three separate occasions, Ken Rockwell's Reviews are second to none when it comes to camera shopping for the most in-depth, unbiased reviews around, and just as when I originally bought my D90 in 2009, it played the biggest factor in helping us decided on this camera/lens pair. Of course Youtube was also helpful for double and triple checking that decision.
Can't wait to see what kind of pictures we can snap with that bad boy when we pick it up early February.
Wake up around 9am, have a cup of hand ground, aeropressed coffee, run + pull-ups, shower/get ready, long walk, book reading at whichever cafe is our favorite at the time, dinner, drinks, topped off by a walk home if we still have enough gas in the tank.
Yesterday the wife and I added two things to our normal itinerary: bookstore & camera shopping.
After finishing a much needed soul warming bowl of 국밥 at 광화문국밥 we stopped by Kyobo Book Centre's Gwanghwamun location and both scooped a few books. She picked up '플러피의 샌드위치와 수프' a nice clean, simple recipe book for soup and sandwiches by 오쿠무라 카요 and I got 'The Everything Store' about Jeff Bezos and Amazon by Brad Stone.
Since finishing Trump's 'The Art of the Deal' I've been trying to find my next book to dive into and I think I found it. I just need to quickly wrap up Margaret Atwood's slightly wry, very bleak, and extremely dystopian 'The Handmaid's Tale' on loan to me from a friend and colleague. (Happy New Year).
On top of that, we have been in the market for a new camera recently. A few years back I received a good enough Samsung point and click from work that my wife has really enjoyed. It's been amazing watching her learn how to take some really good pictures. Her Instagram game is pretty tight as a result.
But we have definitely hit a performance limit with that camera, so we agreed that it is time for an upgrade. Instead of a DSLR which I owned in the past (Nikon D90 with 18-200mm VR lens - a perfect combo that would still hold up today), portability and convenience are just as important as performance to us, so we set our sights on a good mirrorless option.
And the mirrorless market has really come a long way in a short time - there are some fantastic cameras out there. In the end though we decided on a Sony A7R III with Zeiss T* FE 55m f/1.8 lens.
On top of heading to Sony's flagship Seoul store on three separate occasions, Ken Rockwell's Reviews are second to none when it comes to camera shopping for the most in-depth, unbiased reviews around, and just as when I originally bought my D90 in 2009, it played the biggest factor in helping us decided on this camera/lens pair. Of course Youtube was also helpful for double and triple checking that decision.
Can't wait to see what kind of pictures we can snap with that bad boy when we pick it up early February.
2018년 1월 26일 금요일
FUMU
Acronyms are fun. They're like riddles that give you an easily reusable concept once you know what they stand for.
At lunch yesterday I learned a new acronym that is kinda perfect. It describes brilliantly a very specific instance of corporate absurdity.
Every office has at least one or two terrible co-workers. Just nasty folks that everyone is rooting for to fuck up so they can get fired. But often - for whatever reason - those nasty folks have some pretty powerful connections that, directly or indirectly, lead to HR. So that when they do fuck up, instead of getting their asses handed to them, they get shuffled out into a different project or part of the organization, which more often than not is an actual or perceived promotion.
This is a 'Fuck Up Move Up' or 'FUMU' (pronounced: Foo-moo).
At lunch yesterday I learned a new acronym that is kinda perfect. It describes brilliantly a very specific instance of corporate absurdity.
Every office has at least one or two terrible co-workers. Just nasty folks that everyone is rooting for to fuck up so they can get fired. But often - for whatever reason - those nasty folks have some pretty powerful connections that, directly or indirectly, lead to HR. So that when they do fuck up, instead of getting their asses handed to them, they get shuffled out into a different project or part of the organization, which more often than not is an actual or perceived promotion.
This is a 'Fuck Up Move Up' or 'FUMU' (pronounced: Foo-moo).
2018년 1월 25일 목요일
Shame & Disappointment
Working in Korea as an expat can be tough. I have one colleague though whose situation is probably one of the toughest I've seen. He is a true professional though. For two years he put his hard hat on everyday, and tried to slog his way through the bullshit. He hoped - we all hope - that maybe things would start to change if he kept fighting the good fight working like a professional. And sometimes, rarely, we really do help. That is, after all, why they say they needed us when they hired us in the first place.
The other day though he asked me to lunch. I knew what was comming, but I asked if he'd mind if a mutual friend of ours joined. He said he would mind. Since I'm the overseas HR manager of a specific product division and he works in an unrelated corporate function our relationship has always been more casual than professional. But over the past half year or so I have become his unofficial HR rep. So I knew this was obviously going to be a working lunch.
Refreshingly lunch was a lot more positive than I had been anticipating. When many people decide to quit, they make up their mind months or years before they actually end up giving their notice. In the time leading up to 'the announcement' they often become caustically critical and bitter about everything. My colleague probably quit 9 to 12 months ago, but now he was finally ready to make it real.
After he told me he was ready to make his decision official we ended up using the rest of lunch talking about the timing of his notice, the proper channels to go through, how the severance and pension refunds would go - standard HR stuff. Ordinarily his function's HR would have handled this, but as they don't even have an ounce of professionalism, that was obviously out the question to begin with. And then he hit me with it. He wasn't angry. That feeling passed a while ago. No. "Now," he said, "I just feel shame and disappointment."
All I could do was nod.
There wasn't anything more I could do or say either. The only thing I know is that there is so very much more work to be done to ensure others don't end up feeling shame and disappointment. A high bar I know. Mostly I need to double down on influencing the right people so that spots open up for the right people to come in and effect broader changes (in terms of mindset, managerially, and procedurally). That's worth fighting for, at least for the time being.
The other day though he asked me to lunch. I knew what was comming, but I asked if he'd mind if a mutual friend of ours joined. He said he would mind. Since I'm the overseas HR manager of a specific product division and he works in an unrelated corporate function our relationship has always been more casual than professional. But over the past half year or so I have become his unofficial HR rep. So I knew this was obviously going to be a working lunch.
Refreshingly lunch was a lot more positive than I had been anticipating. When many people decide to quit, they make up their mind months or years before they actually end up giving their notice. In the time leading up to 'the announcement' they often become caustically critical and bitter about everything. My colleague probably quit 9 to 12 months ago, but now he was finally ready to make it real.
After he told me he was ready to make his decision official we ended up using the rest of lunch talking about the timing of his notice, the proper channels to go through, how the severance and pension refunds would go - standard HR stuff. Ordinarily his function's HR would have handled this, but as they don't even have an ounce of professionalism, that was obviously out the question to begin with. And then he hit me with it. He wasn't angry. That feeling passed a while ago. No. "Now," he said, "I just feel shame and disappointment."
All I could do was nod.
There wasn't anything more I could do or say either. The only thing I know is that there is so very much more work to be done to ensure others don't end up feeling shame and disappointment. A high bar I know. Mostly I need to double down on influencing the right people so that spots open up for the right people to come in and effect broader changes (in terms of mindset, managerially, and procedurally). That's worth fighting for, at least for the time being.
2018년 1월 24일 수요일
Human Proof of Work (PoW)
I saw a tweet the other day that - for some reason or other - I didn't 'heart' or re-tweet so I couldn't find it to reference, but has still nonetheless stuck with me.
The basic gist of the tweet was this: Graduating and receiving a diploma from university is the human equivalent of Proof of Work. It signals to others that you were able to literally put the time and effort into something and can be trusted in some way now that, before receipt of that document, would have been perceived as higher risk or not even considered at all.
Although the poster was drawing a direct link with the consensus mechanism for Bitcoin, I was reminded of my late Great Uncle John. The last summer before heading off to college I was visiting his beach house down in Rehobeth, Delaware.
He and I were chatting when he asked me if the rumors were true that I was heading to Pittsburgh in the autumn to study. I replied yes, and then he put his hand on my shoulder, looked at me with a serious expression (which was out of character for a man who was *always* laughing) and he just said: "A degree is just a piece of paper to prove to others you are willing to put some hard work in and stick around for a little, so make sure you get one."
It was a simple comment, but so many people stil believe that which I guess makes it profound. I can appreciate that profundity, but like many these days, I just can't help but feel that such an expensive and time consuming PoW model is no longer necessary anymore - there are far cheaper, much quicker and more varied ways to verify the same thing.
Anyways after seeing that tweet and thinking about Uncle John, I started to think of some other human PoW examples besides 'graduating from a 4 year college' and I came up with this list:
These are all things that people can do that, whilst difficult and time consuming, tend to result in regular, consistent recognition if not outright admiration from others.
So then I got to thinking, which PoW examples could be changed to a human equivalent of Proof of Stake? How different would those examples look after switching to PoS? How many more people would benefit if it was not only much easier to accomplish something, but if that accomplishment would also provide an equal if not better reward or response from others?
There are many daily activities in many peoples lives that could be accomplished with a fraction of the effort and time, but still provide a similar if not better result as the traditional PoW activity. And this is where I think a lot of Dapps are going to find extremely broad adoption by allowing an easy but powerful way for anyone to stake their reputation, wealth or confidence in order to quickly and efficiently do work that gets them the results they need. I have a few ideas cooking myself that I hope to share soon.
If you are curious about this stream of thought, I recommend you check out the article by @twobitidiot on Medium entitled “Skin-in-the-Game Coins” and pay particular attention to the section on 'Token Curated Registries' which is essentially a human PoS consensus design architecture.
Source: https://medium.com/@twobitidiot/skin-in-the-game-coins-da0afdfdc650
The basic gist of the tweet was this: Graduating and receiving a diploma from university is the human equivalent of Proof of Work. It signals to others that you were able to literally put the time and effort into something and can be trusted in some way now that, before receipt of that document, would have been perceived as higher risk or not even considered at all.
Although the poster was drawing a direct link with the consensus mechanism for Bitcoin, I was reminded of my late Great Uncle John. The last summer before heading off to college I was visiting his beach house down in Rehobeth, Delaware.
He and I were chatting when he asked me if the rumors were true that I was heading to Pittsburgh in the autumn to study. I replied yes, and then he put his hand on my shoulder, looked at me with a serious expression (which was out of character for a man who was *always* laughing) and he just said: "A degree is just a piece of paper to prove to others you are willing to put some hard work in and stick around for a little, so make sure you get one."
It was a simple comment, but so many people stil believe that which I guess makes it profound. I can appreciate that profundity, but like many these days, I just can't help but feel that such an expensive and time consuming PoW model is no longer necessary anymore - there are far cheaper, much quicker and more varied ways to verify the same thing.
Anyways after seeing that tweet and thinking about Uncle John, I started to think of some other human PoW examples besides 'graduating from a 4 year college' and I came up with this list:
- Growing Twitter followers organically
- Climbing the corporate ladder
- Building up Reddit reputation
- Earning regular avc.com upvotes
- Attending church regularly
- Creating a successsful newsletter
- Having a baby with your spouse
- (Feel free to add more)
These are all things that people can do that, whilst difficult and time consuming, tend to result in regular, consistent recognition if not outright admiration from others.
So then I got to thinking, which PoW examples could be changed to a human equivalent of Proof of Stake? How different would those examples look after switching to PoS? How many more people would benefit if it was not only much easier to accomplish something, but if that accomplishment would also provide an equal if not better reward or response from others?
There are many daily activities in many peoples lives that could be accomplished with a fraction of the effort and time, but still provide a similar if not better result as the traditional PoW activity. And this is where I think a lot of Dapps are going to find extremely broad adoption by allowing an easy but powerful way for anyone to stake their reputation, wealth or confidence in order to quickly and efficiently do work that gets them the results they need. I have a few ideas cooking myself that I hope to share soon.
If you are curious about this stream of thought, I recommend you check out the article by @twobitidiot on Medium entitled “Skin-in-the-Game Coins” and pay particular attention to the section on 'Token Curated Registries' which is essentially a human PoS consensus design architecture.
Source: https://medium.com/@twobitidiot/skin-in-the-game-coins-da0afdfdc650
2018년 1월 23일 화요일
Living Economics Experiments
I read the Nathaniel Popper piece that appeared in todays NYT, and as always it was great. The man regularly offers up the most entertaining, unbiased perspectives on the frothiest, most exciting sector since the dotcom boom and bust.
