Reuters Tech Tonic taping today
A while back, I posted a video of the week of Avner Ronen on Reuters Tech Tonic. In the comments to that post, the host Paul Smalera invited me to appear on the show and then invited the AVC community to sit in the audience.
Well the taping is today at the Reuters building in Times Square from 5pm to 6pm and the first 25 people to sign up can attend. The link to RSVP is here. Please don't RSVP unless you really plan to attend.
We are going to talk about immigration, regulation 2.0, bitcoin, and a few other things that will be common themes to the AVC community.
Comments (Archived):
I increasingly feel rather miffed that I no longer reside in NYC. Was all too temporary a residency. Sigh.Sounds great. Enjoy!
great post yesterday on Thatcher. just saw it in my tumblr dashboard
Many thanks, Fred. Was a very odd feeling writing it – I felt compelled to write something on the same day – kind of a John Lennon, 9/11, Shuttle moment – but without the emotion. I had the BBC World Service on the radio in the background, so I have no tune to associate with the time of hearing the news (I heard via Twitter, of course – not the BBC WS, ironically!).
You saw this graphic? What Twitter will look like on the day that Tatcher dies.
Lol, yes – I’d say from a glance of my own Twitter-stream that it is pretty damn spot-on!
lol
Funny. Re journalists and “who is Thatcher” the angle is more the fact that young people ask on twitter rather than just finding the answer themselves by a search. Or if they ask it’s more of a mockery of the importance of someone that they never had heard of.
True. Innocence & ignorance are not the same thing 🙂
I was out much of yesterday but look forward to reading your post today. I took one of my kids to the Ronald Reagan Library for the Disney Treasures exhibit on his last day of Spring Break. Was surreal seeing the film clip of Margaret Thatcher speaking at Reagan’s funeral.I learned about Thatcher’s death on AVC. Learned of Annette Funicello’s death while at the Disney exhibit from one of the docents.Two very different women who fascinated me for very different reasons. Funicello mostly through reruns as a very nostalgic young girl (me not her) and Thatcher through retrospect because I was pretty clueless about politics and world events during much of her reign. Yes, I realize that I said reign.
Hi Donna – hope you’re well!’Reign’ is a very good term indeed – very well spotted – she very much reminded me of wielding the fascinating matriarchal power that all-consumed our nation’s identity for a generation or more – and leaves a legacy for ever after – the same as Elizabeth I and Queen Victoria did. Explains why our current wonderful Queen Elizabeth didn’t care for her much – will be platitudes from her re: Thatcher’s demise – is well known over here that she thought she tried to usurp her regal powers in her demeanour.We’ve done pretty well for some amazing women over here, all in all. Elizabeth I is a perpetual fascination for me and my wife. Utterly amazing person – defined our nation more than most ever did/will…”I know I have the body of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England too.” ~ Elizabeth I.
Funicello was amazing. Very touching story.
I hope to have a reason to be in NYC regularly at some point in my life – many other major cities around the world I love too.
Cool. Luckily I’ve experienced many great cities for extended periods of time but NYC always rattles my soul in feeling I have unfinished business there…
Hint hint nudge nudge? 😉
Lol, moi? I’ve always been too subtle for my own good. Maybe I should SCREAM IT OUT LOUD, IN FG STYLE!? 😉
Life is short. Waiting to do what you want a bad strategy my friend.
Agree, Arnold – but fiscally it is utterly impossible right now and for the foreseeable future…
What’s interesting with that is to see people who bought (at the time) expensive vacation homes that appeared to be over reaching and ended up (because of real estate price increases) in a better position than the people who were more conservative with their spending.
So close, yet so far. Have fun!
Will the interview be streamed live?If not, it would be great to pick a hash tag so we can follow some tweets.
Good catch
I’m guessing it would be #TechTonic
If it was in Germany would it be #teutonic? 🙂
I thought it would be tektonisch, nicht?
Well, Germany has certainly been seismic in Europe for the past one hundred years or so – and to this day re: the bloody Euro! 😉
Unfortunately because it’s really a studio taping with an audience, we’re probably going to ask guests turn off their phones. 🙁 However it will be edited and posted as quickly as we can get it up, and I’d of course love if you wanted to use the hashtag then!
That’s great. Thanks.
not coming. my jet’s in for servicing today. far too short notice.when will there be the chance to see it?
Odd, I have the same problem this morning.
Jets are sooo 1990s. My Tesla is on charge.
Whoa whoa- hold your hoses. Tesla’s already can fly? Cool.
