Superagency: What Could Possibly Go Right with Our AI Future by Reid Hoffman and Greg Beato
The authors think AI is the next great thing and will help out humanity. This piece focusses on the positives of AI with little attention to the negatives (like energy consumption).
Netflixed: The Epic Battle for America's Eyeballs by Gina Keating
Netflix was founded by Marc Randolph and Reed Hastings in the late 1990s. They had worked at a software company together that was acquired by IBM. Randolph was the primary force behind the initial idea and wanted to do something Amazon with video. Netflix was somewhat lucky that the potential competitors like Amazon and Blockbuster were inept, allowing Netflix to grow. An "activist investor" was busy trying to pull money out of Blockbuster preventing them from putting enough money into the DVD delivery operation to compete with Netflix. Blockbuster also had to struggle with the possibility of cannibalizing their existing store's revenue model - including the reliance on late fees. Netflix had optimized fast delivery of DVDs through the mail system to locations where their customers were. This seemed simple, but was difficult for others to copy. This book was written more than a decade ago, so only touches the surface of the pivot to streaming. Netflix did not do things perfectly, but was able to learn from mistakes and pivot to continue succeeding.
How Progress Ends: Technology, Innovation, and the Fate of Nations by Carl Benedikt Frey
The big theme of innovation is centralization vs decentralization. The two need to be balanced to drive innovation and progress. Decentralization helps innovation. However, too much decentralization leaves anarchy and little ability to spread the innovations. Centralization provides rules of law and helps support processes and carry out big project implementation. However, centralized organized are prone to keep with the status quo and have little room for innovation.
Big companies rarely innovate as much as small ones. Entrenched big firms benefit from regulation. They like to keep their position. Their location at the forefront of technology is usually short lived.
The discussion of progress is well researched though it is wordy.
High Output Management by Andrew S. Grove
This is an older management book from a boss at Intel. The chip business was booming in the day, though there were plenty of pivots and changes that the company went through. There are some insights that seem funny today. Email was seen as a powerful tool that helped enable communication throughout the company. This would give American companies the similar "real time" communication similar to Japanese companies where everybody sits at a table together. Well that has come and gone. We have even gone through the open office trend, instant messaging and other real time communication tools. Now the college is often to get more focussed.
There was some good discussion on 1:1 meetings. It is good for both sides to take notes. Look at problems. Plan actions and get to the bottom of things.
In spite of the changes in technology many key aspects of management remain similar.
Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman's OpenAI by Karen Hao
Sam Altman is not a good guy and we are trusting him with what could be existential technology. He has had issues with family members. He is a smooth talker with many connections in Silicon Valley. He was ousted from OpenAI for very valid reasons. Alas, there was not sufficient backbone to keep him out and he returned stronger than ever. Despite being called OpenAI, the company is very secretive. As a startup they were able to skirt the law and train their models on other people's IP. They would also outsource data annotation to many poorer companies, leaving some destruction in the wake. They also worked on massively scaling up hardware to accelerate improvements. Alas, this requires huge data centers and massive amounts of water.
Some people got tired of OpenAI and went to form Anthropic. Google and Microsoft have gone all-in on their AIs. It is nice to see Open AI demoted in importance. Alas, the AI arms race is still ongoing. What will the impact be on humanity?
Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism by Sarah Wynn-Williams
In its early days Facebook was run like a fraternity, with little respect for how it would impact the world. It was all about maintaining engagement. Government relations only came later as a reluctant necessity. The author of this book came from a diplomatic background. She liked Facebook and thought she could make a difference. Things did not go well. Facebook was not ready for her and she was not ready for Facebook. The book is a hatchet job on Facebook, with attacks especially on Sheryl Sandberg and Mark Zuckerberg. Her ire is especially strong on Sandberg. As an executive, Sandberg preaches female empowerment and mixing motherhood with work. However, in practice she wants work to dominate. She mandated international travel late in pregnancy and required her to get a nanny. Zuckerberg is portrayed as a clueless guy who doesn't get the importance of political hobnobbing - until he decides he wants to run for president.
There are legitimate concerns exposed in the book. However, there is also a significant clash of culture and personalities. I'm sure the other side would have plenty of valid counterpoints. The truth is probably somewhere in the middle.
