RE: Where to now?
-Original Message- From: brin-l-boun...@mccmedia.com [mailto:brin-l-boun...@mccmedia.com] On Behalf Of Jon Louis Mann Sent: Sunday, November 18, 2012 4:34 PM To: Jonathan Louis Mann Subject: Where to now? Now that the election is past and Obama doesn't have to worry about his re-election, will he finally stand up to Wall Street, put the brakes on corrupt, corporate capitalism, and stick to his guns on taxing the rich? If that were the problem, we'd be lucky. There is a natual self regulating mechanism in capitalism, which Clay Christensen has found, that has not worked in the last 20 years or so. The problem is that we've played out the last big innovation, and are have Apple winning market share on style instead of companies providing innovation that turns the world upside down (e.g. electricity, radio, automobiles and tractors, computers). He has a nice article on this at: http://techcrunch.com/2012/10/09/clayton-christensen-disruptive-innovations- create-jobs-efficiency-innovations-destroy-them/ I've been, responsible for a few efficiency creating innovations that saved hundreds of millions of dollars in costs, but destroyed jobs. Friends of mine have been responsible for over a trillion in wealth creation, and the destruction of thousands if not tens of thousands of jobs. Another bad by-product is that Wall Street and overpaid CEOs of companies that win by playing the game better, instead of providing jobs and services win in this enviornment. We need a black swan. Dan M. ___ http://box535.bluehost.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
Re: Where to now?
Dan, Interesting article, thanks for the link. I am reminded of this, which came out in April, a preview of the EPI's State of Working America: 12th Edition — http://www.epi.org/publication/ib330-productivity-vs-compensation/ Until the early 1970s, hourly compensation rose with worker productivity. Since then, hourly compensation has been pretty much flat, while productivity has continued to rise. This is largely the result of a shift to capital gains income, rather than productivity-based income among the top few percent, who have gobbled up the growing gap between productivity and income. Dave On Nov 19, 2012, at 6:46 AM, Dan Minette wrote: -Original Message- From: brin-l-boun...@mccmedia.com [mailto:brin-l-boun...@mccmedia.com] On Behalf Of Jon Louis Mann Sent: Sunday, November 18, 2012 4:34 PM To: Jonathan Louis Mann Subject: Where to now? Now that the election is past and Obama doesn't have to worry about his re-election, will he finally stand up to Wall Street, put the brakes on corrupt, corporate capitalism, and stick to his guns on taxing the rich? If that were the problem, we'd be lucky. There is a natual self regulating mechanism in capitalism, which Clay Christensen has found, that has not worked in the last 20 years or so. The problem is that we've played out the last big innovation, and are have Apple winning market share on style instead of companies providing innovation that turns the world upside down (e.g. electricity, radio, automobiles and tractors, computers). He has a nice article on this at: http://techcrunch.com/2012/10/09/clayton-christensen-disruptive-innovations- create-jobs-efficiency-innovations-destroy-them/ I've been, responsible for a few efficiency creating innovations that saved hundreds of millions of dollars in costs, but destroyed jobs. Friends of mine have been responsible for over a trillion in wealth creation, and the destruction of thousands if not tens of thousands of jobs. Another bad by-product is that Wall Street and overpaid CEOs of companies that win by playing the game better, instead of providing jobs and services win in this enviornment. We need a black swan. Dan M. ___ http://box535.bluehost.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com ___ http://box535.bluehost.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
RE: Where to now?
This is largely the result of a shift to capital gains income, rather than productivity-based income among the top few percent, who have gobbled up the growing gap between productivity and income. There are two problems that face workers. First, productivity has outpaced demand. Second, the world has gotten flat. So, while steel and auto workers could demand high wages in the 60s, and the first half of the 70s because they were in demand, the demand for workers is down now, except in marginal service jobs. Gautam's book may prove unpopular with CEOs because it shows that a filtered leader is not that unique, there are many other candidates who would make the same decision. This would indicate that there is no business basis to pay, for example, Apple's new CEO a 600 million bonus, other contenders for his job would have done just as well. Steve Jobs is different, he's an unfiltered leader. But, he started Apple, and if he failed, then a small company would have failed...as probably many small computer companies failed in the '70s, and many Internet companies failed in the late '90s and early '00s. The good news is that we can, if we have the political will, change the money going to the parisites in the financial sector (and there are a lot of folks in business and business schools who are not in finance who see them as parasites). And, we could cut leadership team income with minimal effect on companies. But, we cannot create many jobs where there is a reason to pay someone a good income. That is a challanging problem. It might best be faced by spreading ownership of corporations, but doing that without the law of unitended consequences bighting us is going to be difficult. Dan M. ___ http://box535.bluehost.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
Re: Where to now?
