The value proposition is the intelligence layer that encompasses a user's work data (emails, files, meetings, chats) alongside memory of style, preferences, and workflows. The more you use it, the more useful it becomes. Apple's newly rebuilt Siri AI is built on the same premise, organized around what Apple calls "personal context understanding," drawing on Messages, Mail, Photos, Notes, and Calendar to complete tasks across apps.

So, the network is no longer the crowd. The network is you. What will that mean?

The switching cost just became deeply personal.

Interesting thoughts on AI and the ‘Intelligence Layer’. As she alludes to, if it is correct, it puts the platform owners of Android and iOS in a few good place, assuming those companies can complete the integration correctly. How they handle differing AI companies plugging in, and not losing the value, will be what to watch out for.

Before we get to my reasoning, Google explains this program is a federally-authorized, tax-deferred custodial investment account for children in the US. The program provides newborns (born between January 1, 2025 and December 31, 2028) with a one-time $1,000 government seed deposit in the account, along with allowing annual contributions of up to $5,000 from family or friends. The investment account funds are locked until the child reached at least 18 years of age, but they can continue being invested in the account until the age of retirement when they would be converted to a traditional IRA.

Second, the market for information is collapsing into the chatbot. The market for transformation—for sitting with one mind, at length, on a subject it has bled for—might just get smaller, weirder, and more interesting. I’d bet on it. In a way, we’re reverting to the earlier days of the Internet.

Via Tim Ferriss

A phase where there’s a dip before the novelty wears off, or a permanent change?

I’m currently reading the book, Beyond the Hallowed Sky, which describes an all-seeing predictive AI that knows your every want and need before you even do. Perhaps that’s the future of self-help? (I sure hope not).

40GB per slice of your body! Maybe this is the future bandwidth increase the telecoms industry needs ;)

Found via ma.tt

I find that statement amazing. We’re now at the point that space travel, at least as far as the moon is concerned is now a fully solved problem. It’s still a long way to go to a decent settlement, however, it’s amazing to think that in my lifetime, we could have humans based - long-term - on another lump of rock in space other than planet earth.

Will it get to the stage that hundreds of people are living there? that’s amazing to think about…

I’m watching the space industry with interest right now. SpaceX’s IPO may have been for an absurd number, however, the upcoming StarShip could be a revelation for travel to the moon. Exciting times.

For a given intensity, wait until you can increase volume by 20% before increasing intensity by 5%...at which point you start over. This rule, which has been applied in strength and speed training for years, is of great use to rock climbers and boulderers.

From ClimbStrong (warning: Facebook link…)

Good rational advise on when strength training

The most attention-grabbing aspect of the article, though, and the most bracing, is its strong suggestion that one of the big factors in this global population decline is the smartphone. It cites an early-stage recent paper, published by the University of Cincinnati, that looked at birth rates through the roll-out of 4G wireless networks in the US and the UK. “The number of births fell first and fastest in the areas that received high-speed mobile connectivity earliest,” writes Burn-Murdoch. The paper’s authors, he continues, “argue that smartphones have transformed how young people spend time with one another, sharply reducing in-person socialising and leading to the collapse in their fertility.”

From “Fewer people are having babies. Could smartphones be the reason?” (Irish Times).

Elon Musk is a public proponent of the idea that global population collapse is a higher risk than climate change. Personally, that sounds non-sensical, however, there is some validity to how it affects the world - and it is interesting to see that current population growth is driven by people living longer, than more births. We’re talking a century from now before this comes anything to consider however and that’s a long horizon for us all to think of….

For now, lets focus on getting us a planet we can continue to live on for the next millenia - and get off fossil fuels….

building on this realization that social media is structured quite differently than the physical world, with unexpected downstream consequences.

From https://arstechnica.com/science/2026/05/rip-social-media-what-comes-next-is-messy/

More likely, it will evolve - there’s a lot of ad money that needs to go somewhere and businesses that want to make money

But at the end of the day, it’s consumption, not production, that defines you as an individual.