I’ve ordered the SpaceX version 😉
Oh you’re on Elon’s favourite list – jealous..
I taught him everything he knows.
Can I have your brain?
Elon’s got it. It’s why I’m a lot dumber now.
I wonder if I can borrow his for a few weeks.
Ditto. But, is he human? Meant in the nicest possible way, I hasten to add!
I’ve wondered this myself..
video of the week this saturday
Thanks, Fred. I’ll be there, sitting in the front row.
Heckle him a bit for us at AVC
lol
I have tomatoes and roses in my bag.
Shhhhhh. They might start searching people first..
You seem to pull off interviews without a hitch. Have any advice on this?
It seems it’s just him knowing his stuff and then being present in the moment.
Via @umairh: “You’re not going to find yourself unless you have the courage to be yourself.”
Very true! Fear of ridicule is a fucker, though – all fear is a fucker mind you.
And then you die…
Fuck!
Did nobody tell you about that bit? Sorry! I only just realised this a few years ago. You should be told.
I suppose next you’ll tell me that Santa Clause, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, Jack Frost, and the Man on the Moon aren’t real either!
Love the Freudian-slip Santa ;-)Pretty much sums-up life, lol!
You mean Santa Clause isn’t a lawyer either?? 😛 (Dammit..)
I am the tooth fairy. I am real.
Yay!
do a lot of them
I look forward to the conversation on Bitcoin. I have a bit of a theory that it’s Silk Road that’s the primary driver for Bitcoin, along with the investor-minded folks who are playing the game.Someone on HN the other day suggested having an automatic inflation happening to dissuade investor buying might help. I’m not sure how well that would work, though I think it’s a worthwhile idea to explore if you want the mass consumer to join on; They won’t when cost of entry into market can be $200 USD, yet product and service suppliers don’t match that to real-world pricing – sometimes not even close – mostly because they don’t trust it’s not going to go back down X times before they can spend it themselves, and they can benefit / profit hugely – at least so long as new buyers keep coming in and they keep spending money.If these factors all remain true though, then there will be a collapse in value – and then you’ll get a rapid buy and increase from investor-minded folks again … and the extreme up/down cycle will continue until either enough people are in the platform (100s of millions possibly), or some mechanism is put in place to limit gambling with Bitcoin.
Good points, Matt. It’s fascinating stuff, for sure. Have you been following Max Keiser/Stacy Herbert on this topic at all? I know they are not everyone’s cup of tea but he was an early-adopter Bitcoin maven. Love the guy.I was at a Bitcoin conference just over a year ago – one of the core team presented and I had a long 1:1 chat with him before the event (can’t recall his name – I have a follow-up email somewhere) – audience was mainly London city-types – the notion of a non-fiat currency didn’t remotely compute with any of them – they were so scoffing (and utterly ignorant and patronising) it’s rather sweet to see how it’s accelerated credibility over the past few months, especially since the farce that is the EU/Euro started its inevitable implosion – there’s a hint of tulip-mania, for sure, but, interesting times…
I haven’t been paying attention to Bitcoin until lately – there was no point in analyzing it being so newborn, nor using it until more stable / tested.I really wonder if it’s a safe currency alternative though. Aside from security breaches / hacks / untraceable stolen money, etc. – if you have to wait for Bitcoin price to come back down so the price of goods in Bitcoin equals the cost of goods in reality, then it’s just too inefficient / inflexible.
It’s disruptive and makes us question/think, which is good.
100% agree there!
“I really wonder if it’s a safe currency alternative though.”How can it be safe if the operation of it isn’t transparent? It’s a total black hole. Similar to investing in stocks vs. something tangible that you can touch, feel or have control over.
Do you really have control over the U.S. currency though?
I don’t need control over currency. It allows me to buy things that I do have control over.Re: investing what I mean is that if you decide to start a business with your money (instead of gambling on stocks) or buy real estate as an investment you have certainly more control over things that you don’t have with the black hole of stocks and the bullshit “as always do your research!” that the market participants push on the sheep.
.PPP – purchasing power parity — will ultimately dictate that any currency will move to some “real” parity level absent only artificial government intervention or a bubble.You cannot buy a ton of steel or lumber or gold in two different currencies and have a real price arbitrage. A price difference.Markets are not that stupid. Ultimately the trade has to be a zero sum between two currencies or otherwise enormous cash flows would follow the arbitrage.After all the baloney about an alternative reserve currency and abandoning the US dollar as THE modicum of exchange in the global energy business — guess what?It’s still the freakin’ dollar and it will always be. If the oil business could not be pried out of the grasp of the US dollar in the most recent global recession — when?Answer: NEVERJLM.