On Nov 19, 2012, at 8:11 AM, Dan Minette wrote: Gautam's book may prove unpopular with CEOs because it shows that a filtered leader is not that unique, there are many other candidates who would make the same decision. This would indicate that there is no business basis to pay, for example, Apple's new CEO a 600 million bonus, other contenders for his job would have done just as well. Steve Jobs is different, he's an unfiltered leader. But, he started Apple, and if he failed, then a small company would have failed...as probably many small computer companies failed in the '70s, and many Internet companies failed in the late '90s and early '00s. It's sounding more and more like I need to get a copy of Gautam's book… Dave ___ http://box535.bluehost.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
Re: Where to now?
Dan Minette prayed: We need a black swan. Maybe we already have it. The wiki model is working for editing wikipedias (not only _the_ Wikipedia, but many other clones, parodies, porn sites or just silly stuff), It began with IMDB and if they hadn't been such stupid jerks IMDB would have turned itself into what Wikipedia became. Why can't we apply the wiki idea to _engineering_? Alberto Monteiro ___ http://box535.bluehost.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
RE: Where to now?
Dave wrote: It's sounding more and more like I need to get a copy of Gautam's book. Well, I admit I'm very biased in this, so I think my comments need to be taken with a grain of salt. But, to have a book that considers Lincoln as a near singular example of excellence in a unfiltered leader and then get the following as a book blurb: Doris Kearns Goodwin, Pulitzer Prize-winning author and presidential historian- Indispensable provides a masterly, absorbing, and exceptionally original approach to the age-old study of leadership. is a fairly objective indication that the book is worth reading. That's not a bad blurb from the author of A Team of Rivals. Dan M. ___ http://box535.bluehost.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
RE: Where to now?
Why can't we apply the wiki idea to _engineering_? Because wikipedia is a collection of knowledge. Breakthroughs are typically done by a few people. It's seeing what no-one has seen before, not compiling all the stuff people have seen. It would be akin to having a masterpiece painted by 10,000 people. Nothing is impossible, what you are talking about is highly filtered. Dan M. ___ http://box535.bluehost.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
Re: Where to now?
On 11/19/2012 11:11 AM, Dan Minette wrote: But, we cannot create many jobs where there is a reason to pay someone a good income. That is a challanging problem. It might best be faced by spreading ownership of corporations, but doing that without the law of unitended consequences bighting us is going to be difficult. Dan M. There is one and only one factor that creates jobs, and it is not wealthy people. That one factor is customers. Which is why the number one priority should be to get the economy going again. Instead, we have two sides negotiating on how bad the damage to the economy will be from their austerity policies. Regards, -- Kevin B. O'Brien zwil...@zwilnik.com A damsel with a dulcimer in a vision once I saw. ___ http://box535.bluehost.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
RE: Where to now?
There is one and only one factor that creates jobs, and it is not wealthy people. That one factor is customers. I differ here. Not that middle class consumers are not more important than the top 0.1% getting more money, I agree with that. But, Clay's article is deeper than that. Look at all the jobs that existed in 2000 that didn't exist in 1900. They employ most of the people now working. The reason for this is whole industries were developed from disruptive innovations. But, since we have't had an earth shattering disruptive innovation in more than 50 years (for 50 years our ecconomy boomed off the invention of the transistor), we are now at the point where we are just more efficent build cars, drilling for oil, etc. Thus, fewer people are needed for the same job. One potential disruptive innovation would be a process that coverts CO2, sea water and sunlight into petrol, at a cheaper price than we pay at the pump. That would create tens of thousands of good new jobs. But, the next ipad will not create many US jobs, no matter how many consumers buy it. Dan M. ___ http://box535.bluehost.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
Re: Where to now?