That choice is yours and yours alone. Every day that you exist as a consumer in a capitalist society, you are forced to make dozens of decisions about what to spend your money on. Should you buy coffee at Starbucks or Peet’s? Should you buy a new skirt or a new pair of jeans? Should you go watch a Marvel movie or an indie film? Should you subscribe to Noahpinion or to Slow Boring?¹

Each time you make one of those choices, you are forced to interrogate your own preferences. You are forced to look inside your heart/mind/soul/utility function/whatever and decide which brand of coffee you want, which type of clothing you want, which blog you want to read, and so on. It’s all about you.

That’s a vision of a consumption society, but not one that’s meaningless or empty. Instead, it’s a vision of technology freeing us to become more like ourselves. I don’t think this happy outcome is inevitable, but I think it’s getting ignored in most of the discussions about our future.

Tantalising ideas that come from the AI revolution. I like that it’s acknowledged this vision isn’t guaranteed, however, it’s refreshing to consider ideas that don’t have the ‘world is ending due to AI’ in our ears every once in a while.

I’ll be keeping an eye on his new RSS reader, Current (Apple only). For now, I’ll stick with the tried-and-true and OG, NetNewsWire.

You couldn’t make this up. I was tipping away with a nice steady increase in my running volume since the start of the year, perhaps 10-20% more than I’d started with last year. All well und then one of those “are you joking me?!” injuries… It was mid-January I’d been in to do some squats - medium difficulty for me when running so perhaps 50% of my limit. There was bench left behind the squat rack and as I was conscious of tripping over it, I finished my squats, turned around and pushed without lifting up the bench onto its wheels. Unfortunately with the fatigue in my legs and the leverage position, I pulled either my hamstring or the tendon at the top of it. Serious pain and since then I’ve been managing a this constant dull ache and niggle. It’s a weird one in the sense that I could keep running on it, however, I was also very aware when pushing it, that it could really blow up….. Which lead to some serious decision making - would I do the Raheny 5-miler (8km) running event that had sent me a reminder email to tell me I had a ticket (ha - seems I bought it last November and promptly forgot!), or skip it to avoid the risk… We all know the answer here.

Raheny 5-mile (8km)

And so, on a lovely Sunday afternoon, I was on the electric bike cycling across to Raheny, all 13km into a solid headwind to both catch up with a friend and give my first ever' ‘short distance’ (yes, it’s not that short…) event a lash. Dropping the bike off, myself and Andy had a short 1km jog down to the registration desk, a painful queue for the toilets, a mad dash to the start line (getting close to the front as there was THOUSANDS of people taking part) and then go go go! I.e. no proper warm-up with strides, etc for what was going to be a fast run for me. With my sketchy hamstring. Sigh…. Anyway, what I can I say only that it wall went surprisingly well on the day!

It ended up being a 31 minute time which clocks in at 3:51min/km and what can definitely be said to be a personal best. I also ran my PB for the 5km time which just shows how little I’ve done at these distances. The heart rate averaged 165 also which implies there was a bit more in the tank also…..

Then, a nice social coffee, back on the bike and home.

All while carrying what was now a slightly louder groaning hamstring. Oh oh…

However, it was a real positive and I came away with a positive feeling for what was to come, even if I was looking at having to manage out a truly odd niggle….

The rest of January came and went and I managed to maintain a solid 70km/week (good average for me) before realising that with two weeks to go to Donadea, perhaps some physio was required. A trip to the excellent Musa at Pearse Street physio came with the feedback that was likely wasn’t the tendon (a good thing as that’s a messy long-term recuperation) and somewhere in the bed of the muscle. However, over the next two weeks, I still wasn’t getting in long runs and I realised as I fast approached the start of the Donadea 50km, I hadn’t run more than 24km in a single training run since early December. Gulp. Either way, I was doing it but it was going to be a real unknown on the day - would I blow up quickly? would the hamstring hold? Should I commit to just coasting so that I can guarantee the finish, or go out hard? Or go somewhere in the middle?

