The impending Age Of Abundance was prophecied in the scriptures thousands of years ago.
Monday, December 15, 2014
Friday, December 12, 2014
Monday, December 08, 2014
My First Taste Of Bitcoin
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| The bitcoin logo (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
Sunday, December 07, 2014
Chinatown: My Favorite Part Of Manhattan
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| English: Chinatown, Manhattan, New York City 2009 on Pell Street, looking west towards Bayard and Mott. (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
I like NYC, period. I will walk any block in the city. Because I like it so. And I don't differentiate among the boroughs, except for Staten Island, that I think is a legitimate part of New Jersey, or even Delaware.
But Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan. These three are a cluster. The Bronx is a little off. It is not in my route. One day years ago I realized the borough I have walked the least is The Bronx. So I camped out at a college friend's place for a month and walked that borough out thoroughly, left to right, north to south, east to west. Walking is the only way to see a city. There is no other way. You have to see at a certain slowish pace. I realized The Bronx of the popular imagination is only the southern Bronx, right north of Manhattan. I got called upon around there for taking a picture. What do you think you are doing! Someone yelled. I don't know if I got scared, but I did get uncomfortable. Okay, maybe a little scared.
Manhattan, Brooklyn: I have walked everywhere. Queens is just so big. I have walked many parts of Queens. But walking everywhere in Queens is quite a task. I am on it. I have walked from Jackson Heights to Jamaica to Flushing and back to Jackson Heights many times. I call it a walking kind of marathon. It takes a good part of the day. At the end of it you are guaranteed a great night of sleep. You are so dog tired. Walking to Astoria, to Long Island City: no big deal. I once walked from Jackson Heights east all the way until I was in Nassau County. And then I walked back.
Chinatown in Manhattan is awesome. The British colonized us, and then they left. Otherwise India and China were the richest countries on the planet for thousands of years. Europe was barbaric people land. India and China might again get their act together this century. And I mean that in a win win way. America does not have to lose, Europe does not have to lose, for India and China to win. If it were not for the strong Chinese economy the 2008 recession would have become a global depression. So there's that. And it is democracy like in America that will help India realize its true potential. For all those centuries India was feudal. There were kings, monarchs, emperors, some good, most not so good.
Chinatown in Manhattan is so different from every other part of Manhattan. And to think I grew right next to China in Nepal. But the British left and left a whole lot of them behind. I had a British education growing up, at a British school too. And so I grew up in the worldview where the only place China was next door was on the map. Otherwise China was nowhere to be seen. Britain and America felt closer than China. It was in the education.
Dumplings in Kathmandu are the staple snack. And so in Chinatown I am in dumplings town. It is a treat. I got 100 frozen dumplings last night, to go. It was a feast.
Chinatown is big and unique. Not even Harlem has it. And Harlem is considered the black capital of America, rapidly becoming more Hispanic and white. But Harlem is still English. Chinatown has Chinese characters on all sorts of signs and boards.
I am a bargain shopper. I don't believe in buying expensive. The exact thing can cost you three times, five times more in the wrong location. I am not up for that. And Chinatown beats even Queens on prices. I don't know how they do it. Let it be their secret sauce. A 10 dollar haircut in Jackson Heights can be had for five bucks in Chinatown. It should have been the other way round. I hear you can get vegetables in Flushing for really cheap. Flushing is in Queens, and it is actually bigger than the Chinatown in Manhattan.
China is so flush with cash, it wants to build bullet trains in India, not as foreign aid, but for profit. I am all for it. China is better positioned than anyone else to engage in massive infrastructure projects in Africa. And Africa is the ultimate sleeping giant. I think most people don't realize the African economy is coming along really nice. By the end of the decade Africa will be fully on the global map.
Beijing has grandiose plans to become the capital of the world. You should be able to take a train anywhere on the planet and end up in Beijing. I would love a Lhasa to Lumbini railway that also extends to Beijing and Delhi.
The Chinese are doing something right. They are not a one person dictatorship. It is a dictatorship of a political party. Which means a lot of patriotic people end up at the top. It is an alternate system. China can teach campaign finance reform to America, for sure. The Chinese have pulled hundreds of millions out of poverty. India needs to. And now India is poised to become the fastest growing economy on the planet. It has trillions in catching up to do.
The Blockchain Is About Trust
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| The main chain (black) consists of the longest series of blocks from the genesis block (green) to the current block. Orphan blocks (purple) exist outside of the main chain. (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
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| The bitcoin logo (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
Most of humanity does not have internet access. Most of humanity does not have credit rating either, most of humanity does not have Social Security numbers either. And you can't wait and expect governments to patch those holes. They will take forever. I am not saying exclude them, I am saying include them as much as possible, but do not wait for them.
The Bitcoin stands to revolutionize microfinance. ($100 Billion Plan To Save The World)
BitBeat: Blockchain-Based ID App Reimagines Internet Identity
a universal personal ID verified by cyrptocurrency blockchain technology ..... One day, suggests Mr. Ali, you could use your Onename ID to assign rights and powers to do all sorts of things — “to open your garage door, release your medical records or lodge an online vote.”Feature Friday: Distributed Identity
I predicted that there would emerge a “bitcoin like protocol” for identity. And we’ve been looking for that. ..... One thing we realized along the way is that this could be built on top of bitcoin or another blockchain. And so earlier this year we made a seed investment in a startup called OneName that is building exactly that. ...... a distributed ledger of identity that is open and not controlled by any entity. And that sounds like an application for a blockchain if there ever was one.https://onename.io/paramendra
Veniam
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| Fred Wilson (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
Here is a super exciting investment he just made, looks like: Veniam.
In my book Veniam is the most exciting move Fred Wilson ever made.
Google's self driving car might never happen. But you pair up an almost self driving car with Uber, and you get magic, much sooner. Singularity might never happen. My bet is it will not happen. But a lot of wonderful things will happen in attempts at singularity. This Veniam deal might be the real thing to Google and Facebook talking satellites and drones and balloons. Although I am big on satellites and drones and balloons.
Innovation has a funny way of upending the big dogs.
My comment to his blog post:
This is HUGELY exciting. I think you should get one on one with De Blasio, like NOW, and make this happen for NYC. They are talking old phone booths, which is great, but this is the real deal. A NYC where there is internet access every inch of the city is safer and is on its way to becoming One City. (Reference: De Blasio's Two Cities theme when he ran.)
The Bitcoin is as fundamental as the Internet was in 1996, I give you that. But for a while I was worried you have become a one track train with a laser focus just on Bitcoins. But I guess not.
Heck, this can be taken to Mumbai, to Kathmandu. What about backpacks? This could be taken to Namche! (Sagarmatha base camp ---- Sagarmatha, the Nepali name for Everest).
Wednesday, December 03, 2014
Monday, December 01, 2014
Fred Wilson And Mark Suster Missing Out On AirBnB And Uber
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| Mark Suster (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
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| photo of Paul Graham (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
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| Fred Wilson (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
These are smart guys, well connected. They are VC bloggers I like. What happened? How did they miss out?
They say about companies, you become so good at one thing, you tend to miss out on the next thing.
AirBnB and Uber are alike in that there are physical things in their equations. There are apartments and cars involved. I think they sit on top of a mega trend where software actively interacts with the physical environment. And I feel many more large companies will get created at that intersection.
When you have stellar track records of information only kind of software plays, I guess you don't feel the love for the physical.
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