Venture Capitalism is a "Meritocracy"

Catchy headline no?  Well this is a semi-sidebar on the whole "Rise of the Meritocracy" series that came up in May.  I noted it and am noting it now mostly to point out that the notion of meritocracy is a concept embraced in the modern world and still in the vernacular of popular culture.  In this particular instance it carries a more insidious undertone related to sexism and to a lesser degree racism.  The particular article was on Techcrunch after a Partner at a Venture Capital firm filed a sexual harassment suit.  The firm itself is well regarded as a pioneer in gender equality as it was the first to have female partners in the US, and has multiple funds managed by female partners.  It was shocking in that no one expected it of a firm considered progressive.

The author has a slant, but it is interesting that the panel was comprised of all men and only one had the stones to take on the question of sexism in the industry.  Of further concern is that the one man that did answer from the all white male panel dismissed the notion that there was sexism because venture capitalism was a meritocracy.  Nope nothing to see here, that woman's claims are without merit.

So sidebar it may be, but here you have gender politics and privilege wrapped up in a word coined just after the second world war.

SOPA

I think I've mentioned it before, but given how unbelievably poorly this law is shaping up I thought it was time to post a little round up and information on what you can do should you find this proposed bill as abhorrent as I find it.

First Gizmodo has a pretty solid run down on why this bill is murderous for the internet as we know it.  The gist of it is that because sites that host infringing content typically are not US sites, court orders and take down notices do not have force of law.  To make it so rights holders have a way to see their interests looked after (keep in mind who the government works for here kids) they can have that sites DNS records blocked or erased without due process (remember foreign entities) with no appeal process.  This fundamentally undermines the way that DNS and the internet works and is from an infrastructure point of view a very bad way to implement this.  We would be following in the footsteps pioneered by The Great Chinese firewall.  Not the best role model, I would say.  Next up there is third party transfer of liability, that is a legal way of saying that if the search engines don't expunge records that rights holders get taken down fast enough they can be sued for the infringement that they are "facilitating".  Finally the whole framework amounts to a tool that can and in the hands of companies like UMG will be used to stifle free speech.  It literally blows my mind that a congress that claims to be in the business of lessening the power of government would like to handover such a huge power grab to private companies.  Or it would blow my mind if it wasn't business as usual over in congress.

Gizmodo has a link to a petition you can sign to ask Obama to veto the bill.

Gizmodo also has a story up of all the companies that are supporting this bill so you can know if you still want to give them your patronage.  The most notable of them is the Registrar GoDaddy, they have caught a decent amount of flack for this so I don't feel the need to pile on any more.  I will note that I have chosen to take my business elsewhere.  Yeah broken websites for a little while, but I think it is important enough to take the time to do.

Now I would like to post a link to a video that has a pretty decent attempt from one of the bills co-sponsors on what they want the bill to do.  They are trying to extend a physical metaphor to police the internet is the short story.  Once again Congress just doesn't understand the technology they are trying to regulate and should not be allowed to work on it.

Not covered in this post is the related and already passed 2008 Pro-IP law used to take websites down currently.  This is a really strange use of ICE and Department of Homeland Security, (read excessively broad interpretation of the Patriot Act powers).  Some people have gone as far as suggest that the current USAG should face criminal charges for his mis-use of laws.

Corruption all over

Wow, I am a little stunned about learning that Olympus has been hiding investment losses for 20 years!  That is pretty amazing feat of accounting and collusion by so many people would be required to pull this off.  I don't have any witty commentary to add, I just cannot believe that they where able to hide it for so long.

College and its value

Lately several FB friends have posted articles that are critical of the value of college, at the same time several prominent blogs have been trashing the economic sense of attending college.  I think that even more than questioning the value of the undergrad experience vs the value of not starting your "adult" life in debt, some of these attacks are focused on if we are actually learning in college.  In that instance I am actually in agreeiance, as I was severely disappointed with a number of my undergraduate courses.  The material stale, the teachers on autopilot, and "knowledge" out of date.  Really the two best classes I had where from outsiders so to speak, professors that had just arrived fresh from industry.  Their current experiences really spoke to me more than one aging prof's long winded stories about the Kibbutz back in the 70's.  One of the newly minted professors had a side business that was leveraging the exploding commercialization of China by selling typewriters.  Typewriters, because then as now, the rural districts that where trying to modernize didn't have reliable electricity, so filling out forms on computer was not reliable enough for them.  He claimed to clear about $1 million dollars and had orders booked for the next several years, selling an antiquated technology to an exploding market.  The biggest lesson was opportunity is not where you might expect; sometimes large opportunities exist in where no one is looking for them.

I am conflicted about the college experience, as my position might not have been available to me without a degree and my wife's job as well might not have been available to her so on the one hand I absolutely believe I needed a degree on the other hand my coworker has an associates degree and has virtually the same pay and responsibilities.  Very little of my day to day job function can be tied back to my education and particularly my degree program.  Most of the things I took from college are social in nature, the network I gained from being there.  The friends, my wife, my time on the swim team are all tied to the social nature of the "full undergrad" experience.  I really enjoyed the social aspects of my time at college, and had it been fully covered by grants and scholarships I probably would be less bitter about my perception of the quality of the education.  That I paid for it, and continue to pay for the "education" I received makes me take the position that in dollars and cents my college didn't make sense for me.  My job and the way I started out in the industry would have been virtually identical, the difference is I got to make some mistakes in the relative safety of college, rather than loosing a real job.  I can say that I wouldn't do college over again, or at the very least I would have gone to a different college.