It’s all about trust. People trust that the US is a relatively open and “democratic” society, although I would point out that we’ve worn out the welcome mat on that front. Maybe natural gas and google fiber will come to the rescue.
.Not to go too deep on you but you really have hit on a serious concern — the Americans have always been trusted to do the “right thing” though Winston Churchill said we would try everything else first.Implied within that statement was that America was “competent”. The evidence for this assertion is manifold and profound — the world’s financial superstore, men on the moon, the arsenal of democracy, hot dogs, etc.Now I think the fundamental issue is “Are the Americans competent?”Our current economic affairs suggest that the answer to that question may not be “yes” and may, in fact, be “no”.Every State Governor has to balance their budget and the US Federal government apparently does not think that to be the case.Resist the temptation to think that is a knee jerk political diatribe — a pox on the Republicans and the Democrats.Neither are financially competent.BTW, Austin Texas (ATX) just was announced as the next location on the Google Fiber World Tour — speeds of 1G per second at the same cost as my current 65M per second. Oh, boy.Unfortunately I can neither think nor type that fast.JLM.
A non-fiat currency will never work because there is no ability to make more to stave off disaster. Witness the EU/Euro. Those poor countries are fucked because they can’t just print more Euros and inflate their debts away to a manageable level. Or something like that.
I would see that as a positive long-term. Governments and politics only think short-term so they can get re-elected, though recovery time and shifts should always be long-term / gradual.
There’s already now a multi-tier Euro system in place. It’s highly malleable, as Germany dictates. It’s a farce. Bitcoin already has more credibility than the Euro. Huge complex topic, and many people are much more qualified than me to answer you but many pretty conservative folk are giving it more and more credibility. Christ, Monopoly money has more integrity than the Euro.
.The Germans will take more with the Euro than they ever took with Panzers.They will shortly own Greece, Italy, France.England will again stand alone. And America — well the American dollar — will again be England’s grandest ally.JLM.
Indeed. People think this is an exaggeration and xenophobia – it is not at all. This is not meant in a cynical way, honestly – they (the Germans) already own most of the holiday villas in those regions, so they may as well own the countries, also. Makes one wonder…We had retired friends over last night – they built a villa in Spain, pre-crisis, and retired over there; being born and bred in our Yorkshire village but wanting warmer climes for health reasons – you hear some heartbreaking stories from them as to what the Spanish locals are going through – eg, recently one guy who does some work for them was desperate for some/any work/money – he had ONE EGG to feed his family on for the day. This is a builder in Spain, in 2013. Disgraceful what the EU has done. Bureaucratic Bastards.They say that the only people out and about spending any money are the Germans (and a few Brits) who have retired over there.QED.
“I look forward to the conversation on Bitcoin.”To me bitcoin is like dutch tulip meets barter exchange. Never going to come near hitting the tipping point it’s a non starter to me (in it’s current form – morphing into something else doesn’t count). Additionally the entire concept is much to hard for any “regular” to understand.
Agreed. Another reason I didn’t really get interested in it early on is I didn’t understand it.
Also no “killer app” for bitcoin.Was thinking about this the other day when Fred talked about why he invested in twitter essentially he realized the effort he put into blogging and realized that twitter would allow people to say something w/o the effort. This is a really really important point. Twitter was a killer app allowing people to say what was on their mind with little or no effort.http://en.wikipedia.org/wik…
could not be more wrong IMO – lets get a convo going on bitcoin here…..its fascinating to me….
Ok so why don’t you explain exactly (to start the conversation) why I “could not be more wrong” then.
sure IMO (in my opinion) the bitcoin saga has the potential to become as transformative to our society as anything i have seen in my lifetime. (except maggie ofcourse). My reasons for concluding this would take too long (respectfully) to articulate here, but i wait with bated breath……
Online gambling has the potential to be a killer app but only so long as it’s outlawed in the US.
Silk Road and gambling, yup.
BitCoin allows anonymous / untraceable purchases. Silk Road is likely the main driver behind BitCoin purchases, at least initially.
Impossible to believe that the quantity of people that need to do untraceable purchases could ever hit a tipping point or even come close compared to the rest of the economy. Not to mention that if it’s illegal then there is no way for others to monetize (pick axe or whatever) it in any legitimate way.
Is BitCoin illegal though?And if its primary use isn’t marketed as untraceable then that’s how it could gain traction in those other markets.
