Has the Industrial Age just been a long economic bubble?

Interesting thoughts from a guy who made some very serious money betting on technology . . .

Utopian Pessimist Calls on Radical Tech to Save Economy | Magazine

. . .

Wired: You say that we have big problems in the US economy and that investors have unrealistic expectations. We’ve certainly been through a major crisis, but over the long term the stock market seems to grow fairly reliably.

Thiel: People take it for granted that their retirement funds can earn 8.5 percent a year. That’s what their financial planners tell them. And sure, you look back over the past 100 years, the stock market has generally gone up 6 to 8 percent a year. But in a larger historical perspective, that kind of growth is exceptional. If you had done the equivalent of investing in the stock market from, say, 1000 to 1100 AD, you would not have made 8 percent a year. During the fall of the Roman Empire, you’d have been lucky to get zero. We’ve been living in a unique period of accelerating technological progress. We’ve gone from horses to cars to planes to rockets to computers to the Internet in a very short time. It’s not automatic that that continues.

Wired: What happens if we don’t get the growth everyone expects?

Thiel: If it doesn’t happen, people will go bankrupt in retirement. There are systemic consequences, too. If we don’t have enough growth, we will see a powerful shift away from capitalism. There are good things and bad things about capitalism, but inequality becomes completely intolerable to society when everything’s static.

Wired: You’re worried about economic stagnation, but you’re optimistic about artificial intelligence and space?

Thiel: I think we have to make those things happen. We should be looking at technologies that might lead to really big breakthroughs. As a starting point, let’s just go back to the science fiction novels of the 1950s and ’60s and try to run the past 40 years again.

Wired: We need underwater cities and flying cars, otherwise we’re going bankrupt?

Thiel: We go bankrupt if radical progress doesn’t happen and we don’t realize it’s not happening. That’s a dangerous combination.

Wired: We’ve had tremendous growth in the Internet, which is how you made your fortune. Why not look there?

Thiel: Obviously we’ve done well online. But how much more progress is there going to be? How many big new Internet companies are there? In the ’90s we had Netscape, Yahoo, eBay, Amazon. In the past eight years there have been only two: Google and Facebook.

Wired: Twitter?

Thiel: Possibly. Still, the numbers suggest a maturing industry. The Internet may be culturally important, just as the automobile was culturally more important in the ’50s than the ’20s, as we got suburbia and built the Interstate Highway System. But the last successful car company started in the US was Jeep in 1941.

Emphasis added

Twitter Lists

Well I'm not if anyone should follow all of these, but some may be useful if you use Twitter.

Twitter Lists You Should Follow:
"Twitter is officially launching Lists, its new feature to organize the massive group of users obsessively sending out 140 character messages.

An independent web development company wasted no time setting up Listorious, a directory much like Kevin Rose's WeFollow, tracking all the most popular and influential Twitter Lists."

Making Social Media work for you.

No big surprises except the prejudice against smiley faces :-)
An oft-repeated rule of thumb is to assume that anything you type on your computer today could be on the front page tomorrow.

Social Media News, Insights and Tips:
"The top examples on why employers didn't hire a candidate after seeing them on sites such as Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn were not surprising. According to the survey, the posting no-no's were inappropriate photos or information (53 percent), content about the candidate drinking or using drugs (44 percent) and badmouthing previous employers, co-workers or clients (35 percent).

Something that did surprise me was the number of employers who disregarded a candidate because they sent a message using an emoticon such as a smiley face (14 percent).

. . .

When it comes to posts online, here are some tips from CareerBuilder:

- Before starting a job search, remove digital stuff you wouldn't want a potential employer to see, including photos, content and links.

- Consider establishing a professional group on sites like Facebook to establish relationships with business leaders.

- Keep gripes offline, especially about former employers.

- Keep in mind that others can see your friends, so be selective about who you accept. Also consider using the "block comments" feature or setting the profile to private so only designated friends can view it.

- Don't mention being on a job search online if you're still employed. "

Real time recreation - trip to the Moon

Celebrating this month - the 40th anniversary of Apollo 11's trip to the Moon.

On my monitor, some of this site's text is a bit hard to read - gray on black, but lots of interesting Apollo things here & there. As I type this, it is mostly spacecraft based white noise - still pretty different than what I would be playing on a normal day :-)

I imagine this site is best enjoyed on a separate monitor - as my home system only has 1 monitor attached right now, I put it up on full screen when I'm not using the system for other things.

Things to Do on the Way to the Moon | GeekDad | Wired.com:
"If you’re following the 40th anniversary recreation of the Apollo 11 mission on We Choose the Moon (a you-are-there, moment-by-moment immersion in the first lunar mission) you know that the mighty Saturn V rocket lifted off its pad at the Kennedy Space Center on July 16th. Twelve minutes later, the astronauts were in orbit around the earth, docked the command module with the lunar lander, and are now on their way to the moon.

You can follow the progress of the mission at the website, or on Twitter:
Capcom transmissions
Spacecraft transmissions
(and eventually the landing craft -) Eagle transmissions"

The Smithsonian is also following the mission on Twitter.

Proposed help for Iranian citizens

This seems well intentioned and a useful way of supporting the freedom movement in Iran. I wonder what the unintended consequences might be if passed and signed into law. Certainly it won't improve diplomatic relations with Iran's current government, but what would?
To be useful in the current crisis, the money & authority to spend it would have been needed months ago, so this is aimed at tomorrow's Iran, whatever it may be.

The Weekly Standard:
"Lieberman, McCain, and Graham held a presser announcing new Iran legislation they intend to introduce. It will increase funding for Radio Farda and Voice of America, both of which have been critical at keeping Iranians informed of what's happening in their own country and reporting those events to the outside world as well. They also talk of funding a new Farsi-language website with live news coverage, and 'funding to foster the spread of technologies that would make it harder for the Iranian regime to crackdown' on the transmission of information over cellphones.

Lieberman sums it up: “We’ve seen that the Iranian regime has tried to deploy new technologies to restrict its people from getting access to information, prevent its people from exercising their freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, particularly online. The Iranian government has jammed satellites and radio broadcasts, disrupted cell phone service, monitored Internet use, and blocked particular Web sites. It’s now trying to slam shut the door that a vibrant election had begun to open. The legislation we intend to introduce is inspired by a clear and simple purpose. We want the Iranian people to be able to stay one step ahead of the Iranian regime, getting access to information and safely exercising freedom of speech and freedom of assembly online.”
. . .
A great McCain line: “During the Cold War, we provided the Polish people and dissidents with printing presses. Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube are the modern-day printing presses. They are the way. They are the way to spread information and keep the hope of freedom alive amongst the Iranian people.”"

Iran needs Twitter - #IranElection #gr88

The odds are stacked heavily in favor of Ahmadinejad and the Mullahs - they control the military, the power, the food supply, etc. If it comes, revolution will carry a terrible price regardless of who wins. If the government compromises and backs down a little, some incremental progress towards freedom might result.

It is frustrating to just watch - we can share our thoughts with our representatives, but I doubt they have much influence right now.

With Iran Protests in Mind, State Department Blocks Twitter's Maintenance Outage | Popular Science:
"So all that importance-of-social-media business you keep hearing about Iran? This should tell you something about the underlying truth, no matter how numbing the barrage from the media can be: When the U.S. State Department heard of Twitter's plans for an hour-long regularly-scheduled maintenance outage that would have denied daytime Twitter service to Iran, they stepped in and 'urged' them to reschedule.

The outage was supposed to happen late last night--downtime for most of North America, but prime daytime in Iran, where it has continued to be used as an important communication and organization tool for the protests there."