I’m trying to spend some time getting this site back on track. We shall see.
The egg came first. Kinda.
A unicellular organism becoime multicellular through replication before splitting into flagellated daughter cells.
Scientists Reveal a Shocking Solution to The Chicken or Egg Paradox
This is so ccol. The organism, Chromosphaera perkinsii, is part of a group that has been proposed to serve as surrogates for multicellularity. The single cell replicates and then replicates again without separating, forming a 4 cell bundle. Just likea fertilized egg does.
Fertilized eggs continue dividing and form a multicellular sack of cells with a hollow center, called a blastula.
It turns out these primitive organsms form something similar. Instead of differentiating into hundreds of different cell types, these simple colonies actually do show some simple differentiation into two types. Then after spending a long time as a big colony of cells, the cells brek apart and form a flaellated cell (kind of like a sperm) and swim off, to start things all over again.
I mentioned a few days ago what life under a Snowball Earth might have looked like – large ball-like, multicellular colonies resembling C. perkinsii .
So, the path to multicellular organisms might be something like C. perkinsii staying together and seeing its cells differentiate from 2 types into hundreds.
With one cell retaining the ability to form a sperm-like flagellated form and one retinaing the ‘egg’. Pretty cool. Still lots of biology that needs to happen – like meiosis – but an interesting path and one that fits with the emergence of multicellular organisms following the Snowball Earth period.
test 2
testing again
Testing
This is a test
The end of Liberalism is the beginning
Classic liberalism has taken us a long ways, allowing much more complex societies than before. But it cannot pull us much further by itself. The endpoint of the focus on the individual is beginning to pull us a part. As social animals, we cannot survive as individuals.
“Why Liberalism Failed” — the title suggests an abstract and academic treatise, and author Patrick Deneen does not disappoint. The Notre Dame professor discourses on modernity’s prevailing political philosophy and loftily pronounces it dead. His critique spans countries, centuries and fields of study from economics to the humanities. It’s not a small topic, when you think about it.
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But we can use our liberal gifts to bootstrap ourselves to a new way of organizing ourselves, one with a little more balance, by adding more distributed systems of interacting rather than hierarchical.
We are already in the process and early examples are seeing tremendous success. We can do this now because we have tools to accomplish this change, something lacking before.
This is the fundamental cause of our troubles today – advancing to a new level of social organization. One that provides a selective advantage in the new cultural environment we inhabit
Liberalism got us up several flights of stairs but to continue we need new principles.
Image: Skara kommun
Diamandis details 21st century entrepreneurship
Peter hits the nail squarely here. Humans have a hard time understanding exponentials. And the exponential economy seems like a mystery to them. But if you do not organize your community to deal with exponentials, you will likely fail.
Being an entrepreneur today is vastly different than it was 20 years ago.
Today, each of us has access to more capital, more technological tools, more information, more talent, and more computational power than the CEOs of the world’s biggest companies did just two decades ago.
As I think about what it takes to succeed in a world of Abundance and a world of accelerating returns, I focus on six mindsets and tools that every exponential entrepreneur needs to master.
Here’s a quick look:
1. You Must Understand Exponentials
We’re local and linear thinkers in an exponential world.
Our brains haven’t had a significant upgrade in over a million years, whereas our technology is doubling in power every 18 to 24 months.
Exponential technology is transforming products and services and disrupting industries. That’s why Ray Kurzweil and I cofounded Singularity University.
I often talk about my “6 D’s” framework – it’s a lens through which I contextualize all technological change and opportunities:
The 6 Ds Progression:
- Digitized: Turning every product or service into “1’s and 0’s.”
- Deceptive: The doubling of small numbers is deceptive. Start doubling 0.1 to 0.2… 0.4… 0.8… and at this phase, it all looks like “zero.”
- Disruptive: After we reach “1,” just 30 doublings later, we’re at 1 billion.
- Dematerialized: Exponential technology turns tangible “things” into digital apps. I no longer carry around GPS equipment – it’s an app on my phone.
- Demonetized: The cost of duplicating and sending an app is essentially zero.
- Democratized: Once products and services are digital, they go global and can become ubiquitous.
