Category Archives: Personal Values

Massive manias, booms and busts.

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Remarkable video from Peter Thiel speaking at the Singularity Summit two years ago about the need for Singularity in todays Financial Markets.

Peter Andreas Thiel (born 1967) is an American entrepreneur, hedge fund manager, libertarian and venture capitalist. With Max Levchin, Thiel co-founded PayPal and was its CEO. He currently serves as president of Clarium Capital.

Thiel has made early-stage investments in several startups, including Slide, LinkedIn, Friendster, Geni.com, Yammer, Yelp, Powerset, Vator, Palantir Technologies, Joyent and IronPort.

Btw, we already mentioned Palantir Technologies in this earlier blog post. Also those folks are ex-PayPal.

“As you can’t predict, you have to bet” says Thiel.

And “The alternative to the singularity is the apocalypse”. See also my previous post on the need for a singleton if we want to avoid humans to be overruled by Artificial Intelligence

We will (are) witness massive manias, booms and busts

on a scale unprecedented.

But that’s not normal for markets that are well connected. Markets that are well connected (such as the financial markets) have more information circulating on their networks. Normally, when more and more information is floating around in a market, that market gets smoothened out and gets more efficient. Stocks would evolve at a smooth 6-7% per year, and most volatility would go out of the market.

Well, unless you have been living on another planet, the contrary is true. And worse,

the frequency ànd amplitude of the booms and busts gets bigger.

There was the Japanese crash end 80ies, the emerging markets mid 90ies, the intro of the financial derivatives that scaled to a 1 trillion hype industry, in 98 Russian market blew up, the March 2000 Internet bubble, the 2008 bust of Lehman’s and the big crisis we are in now. Peter Thiel explains how in March 2009 was the last month of insanity before the bust.

Dillusion and insanity were at their peak.

What i really like is when he says: “at the peak of the boom, you can see furthest”.

It reminds me of another quote – can’t find right away from who – that when innovating you better start with the future in mind, rather than starting from the now. The latter approach usually leads to small incremental adjacencies, whereas the first approach at least gives you a chance of driving something disruptive.

All big breakthroughs were disruptive. None of them were predictable by extrapolating the past of the now. See also Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s The Black Swan book.

Btw, in the last Wired (Aug 2009), you can read that speaking of the Black Swan is really “tired”. That’s the stage before “expired”. Old-fashioned.

Isn’t this about big trends ? Like that all sorts of businesses will  not work in the enterprise 2.0 economy. That running a more authentic business becomes mandatory. See book industry, see newspapers, etc.

However, the biggest trend –says Thiel in 2007 -  is the trend from old to new media. So big a trend you don’t even see it.

That was at the Singularity Summit in 2007 two years ago. Next summit is in October 2009. Have  a look at the line-up of speakers. Very curious what those great thinkers will spot as trends you don’t even see.

What are the biggest manias, busts and booms to come ?

Human Evolution Future

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Found a really interesting post today on Accelerating Future blog of Michael Anissimov.

He refers to the technology optimism of Kevin Kelly (KK). If you’re not familiar with KK, you should and definitely to his blog.

Kevin Kelly’s Panglossian optimism is exactly the type criticized in Nick Bostrom’s paper “The Future of Human Evolution”. The PDF version of this paper can be found here.

I read the paper and was blown away by some strong starting points, assumptions, statements and conclusions.

Some teasing extracts to further encourage you to download the paper and – more importantly – read and consume it.

The past few hundred years have seen enormous improvements in human life‐span, labor productivity, scientific knowledge, and social and political organization, which have enabled billions of people to enjoy unprecedented opportunities for enjoyment and personal development. On a historical as well as on a geological timescale, the big picture shows an overarching trend towards increasing levels of complexity, knowledge, consciousness, and coordinated goal‐directed organization, a trend which, not to put too fine a point on it, we may label

 “progress”.

… this past record of success gives us good grounds for thinking that evolution (whether biological, memetic, or technological) will continue to lead in desirable directions. This view, however, can be criticized on at least two grounds.

First, because we have no reason to think that all this past progress was in any sense inevitable‒‐much of it may, for aught we know, have been due to luck.

And second, because even if the past progress were to some extent inevitable, there is no guarantee that the melioristic trend will continue into the indefinite future.

