On Wall Street in the era when more and more work was being done on the trading floor on the computers, all sorts of new problems arose that required us to make adjustments. I was working on the trading desk in 1982/83 when Apples and PC started coming into the mainstream. Prior to that there were computers, but they were either mainframes in some remote location of mini-computers located on a different floor wired into…
I have taken note of pervasive trend in entertainment. I am tempted to say that it pertains to attention span, but I suspect there is a lot more to it than that. It boils down to this; an increasing number of people prefer short snippets of content rather than getting involved in a full-length feature film, whereas others of us (you all know where I come out on this debate) greatly prefer a good old…
I am sitting here at almost 11pm on a Tuesday night at the age of 72 wondering who I am supposed to talk to about the fact that I’ve put in five unexpected hours of expert witness work tonight rather than writing a cute story for you all to read tomorrow morning. I got a surprise email yesterday from my Australian client asking for a Zoom call tomorrow night to review my in-process report. That…
This sounds funny, but I have spent almost all of my 72 years in a tunnel. That metaphor could mean many things. A tunnel metaphor typically conveys one or more meanings. The most common is one of confinement / restriction. A tunnel is a narrow path with no lateral movement. There is no choice but to go forward and one’s vision is limited to what’s directly ahead. It can also mean a journey through darkness…
It’s hard not to think about SpaceX and AI every minute of every day these days. I remember in the late 1990s., we were all abuzz about the Internet. We thought it would change everything. The comparison of the Internet and AI is valid in that the buzz is similar in feel, but AI may be more fundamental. The hype was genuinely euphoric and widespread with every business needing a “.com” strategy overnight, just as…
How many times has it been analogized that America is the Roman Empire of the 21st Century? The rise and the fall. Few subjects in history are richer or have been more studied as a cautionary tale. The Kingdom of Rome began as a small Latin village on the Tiber, legendarily founded by Romulus. Seven kings ruled before the last, Tarquinius Superbus (Tarquin the Proud), was overthrown in a patrician revolt. The Republic that resulted…
I’ve recently seen a number of different things that address the issue of how much time we are all spending on our screens. For a number of years now we have all heard admonitions to children and young people about the fact that they are spending too much time in front of their screens rather than directly interacting with other human beings or out in the fresh air of nature. It’s always been hard to…
Have you heard about the agnostic, dyslexic insomniac? He stays up all night wondering if there’s a Claude. Oh my Claude! I cannot believe all that I am reading and hearing this morning and it is blowing my mind (which the AI world now calls a “meat computer”). How do I unpack this best? I must start with Pope Leo XIV…I absolutely LOVE the guy. I didn’t think I could love a Pope more than…
Back when I was in college, I had a roommate named Gary who I still see every once in a blue moon. Gary is a very smart guy who always had a finger on the pulse of popular culture, perhaps more than most. For some reason, I always remember one of the things he said during freshman year, long before my mind had turned from dreams of being an engineer (like most boys, I had…
Gold may be the single most consequential material in human history. Gold was almost certainly the first metal humans ever worked, simply because it occurs in pure form in nature with no smelting required. The oldest known gold artifacts date to around 4,600 BC, found in the Varna Necropolis in modern Bulgaria. Those were grave goods that already suggest gold’s association with status, divinity, and the afterlife. Egypt became the ancient world’s great gold power.…