Universal Constants
To get the theory of relativity Einstein held the speed of light constant and let time and space vary.
These days cosmologists are holding the infinity of the universe as constant and letting its density and expansion/contraction rate vary.
In some sense quantum mechanics is about holding the observer constant and letting the physical interpretation vary (particle or wave; position or momentum; exist or not).
What would we get if we held consciousness constant and let the universe vary?
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How is Social Enterprise?
A friend recently commented to me that he was really excited about a new business he was about to undertake, but then added almost apologetically, “I know it’s not much of a social enterprise.” This seemed odd to me because in my experience Jason is as socially/environmentally/interpersonally conscious a person as I know. To me it was obvious: as long as Jason didn’t stray from his own values and ways of being, whatever ventures he undertook would by definition be social enterprise. As always, he would find a way to make sure nobody he interacted with was worse off for it. And if successful, at least a few groups of people (including himself and his investors) would be better off.
I then remembered another colleague who was universally praised by the media and others as being a one-man savior in Haiti after the earthquake. He had quite admirably hit the ground running, on his own initiative, with incredible resources, to set up a refugee camp. While I’m not sure how his efforts have evolved today, when I visited his camp I was struck by how isolated it was from the rest of the relief effort, and how sanitation and medical care were actually worse than what was reported about the USAID and Red Cross camps. This is not to question his good intentions or the impressive amount of work he was able to almost singlehandedly accomplish in a short period of time. But rather the way he was going about it possibly nullified all that.
Together these two examples illustrate to me that social enterprise is not about What you are doing so much as How you go about doing it.
To be sure, there are limits to this definition. Does it matter how Pepsi creates its products, or what refreshing innovation challenges it supports, when the vast majority of its operations are to sell us sugar water in plastic bottles?
But shifting the focus from What to How, enables us to see more clearly that most entrepreneurship these days is in fact social enterprise. Why? Because most entrepreneurs these days care deeply about social/environmental problems, and are intent on addressing them, either directly or indirectly through their business. Nor do you have to be an entrepreneur to be a social innovator. Pepsico has legions of them as employees and consultants.
Calling yourself a Social Entrepreneur or saying you work in Social Innovation does not automatically make it so. And on the flip side, just because you don’t identify with these terms, doesn’t mean you are not a positive role model for social enterprise.
It’s time to shift the conversation from What to How.
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Education 2.0
In what turned out to be the most popular TED talk of all time, Ken Robinson asked us to wake up and smell the coffee: our system of education is stuck in the Industrial Revolution where it was invented. Moreover, it’s killing creativity, crushing spirits, and preparing students, not for success and wellbeing, but rather unemployment and dysfunction. Waiting for Superman confirmed this this, adding that the public schools in the U.S. are bankrupt, both financially and morally.
Yet, all around the world, there are signs that the Berlin Wall of education reform is crumbling. Here are a few shining lights:
TEDucationNo single institution or movement has done more to spark educational change than TED.com. Hundreds of millions of people are watching their videos and learning from inspiring individuals sharing ideas and experiences that cannot be learned in a traditional school environment. And there’s an acceleration effect because many of the talks are about education and the transformation that’s going on in areas you would never know about otherwise. Best of all, these talks are free.
Working from WithinThere are groups like Decision Education Foundation which go into schools and augment their capacities by teaching skills that should be part of every curriculum. And there are individuals like John Hunter who teach lessons which cannot be learned at home or on the internet (unlike the three R’s).
Not Waiting AroundThere are many groups who are not waiting around for Supermen like Hunter to save the existing system. Rather they are working alongside it to make it more effective. There are after school programs, like Self Enhancement, Inc., which miraculously has transformed an entire population of at-risk youth into a community of high school graduates (100% in 2008 and 2009) many of whom go on to thrive in higher education settings. Dave Eggers, the bestselling author, started a grass-roots initiative to provide extracurricular tutoring in which the tutors get just as much benefit as the kids. And there’s El Sistema (“The System”), which famously produced the virtuoso symphony conductor, Gustavo Dudamel, but which more importantly is transforming our idea of what education is.
