value of time

IMHO there are fundamentally two ways to think about the value of ones time. realised value (cashflow here and now) & expected gains (what you aim to achieve) based on ones vocation. i think about this in the following framework: realised value (eg: your salary) is a lagging indicator (almost always)therefore, in the moment, always …

Mark Pagel on collective cultural evolution, and how we may be becoming infinitely stupid

This is a very interesting talk by an evolutionary biologist, where he starts from the beginning of life itself and weaves a story through to our current state of culture and how ideas flow. There are several pieces of the talk that are worth taking a moment to appreciate. Here are a couple excerpts. here …

Isaac Asimov to future patrons of a library in Troy, Michigan on 16 March 1971

Congratulations on the new library, because it isn’t just a library. It is a space ship that will take you to the farthest reaches of the Universe, a time machine that will take you to the far past and the far future, a teacher that knows more than any human being, a friend that will …

College costs twice as much as it did 10 years ago

Earlier today, I started to wonder how expense it has become to go to college these days. As Mona and I were chatting, we conjectured that the increases were tiny if we were to consider cumulative inflation over the same period. Best way to find out was to dig into the data, so here we …

my sense of loss at the demise of bookstores

Many would say the writing is on the wall for physical bound books, and business models that rely on them. As Amazon recently reported to their shareholders the rate at which ebook sales are supplanting print books. The revelation that Barnes & Nobles is up for sale and prior news that Borders is seeking bankruptcy …

Rethinking publicness

over the past several weeks, a basic question has been hovering in my conscience. what is the impact of the information and content I share over social networks? who reads these updates, and what are their interpretations of them. when was the last time I saw any one of these people, have I ever met …

network operators need evolutionary innovation in the mean time

(this post was sparked by a recent article about a speech given by the CTO of Ericsson, Hakan Eriksson at the 4G World conference in Chicago) Network operators have been dealing with tremendous growth in bandwidth requirements for most part of this decade with a constant cry for new business models and ways to be …

Tying it all together — the end game of present day silicon valley (circa — October 2010)

As silicon valley goes about disrupting one industry after another, it has at this point in time, laid it’s sights on the combined fuzz of commerce, social networks, mobility, and payments. In the quest of the holy grail for a system that understands consumers and anticipates their likes and dislikes across several dimensions, a group …

the power of place (even in a networked economy)

this post was sparked as a result of a series of articles by Kevin Kelly, on his blog called New Rules where he has a collection blog posts about what the networked economy is doing to distinction of places versus spaces, and the economic implications of these shifts. in the networked economy, what is the importance …

excess capacity helps accelerate innovation

Historically, the supply curve of utility services (electricity, public transport, water supply) has trailed the demand curve by a matter of several years (if not decades). From an economic standpoint, there is a clear alignment with the basic principles of micro-economics and the rules of supply and demand. Why build excess capacity when there is …