12 ms·

What Happened to the Future?

182 points by clay 15y ago

protomyth 15y ago
What happened to the future: Advertising as a primary revenue source and Financial Markets trying to be a place unto themselves with rules and customs that actually don't make much long term sence. In the US, throw in a generation that really didn't seem to care to make a better place for the next generation and you got a lot of problems. The now killed the later.
rbanffy 15y ago
For now, I'd settle for an ordinary, standard scroll bar...
moultano 15y ago
One important aspect of these problems is that they aren't going to be solved by people who know only how to code. These are opportunities for mechanical engineers, biologists, statisticians, materials scientists, physicists ... For many of them the research would have to be so speculative that it would be hard to imagine them occurring outside of an academic research lab. For a startup to tackle one of these, the bones of the technology would have to already be there.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
chailatte 15y ago
A world that is aging, where half the young are unemployed and the old demands to be paid to live to 98 A world lead by visionless, spineless leaders, employed by multinationals to kill anything that threatens their existence A world that is feminized, where men are taught to grovel for a women's affection, and to earn their attention with gucci and prada, paid by their mcjob A world ruled by bankers, where the mindless middle class are the sharecroppers. Bankers don't dream about flying cars. They dream about the rent paid next month. A world brainwashed by advertising, training its citizens to love sequels and brands. Transformers 15. Call of duty 14. Starbucks everyday. A world that no longer needs you, the passionate, explorative, imaginative, thinking you.
- ImprovedSilence 15y ago
  The webpage doesnt show on my mobile, but i got an inda where its goingfrom that first post, but I think society as a whole has always been like this, but there is always those curious, oddball, weird, nerdy, or interested types who keep innovation alive and drag technology and society forward, kicking and screaming...
- dualogy 15y ago
  "Starbucks everyday." ... said the guy named chailatte :D "A world that no longer needs you, the passionate, explorative, imaginative, thinking you." AS IF any passionate, imaginative, thinking blob ever cared about how much "the world" (wth is that supposed to mean) needs her/him or not...
  - airlabam 15y ago
    It's one thing to be cynical, it's another thing to reflect that into a normative statement about how a broad group of talented people act. Awfully contentious, that. I suppose Martin Luther King did what he did for the sheer rush of it all, yes?
- Cushman 15y ago
  From the 1960s through the 1990s, venture capital was an excellent way to pursue these twin interests. From 1999 through the present, the industry has posted negative mean and median returns, with only a handful of funds having done very well. What happened? That's the first paragraph of the article. That is to say... What are you talking about?
- VladRussian 15y ago
  well, one of the way the situation may developed further is bifurcation of the human species into 2 species. One would continue into the ant colony style civilization and another is space bound. One of the natural dividers emerging now is "either one is an accessory to the computer(and all its consumer oriented entertainment) or the computer is an accessory(i.e. tool for further exploration and development) to the one", and that would become even more pronounced with further development of even more effective (ie. direct connection) human(brain) to machine interfaces.
speby 15y ago
PDF button for the article doesn't work and I couldn't find a link in the source or the JS. Annoying. Anyone stumble across the PDF version? Printing the page to PDF from the browser works to no avail either.
Cushman 15y ago
Since the PDF link doesn't work, and the article is annoying enough to read that people aren't, I'll just paste the first couple of paragraphs here to give you an idea what it's about. If this seems interesting, you can suffer through it. FOUNDERS FUND WHAT HAPPENED TO THE FUTURE? A.INTRODUCTION We invest in smart people solving difficult problems, often difficult scientific or engineering problems. Here’s why: The Problem We have two primary and related interests: 1. Finding ways to support technological development (technology is the fundamental driver of growth in the industrialized world). 2. Earning outstanding returns for our investors. From the 1960s through the 1990s, venture capital was an excellent way to pursue these twin interests. From 1999 through the present, the industry has posted negative mean and median returns, with only a handful of funds having done very well. What happened? VC’s Long Nightmare To understand why VC has done so poorly, it helps to approach the future through the lens of VC portfolios during the industry’s heyday, comparing past portfolios to portfolios as they exist today. In the 1960s, venture closely associated with the emerging semiconductor industry (Intel, e.g., was one of the first – and is still one of the greatest – VC investments). In the 1970s, computer hardware and software companies received funding; the 1980s brought the first waves of biotech, mobility, and networking companies; and the 1990s added the Internet in its various guises. Although success now makes these