Archive for the ‘ Business ’ Category

The Defector

I spend my life, it seems like, reading books and writing about them. This book is Liars and Outliers – Enabling the Trust that Society Needs to Thrive by Bruce Schneier.

I heard of him because of his work in Computer Security. But now he is working hard at becoming an intellectual in general – and wants to talk about things in general. And he is making some definitions of his own.

He doesn’t want to talk about criminals – but defectors from mutually beneficial social behavior. People who violate our trust in them. I don’t know if his definition will be accepted by other social thinkers. But I am finding it useful myself to categorized some slippery characters I know. But rather I did not know. You no doubt know some of your own.

What is amazing about them is how they attract other people. One guy I know is almost like saying “I’m evil – follow me!” And people do. He has a waiting list (literally) of people wanting to serve him. Including women who want to have his babies.

Evidently, this is the kind of genes they are looking for – ruthless competitors who are bound to get ahead at all costs.

If he has to do a little time, now and then, that is understandable. When you are walking that thin line, a misstep or two is bound to happen occasionally.

He is grabbing all the lose change that happens to be lying around. And everyone else seem to be calculating that some of that change can somehow be diverted to them.

No one is perfect, they think – even the perfect defector.

2013
03/03
CATEGORY
Business
Morality
Philosophy
Psychology
Sociology
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Being a Person

Every person knows intuitively what it is like to be a person. Just like everything else knows what it is like – to be what it is. When I turned on my computer this morning it knew how to be a computer – and not only that, but a Windows 7 computer – and it set about waking itself up and connecting to billions of other computers on the Internet. While I set about making breakfast.

This is the message of this posting – everything knows how to be itself – even humans, who are no doubt the most messed-up beings in the universe. But that is not an unsolvable problem – all we have to do is realize how messed-up we are. And go from there.

It is strange, however, how messed-up we have become. This deserves some further thought.

As I started saying – we know who we are, and how to be people. And even how to be a person with other people – a truly awesome skill.

But here is where I lose everyone – when I use that all-important “But” word.

But we have decided to go against our instincts – and turn against ourselves. Why? God knows, but that is the way it is. And that is the most important thing we have to understand. But we resist this understanding with all our strength.

We are NOT going to know. And we think this an extremely clever strategy. The best the human race has ever invented. We have learned how not to be – which, admittedly, is clever of us. But of course – self-destructive.

I am reading a new book How to Change the World – Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas. It has been translated into 20 languages and is considered a bible in the field. You ought to read the Preface and the first chapter. Unless you are completely dead – it will get you excited about change.

I have written about this subject before in The Benefits of Positive Parenting - and, in fact, this NY Times article is where I learned about his book – which I promptly got from Amazon. It is ironic that me, a nobody living on my Social Security in Costa Rica, knows more about what is going on than most people in the States.

But there is a reason for that – even if it is hard for you to accept. All those people in the States don’t really exist – and can’t be expected to know anything.

David Bornstein, the author of the book, is convinced this is going to change. I am equally convinced that it is not. And I am going to give you a reason for this right now.

Back when I was working in Silicon Valley I knew a software developer who thought much like Bornstein does. He and his wife (it was very much a common outlook) were determined to make the world a better place. And they thought Latin America was just the place to do it. So he got a Masters Degree in International Finance from UC Berkeley. And he went to Guatemala to learn Spanish. And he got a job with a micro-finance NGO in Mexico.

And he got the shock of his life. He was back working for another company just like the companies he left behind in Silicon Valley. It was ruthless and predatory – especially toward him – one of the most idealist persons on earth, who had devoted his life to making the world better. He ended up back in Silicon Valley – where he would not talk about his experience.

What he learned was what no one wanted to talk about – how human society has turned against the people that compose it.

2013
03/02
CATEGORY
Business
Morality
Philosophy
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Too Little, Too Late: Why?

NY Review

I keep saying that the world has become too complicated for us to understand – and this is a case in point – the recent financial crisis. How many Americans will read this excellent review? None – because they cannot do the hard work of reconciling the opinions of different authorities. If something requires more than six seconds of thought – they do not think about it at all.

All of the final section is excellent, and should be read. But here is the final paragraph:

The fundamental danger to the economy that must be addressed is that the outsize profits to be made from unregulated and ultimately damaging trading and speculation attract money away from the forward-looking investments in American business that can strengthen the American economy and create more jobs. The question for the US today is not merely how to avoid another financial crash but also how to do much more to channel the nation’s precious savings into more productive uses.