Donadea 50km

Which brings me to the Donadea 50km. Considering last year, I’d had to bail out due to an achilles issue, there was no way I wasn’t finishing it this year - that was a given. However, I was didn’t want to just cruise it - I hadn’t run longer than 2 hours and thought I’d get very very bored if I’d had to stay on my feet for 5 or more hours ;) So, the idea was formed - try go out at the top end of my Zone 2 according to the watch (that’s 130-150bpm) and see how long I could hold on. My previous goal had been to go out at 150-158bpm (zone 3 and in theory my marathon pace). That seemed risky with both a) my lack of distance, and b) that problematic hamstring.

The warm-up was….not great. Hamstring was tight, didn’t want to settle and it felt like I was dragging it. However, I had also come armed with a full tube of Voltarol (topical anti-inflammatory) so layered up the legs and decided I was going to suck it up either way.

How did it go? Again, surprisingly well! I had a good dialled in nutrition plan I was keen to test which involved one 500ml bladder with 1-1.5 scoops of Tailwind (so 25-35g carb) and a single SIS Beta Fuel (40g carb) or Precision Hydration caffeine gel (30g carbs) per hour and I managed to maintain that pretty well throughout the whole course with it only slightly falling down around 2.25 - 3 hours but then working well near the end. However, that 45 minute gap of a lack in energy really paid a price on my legs when they really tightened up in the final 10-12km and it felt like they went flat. This wasn’t just a lack of fuel either - I was well north of the distance I’d been covering in recent months so muscular endurance failure kicked in. I can only say I was working hard for those final two laps of 5km each and there was zero pop in the legs when I tried to push the last kilometre.

However, still a 3:56:05 finishing time left me with a very satisfactory outcome and 4:40min/km pace throughout. My watch had predicted a 3:25-3:30min/km pace for the event so I really wasn’t far off that considering the lack of big distance….. Also Nike Vaporfly 4’s work on flat trail events, who knew!

What’s next

So, where does that leave me? I’ve got 9 weeks to go to the next event, the Altar 100km in Avondale Forest Park in late April. There’s also a 2-week holiday in France early in April which will make it interesting to arrange long runs but that’s part of the game! I’m also excited as Naomi will be taking part in her first 50km even on the same looped course. Yes, it’s another looped course only this time, each loop is 3.2km long. 100km of this is sounding like misery so I’m currently debating if I’ll drop it back to the 50km and try beat the Donadea time….. If I do go for the 100km, I’m aiming for - at least - going under 10 hours however, and ideally 9 hours (so that works out as 2 50km events at 4.5 hours). I have a crazy idea to go out really hard at marathon pace and set a PB in the 50km, and then just coast the rest. What do you think? My feeling is if I can run this in a pair of carbon road shoes, and also get my fueling really dialled in (which means probably increasing from 65g/hour to 80-90g/hour also) I could have a very good day….

As a result, Fernandez-Villaverde thinks total global population is going to peak just 30 years from now…

This is a big problem. The first fertility transition was a good thing — it was the result of the world getting richer, it saved human living standards from hitting a Malthusian ceiling, and it seemed like with wise policies, rich countries could keep their fertility near replacement rates. But this second fertility transition is going to be an economic catastrophe if it continues……

….Thus, dimly and through the fog, we can begin to perceive the shape of the future that the posthuman age will take. As humanity becomes more tightly bound into a single digital collective, we find that we desire offline families less and less. As we gradually abandon reproduction, there are fewer and fewer of us, forcing us to cling even more tightly to the online collective — to spend more of our time online, to take solace in the ever-denser core of the final global village. The god-mind of that collective delivers us riches undreamt of by our ancestors, but we enjoy that bounty in solitude as we wirehead into the hive mind for a bit of company.