investments seem blandly sensible, even obvious, the industries and companies backed by venture were actually extraordinarily ambitious for their eras. Although all seemed at least possible, there was no guarantee that any of these technologies could be developed successfully or turned into highly profitable businesses. When H-P developed the pocket calculator in 1967, even H-P itself had serious doubts about the product’s commercial viability and only intervention by the founders saved the calculator. Later, when the heads of major computing corporations (IBM, DEC) openly questioned whether any individual would ever want or need a computer – or even that computers themselves would be smaller than a VW – investment in companies like Microsoft and Apple in the mid-1970s seemed fairly bold. In 1976, when Genentech launched, the field of recombinant DNA technology was less than five years old and no established player expected that insulin or human growth hormone could be cloned or commercially manufactured, much less by a start-up. But VCs backed all these enterprises, in the hope of profiting from a wildly more advanced future. And in exchange for that hope of profit, VC took genuine risks on technological development. In the late 1990s, venture portfolios began to reflect a different sort of future. Some firms still supported transformational technologies (e.g., search, mobility), but venture investing shifted away from funding transformational companies and toward companies that solved incremental problems or even fake problems (e.g., having Kozmo.com messenger Kit-Kats to the office). This model worked for a brief period, thanks to an enormous stock market bubble. Indeed, it was even economically rational for VCs to fund these ultimately worthless companies because they produced extraordinary returns – in fact, the best returns in the industry’s history. And there have been subsequent bubbles – acquisition bubbles, the secondary market, etc. – which have continued to generate excellent returns for VCs lucky enough to tap into them. But these bubbles are narrower and the general market more demanding, so VCs who continue the practices of the late 1990s (a surprising number) tend to produce very weak returns. Along the way, VC has ceased to be the funder of the future, and instead has become a funder of features, widgets, irrelevances. In large part, it also ceased making money, as the bottom half of venture produced flat to negative return for the past decade. [2] We believe that the shift away from backing transformational technologies and toward more cynical, incrementalist investments broke venture capital. Excusing venture’s nightmare decade as a product of adverse economic conditions ignores the industry’s long history of strong, acyclical returns for its first forty years, as well as the consistently strong performance of the top 20% of the industry. What venture backed changed and that is why returns changed as well. Not Everything With A Plug Is Technology ... et cetera
thinkcomp 15y ago
It's a good essay. The only problem is that it's Peter Thiel behind it. The problem isn't just that "we got 140 characters." The problem is that Peter Thiel asked for it by investing in and therefore promulgating Mark Zuckerberg's vision of ubiquitous irrelevance. I think he's right that VC is destroying itself by investing in what I have often referred to as trivial nonsense, but he and his firm are part of the problem, not the solution. Just look at the portfolio companies: Winster? Quid? Slide? Path? GoWalla? And of course, Facebook? None of these companies improve my life or the lives of anyone I care about. Founders Fund has 22 consumer internet companies in its portfolio and one or two in the other categories listed on the web site. Furthermore Thiel has stated that he wouldn't bother doing PayPal again if he knew what he knows about the payments industry today. This is of course the space that I'm working in. Bold words, Peter. If only there were more VCs willing to run and hide. Frankly I'm sick of venture capital firms writing self-serving slogans, or in this case, entire essays. Actions speak louder than words. I'm doing serious work and my company has been rejected by sixty (that's six-zero) VC firms in the past five years. It's going to take more than a manifesto to convince me that any investor is serious about the future.
- sahillavingia 15y ago
  I actually disagree. Facebook has improved my life by a ton.
  - rokhayakebe 15y ago
    How?
    - btcoal 15y ago
      Facebook has improved my life as well. I went to high school in one city, college in one 1,000 miles away. Have since worked in cities all over the world. I don't know how I would manage to keep even a tenuous grasp on all the connections I have with people in these different places without Facebook. Admittedly, these are not and never will be deep social bonds I am maintaing, but that is hardly the point. There is value in maintaining a large web of shallow social connections. Facebook helps me do this. Moreover, whether or not Facebook has improved the life of me or anyone I care about is irrelevant to an objective evaluation of the site's value. I could make the same case for anti-malaria drugs.
chrismealy 15y ago
Enough with the flying cars! That was never a good idea.
- william42 15y ago
  Agreed. I'm not a big fan of Twitter, but flying cars don't exist for a reason. Now self-driving cars, those are interesting. Guess who's working on them? Google.
  - DannoHung 15y ago
