Gonna toot my own horn for a moment while I make a point. In Jun 2006, I was asked to consult and recommend one equity that would satisfy the following criteria:
Publicly traded
Advanced Material, preferably nanotech
Alternative Energy, preferably solar
Buy-and-Hold for about 3 years
No hedging or arbitrage (so it couldn't be a "momentum" play)
And it would be nice if it began appreciating within 6 months
It took a lot of work. I was too ambivalent to be comfortable recommending any "solar nano" publicly traded stock.
By looking not only at financials, markets, and technology, but also considering social asset base, and companies' intellectual property and the potential for continuing to solve problems, I was able to confidently make my recommendation. It was about $9 at the time, and it has just topped $35 yesterday (about 24 months later).
All of wikipedia in every language 100 million hours of human thought
TV watching 200 billion hours in the US alone, every year. (2000 wikipedias per year.)
In the US, we spend 100 million hours per weekend watching just the ads.
He notes that a surplus is only a surplus because we don't know what to do with it. Because it's so complex - what to do with it - many experiments must run. I'll stop there; but there's more to what he says.
Evidently the revelation came to him when talking to a woman who asked, "how do people find the time?" Now, being a single working mom, I gotta wonder...what she may be asking is "and who is it that, after work, ends up having to do the laundry, the grocery shopping, finding appropriate gifts for an upcoming event, taking care of the sick kids, and organizing the summer camp schedule?"
It may be that she was perceiving that the cognitive surplus existed because of a social deficit.
So while the story of the four year old is endearing for entrepreneurs, the real narrative about interaction Clay might investigate would be the transformation of cognitive surplus to social capital. Televisions created a platform for conversation to glue together the social contribution, but it only worked so long as there were only a handful of options. The cognitive surplus was masked; but there was a platform for common dialog and discussion that kept the social fabric together. Until about 1980.
But then the social fabric became scattered and fragmented. "Everyone" didn't watch prime time television any more, or even traditional sports or the evening news. Quickly, the cognitive surplus became unmasked, and thankfully found and made its own outlet.
Fast forward 20 years, and, as with financial exchange, the social conversation is embedded in the movement of cognitive surplus, and the concept of "social entrepreneurialism" has taken off. How will this cognitive surplus be employed? As Clay says, we've woken up. It's time to create relevant institutions. What those will be, we won't really know, but we can watch the flow of capital and it will emerge.
Well, what do I know, really? But the budget cuts for Fremont -- which is in relatively good shape and contains the 49th best public school in the country (my son's) -- are so severe we're talking about the end of libraries, counselors, all transportation and of course the increase of class size (which means the decrease in teaching staff... and we all know which employees leave sinking ships first).
Please forget about textbooks, well-stocked bathrooms, or of course anything innovative in any way.
What happens next? I asked a friend of mine who sits on the Board and has two kids in the schools. Next step is that schools go through a certification process where they can be determined to be able to create a solvent (if severely curtailed) budget or not. If not? Bankruptcy.
We get to share the fate of Oakland: people -- led by a person -- come in and fix things using whatever process and towards whichever goals they believe to be best.
Will your local school be better having been broken and rebuilt than it would have been through more gradual change? Hard to say. But abrupt change is looking increasingly inevitable, as those people who want to own public education are taking the helm by making it impossible for even well-run districts to function adequately. About a third of California's 1000 school districts will need to be reviewed for solvency.
* How are these rescuers chosen? What are their qualifications? * What is their vision for a functioning school district? For a healthy community? Do they share the libertarian or green ideal of small centralized government enough that they'll allow local flavor to public schools? * How do they evaluate those currently employed by the district in order to avoid not only actual cronyism but perceptions of it? * And of course, what is their success rate? How do they measure it? * What will it look like to be a teacher in those districts during the time of review and overhaul? How can we retain teaching talent, experienced counselors, and skilled administrators? * And how do we best help the shock to kids and parents whose schools were functioning just fine, but are suddenly in a state of upheaval?
