Life After Google: The Fall of Big Data and the Rise of the Blockchain Economy
B-
349 pages
Amazon Book Preview of “Life After Google”
Excerpts From My Kindle
Life after Google makes the opposing case that what the hyperventilating haruspices: Yuval Harari, Nick Bostrom, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Tim Urban, and Elon Musk see as a world-changing AI juggernaut is in fact an industrial regime at the end of its rope. The crisis of the current order in security, privacy, intellectual property, business strategy, and technology is fundamental and cannot be solved within the current computer and network architecture. – location 237-241
In the Google era, Newtons system of the worldone universe, one money, one Godis now in eclipse. His unitary foundation of irreversible physics and his irrefragable golden money have given way to infinite parallel universes and multiple paper moneys manipulated by fiat. Money, like the cosmos, has become relativistic and reversible at will. The three hundred years of Newtonian prosperity having come to an end, the new multiverse seems unable to repeat the miracle of a golden age of capitalism. It is now widely held that citizens are essentially owned by the state on which they depend. Slavery, in the form of servitude to governments, is making a comeback as money transactions become less trustworthy. – location 314-319
As Peter Drucker said, It is less important to do things right than to do the right things. Effectiveness is more important than efficiency. Renaissances improvement in market efficiency is – location 1333-1335
They don’t want Satoshi to be wrong or contradictory, boastful or short-tempered, and they really don’t want him to be a 45-year-old Australian called Craig. Tall, dark-haired, Hollywood-handsome, contradictory, libertarian, boastful, and short-tempered, Wright smacks of a cypher-punk Donald Trump. Or as his Sydney project manager put it, Hes like Steve Jobs, only worse. Location 2188-2191 – location 2188-2191
Meanwhile, as Thiel has continually pointed out, U.S. universities bear little resemblance to UFM. A Harvard alumnus and former fellow of the Kennedy School, I received, just before I came to Guatemala that spring of 2014, an announcement from the president of Harvard that she was launching a $400 million fund to dedicate my alma mater and all her science faculties to the cause of combatting climate change. Such efforts, in practice, amount to suppressing energy production with no benefit to the climate. Feeding on the air of entitlement of fading upper-class institutions that accomplish little with a lot of other peoples funds, the Harvard initiative reflected the increasing inebriation of elite American education. Focusing on stopping progress, barring new power plants, dismantling chemical facilities, mobilizing against Israel, and other reactionary pursuits, Ivy institutions are pursuing the fancies of a declining intellectual and business elite, full of chemophobic nags and luddite lame-ducks quacking away on their miasmic pools of old money as the world whirls past them. Location 3213-3220 – location 3213-3220
Blockchains, hashchains, blockstacks, smart contracts, token issues, and cryptocurrencies are new ways to address the evils of the Google Age: porous Internet security, unmoored money, regulatory overreach, network concentration, officious delays, and diminishing returns of big data. All of these problems derive from the hypertrophy of trusted third parties that need to be collapsed into simpler systems controlled by individual agents closer to the actual point of service. Some of these third parties are financial traders, search engines, social networks, or global retailers run by huge agglomerations of Siren Servers. Other examples of overreach are monetary systems run by central banks, parliaments, and treasuries wielding money as a magic wand rather than employing the measuring stick of gold. All need to be decentralized and brought back under the management of the private parties that understand the business constraints and the real investment opportunities. Location 3615-3621 – location 3615-3621
The empire may think that Satoshi and his followers are on shaky ground, but the emperors and their courtiers should look to their $280 trillion tower of debt, which is beginning to teeter. Their own fortunes may go down with it. Governments and investors everywhere should welcome the explosion of creativity in crypto, preparing a new financial system of the world for the moment when the fiat currency piata bursts at last. CHAPTER 22 The Bitcoin Flaw Mike Kendall, nearly six feet, five inches tall, had to slouch at his physical to make it under the Air Forces six-foot-four maximum height for pilots. Location 3621-3627 – location 3621-3627
Cold Read 