    Self-flying cars?
  - hnbla 15y ago
    Self driving cars? Yawn. Try taking a cab ;) Flying cars are way more interesting.
- Detrus 15y ago
  What about sky cities like the Ultima tower?
- anukulrm 15y ago
  It seemed to work just fine in the fifth element!
- seats 15y ago
  Actually flying cars exist now and have been approved for use by all requisite governmental agencies. http://www.terrafugia.com/ http://www.terrafugia.com/
BIackSwan 15y ago
The most powerful minds are the ones that can be changed. I should add ...can be changed after much deliberation.
evmar 15y ago
It's clear whoever put this together put a lot of effort into making the page fancy and there are some nice effects there, but it ultimately harms the message. Here is some concrete feedback: - WebKit lets you make custom scrollbars if that's important to you: http://www.webkit.org/blog/363/styling-scrollbars/ http://www.webkit.org/blog/363/styling-scrollbars/ . Using a real scrollbar means that shortcuts I'm familiar with (e.g. shift-space to page up -- wow, I had no idea how frequently I used this until this page broke it) won't break. - Whitespace is nice, but the double-spaced-feeling line-height combined with the "back to founders fund" heading at the top combine to make it feel uncomfortably cramped vertically -- not enough information density per page. - Similarly, the lines are so wide they are uncomfortable to read. (I actually use a user stylesheet that limits lines to 50em, which makes many sites including HN more readable.) I'm sorry I don't have any feedback on the content, I was too distracted to start reading it yet.
- argv_empty 15y ago
  And then there's the fact that it requires javascript to just display some simple text.
pedalpete 15y ago
I had heard of Founder Fund before, but I can't say I had any strong conviction as to what made them a special VC, or if they were. Their manifesto makes me question if my current project is thinking big enough (I think it is). I think the problem entrepreneurs who would apply to Founders Fund might have is how to present their idea as being big and bold. Often the big and bold are not understood in common terms, so we dumb them down to something that is achievable in the short term, and seems realistic, while having a long-term goal which only makes sense if the shorter term goals can be accomplished. Facebook would be a perfect example here. They couldn't be discussed as 'world changing' in the early days as they were just another social network. Nothing seemed insurmountable, nothing seemed challenging, even the idea of this 'social graph' probably wouldn't have made much sense until tens of millions of people were using it.
h34t 15y ago
Ways FF should improve the reading experience: - Support normal scroll behaviour (swiping my trackpad scrolls but only very slowly; I can't press spacebar to page down; clicking underneath the scroller should advance a single page, not jump ahead to another part of the document) - Show diagrams by default (no reason to require a click) - Add a place for comments - Narrower line length
cleaver 15y ago
its;dr (interface too shitty; didn't read)
- btcoal 15y ago
  Well then you may have done yourself a disservice because: a. the quality of presentation of content is independent of the quality of the information of content; and b. text that is harder to read may be easier to remember: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-11573666 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-11573666
- GeorgeTirebiter 15y ago
  The interface is most likely different from what you are used to, yes?
natch 15y ago
What happened to HTML? If this were formatted with web standards, I could resize the fonts, scroll with my browser's built-in preferred scrolling mechanisms that aren't chunky, laggy, and painful, and I could actually read it. I'm not the only one to comment on this, but apparently whoever did this page is dense enough about web standards that the point needs to be repeated. How do you run a VC and not get this? My opinion of Founders Fund has gone down.
- kakuri 15y ago
  Click link, see blank page, unblock Flash applet, struggle through reading a single paragraph with eye-gougingly atrocious font and mouse-crushingly stupid scroll functionality... then my head simply explodes from the irony of what I am experiencing and what I am reading. Close window.
  - GeorgeTirebiter 15y ago
    Copy/Paste into Emacs. M-x Fill-Region (which breaks lines) Enjoyably read article.
- athom 15y ago
  No kidding! The best part is, it's all so unnecessary! When I saw the blank page, I decided to have a peek at the source, an lo and behold, there's the essay! Copy it to a text editor, turn on dynamic word wrap, and... enjoy?
  - scottkduncan 15y ago
    That's what I did too. Is there a browser this reads well in? Founders Fund should briefly forget about solving more important problems and just stop creating new usability ones.
  - dredmorbius 15y ago
    Firefox: view -> style -> No style Disabling CSS dumps the unstructured page. You can also pay it a visit in a console-mode browser. I'm (sadly) finding this to be increasingly necessary to view web pages (as an aggressive user of NoScript).
VladRussian 15y ago