The Manager's Path: A Guide for Tech Leaders Navigating Growth and Change by Camille Fournier
The author did a NanoWriMo book on her experience transitioning from engineer to management. People still need to remain a bit technical as the rise up. First steps are typically working as a mentor to interns. Other steps include doing more people work and less coding. Even those on a technical track still need to have a little people experience. The best technical people are not necessarily the best managers. The book is a nice tech-focused book on management and rising up the career ladder. (Which sometimes is best done at places that do not have a ladder!) Management is different at different companies and at different phases of growth as are the opportunities.
Maximum Impact: Maxim’s Quiet Rise as Silicon Valley’s Most Prolific Analog Chip Maker by Tunç Doluca
Maximum Impact is part biography of Jack Gifford and part history of Maxim Semiconductor. Even if Jack had not founded Maxim, he would have been a key player in Silicon Valley. He was the leader of analog products at Fairchild Semiconductor. He cofounded AMD. He became CEO of Intersil. And in between he worked in farming and other endeavors. He eventually founded Maxim and lead the company through it's early growth phase, passing away a short time after he left the company.
Jack went to UCLA to play baseball before "stumbling" into the semiconductor industry. He had hard-driving, yet family oriented management style that would likely not pass muster today. He ended up leaving the company as a stock-options backdating scandal unfolded. Maxim had almost always picked the "low price" for option valuations to give employees the best option value. This "backdating" was found to only benefit the rank and file, and not be used to enrich executives.
Maxim itself rose as a pure-play analog semiconductor company. There were lean days at the start, but the company persevered to become a behemoth in the industry. The book is full of plenty of analog semiconductor jargon. Those with intimate knowledge of the industry would likely understand the detailed significance of the events. For the rest of us, the book makes clear that these were some important things that happened.
The book was written primarily by the second (and final) CEO of Maxim. It is filled with quotes from people that played a role in the early days of the company. Many of the stories will be familiar to those that lived through the industry. The book provides a glimpse into the inner workings of a less well-known Silicon Valley success story.
Tracers in the Dark: The Global Hunt for the Crime Lords of Cryptocurrency by Andy Greenberg
Bitcoin and cryptocurrency rose as a means of making financial transactions in anonymity. Criminals have used bitcoin as the currency of choice for illicit transactions. However, the record is on the blockchain. People have been able to analyze the blockchain to help identify the transactions. This has lead to further attempts to anonymize transactions, which has lead to further attempt to trace.
This book follows a few major "busts" of dark web marketplaces and the people that have helped identify activity on the blockchain. Some of the identification was based on concepts from the initial blockchain whitepaper. Others remain "proprietary". There are a number of mathematical and problem solving skills needed to identify transactions. Leads and lucky breaks can also be helpful. Researchers will also set up accounts and transfer money within various exchanges to see how they record transactions. They have even attempted to create their own blockchain recorders to get details. (Though this has also backfired when it has gone wrong.) Often they can identify a mistaken leak of information in the online profile (such as the one time they accidentally sign with a true name, or forget to pass their IP through an anonymizer.)
The bulk of the novel covers the "busts" of various criminals. There were some government figures that had stolen from the bitcoin markets they had infiltrated. Then there were attempts to crack down on the dark web marketplaces like Silk Road. The government used various mechanisms to tie the players to the marketplace. They also tried to track down missing bitcoin from other exchanges. This proved valuable in taking down other parts of the dark web. Even the most careful hackers had an occasional slip up. There were busts in the Netherlands and Thailand, with the Europeans operating a dark web marketplace for a few weeks and thus busting a number of individuals (and scaring many others.) Russians are among the most difficult to trace due to their government not cooperating.
In addition to tracking the hackers, the blocktrain tracing has been used to trace users of blockchain. A child-abuse ring based on a South Korean's computer was brought down via transaction tracing.
The hackers continue to fight back. There are more secure means of making block chain transactions. However, these have added expense (in time and money.) What will be the result of the blockchain arms race?
Made to Break: Technology and Obsolescence in America by Giles Slade
Marketeers have faced the challenge of selling more product. A century or two ago, most products were "commodities". It was nearly impossible to determine the provenance of a particular product. Then companies started packaging their products and slapping their brand on it. This made it difficult for customers to touch the product before buying, but provided trust. Marketing was then used to extol the benefits and virtues of a particular band.