On Nov 19, 2012, at 9:56 AM, Dan Minette wrote: Dave wrote: It's sounding more and more like I need to get a copy of Gautam's book. Doris Kearns Goodwin, Pulitzer Prize-winning author and presidential historian- Indispensable provides a masterly, absorbing, and exceptionally original approach to the age-old study of leadership. is a fairly objective indication that the book is worth reading. That's not a bad blurb from the author of A Team of Rivals. For me, that's close enough to this quote, which does not appear on the jacket: Dave Land, you must buy this book! — Doris Kearns Goodwin Thanks for yet another vote for Gautam's scholarship. I may have had pointed disagreements with him way back, but I look forward to reading his book. Dave ___ http://box535.bluehost.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
Re: Where to now?
On Nov 19, 2012, at 11:04 AM, Dan Minette wrote: One potential disruptive innovation would be a process that coverts CO2, sea water and sunlight into petrol, at a cheaper price than we pay at the pump. That would create tens of thousands of good new jobs. Sounds like this, about which I first heard the inventor speak at TEDxSanJoseCA in 2011: http://tedxsanjoseca.org/2012/10/jonathan-trent-phd/ I saw Dr. Trent speak about this in 2012 while hosting a TEDxGlobal viewing: http://www.ted.com/talks/jonathan_trent_energy_from_floating_algae_pods.html Dave ___ http://box535.bluehost.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
Re: Where to now?
Hi, last big innovation, and are have Apple winning market share on style instead of companies providing innovation that turns the world upside down I vaguely remember that I the past it took about 50 years from an innovation to appear until it became mainstream. Okay, my favourite example (again) for a counter-innovation: reading books on the iPad. In the 1970s, I read books, real book. A lot of them. And, especially when reading in bed, I found that were room for improvement. First of all, the need to flip pages. It would have been cool if books had a button next page. Or, even better, a video camera which tracks eye motion to flip pages automatically. When not reading, I sometimes watched TV (when there a TV program, back in these days TV stations were only transmitting a few hours a day). One of my favourites was Raumschiff Enterprise (Raumschiff being the german word for spaceship). Yup, that was the german title of Star Trek. And there they had the electronic book reader which could flip pages automatically! In the 1980s, computer keyboards began to sport a next page key (nowadays most commonly labelled Page Down or so). In the 1990s, portable computers began to appear. E-Books remained rare - the technology was there for page flipping via buttons, but not the content. The time was not yet right. Nowadays, built-in cameras are commonplace in portable computers. There is a market for E-Books, the content is there. And...we got the iPad, where you actually have to flip pages the old way. Competing devices, like the Kindle, follow suit with models with touchscreen comping up in response to the iPad. WTF? Simple. Star Trek ran from 1966-1970. If a new idea takes 50 years to become commonplace, we can expect user-friendly book to appear no earlier than 2016. ... Or maybe it's just that someone figured out that it's easier to develop sub-par products and sell them to people with below-average intelligence than to develop something for an audience which knows what it wants. Quite a bit different from the visions of many SciFi authors, which envisioned that mankind would evolve towards higher intelligence. Instead, we've an industry which makes being dumb more favourable... - Klaus ___ http://box535.bluehost.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
RE: Where to now?
Dave Land, you must buy this book! - Doris Kearns Goodwin Sounds like your interest in Lincoln has gotten connected to one of the experts on Lincoln. I'm happy for you. Dan M. ___ http://box535.bluehost.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
Re: Where to now?
We need a black swan. Maybe we already have it. The wiki model is working for editing wikipedias (not only _the_ Wikipedia, but many other clones, parodies, porn sites or just silly stuff), It began with IMDB and if they hadn't been such stupid jerks IMDB would have turned itself into what Wikipedia became. Why can't we apply the wiki idea to _engineering_? Patents. - Klaus ___ http://box535.bluehost.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
RE: Where to now?
Sounds like this, about which I first heard the inventor speak at TEDxSanJoseCA in 2011: The group I was thinking of has a slightly different biological approach. It is Joule Unlimited I really don't have a dog in the fight over which company wins, I just hope someone does. It should take long enough for me to be able to retire before oil is obsolete, no matter how fast it works. :-) Dan M. ___ http://box535.bluehost.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
RE: Where to now?