When I read something good, there are usually a few lines that I end up re-reading a few times. That way they end up sticking with me long after I close the tab or shut the book. This time was no different.
I have been thinking a lot about the simplistic power well designed cryptoeconomic incentive architectures will be able to wield lately, so my red hot embers were stoked when I read, "..virtual currencies are all living economics experiments, testing how different sorts of incentives create different behaviors."
It is precisely this economic incentive aspect of all crytpoassets - not just cryptocurrencies, but cryptocommodities, cryptotokens, and cryptocollectibles as well - that I think will start to draw more and more attention to itself and away from the ICO bubble that is starting to slide down the slope of a waning crecent moon.
Currently Bitcoin, with its own carrot and stick incentive strucure built into and around the Proof of Work (PoW) consenus mechanism, is the first, most prominent example of a cryptoeconomic incentive architecture performing in the wild, but as Nathaniel said, "...these incentives don’t always work as expected. That uncertainty is what makes it so interesting to watch — and to report on."
From out of this uncertainty I believe that there are many more low hanging fruit of much simpler and more easily approachable incentive structures that people will start to look for, adopt and actually use. A good, but still incomplete example can be found in a Dapp called Cent.
Cent offers a dead simple concept: any user with an email and ethereum wallet address responds to questions or posts. Based on the portion of upvotes their specific response receives by the community, they receive a corresponding share of the original bounty that was attached to the prompt or question as a way to incentivize responses in the first place. Super simple, and it works, er, sort of.
But it is still early days, and much, much more is still left to come. So stay plugged in my friends.
When I read something good, there are usually a few lines that I end up re-reading a few times. That way they end up sticking with me long after I close the tab or shut the book. This time was no different.
I have been thinking a lot about the simplistic power well designed cryptoeconomic incentive architectures will be able to wield lately, so my red hot embers were stoked when I read, "..virtual currencies are all living economics experiments, testing how different sorts of incentives create different behaviors."
It is precisely this economic incentive aspect of all crytpoassets - not just cryptocurrencies, but cryptocommodities, cryptotokens, and cryptocollectibles as well - that I think will start to draw more and more attention to itself and away from the ICO bubble that is starting to slide down the slope of a waning crecent moon.
Currently Bitcoin, with its own carrot and stick incentive strucure built into and around the Proof of Work (PoW) consenus mechanism, is the first, most prominent example of a cryptoeconomic incentive architecture performing in the wild, but as Nathaniel said, "...these incentives don’t always work as expected. That uncertainty is what makes it so interesting to watch — and to report on."
From out of this uncertainty I believe that there are many more low hanging fruit of much simpler and more easily approachable incentive structures that people will start to look for, adopt and actually use. A good, but still incomplete example can be found in a Dapp called Cent.
Cent offers a dead simple concept: any user with an email and ethereum wallet address responds to questions or posts. Based on the portion of upvotes their specific response receives by the community, they receive a corresponding share of the original bounty that was attached to the prompt or question as a way to incentivize responses in the first place. Super simple, and it works, er, sort of.
But it is still early days, and much, much more is still left to come. So stay plugged in my friends.
2018년 1월 22일 월요일
Insight into the Korean Crypto Ban on Foreigners
So yesterday I published a little #tweetstorm over on Twitter (@bread_krumbs) about why, seemingly all of a sudden, several exchanges have issued statements saying soon they will prohibit *all* foreigners from making fiat deposits into their exchange accounts.
It has been well received over on Twitter so I thought I'd re-post it here as well.
Check it out below, and feel free to follow me for more Korea-related musings.
0/ I'd bet money that Korbit will claw back their prohibition on fiat deposits from *all* foreigners that was announced over the weekend. The same goes for any other exchange that issued/plans to issue a similar ban.
I'll explain.
1/ According to Korbit, their announcement was issued in order to comply with government guidelines. No mention of which one though, since various pieces of the government have made several announcements over the past month or so.
2/ So I did a little homework. Luckily the government has a useful site (정부24) that lets you search official government announcements and reports.
I ran searches for: 가상통화, 가상화폐, 디지털 화폐, and 디지털머니 (both spaced and unspaced variants).
3/ The searches returned a little over 50 unique releases dating back to 14 July 2014.
Only about 8 releases or documents attached to releases contained the words 외국인(foreigner) and/or 비거주자(non-resident).
The first release to include those words dates to 13 December 2017.
4/ That report contained the first public guidelines to regulate crypto in Korea. On the foreigner issue it said:
"...measures should be taken to ban non-resident(foreigners) [비거주자(외국인)] from transacting [on Korean exchanges]..."
https://www.gov.kr/portal/ntnadmNews/1273333
5/ A summary of that meeting report was released the same day and contained identical phrasing: "...measures will be taken to prevent non-resident(foreigners) [비거주자(외국인)] from opening new accounts and trading..."
https://www.gov.kr/portal/ntnadmNews/1273342
6/ On 28 December 2017 three releases included mention of a ban related to foreigners:
1. [보도자료] 가상통화 관련 관게차관회의
2. [보도참고] 가상통화 관련 금융권 점검회의
3. 가상통화 거래 실명제 실시...거래소 폐쇄 특별법도 검토
Only 비거주자 are subject to the ban in 1 & 2 (외국인 was omitted even), but the third is less clear...
7/ Article 3 included the promise that new speculative demand (e.g. from foreigners(외국인) generally) would be blocked by introducing identity verification systems to exchanges.
This detail doesn't alter, but adds to Releases 1 & 2.
https://www.gov.kr/portal/ntnadmNews/1286463
8/ However, a shoddy article in the Segye Ilbo (2 January 2018) claimed the Korean gov hadn't defined foreigner(외국인) nor when restrictions should be carried out causing confusion amongst exchanges that led some to ban foreigner trading.
http://m.segye.com/view/20180102004847
9/ On 3 January 2018, in a release addressing numerous errors in the Segye Ilbo article, the gov stated:
"Once the scope of the restriction on foreigners is set it will be implemented since banks are already able to determine if a foreigner is residing in Korea or abroad."
https://www.gov.kr/portal/ntnadmNews/1292917
10/ WTF.
Between 12~28 December 2018 the government was clear that trading restrictions for foreigners will be limited to non-residents.
So Korbit's proposed prohibition on deposits from *all* foreigners seems to be due to the confused 3 January 2018 release.
11/ As this proposed prohibition seems to stem from a single release written by a confused and/or tired public official, I feel it'll only end up applying to non-resident foreigners.
But one can't discount Klownism - the funny way logic seems not to apply here sometimes...
It has been well received over on Twitter so I thought I'd re-post it here as well.
Check it out below, and feel free to follow me for more Korea-related musings.
0/ I'd bet money that Korbit will claw back their prohibition on fiat deposits from *all* foreigners that was announced over the weekend. The same goes for any other exchange that issued/plans to issue a similar ban.
I'll explain.
1/ According to Korbit, their announcement was issued in order to comply with government guidelines. No mention of which one though, since various pieces of the government have made several announcements over the past month or so.
2/ So I did a little homework. Luckily the government has a useful site (정부24) that lets you search official government announcements and reports.
I ran searches for: 가상통화, 가상화폐, 디지털 화폐, and 디지털머니 (both spaced and unspaced variants).
3/ The searches returned a little over 50 unique releases dating back to 14 July 2014.
Only about 8 releases or documents attached to releases contained the words 외국인(foreigner) and/or 비거주자(non-resident).
The first release to include those words dates to 13 December 2017.
4/ That report contained the first public guidelines to regulate crypto in Korea. On the foreigner issue it said:
"...measures should be taken to ban non-resident(foreigners) [비거주자(외국인)] from transacting [on Korean exchanges]..."
https://www.gov.kr/portal/ntnadmNews/1273333
5/ A summary of that meeting report was released the same day and contained identical phrasing: "...measures will be taken to prevent non-resident(foreigners) [비거주자(외국인)] from opening new accounts and trading..."
https://www.gov.kr/portal/ntnadmNews/1273342
6/ On 28 December 2017 three releases included mention of a ban related to foreigners:
1. [보도자료] 가상통화 관련 관게차관회의
2. [보도참고] 가상통화 관련 금융권 점검회의
3. 가상통화 거래 실명제 실시...거래소 폐쇄 특별법도 검토
Only 비거주자 are subject to the ban in 1 & 2 (외국인 was omitted even), but the third is less clear...
7/ Article 3 included the promise that new speculative demand (e.g. from foreigners(외국인) generally) would be blocked by introducing identity verification systems to exchanges.
This detail doesn't alter, but adds to Releases 1 & 2.
https://www.gov.kr/portal/ntnadmNews/1286463
8/ However, a shoddy article in the Segye Ilbo (2 January 2018) claimed the Korean gov hadn't defined foreigner(외국인) nor when restrictions should be carried out causing confusion amongst exchanges that led some to ban foreigner trading.
http://m.segye.com/view/20180102004847
9/ On 3 January 2018, in a release addressing numerous errors in the Segye Ilbo article, the gov stated:
"Once the scope of the restriction on foreigners is set it will be implemented since banks are already able to determine if a foreigner is residing in Korea or abroad."
https://www.gov.kr/portal/ntnadmNews/1292917
10/ WTF.
Between 12~28 December 2018 the government was clear that trading restrictions for foreigners will be limited to non-residents.
So Korbit's proposed prohibition on deposits from *all* foreigners seems to be due to the confused 3 January 2018 release.
11/ As this proposed prohibition seems to stem from a single release written by a confused and/or tired public official, I feel it'll only end up applying to non-resident foreigners.
But one can't discount Klownism - the funny way logic seems not to apply here sometimes...
2018년 1월 21일 일요일
The Art of the Deal
I have been reading 'The Art of the Deal' by Donald J. Trump (with Tony Schwartz) for about two weeks now and I'm just about finished. Normally, with a book as easy and entertaining to read as this I would have finished in 4~5 days, but I have really been drawing this reading out. It has just completely defied my intially low expectations, which after reflection I realize were unfounded in the first place since everyone I've met who has actually read the book has had nothing but positive things to say about it.
What has surprised me most are the many, many insights into Trump's decision making process that seem to very clearly explain why he says and does things as president in his very unorthodox and un-politicianly way.
To be clear before we go on, I have no horse in the race of American politics - I have never been registered to vote nor do I plan on doing so, perhaps until it is time for me to run myself - but I have been observing Trumps involvement in politics with a detached interest for a while now. The starkly polarizing reactions that Trump seems to elicit from typical Americans - the die hard supporters versus those who see Trump as the second comming of Hitler - should cause anyone who has a properly functioning brain to want to find out a little more about who this polarizing figure really is. And what better way is there to do that than by reading or listening to the mans thoughts. Thoughts that - crucially - came from a time before he was a politician, because, well, you just can't trust anything a politician says.
If there is one thing that seperates Trump the politician from every other politician, it is his seeming indifference to bad press. It wouldn't seem off base to suggest that Trump seems to thrive off of bad press. When Trump was pursuing the construction of the Trump Tower, he described the resulting controversey and negative publicity thusly: "Even though the publicity was almost entirely negative, and there was a great deal of it, and that drew a tremendous amount of attention to Trump Tower. Almost immediately we saw an upsurge in the sales of apartments. I'm not saying that's a good thing, and in truth it probably says something perverse about the culture we live in. But...controversy, in short, sells."
A few years later when Trump was receiving resistence from New York City politicians despite making numerous offers that he would like to offer his help to rebuild the Wollman ice rink instead, he made the following observation: "If there's one thing I've learned from dealing with politicians over the years, it's that the only thing guaranteed to force them into action is the press - or, more specifically, fear of the press...Bad press translates into potential lost votes, and if a politician loses enough votes, he won't get reelected. If that happens, he might have to go out and take a 9 to 5 job. That's the last thing most politicians want to do."
There are many more instances where Trump makes comments specific to particular deals, or offers up thoughts on what seperates good businessmen from bad ones, or explains how he chooses people to lead projects (the best and most competent, regardless of experience) that offer a window into his actions and decisions today. In particular his thoughts on family then, help explain his preference for installing many of his immediate and extended family nembers in high positions today - something that isn't exclusive to Trump in the history of the presidency, but something that receives a lot of focus today. "There is nothing to compare with family if they happen to be competent, because you can trust family in a way you can never trust anyone else."
We are all human, and Trump is no different. If you have an open mind and are curious about why President Trump seems so different, I highly recommend you pick up 'The Art of the Deal' and give it a read. Thanks to this book I'll be focusing more on what I think the long-term goals Trump is focusing on are and evaluating him on 1) the necessity and importance of those goals and 2) if he actually achieves those goals or not. I will look for potential angles that could explain how his punking of the media could help serve some tactical purpose of helping to move the goal-posts closer to the end zone of those goals. And I know it'll be interesting too, because as Trump puts it: "There is no typical week in my life."
What has surprised me most are the many, many insights into Trump's decision making process that seem to very clearly explain why he says and does things as president in his very unorthodox and un-politicianly way.
To be clear before we go on, I have no horse in the race of American politics - I have never been registered to vote nor do I plan on doing so, perhaps until it is time for me to run myself - but I have been observing Trumps involvement in politics with a detached interest for a while now. The starkly polarizing reactions that Trump seems to elicit from typical Americans - the die hard supporters versus those who see Trump as the second comming of Hitler - should cause anyone who has a properly functioning brain to want to find out a little more about who this polarizing figure really is. And what better way is there to do that than by reading or listening to the mans thoughts. Thoughts that - crucially - came from a time before he was a politician, because, well, you just can't trust anything a politician says.
If there is one thing that seperates Trump the politician from every other politician, it is his seeming indifference to bad press. It wouldn't seem off base to suggest that Trump seems to thrive off of bad press. When Trump was pursuing the construction of the Trump Tower, he described the resulting controversey and negative publicity thusly: "Even though the publicity was almost entirely negative, and there was a great deal of it, and that drew a tremendous amount of attention to Trump Tower. Almost immediately we saw an upsurge in the sales of apartments. I'm not saying that's a good thing, and in truth it probably says something perverse about the culture we live in. But...controversy, in short, sells."
A few years later when Trump was receiving resistence from New York City politicians despite making numerous offers that he would like to offer his help to rebuild the Wollman ice rink instead, he made the following observation: "If there's one thing I've learned from dealing with politicians over the years, it's that the only thing guaranteed to force them into action is the press - or, more specifically, fear of the press...Bad press translates into potential lost votes, and if a politician loses enough votes, he won't get reelected. If that happens, he might have to go out and take a 9 to 5 job. That's the last thing most politicians want to do."
There are many more instances where Trump makes comments specific to particular deals, or offers up thoughts on what seperates good businessmen from bad ones, or explains how he chooses people to lead projects (the best and most competent, regardless of experience) that offer a window into his actions and decisions today. In particular his thoughts on family then, help explain his preference for installing many of his immediate and extended family nembers in high positions today - something that isn't exclusive to Trump in the history of the presidency, but something that receives a lot of focus today. "There is nothing to compare with family if they happen to be competent, because you can trust family in a way you can never trust anyone else."
We are all human, and Trump is no different. If you have an open mind and are curious about why President Trump seems so different, I highly recommend you pick up 'The Art of the Deal' and give it a read. Thanks to this book I'll be focusing more on what I think the long-term goals Trump is focusing on are and evaluating him on 1) the necessity and importance of those goals and 2) if he actually achieves those goals or not. I will look for potential angles that could explain how his punking of the media could help serve some tactical purpose of helping to move the goal-posts closer to the end zone of those goals. And I know it'll be interesting too, because as Trump puts it: "There is no typical week in my life."
2017년 12월 31일 일요일
A Cryptoeconomic Solution for Modern Oppression
Today there is nothing as oppressive as the expectation of unremunerated attention.
Attention should be understood here as a temporary donation of, at the very least, one's time. This presupposes that actions, objects, programs or messages that attract and capture the attention and time of others *do not* constitute a sufficiently compensatory benefit.
Uncompensated attention should cease to be an assumed expectation or requirement to engage in atomic experiences (e.g. reading or commenting on blogs, voting in elections). Instead, inducing or attracting said attention in exchange for *any* form of acceptable remuneration should be pursued. In my view this is only possible by adopting and applying newly emergent economic incentive architectures facilitated by tools provisioned by cryptoassets and blockchain technology (particularly with regards to 'Smart Contracts'). By pursuing such a strategy we seek to emancipate our global citizenzry from the de facto compulsion to relinquish and forfeit valuable personal time and information in exchange for unremunerated experiences.
Thus, my claim is as follows: All experiences should be *potentially* remunerative.
As the title of this post indicates, we are seeking a cryptoeconomic solution - or at the very least an orientation towards a solution - to the problem of unremunerated attention. It may be helpful if we provide a brief definition here. Cryptoeconomics should be understood as an emerging field of study of how we use digital incentives to drive specific resources and behaviors on decentralized networks that lead to some globally desired result such as security or network effects. There is a site called Cent that has been accessible to anyone around the world with an internet connection at beta.cent.co that is conducting an extremely novel and at the same time deceptively simple cryptoeconomic experiment.
First of all, despite only being around for three months or so, Cent has already established itself as a community - to be sure it is still small by modern internet standards. It aspires to be the de(cent)ralized reddit-meets-quora that in(cent)ivizes users by way of Ether (ETH) bounties. Users pose questions or requests to the community that, crucially, carry with them a set bounty denominated in ETH to incentivize as many respondants as possible, and based on the number of upvotes respondants get from other respondants, they will receive a proportional share of that bounty. The key innovation here is that the payout is carried out by a Smart Contract that runs on the Ethereum network - after a question is submitted it triggers an unstoppable automatic application wherein a pre-set timer begins its countdown with payouts released automatically as soon as the bounty period expires.
So to summarize: Cent allows users to offer ETH (digital incentive) in order to drive other users to provide quality responses vying for that Ether which attracts new users who provide ever more quality responses and pose new questions with bounties to attract new users repeat ad infinitum. They have bootstrapped an active community where users are referred to as Centians. Hundreds of bounties have been set and respondants have received thousands of dollars worth of ETH for their attention. Users even receive a portion of the bounty simply for either upvoting or downvoting responses. This is an *almost* perfectly structured incentive architecture. Almost.
The shortcommings - in my view - stem from how the question/bounty-posing feature has been incentivized - or the lack thereof - and the potential for abuse and gaming of the system as it is set up today. Whilst there may be marginal benefit in being able to relatively reliably source a certain amount of responses, it is a shame that there is no way to at least subsidize bounty setters. As a result bounty values have remained trivial, ranging between $3~20 (relative to the given value of ETH to USD at the time a question/bounty is set). Trivial bounties beget half-hearted responses.
Additionally, there is the growing problem of users setting up multiple accounts to game the system and win a larger share of the bounty. There is currently no mechanism in place to prevent someone from setting up multiple accounts in order to game the system by upvoting their own posts and downvoting others. It isn't hard to imagine even passionate contributers becomming frustrated over time if their attention is undercompensated whilst scammers are receiving 3~5x more, at least. Of course if these issues are not addressed they will most likely inhibit any real growth for Cent and its community. Fellow Centian @Maxsterly has already voiced frustration regarding the inability to subsidize question/bounty-setters and multiple users including @dreambig and @soothsayer have complained about the scammers with multiple accounts. Operating a system based off of decentralized logic makes it more difficult - but not impossible - to minimize or prevent such behaviour.
So to conclude I would like to propose a few potential novel solutions:
Firstly, Cent should provide the option for users to 'tip' bounties that they have an interest in. Tips could be split 50:50 between a) the user who set the bounty and b) the bounty itself by adding to it thus incentivizing better responses.
Secondly, Cent should designate those Centians who have been active and provided thoughtful responses over time as arbiters of up upvoting; create a class of 'Centurions' if you will. This will a) eliminate the negative impact that gamers could and have had whilst b) ensuring that Centians who provide original and thoughtful responses are duly compensated. Of course there should be a mechanism created that allows newer Centians to become Centurions as well. A sufficiently decentralized approach could be setting up a hard threshold. Say that if a Centian receives over 100 upvotes across a minimum of at least 5 posts then they are automatically upgraded to Centurion status.
Projects like Cent are paving the way forward towards a very exciting future. The creators behind Cent deserve a lot of praise and all the support they need. Hopefully the proposed improvements I have included may be of some assistance in creating not just a better user experience on Cent, but a better future for everyone around the world.
Attention should be understood here as a temporary donation of, at the very least, one's time. This presupposes that actions, objects, programs or messages that attract and capture the attention and time of others *do not* constitute a sufficiently compensatory benefit.
Uncompensated attention should cease to be an assumed expectation or requirement to engage in atomic experiences (e.g. reading or commenting on blogs, voting in elections). Instead, inducing or attracting said attention in exchange for *any* form of acceptable remuneration should be pursued. In my view this is only possible by adopting and applying newly emergent economic incentive architectures facilitated by tools provisioned by cryptoassets and blockchain technology (particularly with regards to 'Smart Contracts'). By pursuing such a strategy we seek to emancipate our global citizenzry from the de facto compulsion to relinquish and forfeit valuable personal time and information in exchange for unremunerated experiences.
Thus, my claim is as follows: All experiences should be *potentially* remunerative.
As the title of this post indicates, we are seeking a cryptoeconomic solution - or at the very least an orientation towards a solution - to the problem of unremunerated attention. It may be helpful if we provide a brief definition here. Cryptoeconomics should be understood as an emerging field of study of how we use digital incentives to drive specific resources and behaviors on decentralized networks that lead to some globally desired result such as security or network effects. There is a site called Cent that has been accessible to anyone around the world with an internet connection at beta.cent.co that is conducting an extremely novel and at the same time deceptively simple cryptoeconomic experiment.
First of all, despite only being around for three months or so, Cent has already established itself as a community - to be sure it is still small by modern internet standards. It aspires to be the de(cent)ralized reddit-meets-quora that in(cent)ivizes users by way of Ether (ETH) bounties. Users pose questions or requests to the community that, crucially, carry with them a set bounty denominated in ETH to incentivize as many respondants as possible, and based on the number of upvotes respondants get from other respondants, they will receive a proportional share of that bounty. The key innovation here is that the payout is carried out by a Smart Contract that runs on the Ethereum network - after a question is submitted it triggers an unstoppable automatic application wherein a pre-set timer begins its countdown with payouts released automatically as soon as the bounty period expires.
So to summarize: Cent allows users to offer ETH (digital incentive) in order to drive other users to provide quality responses vying for that Ether which attracts new users who provide ever more quality responses and pose new questions with bounties to attract new users repeat ad infinitum. They have bootstrapped an active community where users are referred to as Centians. Hundreds of bounties have been set and respondants have received thousands of dollars worth of ETH for their attention. Users even receive a portion of the bounty simply for either upvoting or downvoting responses. This is an *almost* perfectly structured incentive architecture. Almost.
The shortcommings - in my view - stem from how the question/bounty-posing feature has been incentivized - or the lack thereof - and the potential for abuse and gaming of the system as it is set up today. Whilst there may be marginal benefit in being able to relatively reliably source a certain amount of responses, it is a shame that there is no way to at least subsidize bounty setters. As a result bounty values have remained trivial, ranging between $3~20 (relative to the given value of ETH to USD at the time a question/bounty is set). Trivial bounties beget half-hearted responses.
Additionally, there is the growing problem of users setting up multiple accounts to game the system and win a larger share of the bounty. There is currently no mechanism in place to prevent someone from setting up multiple accounts in order to game the system by upvoting their own posts and downvoting others. It isn't hard to imagine even passionate contributers becomming frustrated over time if their attention is undercompensated whilst scammers are receiving 3~5x more, at least. Of course if these issues are not addressed they will most likely inhibit any real growth for Cent and its community. Fellow Centian @Maxsterly has already voiced frustration regarding the inability to subsidize question/bounty-setters and multiple users including @dreambig and @soothsayer have complained about the scammers with multiple accounts. Operating a system based off of decentralized logic makes it more difficult - but not impossible - to minimize or prevent such behaviour.
So to conclude I would like to propose a few potential novel solutions:
Firstly, Cent should provide the option for users to 'tip' bounties that they have an interest in. Tips could be split 50:50 between a) the user who set the bounty and b) the bounty itself by adding to it thus incentivizing better responses.