When I write it out that way, it sounds terrifying. And yet day by day, watching the latest TikTok trend, or making bad jokes on X, or asking ChatGPT to teach me about Mongol history, the slide into posthumanity feels pleasant and warm. Perhaps we are no stranger than our grandparents would have seemed to their own grandparents who grew up on premodern farms. After all, aliens never call themselves “aliens”…they call themselves “us”.

This article considering the rapidly declining birth rate from Noahpinion.

Consider this:

….2 children per woman1 is around the level where population is stable in the long term — actually, it’s about 2.1 for a rich country and 2.3 for a poor country, to take into account the fact that some kids don’t survive until adulthood. But basically, going from 5-7 kids per woman to 2 means that your population goes from “exploding” to “stable”…..

The world’s richest billionaire has written on this going back to 2017

I’m not one to catastrophes, however, there is likely some validity to this discussion. Where will we be in 100 years from now?

I’ve got patellar tendonitis. It’s mild, but it’s there. Blame all the speed work I’ve been doing since March. It paid off as I got to point of running a 1:25:00 half marathon (possibly quicker). However, at the same time, I’d a house build project kicking off and physically - and mentally - I was under serious load. So, I turned up for the goal half marathon run and knew straight away - I needed to rest. So, 10km in, I pulled off the course.

A small snippet in me burns with the what-if - would I have kept the pace I was at for another 11km?! (yes, I know I could have). But would I have enjoyed it? And made myself more injured? A no and a yes to both of those questions.

I’m in the phase now where we’ve this project ongoing, and I’m busy spending the rest of the time with work and family.

My knee can take its time to recover, and I’ll get fired up for the next event in September. There’s loads of time for more fun and adventures in the future!

Right now, I’ll just enjoy the downtime watching my kid continue her journey in starting to rock climb…

Below is the pre-race plan I’m looking to use. I’ll update this post after with what the outcome was. I’m reducing carb quantity a small amount to account for the fact that I’ll hopefully be finished in 90 minutes)

• 05:00 - 05:30 Eat Breakfast

  • Bagel with honey and banana

  • 500ml with Maurten 320 drink mix

• 06:10 - 06:30 Consume BiCarb (BiCarb effect/window will then be from 08:00 - 12:30, more than covering the half marathon)

• 07:00 - 07:45 Bag Drop

• 07:45 Walk to start line (15 minutes)

• 08:10 Last pre-racenutrition

  • 2 x Panadal Extra (1g paracetamol and 130mg of caffeine for the two tablets). I’eve never done this before but quite intrigued with this for other events (if genuinely needed to be taken and very very carefully!).

  • 2 x Precision Hydration caffeine gel (60g carb and 200mg of caffeine for the two gels)

• 08:30 Start Wave 1

  • Nutrition - maximum of 100g of carbs over the event

    • 1 SIS Beta Fuel gel (40g carb)

    • 1 x 30g caffeine (30g carb, 100mg caffeine))

    • 500ml bottle with Tailwind (30g)

• 10:00 Finish (target time of 90 minutes for completion at 4:15-4:16minutes/kilometer)

Gear List

• Nike Zoom Fly 6

• 26.2 zip tights

• Nike singlet

Firstly, acknowledging the two "successes" of 2G/4G:
- 2G: had two specific use cases for users, voice and text. And that is what it seemed was the primary purpose for 2G. [yes, data services existed but always felt like an aside and just a nice side benefit that some/any data]. Mobile Telecom operators did very well out of this world, which was largely just a recreation of the fixed line world using wireless technology.
- 4G: appears to have been designed with fast data in mind, a tacit acknowledgement that everything (including your phone calls) to data. So the focus was primarily on a good, fast, internet connection. Purely, solely focused on letting customers experience the Internet. This is evident that even voice wasn't initially supported on 4G and a situation we're still largely currently in where voice calls fall back to 3G.