.In the long run, any currency or store of value is only going to be as attractive as the manner in which the following question is answered:”In a panicked, mad dog flight to financial safety, I want to be holding_______________.”Today that question is answered by either US Treasuries or, perhaps, gold. Maybe real estate.It will likely never be answered by “bitcoin”.Therein lies the real challenge.As a measure of financial lubrication or as a process facilitator — bringing other virtues to the transaction such as anonymity — many things will have a bit of utility in the short term. Including tulips.JLM.
my bet is you are wrong about that JLMi believe within a decade all of us will want our “if shit happens” funds in bitcoin
.Remember my premise is in “…a mad dog flight to financial safety…”I am not talking about a “normal” economic situation — whenever that lovely siren might reappear in all its trappings of glory.The problem with bitcoin is its very utility — it is not tangible. It is highly mobile. It is an entry somewhere on an accounting on a anonymous server dependent upon some stranger’s honesty. It is an invention.Its very nature is the antithesis of safety.Compared to the full faith and credit of the US government (treasuries), the physical possession of gold (a modicum of value and direct barter) and real estate (it isn’t going anywhere), it is a Jack and the Beanstalk promise of no real realizable value.Whose door do you knock on to get yours when the electricity is not working?This is not a fatal indictment of the utility of bitcoin as a currency in “normal” times, only as a measure of safety. Real safety.I will take your bet.JLM.
see that’s where you and i differ. the more virtual the more i have faith in it.
Agreed JLM. Years ago I was having this conversation with some bankers from Goldman. They pointed out people hold dollars partly because of the reserve currency, but mostly because we have the largest military. That’s what backs it up at the end of the day.
.I once dealt with investors who were moving real estate money out of West Berlin because of the threat of war. This was in the early 1980s. Quite a different perspective than that of a US real estate investor.JLM.
Different perspective indeed. I hear you.
the reason i fail to understand is how the currency can work for either a buyer or seller of goods if it is so inherently volatile on a day to day basis
What happens when 1000 other entities roll out bitcoin clones? Does bitcoin remain the standard because it was first?
The only clones I could see succeeding would be curated ones.
Bummer – I wish I was in NYC this afternoon…I always enjoy seeing Fred talk.Planning on being in NYC Thursday PM
If possible, help us better understand where Bitcoin is.Its recent volatility is scary.
the volatility is normal. there is a lack of information on it, along with lack of market depth.
Really excited to attend and looking forward to the conversation around immigration (a topic personally relevant to me) and regulation 2.0 (a topic dear to my heart). Will try to tweet out happenings to #techtonic
Never mind, #techtonic is already taken for something else, I will tweet to #nyctechtonic
Brewster Kahle mentioned last week that he’s now offering his team at Internet Archive to take part of their salaries in Bitcoin. Sounds line he has also wrangled a couple local sandwich shops into taking it.
Regarding immigration, Harvard economist George Borjas has a new paper on the economic impacts of it. A brief excerpt:The presence of all immigrant workers (legal and illegal) in the labor market makes the U.S. economy (GDP) an estimated 11 percent larger ($1.6 trillion) each year. This “contribution” to the aggregate economy, however, does not measure the net benefit to the native-born population.Of the $1.6 trillion increase in GDP, 97.8 percent goes to the immigrants themselves in the form of wages and benefits; the remainder constitutes the “immigration surplus” — the benefit accruing to the native-born population, including both workers, owners of firms, and other users of the services provided by immigrants.[…]The immigration surplus of $35 billion comes from reducing the wages of natives in competition with immigrants by an estimated $402 billion a year, while increasing profits or the incomes of users of immigrants by an estimated $437 billion.”
Not to mention that if it’s illegal then there is no way for others to monetize (pick axe or whatever) it in any legitimate way.
“Hello, Holland 1636? Listen, just thought you should know 1637 isn’t going to go as expected. Best, M”Funny, but the parallels between what led to the tulip craze (war, budget deficits, monetary debasing) and what we have now are disconcerting; the Euro, the US budget deficit, the Japan/China currency conflict, etc… I agree with Fred, something’s got to change, but bitcoin has to be trusted. Will it be able to build that trust over 10 years?
Hi Fred! Thanks again for having us readers at the taping of Tech Tonic yesterday. I approached you before the taping and let you know how well I’ve done for myself copying from your “Equity for Employees” class that you taught a year ago. I’m at it again! Here’s the link: http://skl.sh/ZNrbKGMy pre-class ritual is to re-read choice MBA Monday posts on the topic. Any interest in curating, editing and turning MBA Monday content into an ebook?
This was a great interview. You two mesh well.I liked the Bitcoin discussion a lot