The Polish philosopher Leszek Kolakowski once said "Original sin remains a profound and insightful view of the human condition".
He didn't last long at Berkeley, as it happens.
Pinterest is a good bet to succeed if it can integrate social commerce into the platform. A lot of E-commerce is going to be done over social media soon, especially fashion.
Financial institutions won't be making the decision as to whether the technology is widely adopted or not in the long term.
If there is another financial crisis, then people will eventually work out the existing financial system (esp the role of central banks) is fundamentally f#cked.
Alternative currencies may then boom in popularity. It's a high risk area for startup investing, but someone, somewhere is going to make a ton of Bitcoins (?) out of this.
One of the most damaging notions of creativity is that of the lone genius, as portrayed and developed by the Romantics.
To be creative you have to situate yourself in a tradition (it could be furthering the tradition, or rebelling against it).
Many of the pre-Beeching lines cannot be re-opened, as they have been built over with roads and housing, especially in the South East.
The closest you will get to experiencing pre-Beeching railways is the Hogwarts Express in Florida, I'm afraid.
I don't think it was intended to be a scam. The founder raised too much capital on the back of massively inflated expectations.
They couldn't deliver (didn't one of the technical team commit suicide in despair over this?) and rather than doing the honest thing and returning the capital, they've ended up creating a Kafkaesque web of shadows and lies.
The fundamental issue is overfunding, and it is not limited to this one company, which is why we're in bubble territory once again.
Technological revolutions create economic growth, as understood by Schumpeter.
Governments do not create economic growth. Debt does not create economic growth.
We are at the early stages of probably the largest technological revolution in human history...meaningful economic growth will follow, although there could be another financial crisis in the meantime.
William Blake said the last thing to expect of Public Records is for them to be true.
I'd argue the last place to expect to find freedom of speech is a university campus.
Tech is a big part of the US stock market (significantly bigger than it was before the financial crisis began).
The question is: would the unicorn bubble bursting then contribute to a loss in faith in tech in general by investors, a NASDAQ collapse and a haircut for the likes of Apple and FB?
We could well be on our way to QE to infinity and beyond.
House prices in parts of the UK are 17 times salary now (against a historic average of 4 or 5), which all comes down to central bank policies over the last 20 years.
The new (ab)normal might be here to stay, although I'd take a punt on alternative currencies in the meantime.
The unicorn phenomenon is the result of hot money looking for any kind of return in a zombified financial system.
Tech has had a good run the last ten years but things like QE have contributed to turning the sector into something of an asset bubble.
But will it be allowed to burst? I'm not so sure. The central banks now have a vested interest in keeping these bubbles (whether in real estate or stocks) going for as long as possible.
A few more rounds of QE and Twitter and LinkedIn might be back up in the clouds again.
I would investigate implementing a basic income through the creation of an alternative currency system.
That is, everyone who subscribes to the system, gets a certain number of free credits equivalent to 10k a year, in exchange for certain responsibilities.
I don't see how it can be done using the existing fiat currencies at the moment due to lack of political support, but if you could pilot and trial it on say Bitcoin, then you might be able to scale it at a later date when the political climate has changed and everyone understands that software is eating (or has already eaten) the world.
I'm not so sure. Central banks helped cause the 08 crisis by lowering interest rates after 9/11 and encouraging a housing bubble.
Their response to the 08 crisis (bailing out the banks, ultra-low interest rates, QE) may have laid the ground for an even bigger crisis further down the road.
All this is good news for alternative currencies IMO.
Most children are creative. I taught in a school for a year and there was only one child who had zero creativity (the exercise was to write a film plot and he basically reproduced the "Cool Runnings" story).
But the school system has had to prepare kids for adult life and repetitive boring jobs. That may change as the machines take over, so like Baudelaire we can truly become lovers of clouds.
It's not going to happen by then. Musk is trying to provoke a greater interest in space exploration. He has done the same for electric cars.
This may lead to greater public funding for NASA, and more private investment for things like SpaceX.
So I never take Musk's timing statements literally, but his hype-mode is an intrinsic part of him realising his vision, sooner or later that is.
Central banks are the problem. They have destabalised the global economy by constantly lowering interest rates and creating asset bubbles to promote the illusion of growth.
Central bankers are politically appointed in many cases so they have no interest in cooling an economy. It messes up the business cycle and creates the conditions for even bigger booms and busts.
Alternative currencies like Bitcoin will rise in popularity and may hold the key to a less manipulated financial system in the longer term - but I fear we will have another financial crisis before the new alternative currencies have gained traction. We shall see...
Also factor in the trend of millennials living at home and declining family formation.
But the main reason for the drop is the collapse of the emerging markets and the fact that China has dramatically slowed down.
Contrary to popular belief, Dawkins has never produced original research. He is a popular science writer, who synthesises recent discoveries in the field of evolutionary biology into an understandable narrative for the layperson (albeit with extensive commentary on the non-existence of God).
Free trade with China has undoubtedly destroyed US manufacturing jobs, and therefore significantly affected the working and lower middle class, which makes (or made) up most of the people.
China has always implemented protectionist policies. The US government committed the same mistake of the Brits many years ago, by assuming free trade meant a level playing field and everyone would stick to the rules. In reality, you just end up giving away economic power to those nations who will happily subsidise their exports whilst penalising imports.
Contrary to popular belief, there can be economic growth during periods of deflation, as demonstrated by the economist Gary Shilling.
Paul Buchheit gave a presentation in London which understood capitalism as a technology. I think that is the right way to regard it.
Unfortunately, over the last 30 years Western society has turned capitalism into an ideology, something to be worshipped and bowed down to.
Startups and PhDs do tend to attract intellectually curious people. The startup scene seems to be benefiting from the brain-drain away from academia due to push and pull factors.
But there are some differences:
A startup involves working in a team; for a PhD, you're mostly on your own.
A startup has no guarantee of success; for a PhD, there is an institutional bias in getting you through.