Exponential entrepreneurs use the 6 D’s as a technological road map to predict where technologies are going and when to capitalize on the opportunities. This framework gives them an unfair advantage over competitors.
2. You See the World as Abundant (vs. Scarce)
Exponential entrepreneurs understand that technology is a force that transforms things from scarcity to abundance.
Technology is creating a world of abundance in almost every major arena, including energy, knowledge, transportation, computation, access to education and access to healthcare.
Once these industries transform from scarcity to abundance, their products and services become cheap (or free) and their quality goes through the roof.
Exponential entrepreneurs understand that despite the constant barrage of negative news from the Crisis News Network (my joking term for CNN) and its ilk, the world is becoming better at an extraordinary rate on almost every possible measure, including food, energy, education, poverty and health. (Note: I collect detailed charts on “Evidence of Abundance here.”)
Exponential entrepreneurs also know that scarcity-minded, closed business models ultimately fail, and open platforms ultimately win.
3. You Leverage Exponential Technologies
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4. You Have an MTP and a Moonshot
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5. You Tap the Crowd for Expertise, Solutions & Capital
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6. You Launch Your Vision, Experiment & Disrupt Yourself
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So many good points. Read and execute them all.
Image: luk.s
Moving Adobe into the Special category
Adobe’s Record Revenue Proves Successful Business Transformation Is Possible
[Via Daring Fireball]
Ron Miller, writing for TechCrunch:
As we watch organizations like IBM, HP and EMC struggle to transform, Adobe is an interesting contrasting case. It went from selling boxed software to a cloud subscription model in shorter order, and judging from its financial report that came out last week, it’s done quite well making that leap.
First, let’s have a look at the numbers. Adobe reported a record $1.31 billion in revenue for the quarter, a 22 percent year over year increase. It disclosed record annual revenue of $4.8 billion. Mind you these are significant, but the big number to me is that recurring revenue from subscriptions now represents 74 percent of Adobe’s business. What’s more, just under $3 billion in revenue in 2015 came from digital media-related annual recurring revenue (ARR).
Adobe is making this switch to subscription pricing look easy. It’s not.
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Apple has been a great example of a 21st century company, transitioning from a mass producer of millions of things to a personal producer of things for millions of people.
This is the key transition to the new economy being created. It requires a changing balance between the hierarchical authority so useful in the Age of Mass Production and the distributed democracy driving the Age of Personal Production.
Adobe no longer sells millions of boxes of the same thing to people for them to consume. It has a personal connection to millions of subscribers who use the offerings of Adobe.
This is not easy today but I expect that more will appear over the next decade,
It is all personal.
Image: Valerie Everett
Disagreement, Yes. Disrespect, No.
Amazon Is Right That Disagreement Results in Better Decisions
[Via Harvard Business Review]
When I worked in the federal government, I was amazed at the large numbers of factual errors in widely-read stories, even in the best newspapers. As a colleague of mine, a staunch Democrat, observed in 2009, “I now think that at least half of the things I most disliked about the Bush Administration . . . never happened.”
I tell this little tale because the lengthy New York Times story, detailing some apparently brutal features of the culture at Amazon, should be taken with many grains of salt. But even if the story is full of inaccuracies, and if we put the company’s alleged harshness to one side, Amazon’s approach offers indispensable guidance for companies both large and small when they are deciding how to make group decisions.
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Disagreement does not mean disrespect. Finding the right balance will help companies become successful and wise.
The disagreement must be based on and argued using logical rhetoric. Allowing logucal fallacies to be raised in a disagreement will result in a failed process and little wisdom.
As Brook’s law suggests, projects cannot be made successful by spending more time or throwing more people at them. What can make the projects successful is effective information flow, lowering the friction for important information to traverse the group.
One way that works to do this is to have open discussions, including open disagreement. These prevents groupthink will enhancng the inflow of novel information.
But, logical fallacies or lawyerly tactics (ie belittling, bullying, anger, intimidation) will destroy the benefits of this process and eventually cause the company to fail.
Because the dissenters, the disruptors who disagree, will either leave for better pastures or be forced out. Leaving the company full of easy going, hard working drones who simply follow the easiest path rather than the wise one.