Which brings me to the 'over hyped that didn't deliver' tech, 3G. Firstly, an aside: personally, I joined the Telecom world in the early 2000's (and Vodafone -the first time! - originally in mid 2000's). just as. 3G was announced in Ireland and all staff were given a free Nokia 6630. Speeds didn't seem much more impressive than 2G, and battery life was crippling if using data****
At the time, I was also spending 3G, from memory (although I'm more than happy to be told I'm wrong!), felt like it was focused on the technology, NOT the customer experience. And the focus on the technology was to show-horn three completely different formats together: giving equal priority to voice, data, and text. Even the data speeds were not particularly great. 

Of course, one interesting point is that even if 3G was not as expected, it'll still be the old 2G that will be switched off first. [Related: great to see a technology switched for the benefit of customers. When will MMS follow the same route?]

So, for 5G is are we focused on the engineering, or is it focused on the customer experience/product? 
What do customers (consumer or enterprises) want? A persistent, continuous internet connection no matter where they are. We're fast approaching the point where the data connection will be 'good enough' and the services on top will start to flourish (it's already started). Software Will continue to Eat The World, migrating more and more businesses to this world. so '5G' should focus on the cleanest possible access method for customers to get online with quick-response, seamless connection. This is also viable because the devices available to everyone are also now 'good enough' so as to enable a new layer of possibilities (3G was in many ways partially poor due to the standard of mobile devices at the time also).

Start with the customer experience and work back to the technology. Can't start with the technology and try to figure out where you're going to try to sell it. What benefit can we give to the customer, and where can we take the customer. Not, starting with lets sit down with the engineers and figure out what awesome technology we have, and then how are we going to market that.
Mistakes are being made, but that's good because it shows decisions are being made. Some people will be pissed off.

* The comment about 3G and its failure, reminds me of a recent talk I attended where Facebook stood up and quite happily chatted about how they completely missed mobile. Not that you'd be able to tell from their current success!

** COTI: Child Of The Internet. My age puts me outside the bracket of 'Millennials' but I was lucky enough to get continuous access to the Internet in 1995, just before the seminal Netscape 2.0 was released and the dawn of the now-ubiquitous Web. So, pretty much my whole life of telecommunications has involved over the Internet (for voice, data), not 'telephony'.

*** 1G network: analogue cellular. Your old phone line to your home that has existed for over 100 years, only delivered wirelessly.
2G: your phone call gets converted to digital signal allowing little glimpses of 'now' with basic data services. I treat 3G as part of this era also, even if it was a change from circuit-switched to packet-switched.
4G: IP-networking. You know the scene in the Matrix with all the icons flowing down the screen? Now your voice is just another set of icons flowing on the screen, another piece of data.

**** I fondly remember flattening the battery of that Nokia is under 2 hours one day when doing some tests/experiments of working exclusively from a mobile (it's easy to think 'old' phones lasted for multiple days but when all you used it for was sending texts and some phone calls, no wonder they did): anyone who thinks modern smartphones are bad.....

From the door of my Internet cafe, I can see out the door to a perfect Thai beach. Palm trees partially block the view, but that’s o.k. as they also take some of the intensity out of the heat. Behind me there’s a wild jungle, containing all sorts of exotic creatures. The idle thought comes to me to remember to keep an eye out for the Komoda Dragon that has been roaming through the local beach bar. As I reflect on the idea I’m sitting on a beach that is only accessible by boat, with no wired electricity (all supplied via generators), I reflect that I also have Internet access, allowing me to write a blog post for my now early blog.

It's February 2007, and I'm on my (first....) year-long trip around the world.

However, the important part of this story (even though that whole period of my life is likely worth consolidating into some posts….).

Back to that Thai beach. Not only was I on the beach with a commitment to pursue my sport, I'd also made the commitment to put up at least one blog post per week. Blogging was looking interesting and I wanted to be part of the revolution! And so, paying $5/hour for connectivity (5-6 days per week.....I estimate I spent almost $1,000 on connectivity that year!) I was connected to the Internet reading and writing to the world's largest network, the Internet. And I was in awe, that I could connect to this community with a decent connection for anywhere on the planet there was WiFi. How had we got there? When did the telecoms industry start? Which brings me to this great book for anyone looking for some history on the background of Ireland’s involvement in the flattening of the world.