… then the only way we could avoid long‐term existential disaster is by

taking control of our

own evolution.

Doing this, I shall further argue, would require the development of a “singleton,” a world order in which at the highest level of organization there is only one independent decision‐making power (which may be, but need not be, a world government).

Second, new methods of reliably communicating information about oneself might be available to technologically mature creatures, methods that do not rely on flamboyant display. Even today, professional lenders tend to rely more on ownership certificates, bank statements, and the like, than on costly displays such as designer suits and Rolex watches. In the future, it might be possible to employ auditing firms that can

verify through direct inspection that a client possesses a claimed attribute.

Signaling one’s qualities by such auditing may be much more efficient than signaling via flamboyant display. Such a professionally mediated signal would still be costly to fake (this is of course the essential feature that makes the signal reliable), but the signal could be much cheaper to transmit than a flamboyantly communicated one when it is

truthful

… not all possible costly or “flamboyant” displays are ones which we should regard as intrinsically valuable…

Just as current human beings benefit from other species, which pose no serious threat to the human species, so too may technologically more advanced agents benefit from the existence of an ecology of non‐eudaemonic agents

Moreover, by contrast to current human political competition, where alliances shift over time, it might be possible for more advanced life forms verifiably to commit themselves permanently to a particular alliance (perhaps using

mind‐scanning techniques

and

technologies for controlling motivation

All this makes me think about Kosta Peric’s posting on www.innotribe.com on developing a vision for 2020. Initial posting and debate can be found here.

Back from the future – tell your story

Consider the following "thought experiment" – imagine yourself in the future (let’s say somewhere in the 2020’s) and describe how the world looks like – and also how we got there. Something like this:

http://idorosen.com/mirrors/robinsloan.com/epic/

Some predictions are off and some are … quite close and still unfolding. In fact as we speak there are examples of newspapers attacking google or the internet in general.

(There is another movie applying the same trick for the financial industry known as "amazonbay"  but unfortunately all the links to it on the web are all off)

As a matter of fact that video is here:

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I find this type of thinking very useful and creative – you can drop all constraints and just let the imagination loose!
Any candidates for visionary story telling?

If you look at the stories posted, they are just lacking a bit of imagination on what’s going to happen by 2020 or 2030. Most of the the things posted there are already possible today !

I have a couple of days off and will try to write some sort of trailer on  what i believe is going to happen based on the singularity principles of Ray Kurzweil, and other great thinkers like Kevin Kelly and Nick Bostrom.

Stay tuned for some amateur SiFi.

2009 State of the Future

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The 2009 State of the Future report, just published by the Millennium Project, a global, independent futures-research think tank.

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The Executive Summary can be downloaded here.

Interesting dimensions in the report:

  1. Two State of the Future Indexes are presented; one without the recession and one based on an extended recession
  2. Emerging International Environmental Security Issues
  3. Future Economic Elements to Improve the Human Condition

The Future Economic Elements receiving the highest average ratings from the international panel for beneficial impacts for the future of humanity were:

• Ethics a key element in most work relations and economic exchanges
• New GNP/GDP definitions that include all forms of national wealth: e.g., energy, materials, ecosystems, social and human capital
• Global commons—air, climate, oceans, biodiversity (bees necessary for agriculture, etc.)—supported by international agreements among countries for very small (less than 1%) tax on selected categories, including currency trading and international travel; the funds collected would amount to several hundred billion per year for global public goods
• Collective intelligence––global commons for the knowledge economy
• On-line and in-classroom educational systems that continually update curriculum on the evolving economic system and its elements.

Interesting quote:

In March 2009 an asteroid missed Earth by 77,000 kilometers, 80% closer to the planet than our moon is. If it had hit Earth, it would have wiped out all life on 800 square kilometers.

No one knew it was coming.

The time between its discovery and close approach was very short.

Few people knew the global financial crisis was coming; fewer still forecast its breadth and depth. We need global, national, and local systems for resilience—the capacities to anticipate, respond, and recover from disasters while identifying future technological and social innovations and opportunities.

The acceleration of change reduces the time from recognizing the need to make a decision to completing all the steps to make the right decision. The number and intricacy of choices seem to be growing beyond leaders’ abilities to analyze and make decisions.