So I'll leave you with this.

Business Porn

Hugh, I feel like I just got busted.  I love reading Techcrunch its like vicariously being creative and successful.



Hugh would say that's business porn, damn it I look at porn almost every day then!

Facebook, Privacy and the Alternatives

A crazy amount of digital ink has been spent lately taking Facebook to task, and demonizing Mark Zuckerberg, calling for a boycott of the site in response to the privacy changes.  (Random side note Engadget hasn't said a peep about this it seems, either that or they pulled the content.)

The boycotting and leaving Facebook is an interesting cunundrum given that Facebook actually provides some value to many of its users.  That value may just be satisfying their voyeur needs into the lives of their "friends", but it is a way to maintain some level of contact with those that are far away from us.  Every now and then you learn things that you might have not known, or encounter very odd situations with divorces or fighting couples.  Is any of this useful, valuable, or worthwhile?  I don't know that it isn't.

I thought that this was an interesting alternative design to counter Facebook's Monolithic scale, the idea is to give you a higher degree of control over what you share.  I think that they certianly choose the best possible time to launch, but given the time it will take them to get off the ground it likely will have fallen off of people radar by then.  People have short attention spans and the news doesn't know what a follow up report is, so I don't expect to ever hear about this "Alternative" again.

I think everyone agrees you suck labels

Electronista, Crunch Gear, Engadget, Gizmodo and I all agree trying to revive the album is dumb. You have been focusing on singles for so long now, this smacks of desperation to not be irrelevant.

Also to all the above, it doesn't have to be about Apple making a competing product, this product sucks on its own.

Beta Bloglines

I will give you an "A" for effort Bloglines, the beta features mentioned on TC sound nice (the save feature especially), but not quite enough to make me switch back from Google Reader. I have overcome the shortcoming of no save feature by email tags. I setup several filters, and email articles based on content to the correct filter. Not the perfect solution, but the results are searchable in gmail, and makes it relatively easy to forward on when someone asks for some information I have squirreled away about this or that product.

Social sites, Finding the ties

Since joining Pownce I have noticed that by design it limits some of the anit-social social behavior. With fewer pictures, and the ability to have your posts only shown to friends I feel like the stalking you see and hear about on Myspace that disturbs me so much is slightly limited. However the annoying trying to have everyone under the sun as a friend habit is not. This guy is already at in on Pownce.

In mildly related news Techcrunch reminded us that Myspace is still number one in the social site standings, and traffic is growing. First off, they certainly have achieved the tipping point so it is very unlikely that they will die anytime soon, even with a significant mis-step they are likely to continue to have strong traffic volume. The whole phenomenon is rather interesting on the micro-scale in that fundamentally the site is driven by personal connection. Users still love this, and the people that haven't created profiles yet that are coming to the site and starting into the community are still grabbed the way that many users where when Myspace started to get hot.

There is something profound about whole personal connection, especially the opportunity to reconnect. For instance I am going to a wedding this September for two people that knew each other in High School and lost track. Both had changed, and they reconnected on Myspace. That is some of the magic that will make those to strong supporters of Myspace, and I am sure they are not the first or the last to find romance. This type of reconnection used to happen through the community process that has virtually disappeared in the physical world. Friend of Friends meeting years later and finding love is neither new nor germane to the online world.

The downswing of these sites it is does require situational/information awareness in social interactions. Certainly this is not different than the physical community interactions in my opinion, so image control translates to the virtual world. The main difference is the reach, individuals knowing about your indiscretions vs indiscretions posted in a searchable and open to any eyes that go looking for it.

In spite of the inherent dangers of reach and overexposure the use and utilization of social networks is continuing to grow, and could be the key to rebuilding the community that news media bemoans as dying. The internet at large can still be about community, that I have a Name and choose to use a pseudonym doesn't prevent individuals from building trust in my moniker any more if I used a real name and that is something you can hang a hat on, maybe a coat too.

Tags: TechCrunch, Myspace, Pownce

Pownce and pwned by Techcruch

Not even out of private beta and I find Pownce on Techcrunch.

Not that I should be surprised, but TC beat my thoughts to the punch, though mine was longer (length != quality), and it looks like my thoughts fell well within the bell curve of the TC readers. I do see opportunities for them as im and other ilk that we stitch together our social fabric together with suck. I just figure it will be an exclusive party for a while (with me on the outside) so unless you reside in San Fran, or know these people( or are on the Internet A list) don't expect to get invited to the party any time soon.

Interesting side note, anyone else notice how all of these services and sites focused on "social medium" start out elitist? Orkut anyone?



Tags: Pownce, Techcrunch, People that are cooler than Me