This fits right in with what Jeff Madrick says in his book Age of Greed: the Triumph of Finance and the Decline of America.

This fits right into my basic premise – that America is destroying itself – in all kinds of ingenious ways.

2013
03/01
CATEGORY
Business
Economy
History
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The Computer is Our Final Illusion

One thing that continues to amaze me about Americans is their complete disinterest in Reality – and in fact their hatred of it. This is the worst thing that could happen to any people. It means their complete destruction – which they seem to consider their ultimate accomplishment.

Their ultimate goal is to no longer exist – and they have discovered how to do that while seeming to be physically alive. No other people have come close to doing this – and they amount to a wonder of the world.

When their destruction is complete – which will not be too long from now (something on the order of a hundred years) there will have to be a slow re-building – such as during the Middle Ages after the Fall of the Roman Empire. Only this time it will be entirely different – since we will be starting from an entirely different situation.

It is the hope of thinking people (such as those in the Enlightenment) that this time we will do it better. But to do this, we will have to start planning now - before the collapse is complete.

The big unknown here is the effect of global warming – which we seem determined to ignore. But this is part of Reality – and we can be sure that it is not ignoring us.

But another unknown is not really unknown at all – but unacknowledged. The effect of the Computer on us. This has never been analyzed – so I have taken on the job myself.

First of all, we will have to acknowledge something we have never wanted to admit – but is as plain as day. Any successful technology has a big impact on us – it changes who we are. The model of ourselves as religious beings will have to be modified to include a new religion – which is a complex of business and technology. And, as it turns out – a destructive complex.

I will show how the Computer facilitates this destructiveness – by enforcing the view that the world is an illusion.

There is a huge gap between a computer’s hardware and its software. Very few can understand the hardware of a computer – especially the microprocessor at the heart of it. This has evolved extremely rapidly and almost no one can understand it completely.

“So what,” You may say, “”How is this important to me, or anyone else?” Be patient, and I will explain.

The Computer is run by software. Any grade-school kid can program a computer – although he understands nothing about it. Nothing at all. He just enters a magic formula, and the Computer does what he tells it to.

Now we come to the important point. The software world is a world of a vast illusion – at every level. At the lowest level, it is these magical incantations (software instructions) I have already mentioned. At the highest level it is the magical screen the user is fascinated with – which is nothing but an illusion created by some invisible people somewhere to manipulate their minds. And there are plenty of intermediate levels – including the Internet and the Wireless networks.

The net effect is subtle, but extremely significant. It makes us believe in this vast illusion (or if you prefer, a religion). And disbelieve in Reality.

Nothing could be worse.

2013
03/01
CATEGORY
Business
Philosophy
Psychology
Sociology
Technology
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The Underground Foreclosure Industry

My brother has recently purchased a condo that was foreclosed on, and this made him aware of this part of the economy – that few are aware of.

According to him, billions of dollars of real estate have disappeared from view into this underground market (the dark side of the Housing Bubble). Where unscrupulous  investors are making huge profits. And where nothing is regulated.

There has been some attention paid to home owners who have lost their homes unfairly. We will not go into that – but what happens to these homes once they get into this underground market. Strange things are happening there.

This is a work in progress, and we will be changing it frequently.

2013
02/25
CATEGORY
Business
Economy
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Religion and Realitly

I learn some amazing things when I write. When I wrote The Religion of Our Time, for example. I surprised myself by what I ended up saying. That we have created a new religion of our own. I hardly needed to add that we were not aware of this at all.

After thinking about it some more, I was struck by how strange human society was. Every social animal has its own kind of society. And this is part of its genetic coding. But people are different. Every society is different, and even has its own language! And, of course, its own religion. And, for these reasons –  its own reality.

This last item gives me pause for thought. Are there many realities?

One of our most important insights – common to Buddhism and Science, and even the Abrahamic monotheistic religions – is that there is only one Reality. And we ignore that at our peril.

But this is just what this new religion does – it ignores reality. And its practitoners  are positively allergic to it; they can’t even stand the idea of it. And, as much as they can – they are destroying it.

The end result will be that Reality will destroy us – and all our grandiose pretensions.

2013
02/25
CATEGORY
Business
History
Morality
Religion
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The Benefits of Positive Parenting

NY Times

I have believed for a long time that defective parenting is the cause of many of our problems. I have said so loud and clear – but few are inclined to agree with me. They will always give their parents a passing grade – no matter what. And insist the problem is somewhere else – and not in defective parenting (including their own).