Secondly, Cent should designate those Centians who have been active and provided thoughtful responses over time as arbiters of up upvoting; create a class of 'Centurions' if you will. This will a) eliminate the negative impact that gamers could and have had whilst b) ensuring that Centians who provide original and thoughtful responses are duly compensated. Of course there should be a mechanism created that allows newer Centians to become Centurions as well. A sufficiently decentralized approach could be setting up a hard threshold. Say that if a Centian receives over 100 upvotes across a minimum of at least 5 posts then they are automatically upgraded to Centurion status.
Projects like Cent are paving the way forward towards a very exciting future. The creators behind Cent deserve a lot of praise and all the support they need. Hopefully the proposed improvements I have included may be of some assistance in creating not just a better user experience on Cent, but a better future for everyone around the world.
2017년 11월 30일 목요일
Politics, Populism, Disappointment, and Hegemony
Politics
A set of dynamic systems, driven by conflict, and by adaptations and counter-adaptation, leading to tactical arms races...
No given mode of politics is historically inviolable.
Political tactics are a dynamic field of forces.
Populism
A type of political logic by which a collection of different identities are knitted together against a common opponent and in search of a new world
Disappointment
Indexes a yearning for a lost future
Hegemony
Ruling by the engineering of consent (according to the dictates of one particular group)
But it is NOT to be identified as a system of domination.
Should be understood as a complex, emergent mode of power, dependent on the ability of groups within society to influence others in much more diffuse ways.
It emerges out of the interactions and practices of a diverse array of groups, agents, and organizations in society. It doesn't flatten difference, but emerges out of the interplay of difference.
~ Antonio Gramsci
All from "Inventing the Future" by Nick Srnicek & Alex Williams
A set of dynamic systems, driven by conflict, and by adaptations and counter-adaptation, leading to tactical arms races...
No given mode of politics is historically inviolable.
Political tactics are a dynamic field of forces.
Populism
A type of political logic by which a collection of different identities are knitted together against a common opponent and in search of a new world
Disappointment
Indexes a yearning for a lost future
Hegemony
Ruling by the engineering of consent (according to the dictates of one particular group)
But it is NOT to be identified as a system of domination.
Should be understood as a complex, emergent mode of power, dependent on the ability of groups within society to influence others in much more diffuse ways.
It emerges out of the interactions and practices of a diverse array of groups, agents, and organizations in society. It doesn't flatten difference, but emerges out of the interplay of difference.
~ Antonio Gramsci
All from "Inventing the Future" by Nick Srnicek & Alex Williams
2017년 10월 31일 화요일
2017년 9월 30일 토요일
Erotic Algorithms
Erotocism: A thirst for otherness where the "other" is very often a new self...
~ Octavio Paz
Algorithm: A methodological set of steps to make calculations, resolve problems and reach decisions.
~ Yuval Noah Harari
~ Octavio Paz
Algorithm: A methodological set of steps to make calculations, resolve problems and reach decisions.
~ Yuval Noah Harari
2017년 8월 31일 목요일
Miguel - Skywalker
Outstanding so I stand out
More babes than a bath house
Top gun I'm like Tom Cruise
I play for keeps and I don't lose
You more than love it cuz I'm cool as a breeze
So pick a poison, yeah I got what you need
Nonchalant got the green on rotation all night
We gonna keep it psychadelic like a cap and stem
Catch a wave on us
Take a shot, make a friend, just enjoy the moment
Luke Skywalkin' on these haters
Celebrate everyday like a birthday
Things come to those who wait up
Don't wait to jump in too long
Don't sleep you gotta stay up
Don't sleep you gotta stay up
More babes than a bath house
Top gun I'm like Tom Cruise
I play for keeps and I don't lose
You more than love it cuz I'm cool as a breeze
So pick a poison, yeah I got what you need
Nonchalant got the green on rotation all night
We gonna keep it psychadelic like a cap and stem
Catch a wave on us
Take a shot, make a friend, just enjoy the moment
Luke Skywalkin' on these haters
Celebrate everyday like a birthday
Things come to those who wait up
Don't wait to jump in too long
Don't sleep you gotta stay up
Don't sleep you gotta stay up
2017년 7월 31일 월요일
The Paradox of Historical Knowledge
Knowledge that does not change behaviour is useless.
But knowledge that changes behaviour quickly loses its relevance.
The more data we have and the better we understand history, the quicker it changes.
~ Yuval Noah Harari
But knowledge that changes behaviour quickly loses its relevance.
The more data we have and the better we understand history, the quicker it changes.
~ Yuval Noah Harari
2017년 7월 14일 금요일
Off Key
Off key
But she likes me
Arms entwined
But time unwinds
Somehow foreign
But here born in
I'm deep bottled
Her, near tee-totaled
Oatmeal raison
Red velvet cake 'n
Wearin' same shirts 'n
Words left unsaid
But heard in bed
Somehow so different
But of same filiment
Cuddling atop covers
Alarm breaks slumber
But she still likes me
Off key
But she likes me
Arms entwined
But time unwinds
Somehow foreign
But here born in
I'm deep bottled
Her, near tee-totaled
Oatmeal raison
Red velvet cake 'n
Wearin' same shirts 'n
Words left unsaid
But heard in bed
Somehow so different
But of same filiment
Cuddling atop covers
Alarm breaks slumber
But she still likes me
Off key
2017년 6월 30일 금요일
Too Real
Too real
To the real
Not political
Fuck that
Can't be
But sees
Their needs
Fucks that
Walks a line
What's fine
Or a crime
Fuck it
Most deep
Likes to creep
But weeps
Fucks given
Locked eyes
So high
In her thighs
We fucks
Not binary
More spectrum-ary
Future come early
Fucking to the real
To the real
Not political
Fuck that
Can't be
But sees
Their needs
Fucks that
Walks a line
What's fine
Or a crime
Fuck it
Most deep
Likes to creep
But weeps
Fucks given
Locked eyes
So high
In her thighs
We fucks
Not binary
More spectrum-ary
Future come early
Fucking to the real
2017년 5월 31일 수요일
Blockchain, Questions and Responses
So if you know me, you know that for the past year cryptrocurrencies - beginning with ethereum - have been top of mind for me. I imagine that will be the case for many of you reading this as well. If that is the case then you have probably been asked - or told - one or both of the following question: "What is the blockchain[sic]?"
There are a ton of variations on this question, but I think it essentially sums up the mystery and skepticism sorrounding this epoch shifting technology. Below I want to leave you, dear reader, an answer to this question as well as a few responses from a couple of brilliant people that I hope you find useful the next time you start talking crypto with a noob, or a seasoned vet. Xoxo and don't get rekt. Hodl your ish bish.
What are blockchains?
Blockchains are a way to implement a distributed ledger, a record of consensus with a cryptographic audit trail which is maintained and validated by several separate nodes.
Blockchains sit ‘below’ a distributed ledger and act as a way to order and validate the transactions in the ledger. To that end, you can say that blockchains are a way to achieve the consensus necessary for a distributed ledger.
Source: “Blockchains 101” @breitwoman https://medium.com/@kathleenbreit/blockchains-101-654217effe20
copy of his book in my email inbox a few minutes after I sent 0.0162 BTC to David. T
Thoughts from thoughtful people:
Naval Ravikant: "The Four Layers of the Internet Protocol Suite are constantly communicating. The Link Layer puts packets on a wire. The Internet Layer routes them across networks. The Transport Layer persists communication across a given conversation. And the Application Layer delivers entire documents and applications.
Where’s the protocol layer for exchanging value, not just data? Where’s the distributed, anonymous, permission- less system for chatty machines to allocate their scarce resources? Where is the “virtual money” to create this “virtual economy?
Cryptocurrencies are an emergent property of the Internet – almost a 5th protocol in the Internet suite."
Benedict Evans: "The question, then, is not whether something works now but whether it could work - whether you know how to change it. Saying 'it doesn't work, today' has no value, but saying 'yes, but everything didn't work once' also has no value. Rather, do you have a roadmap? Do you know what to do next?
...
First of all, it's quite common, especially in enterprise technology, for something to propose a new way to solve an existing problem. It can't be used to solve the problem in the old way, so 'it doesn't work', and proposes a new way, and so 'no-one will want that'. This is how generational shifts work - first you try to force the new tool to fit the old workflow, and then the new tool creates a new workflow. Both parts are painful and full of denial, but the new model is ultimately much better than the old.
...
One way to solve this problem is to try to separate the fundamental capability that's being proposed from the specific uses. Edison thought that sound recording would be good for sermons, not music, and it’s hard, and perhaps impossible, to tell what people will use the new thing for. But sound recording and one-to-one and one-to-many sound transmission were much more fundamental changes than the ability to listen to a sermon on demand. What mattered was seeing the value of the capability, not predicting any particular applications. The mistake to make in looking at Edison's recording technology would have been to argue about whether people wanted sermons - the mistake is to look only at the application that this technology is proposed to provide, and not the actual capability that has been created. Sermons might not work, but sound is a big deal."
There are a ton of variations on this question, but I think it essentially sums up the mystery and skepticism sorrounding this epoch shifting technology. Below I want to leave you, dear reader, an answer to this question as well as a few responses from a couple of brilliant people that I hope you find useful the next time you start talking crypto with a noob, or a seasoned vet. Xoxo and don't get rekt. Hodl your ish bish.
What are blockchains?
Blockchains are a way to implement a distributed ledger, a record of consensus with a cryptographic audit trail which is maintained and validated by several separate nodes.
Blockchains sit ‘below’ a distributed ledger and act as a way to order and validate the transactions in the ledger. To that end, you can say that blockchains are a way to achieve the consensus necessary for a distributed ledger.
Source: “Blockchains 101” @breitwoman https://medium.com/@kathleenbreit/blockchains-101-654217effe20
copy of his book in my email inbox a few minutes after I sent 0.0162 BTC to David. T
Thoughts from thoughtful people:
Naval Ravikant: "The Four Layers of the Internet Protocol Suite are constantly communicating. The Link Layer puts packets on a wire. The Internet Layer routes them across networks. The Transport Layer persists communication across a given conversation. And the Application Layer delivers entire documents and applications.
Where’s the protocol layer for exchanging value, not just data? Where’s the distributed, anonymous, permission- less system for chatty machines to allocate their scarce resources? Where is the “virtual money” to create this “virtual economy?
Cryptocurrencies are an emergent property of the Internet – almost a 5th protocol in the Internet suite."
Benedict Evans: "The question, then, is not whether something works now but whether it could work - whether you know how to change it. Saying 'it doesn't work, today' has no value, but saying 'yes, but everything didn't work once' also has no value. Rather, do you have a roadmap? Do you know what to do next?
...
First of all, it's quite common, especially in enterprise technology, for something to propose a new way to solve an existing problem. It can't be used to solve the problem in the old way, so 'it doesn't work', and proposes a new way, and so 'no-one will want that'. This is how generational shifts work - first you try to force the new tool to fit the old workflow, and then the new tool creates a new workflow. Both parts are painful and full of denial, but the new model is ultimately much better than the old.
...
One way to solve this problem is to try to separate the fundamental capability that's being proposed from the specific uses. Edison thought that sound recording would be good for sermons, not music, and it’s hard, and perhaps impossible, to tell what people will use the new thing for. But sound recording and one-to-one and one-to-many sound transmission were much more fundamental changes than the ability to listen to a sermon on demand. What mattered was seeing the value of the capability, not predicting any particular applications. The mistake to make in looking at Edison's recording technology would have been to argue about whether people wanted sermons - the mistake is to look only at the application that this technology is proposed to provide, and not the actual capability that has been created. Sermons might not work, but sound is a big deal."
2017년 4월 30일 일요일
2017년 3월 31일 금요일
Ideas These Days
An idea is something whose time has come, so if I think of something these days it is - at best - something thought of in tandem with someone else.
Chris DeRose,
Bitcoin Uncensored - Episode 62
Chris DeRose,
Bitcoin Uncensored - Episode 62
2017년 2월 28일 화요일
Precious, Precious Tech
"Yes...but [in those recent job cuts at major tech firms] who are they cutting? [They are] cutting redundancy and adding highly skilled workers [it's] is part of life."
