Failure Theory
Change that lasts, the downside of preventing failure, and the bull case for Ethereum
👋 On time for your weekend: a round-up of this week’s remarkable stories at the intersection of #technology, #business, #design, and #culture.
📚 Reading
Own the Internet:
If you believe that web3 is going to continue to grow, then you likely believe that over time, Ethereum will become the settlement layer of a new internet. All sorts of transactions, whether they happen on Ethereum, another blockchain, or even Visa, will turn to Ethereum to exchange funds and keep secure, immutable records. A year ago, I wouldn’t have said that.
🥞 Building a bull case for Ethereum, layer by layer—Not Boring
To Create Real Change That Lasts, Start With A Majority:
The fundamental fallacy of change management is that it is essentially a communication exercise, that change fails because people don’t understand it well enough and if you explain it to them in sufficiently powerful terms, they will embrace it. The truth is that change fails because others oppose it in ways that are devious, underhanded and deceptive.
🧑🎓 Redefining crossing the chasm—Greg Satell
Failure Theory:
It has always struck me that the more edifice you build to prevent minor failures the larger the capacity you create for catastrophic ones, just like climbers roped together on a mountaintop … Humans are both the greatest threat and the greatest opportunity for stability.
🤷🏻♂️ In the end, it’s always down to humans—boz
🎧 Listening
China’s Industry Policy:
Bejing has realised that there is tremenduous value—both economic and more broadly geo-political and geo-economical—to be gained from setting internation standards. And to that end, China actively competes to set them and to ensure outsight Chinese influence over the internatiol standards landscape. Bejing is able to do this largely as a function of its scale and its centralisation, and also its deliberate competitve focus.
Emily de La Bruyère—European Straits
Whether Our Economy is Rigged:
I'm a college professor, and I believe the most important thing (or one of the most important things) we need to do is to build on-ramps into our economy for people who don't go to college [..] If corporations don't stop fetishising the elite college degree, [..] if by the age of 22 or 23 you're part of 50%-60% that have not figured out a way to get a college degree? Sorry, then you're 🤬
Scott Galloway—Big Technology Podcast
Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe
A lot of people would rather we focussed on climate change as the next big threat to our existince, to the exclusion of other threats. Climate change certainly poses some serious risks. But part of the argument of Doom is that's only one of the many risks that we face. If we only talk about climate change, and think that's the only thing we really need to worry about, then we will only have ourselves to blame when we find ourselves in World War 3.
Niall Ferguson—Hidden Forces (and also at Prof G)
📬 Suggestions?
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