Reinventing the ModelOthers, like John Hardy, are taking taking the idea that education can be revolutionized, and are just doing it. And in doing so are challenging our most basic assumptions, such as “adults know what’s best for kids to learn and how to teach it to them.” What if there were a school with no classes, no grades, no tests, and the students (age 5 to 18) decide what they are going to learn and how to run the school? If you are thinking “Lord of the Flies”, tune in to hear about the Brooklyn Free School and free your mind….
Turn On and Tune InIt’s no surprise that formal education is moving online. But did you know that it’s top notch and free? Check out the Khan Academy which has delivered almost 100 million lessons to students around the world in math, physics, finance, history and more. And why pay over $300K attending Stanford to get a degree in Computer Science when you can take the same classes for free online?
We Are SupermanIt turns out that kids really can teach themselves and each other, when provided with the right guidance and framework. And it’s not just in resource-rich areas like Brooklyn. In India, Kiran Bir Sethi and Shukla Bose are showing the way. But it also turns out that kids don’t need guidance from adults, they just need access to learning tools and for adults to stop interfering. If you haven’t seen Sugata Mitra’s experiments of providing free internet terminals without instruction to rural Indian kids who don’t speak English, you need to watch what happens.
It turns out it’s not just kids who can learn from one another. The Barefoot College is turning grandmothers into solar technicians and teachers of solar technology. Oh, and again, a common language is not necessary in either case.
It turns out, it’s not just schoolchildren and the elderly that can learn from one another. Skillshare is connecting individuals who want to learn anything to people who want to teach them. Why not teach a class yourself in your local area? After all, we are all Superman or Superwoman in something.
So, what are your favorite examples of Education 2.0?
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Practical Artificial Intelligence
There’s an old saying in computer science circles that when we have no idea how to make a piece of software do something smart we call it “Artificial Intelligence” but once it’s solved we look back with 20-20 hindsight and say it was “Software Engineering”. A computer becoming the world chess champion is the quintessential example of this. Once considered a holy grail of AI, by the time Deep Blue actually dethroned Kasparov, the computing world yawned, “Oh it was just brute force computing power, nothing truly intelligent is really happening”.
Beating the world champions at Jeopardy was slightly more interesting because we acknowledge the vast range of knowledge and language understanding involved. But ultimately, since Jeopardy is just a game, we are left with the feeling, “so what?” How does this affect my life one way or another? Enter, Siri, the voice recognition system integrated into the new iPhone 4S.
When I heard about the feature and saw what it claimed to do, I was intrigued, but figured that the claims of how well it worked were really exaggerated. After all, it’s easy to program for requests that you can anticipate and individual speakers’ accents and colloquialisms. Practically speaking (I figured) it would be no more useful than the standalone Siri app you could download, or the Google voice recognition system. But after experimenting with it for a few minutes, I was blown away. Not only is the syntactic recognition way more accurate than anything I’ve ever seen, Siri exhibits an understanding of the semantic and pragmatic like no other system I’ve seen, except perhaps google’s search engine itself.*
Sure it was fun asking “Who’s your daddy?” and getting a different reply based on the gender of the speaker, or asking Siri what (s)he’s wearing and getting an appropriately evasive answer. But my real aha moment came when I got an email from a friend suggesting we chat next week sometime. Normally this kind of thing would either clutter my inbox until I created an appointment in my calendar or next Friday rolled around and I realized I hadn’t responded in a socially appropriate timeframe. I was curious how Siri would handle the request, “Remind me to call Mark on Wednesday”. Not only did it repeat back my request verbatim, but it created a reminder for 9am on Wednesday using a new Reminder App bundled with iPhone that I didn’t know about. Most importantly, it gave me a very real peace of mind and reduction of anxiety that I haven’t been able to get from any of the dozens of productivity apps or systems I’ve tried, like Evernote and Omnifocus.
This Quora article outlines the significance of Siri’s great leap forward for AI, pointing out that voice represents the “4th interface” for human-computer interaction (the first three being keyboard, mouse and gestures). The real key though is that Siri actually does things of practical value for a mass audience. In other words, Siri helps you get things done that you want done. This is new. And huge. And just the tip of the iceberg.
The article ends with a suggestion that we should start thinking about new uses for the technology because eventually there will be an API that allows app developers to make use of the power of voice interaction. This fact is inevitable, even if Apple and Siri are not the ones that will do it. The AI genie is coming out of the bottle.
