Creative Capitalism

Bill gates gave a speech at the davos wolrd Economic Forum on Thursday about "creative capitalism". Gates has been talking for a while about the shortcomings of the modern capitalist system; he's one of the few business leaders not in thrall to the free markets at all costs mantra. Gates was speaking about an issue that is generally subsumed under the rubric of "corporate social responsibility" and although he makes it clear that he iis not talking about that, it's unfortunate that the post hoc journalism about the event will push the issue into that particular known and readily-digestible topic area.
There is no question that what Gates is leading is transformational in the sense that nobody has ever operated with such a huge finacial platform to transform the possibilities for the world in such a self-aware fashion. From what I've seen, the Gates Foundation is attracting the best and brightest and enabling them to develop program structures and tools for capturing the core requirements for building a sustainable future -- the proverbial "world that works for everyone." They are developing metrics and dashboards that respond to the genuine issues that exist, and although their efforts are deeply embedded inside first world assumptions, it is clear also that they are on the ground in the developing world and feeding that reality back in ways that a representative sampling process is in place. It's all worthy from my perspective.
Yet Gates seems constrained in his still-current role as the Chairman of a modern US corporation to see that corporate activity and activism is likely not the medium of solving the world's problems. likewise, when he points to governments as being the primary sources of aid, he still misses the point. He still hasn't crossed over -- or transformed -- into seeing the outline of real solutions for the human predicament -- what I consider to be the eemergence of a global polity. A global polity is one in which the pre-eminent context for a human being is service and contribution. Gates points to this when he quotes Adam Smith and recognizes the fundamental human drive to be "interested in the fortunes of others." In the early part of the 21st Century, we've been "game theory-ed" out of this belief.
This discussion of how best to coordinate and integrate the existing set of actors -- corporations, governments, NGOs -- is certainly worthy and no-trivial. Yet at some point there needs to be the recognition that, as Einstein said, "The world we have made, as a result of the level of thinking we have done thus far, creates problems we cannot solve at the same level of thinking at which we created them." The new level of thinking recognizes different starting assumptions about the capacity of the physical universe to provide.

A few things I think about

1) Why doesn't the US have a central bank? We have the Fed, but that's not an instrument of monetary policy, inasmuch as it has NO de facto accountability to the Exectuive or Legislative branch, and it really isn't a government entity at all. The fed does what suits its members, no matter whether those decisions might, partculalrly in the long run, but counter to broader social interests. (Equilibrium is an admirable goal, but it's only admirable fo so long.
2) What is industrial policy in a post-industrial world? in the US, I think it's defined as tax policy, and that is totally the wrong instrument.

Investment

For some reason I want to just start writing what I've been thinking about investment and investing. I think I'm a very naive investor. I don't see the world three steps ahead in terms of how to get a given amount X to turn into X plus some percent on an ongoing basis. I see all the possible things to invest in -- I always thought Apple was a good investment, and remember thinking that when it was at $25 a share. There would always be a return to design. But I think the world is in a critical phase in that the conversation "investment" has been hijacked by a small minority with an oligarchic, plutocratic bent. They are investing in a house of card, an amalgam of financial instruments so inter-woven and inter-levered that while the outcome is to shuttle money into their accounts, the broader macro-economic outcome is to reduce the capacity to invest in things that make the world more sustainable, more livable, and more fundamentally (and seldom considered) providing people with the means to achieve a sense of purpose in life.

Tools and marketing

Yesterday I posted the link to an on-line blogging course that I'm interested in taking. I don't know if this guy Mark Joyner is a charlatan or a genius, but I've bought his book and subscribed to his Simpleology list for the past two year.
I've spent the last few years trying to grok the on-line marketing zeitgeist from a number of different angles. On one hand -- my cynical view -- I see a small number of people manipulating other people's hopes and dreams in the face of rapidly fading opportunity in the US domestic economy. It seems like we're all going to end up selling each other our own self-help programs and "how we did it" stories based on filling up blank templates that hucksters like Joyner provide. On the other hand I could see that we're engaged in a great cultural and economic shift that involves people recognizing the need to "live out loud on-line" so to speak. Those who have taken the first tentative steps into this brave new world are acting as guides or Sherpas for the rest of us.
I've been "blogging" on and off for over 10 years. Back when it was cutting HTML by hand and posting files through a text interface on FTP. I actually had a decent little personal site on the Well back then. And all along, I've wanted something more. I've wanted to develop a personal portal. I wanted a way to post all my legacy content, along with a real-time listing of media and book consumption, links, etc. All these things are now enabled by an amalgam of new technologies (e.g., Twitter) I'm looking for away to integrate them, but more importantly I'm looking for the design pattern that enables mass adoption. That's my UML for the Design Service Society concept I mentioned earlier.

I'm evaluating a multi-media course on blogging from the folks at Simpleology. For a while, they're letting you snag it for free if you post about it on your blog.

It covers:

• The best blogging techniques.
• How to get traffic to your blog.
• How to turn your blog into money.

I'll let you know what I think once I've had a chance to check it out. Meanwhile, go grab yours while it's still free.

On Intelligence

I just finished reading Jeff Hawkins' On Intelligence. Hawkins -- the developer of the Palm Pilot -- has delved into cortical physiology to explain a model of thought and memory that provides a testable theory of intelligence. Hawkins' raison d'etre is to develop a model of intelligence that can be transduced into digital processing systems.
I am not a neurophysiologist, and Hawkins freely admits his theories are subject to controversy within the scientific community. His independent scholarship is, in my eyes, quite admirable, and he has the personal resources to pursue a research program that will certainly move the state of the art forward. The important notion is that the brain is a pattern matching and generation system that predicts existence, taking sensory input and piecing it together with memory. It is physical affirmation that much of what we experience as reality are, in fact,
Hawkins book provided me with a new appreciation for meta-thinking and meta-appreciation. It provided a new way of understanding some peculiar experiences -- where I could not literally understand my own senses It's particularly exciting as Hawkins has chosen to carve out a niche in developing a computing paradigm that extends the capacities of intelligence without humanizing it -- recognizing that the capabilities of intelligent system do not result in systems that in any way emulate or mimc human behavior.