Pop quiz: what was happening in America during the fall of the Roman Empire?
I found this interesting link the other day: http://geacron.com/home-en/. It’s an interactive map of the different states and nations at different time periods. Fun to play around with, and makes you think about some of the less-well-known empires and epochs of history.
[Hitler] has grasped the falsity of the hedonistic attitude to life. Nearly all western thought since the last war, certainly all “progressive” thought, has assumed tacitly that human beings desire nothing beyond ease, security, and avoidance of pain. In such a view of life there is no room, for instance, for patriotism and the military virtues. The Socialist who finds his children playing with soldiers is usually upset, but he is never able to think of a substitute for the tin soldiers; tin pacifists somehow won’t do. Hitler, because in his own joyless mind he feels it with exceptional strength, knows that human beings don’t only want comfort, safety, short working-hours, hygiene, birth-control and, in general, common sense; they also, at least intermittently, want struggle and self-sacrifice, not to mention drums, flag and loyalty-parades.
However they may be as economic theories, Fascism and Nazism are psychologically far sounder than any hedonistic conception of life. The same is probably true of Stalin’s militarized version of Socialism. All three of the great dictators have enhanced their power by imposing intolerable burdens on their peoples. Whereas Socialism, and even capitalism in a grudging way, have said to people “I offer you a good time,” Hitler has said to them “I offer you struggle, danger and death,” and as a result a whole nation flings itself at his feet.
From George Orwell’s review of Mein Kampf.
I don’t know if you’ve seen this already, but I thought it was very cool.
By the way, this is a first for me: an actual computer-science related post. Don’t worry, I’ll keep it simple.
While doing some research for my 4th year project (studying influence propagation on Twitter), I came across this interesting paper: Identifying Influential Spreaders in Social Networks.
Summarised version: you might think the most influential people were simply those who knew a lot of people. (In graph theory, these are nodes with a high degree). Or you might think they’re bridges that connect different groups (in graph theory, these are nodes with high betweenness centrality). Both intuitions are wrong.
What the researchers found was that influence depended on position; the most influential nodes were those in the core of the network. (If you want to know how they defined “core”, read the linked paper). The number of connections did matter, but it was far more important to be connected to a few central nodes than a large number of nodes at the fringes.
This makes sense if you think about it — it’s better to be connected to a few central people than lots of people on the outskirts.
It’s not a risk you can take. And it’s not a risk you can explain to Barry Michaels, because you know his type, and after seventy years of data processing, they still think that coders can be hired and fired; that the engineers who ripped out the muscles and nerves of the modern world and replaced it with something entirely alien under the skin are still little artisans who will put their tools down and go home if you tell them to leave the job half-done.
The line is from Charlie Stross’ near-future scifi novel Halting State. The book was written in 2006, set in roughly 2016, and has proved remarkably prescient. He successfully predicted the rise of mobile gaming, murders committed over virtual items, and an independent Scotland (OK, we’re only halfway on the last one). The quote above shows why I think he’s one of the few people who really gets the profound weirdness of this new world we’re building.
The sequel Rule 34, set roughly in 2021, is even better (and weirder).
We’ve pivoted to an idea that’s truly disruptive! If we make if freemium we’ll go viral for sure!
People saying stuff like that makes my blood boil. It’s not that they’re using the latest startup buzzwords, it’s that these shallow-seeming words actually represent deep strategic concepts. “Disruptive” does not mean “sort of, changes things, y’know?”; there’s a whole academic theory of disruption developed by someone who is probably a lot smarter than you or I.
Reading up on these concepts felt like I was levelling up my knowledge of business strategy. In an ideal world, use of the word “disrupt” would be restricted to a secret cabal consisting only of people who’ve actually read The Innovator’s Dilemma. It would be like a secret handshake — they’d ask about your well-established competitor, you’d reply that you’d beat them with a disruptive strategy (wink, wink). On discovering you were one of the cabal they’d invite you to a secret hangout, far away from social media gurus and idea guys, where you could discuss high-level business strategy over port and cigars.
Sadly this is not possible. These terms are now mainly used by morons to make themselves sound smarter. Am I being too finicky about some mere words? Maybe, but I think I’m justified. These terms let you communicate complex concepts simply. Misusing them weakens them, strips out their meaning, leaving only vague buzzwords.