Image: Carsten Tolkmit
The Space Trade Association Experiment
I thought I’d bring everyone up to date with what happened regarding the Space Trade Association. It is currently on hiatus.
The three of us started it about a year ago. We wanted to catalyze the creation of a full economy in space and drive the formation of a NewSpace hub in the Seattle area. We had met as part of a group that came together to support Planetary Resources’ crowdfunding efforts.
We had a wonderful time helping them raise over $1.5 million. We wanted to find a way to continue our work and thus the Space Trade Association come into being.
Each of us brought something important to the mix, with a balance of expertise that was really exciting.
Now the experiment part came from the fact that the three of us were located in different parts of the country – New Mexico, Illinois and Washington. I was curious to see how well we could work to drive our initiative.
The experiment lasted until this summer. It was quite successful to my mind because of what was learned. We were able to make some great contacts, get our message out there and begin the changes we saw were needed.
But, using a space metaphor, when it reached the end of the first stage burn, we found we could not really ignite the second stage and make it to a successful orbit.
it ultimately could not continue for several reasons. For me, the main one was that we could not really move as fast as was needed in this rapidly changing area with such a distributed management structure.
Not too surprised but that is what experiments are for. We actually came closer than I think would have been possible a few years ago.
We decided to put the group on hiatus as we each explored other arenas, shutting down the STA engines and seeing it contining on a ballistic path until either splashdown or we can reignite the 2nd stage.
My focus now is on using the scientific models that exist and the expertise I have gained to enhance and stimulate the changes that are occurring in the area. To facilitate the coming space economy by helping more organizations succeed and less fail.
It will be exciting.
Image: kind permission of Pat Rawings
The road to Hell really is paved with good intentions
Nice People Are More Likely to Follow Orders that Hurt Others
[Via Big Think]
A new psychology study published this month in the Journal of Personality has revealed a dark truth about the nicest and friendliest people in our society — they are probably more capable of doing the most horrific things if ordered to.
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The title of the paper tells all: Personality Predicts Obedience in a Milgram Paradigm.
Communities of nice people can be made to do awful things. If everyone is nice, no one will be impolite enough to tell the community it is doing wrong.
We all need to find ways to value the rude, contrarian and disagreeable people in our communities. They may be the ones who prevent the community from doing great harm.
Nice people are usually the ones that follow the social norms best. They get along with everyone because they follow the rules. That is why they are seen as nice. No disruptive behavior for them.
It is easy to be seen as agreeable if you never question others or their behavior.
As the researchers state:
Those who are described as ‘agreeable, conscientious personalities’ are more likely to follow orders and deliver electric shocks that they believe can harm innocent people, while more contrarian, less agreeable personalities are more likely to refuse to hurt others.
It is easy to be seen as disagreeable if you question others or their behavior.
Amazingly, those who are seen as less agreeable are less likely to harm others. They dug their heels in and refused to submit to authority or social norms.
I expect part of the reason they are seen as less agreeable is that they are rude enough to shirk social norms, the same social norms the agreeable people follow so storngly.
A community with only nice people can suffer from epistemic closure,where all those nice people can be made to do really awful things
Because they do not want to appear rude and thus be less likable by telling everyone else they are doing something harmful. It will never realize that the Emperor has no clothes.
It may be that rude people are the most important ones in a community, needed to keep it on an ethical path.
Yet they are often the ones cast out first, because they are so ‘rude.’
If this research holds up, it would suggest that trying to create a community where everyone is nice and no one is rude could well produce a community capable of doing great harm.
So value and support a few disagreeable people in your organization – the ones that upset some people – in order to have a well-balanced community that will not do something harmful or stupid.
Try to determine why they are disagreeing and engage with that, rather than dismiss them because they act contrary to social norms.
Some rude people are purely disruptive and disrespectful because the attention makes them feel important. But many are actually trying to help the group see where the danger lies, to prevent the group from doing harm.
It takes more work to deal with disagreeable people – it is part of what makes them disagreeable – but they may be critical for the community’s success.
Value those committed yet disagreeable people. They will help the community best in the long run.
Image: Paul Downey