Branding was not enough. People must also feel a need to buy. Hence comes obsolescence. At first, psychology was used. Simply putting a year on automobile models encouraged people to go out and buy the newest ones. Small new features also encouraged adoption.
Later quality took a dive. A product should last long enough to get some use, but eventually fail and become obsolete. There is no benefit to long term quality when "just good enough" will allow selling more.
The US even took this to their benefit. When it became clear that the Soviets were copying American technology, the US let them - but made sure it was the version with "issues". The Soviet copies would work for a little while, but then eventually fail. This led to failures in Soviet energy extraction technology as well as weaponry.
Today cell phones are the big technological pariah. They have a very short life span. It is difficult to repair, and many people simply replace. Many other technologies have similar short lifespans. People may be content doing what they were doing before with their devices. However, the apps require the latest technology and no longer work. They are "forced" to upgrade. It is somewhat ironic that moving things "to the cloud" makes us more dependent on newer technology.
The book tries a little too hard to find obsolescence everywhere. Near the end, there is also a significant diversion into the cold war that distracts from the focus. Stretching for everything distracts from the main thesis.
How do the things that we use everyday work? We have some solid science behind many things, from toasters to airplanes. However, there are parts that we just "know work", without fully understanding the details of why. This book goes through a "day in the life" of a person as they encounter various technology in their daily activities. I had listened to it as I was going out to the airport on a trip. It so happened that the book uses an airport trip as a key event for many of the activities. (After all, there is a let of tech involed in travel.) It did make for an interesting listen.
The book abounds in examples of "efficiency gone wrong". The financial industry takes the crown for the worst offender. Trading has become ultra-efficient, with dedicated lines helping to produce millisecond improvements in executions. The result is more and more rapid trading among intermediaries. There is also more derivative trading. While some of the improved efficiency helps everyday investors, most of the effort does not.
There are some interesting quotes from James Evans regarding the impacts of "efficiency" in science. A "popularity" contest has evolved in science as well as other industries. People can easily find the most cited articles, and then cite them in their work. Instead of a long-tail enabled by easy access, we get more concentration to those that are already dominant.
Efficiency also brings about more challenges. Travel used to be very opaque with complex, hard to find pricing. As online travel agencies came about, more of the information was available to consumers. As they found and exported inefficiencies in the pricing structures, the travel companies made updates to make things more "efficient". Now it required more work to find the best deals. Meta travel search sites came out to help find better deals. Even travel agents themselves have been having a comeback. The old inefficiencies have simply been replaced with new ones.
Are we better off with changes? We can access the internet at any time on our phones. This helps improve some actions that were difficult earlier. But, it also has resulted in a bunch of time wasting. Does it provide a net benefit or not? A computer can more efficiently fly a plane than a human, but a human still needs to take over during catastrophes. If humans rely too much on autopilot, they may not have the skills when they are needed the most.
The book is aptly titled. Efficiency is a paradox. Making parts more efficient can sometimes make the sum of the parts less efficient. Finding the best way forward for society is a huge challenge.
Almost all newer semiconductor companies are "fabless". They design the chips, but don't manufacture them. The production has been concentrated in a few companies in southeast Asia like Taiwan Semiconductor. Other parts of production are also heavily concentrated. A single Dutch company produces Extreme Utlraviolet Lithography machines to manufacture advanced chips. Other key parts for chip production are concentrated in Silicon Valley companies. Because of this concentration, the US government was able to shut down a company that copied Micron by preventing them from importing supplies.
There is also a lot of copying going on in the chip industry. Russia was notorious for copying US chip designs. However, this probably kept them perpetually behind the US industry. While government and defense work may have provided some of the initial impetus for chip design, it became the US consumer market that allowed for massive growth?
What does the future hold? The concentration does spook a lot of governments. However, it is difficult to scale and compete with the various other operations.