Anyway, if you want to join the cabal, read on.
The word disrupt, when applied to startups, is normally used to mean “change”. Something disruptive changes a lot of things, in a sexy, revolutionary, disruptive way.
The original meaning of the word is much subtler, and is actually a bit counter-intuitive. Clayton Christensen, a Harvard professor, developed his theory of disruptive innovation after years of research into how innovations spread throughout society. The innovations he looked at weren’t necessarily the cool ones — he devotes a whole chapter to mechanical diggers. He studied the hard drive industry in depth, an industry where new companies were rapidly displacing old companies that couldn’t adapt to new technology.
But he noticed something strange. Established companies were generally good at adapting to new technology. But everyone once in a while, they’d miss out on a new trend, and be replaced by a new batch of startups. Why were the incumbents able to adopt some innovations and not others?
The answer is that there’s two types of innovation. Not every innovation is disruptive. Most are sustaining innovations — that doesn’t mean they’re boring, sustaining innovations can be revolutionary –but they have one major difference from disruptive innovations. And it’s a market difference, not a technological difference.
Christensen realised that companies could adapt to new technology provided it was what their existing customers wanted. If the new technology was better on the metrics their customers cared about, they’d adopt it quickly.
What they couldn’t do was adopt a technology that their existing customers thought was worse. Why would they? But there might be a new market that cares about different metrics to the existing customers. A disruptive innovation is one that meets the needs of this new market.
Let’s use a recent example: the Nintendo Wii. The market for games consoles was power gamers; when Sony and Microsoft made the Playstation 3 and XBox 360, they made them for this group, and focused on hardware specs (these two devices could be considered sustaining innovations). The Nintendo Wii, with it’s feeble processing power, was laughed at by this group.
But granny and the grandkids didn’t care about hardware specs. What they cared about was accessibility; they wanted simple games they could play together. The Wii was disruptive because it opened up a new market — casual gamers — that was unserved by existing consoles.
That was a rare case of an incumbent (Nintendo) doing something disruptive. Normally disruption is a chance for a scrappy startup to overthrow an established player.
An example is PCs. IBM sold mainframes to corporations, who cared about performance/dollar. On a price/performance basis, PCs were much worse than mainframes. But they were much cheaper overall, and suddenly consumers could afford their own computers (new market: consumers, new metric: absolute price). Apple, Commodore and other startups took advantage of this gap left by the incumbents. PCs got better over time and eventually became good enough to replace mainframes. IBM was disrupted, and almost died.
The key lesson for startups is a disruptive strategy is necessary when you’re taking on an well-established competitor. You have to outmanoeuvre them and find a market segment they haven’t spotted, the cheese that’s too small for them to bother with. If you want to learn more, definitely check out Clayton Christen’s original book, which goes into all this in far more detail then I can: The Innovator’s Dilemma.
Next week’s misused startup term: “pivot”.
I have told you that your life is over, that you should not work, and that you should avoid telling the truth. I now say this to you: be hated.
It’s not as easy as it sounds. Do you know anyone who hates you? Yet every great figure who has contributed to the human race has been hated, not just by one person, but often by a great many. That hatred is so strong it has caused those great figures to be shunned, abused, murdered and in one famous instance, nailed to a cross.
One does not have to be evil to be hated. In fact, it’s often the case that one is hated precisely because one is trying to do right by one’s own convictions. It is far too easy to be liked, one merely has to be accommodating and hold no strong convictions. Then one will gravitate towards the centre and settle into the average. That cannot be your role. There are a great many bad people in the world, and if you are not offending them, you must be bad yourself. Popularity is a sure sign that you are doing something wrong.
I think he’s right. Original here: http://halfhalf.posterous.com/dont-work-be-hated-love-someone.
I’ve just had my first article published on Your Hidden Potential, the UK startup blog. It’s some more lessons from one of my favourite American entrepreneurs:
Lesson 2: There’s Less Competition For the Big Opportunities
At one point, Fifty and his partner were amongst a bunch of small-time crack dealers working the same estate, all competing for the custom of the same drug fiends. With so much competition, profits remained modest.