the human race will get the flying car and the fusion when it is ready for it ( technologically these innovations, at the level of successful prototypes have existed for last 50 years). What would we do with such technology if it was in widespread use today? Flying car - sprawl development even further. Fusion - com'n, are we ready for a wide availability of a high flux high energy neutron generating devices? We are still can't control ourselves when it comes to the dynamite and the similar levels of energy, and it becomes hysterical paroxysm when the fission levels of energy come into play. The primitive steam based engine was discovered by ancient Greeks and technologically they could improve upon it further. Their slave based society wasn't ready for it. Like Greeks and steam power, today we have the primitive access to space - and surprise!, instead of actively working upon improving it, pouring all our resources into it, we're still discussing whether it has economical reasons, and like in case of Greeks, we can't find much of such economical reasons for it.
- fractallyte 15y ago
  'If human thought is a growth, like all other growths, its logic is without foundation of its own, and is only the adjusting constructiveness of all other growing things. A tree cannot find out, as it were, how to blossom, until comes blossom-time. A social growth cannot find out the use of steam engines, until comes steam-engine-time.' - Charles Fort, Lo!
david927 15y ago
When you're traveling at 60km/hr and going faster, it's thrilling. You imagine what will come next. When you're traveling at 260km/hr and going faster, it's horrifying. You think of how you can hold on. If you go to Disneyland's Tomorrowland you'll see that we ended dreaming about the future in the 60's and 70's. It was polished metal; a stone's throw from what we had, but within dreaming limits. Now we don't know where we're going, but we know we've never been there before. It makes no sense to dream about "today plus twenty years". It won't be that and we're aware now that it won't. The innovation will happen with or without us as individuals. And it will keep going, hurtling faster into an oblivion which we can only guess at.
- jamesbritt 15y ago
  TV's Max Headroom intro was prescient in that regard. "20 minutes into the future ..." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rM9BOkcG9M0&feature=player_embedded#at=67 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rM9BOkcG9M0&feature=playe...
nick_urban 15y ago
Thank you for this essay. I understand that it's not, as some have already pointed out, particularly disinterested, but it set me to thinking, which is enough for me. This essay calls for a return to hard problems. The "problem" with hard problems isn't that they're hard. That's actually exactly what we need about them. It the unyielding character of hard problems which makes them worth dedicating ourselves to. The greatest difficulty is not solving the problem (which isn't even strictly necessary to benefit from the investigation), but rather, in giving ourselves to the problem in the first place. How can we choose a problem when there are so many possibilities and we have so little foresight? If we lived in a vacuum, the choice would be impossible or arbitrary. Luckily, our lives are not vacuums. The "real problems" (the things that matter to us, which come into our lives whether we like it or not, and generate actual experiences of significance) provide a point of departure. Real problems aren't technological in nature, but that doesn't mean they don't lead the way towards challenging technical projects. The space race didn't start as an engineering problem. It was the result of the longing of a people, of their hope and anxiety for the future. But as a result of that longing, of that fear and excitement, a lot of smart people dedicated themselves to hard technical problems and produced a huge array of breakthroughs. The trick, then, is to remain attentive to the problems around us, rather than giving into the temptation to ignore or adapt to them. In order to refocus ourselves on the hard problems, it helps to acknowledge that they are what we want -- that we aren't really satisfied with a day's salary and that we want to push forward towards a life's work. Wouldn't everyone prefer to work on something substantial, on a 'hard problem' for the sake of a 'real problem'? I think so, but we often don't know where to start. Can technology help us get started? I don't think "a Facebook" or "a Wikipedia" for hard problems is the answer, although either might help. In order to maintain the kind of excitement and reciprocal encouragement necessary to sustain a culture of hard-problem-solving, you need to put smart people who respect each other into the same physical space. You need to make hard- and real-problem-solving a lifestyle in order to overcome the creeping inertia of the trivial. This is why universities retain their relevance. They're a concentrated mix of intelligence, experience, and youthful idealism. They contain lots of people who think about "hard problems" (science, engineering) and "real problems" (philosophy, history, social thought). Universities have their own issues, of course. They suffer from institutional pressures that have more in common with the banalities of commerce and politics than with any dedicated enthusiasm. Historically they have been very successful, but it may be that the next wave of innovation will come from a less traditional source, perhaps from the real-life communities that sprout up around virtual groups like this one.
cbr 15y ago
over the past thirty years, there have been no radical advances in transportation technology Containerization.
- dredmorbius 15y ago
