Canon PowerShot G9
ƒ/4.8
44.4 mm
1/8
200

Wearing the Economist colors at their conference on innovation today in Berkeley.

“It’s no longer possible for a country to collapse in isolation. Now we all collapse.”

“The only path to stability is to equalize the consumption rates of the first and developing world. Our dream is no longer possible in the new world.”

“We are confused between consumption rates and our standard of living. Most of our consumption is wasteful.”

And Paul Saffo had some sculpted nuggets in the panel that followed:

“Societies, and companies, mimic the communication networks of the day. We have moved from the mainframe to networks.”

“Our myths struggle to catch up to our reality. How do we shed our independence and lever our interdependence?”

“There is maybe a 50% chance the U.S. exists as a nation by mid-century.”

In response to Kurzweil’s neo-cornucopian stance:
“Engineers flee into the future. Druids flee into the past. I would hope we would do neither.”

9 responses to “Jared Diamond”

  1. tifotter Avatar
    tifotter

    And how did your "Flash of Genius" talk go?

    Reply
  2. -fCh- Avatar
    -fCh-

    “It’s no longer possible for a country to collapse in isolation. Now we all collapse:” GLOBALIZATION, alternatives are possible at a cost, though.

    “The only path to stability is to equalize the consumption rates of the first and developing world:” At what level, former or letter type of world?

    “We are confused between consumption rates and our standard of living. Most of our consumption is wasteful.” Especially we in the US, if I may. I agree with the 2nd statement.

    _____________________________

    “Our myths struggle to catch up to our reality. How do we shed our independence and lever our interdependence?” Yes, my money goes to a statement like this, especially if Paul had in mind the American (-Capitalist) myth!

    “There is maybe a 50% chance the U.S. exists as a nation by mid-century:” Smart people of all times have said the same thing. In fact, smart people of most times had overwhelmingly thought something like a Boeing 747 would be an impossibility.

    Thanks for sharing!

    Reply
  3. heet_myser Avatar
    heet_myser

    I wonder how one comes to be a futurist. Is it merely by virtue of a willingness to be heard thinking out loud?

    Reply
  4. -fCh- Avatar
    -fCh-

    "I wonder how one comes to be a futurist. Is it merely by virtue of a willingness to be heard thinking out loud?"

    That’s how you get started, but they won’t invite you back if only that!

    Reply
  5. jurvetson Avatar
    jurvetson

    fch: yes, quite a dour lot. =)

    tifotter: well, it was done in a flash, that’s all I know for sure. And it was referenced a few times in the panel that followed.

    I started with some musings on innovation.

    A snippet:
    What great new idea will change the world? Imagine we all voted on a series of startups – any selection of the startups that walk through our door. You would not want to bet on the winner of that popular vote. Instead I would look to the ideas that most people ridicule, yet a handful of you defend passionately.

    In retrospect, the companies that change the world are generally considered a bad idea at their founding.

    Leaders can tune process of innovation more than they can hope to dictate the product of innovation.

    Just like evolution.

    New countries are like new companies; they thrive on disruption. Structurally, they are not yet cognitively ossified, an inevitable trajectory at scale.

    Reply
  6. -fCh- Avatar
    -fCh-

    "A critical pattern, spanning centuries, is that the pace of innovation is accelerating, and it is exogenous to the economy."

    This is a very powerful statement that goes beyond the context in which you made it. However, to by really general it has too many moving parts. The way it is right now I take it to mean, "commercial innovation."
    _________

    "Imagine we all voted on a series of startups – any selection of the startups that walk through our door. You would not want to bet on the winner of that popular vote. Instead I would look to the ideas that most people ridicule, yet a handful of you defend passionately.

    In retrospect, the companies that change the world are generally considered a bad idea at their founding."

    For me, this is an outstanding thought experiement–though, it’s as practical as they come for top investors in innovation like you. I wish we were geographically closer to explore the concept further. Right now I’m interested in the narrative side of entrepreneurship, and think that’s the place where a lot of these meet, in a story.

    Reply
  7. tifotter Avatar
    tifotter

    Nice – thank you for the links to more as well.

    Reply
  8. Jonathan Ruff Avatar
    Jonathan Ruff

    I’ve lately noticed a growing meme about the best ventures often being the most ridiculed or considered least promising. It’s ironic so many VC firms are dying out due to the economic mess and the last decade of results – because right now is the absolute best time to be getting into the VC business. The returns in the next 10 to 15 years will be tremendous (courtesy of the explosion of innovation happening right now; I haven’t seen tech this hopping since the dotcom bubble; and courtesy of the lower, earlier stage funding shift).

    If you look at the business successes, the concept certainly appears to hold true. Zuckerberg built the first core of Facebook in a weekend, it wasn’t an impressive concept seemingly to start; who would have believed Wikipedia would do what it did; Google… just another search engine circa 1998; Twitter, 140 characters, you’ve gotta be kidding; Amazon.toast; eBay, the world’s biggest junk sale; Microsoft – who would ever pay for software ….. Redhat – free software is a joke; Apple – what would normal people use a personal computer for; tell someone in 1994 that AOL would buy Time Warner; Dell, you can’t sell a $2,000 computer to someone without them touching it first; etc.

    Reply
  9. jurvetson Avatar
    jurvetson

    exactly!

    P.S. Daniel Kraft snapped an iPhone

    Economist talk

    Reply

Leave a Reply to tifotter Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *