Great stuff as always, Dave. Well reasoned and equally well stated. The only place I might push back is on this point:
>> I like to say that what the smartest people do on the weekends is what everyone else will do during the week in ten years” [snip] What part of our weekday in 2024 was “the smartest peoples’” weekend hobby in 2014?
You say Dixon's statement "isn't even faintly true." I'm not so sure.
I'm giving Dixon lots of (maybe too much) benefit of the doubt here, but what if we change "smartest" to "wealthiest" and 10 years to "roughly 10-15 years"? That's a common framing I first heard from economist Hal Varian some time ago.
For instance, YouTube launched in 2005, Facebook in 2006. Twitter and the iPhone in 2007, and Instagram in 2010. BBSs, message boards, and Usenet predated those by decades (hence my "roughly 10-15 years" thought). Google Docs launched in 2006 as well. Today, we're all commenting all the time in Slack and Teams in a way that was not workday typical in the aughts and early 2010s, borrowing from the norms that started a while back, migrated to social media around 2007-2010. We're all using SaaS tools and ubiquitous internet connectivity in a way that wasn't the norm 10-15 years ago. More broadly, where the wealthy once had media rooms, today the average TV size in the US is 50". We've ended up in the same place. Sure, all of this is just a version of Moore's Law writ large, but in that sense, Dixon is right. He's just being overly pithy/glib about it.
Again, your review is spot-on. Dixon's book deserves the criticism. I also find that looking at what companies and people in the highest socioeconomic strata are doing with tech today to be a relatively decent predictor of what "everyone" will be doing within the next decade, give or take. At least there's some truth to it.
Ah, that's interesting. So in your reading it's kind of like a riff on William Gibson's "the future is already here, it just isn't evenly distributed." We can look at the trappings of early adopters -- particularly wealthy ones with a lot of free time -- to get a sense of what will be in mass consumption a decade or so later.
Yes, I buy the general contours of that argument. I mean, I have a few quibbles that I'll pursue in the book, but I do agree that version is at-least-faintly-true.
I'll stand by my claim that Dixon's phrasing isn't compelling or convincing though. Varian and Gibson said it much better!
Thanks, Dave! And, yes, it's definitely a riff on Gibson (I use both his and Varian's quotes pretty regularly in writing and teaching).
As for Dixon, I completely agree that his lack of introspection is a massive miss. He's a smart guy. I'd love to hear that he's put his intellectual horsepower to work learning from his — and the industry's — missteps.
This is a plausible reading of that "smart people weekend" quote, but what keeps nagging at me is Dixon's overall nefarious plan to monetize every social interaction via duct-taping block chain to "the Web". His vision is everyone "profiting" off their interactions, just like him, thanks to the magic of an "unalterable" digital file. This is insane in ways it would take a book to list, let alone explain, but makes perfect sense to a billionaire whose universe is demanding he step up and Change The World for fun and profit. Again. Or else.
Oh, hell yeah. I was only picking the tiniest of nits in Dave's excellent review. My biggest argument against web3 is that it's driven as much by motivated reasoning as anything else. As I noted a couple of years ago on a podcast episode, "...we already have a decentralized web. It’s called the web. Anyone can set up a web server, anyone can launch a company or a product or an app or a movement on the web easily. The centralization that has emerged in recent years is a bug. The fact that we have [Big Tech] is definitely, a bug of the system. But it’s also a feature. Users don’t want to have to randomly type in web addresses in hopes that the one they land on serves their needs. And so intermediaries and gatekeepers have emerged to help users find what they want... The other place where [web3] doesn’t quite ring true to me is that a number of venture capital firms have invested in web3 startups to the tune of around $30 billion in 2021. Now call me crazy but VCs make money when their portfolio companies get sold... whether through later funding rounds or public markets. Those exits that they are banking on assume that these companies will generate revenues and profits or will lead some other entity to generate revenues and profits. A decentralized web doesn’t actually, help them reach their goals. I don’t think the venture capital community is betting on a decentralized web so much as it’s betting on a re-centralized web with their portfolio companies at the center."
I don't know if it's a nefarious plan. It's Dixon's job to make money. I also suspect he genuinely thinks everyone else wants to/should/could profit, too. The challenge is that even if he's 100% ethical and honest all the time — and I have no reason to think Dixon is deliberately being unethical or dishonest — he's going to follow where the dollars lead him. It's just that sometimes the dollars lead to weird conclusions.
The question that immediately occurs to me is when that $7bn invested in these blockchain projects/startups/whatevers is going to start being written down or off. That's got to put a hole in someone's day, and my expectation would be that there would be Consequences for anyone who had steered that amount of real money into a whole set of junk ideas which never came good.
