I spent a good amount of time Saturday night in the night-vision-green haze of the Oakland debacle. A lone citizen journalist hollering at arrested protestors for their names. Footage of battle-gear sporting plump policemen milling about outside the kettling cordon, pausing to eat chinese food off the back of a police cruiser, arresting journalists. It’s part of the ambient video playlist for the next decade, so you may as well get used to it.
Ignoring the political hubbub, what’s clear is that there is an information problem. Mainstream media is, of course, by and large not serious in its coverage of anything, much less OWS. That little which is, finds itself susceptible to arrest. Citizen media is all niche. The bad apples in police are literally taking advantage of the opaqueness to hit and hide.
The solution is to provide better, clearer information streams. Best way to do that? Take a page from the Air Force.
You could, of course, do this with drones. There’s already been a a little work in that regard. Another option is to birth a litter of gorgon babies. Protestors with wearable cameras that stream over a mesh network.
A server to aggregate, then use some pretty sophisticated software (some funded by an interesting VC) to process the collective feeds. But here’s the key, pair the data with something actionable: a legal team.
Not unlike the ubiquitous traffic camera, they watch for infractions – mace to an unsuspecting face – then launch lawsuits. They shouldn’t be altruistic. They should see this enterprise as a profit center. Hell, they should buy and give out the cameras. And they shouldn’t skimp, the return on this investment would be insane.
Off the shelf, something likeequipped with an Eye-fi should work, though multidirectional would be better.
Update: Dale has a much better option for the camera. The Looxcie.
-Shlok
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I listen to audiobooks of tomes I won’t be notating extensively. (Boyd said that if you didn’t write more than what was on the page in the margins, you weren’t reading closely enough.) I listen at 2x speed, perhaps the coolest feature on my aging iPod. I can kill a book a week on top of what I’m reading – while walking, showering, heading to bed, playing video games. Otherwise each of these things bores me to no end.
But sometimes, as when listening to this biography of Marx, I find myself wanting to annotate. Which means I have to scrounge up a copy of the book (stupid that a PDF does not come with every audiobook), find the right page, then mark it up. Or just write notes in a separate (or physical) document, that will forever remain untethered from the text itself.
A cool trend on the iPad is that the audio is paired with the text. You can read along but also zone out and listen. It seems to be primarily geared towards children’s books, but I’d use this now. Pause and markup. Pick up listening from wherever the text is. Export notes.
We’re not there yet on the voice software that tries to read text locally on an ad-hoc basis, or even Siri. The inflections are jarring. When you put out a book, just produce audiobooks using actors trying to make it. Podcast-ify the whole thing. At home, with a mic and a voice for radio, for a couple hundred bucks.
A side note: I read a lot as a kid. Lots. My vocabulary – the words I knew and understood within and outside of context – was huge. I had no idea how to pronounce them. Still, once in a while, I’ll find myself stumbling over a word, equally surprising myself and whoever I’m having a conversation with. That’s something read-along books will cure for future generations. And that’s very cool.
-Shlok
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A variant on Kickstarter for lobbying initiatives. May as formalize existing flows of capital in exchange for influence so more can participate and benefit instead of just the few.
These could be local. Force a bank to clean up a foreclosed home. Front-yard garden/goat/chicken friendly laws. Make it illegal for debt collectors to be on your street. At the state level. End marijuana enforcement.
Figure out who needs to sign off on the permit/law. Fund their next election cycle (the current standard for bribing). Fund a decade of cushy non-jobs. All the standard lobbyist tactics. Retainers at restaurants. Fund their spouses non-business. Put their (18+ independent) kid through school.
Hey, bribery-as-a-service has a nice ring to it. Essentially act as a white-label PAC.
-Shlok
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Following up on my review, Daedalus is great for writing and organizing parts of a workflow. Needs add editing functionality to close the loop.
I’m looking for the ability to blow apart a page (which are infinite). Specifically, a way to look at the elements of a page and reorganize them as needed. This would be invaluable in the editing process. Not just for stuff you write yourself, but things other people send you.
How this could work: Hit a “edit mode” button, and zoom out to see the entire page. To the right, you see the listed ‘snippets’. By default each snippet is a sentence. You can modify the length of the snippet by drawing a line over a set of words.
You can drag and drop the position of the snippets relative to one another, consider, and remove if necessary. This works with the current page and stack logic. Mockup:
Add versioning control and Daedalus suddenly becomes the only iPad app that takes advantage of the touch interface to help you get stuff written, developed, and edited in a slick way (really, without getting in the way – as I fear LiquidText will with all these features).
-Shlok
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If I were an average sized V.C. ($150m or so), was watching the funding overhang end (what funds raised vs. what the industry spent), and the uncertainty in the economy in general, here’s what my portfolio would look like (based on several years of research in a variety of fields for a diverse set of clients). Assume a standard 7 year investment horizon.
First, the standard answer of growing segments today: education, consumer healthcare, and consumer technology. Say this is between 25-50% of your existing portfolio (heavier if your exit events are projected to be earlier than later).
- Education. Software and hardware for the (virtual and meatspace) classroom, college, loans and payment processing.
- Consumer Healthcare. Payment processing is huge. Insurance products. Info management and point-of-care tools.
- Consumer Technology. Going to see a shift away from features to social networks/graphs with purpose. Reputation systems that transcend a particular business.
Next, take into account three major trends:
- The gutting of the middle class. It’s happening (measured by a decline in median income levels, 1/3 being one paycheck away from losing their homes)Won’t be stopped, the system is too far off the rails.
- The rise of distributed manufacturing capacity + tinkering networks. Or work in general really.
- As in the first depression, the elite get by. They may lose half their net worth, but half of a lot is still pretty good. They’ll keep buying with some modifications.
Of course, as an investor, you don’t just want businesses that can rapidly gain market share, but also businesses in a space where the market itself is growing MASSIVELY. For example, 3d fabrication alone is predicted to double in the next 5 years. The following would comprise 50%-75% of my portfolio. (Of course, assume the executive teams, value props, and execution are solid.)
- Bankruptcy. Digitally accelerating or delaying the information flows. Transforming nonproductive assets. Helping families/communities cope. Repossessing. Not really dealing in debt (default will be more likely).
- Fractional Employment. Despite not having jobs, they will remain productive. Platforms that enable distributed work (atomize every task) will take off. Tasks will progressively grow in complexity.
- Decentralized Production. Everything from energy, food, water, consumer products, healthcare products (courtesy of biohackers). This includes tools (design software, hardware, etc) and methodologies they’ll need to generate each.
- Upmarket Services. Simply, bifurcating society. Those who can afford today’s standard of living, and those who are in the 3’rd world category. So vacations, security, building walls, dampening exposure to shocks, preserving asset value. Wine, art, diamonds, etc.
- Private Security. No longer a public good, market is poised to explode. Neighborhood rent-a-cops, bodyguards, protecting schools/malls/tent cities/infrastructure. The nonlethal weapons and tools and information management they’ll need.
-Shlok
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