________________________________________________________________________________ ================================================================ Venture Verité ================================================================ What if the Dow doesn't fall to 3,000, but zooms to 30,000 in four years? If you're Jack Jones and want to be jackjones.homepage.com, you'll have to bid against every other Jack Jones in pursuit of the same online identity. The page is free, subsidized by banner ads, but you'll be able to place additional merchant links of your own choice, from a selection stored online. Then you'll keep a cut of the clickthrough revenue. In effect, you'll become a junior Web capitalist. The way capitalism works is that the people who understand how to invest get the money to invest. Walter Wriston, former CEO of Citibank, likes to quip that in the new economy, "money goes where it is wanted and stays where it is well treated." I worry that so many people don't have any comprehension of how to create wealth by serving others. They have been taught by Marx and 50 years of kleptocracy that you get money by taking money from others, rather than by serving others, which is what capitalism is all about. I've reached statutory senility, so I am retired, but I go to work every day. In fact, I work for seven different companies. I think three intelligent people could raise a million right now for just about anything. The gap between rich and poor is not widening. This is a claim that is usually based on myths. ================================================================ Yes, we see the stock market, the Dow, going to 35,000 or 40,000 in the next decade. The US economy becomes a tornado, whipping up huge gains on investments. That great sucking sound you hear is all the world's money rushing into the most booming economy. In the vortex, money is well treated, multiplying fast, sucking in yet more money. That leaves a huge arid vacancy in other parts of the world for capital. Indeed, the Asian crisis can be seen as the result of political and financial institutions that did not keep pace with global capitalism. Consequently, capital got sucked out of Asia as soon as everyone realized how much serious work lay ahead there. This is a normal if unfortunate part of economic development. One of the great lessons is that the secret to growth is cutting jobs. Right. To save the economy, cut jobs. Beyond Internet startups, Gross's dream is to privatize an entire country, breaking it into worker tribes of no more than 100 people, all of them energized by the profit motive. As Matthew Miller, a senior fellow at the Annenberg Public Policy Center, says, "This means guns and butter: ballistic missile defense, universal health coverage, hefty tax cuts, and a Marshall Plan for Kosovo." Several tornados of capital are likely to spin around the globe at once. ================================================================ Economist Kevin Hassett and financial columnist James Glassmann, coauthors of the upcoming book "Dow 36,000", suggest that we'll reach that mark not only in 10 years, but in a few years. Speed. That's what Amtrak offers this fall with its new Acela service, which will whisk passengers from Boston to the Big Apple in just three hours, and on to the nation's capital in two and a half more. You're shopping online, and it's a breeze - until you order. Security measures slow you down, so after a couple of desk-edge drum solos, you bail. Too bad the site doesn't have IPivot's Commerce Director. It's the ideal appliance for high-volume sites that want the money their customers try to give them. There's no doubt that the StarTAC ClipOn Organizer is a great tool: It is, after all, a PDA and 800-MHz phone in one. And with 512K of RAM, the organizer holds plenty of contacts, memos, and to-dos. Nokia's concepts for third-generation mobile phones combine voice, data, and images on devices that weigh about half a pound. The goal is to put the Web in your pocket. Better looking than TV? That's the promise Sega is making with its football game for the new Dreamcast console - the company is investing millions to ensure that NFL 2000 will be the greatest-looking and -playing video football title of all time. When words fail, send a picture. Kenwood's KVT-10 Digital Radio Camera adds a CCD camera to any Kenwood transceiver, so you can send 510- by 472-pixel color pictures as well as voice. Police as firefighters may soon start using these things to help solve crimes and save lives, but the cameras are also fun to play with. ================================================================ Harry Dent, author of "The Roaring 2000s", plots a long curve described by the upper and lower limits of the daily fluctuations of the Dow and extrapolates this "channel" into the future. He expects the Dow to peak at 41,000 in 2008. The roaming, spontaneous gatherings of kids in the streets of Helsinki are not just a glimpse of our wireless future, but a resurgence of our collective past: The rediscovery of an ancient unity coded in our senses ... We are herd animals Could luxury fever be merely a function of our impulse to attract a mate? All the world's a stage, and the iColor Cove accent light makes you lightning director. Its 45 variable-intensity RGB LEDs can create millions of colors to set the scene for relaxation, home entertaining, and, yes, romance. "It's true", he agrees, "there are some who have not been exposed to the rewards of being an entrepreneur and don't know what they're missing. But they're starting to hear about it, and they're getting antsy for a taste of it. It's as if they're sitting on the other side