-Original Message- From: brin-l-boun...@mccmedia.com [mailto:brin-l-boun...@mccmedia.com] On Behalf Of Klaus Stock Sent: Monday, November 19, 2012 1:56 PM To: Killer Bs (David Brin et al) Discussion Subject: Re: Where to now? Hi, last big innovation, and are have Apple winning market share on style instead of companies providing innovation that turns the world upside down I vaguely remember that I the past it took about 50 years from an innovation to appear until it became mainstream. Huh? It took geosteering 3 years to drop the price of oil by a factor of 3. It didn't stay down because Chinese demand started up thenbut its one of the major reasons oil isn't going through the roof and why natural gas reserves doubled. Or, the transistor. The transistor radio came within 10 years of the invention of the transistor. Computers were used by institutions soon after that. It took about 60 years to wring most of the potential for additional innovation from the transistor, but now we are left with little innovation, so style sells. 50 years is closer to the back end of reaping the harvest of an innovation. Your idea worked only after cheap screens that printed characters that looked like writing, not glowing images, were developed, and when you could buy a book in a minute wherever you lived. Sometimes the initial idea isn't enough. Dan M. ___ http://box535.bluehost.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
Re: Where to now?
I agree with you, Dan. Newer and better versions of tablets or iphones are marginal improvements and will not provide the stimulus to the economy to change the direction we are following. But I also have a problem with the idea that creating new customers by which I guess, Kevin, you mean demand, is the only solution. I believe our problem has been that we have been fixated on creating demand only, not on the type of demand we are creating. Much of our economy in the world today is built around building demand for throw away products that merely replace previously created products. Thus the value added by labor is wasted in terms of creating lasting wealth. As you saturate the widget market you must create artificial demand to create turn over and continued demand for the widgets. Thus, the birth of the advertising industry and designed obsolescence. Now think of all the time and effort we spend on developing advertising content which is ephemeral. Most of it is used once and discarded. Add that to the inevitable loss of raw materials to land fills as people scrap the old models and we have to ask, are we building lasting wealth or merely making work for our population? If all we are doing is recycling wealth and at the same time we allow that wealth to be siphoned off and sequestered by fewer and fewer people we have a problem. Now the idea of a black swan that would make a difference would be something that would incrementally increase wealth by adding lasting value to labor. The computer initially did that by allowing increased productivity of knowledge workers. Then by assembly line robots, etc. Or perhaps another example of what we need is something like a breakthrough in access to space and all the resources of the solar system. I apologize for jumping in late to this conversation. but you all have been fascinating. I think that these are fundamental issues that have created a flaw in our economic model and if not remedied we are facing a slow decline in the standard of living everywhere as populations change and resources become constrained. Great fodder for science fiction, of course. Chris Frandsen On Nov 19, 2012, at 1:04 PM, Dan Minette danmine...@att.net wrote: There is one and only one factor that creates jobs, and it is not wealthy people. That one factor is customers. I differ here. Not that middle class consumers are not more important than the top 0.1% getting more money, I agree with that. But, Clay's article is deeper than that. Look at all the jobs that existed in 2000 that didn't exist in 1900. They employ most of the people now working. The reason for this is whole industries were developed from disruptive innovations. But, since we have't had an earth shattering disruptive innovation in more than 50 years (for 50 years our ecconomy boomed off the invention of the transistor), we are now at the point where we are just more efficent build cars, drilling for oil, etc. Thus, fewer people are needed for the same job. One potential disruptive innovation would be a process that coverts CO2, sea water and sunlight into petrol, at a cheaper price than we pay at the pump. That would create tens of thousands of good new jobs. But, the next ipad will not create many US jobs, no matter how many consumers buy it. Dan M. ___ http://box535.bluehost.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com ___ http://box535.bluehost.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
Re: Where to now?
I vaguely remember that I the past it took about 50 years from an innovation to appear until it became mainstream. Huh? It took geosteering 3 years to drop the price of oil by a factor of 3. snip My rant about the 50 years wasn't really meant seriously. Just the preparation to the conclusion at the end: Or maybe it's just that someone figured out that it's easier to develop sub-par products and sell them to people with below-average intelligence than to develop something for an audience which knows what it wants. Quite a bit different from the visions of many SciFi authors, which envisioned that mankind would evolve towards higher intelligence. Instead, we've an industry which makes being dumb more favourable... Or, in other words, we don't have inspired leaders in the industry any more. A manager has to maximize profits, especially the profits which are measured in hard dollars. There are two ways to achieve this: (a) be innovative, open new markets, invent (b) cut costs Approach (a) is risky. It also requires a bit of brain. So everyone chooses the safe way, (b). This, of course, a tendency only. But it's sufficient and it surely kills innovation. I wonder how much further this tendency will go. - Klaus ___ http://box535.bluehost.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
