Great post by Fred Wilson today.
"As has become my practice, I celebrate the end of a year and the start of a new one here at AVC with back to back posts focusing on what happened and then thinking about what might happen. Today, we focus on what happened in 2017."
Read the whole thing, but here are my thoughts on Fred's post.
First and foremost, Fred should be lauded for being an honest broker of his own personal truth, all the while encouraging diverse perspectives. Anyone who has spent any time in the AVC community over the years knows the earnestness by which he cultivates these discussions.
This is such a great post, and the varying responses in the comments section show just how reflexively folks default to false dichotomies and false equivalencies. Truth is always more nuanced, a notion that struggles mightily in the age of social media.
As to Crypto, and the analogs to Internet 1.0/2.0, the good news for most of us coming "late" to the party, is that the party really hasn't started yet. Sure, there are multitudes that will make massive "coin" on speculation and mania, but as the prior periods show, real infrastructure will get built, real industries will rise and real businesses will take flight.
The ascendant periods are decade plus in nature, so focus on what is real and take a real time horizon, and the notion of "missed opportunities" goes away.
As to applicable use cases, borderless/decentralized markets, micro currencies, micro incentives, programmable currencies, validated identity, verified general ledger are all areas ripe for innovation. Don't fall prey to reducing this to the Pets.com analog of delivering dog food at a loss via the Internet. You'll miss the next Amazon.
Re the end of White Male Dominance, I am not as sanguine that this is really happening. For one, the reflexive response by a number of folks to the very term "White Male Dominance" is emblematic that the resistance is tough. The number of white males that believe it is **they** who are being discriminated against speaks to how institutionalized this is.
If you watch Fox News as your primary mouthpiece, you are NEVER hearing the concept of sexism, racism or hate as a real problem, and let's face it, the power of tribalism in our country is extreme.
If anything, the moral of the story is that **demographically** speaking, this is the end of White Male Dominance, but unless the Majority can organize and build working coalitions focused on actual policy, this is just a rallying cry for Trump's 2020 re-election campaign.
Finally, as to the Tech Backlash, I'd say I hope so. There is a simultaneous lack of accountability in the tech business (as was the case with Wall Street before it), the blind notion that if it can be built it should, and a general amorality of the leaders of these tech companies.
I find it laughable that so many reflexively dismiss the impact that Facebook, Twitter and Google had on an election where the outcome was shaped by very few **counties** in very few states. Given the ease by which 2016 showed how a motivated alien party (Russia) could micro target highly charged, often verifiability false messages to tens of millions of people, should trouble everyone.
If it was your home, school, church, workplace or community center, wouldn't you at least want to **know** if the back door was left unlocked for would-be evil doers? I sure would, and do.
The fact that Mark Zuckerberg, Sundar Pichai and Jack Dorsey have shown no ethical sense of responsibility to govern their platforms against hate, discrimination and divisiveness speaks to a lack of accountability.
A final thought about disruption is that if history teaches us anything, it's that in the long run, disruption creates far more jobs than it disrupts, but in the short run, the disruption is catastrophic for the disrupted AND the nature of the disruption is uneven, with real losers for which a better tomorrow (seemingly) never comes.
This is where real safety nets are critical, and our lazy notions of capitalism "good," government "bad" needs its own version of 2.0 thinking.
Happy New Year everyone. :-)
