Twitteretter

There are many startups which do not aspire to either of these, hefty goals. But ambitious ones often start with one of these two objectives in mind. Possibly with both, but typically, with one over the other. This is at least my observation from talking to young people interested in start up, which is something I am doing quite frequently these days. Even though I do of course think that one objective is morally superior to the other, this post is concerned with which is a better engine for success. On this, I can offer, of course, only an opinion, I do not claim to have the key, and a generally correct answer may not even exist. But it strikes me that the will to change the World, the thirst for ultimate impact, is a better ram with which to batter the many barriers that will block your path than the will to become rich which you can, of course, always do in some other way. And thus, as it often happens in life, it may be that the riches come more often to those who seek them less Le...

I am both worried and curious about the obvious fact, which I had not really thought about until now, that Europe has no personal computer manufacturing. And, despite a good start in mobile telephony, with Nokia and Ericsson, we also missed the train of smart phones, probably because we were, unlike some of our Far East competitors, respectful of Apple’s patents. 5G seems to tell the same story. These are huge products in today’s World, with the potential to create vast amounts of wealth and prosperity, as well as strategic advantages. I wonder why Europe does not play in this game, what the reasons are for our sitting on the bench, watching the US and the Far East fight it out. I think we lack a common European conscience, still in early development, which drives us to consume European, when possible, in the same way Americans and Asians do. Just remember, when you are next shopping, for trainers, or an electric car, your consumer choices shape global geopolitics Length: 979 character...

After an unprecedented technological race, humanity has researched, developed and approved several vaccines against the virus which shook our society at the start of last year. The approval comes with record speed and may provide a welcome solution to the otherwise possibly unsurmountable social problems the pandemic is creating.   We now can continue to develop, to grow, to increase wealth (the distribution of which is not for this post) without unpalatable sacrifices of life. Alas, vaccination success will rely on its adoption, on a sufficient percentage of the population accepting it. Given the speedy development and approval, many are justifiably wary of its potential risks. Humanity will, once again, split down the middle, those who believe in institutions and in the fundamental virtue underpinning society and those who believe in conspiracy, exploitation and nihilist individualism as their only antagonist. It is not a matter of safety, but of outlook. My arm is ready, is your...

As a species, humanity’s technological accomplishments are, to our current knowledge, unparalleled. We’ve mastered fire and electricity. We’ve escaped our gravitational earthly prison, sending satellites and even people into orbit. We have put men on the moon. We are sending probes to faraway planets, have connected our whole species via the miracle of real time communication and are in the cusp of domesticating quantum theory to build computers. We are now even attempting to create intelligence, in our image, but more powerful. Despite such staggering shows of prowess, there are some challenges, some problems, that still escape us, and may do forever. The shower door, for example. My observation is that we are, as a species, so far incapable of creating a shower door which efficiently fulfils its purpose, namely keeping water in and the floor outside dry. However modern the home, or swanky the hotel, a wet bathroom floor remains, almost always, an inescapable reality, a humility cure...

This seems to be a new MS Word feature, or maybe one I had not noticed before. Word is now not only helping writers with orthography, but braving the much more complex realm of vocabulary, grammar and sentence building. And here, I must say, it still needs significant work. I do not normally encounter the title message when writing professionally, but I often do when writing Twitteretter. Word is not being trained, I guess, on the nuances of turn of phrase and artistic use of language, but on its much more prosaic utilitarian use. This is logical. Whilst I would be willing to accept help when writing for strictly utilitarian purposes, and I am happy for others to receive it when doing the same, I think writing for pleasure, one’s own or that of others, is a very personal pursuit in which any help received must come from others equally artistically inclined, and not from machines. This may change one day, but the perfection that may be achieved may kill the beauty of near perfection...

The title of this post may be over optimistic. Right now, the new gold rush may be cannabis decriminalisation. But still, that specific vertical’s current popularity is extremely opportunistic and not sufficiently durable to qualify as a trend. The real gold rush with legs is tech startup. We all marvel at the success stories of the new tech giants and their unprecedentedly fast growth, which is not that unprecedently fast, as you would see if you cared to look at the previous rise of railway companies, steel makers, car and supercomputer manufacturers. Still, a successful tech start-up is the path to huge wealth today. But are entrepreneurs who succeed in new tech driven by the promise of those riches, or are they motivated by the chance to change the World, impact lives, improve processes or fix malfunctions? As a tech entrepreneur, I have my answer, which, like many things in life, follows the 80/20 rule, impact 80, riches 20. But others may have others, to paraphrase Groucho Marx L...

Last night I rewatched ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’, the great Stanley Kubrick movie. Have you seen it? If you have not, you definitely should. It is a movie from a time when movies were different and did not all follow the same rhythm and formula. That can make it a bit hard going, but it is incredibly beautiful and interesting. It plays with many concepts which would warrant their own Twitteretters. Alien gifted human intelligence, rogue AI, space and hyperspace travelling. The last 15 minutes are mind bending, light speed travelling, time travelling, uncertainty principle… What I also find very interesting is seeing the technologies they expected to have by 2001, and the ones they completely missed. The most noticeable of these are internet and mobile devices. Humanity can colonize the moon and travel to Jupiter with a conscious AI on board, but video calling happens from an over teched phone booth paid for with a phone card. I wonder what future technologies will completely blindside us...

Science fiction books have frequently featured gadgets which would translate different languages in real time. This was a cool idea (the weirdest would most likely be the Babel fish you insert in your ear in Douglas Adams’ ‘Hitchhiker Guide to the Galaxy’). Today, it is no longer an idea, and the technology is already available. It combines voice recognition and text translation and it is deployed through several hardware set ups, typically earpieces with a mic. It does not work perfectly yet, as anyone who uses Google Translate will imagine, but it is improving all the time. Our first reaction, when reading about it, is to imagine how helpful it would be on holidays, or even business meetings. But what I am really interested in is seeing whether it will foster understanding between cultures by allowing us to go directly to the source without mediation, to discuss politics, economy, etc. without language barriers. How much more informative would an unmediated Putin or Qi Jinping be? Le...