“Hobbies are what the smartest people spend time on when they aren’t constrained by near-term financial goals. I like to say that what the smartest people do on the weekends is what everyone else will do during the week in ten years.”
People tell me I'm smart, and as a shareholder in Games Workshop I look forward to a day when everyone else is spending their week buying and painting Warhammer miniatures. I might actually be able to retire.
“What part of our weekday in 2024 was “the smartest peoples’” weekend hobby in 2014?”
Hmm. Well, yeah—the fact that the smartest folks *weren’t* spending their (our?) weekends in 2014 actively fending off fascism is a big part of how we got where we are today!
Great stuff as usual, and thanks for the pointer to Molly White. She really knows how to weild a scalpel. She notes Dixon's comment that "RSS is dead", and is confused what he means. I know what he means, he means no one is making money off RSS. And his comment you noted calling software (he means library routines) "LEGO blocks", hoo boy. Even project managers know better than that. I'd like to introduce him to Java ("write once, debug everywhere") and his little brother Javascript (don't get me started).Come to think of it, Andreesen is responsible for putting ECMAscript in browsers, so he's even a bigger monster than you might think. These guys all have no choice. Their fortunes, their culture, their status, all demand they come up with the Next Big Thing NOW, and the big 3 scams (Web3, VR, AI) are all they've got. Most of them are too wealthy to go broke, but this isn't going to end well for them. Maybe that's why Zuckerberg is building a Fortress Of Solitude in Hawaii.
While I have no intention of reading this book, I did hear the Hard Fork interview, which was wonderfully awkward for exactly the reasons you list. What I can’t decide is whether Dixon meets Carlo Cipolla’s definition of a stupid person or if he’s bandit who has convinced himself that he is an intelligent person.
Chris Dixon got a grilling in the NYT Podcast "Hard Fork", too. Worth listening too.
I like the title of his book: The Combination of Tech & Property writes and the command line "rewrite". For the sake of planetary and social goals, we need this rewrite. just not in the way a staunch VC like Dixon thinks.
I am in general not a fan of Hard Fork, but hearing Molly mention that it was a proper grilling, and not the usual fawning exercise prompted me to listen (I am a huge fan of Cam Newton, but Kevin Roose(ap?) really rubs me the wrong way) and it was worth the investment in time.
Great stuff as always, Dave. Well reasoned and equally well stated. The only place I might push back is on this point:
>> I like to say that what the smartest people do on the weekends is what everyone else will do during the week in ten years” [snip] What part of our weekday in 2024 was “the smartest peoples’” weekend hobby in 2014?
You say Dixon's statement "isn't even faintly true." I'm not so sure.
I'm giving Dixon lots of (maybe too much) benefit of the doubt here, but what if we change "smartest" to "wealthiest" and 10 years to "roughly 10-15 years"? That's a common framing I first heard from economist Hal Varian some time ago.
For instance, YouTube launched in 2005, Facebook in 2006. Twitter and the iPhone in 2007, and Instagram in 2010. BBSs, message boards, and Usenet predated those by decades (hence my "roughly 10-15 years" thought). Google Docs launched in 2006 as well. Today, we're all commenting all the time in Slack and Teams in a way that was not workday typical in the aughts and early 2010s, borrowing from the norms that started a while back, migrated to social media around 2007-2010. We're all using SaaS tools and ubiquitous internet connectivity in a way that wasn't the norm 10-15 years ago. More broadly, where the wealthy once had media rooms, today the average TV size in the US is 50". We've ended up in the same place. Sure, all of this is just a version of Moore's Law writ large, but in that sense, Dixon is right. He's just being overly pithy/glib about it.
Again, your review is spot-on. Dixon's book deserves the criticism. I also find that looking at what companies and people in the highest socioeconomic strata are doing with tech today to be a relatively decent predictor of what "everyone" will be doing within the next decade, give or take. At least there's some truth to it.
Hi Tim,
Ah, that's interesting. So in your reading it's kind of like a riff on William Gibson's "the future is already here, it just isn't evenly distributed." We can look at the trappings of early adopters -- particularly wealthy ones with a lot of free time -- to get a sense of what will be in mass consumption a decade or so later.
Yes, I buy the general contours of that argument. I mean, I have a few quibbles that I'll pursue in the book, but I do agree that version is at-least-faintly-true.
I'll stand by my claim that Dixon's phrasing isn't compelling or convincing though. Varian and Gibson said it much better!
Still, good point. Thanks.
Thanks, Dave! And, yes, it's definitely a riff on Gibson (I use both his and Varian's quotes pretty regularly in writing and teaching).