This book is a fairly objective look at Youtube's rise and the many challenges it has faced. Creators often struggle when a simple algorithm change greatly curtails their viewership. Quality is not so important as engagement. Algorithms that pick the next video can easily lead people into echo chambers where their beliefs are amplified. Curtailing one person's hate speech curtails another person's legitimate conversation. To some there is not enough monitoring. To others there is too much. Even Kids Youtube can let not-good-for-kids content slip through. Even worse the "next video" feature can lead people down an endless trail of morass. YouTube as a platform has too much power to influence our thoughts. Yet, there is not anyone that really understands how this power is used. Even monetization is based on algorithms to show the maximum amount of advertisements that don't hurt viewership. It feels like we should keep away, rather than let it be consumed with regularity.
Today it has become worse. Moving pictures are available on phones, computers and the TV set. There are a near-infinite number of different videos that can be streamed with the click of a button. Nearly everything is "stand alone". You can watch a single youtube video then see more from the same creator. There are many series and movies available. The attention spans have shrunk further as there are many other options if something is not entertaining.
With COVID, education and religion have been migrated to screens with poor results. Church did not have the same "sacredness" when it was just coming from a screen at home. People would do things that they would not otherwise do at church. Similarly school was a different experience. Even trying to replicate the same school experience over Zoom produced poor results. Why watch a boring teacher, when there are many well-produced programs out there? Migration to screens seems to degrade the original.
TV is here to stay. We are now picking leaders based on how they appear on screens rather than on substantive issues. "Influencers" have large media followings. With the large number of video productions there are some that are daring. However, the overall quality has veered towards those with lower attention spans and less spot. It does not bode well for society. Postman observed the problems and half heartedly proposes solutions. Things do not bode well for society.
The advice he gives boils down to "do what you like and don't be afraid to fail." The book is structured with many small standalone sections, though the narrative provides a roughly chronological story of his career. He moved around a lot as a kid. He got involved with computers and BBS's before the internet. He worked at small tech startups trying to make the next big thing. Companies often failed because they didn't know who they were building things for or how they would be sold. He had a desire to make a better music listening experience. Things didn't work out, but he eventually landed at Apple and launched the iPod into existence. There were many design decisions involved in the evolution. (It seems like there was also a good deal of luck in the process. If things went slightly different ways, the whole project could have been torpedoed.)
The iPhone launch was the next big challenge he worked on. He also struggled with big company politics. He was ready to leave because of a bad boss, but eventually got the promotion he wanted (over the boss's objections) and stayed a while longer. He later went to Nest and had a lean culture. He is in favor of treating employees well, but not being overly focussed on perks. There are also many additional nuggets. People have more appreciation for things they need to pay for. Junior employees and more experienced employees all play a roll in an organization. It is great to take risks when you are young, on your own and free to make your own decisions. It becomes more challenging as you have more responsibility. Leadership roles come naturally to some people. However, individual contributors also play an important role.
The central argument is that modern culture has made it impossible to focus. Companies business models rely on keeping us engaged with devices. This is to the detriment of us individually and to society as a whole. The author describes his attempt at "digital detox" at the start. He went off to Provincetown, disconnected from the internet and tried to focus on life. He did find it refreshing. When he got back he found that the urgent queue of email he was seeking did not materialize. He struggled from withdrawal, but was able to appreciate life without being tethered.
He then seeks to further analyze the problems we face and argues that while we can do a little to help ourselves, what we really need to address is the society that we live in. Social media algorithms seek to drive engagement. People tend to be engaged more with things that make them angry than with things that make them happy. This leads to algorithms driving people to more polarizing content that contributes to the mess that we are in as a society today. These algorithms can manipulate us without us (or the algorithm creators) even knowing it. When used for bad, the results can be devastating.
It is difficult to live untethered in today's society. Payphones don't exist. People just expect for their phone to give them directions. Pre-arranged "meeting places" are often just the first step that is later coordinated by phone conversation. We expect to get a quick response from somebody. Waiting hours or days is not expected. All of the immediate feedback vying for our attention makes it more challenging for us to accomplish anything of substance. We end up occupying our time being "busy" with menial activities. Trying to stop "surveillance capitalism" may provide a brief reprieve. However, even outside of the push of media, we are being pushed by society. The author notes that culture has been "accelerating" for the last century. What is the endgame? Can we slow things down? Or do we just need to wait for the crash?
