Books, books, books.
The Money Trap: Lost Illusions Inside the Tech Bubble by Alok Sama
Fun stories from the Softbank era from a Softbank insider. Masa is such a fascinating character.
All Fours by Miranda July
The book causing women everywhere to divorce their husbands. It’s a compelling quasi-erotic romp through the mind of a mid-life woman rediscovering her sexuality.
But how skilled was he? An overly skilled lover was kind of icky—desire should make you clumsy. I always imagined us tripping all over ourselves with hunger. …
“Everyone thinks doggy style is so vulnerable,” Jordi said, “but it’s actually the most stable position. Like a table. It’s hard to be knocked down when you’re on all fours.” …
My friends are always obliging me with ephemera like this—screenshots of sexts, emails to their mothers—because I’m forever wanting to know what it feels like to be other people. What were we all doing? What the hell was going on here on Earth? Of course none of these artifacts really amounted to anything; it was like trying to grab smoke by its handle. What handle?
Mouth to Mouth: A Novel by Antoine Wilson
A fun novel about a oceanside rescue of an art dealer. The lives of rescuer and art dealer and others intertwine in compelling ways.
Read, Write, Own by Chris Dixon
A terrific argument for the power and potential of blockchain networks. Chris lays out the case for why we should not celebrate big tech’s control of our communication and social network platforms (Fb, Google, Apple, MSFT, etc). At this point, only email has open protocols free of any one big tech provider. Some excerpts (out of order):
What if you couldn’t resell or reinvest in your house or car? Or what if you had to change your name wherever you went? This is the digital world of corporate networks. ….
Think about it in terms of the infrastructure of a city, an analogy to which I’ll continually return. Roads should perform basic functions, but you don’t need them to be hotbeds of innovation. There isn’t that much creativity required; they just need to convey cars. On the other hand, you do want lots of creative entrepreneurs building around the roads: creating new shops and restaurants, constructing new buildings, expanding neighborhoods, and so forth. Roads should be thin, and their surroundings should be thick. …
Cost savings are nice, but wouldn’t it be nicer if companies let users, not just shareholders, participate in their financial success? The market cap of Big Tech companies totals in the trillions of dollars. Users, especially early ones, contribute much to this success. They sell products on Amazon, publish videos on YouTube, share content on Twitter, and so on. Users make early bets, just as founders and investors do. And yet in most corporate networks, users are treated as second-class citizens at best, or as a product to be served up to real customers, like advertisers, at worst. …
The design of the dominant social networks explains what went wrong. Powerful network effects locked users into Big Tech’s clutches, and that lock-in led to high take rates. It’s hard to know precisely what take rates many major corporate networks charge, because their terms can be opaque and noncommittal, but it’s reasonable to estimate they charge around 99 percent. …
The corporate model is like a highly managed theme park that builds the whole experience end to end. The blockchain network is like a city that starts with core building blocks and encourages bottom-up entrepreneurship.
The Decadent Society by Ross Douthat
I try not to miss anything Ross writes.
The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden
Wonderful plot. One sentence: “Outside, the snow kept on falling. She took off her coat, lit a fire in the kitchen, and made herself small before it.”
The Score Takes Care of Itself: My Philosophy of Leadership by Bill Walsh, Steve Jamison, and Craig Walsh
I didn’t get a lot out of this book. There were some good sentences, though, on the costs of intensity:
When I give a speech at a corporate event, I often ask those in attendance, “Do you know how to tell if you’re doing the job?” As heads start whispering back and forth, I provide these clues: “If you’re up at 3 A.M. every night talking into a tape recorder and writing notes on scraps of paper, have a knot in your stomach and a rash on your skin, are losing sleep and losing touch with your wife and kids, have no appetite or sense of humor, and feel that everything might turn out wrong, then you’re probably doing the job.” This always gets a laugh, but not a very big one. Those executives in the audience recognize there is a significant price to pay to be the best. That price is not something they laugh at.
Who Is Government?: The Untold Story of Public Service by Michael Lewis
Michael Lewis is one of the GOATs but I didn’t find much that was gripping here. Lewis’s premise that government workers are deeply under appreciated is an extraordinary claim.