Product & Startup Builder

Bitcoin is Ridiculous

Added on by Guest User.

What a beautifully written cry for help. The difference between the commentator and the man (or woman) in the arena.

“Bitcoin will crash because of course it will. Bubbles burst. The real estate and athletics management people go home, and the believers remain, meeting up, planning new markets. It could take years, it could take a decade, but the blockchain freaks have a world in their heads, and they won’t rest until it’s real. That the rest of us live here, too, is the least of their concerns. Some of the things they’ll do will be magical, community-building, economically thrilling. Others may keep us up at night.

Still, I can’t help but look on in envy. Not for the believers’ possible wealth, because that will elude most. (Even in a distributed money platform, wealth has a way of finding only a few pockets.) I’m jealous that they’ll experience it all: the crash, the rejection, and then the slow rebuild as they learn the difference between toys and tools. They get to participate in the screaming edge of culture.”

The Enlightenment is Working

Added on by Guest User.

“The Enlightenment is working. Our ancestors replaced dogma, tradition and authority with reason, debate and institutions of truth-seeking. They replaced superstition and magic with science. And they shifted their values from the glory of the tribe, nation, race, class or faith toward universal human flourishing.”

Let’s hope we don’t materially reverse those gains. Hopefully what we’re seeing now is the last gasps of air by those who would have us go back to tribal, dogmatic thinking.

That being said, and although I’m usually an eternal optimist, I don’t have a lot of faith in the future right now. It feels like we’ve reached a tipping point where we may, in fact, quickly slide backwards.

This is particularly true where, at least in the US, the population has been steadily getting less educated, more misinformed and more hyper polarized. All amid failing or weakened institutions. This is not a blip. This is a decades long trend that will be difficult to reverse because it’s self-reinforcing.

The only thing that’s giving me hope for the US right now are the outspoken and surprisingly effective surviving victims of the Florida shooting.

Government is the enemy?

Added on by Guest User.

Reminder:

Government is the thing we do together. It’s not us vs them. We have democratic institutions and elections so that anyone and everyone can be part of a shared project called governance.

America is the only western democracy (ha!) that has a plurality of people who view their own government as the potential enemy and uses that as a reason to arm its citizens in the name of “Freedom!”.

In the mean time, the same people that are fighting for guns are also fighting to protect a group of men undermining the principles and institutions of free and functional democracy.

Originally posted on Facebook

Reminder: Government Is The Thing We Do Together.

Added on by Chris Saad.

Reminder:

Government is the thing we do together. It’s not us vs them. We have democratic institutions and elections so that anyone and everyone can be part of a shared project called governance.

America is the only western democracy (ha!) that has a plurality of people who view their own government as the potential enemy and uses that as a reason to arm its citizens in the name of “Freedom!”.

In the mean time, the same people that are fighting for guns are also fighting to protect a group of men undermining the principles and institutions of free and functional democracy.

Originally posted on Facebook

We are wired to raise children in community

Added on by Guest User.

Very interesting article attached below.

I've always longed to live in an extended community.

Maybe it can be traced back to my childhood where my life was filled with extended family and friends who would always visit or stay at our home for dinners, parties and movie nights. As an adult, I've attempted to recreate that environment as often as I can with the best people I can find. Hence #SaadSanctuary and #SkySanctuary.

Now, as I start to ponder what my own family might look like in the next 20 years (wife? kids? friends with kids?) I wonder how I might maintain this plurality of relationships and experiences for myself, my partner and my children (future children, I don't think I have any right now!), over time.

This is further challenged by the fact that so many of my dear friends and family are now so spread out across the world. And, as usual for me, I'm not satisfied to just repeat what's come before. Rather, I want to take it to the next level. What might a community like the one described in the article look like in an urban, modern setting? Penthouses instead of fields.

Government is SocietyOS

Added on by Guest User.

Government is SocietyOS. It is not the enemy.

As various App level "features" become fundamental/common they should become part of the platform. Electricity, roads, healthcare.

Laws provide guardrails for the "apps" (I.e companies etc) to function and protect the system from crashing.

Only question is "How good is your OS?"

Originally posted on Facebook

Last Day of 2017: Gratitude

Added on by Chris Saad.

Today is the last day of 2017.

This year I have one overriding thought and feeling: Gratitude.

Gratitude for all the people and experiences I've had. Gratitude for all the abundance. Gratitude for any period of time - however brief - that I can live in gratitude.

If someone told me how this year would turn out, I would have a) not believed them and b) not changed a thing (except maybe Trump).

I left it all out on the field. Saw the difference between world class bold leadership and fear based incrementalism up close, worked my ass off to make a shared vision a reality, had the opportunity to travel to places I'd always wanted to go, advised some great companies doing very cool stuff, pushed past my anxiety to do some public speaking, reconnected with family and a sense of balance, and made beautiful new connections in my life - all while (surprisingly) going up and to the right!

So to 2017 - and the people who made it what it was - thank you!

Originally posted on Facebook

Mild Spoilers: Last Jedi

Added on by Chris Saad.

Mild Last Jedi spoilers:

The movie is about...

1. Perspective: Everyone is the hero of their own story. Everyone has their own perspective on events. Everyone feels justified in their own behavior.

2. Leadership: There are many ways to communicate and lead. Some are successful, some are total failures. Some engender trust, some get results, some can lead to disaster.