Of course, for us, it wasn't the inventions but the location: we were the closest landmass to the USA for connecting up the first transatlantic cable between Europe and the USA.

Imagine, prior to this stage, to send a message/letter between the two continents took several WEEKS. We can’t really imagine of course because in this era of connectivity, it’s possible to get a message to almost anywhere on the planet instantaneously.

Cyrus Far

I came across this wonderful book last year but am only getting around to posting a review now. Blame it on needing a re-charge from writing, life, etc etc.  

Written at a steady, fluid pace by John Steele Gordon, the story documents the first transatlantic telegraph cable linking Europe and the USA and all the challenges to succeed at what must have been an outrageous achievement at the time. Of course, the relevant link to my own nationality (Irish) being that all of the first transatlantic cables landed into west Ireland at Valencia (where there is also a small museum to celebrate the fact - for anyone touring the Wild Atlantic Way, it's on the route).

Envisioned by the pioneering American entrepreneur, Cyrus West Field, it has many analogies to out-there thinking by present-day visionaries (Elon Musk with SpaceX and low-cost space flight including a trip to Mars in the early 2020's comes to mind - both individuals that made their fortunes at the beginning of earlier industries: in the case of Mr. Field in paper manufacturing before taking his significant earnings to play in the burgeoning industry of telecoms) and their ability to push through a project that seems impossible to most.

Threading a weave through the early 1800's, the books describes in perfect fashion the living and capabilities of the time, before diving headlong into the technical challenges and state of affairs when it came to telecommunication at the time, starting out with their early designs and to the point where longer-distance cables were beginning to be laid (with all the equivalent challenges as of now with cost - also related to modern visionaries such as Musk and Bezos). Flowing through, it describes *&*(&'s work to gather the required number of investors on both sides of the Atlantic and the various logistics that came with this - numerous personal crossings of the Atlantic which was still by sail at the time! 

Describing the challenge of laying the cable, something that had never been considered before is fascinating, and it flows perfectly into our current era of a world layered in cables. The fact that I'm writing this on a device that will post to a website accessible from almost anywhere on the planet (at tiny cost nowadays also) owes a huge debt to the visionaries of the time. 

Without going into details, the analogies/concepts that can be taken are interesting. It's relevant to consider that in many ways telecoms started out with shared lines through the use of standard character-based messages: the first messages across the Atlantic being around ??10 words per minute???: but this was a shared resource so once this message was completed, the next 'user' (I.e. Customer) message was then pushed down the line. Over time, we moved to the stage were we laid cables to individual homes which were used for voice calls (but dedicated to that sole purpose), whereas the Internet has brought us full circle the point of pushing characters (at much higher speeds!!) - in many ways, this was the earliest 'Internet' and we started out with putting telecoms comes over the network, but when we went mobile to trying to put the Internet over telecoms and have now gone back to the path of telecoms back over the Internet. (Other items have changed, or are changing too, with the original 'smart pieces' of these cables, the human operators, being at each end with just a dumb cable in between and we're now reverting not to a similar setup). 

Through the book, our visionary deals with other insightful pieces with the arrival of the first steamships. By luck, the pinnacle of sailboats - now redundant - became available. I'll leave the epic stories of attempts to lay the cable to those who read the book! 

Well worth a read for anyone interested in a bit of history of Telecoms. 

