Bitcoin Tech Talk #394
Interesting Stuff
No Tech Is Inevitable - The article is about the Apple Vision Pro, but the bigger point that it’s making about how tech companies and media try to make something sound inevitable is the real nugget in the story. Essentially the Vision Pro got a lot of hype because of the reputation of Apple, but it’s turned out to be a big dud in the market and ultimately, it’s the consumers that determine the success of a product. In other words, markets win over hype. Every. Single. Time.
Nobody Knows How to Hang Out - This article is not your normal modern lament about cell phones and social media, it’s a more positive article about the art of hanging out and how it’s becoming lost. It’s written in a left-leaning mag, so there are the usual lefty tropes, but the sense I got from the article is that there really is something being lost. Much like how most people don’t really know how to have a long phone conversation anymore, the digital life is creeping into our relationships at such a rate that most people don’t know how to have a good time together.
Nobody Reads Books - For someone like me, who’s both an author and big reader, this is a depressing read. The trends in publishing are terrible. 90% of books sell less than 2000 copies in their lifetime. 50% sell less than 12. Big advances mostly go to celebrities, and even on those, the publishing houses often lose money. It’s really a few big hits that they rely on to make any money at all. All these trends are ultimately because there’s just fewer people that read books and that’s because far more people are entertained through video and podcasts. Sadly, I don’t think this is a trend that’ll get any better as AI makes production of these latter far easier.
Public Education vs Family - The article starts off with a challenge of the conventional wisdom that education is the key to lifting the poor out of poverty. As the article points out, the actual thing that correlates strongest with lifting the poor out of poverty is growing up in a household with a father. It’s an intact family that creates success, not 8 hours a day of being lectured at for 13+ years. In a sense, public education is a debased form of family and it’s produced some terrible results.
What I'm up to
Reason Interview - This is an older interview since no new ones got released this week, but it’s a good one with Reason Magazine. I talked about education, Christianity and a whole bunch of other things and relating them to Bitcoin. This is one of those interviews where I got to show how the free market really does improve things on stuff like education where we take the default way to be the right way.
AudioBook and eBook - You can now get my latest book, Fiat Ruins Everything on both audio and e-devices using Bitcoin! The Bitcoin Magazine store has upgraded their e-commerce and is selling these books to people around the world and if you’re interested in a circular economy, this is the place to use it.
Bitcoin Seoul - This conference is only 4 weeks away and it should be a banger! Lots of people like Saifedean coming to the conference and it will be one of the few Bitcoin-only conferences in Asia this year.
Nostr Note of the Week
What I’m Promoting
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