Right, those laid off or made redundant lack those highly specialized skills. Those who are made redundant need different skill sets for the software-defined future that they simply don't have, right? Of course each position that needs to be filled is a special snowflake that in turn needs its own special snowflake to fill it and be able to unlock those miracles and incredible experiences that makes everyone involved super proud. Everyone is precious about these things.
And - to be absolutely clear - that is why these companies are great.
Ok, that said, are these companies getting too precious? Are we - you and I - getting too precious about those companies? Are there any negative externalities caused by so much preciousness?
And - to be absolutely clear - that is why these companies are great.
Ok, that said, are these companies getting too precious? Are we - you and I - getting too precious about those companies? Are there any negative externalities caused by so much preciousness?
I think the arguement can be made that we are subsidizing preciousness too damn much. If you had the option to increase the size of a bucket - one that is replenished year after year - that is not only full of the exact snowflakes you are looking floor, but is actually flown direct to you INSTEAD of having to fill your own bucket up with regular old water, then freeze that bucket into a workable mold before you husk off chunks that basically will get the job done and could be chisled out over time, who the fuck would ever choose the latter? This is what is happening. We are subsidizing precious companies and their desire to select their precious snowflakes.
The claim that there is an absolute lack of domestic STEM talent versus actual jobs and forecast jobs is not a tenable arguement to hold. The reality, as the US Bureau of Labor Studies made clear here (https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2015/article/stem-crisis-or-stem-surplus-yes-and-yes.htm) is much more nuanced and the reality is that it is frankly impossible to unequivocally assert such a lack exists. The amount of anecdotal evidence relied on - most of which is provided by the groups that would benefit the most by having a bucket of talent pooled exclusively for them - is astounding.
What the real focus regarding HIRING REFORM should be - because any visa reform would essentially be a reform on hiring practices - should be to monitor real wages amongst other factors of course; I'm not a PhD for faks sakes. Those sectors/positions that see a quicker rise/spike in real wages obviously would indicate an area where companies - especially smaller companies - may have a need for easier access to easily recruitable talent in order to compete. This would also benefit the larger ecosystem with a diversity of product solutions that would give consumers more choice and expedite future improvements.
And let's talk about global diversity and a global ecosystem of competing businesses. Let's say Trump pulled a knee jerk reaction and yanks the whole H1B program, hundreds of thousands of Indians and Eastern Europeans amongst others will have to go home. They will be pissed, and heartbroken and everything. They will leave behind friends and have to move back to countries with backward ways of doing things. But how much of that backwardness and corruption can be attributed to a comparative lack of competition for better leaders, better business people etc...?? These people would return with global networks, best practices, and a fucking chip on their shoulder bigger than the tumour that took out Steve Jobs...
2017년 1월 30일 월요일
Jongsam 종삼
In volume one of Go Eun's 1995 autobiographical novel "My Bronze Age," Korea's representative modern poet-essayist depicts Jongsam prostitution, in particular the rooms that the prostitutes worked out of.
"There was a girl whose entire wall was lined with records. Another was behind pulled, pink nylon curtains bringing a man back to his wedding night ecstasy. What was really sad though were the posters with english phrases like 'Sweet Home' and 'Happy' that lined the walls where the girls hung their treasured garments that were constantly being ripped off of them."
Such a realistic picture of a Jongsam room belies the frequent visits that the author must have made to Jongsam. To be honest, if I had to choose a piece of literature that best captures Jongsam, Go Eun's "Generation" published in the April 1972 version of "1950's Non-fiction: The Literature of Destruction, 16" would be my immediate choice.
The following excerpt describes why men from that generation had to go to Jongsam.
"The alcohol of Myeongdong and the women of Jongsam were the true homes of writers in the wake of the destruction from the 1950s. Drinking cheap alcohol in Myeongdong and running to Jongro 3-ga to get stuck in cheap women allowed us to colourfully escape the dark post-war atmosphere.
The war was over. All the writers and citizens had returned. The wasted youth and writers of ruin imitated Oscar Wilde and Rimbaud. Since they quickly mimicked the existentialists as well as the fallen house of Heungson Daewongun, the despair, anxiety, irrationality, extreme situations, existence, solitude - the lexicon of the post-war period all became the same. When the war ended they all had to embrace the feeling of loss together. In the 1950s, a tremendous void was left in their hearts that they had to cover with something. They hadn't only lost their mothers or their homes. They didn't just lose books. That time they climbed up Namsan with their first love, and ran right back down spasming in ecstasy without even hugging her was lost.
They lost their homes. Philosophies were lost. Everything was lost. Their beloved Soonhee became a whore the foreigners called Elena. Houses, destroyed; philosophies, barren. Those damaged souls had to find a way to deal with such an overwhelming feeling of loss. And that was [through] alcohol and whores.
..... The Jongsam girls provided deep consolation. Of course this doesn't mean the girls were cute or had good bodies. They were destroyed, and like ruin their rotten temperment was without equal. Yet just going there and experiencing such disillusionment was consolation enough.
Let's go! To our hometown, Jongsam!
Let's go! To our eternal lovers! Oh! Oh! My sun, my night!"
~ An original translation of
Vol. Of Son Jung-mok's
'The Story of Seoul's City Planning'
"There was a girl whose entire wall was lined with records. Another was behind pulled, pink nylon curtains bringing a man back to his wedding night ecstasy. What was really sad though were the posters with english phrases like 'Sweet Home' and 'Happy' that lined the walls where the girls hung their treasured garments that were constantly being ripped off of them."
Such a realistic picture of a Jongsam room belies the frequent visits that the author must have made to Jongsam. To be honest, if I had to choose a piece of literature that best captures Jongsam, Go Eun's "Generation" published in the April 1972 version of "1950's Non-fiction: The Literature of Destruction, 16" would be my immediate choice.
The following excerpt describes why men from that generation had to go to Jongsam.
"The alcohol of Myeongdong and the women of Jongsam were the true homes of writers in the wake of the destruction from the 1950s. Drinking cheap alcohol in Myeongdong and running to Jongro 3-ga to get stuck in cheap women allowed us to colourfully escape the dark post-war atmosphere.
The war was over. All the writers and citizens had returned. The wasted youth and writers of ruin imitated Oscar Wilde and Rimbaud. Since they quickly mimicked the existentialists as well as the fallen house of Heungson Daewongun, the despair, anxiety, irrationality, extreme situations, existence, solitude - the lexicon of the post-war period all became the same. When the war ended they all had to embrace the feeling of loss together. In the 1950s, a tremendous void was left in their hearts that they had to cover with something. They hadn't only lost their mothers or their homes. They didn't just lose books. That time they climbed up Namsan with their first love, and ran right back down spasming in ecstasy without even hugging her was lost.
They lost their homes. Philosophies were lost. Everything was lost. Their beloved Soonhee became a whore the foreigners called Elena. Houses, destroyed; philosophies, barren. Those damaged souls had to find a way to deal with such an overwhelming feeling of loss. And that was [through] alcohol and whores.
..... The Jongsam girls provided deep consolation. Of course this doesn't mean the girls were cute or had good bodies. They were destroyed, and like ruin their rotten temperment was without equal. Yet just going there and experiencing such disillusionment was consolation enough.
Let's go! To our hometown, Jongsam!
Let's go! To our eternal lovers! Oh! Oh! My sun, my night!"
~ An original translation of
Vol. Of Son Jung-mok's
'The Story of Seoul's City Planning'
2016년 12월 31일 토요일
HyperNormalization
Origin: Russian
A term to describe the dissonance between a life lived and the "official" version of reality in the sense that people are forced to accept and believe an official narrative instead of the stark reality, because the latter is just so bad or antithetical to what was originally believed.
"When a majority of society feels themselves to be so much a part of a system that it becomes impossible for them to see beyond it; when fakeness is hypernormal."
Adam Curtis, 'HyperNormalization' (BBC, 2016)
A term to describe the dissonance between a life lived and the "official" version of reality in the sense that people are forced to accept and believe an official narrative instead of the stark reality, because the latter is just so bad or antithetical to what was originally believed.
"When a majority of society feels themselves to be so much a part of a system that it becomes impossible for them to see beyond it; when fakeness is hypernormal."
Adam Curtis, 'HyperNormalization' (BBC, 2016)
2016년 11월 30일 수요일
술 상무
Jamsil Island was very, very wide. When the decision was made to carry out public water reclamation works to connect the island to land to its south, it would have made sense to have the Seoul Metropolitan government carry out works instead of tendering the job to private firms. Seoul Metropolitan submitted its application for a permit to carry out public water reclamation works on Jamsil Island to the Ministry of Construction on January 1, 1969. The Ministry of Construction rejected this application under the following pretext: "There is a concern that should the width of the river be narrowed, such a change to the surface water profile may weaken its resistance to floods. A further review will be undertaken following a report on the results of a hydraulic water experiment on the lower Han River basin in the Seoul Region."
Seoul Metropolitan submitted several more permit applications. They received no response to any of them. Then on August 26th, a reply to their permit application submitted on July 23, 1970, finally arrived. "As concerns the works at hand, a private contractor would be preferred to having Seoul Metropolitan directly carry out works." No reason was provided to the question of 'why exactly a private contractor was preferred' in the first place. However, behind the Construction Ministry's response lay a contentious back and forth regarding the collection of so-called political funds.
During Park Chung Hee's time - which is to say throughout the 3rd and 4th republics - political funds were regularly solicited. Korea's economic scale was much smaller then than it is today. I also happen to know first hand that significant excesses were committed during the political fund collections - all of which had their own long term repercussions. There was a striking feature in the way Park Chung Hee pooled political funds: he never once received anything from any business directly.
There were several channels, though. The first was to have the Deputy Prime Minister cum Economic Planning Board Minister collect the funds. The Chaebol and large corporations we see in Korea today were basically all formed during the 3rd and 4th Republics. Capital infusion and special interest rates, along with favorable tax schemes, were the three means by which the Chaebol developed under. All of these measures were under the direct control of the Deputy Prime Minister cum Economic Planning Minister. To give an example of customary practice, when large sums of capital were provided, a percentage of the funds would then be set aside to be sent up as political funds.
The second channel was to have the Chairman of the then ruling Republican Party's Finance Committee gather the funds. I'm not sure how things operate today, but during the 3rd and 4th Republics, nearly all of the large construction works let to market by the Central Government, government-owned enterprises, and the Seoul Metropolitan Government were awarded either through privately negotiated contracts or nominated competitive tenders. To say that there was no such thing as a normal competitive tender isn't an exaggeration. These nominations were at the sole discretion of the Republican Party's Finance Committee Chairman. So in practice, when a new project was ready to come to market, a percentage of political funds would be sent up. Then the size and scale of the works awarded to the various contractors would be distributed based on the amount of funds provided. The Finance Committee Chairman would take a portion of the political funds received and send them up to the Blue House with remaining funds used to cover Party operating expenses. Over the years, Kim Youngtae, Kim Seong-goen, Kim Jin-min and other notable figures would serve as the Finance Committee Chairman, occupying a more important role than either the Leader of the Floor or Secretary General. Kim Youngtae was a private citizen who was a central figure in the May 16 Coup d'tat, Kim Seong-nam was the founder of Ssangyong Group, and Kim Jin-min was the founder of Dongbu Group. Hence, it's no surprise that they were the Chief Financial Operators of their party and held outsized influence.
Annual 'Rice Cake Bonuses' (떡값) at Chuseok or the end of the year were the third channel. These 'bonuses' were facilitated by the Chief Presidential Secretary or Chief of Security.
Outside of these channels there were times when the Head of the Korean Central Intelligence Agency or Seoul Mayor would collect and send up funds. Of course, there was obvious competition behind the collecting and passing up of political funds in an effort to be seen as more loyal to the president. Demarcated lines were drawn between those in the ruling elite and those who they typically used their influence on to collect the political funds. The Economic Planning Minister would typically recieve funds from corporations, and the Republican Party Finance Committee Chairman would bring in funds from contractors. Large corporations at that time would typically have a full-time position manned by an individual responsible for sending up these political funds, which held a rank equivalent to that of the CEO. This person was the VP of Liquor (술 상무).
