Saturday, December 04,2021
Hey folks! I’m off to a short trip to Jaipur followed by Ranthambore with a few of my friends. Train journeys, and especially when you are traveling alone, are always weirdly funny. The old uncle sitting besides you, probably in his 70’s isn’t happy with the way government is handling the pandemic. He says had he been in his 20’s or 30’s he would have revolutionized the country with his *not so practical* ideas. Two young lads, who too appear to be on a trip with all the backpacks, are discussing why Virat is not performing well at the international stage. According to him there's some problem with his front foot defence. Virat if you are reading this, please take note of it and work on your front foot defence. The team needs a solid century from you. A well suited man, dressed as if he's coming from a meeting or going to one, is discussing with his wife about their investment decisions. They wonder why their money is not compounding. To which the wife replies - ‘#Bitcoin liya kya?’ (Not a financial advise). And here I am observing everyone and penning it down. Anyways, next Saturday’s blog is going to about my trip, stay tuned for some wonderful stories about the trip.
Jack Dorsey, who stepped down as Twitter’s CEO, is no doubt one of the tech mogul of all times. The thing that differentiates him, and which I like most about him is that unlike other CEOs he is quite and reserved in all the interviews he has given but yet thought provoking. I recently heard him speaking to Joe Rogan in the Joe Rogan Experience and the way he articulated his answers advocates how clever and smart he is as a person. He has always been the ‘idea’ guy. Soon after the launch of Twitter in 2006, Dorsey worked on another company to democratize mobile payments, Square, which got renamed to Block the day after Dorsey resigned. His trademark look of a long beard and a nose ring capitalizes on his visionary status and cool attitude. By now you might have already guessed that I have a male crush on Jack Dorsey because I believe he is the One. Just kidding….. But yeah he is an ideal CEO for me.
Jack has always been vocal about his interest in cryptocurrency and how it could change the global financial system for a good cause.
“For me bitcoin changes everything.”
~ Jack Dorsey
The last year for Twitter and the CEO was full of twists and turns - Containing the spread of misinformation about the pandemic, multiple testimonies in the court, the election fiasco and eventually banning the last President of United States, Donald Trump. All of this involved a lot of criticism. Constructive criticism is good but the problem is that rolling out new products, updates, and rules is a logistical challenge, and users are cranky and resistant to change. The successes of Web 2.0—the social internet—are no longer playgrounds of possibility; they’re not the future. That’s why many venture capitalists, programmers, and Silicon Valley CEOs such as Dorsey are now eyeing Web3.
To put it in simple terms, Web3 refers to a third generation of the internet where online services and platforms have been transitioned to a model based on blockchains and cryptographic tokens. In theory, that means they are decentralized, and anyone who owns tokens has some amount of ownership or voting control over them. This model of the web represents a financialized vision of the internet, backed heavily by investors and speculative currencies. It is also the kind of chaotic space to which developers and creatives instinctively flock. Blockchain-based projects are sometimes confusing. They can have barriers to entry (like requiring a crypto wallet), and they seem to generate their own, varied countercultures. There is an immense amount of money to be made. It’s exciting—a new playground.
“What I’m drawn to the most about it is the ethos, is what it represents, the conditions that created it, which are so rare and so special and so precious. I don’t think there’s anything more important in my lifetime to work on, and I don’t think there’s anything more enabling for people around the world.”
~ Jack Dorsey at the Miami conference
In the respect, Jack’s resignation as a CEO of twitter and embrace of crypto resembles the rebrand of Facebook to Meta by Mark Zuckerberg. Big Tech’s founders have jettisoned the escape pod from their bloated, boring second incarnations of the internet and set off for a new frontier.
For this blog, I’ll leave you with a very beautiful and informative video on how a bicycle works by Veritasium. We all have been riding bicycles since childhood but I bet no one knows how we turn a bicycle with so much precision as it is explained in the video.
Let me know how you find it.
See you next Saturday. I hope you have a beautiful weekend.