As for Dixon, I completely agree that his lack of introspection is a massive miss. He's a smart guy. I'd love to hear that he's put his intellectual horsepower to work learning from his — and the industry's — missteps.
This is a plausible reading of that "smart people weekend" quote, but what keeps nagging at me is Dixon's overall nefarious plan to monetize every social interaction via duct-taping block chain to "the Web". His vision is everyone "profiting" off their interactions, just like him, thanks to the magic of an "unalterable" digital file. This is insane in ways it would take a book to list, let alone explain, but makes perfect sense to a billionaire whose universe is demanding he step up and Change The World for fun and profit. Again. Or else.
Oh, hell yeah. I was only picking the tiniest of nits in Dave's excellent review. My biggest argument against web3 is that it's driven as much by motivated reasoning as anything else. As I noted a couple of years ago on a podcast episode, "...we already have a decentralized web. It’s called the web. Anyone can set up a web server, anyone can launch a company or a product or an app or a movement on the web easily. The centralization that has emerged in recent years is a bug. The fact that we have [Big Tech] is definitely, a bug of the system. But it’s also a feature. Users don’t want to have to randomly type in web addresses in hopes that the one they land on serves their needs. And so intermediaries and gatekeepers have emerged to help users find what they want... The other place where [web3] doesn’t quite ring true to me is that a number of venture capital firms have invested in web3 startups to the tune of around $30 billion in 2021. Now call me crazy but VCs make money when their portfolio companies get sold... whether through later funding rounds or public markets. Those exits that they are banking on assume that these companies will generate revenues and profits or will lead some other entity to generate revenues and profits. A decentralized web doesn’t actually, help them reach their goals. I don’t think the venture capital community is betting on a decentralized web so much as it’s betting on a re-centralized web with their portfolio companies at the center."
I don't know if it's a nefarious plan. It's Dixon's job to make money. I also suspect he genuinely thinks everyone else wants to/should/could profit, too. The challenge is that even if he's 100% ethical and honest all the time — and I have no reason to think Dixon is deliberately being unethical or dishonest — he's going to follow where the dollars lead him. It's just that sometimes the dollars lead to weird conclusions.
The question that immediately occurs to me is when that $7bn invested in these blockchain projects/startups/whatevers is going to start being written down or off. That's got to put a hole in someone's day, and my expectation would be that there would be Consequences for anyone who had steered that amount of real money into a whole set of junk ideas which never came good.
“Hobbies are what the smartest people spend time on when they aren’t constrained by near-term financial goals. I like to say that what the smartest people do on the weekends is what everyone else will do during the week in ten years.”
People tell me I'm smart, and as a shareholder in Games Workshop I look forward to a day when everyone else is spending their week buying and painting Warhammer miniatures. I might actually be able to retire.
“What part of our weekday in 2024 was “the smartest peoples’” weekend hobby in 2014?”
Hmm. Well, yeah—the fact that the smartest folks *weren’t* spending their (our?) weekends in 2014 actively fending off fascism is a big part of how we got where we are today!
Great stuff as usual, and thanks for the pointer to Molly White. She really knows how to weild a scalpel. She notes Dixon's comment that "RSS is dead", and is confused what he means. I know what he means, he means no one is making money off RSS. And his comment you noted calling software (he means library routines) "LEGO blocks", hoo boy. Even project managers know better than that. I'd like to introduce him to Java ("write once, debug everywhere") and his little brother Javascript (don't get me started).Come to think of it, Andreesen is responsible for putting ECMAscript in browsers, so he's even a bigger monster than you might think. These guys all have no choice. Their fortunes, their culture, their status, all demand they come up with the Next Big Thing NOW, and the big 3 scams (Web3, VR, AI) are all they've got. Most of them are too wealthy to go broke, but this isn't going to end well for them. Maybe that's why Zuckerberg is building a Fortress Of Solitude in Hawaii.
While I have no intention of reading this book, I did hear the Hard Fork interview, which was wonderfully awkward for exactly the reasons you list. What I can’t decide is whether Dixon meets Carlo Cipolla’s definition of a stupid person or if he’s bandit who has convinced himself that he is an intelligent person.
You and Molly White have done the review of this book justice.
Chris Dixon got a grilling in the NYT Podcast "Hard Fork", too. Worth listening too.
I like the title of his book: The Combination of Tech & Property writes and the command line "rewrite". For the sake of planetary and social goals, we need this rewrite. just not in the way a staunch VC like Dixon thinks.
I am in general not a fan of Hard Fork, but hearing Molly mention that it was a proper grilling, and not the usual fawning exercise prompted me to listen (I am a huge fan of Cam Newton, but Kevin Roose(ap?) really rubs me the wrong way) and it was worth the investment in time.