  That actually dates to the 1950s and is based on concepts up to a century older than that. Break-bulk has been recognized as a bottleneck in freight transport for ages. It's evolved and become dominant with standardization of container sizes and fittings (by 1970) and with the deregulation of the US shipping industry and introduction of double-stack rail transports (both in 1984). I suspect more significant recent advancements have been in inventory and logistics management (though bar-coding of rail cars was already happening in the 1980s) and overnight air and other rapid freight. Not quite as visible as containers, but vital to keeping the boats, trains, and trucks moving, and with JIT delivery probably accounts for much of the success of big box stores, and now Internet-based retail and shipping.
jfoutz 15y ago
Is this a joke? I have a 3d printer in my basement. Poor little VC, go play with your social networks. The grownups a busy making the future.
- minikomi 15y ago
  Mid-portfolio crisis, perhaps?
zb 15y ago
> Not all technology is created equal: there is a difference between Pong and the Concorde Yes, Pong was simply a clever design making use of existing technology that made shirtloads of money for a bunch of people and spawned entire industries. Whereas Concorde - a "real technological development" - was a giant money pit fed from government slush funds for decades, punctuated only by occasional lethal consequences for its passengers and bystanders. (Not to mention that it was a technological cul-de-sac.) Remind me, which one was it they want to be investing in? Because it sure sounds like they're saying Concorde. Am I misinterpreting?
- temphn 15y ago
  Technological cul de sac and subsidized investment, yes. But looks like the Air France Concorde crash was due to debris on the runway rather than the plane itself. Or were you thinking of something else? https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Air_France_Flight_4590 https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Air_France_Fl... A Continental Airlines DC-10 departing for Newark, New Jersey, lost a titanium alloy strip, 435 millimetres (17.1 in) long and about 29 millimetres (1.1 in) to 34 millimetres (1.3 in) wide, during takeoff from the same runway. During the Concorde's subsequent take-off run, this piece of debris, still lying on the runway, cut a tyre causing rupture and tyre debris to be hurled by centrifugal force. A large chunk of this debris (4.5 kilograms or 9.9 pounds) struck the underside of the aircraft's wing structure at an estimated speed of 500 kilometres per hour (310 mph). Although it did not directly puncture any of the fuel tanks, it sent out a pressure shockwave that eventually ruptured the number five fuel tank at the weakest point, just above the landing gear.
  - jberryman 15y ago
    > But looks like the Air France Concorde crash was due to debris on the runway rather than the plane itself. Or were you thinking of something else? I know nothing about the Concorde, etc. but that the crash was triggered by debris does not really refute that it was a poorly designed or dangerous aircraft, as that should be a design consideration of any aircraft (I assume).
    - 15y ago
drm237 15y ago
Someone forgot to set their Google Analytics ID. Requirement one to inventing the future: be able to follow instructions.
fuzzythinker 15y ago
Is the use of the "presentation enhancer" to deter people from actually reading it? Because that's it did to me. The font is illegible, scrolling must be done via the bar (otherwise it crawls at ~1px/sec), and turns my cpu fan way up. Is it really still "cool" to misuse technology nowadays?
njharman 15y ago
The answer is largely contained within their goal #2.
robryan 15y ago
Is their really much a technical problem preventing flying cars? I think it's similar to space in that it isn't overly energy efficient as I'd assume withut completely redesigning our cities you would need vertical takeoff. Then there is a lot of safety considerations, I think self driving cars would need to be accepted well before anything could happen with flying cars.
seats 15y ago
Flying cars do exist and can be bought (pre-order) today. http://www.terrafugia.com/ http://www.terrafugia.com/ Unrelated, except to the sub-title. I also posted deeper in the comments, but I think it's a pretty cool project and thought it's worth trying to repost in a more visible spot. The price tag is a few 100k and you only need the lowest level pilot's license to fly it.
mitultiwari 15y ago
Nicely written essay. I would say future is hard to predict. People in 1960s predicted about space travel but did not predict mobile devices like iphones that have so much compute power with so many apps with location, touch, social, communication features. 140 characters may not have great technology but can be attributed to bring social revolution in so many places. Ultimately, need is mother of most of innovations. Need leads to demand, which leads to building new solutions.
jayzee 15y ago
People knock Webvan around but the founder (Mick Mountz), 10 years after that debacle, founded http://www.kivasystems.com/ http://www.kivasystems.com/ where instead of conveyor belts (Webvan) they use robots for managing a warehouse. Seriously cool robotics. Check out the videos on their site. Kiva Systems has gone from strength to strength and is now used by Zappos, Wallgreens and others (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiva_Systems http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiva_Systems)