Then one day, in the second half of 1969, the Deputy Prime Minister cum Economic Planning Minister Kim Hak-legal contacted the managing directors (chairman or CEO level) of five major contractors. The managing directors of Hyundai Construction, Daelim Industries, Geukdong Construction, Sambu Civil Works, and Donga Construction. They were told to come to the office of the Economic Planning Minsters the next day at a certain time. Kim Hak-leol requested a rather large political contribution from each of the five individuals (Hyundai's Chung Joo-Young; Lee Jae-June from Daelim; Kim Yong-San of Geukdong; Cho Jung-Gu of Sambu, and Donga's Choi June-Moon).
On September 14, 1969 in the 3rd annex of the National Assembly, the constitutional revision allowing a third consecutive term for Park Chung Hee was passed, with the approving public referendum taking place shortly thereafter on October 17. In accordance with the constitutional revision, both the presidential as well as National Assembly elections were held on April 5, 1971. During this period between 1969 and 1971, there must have been quite a need for political funds, since that would explain the Deputy Prime Minister Kim's unusual request for politcal funds to this group of contractors who were outside of his normal corporate targets.
The contractors were all opposed to the Deputy Prime Ministers request. "We are already sending up political funds to the Republican Party Finance Committee Chairman every time we are awarded new projects. It just isn't reasonable for the Economic Planning Minister to now request that we send up political funds to him too." Hearing their objection, the Deputy Prime Minister proposed that in exchange for their politcal funds, they would receive the rights to the Jamsil public water reclamation works project. If they were to block the waterway to the south side of Jamsil island, connect it with the land adjacent to it, and build up a dike along its northern border, a massive section of reclaimed land would be formed. They would then have the right to that enormous amount of virgin land. The five manging directors all immediately accepted the proposal and promised to send up the political funds that the Deputy Prime Ministers had requested.
~ An original translation
from Volume III of Son Jung-mok's
'The Story of Seoul's City Planning'
Son Jung-mok: Former Director of Seoul City Planning Bureau, Internal Affairs Ministry, and Deputy Director of the National Assembly Budget Office for Planning and Management
Seoul Metropolitan submitted several more permit applications. They received no response to any of them. Then on August 26th, a reply to their permit application submitted on July 23, 1970, finally arrived. "As concerns the works at hand, a private contractor would be preferred to having Seoul Metropolitan directly carry out works." No reason was provided to the question of 'why exactly a private contractor was preferred' in the first place. However, behind the Construction Ministry's response lay a contentious back and forth regarding the collection of so-called political funds.
During Park Chung Hee's time - which is to say throughout the 3rd and 4th republics - political funds were regularly solicited. Korea's economic scale was much smaller then than it is today. I also happen to know first hand that significant excesses were committed during the political fund collections - all of which had their own long term repercussions. There was a striking feature in the way Park Chung Hee pooled political funds: he never once received anything from any business directly.
There were several channels, though. The first was to have the Deputy Prime Minister cum Economic Planning Board Minister collect the funds. The Chaebol and large corporations we see in Korea today were basically all formed during the 3rd and 4th Republics. Capital infusion and special interest rates, along with favorable tax schemes, were the three means by which the Chaebol developed under. All of these measures were under the direct control of the Deputy Prime Minister cum Economic Planning Minister. To give an example of customary practice, when large sums of capital were provided, a percentage of the funds would then be set aside to be sent up as political funds.
The second channel was to have the Chairman of the then ruling Republican Party's Finance Committee gather the funds. I'm not sure how things operate today, but during the 3rd and 4th Republics, nearly all of the large construction works let to market by the Central Government, government-owned enterprises, and the Seoul Metropolitan Government were awarded either through privately negotiated contracts or nominated competitive tenders. To say that there was no such thing as a normal competitive tender isn't an exaggeration. These nominations were at the sole discretion of the Republican Party's Finance Committee Chairman. So in practice, when a new project was ready to come to market, a percentage of political funds would be sent up. Then the size and scale of the works awarded to the various contractors would be distributed based on the amount of funds provided. The Finance Committee Chairman would take a portion of the political funds received and send them up to the Blue House with remaining funds used to cover Party operating expenses. Over the years, Kim Youngtae, Kim Seong-goen, Kim Jin-min and other notable figures would serve as the Finance Committee Chairman, occupying a more important role than either the Leader of the Floor or Secretary General. Kim Youngtae was a private citizen who was a central figure in the May 16 Coup d'tat, Kim Seong-nam was the founder of Ssangyong Group, and Kim Jin-min was the founder of Dongbu Group. Hence, it's no surprise that they were the Chief Financial Operators of their party and held outsized influence.
Annual 'Rice Cake Bonuses' (떡값) at Chuseok or the end of the year were the third channel. These 'bonuses' were facilitated by the Chief Presidential Secretary or Chief of Security.
Outside of these channels there were times when the Head of the Korean Central Intelligence Agency or Seoul Mayor would collect and send up funds. Of course, there was obvious competition behind the collecting and passing up of political funds in an effort to be seen as more loyal to the president. Demarcated lines were drawn between those in the ruling elite and those who they typically used their influence on to collect the political funds. The Economic Planning Minister would typically recieve funds from corporations, and the Republican Party Finance Committee Chairman would bring in funds from contractors. Large corporations at that time would typically have a full-time position manned by an individual responsible for sending up these political funds, which held a rank equivalent to that of the CEO. This person was the VP of Liquor (술 상무).
Then one day, in the second half of 1969, the Deputy Prime Minister cum Economic Planning Minister Kim Hak-legal contacted the managing directors (chairman or CEO level) of five major contractors. The managing directors of Hyundai Construction, Daelim Industries, Geukdong Construction, Sambu Civil Works, and Donga Construction. They were told to come to the office of the Economic Planning Minsters the next day at a certain time. Kim Hak-leol requested a rather large political contribution from each of the five individuals (Hyundai's Chung Joo-Young; Lee Jae-June from Daelim; Kim Yong-San of Geukdong; Cho Jung-Gu of Sambu, and Donga's Choi June-Moon).
On September 14, 1969 in the 3rd annex of the National Assembly, the constitutional revision allowing a third consecutive term for Park Chung Hee was passed, with the approving public referendum taking place shortly thereafter on October 17. In accordance with the constitutional revision, both the presidential as well as National Assembly elections were held on April 5, 1971. During this period between 1969 and 1971, there must have been quite a need for political funds, since that would explain the Deputy Prime Minister Kim's unusual request for politcal funds to this group of contractors who were outside of his normal corporate targets.
The contractors were all opposed to the Deputy Prime Ministers request. "We are already sending up political funds to the Republican Party Finance Committee Chairman every time we are awarded new projects. It just isn't reasonable for the Economic Planning Minister to now request that we send up political funds to him too." Hearing their objection, the Deputy Prime Minister proposed that in exchange for their politcal funds, they would receive the rights to the Jamsil public water reclamation works project. If they were to block the waterway to the south side of Jamsil island, connect it with the land adjacent to it, and build up a dike along its northern border, a massive section of reclaimed land would be formed. They would then have the right to that enormous amount of virgin land. The five manging directors all immediately accepted the proposal and promised to send up the political funds that the Deputy Prime Ministers had requested.
~ An original translation
from Volume III of Son Jung-mok's
'The Story of Seoul's City Planning'
Son Jung-mok: Former Director of Seoul City Planning Bureau, Internal Affairs Ministry, and Deputy Director of the National Assembly Budget Office for Planning and Management
2016년 10월 31일 월요일
Lead & Lag Indicators and the Podcast Industry
There have been some good discussions on the Hotpod paid members forum looking at all of the channels for revenue generation available to podcasters. Over the past year or so live shows seem to have really become a very interesting new mode and expression of fan engagement that also serves as a healthy and robust means of generating revenue for many shows. A fellow member @mijustin provided some great food for thought on high- and low-impact advertising
To this outsider it seems that advertising via podcasts (when done right of course) could also highlight a third potential categorization: hyper-purchase intent. I would define this sort of advertising as that which targets those high-intent listeners with products or services that are both relatively novel and obviously within the semiosphere of the subject or topic of the podcast (episode) at hand, but not something that was directly searched for ahead of time. Case in point, these days I've taken a keen interest in several podcasts like 'Epicenter Bitcoin' and 'The Bitcoin Show' that discuss cryptocurrencies (e.g. bitcoin, ethereum). People curious about cryptocurrencies will find these shows. And when they do they will hear ads hyper-directed towards them about digital wallets to put any funds they purchase in like the jaxx wallet (jaxx.io) or digital currency escrow services like escrowmybits.com and others that they may have not have thought about before, but upon hearing will be (more) apt to check out and maybe consume.
Over and above the discussion of advertising though, I was reminded of terms that are popular with Q-HSE experts in the construction industry and how they may be applied and used by podcasters. Of course - but of course - I am talking about lead and lag indicators. Lag indicators, when used on infrastructure projects, are things like manhours without an accident, or simply the number of fatalities or injuries. They are retrospective metrics that are important yesterday. Their assumed importance for tomorrow's decision making cannot be understated either, however, their actual predictive value is quite low. Thus if decision making is made based largely on such lag indicators things can get obfuscated pretty quickly. For example, after someone dies on a project there is usually a push to highlight every potential hazard on-site, so every single near-miss (incident) is recorded. As a result, from one day to the next you go from what looked like a relatively safe site to a death trap without any clarity on where "the real" trouble areas are. Rankings, CPM-rates and clarity on other podcast metrics that I and most others have been calling for fall into the lagging indicator category. Since these measurements are still in the process of being standardized as they relate to the audio on-demand sector, I think most of us have felt it sufficient to chase the rabbit down the fly trap so to speak as it relates to forecasting how we think things will settle for these indicators.
But don't we already know how things will turn out if we only focus on lag indicators? A few powers will settle (if they haven't settled already) on standardized metrics and we will have top-50 or top-100 list of shows that will take a large portion of the pie. The flip side of lag indicators are what's called 'lead indicators' or positive performance indicators. In construction these indicators manifest themselves in things like educations and trainings. Interestingly enough they also seem to have already appeared in podcasting in the form of live shows. A more developed - but still directly related - form is the traveling tour version of these live shows. Direct support via Patreon campaigns or simple fan to producer payments using bitcoin/ethereum are additional examples of lead indicators that are simply unaccounted for in traditional lag indicators. What is incredibly interesting is that lead indicators in podcasting, in addition to being great signals of a shows continued future success based on direct audience support, is that they clearly demonstrate a direct relation with bottom line growth.
Heading forward it would behoove those involved with producing on-demand audio to develop and standardize more leading indicators, sharing best practices along the way. This way content creators and owners of content can better understand that their active role is integral to the success of their work - their role simply doesn't stop after producing a show - while pulling on the availability of useful lag indicators to help keep everyone honest and on their toes while innovating forward, without being beholden to such metrics as the ultimate measure of what defines a shows success and profit or failure.
To this outsider it seems that advertising via podcasts (when done right of course) could also highlight a third potential categorization: hyper-purchase intent. I would define this sort of advertising as that which targets those high-intent listeners with products or services that are both relatively novel and obviously within the semiosphere of the subject or topic of the podcast (episode) at hand, but not something that was directly searched for ahead of time. Case in point, these days I've taken a keen interest in several podcasts like 'Epicenter Bitcoin' and 'The Bitcoin Show' that discuss cryptocurrencies (e.g. bitcoin, ethereum). People curious about cryptocurrencies will find these shows. And when they do they will hear ads hyper-directed towards them about digital wallets to put any funds they purchase in like the jaxx wallet (jaxx.io) or digital currency escrow services like escrowmybits.com and others that they may have not have thought about before, but upon hearing will be (more) apt to check out and maybe consume.
Over and above the discussion of advertising though, I was reminded of terms that are popular with Q-HSE experts in the construction industry and how they may be applied and used by podcasters. Of course - but of course - I am talking about lead and lag indicators. Lag indicators, when used on infrastructure projects, are things like manhours without an accident, or simply the number of fatalities or injuries. They are retrospective metrics that are important yesterday. Their assumed importance for tomorrow's decision making cannot be understated either, however, their actual predictive value is quite low. Thus if decision making is made based largely on such lag indicators things can get obfuscated pretty quickly. For example, after someone dies on a project there is usually a push to highlight every potential hazard on-site, so every single near-miss (incident) is recorded. As a result, from one day to the next you go from what looked like a relatively safe site to a death trap without any clarity on where "the real" trouble areas are. Rankings, CPM-rates and clarity on other podcast metrics that I and most others have been calling for fall into the lagging indicator category. Since these measurements are still in the process of being standardized as they relate to the audio on-demand sector, I think most of us have felt it sufficient to chase the rabbit down the fly trap so to speak as it relates to forecasting how we think things will settle for these indicators.
