Crypto Wars and Impact of Dune
In this edition, we have episodic podcast Business Wars covering the rise of cryptocurrencies. Also worth reading is an article from The Guardian from a few years ago talking about the impact of the novel Dune! And always a few other ideas.
Worth Listening
Crypto Wars | Business Wars
Whenever a new idea hits mainstream in a big way like cryptocurrencies have over the last year, I tend to look back through the hype and current sentiment. In Crypto War, host David Brown will take us through the early days of Bitcoin and the early players that brought this new way of transferring value to the world. If you know where the idea came from, you'll better understand where it may go in the future.
Worth Reading
Dune, 50 years on: how a science fiction novel changed the world | The Guardian
I'm sure many people expected this exploration of Dune! If you haven't made the time to watch it, you should! But I'm late the party on reading the books, in many ways, this is a repeat of when Lord of Rings was released. I can't wait to dive more deeply into the world of Dune. In this article, we explore where Frank Herbert pulled his ideas from. They cite inspiration from Zen via Allan Watts and ideas from Karl Jung which Herbert intermixed the ideas together in a new way especially being the 60s. Also worth noting is Herbert had tried Peyote and the emergence of psychedelics. Toss in Herbert's distrust of big government set the context for an exciting sci-fi novel. What's even more interesting is the current climate seems uniquely positioned to appreciate the world of Dune again.
Every fantasy reflects the place and time that produced it. If The Lord of the Rings is about the rise of fascism and the trauma of the second world war, Game of Thrones, with its cynical realpolitik and cast of precarious, entrepreneurial characters, is a fairytale of neoliberalism. Dune is the paradigmatic fantasy of the Age of Aquarius. Its concerns – environmental stress, human potential, altered states of consciousness, and the developing countries' revolution against imperialism – are blended together into an era-defining vision of personal and cosmic transformation.
The next big thing will start out looking like a toy | cdixon
This article was a fun read, especially since it linked the back to the early 2000s of what internet companies were on the list, and now many of them are gone and no longer here. After reading, I found myself thinking about what the toys nobody is taking seriously are? Or what could shift to make something from toy to ubiquitous? For example, what made social media that have defined technology since its arrival? The smartphone. The smartphone exists as a culmination of external forces. So my question is, what's next? What are pieces are already out there that have yet to be put together?
This does not mean every product that looks like a toy will turn out to be the next big thing. To distinguish toys that are disruptive from toys that will remain just toys, you need to look at products as processes. Obviously, products get better inasmuch as the designer adds features, but this is a relatively weak force. Much more powerful are external forces: microchips getting cheaper, bandwidth becoming ubiquitous, mobile devices getting smarter, etc. For a product to be disruptive, it needs to be designed to ride these changes up the utility curve.
Worth Watching
The "Real" Fake Worlds Of Pixar | Nerdstalgic
"Pixar is a believer in the world you already see." God damn, is this video great! A few years ago, I read the book Creativity Inc., and I fell for Pixar's style even more than what you have already seen on screen. This short video takes what Pixar shows you and condenses it on how they apply reality to their fictional worlds—at times spending countless hours getting realistic details in their shots. For example, in Finding Nemo, rendering 1/24 of a second took days to render the scene's complexity! Pixar makes you believe in the world and look at it with just a bit more wonder.