For example, do we have the right to clone ourselves, or to rewrite genetic codes to create thousands of new life forms, or to genetically change ourselves and future generations into new species?

Some experts speculate that the world is heading for a “singularity”—a time in which technological change is so fast and significant that we today are incapable of conceiving what life might be like beyond the year 2025.

Fortunately, we have the means for many people to know the world as a whole, identify global improvement systems, and seek to improve such systems—hence accelerating the improvements of our global situation.

We are the first generation to act via Internet with like-minded individuals around the world.

We have the ability to connect the right ideas to resources and people to help address global and local challenges. This is a unique time in human history.

Mobile phones, the Internet, international trade, language translation, and jet planes are giving birth to an interdependent humanity that can create and implement global strategies to improve the prospects for humanity.

Bugs from the screen into your arm

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Via Beyond the Beyond:

What’s real and what’s screen ?

What are our boundaries ?

Scary pushing of known boundaries. How will this look in 2030 ? Food for thought for our Think Tank on Long Term Future.

The Distinction of Past and Future

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Thanks to my subscription to Twine.com, i found this great website of Humansfuture.

future_human_evolution

It brings together subjects like Artificial Intelligence, Nano, Genetic Engineering, Transhumanism, etc, etc,… exactly all the subject matter for our Think Tank on Long Term Future.

From there i went on a surf “trip”, and discover The Next Big Thing, an initiative from BBC2 Open University.

They find their stuff at the Vega Science Trust.

Which led me discover the Classic Feynman Lectures that were put on line recently by Bill Gates on Microsoft Research under Project Tuva.

Btw, i wonder what became of Bill Gates new company, a sort of Think Tank.

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Microsoft Research Project Tuva presents Nobel Prize winning physicist Richard Feynman’s Messenger Series lectures within a new video player. This enhanced video player features searchable video, linked transcripts, user notes, and interactive extras.

Have a look at the 1964 lecture on “The distinction of past & future”. Dont forget this is 50 years old !

You can of course also google/bing Feynman. Here is a cool video: he starts by saying “I want to investigate everything”.

So, while the title of this post relates to future that is still 30-50 years away, it brings us back 50 years ago !

Money Remixed

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Can i trust you?

A nasty virus.

The party is over.

Mint Money.

Money will be reborn.

Private currencies to be liquid ?

How many controversial statements do you need to get attention ?

Who do you trust

Brands for example. Brand Equity.

 

Found via O’Reilly.

The economy is going off a cliff and financial practices are being, ahem, re-evaluated. Anthony Citrano takes this thinking a step further and ponders what would happen if the US dollar disappeared. He suggests that corporations will end up issuing money (like Kong Bucks in Snow Crash).

Anthony Citrano co-founded Pop!Tech and worked on the Obama campaign. He has written for Consumerist, The Huffington Post, Money, the New York Times, Investor’s Business Daily, the Wall Street Journal, WIRED, and his blog, The Cosmic Tap. This talk was filmed by Social Animal and was given at the first ignite LA.

image

What if TRUST becomes value #1 ?

Food for thought for our Think Tank on Long Term Future

Singularity Summit 2009

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If you happen to be in New-York begin October 2009, and you can spend the week-end there, something different would be to attend the Saturday-Sunday 3-4 Oct 2009 Singularity Summit.

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Very interesting line-up of speakers and not that expensive: 399$ for the 2 days if your are an early bird.

The conference is devoted to the better understanding of increasing intelligence and accelerating change.

Participants will hear talks from cutting-edge researchers and network with strategic business leaders.

The world’s most eminent experts on forecasting, venture capital, emerging technologies, consciousness and life extension will present their unique perspectives on the future and how to get there.

Select Speakers this year:

* Ray Kurzweil really does not need an introduction, but anyway: he is the author of The Singularity is Near (2005) and co-founder of Singularity University, which is backed by Google and NASA. At the Singularity Summit, he will present his theories on accelerating technological change and the future of humanity.

* Dr. David Chalmers, director of the Centre for Consciousness at Australian National University and one of the world’s foremost philosophers, will discuss mind uploading, the possibility of transferring human consciousness onto a computer network.