This article is an excellent overview of what is called social entrepreneurship.  I have ordered his book How to Change the World. But he will have a hard time convincing me that his kind can really make the world a better place.

I agree entirely with his objectives, but I think they are too optimistic for the times we live in.

2013
02/21
CATEGORY
Business
Sociology
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The Religion of Our Time

This is not about the fundamentalist religious passions that are so prominent all over the world, I regard these as a smoke screen for a movement that is much more important – but is not considered a religion at all. But nevertheless absorbs all our energies and passions.

First of all, what is Religion? I am going to define it as belief in the supernatural. This definition is not comprehensive (indeed, it is offensive to religious people), but it has important implications – as you will see.

Next we will have to consider Science – and its derivative, Technology. Science began as the opposite of religion – it concentrated on ordinary reality, and insisted that everything could be understood by recourse to that alone. This does not explain everything about Science – but like my definition of Religion, it is a good start. Science did not believe in the supernatural.

Fine. Now what happened as Science produced all the Technology that the Industrial Revolution depended on? What happened to the people that made these part of their lives? They changed, and they changed fundamentally. But they were completely unaware of these changes.

This is a big assertion, and I must unpack it – one technology at a time.

The first Industrial technology, as I have said, was the Sailing Ship. Its effect on people was enormous. But we were so close to what was happening, we could not understand this. We just changed ourselves completely to meet its demands.

And this is what we did for each succeeding technology – we changed completely without being aware at all. At one level, we were aware of how we were changing – but, at a deeper, more fundamental level, we denied it completely – because, we thought, our fundamental selves (our souls) were unchanged. But these supernatural souls did not exist.

Only our human selves (our bodies and our minds) existed – but we were fast denying them – one step at a time.

The next technology was a big one – the Steam Engine, with its biggest manifestation being the Railroad. Which used fossil fuels – first Coal, and then Oil. Then the Automobile – the combination of the Internal Combustion Engine and the Pneumatic Tire – and the public roads to run them on. We quickly became Car People – and could not imagine being anything else.

But something even bigger had already happened – Electricity and Photography. Which, with Mass Communications, completely changed our world – and drove us completely crazy.

I have probably gone too fast here – condensing one hundred years into a single paragraph. But I will let it stand because it makes a basic point – we went crazy in the 19th and 20th Centuries. But this was topped off with the next Technology – the Computer.

We had not the slightest idea what this was. But that does not matter. What matters is what we thought all this technology was.

It was our new religion.

We were on to something really big, that made everything else look paltry by comparison. And this was embodied by The Organization (the Corporation) – the church of our new religion.

2013
02/21
CATEGORY
Business
Political comment
Religion
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Using Your Computer Skills to Control the World

Somehow or other I got the book Social Media Marketing – and now I am looking at it – and realizing it is not my thing. Marketing is the last thing in the world I am interested in.

But at the same time – I realize this is precisely what a lot of people are interested in – because this is where the money is. They will follow the money wherever it leads them (like the pied piper) even if it is straight to Hell.

I know many software engineers (and some of the best ones) are not interested in money at all. It is to another class that this posting is directed.

These are the software developers who are more than willing to sell (or market) themselves – and everyone else. I worked with these guys (and gals) for twenty years – and I have the scar tissue to prove it.

I am still amazed that they got away with it. That trillions of dollars and some of the best (if second-class) minds of their time were poured down the drain.

They have developed some clever new programming skills (the ASP.NET MVC Framework, for example) – that I cannot help but admire. But these new skills, despite the success of Facebook, have not been too helpful in the larger human world.

They cannot believe the Computer world is smaller than the Human world – and should be.

2013
02/17
CATEGORY
Business
Morality
Philosophy
Software
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Accidental Empires — Why They Don’t Call It Computer Valley

I, Cringely

This is a long article – but it is priceless – for those who want to know what really happened.

I was a late-comer to the Valley myself – having wasted much of my life in Southern California high-tech. And only left when life there became impossible. But people will live anywhere – even there, where life is still impossible.

When I showed up, the Valley had gone through a big crash – and was only beginning to recover. And it never did recover to what it once was – as any long-time denizen will tell you.

I was there for its second collapse – variously called the dot-com or the Internet boom/bust. I was unceremoniously kicked out of the nest. And was lucky to land on my butt – and not on my head.

What Cringely does not make clear – is that software is now our Great White Hope. But in A Society That is Determined Not to Work our software cannot work either.

2013
02/14
CATEGORY
Business
Economy
History
Technology
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