But don't we already know how things will turn out if we only focus on lag indicators? A few powers will settle (if they haven't settled already) on standardized metrics and we will have top-50 or top-100 list of shows that will take a large portion of the pie. The flip side of lag indicators are what's called 'lead indicators' or positive performance indicators. In construction these indicators manifest themselves in things like educations and trainings. Interestingly enough they also seem to have already appeared in podcasting in the form of live shows. A more developed - but still directly related - form is the traveling tour version of these live shows. Direct support via Patreon campaigns or simple fan to producer payments using bitcoin/ethereum are additional examples of lead indicators that are simply unaccounted for in traditional lag indicators. What is incredibly interesting is that lead indicators in podcasting, in addition to being great signals of a shows continued future success based on direct audience support, is that they clearly demonstrate a direct relation with bottom line growth.
Heading forward it would behoove those involved with producing on-demand audio to develop and standardize more leading indicators, sharing best practices along the way. This way content creators and owners of content can better understand that their active role is integral to the success of their work - their role simply doesn't stop after producing a show - while pulling on the availability of useful lag indicators to help keep everyone honest and on their toes while innovating forward, without being beholden to such metrics as the ultimate measure of what defines a shows success and profit or failure.
2016년 9월 30일 금요일
Seinfeld's 3 Steps for Creatives
1. Inspiration
2. Execution
3. Obsessive Attention to Detail
Source : "Awards Chatter" podcast
< https://audio.simplecast.com/45456.mp3 >
2. Execution
3. Obsessive Attention to Detail
Source : "Awards Chatter" podcast
< https://audio.simplecast.com/45456.mp3 >
2016년 8월 31일 수요일
How to Take Notes
Recently there have been a slew of articles that made me feel like a kid again. There was an article that taught me how to tie my shoes, one that showed me how to tie a scarf, and another on how to use toilet paper properly. I've re-learned so many things recently it'd be embarrassing to continue.
So here I am, an almost - but at the time I started writing this not quite - 30 year old (re)learning how to tie my shoes and live life. For a quick second I thought I was some oddball outlier. But then I started to take a look around - like really looked closely at everything again - and I was surprised (in a not so surprised way) to see so many people re-learning how to tie their shows, for reals.
When it comes to basic tasks and activites from eating to excersing and thinking, my bet is that most of us learned how to do these things by simply just following along. Following whom? Our parents, siblings, relatives, teachers, and friends of course. And that's generally good enough. We learn a small, but crucial aspect of a task, and as we get older we develop and build out our skill/know how of that task.
Let's take the example of note taking as a case-in-point. Most learn to take notes in elementary school or middle school. We were advised to keep seperate notebooks for each specific subject. As we matriculated through high school, university and beyond, this idea of 'seperation' probably continued. Maybe you now keep an array of different pens to identify different subjects, or use a specific filing technique when you save notes and documents electronically or perhaps you have different sized post-its to catagorize different thoughts. Or maybe you are "that person" who meticulously labels mini-tabs before you stick then on pages like bookmarks with medieval metadata.
With this hypothetical example at least, the guiding philosophy - that thought at the center of what note taking (as we learned it) is - has been 'seperation of different thoughts and ideas for some specific purpose.' And it works, up to a point. How many of you still have your notebooks from middle school, let alone from university or even your planner from last year? Trick question; it doesn't matter because even if you still have your old notebooks, or a hard drive full of documents, they have probably been left untouched. Everything written down or saved now remains lost and covered in that original seperation; such loss is built into and anticipated by the very way we learned to take notes.
Things are getting a little deep, no? I mean, I thought we were just talking about note taking right?! Well, we're about to get even deeper. We will now represent, symbolically, what note taking always has been but never thought of as being, what note taking has been to us, and what it could be in order to show a better way to take notes.
If you take a wide lens towards what note taking - or the recording of anything for that matter - has been throughout the history of humankind, it has simply been a long, running recording of thoughts & ideas. These recorded thoughts are all essentially functions: they are all linked to some specific thing (e.g. a passage in a book, a specifc topic, a particular lecture, an assignment, a to-do etc...). On top of that, over-arching relations run through these thoughts and ideas (e.g. time, place, a broad topic, a general thing, mood or behaviour). Much like a river, recorded notes pierce through time, are firmly connected with and touch their sorrounding environs and flow through space timelessly. This we can symbolize with the character '流'.
Now let's try to represent the essence of what note taking has been. The philosophy we etched out above should help. The driving force, the reason why we take notes is 'for some specific end' and thus we may re-present this idea with the symbol which has been used to convey acting for some things sake: '爲'.
Despite the shortcommings with taking notes focused solely on some specific end, it's hard to entirely refute the positive value or effect - however short lasting they may be - in our drive towards a better way. On the contrary, a synthesis should be what we strive for. Thus, for simplicity we can simply add a negation repesented with the symbol '無' to what we have thought note taking has been so that the resulting essence of the couplet is one where a specific end does not exist, but in the absence of such an end all ends are possible or '無爲'.
When all elements are combined we are left with '流無爲' or a flowing non-doing (i.e. not doing something for some specific end; doing something with all ends being possible without any any end being a direct impetus, focus nor a consideration of the original act). This is best exhibited in the 流無爲 note-taking app Diaro. Try it out. Use it. Carry it with you. Save it in the cloud. Add and update this flowing list across platforms and devices. Pay a little money to use it, forever. Give it to your children.
Basic tasks and how well we carry them out form the foundation of every other activity we engage in. If we can do basic things better, it would make sense that any unlocked efficiency could ripple through every other thing we do. Today, the best ways of doing things are readily available and shared through the internet. So, if we can learn the best way to do the basics, we no longer need to settle for what's simply been good enough.
So here I am, an almost - but at the time I started writing this not quite - 30 year old (re)learning how to tie my shoes and live life. For a quick second I thought I was some oddball outlier. But then I started to take a look around - like really looked closely at everything again - and I was surprised (in a not so surprised way) to see so many people re-learning how to tie their shows, for reals.
When it comes to basic tasks and activites from eating to excersing and thinking, my bet is that most of us learned how to do these things by simply just following along. Following whom? Our parents, siblings, relatives, teachers, and friends of course. And that's generally good enough. We learn a small, but crucial aspect of a task, and as we get older we develop and build out our skill/know how of that task.
Let's take the example of note taking as a case-in-point. Most learn to take notes in elementary school or middle school. We were advised to keep seperate notebooks for each specific subject. As we matriculated through high school, university and beyond, this idea of 'seperation' probably continued. Maybe you now keep an array of different pens to identify different subjects, or use a specific filing technique when you save notes and documents electronically or perhaps you have different sized post-its to catagorize different thoughts. Or maybe you are "that person" who meticulously labels mini-tabs before you stick then on pages like bookmarks with medieval metadata.
With this hypothetical example at least, the guiding philosophy - that thought at the center of what note taking (as we learned it) is - has been 'seperation of different thoughts and ideas for some specific purpose.' And it works, up to a point. How many of you still have your notebooks from middle school, let alone from university or even your planner from last year? Trick question; it doesn't matter because even if you still have your old notebooks, or a hard drive full of documents, they have probably been left untouched. Everything written down or saved now remains lost and covered in that original seperation; such loss is built into and anticipated by the very way we learned to take notes.
Things are getting a little deep, no? I mean, I thought we were just talking about note taking right?! Well, we're about to get even deeper. We will now represent, symbolically, what note taking always has been but never thought of as being, what note taking has been to us, and what it could be in order to show a better way to take notes.
If you take a wide lens towards what note taking - or the recording of anything for that matter - has been throughout the history of humankind, it has simply been a long, running recording of thoughts & ideas. These recorded thoughts are all essentially functions: they are all linked to some specific thing (e.g. a passage in a book, a specifc topic, a particular lecture, an assignment, a to-do etc...). On top of that, over-arching relations run through these thoughts and ideas (e.g. time, place, a broad topic, a general thing, mood or behaviour). Much like a river, recorded notes pierce through time, are firmly connected with and touch their sorrounding environs and flow through space timelessly. This we can symbolize with the character '流'.
Now let's try to represent the essence of what note taking has been. The philosophy we etched out above should help. The driving force, the reason why we take notes is 'for some specific end' and thus we may re-present this idea with the symbol which has been used to convey acting for some things sake: '爲'.
Despite the shortcommings with taking notes focused solely on some specific end, it's hard to entirely refute the positive value or effect - however short lasting they may be - in our drive towards a better way. On the contrary, a synthesis should be what we strive for. Thus, for simplicity we can simply add a negation repesented with the symbol '無' to what we have thought note taking has been so that the resulting essence of the couplet is one where a specific end does not exist, but in the absence of such an end all ends are possible or '無爲'.
When all elements are combined we are left with '流無爲' or a flowing non-doing (i.e. not doing something for some specific end; doing something with all ends being possible without any any end being a direct impetus, focus nor a consideration of the original act). This is best exhibited in the 流無爲 note-taking app Diaro. Try it out. Use it. Carry it with you. Save it in the cloud. Add and update this flowing list across platforms and devices. Pay a little money to use it, forever. Give it to your children.
Basic tasks and how well we carry them out form the foundation of every other activity we engage in. If we can do basic things better, it would make sense that any unlocked efficiency could ripple through every other thing we do. Today, the best ways of doing things are readily available and shared through the internet. So, if we can learn the best way to do the basics, we no longer need to settle for what's simply been good enough.
2016년 7월 31일 일요일
Biphasic Effect
An effect wherein, low and high doses of the same substance can produce opposite effects. For example, marijuana. Colloquially these opposite states are expressed by an individual when they say they are either 'high' or 'stoned', with the former state the result of a low dose, and the latter - of course - the result of too many hits to one's dome, or ingestion of a high dose edible.
2016년 6월 30일 목요일
Identity is the New Money
By David Birch. I'm about to pick it up in a Portland, Oregon Powell's. Blast off in 3-2-1...
2016년 5월 31일 화요일
Korean PC Game Rooms & Kakao Talk
What do a piece of parking lot management software, a former Samsung employee and Kakao all have in common?
A lot.
That former Samsung employee of course being Kim Bomsu. He of course - of course - was responsible for getting a former Seoul National University Graduate School buddy who later became a coworker at Samsung SDS to adapt a piece of software originally developed to manage paid parking lots to instead help PC Room managers keep track of individual users and how much time they spent using a machine and how much they owed. He then of course - of course - went on to market the hell out of that software (i.e. offering it for free, of course) to every other PC Room located on the Korean Peninsula until every PC Room on the peninsula had it installed and relied on it to an insane degree.
With that platform in place, Kim Bomsu and crew created Han Game, a gaming platform made up of simple, digitized card and board games, and embedded it in the PC Room management system. In half a year, Han Game amassed 10 million users, and it's server fees were about to bankrupt the team, but then the CEO of a fledgling web portal approached Bomsu and offered ㅇㅇㅇ won to acquire Han Game.
That CEO was ㅇㅇㅇ, also an alumnus of Seoul National University and Samsung SDS, and Naver was the web portal who at the time was fighting the twin giants of Yahoo Korea and Daum.
A lot.
That former Samsung employee of course being Kim Bomsu. He of course - of course - was responsible for getting a former Seoul National University Graduate School buddy who later became a coworker at Samsung SDS to adapt a piece of software originally developed to manage paid parking lots to instead help PC Room managers keep track of individual users and how much time they spent using a machine and how much they owed. He then of course - of course - went on to market the hell out of that software (i.e. offering it for free, of course) to every other PC Room located on the Korean Peninsula until every PC Room on the peninsula had it installed and relied on it to an insane degree.