* Dr. Ed Boyden is a joint professor of Biological Engineering and of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT. Discover Magazine named him one of the 20 best brains under 40.

* Peter Thiel is the president of Clarium, seed investor in Facebook, managing partner of Founders Fund, and co-founder of PayPal.

* Dr. Aubrey de Grey is a biogerontologist and Director of Research at the SENS Foundation, which seeks to extend the human lifespan. He will present on the ethics of this proposition.

* Dr. Philip Tetlock is Professor of Organizational Behavior at the Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley, and author of Expert Political Judgement: How Good Is It?

* Dr. Jurgen Schmidhuber is co-director of the Dalle Molle Institute for Artificial Intelligence in Lugano, Switzerland. He will discuss the mathematical essence of beauty and creativity.

* Dr. Gary Marcus is director of the NYU Infant Language Learning Center, and professor of psychology at New York University and author of the book Kludge.

You can subscribe to the event via the banner below.

If you are interested in this sort of stuff, i strongly recommend to subscribe to the weekly KurzweilAI.net newsletter, where this week, i found the following interesting article on the first Touchable Hologram becoming reality.

3D holograms that can be touched with bare hands have been developed by researchers from the University of Tokyo. Called the Airborne Ultrasound Tactile Display, the hologram projector uses an ultrasound phenomenon called acoustic radiation pressure to create a pressure sensation on a user’s hands, which are tracked with two Nintendo Wiimotes….

Watch the white mouse at the very end. I can think of a couple of applications that are touch-based 😉

The hype of Augmented Reality

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Good overview of latest Augmented Reality examples on ReadWriteWeb.

The example i “like” most is the Augmented Identity one.

I am re-iterating the thinking we did before on this blog on how any on-line person is starting to have its own “information shadow” that is unique. No more need for identity “cards” or alike.

In that context, I recently met Dave Birch, Director at Consult Hyperion, who is 1) a very cool presenter on identity and digital money and 2) has two pretty interesting blogs on these subjects:

– His identity blog is here

– His money blog is here

Not much to add to the ReadWriteWeb article.

Have a deep dive in Gartner’s 2009 Hype Circle for Emerging Technologies.

gartner-emerging-technologies-hype-cycle-2009

See also that Human Augmentation now appears at the very start of the Technology Triggers.

Virtual Worlds

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Thanks to my job, i get in contact with interesting people. As preparation for the Innovation track at Sibos (called www.innotribe.com), our team is focusing on 3 themes:

  1. Cloud
  2. Crowd
  3. Mash-ups

In total we’ll have more than 40 speakers during one week, combined with speedlabs, debates, and R&D pitches. And during the last day, Guy Kawasaki will be part of our VC debate and Buyers Panel.

Detailed agenda available here.

As you have probably noticed, in my private life and endeavors (such as the Think Tank for Long Term Future), i am blurring the lines between real and virtual, between flesh & bone human and robots.

As a matter of fact, i am also blurring the lines between job and private here, and i  don’t see anything wrong with it.

What about virtual reality in a business context ?

Welcome to project Wonderland from Sun Microsystems. They will do during Innotribe @ Sibos a demo on the Virtual Bank Branch Office. In the meantime , have a look at below 2 videos, that once again proof how fast our real and virtual worlds are merging.

First listen to the project manager, Nicole Yankelovich. What’s really interesting is that the sort of people that work on this are true hybrids: a mix of nerds, psychologists, anthropological and ethnographic R&D…

This video is a hidden job advertisement, so you’re warned 🙂

But this sort of stuff and skills is really were we as a society should put stimuli and scholarships for our net.generation to be ready for 2030. Those who are 20 today will be 40 by then and our next leaders.

Then enjoy to this wonderful Wonderland scenario tour based on the preview of version 0.5 in their labs:

First time i see things like federation of worlds. I already heard about federated identities, federated clouds, federated services, but this ? No, not yet.

Oh yes, you can also restore a world in his previous state.

However, i still find that the user is forced into the developers mind of properties, cells, etc. No way i can explain this to my dad. It’s like the first time you see Windows: only if you get used to it, you start making sense out of it. You adapt to the programmer’s mind.

Think.

Tank.

Thanks to Amir for providing me the links.