The World Wide Web was initially envisioned as a an open, decentralized communication source. However, it has evolved to be highly centralized, with a few large companies dominating traffic. The internet sites are visible throughout the world, rather than being restricted to individual localities. There are advantages to the scale. It is more convenient to go to a single source of needs. (Ironically, Google can help keep diversity by exposing even the smallest sites to everyone.)
There is a desire to have higher ad rates for "high quality" content. Content producers advocate that point of view. It costs a lot more to write a high quality article for the New York Times than for Buzzfeed. However, for an advertizer, it is only the engagement with the advertisement that matters. If they get more sales from a junk site, that is more valuable to the advertiser. People do spend a lot of time on "low quality" sites, just like they read "low quality" newspapers. With all sites equally available, it is much more challenging to distinguish the different qualities. Now newspapers are implementing "paywalls" to earn money from content and working to extract money from Google to link to content. This seems to be another "consolidation" effort that will lead to people focussing on a few large gatekeepers. Is this better? Is it sustainable?
Through the 1990s, an artist could count on a regular stream of royalties. This dried up once Napster came about and music was expected to be "free". Napster's success owes a great deal to the greed of the music industry. Companies like emusic and Liquid Audio were selling digital downloads at a time. The major labels saw this as another gravy train. CDs were sold at a higher price point than LPs and cassettes, despite their cheaper production cost. Even with this, people would buy a CD of music they already owned. They were hoping to ride the gravy train by selling a limited set of music downloads at a higher price point. Alas, there was little demand for paying $20 for a Duran Duran catalog album. The various services all had different sets of limited songs. Napster solved all this with a comprehensive service where just about anything could be downloaded. Today streaming has taken over as the primary source of music consumption. These pay up to about a cent per stream. Media sales would pay royalties of 10-25% of price. A song that is listened to thousands of times will earn more on streaming. A physical album that is bought to display would earn the artist just as much as one that was listened to on repeat for months. With streaming, artists are only getting paid for what consumers are actively listening to.
While music has been caught off-guard by change, film has done better. The proliferation of streaming services has provided for many new ways for film and tv show distribution. We are in a golden age of film production. The services may be providing many opportunities for creators, but for consumers it is a pain. There are a large number of different services out there. It is much more difficult to find that which you want.
The author advocates stronger government intervention to control these big business. Ironically, regulation is what helps these companies to be big right now. They got started at a time of near zero internet regulation. Today, the internet is much more heavily regulated. This creates a higher barrier for entry. This even comes down to local businesses. Lawsuits are filed against small businesses for wage theft or misclassifying employees as independent contractors. (The big businesses often have departments that help ensure they are in compliance.) Regulations almost always end up helping the incumbents.
Another proposal was to force companies like Google to license all of their patents. He proposes a cooperative model where artists license Youtube patents to have their own site that lets them maximize their share of revenue. This misses the benefits of network effects. Even without patent licensing, video or audio streaming sites could easily be set up. There are already multiple media consuming sites out there. The challenge is implementing them. Web sites also cost money to set up.
The author has little bad to say about Apple. This company has been in someway even worse in its monopolist behavior. It focuses on selling things. When selling entertainment media, it works hard to make sure the creators are paid well. The company sells the devices where media are consumed as well as the store where media is purchased. They seek to take a cut for all transactions. Only media that is approved by Apple can be easily consumed. On Apple devices it is impossible to install any app without Apple's blessing.
What is the solution? Instead of fighting libertarianism, we should encourage more of it. We need more opportunities for competitors, rather than more regulations. Or we could go the other extreme and declare some things public utilities. Regardless of what we do, we should also realize that the way we consume media has changed. We still have old gatekeepers along with the new ones. We should be careful not to destroy what is better as a means of keeping what we are familiar with.
37 Signals started out as a web design firm. They created the Basecamp project management software for their needs along with Ruby on Rails framework to implement it. They then moved out to focus entirely on software development. The company intentionally did not grow to have a large number of employees or to bloat the product with features. Not getting too big gives the company freedom that they would not have if they were huge. Not adding every feature allows them to focus on features that are most needed for the small clients. They have their market and excel at it.
Their plan is a great one for an ongoing niche player. They don't intend to be huge or even have an "exit". They want to continue to do a good job at what they do.