With that platform in place, Kim Bomsu and crew created Han Game, a gaming platform made up of simple, digitized card and board games, and embedded it in the PC Room management system. In half a year, Han Game amassed 10 million users, and it's server fees were about to bankrupt the team, but then the CEO of a fledgling web portal approached Bomsu and offered ㅇㅇㅇ won to acquire Han Game.
That CEO was ㅇㅇㅇ, also an alumnus of Seoul National University and Samsung SDS, and Naver was the web portal who at the time was fighting the twin giants of Yahoo Korea and Daum.
2016년 4월 15일 금요일
2016년 3월 28일 월요일
Justice (as defined on the TV drama 'Billions')
Justice:
Rooted in truth,
watered by tenacity and
flowering in wisdom.
Maybe the single most beautiful expression of man kind.
~ U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of NY Chuck Rhoades (Billions, s01e10)
Rooted in truth,
watered by tenacity and
flowering in wisdom.
Maybe the single most beautiful expression of man kind.
~ U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of NY Chuck Rhoades (Billions, s01e10)
2016년 2월 29일 월요일
Note Taking
**rough draft**
Recently there gave been a slew of articles that made me feel like a kid again. There was an article that taught me how to tie my shoes [link], one that showed me how to tie a scarf [link], and another about the best way to fold toilet paper [link]. I've re-learned so many things recently that it'd be almost embarrassing to continue.
How funny is that image? An almost - but not quite - 30 year old learning how to tie his shoes; I think anyone would laugh out loud if they saw that in real life. But, if you look around - and I mean really look closely - I think you may be surprised to find how many people are actually re-learning how to tie their shoes, metaphorically that is.
When it comes to basic tasks and activities like eating, excercising and thinking, all of us have a specific method we employ to carry out each activity. My bet is that for such '"basic" activities, most of us simply learned how to do those things (i.e. basic methods) by simply following along. Following whom? We learned by following parents, siblings, relatives, teachers and friends of course. And that's generally good enough. We learn a basic method based on a simple principle (e.g. ' Over, under, pull it tight;
make a bow, pull it through to do it right', chew before you swallow) and as we ger older we may stick to the basic method or build out more advanced techniques a top it.
Let's use the the example of note taking as a case-in-point. Most learn to take notes in elementary school or middle school. We were advised to keep seperate notebooks for each specific subject. As we matriculated through high school, university and beyong, this idea of 'seperation' probably continued. Maybe you now keep an array of different pens to identify notes on different subjects, or use a specific filing technique when you save notes and documents electronically or perhaps have different sized post-its to categorize different thoughts or mini-tabs you stick on pages to help you find what you read or wrote.
With this hypothetical example at least, the guiding philosophy - that thought at the center of what note taking as we learned it - has been 'seperation of different thoughts and ideas for some specific purpose'. And it works, up to a point. How many of you still have your notebooks from middle school let alone from university or even you Samsung planner from last year? My guess is not many. Even if some of you still have your old notebooks, or have a hard drive full of documents, they have probably been left untouched, if not lost. But is being left untouched just another kind of loss anyways? Thus it would seem that loss is either built into and anticipated in the method of note taking we learned that embraces 'seperation' at its core.
Things are getting a little deep, no? I thought we were talking about note taking right?! Well, we're about to get even deeper. we're about to represent the essence of what note taking has been as a symbol. If we think back to what we said is the philosophy of note taking is (the seperation of different thoughts and ideas for some specific purpose) it should be clear that the driving force, the reason why we have taken notes is 'for some specific end' and thus we may use the following symbol: '爲'.
So now that we have symbolized what note taking has been, let's think about what note taking is, broadly. To define note taking as bluntly as possible, I would say: note taking is simply a long, running recording of thoughts and ideas. Thought broadly, recorded thoughts and ideas are all essentially functions; they are all linked to some specific thing (e.g. a passage in a book, a specific topic, a particular lecture, an assignment, a to-do etc...). On top of that, there are over-arching relations that run through these thoughts and ideas (e.g. broad topics, general ideas).
Recently there gave been a slew of articles that made me feel like a kid again. There was an article that taught me how to tie my shoes [link], one that showed me how to tie a scarf [link], and another about the best way to fold toilet paper [link]. I've re-learned so many things recently that it'd be almost embarrassing to continue.
How funny is that image? An almost - but not quite - 30 year old learning how to tie his shoes; I think anyone would laugh out loud if they saw that in real life. But, if you look around - and I mean really look closely - I think you may be surprised to find how many people are actually re-learning how to tie their shoes, metaphorically that is.
When it comes to basic tasks and activities like eating, excercising and thinking, all of us have a specific method we employ to carry out each activity. My bet is that for such '"basic" activities, most of us simply learned how to do those things (i.e. basic methods) by simply following along. Following whom? We learned by following parents, siblings, relatives, teachers and friends of course. And that's generally good enough. We learn a basic method based on a simple principle (e.g. ' Over, under, pull it tight;
make a bow, pull it through to do it right', chew before you swallow) and as we ger older we may stick to the basic method or build out more advanced techniques a top it.
Let's use the the example of note taking as a case-in-point. Most learn to take notes in elementary school or middle school. We were advised to keep seperate notebooks for each specific subject. As we matriculated through high school, university and beyong, this idea of 'seperation' probably continued. Maybe you now keep an array of different pens to identify notes on different subjects, or use a specific filing technique when you save notes and documents electronically or perhaps have different sized post-its to categorize different thoughts or mini-tabs you stick on pages to help you find what you read or wrote.
With this hypothetical example at least, the guiding philosophy - that thought at the center of what note taking as we learned it - has been 'seperation of different thoughts and ideas for some specific purpose'. And it works, up to a point. How many of you still have your notebooks from middle school let alone from university or even you Samsung planner from last year? My guess is not many. Even if some of you still have your old notebooks, or have a hard drive full of documents, they have probably been left untouched, if not lost. But is being left untouched just another kind of loss anyways? Thus it would seem that loss is either built into and anticipated in the method of note taking we learned that embraces 'seperation' at its core.
Things are getting a little deep, no? I thought we were talking about note taking right?! Well, we're about to get even deeper. we're about to represent the essence of what note taking has been as a symbol. If we think back to what we said is the philosophy of note taking is (the seperation of different thoughts and ideas for some specific purpose) it should be clear that the driving force, the reason why we have taken notes is 'for some specific end' and thus we may use the following symbol: '爲'.
So now that we have symbolized what note taking has been, let's think about what note taking is, broadly. To define note taking as bluntly as possible, I would say: note taking is simply a long, running recording of thoughts and ideas. Thought broadly, recorded thoughts and ideas are all essentially functions; they are all linked to some specific thing (e.g. a passage in a book, a specific topic, a particular lecture, an assignment, a to-do etc...). On top of that, there are over-arching relations that run through these thoughts and ideas (e.g. broad topics, general ideas).
2016년 1월 31일 일요일
Mister Rodgers-style Advertising
Fact: The global audio/radio ad market is worth $65 billion.
Fact: CTRs (click through rates) for all ad banners in 2014 was 0.06% or less than 1 click through per 1,000 views.
Fact: CPMs (costs per 1,000 listeners) for some podcasts has reached $60~100 as is the case for Midroll media, whilst average rates of $20~45 for the rest of the industry, despite being lower, are much higher than ad rates in other sectors. Also, podcast listener response to ads has been highlighted as being "significant."
Takeaway: People seek out specific meaning from print media, not advertisements. Radio and podcast listeners develop relationships with the voices they hear. Imagine being in a relationship with Mister Rodgers over a podcast. Now imagine that after a segment that saw you cry, laugh and learn something new, he talks about product 'x' - a product he actually uses and loves and because of that he has decided that his listeners should also at least hear about how good it is - and personally vouches for the product. You would at least be curious about the product, right? I know I am, and this is an imaginary hypothetical. Relationships are valuable and are the conduit for meaningful advertisement.
Extra credit: If Mister Rodgers asked for his listeners' financial support so that he could produce better shows more often, do you think that in addition to buying a product he advertises to them do you think they would also be willing to support him? If you were his listener, and he simply asked that you send him $1 per month, would you?
Personal question: If you had a podcast about something that was interesting to both yourself and others, how much money would you need to be able to exclusively do the podcast for one year? $100,000 give or take?
Happy podcasting^^
Fact: CTRs (click through rates) for all ad banners in 2014 was 0.06% or less than 1 click through per 1,000 views.
Fact: CPMs (costs per 1,000 listeners) for some podcasts has reached $60~100 as is the case for Midroll media, whilst average rates of $20~45 for the rest of the industry, despite being lower, are much higher than ad rates in other sectors. Also, podcast listener response to ads has been highlighted as being "significant."
Takeaway: People seek out specific meaning from print media, not advertisements. Radio and podcast listeners develop relationships with the voices they hear. Imagine being in a relationship with Mister Rodgers over a podcast. Now imagine that after a segment that saw you cry, laugh and learn something new, he talks about product 'x' - a product he actually uses and loves and because of that he has decided that his listeners should also at least hear about how good it is - and personally vouches for the product. You would at least be curious about the product, right? I know I am, and this is an imaginary hypothetical. Relationships are valuable and are the conduit for meaningful advertisement.
Extra credit: If Mister Rodgers asked for his listeners' financial support so that he could produce better shows more often, do you think that in addition to buying a product he advertises to them do you think they would also be willing to support him? If you were his listener, and he simply asked that you send him $1 per month, would you?
Personal question: If you had a podcast about something that was interesting to both yourself and others, how much money would you need to be able to exclusively do the podcast for one year? $100,000 give or take?
Happy podcasting^^
2015년 12월 29일 화요일
Adaptive Versus Creative Powers
Below I will end the year and leave you dear reader with one important question. While you and I are surely on the train of the digital re-cognizing of life and the world - to use the word 'revolution' to describe what is happening is to not clearly see the possibility cresting over the horizon - many, many others are most definately not. But, unlike the past two major ages (i.e. the colonial and industrial ages) those most at risk to be "left behind" reside in the "advanced nations" and not those parts of the world that are fiscally disadvantaged (imho). So, is this really a problem? Or, simply Karma? Anyways, happy new years everybody!
The problem of valuing adaptive qualities/powers of an individual higher than creative powers.
The increase in the degree of information threatens the loss of identity of people today (contrary to the belief that it is strengthening social reason). Those who feel independent and helpless in the face of technically mediated forms are more likely to become incapable of establishing an identity.
Adaptive power refers to the ability to become a specialist or expert and thus at the same time a functionary. Functionaries by their very nature must be completely concentrated upon the administration of their function (e.g. scientific, technical, economic, monetary processes, administration and politics). Smooth funtioning of the apparatus is the ultimate aim of inserting an expert.
The problem: As ever fewer persons are making the important decisions and ever more are manning the apparatus, modern society is thus oppressed by imminent structural pressures. This in turn leads to the degeneration of practice into technique and - through no fault of the experts themselves - to a decline into social irrationality.
It would be propitious at this juncture to emphasize the gravity of this last sentence - and to ultimately show that every word was thoughtfully chosen - by providing the meaning of 'practice' as defined by Heraclitus and re-cognized in the modern word by Gadamer: Practice is carrying and conducting oneself in solidarity; solidarity of course being the basis and foundation of social reason.
The problem of valuing adaptive qualities/powers of an individual higher than creative powers.
The increase in the degree of information threatens the loss of identity of people today (contrary to the belief that it is strengthening social reason). Those who feel independent and helpless in the face of technically mediated forms are more likely to become incapable of establishing an identity.
Adaptive power refers to the ability to become a specialist or expert and thus at the same time a functionary. Functionaries by their very nature must be completely concentrated upon the administration of their function (e.g. scientific, technical, economic, monetary processes, administration and politics). Smooth funtioning of the apparatus is the ultimate aim of inserting an expert.
The problem: As ever fewer persons are making the important decisions and ever more are manning the apparatus, modern society is thus oppressed by imminent structural pressures. This in turn leads to the degeneration of practice into technique and - through no fault of the experts themselves - to a decline into social irrationality.
It would be propitious at this juncture to emphasize the gravity of this last sentence - and to ultimately show that every word was thoughtfully chosen - by providing the meaning of 'practice' as defined by Heraclitus and re-cognized in the modern word by Gadamer: Practice is carrying and conducting oneself in solidarity; solidarity of course being the basis and foundation of social reason.
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