of a one-way mirror, watching people make love and wanting to be part of it." Walsh, who is also working on CIO tasks like Y2K compliance, is so enthusiastic about eLogistics.net that he is devoting nearly 50 percent of his time to it. But we kept having ideas about how customers would manage information about shipping and logistics in a perfect world. I'd have an idea in the middle of the night, and we'd phone each other - which really pissed our wives off. ================================================================ The Dow Hits 50,000 Equipped with a suspended synchronous motor, a solid-body MDF plinth, and the renowned and respected Sumiko Oyster Cartridge, this belt-driven table delivers clean, dynamic sound in a package that's simple, elegant, and easy to assemble. An inexpensive entrée to home security, the HST404 package includes remote-control units, door and window sensors, lamp and appliance controllers, a siren, a motion detector, and a central controller. The belt-driven Planar 3 is the perfect combination of utility and style. Solid as a tank, this table sports an AC synchronous motor, a precision-milled belt, and a medium-density fiberboard (MDF) plinth. For just 7 grand, a typical 3,000 square-foot home in Washington, DC, can be outfitted with magnetic sensors, outside motion detectors, sirens, lights, control panels, keychain panic buttons, cellular backup, and smoke, fire, and carbon-monoxide alarms. The Sondek LP-12 - a touchstone for analog music lovers - features a belt-driven platter, a suspended subchassis, and a tonearm anchored to the base, or plinth, for stability. But customized high-end packages, like those offered by Knight Security, go above and beyond the call of duty, with biometric stations (iris, voice, thumbprint scanning), pressure mats, driveway and seismic sensors, night-vision cameras, window screens that scream when cut, and "safe rooms" for waiting out a home invasion. ================================================================ Charles Kadlec, author of the forthcoming book "Dow 100,000: Fact or Fiction", bases his forecast on an annual appreciation rate of 11.1 percent. As Paul Saffo of the Institute for the Future says, "The BMW of the next decade will be the personal charitable trust fund." But like Kirsch, the new breed of high tech philanthropists want to reinvent the art of generosity. They share his sense that simply giving money away is too passive and uninvolved. They want to lend business expertise, identify and support "social entrepreneurs" hungry to shake up the nonprofit world, and quantify their results. "We're kind of the lunatic fringe of venture philanthropy, taking financial metrics and applying them to the social sector," says Jed Emerson, the Roberts fund's executive director. He gives to the University of Arizona's Spacewatch Project, which seeks to identify asteroids that could strike the earth. "It's cheap collision insurance," Kirsch cracks. "I pay more for my Acara NSX." PeopleSoft founder David Duffield, meanwhile, has started a $200 million foundation to prevent the killing of unwanted pets. The endowment is so immense that homeless Bay Area dogs and cats can find themselves impounded in their own Victorian mini-apartments. The new breed of Silicon valley philanthropists would make Mother Teresa crunch the numbers. ================================================================ We did an extrapolation that said the Dow ought to be 250,000 to 400,000 at the middle of the next century. We're the products of nearly a half-century of scientific truthfulness, media skepticism, and postmodern relativism. In other words, we've grown allergic to the actual idea of improvement. What the rich have in the year 2000, the rest have in 2020: personal chefs, stay-at-home moms, six-month sabbaticals. The good news is, you'll be a millionaire soon. The bad news is, so will be everybody else. The biggest difference between generations is that the American Dream used to be about working hard and building up one's financial security incrementally and providing for your family. There was a lot of honor associated with that. This prosperity could also be subverted by some fabulous outbreak of hedonism. Achieving prosperity without hedonism will entail heroic leadership. At the far end of the lobby, an unimposing figure appears. He's thin, below average height, and peers through gold-rimmed glasses as he moves with a shambling walk - a nerd walk. It's the Idea Man himself, offering a mild handshake, a shy smile, a quiet greeting. His shoulders slope. He has the bad posture you get from leaning forward and staring into a video monitor 12 hours a day. He also seems genuinely unpretentious, projecting a sincere, childlike charm. You begin to see why his employees speak of him protectively, as if he belongs to them, rather than vice versa. But when Gross walks into the small conference room at the far end of the lobby, his presence galvanizes the place. ================================================================ all quotes from: Wired 7.09, September 1999 ================================================================ _____________________________ a.s.ambulanzen | ____ | berlin, germany | PARTNER GEGEN |||| BERLIN | http://rolux.org |_____________________________| ________________________________________________________________________________ no copyright 1999 rolux.org - no commercial use without permission. is a moderated mailing list for the advancement of minor criticism. more information: mail to: majordomo@rolux.org, subject line: , message body: info. further questions: mail to: rolux-owner@rolux.org. archive: http://www.rolux.org