Then Fifty remembered a relative of the local drug kingpin, who a few years ago had succeeded — if only for a brief period — in taking over the drugs trade for the entire estate. The strategy was simple. Sell top quality crack at a low price, sacrificing short-term profits, but ensuring the fiends only want your product. Once that happens, suggest that the other dealers become your resellers. If they’re still inclined to scratch out meagre profits as independents, a few armed threats might persuade them otherwise. (Business can be easier when you operate outside normal regulatory frameworks).
Full article here: http://yourhiddenpotential.co.uk/2012/04/16/4-lessons-in-life-and-business-from-50-cent/ I previously wrote about Fifty here and here.
Came across this interesting article on Wikipedia today: Productivity improving technologies (historical)
“The years 1929-1941 were, in the aggregate, the most technologically progressive of any comparable period in U.S. economic history.” Alexander J. Field
“As industrialization has proceeded, its effects, relatively speaking, have become less, not more, revolutionary”….”There has, in effect, been a general progression in industrial commodities from a deficiency to a surplus of capital relative to internal investments”. Alan Sweezy, 1943
The most interesting takeaway was that productivity growth has been declining since World War II. That is, change isn’t accelerating, but decelerating.
Most of the technologies in the article were developed during the industrial revolution, with a big cluster between 1870 and 1910: cars, trains, factories, electricity, aeroplanes, telegraphs, telephones.
Compare to another 40-year period, 1970 to 2010. Personal computers, the internet, smartphones, genetic engineering. Have they had as big an impact?
I recently discussed a Lesswrong article about attention control. The article was also discussed on Hacker News, where a chap named sumkh1 mentioned his own method of controlling attention. I got in touch to ask him more about it, and I thought his reply was interesting. He give me permission to post it here:
What I did was a little similar with your own plan. The information diet is a really good idea but it needs a lot of discipline to stick with it.
The basic steps of my plan was this. The night before I went to sleep I would take out a piece of paper and I would write down what are the three things I needed to do tomorrow (along with the little things).
It usually looked something like this
Big Things:
1. Complete Assignment
2. Buy books from Amazon
3. Do this other assignment
Little things (that I need to ):
Morning Habits (brush etc)
Eat lunch
Call up my client
Get a VGA cable.
Clean my desk.Then I take the paper in the morning and put it on top of my computer’s keyboard (Don’t know if you can do that, but just put it somewhere where you’ll see it when you wakeup). The key (as you’re trying out) is to start out the morning by seeing the list, going through your routine and starting the day in the positive. I’m not sure why it works but it seems to set the baseline for the rest of the day. Then the next part is to keep that paper with you (keeping in my head didn’t work). Since you start noticing when you are control-t and start to type news.y take just 3 seconds and take your hands off the keyboard. (I use chrome so I had to take these time wasting sites off my quick launch screen too). I had the paper next to the keyboard so I was able to glance over and convinced myself to do one of the little tasks that will only take me a few minutes (like clean my desk) and then get back to working on the big three things I want to do. That really seemed to work for me in getting out the distractions. The time I spend on HN is vastly reduced because of it. (side note: I had this problem with Email so what I did was take to heart that whatever the people that email me want, they’ll get heard eventually and don’t need a response in <5 minutes. Made my life a lot easier as email was easily the biggest Time Sink I had)
Of course you can try to block websites, but when I tried that I vastly underestimated my ability to find new sites to waste time on. The only really good way that I see is to build a new habit around refocusing your energy. I think your information diet could really work out for you. I did one more thing, I had a few people that I had to check in with everyday. I wrote down how many time I found myself having the urge to visit HN/Twitter/etc by just writing a tally on the paper after I put my hands down. Then I emailed that at the end of the day to a person who kept me accountable. It felt like I would be disappointing him if I wan’t improving. Essentially positive peer pressure. If you’re up for that I would love to help you stay accountable.
Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help.
Thanks to Sumukh for being my first guest poster! Follow him on Twitter at @sumukhsridhara, or check out GoalHawk, the product he’s building based on the ideas above.
If anyone else is interested in writing an article on here, drop me an email on isaac@i.saac.me. I’ll consider any intelligent people who want to explore similar topics to the ones I normally discuss on here.