For me, it started with a link to a book, “A Thread across the Ocean”. Here, the author, XYZ, does a magnificent job of introducing and talking through history of the first telegraph cable between the USA and Ireland. I picked this book up for its historical interest on the topic of the telegraph cable and its implications: that the transfer of knowledge from Europe to the USA went from taking 10 WEEKS to be being measured in minutes. In doing so, an epic tale of figuring out how to create and drop a cable across the Atlantic Ocean came to being and the astounding vision of Cyrus Wright is shown in believing that it was possible, but also pulling together the correct skillsets, financiers and tools to create such a cable. The impact of this cable – which failed within a few minutes on the first occasion, requiring a completely new cable to be relaid – cannot be understated, removing countless barriers to the development of world markets and the breakneck development of the nascent American economy.

However, it was another industry that was further along its disruption trail that I couldn’t shake from my interests when reading the book: that of the shipping industry. Whereas now, the telephony industry is about to disappear to be replaced by the Internet/digital industry (choose your name of preference), the same had occurred with boats with the transition from sail to steam-power, enabling a revolution in capabilities and opportunities. In the case of the first telegraph cable, luck was to have it that the ‘Great Eastern’ was to join the story. I’ve talked about it elsewhere, but in short, a hybrid of sail and steam power, built in the middle of the transition, it turned out to be the perfect vessel for laying a telegraph cable.

In ‘Men, machines and modern times’, the author XYZ talks through various historical examples of transitions and its impact on human society. One such story is the Wampoang, further along the transition to steam: in this case a completely fresh design built to the sole considerations of steam: capable of much higher speeds for longer distances, it was 40 years ahead of all other designs in the end!

The book is an interesting one, written in 1966 that leads to numerous interesting ideas. Firstly, I’m reading the 50th anniversary edition which kindly highlights just what a different era it is now – if you were to read only this book, you would imagine men were the only people on the planet….

…This is, I believe, a permanent civilizational shift. It is perhaps the most important thing that’s happened in my lifetime, a consequence of the internet that’s maybe even more important than the internet….”

In many ways, Marc Andreeson can take a lot of credit for much of what has occurred in the past thirty years. Creator of the first web browser, Mosaic (the basis for most modern web browsers), co-founder of venture capital company a16z (early investors in game-changers such as Airbnb), and an early board member of Facebook (with a vision that largely aligns with Zuckerberg’s). He’s also pushed out the seminal article ‘why software is eating the world’ (written in August 2011):

Six decades into the computer revolution, four decades since the invention of the microprocessor, and two decades into the rise of the modern Internet, all of the technology required to transform industries through software finally works and can be widely delivered at global scale

From ‘Technology Saves the World’, by Marc Andreesson.

“The most positively shocking development was that virtually all knowledge work in the economy simply kept going. Of course, companies were forced to shut down physical production facilities such as car factories, and frontline workers bore the brunt of in person exposure to COVID throughout the pandemic. But consider this: Not a single significant company engaged in service provision — whether banking, insurance, communications, media, healthcare, you name it — had any downtime at all. Every knowledge worker went home, fired up their laptops, jumped on Slack and Zoom and Gmail and Github, and kept on going. I must have talked to a hundred CEOs through that initial period, and they were uniformly shocked at how well remote work worked, right from the start….

….What we have learned — what we were forced to learn — during the COVID lockdowns has permanently shattered these assumptions. It turns out many of the best jobs really can be performed from anywhere, through screens and the internet. It turns out people really can live in a smaller city or a small town or in rural nowhere and still be just as productive as if they lived in a tiny one-room walk-up in a big city. It turns out companies really are capable of organizing and sustaining remote work even — perhaps especially — in the most sophisticated and complex fields….

…This is, I believe, a permanent civilizational shift. It is perhaps the most important thing that’s happened in my lifetime, a consequence of the internet that’s maybe even more important than the internet. Permanently divorcing physical location from economic opportunity gives us a real shot at radically expanding the number of good jobs in the world while also dramatically improving quality of life for millions, or billions, of people. We may, at long last, shatter the geographic lottery, opening up opportunity to countless people who weren’t lucky enough to be born in the right place. And people are leaping at the opportunities this shift is already creating, moving both homes and jobs at furious rates.