So, my question to you, is what’s the next killer app that utilizes voice interaction? What would you like to see personally?
* Syntax refers to the form of a sentence, i.e. what words are being used and do they follow the rules of grammar. Semantics refers to the literal meaning of the sentence (e.g. “Does anyone know what time it is?”) while pragmatics refer to the underlying intent of the speaker (e.g. that the speaker wants you to tell them what time it is, not whether there exists someone who knows the time).
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Open Letter
By now you’ve no doubt heard about the allegations against me in a Federal civil suit regarding Full Tilt Poker. Because of the seriousness of the allegations I’m not able to comment at all about the pending case, much as I would like to. From a moral, personal and interpersonal perspective I feel I’ve got nothing to hide. And since I trust in our system of justice and have the utmost respect for my legal counsel, I will refrain from talking about the case until it’s resolved.
What I would like to express here is concern for my family, friends, colleagues and supporters who believe in me and who feel my pain as if it were their own. It sucks to have to endure the character assassination and potshots being taken at me in the media and social networks without being able to defend myself. Privately though I have received incredible support from many of you, and I can’t tell you how much it means to me. May you never have to endure something like this, but if you do, I hope you have friends as good as mine.
To the skeptics, please consider that not everything you read is true, and our society is built on a presumption of innocence until proven otherwise. It’s difficult to take back hurtful things that you might later regret, when the damage has already been done.
To those of you who have asked what you can do to show your support, I am grateful for the offer. My only request at this time would be to not let the naysayers and haters be the only voices out there expressing their opinion of me. My twitter is @rafefurst, and I’d love to hear from you publicly.
With Respect and Love,
Rafe
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Investing in Superstars, part 4
[NOTE: I updated this post with more detailed examples]
Background: part 3, part 2 and part 1.
In the interview with Jon Gunn in Part 3, I mention that I’ve been thinking of what “version 2″ of the Personal Investment Contract might look like. Here’s the model:
- Investment Amount - Same as before, intended to give the individual some time to pursue their passion (or figure out what that is) without having to worry about how to support themselves.
- Maximum Return - The cumulative total amount that the investor can receive as return on their investment. If and when this amount is reached, the contract is over.
- Annual Exclusion - The amount of annual income the entrepreneur can make without having to share any of it with the investor.
- Minimum Revenue Share - The minimum percentage of gross income the entrepreneur returns to the investor after deducting the Annual Exclusion.
Following are some examples of various different career paths and uses for a PIC. Click on the thumbnails to expand the graphs. These are modeled with various “reasonable” assumptions but if you want to experiment with how it might apply to you or under different assumptions, here’s the spreadsheet.
Example 1: Entrepreneur
- Investment Amount: $50K
- Maximum Return: $2M (i.e. 40x )
- Annual Exclusion: $100K
- Minimum Revenue Share: 25%
Example 2: Social Innovator
- Investment Amount: $100K
- Maximum Return: $1M (i.e. 10x)
- Annual Exclusion: $50K
- Minimum Revenue Share: 30%
Example 3: Small Biz Expansion
- Investment Amount: $300K
- Maximum Return: $1.8M (i.e. 6x)
- Annual Exclusion: $0
- Minimum Revenue Share: 40%
Example 4: Career Change
- Investment Amount: $1M
- Maximum Return: $4M (i.e. 4x)
- Annual Exclusion: $200K
- Minimum Revenue Share: 60%
Example 5: Investor
- Investment Amount: $3M
- Maximum Return: $300M (i.e. 100x)
- Annual Exclusion: $250K
- Minimum Revenue Share: 100%
Several things to note: the Minimum Revenue Share is calculated from the gross income (all sources) as reported on your tax return; you get to deduct the Annual Exclusion amount before figuring and paying taxes. If your effective income tax rate is 40% and you quit your job — using the Investment Amount to live off of — you’ve just stretched out your runway by 40% (i.e. you don’t pay taxes on the money someone invests in you). Finally, this contract gives you incentive to pay more than the Minimum Revenue Share to your investors, since the more you return, the quicker you reach the Maximum and end the contract.
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