3. Letting go of legacy: Both sides argue for sweeping away the past and creating a new kind of future. Let it die. Let it burn. Time for a new approach. Ironic given that the Force Awakens borrowed so much from the legacy of the franchise.

Originally posted on Facebook

Regarding net neutrality:

Added on by Guest User.

Regarding net neutrality:

If major ISPs start implementing paid access/tiering as most observers fear, this doesn’t just affect the US - It affects the whole world.

Companies that would have been born in the US will now be unable to launch and/or succeed in that critical market and will therefore never come into existence for the rest of the world. The next Facebook, Google, Uber etc will be snuffed out before they even begin.

At the very least it could put a real chill in the air for Silicon Valley and the US startup/tech ecosystem that produces so many amazing companies.

Further, the rest of the world’s corrupt right wing governments will now feel emboldened to pass the same laws In their respective countries.

As usual, America sneezes and the rest of the world gets #manflu.

More broadly speaking:

In so many practical ways, critical factors/systems of the established world order that were leading us to greater and greater productivity and prosperity are now being dismantled. Health, education, a free and open internet, the UN, Brexit, a thriving US middle class and yes, even America’s status as a global leader. Without these fundamentals I sincerely worry about our shared future.

To be clear, these effects won’t be felt in just a few years.

Take the US itself as an example. Trump didn’t come out of nowhere. He’s the result of decades of Fox News propaganda, a long-term rigged economy and a dismantled education+healthcare system that created a great many uneducated and desperate people.

Similarly (and in many ways as an extension of the US situation) we are now seeing a slow unraveling of the ingredients that have lead to relative global stability since World War 2. This has a chance to one day lead to systemic failures and may cause more frequent outlier events (e.g major wars, shifting of alliances, major dictators etc)

Or maybe, I’m being an alarmist and a pessimist. I hope so.

Side note: It’s funny, I started this post with the intention to say I didn’t have much new or useful to say about the net neutrality decision. I guess I had a lot to say.

Originally posted on Facebook

Net Neutrality

Added on by Chris Saad.

Regarding net neutrality:

If major ISPs start implementing paid access/tiering as most observers fear, this doesn’t just affect the US - It affects the whole world.

Companies that would have been born in the US will now be unable to launch and/or succeed in that critical market and will therefore never come into existence for the rest of the world. The next Facebook, Google, Uber etc will be snuffed out before they even begin.

At the very least it could put a real chill in the air for Silicon Valley and the US startup/tech ecosystem that produces so many amazing companies.

Further, the rest of the world’s corrupt right wing governments will now feel emboldened to pass the same laws In their respective countries.

As usual, America sneezes and the rest of the world gets #manflu.

More broadly speaking:

In so many practical ways, critical factors/systems of the established world order that were leading us to greater and greater productivity and prosperity are now being dismantled. Health, education, a free and open internet, the UN, Brexit, a thriving US middle class and yes, even America’s status as a global leader. Without these fundamentals I sincerely worry about our shared future.

To be clear, these effects won’t be felt in just a few years.

Take the US itself as an example. Trump didn’t come out of nowhere. He’s the result of decades of Fox News propaganda, a long-term rigged economy and a dismantled education+healthcare system that created a great many uneducated and desperate people.

Similarly (and in many ways as an extension of the US situation) we are now seeing a slow unraveling of the ingredients that have lead to relative global stability since World War 2. This has a chance to one day lead to systemic failures and may cause more frequent outlier events (e.g major wars, shifting of alliances, major dictators etc)

Or maybe, I’m being an alarmist and a pessimist. I hope so.

Side note: It’s funny, I started this post with the intention to say I didn’t have much new or useful to say about the net neutrality decision. I guess I had a lot to say.

Originally posted on Facebook

Consensus

Added on by Guest User.

The world is built on consensus.

Concepts like ownership, law, money, monarchy, governance etc - they are merely constructs built on this fundamental mechanism.

Said another way: the only reason we can own a piece of land or money has value or the queen is the queen is because a sufficient number of people agree that those things are true. All the mechanisms and norms of society only exist because the majority basically agree they exist.

In an era where our most senior business and political leaders are explicitly calling into question our fundamental institutions of operationalized consensus - or manipulating them for their own greedy and corrupt ends - a new kind of consensus needs to emerge.

That’s why Blockchain technology is so very important.

Being able to turn human consensus into running code and an immutable distributed dataset (e.g a ledger) transforms our implicit rules operated by central authorities into distributed, peer-to-peer operations.

We can now #unbundle consensus from legacy, centralized institutions and put it at the edge.

The implications are profoundly disruptive. For both good and ill.

// Inspired by the first 10 minutes of “The Crown”. And the stupid comparison of Bitcoin to Tulips.

Originally posted on Facebook

More Outside Time

Added on by Chris Saad.

I’ve spent the last 10 years designing the perfect place to stay in. Now I’m considering how to inspire the perfect reasons to go out.

Moving from a focus on epic apartments, TVs and household gadgets to great bags, drones, cameras and a car. From a job that requires me to be in one place, to work that lets me be anywhere.

I’m curious if this will be a successful or permanent change. I don’t expect that I’ll completely flip to being a digital nomad (although I did consider that) but I think rebalancing my life to include more outside/travel time will be a healthy new experience.

Stay tuned...