The first episode of our new podcast, Should This Exist? is out! It’s a brand new kind of pitch show, where the entrepreneur pitches not just the business case, but the human case for their technology. Please listen and subscribe!
Caterina’s guest in the first episode is neurotech entrepreneur Daniel Chao, CEO of Halo Neuroscience. Halo is a headset that enhances the neuroplasticity of the motor cortex in your brain. It could usher in a new golden age where millions are virtuosos… or bring about the dystopia of Gattaca, where only a select few get superhuman abilities.
My partner Caterina Fake and the Wait, What team have created a voice that puts technology’s impact on humanity front and center. It’s a new podcast called Should This Exist? and the first episode will launch on February 21st. Here’s the trailer!
Manufacturing is returning to America—but not manufacturing jobs, because of automation. Instead, the share of service jobs keeps growing. Economist and management scholar Bruce Greenwald says while this is painful, it benefits women:
“We are in the middle of – and you see it in Europe, you will see it in China, you’ve seen it in Japan for 30 years – an extraordinarily difficult transition. And it is a transition from centralized manufacturing institutions with jobs that are male-oriented to decentralized service institutions with jobs that have a much higher human relationship content that favor women.”
Horace Didieu asks, what does a scooter company do next after deploying 10,000 of their first generation vehicle?
They’re going to evolve the vehicle to something more more robust. They’re going to have a bigger battery. They’ll be motivated to improve their operating margins and that involves extending the lifespan and lowering charging costs. They’re going to have a bigger motor. They’re going to be looking at ABS. They’re going to be looking at traction control. They’re going to be looking at stability control. They’re going to add technology into the vehicle on three-month cycles.
If you fast forward this movie far enough, they start doing the jobs of cars. Like phones evolved to “eat up” the jobs of computers.
This passage in Matt Schrage’s post on the “rationalization of the attention market” does a good job explaining why social media creates blocks of people who think alike:
The rulers of the past commanded attention because they were powerful, those who receive it today, do so because they are entertaining. To consistently channel attention on the internet is to constantly be competing for it. In the individualized feed, before a piece of content is presented, it is compared against every other article, video and tweet and if, according to the proprietary algorithm that models your interests, it is insufficiently fascinating to you, you will never see it. Even those who build up a following are still subject to these demands. Nothing uninteresting can be communicated, for the very property of being uninteresting precludes distribution on platforms that algorithmically match content to the interests of the individual. Mass media had to avoid being hated, individualized media must be loved. If the mass market required an average palatability, a perfectly legible attention market demands the extreme preference of a small niche.
ICEYE is hitting it out of the atmosphere. Their suitcase-sized radar microsatellites are vastly improving humankind’s ability to produce unobstructed imagery of Earth and respond to climate change–and this satellite is 1/100th of the price and around a tenth of the size of a conventional radar satellite.
From the minute I met the ICEYE founders Rafal Modrzewski and Pekka Laurila I was astonished by the possibilities and now they have achieved their first milestone. At True Ventures we are incredibly fired up–read more about it in my blog post on the True blog. Thanks to our Finnish co-investors Petteri and Timo at Lifeline for making the intro!
I was born 40 years ago in Helsinki. Finland wasn’t a wealthy place back then. GDP per capita that year was about $7,000. Over in neighboring Sweden GDP was over $11,000, for comps. “Suomi” was a small, relatively poor country.
During my lifetime, Finland’s population hasn’t dramatically changed. But GDP has skyrocketed more than 6x to $43,000. It’s been a good run. Not just in terms of wealth but on almost every other indicator you can think of. People live longer, fewer kill themselves, more report feeling happier.
So today, on the 100th anniversary of Finland’s independence, there’s a lot to celebrate.
But also things that worry me. Rising inequality being by far the biggest risk. It, coupled with bad governance, could wipe out all these gains in the remaining part of my lifetime. I really think they are reversible. Complacency and short-sightedness, such as devaluing basic research and the arts, and a rise in polarization, coupled with a reliance on tech, gives me concern.
“Let us see rather that like Janus—or better, like Yama, the Brahmin god of death—religion [technology] has two faces, one very friendly, one very gloomy…” -Arthur Schopenhauer, Essays and Aphorisms
“Michael Varus drew his sword. ”My father is Janus, the god of two faces. I am used to seeing through masks and deceptions.”
― Rick Riordan, The Blood of Olympus
The degrading effect smartphones are having on our cognitive ability, sleep, and relationships—and the related connection between social media, elections and democracy—is rapidly becoming the most talked-about topic in tech.
Business Insider put them together in this article.
I think there is a good chance this will become one of the two or three defining conversations of the next few years, and that it will influence the change-agents who will be responsible for the next major disruptive changes in our communication stack.
Sain eilen tilaisuuden vierailla Suomen Los Angelesin pääkonsuli Stefan Lindströmin podcastissa. 11 minuuttia startup-asiaa, “mitä olisit tehnyt toisin?” ym. kiperiä kysymyksiä.