182 points by clay 15y ago

What happened to the future: Advertising as a primary revenue source and Financial Markets trying to be a place unto themselves with rules and customs that actually don't make much long term sence. In the US, throw in a generation that really didn't seem to care to make a better place for the next generation and you got a lot of problems. The now killed the later.

rbanffy 15y ago

For now, I'd settle for an ordinary, standard scroll bar...

moultano 15y ago

One important aspect of these problems is that they aren't going to be solved by people who know only how to code. These are opportunities for mechanical engineers, biologists, statisticians, materials scientists, physicists ... For many of them the research would have to be so speculative that it would be hard to imagine them occurring outside of an academic research lab. For a startup to tackle one of these, the bones of the technology would have to already be there.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

chailatte 15y ago

A world that is aging, where half the young are unemployed and the old demands to be paid to live to 98 A world lead by visionless, spineless leaders, employed by multinationals to kill anything that threatens their existence A world that is feminized, where men are taught to grovel for a women's affection, and to earn their attention with gucci and prada, paid by their mcjob A world ruled by bankers, where the mindless middle class are the sharecroppers. Bankers don't dream about flying cars. They dream about the rent paid next month. A world brainwashed by advertising, training its citizens to love sequels and brands. Transformers 15. Call of duty 14. Starbucks everyday. A world that no longer needs you, the passionate, explorative, imaginative, thinking you.

ImprovedSilence 15y ago
The webpage doesnt show on my mobile, but i got an inda where its goingfrom that first post, but I think society as a whole has always been like this, but there is always those curious, oddball, weird, nerdy, or interested types who keep innovation alive and drag technology and society forward, kicking and screaming...
dualogy 15y ago
"Starbucks everyday." ... said the guy named chailatte :D "A world that no longer needs you, the passionate, explorative, imaginative, thinking you." AS IF any passionate, imaginative, thinking blob ever cared about how much "the world" (wth is that supposed to mean) needs her/him or not...
- airlabam 15y ago
  It's one thing to be cynical, it's another thing to reflect that into a normative statement about how a broad group of talented people act. Awfully contentious, that. I suppose Martin Luther King did what he did for the sheer rush of it all, yes?
Cushman 15y ago
From the 1960s through the 1990s, venture capital was an excellent way to pursue these twin interests. From 1999 through the present, the industry has posted negative mean and median returns, with only a handful of funds having done very well. What happened? That's the first paragraph of the article. That is to say... What are you talking about?
VladRussian 15y ago
well, one of the way the situation may developed further is bifurcation of the human species into 2 species. One would continue into the ant colony style civilization and another is space bound. One of the natural dividers emerging now is "either one is an accessory to the computer(and all its consumer oriented entertainment) or the computer is an accessory(i.e. tool for further exploration and development) to the one", and that would become even more pronounced with further development of even more effective (ie. direct connection) human(brain) to machine interfaces.

speby 15y ago

PDF button for the article doesn't work and I couldn't find a link in the source or the JS. Annoying. Anyone stumble across the PDF version? Printing the page to PDF from the browser works to no avail either.

Cushman 15y ago

Since the PDF link doesn't work, and the article is annoying enough to read that people aren't, I'll just paste the first couple of paragraphs here to give you an idea what it's about. If this seems interesting, you can suffer through it. FOUNDERS FUND WHAT HAPPENED TO THE FUTURE? A.INTRODUCTION We invest in smart people solving difficult problems, often difficult scientific or engineering problems. Here’s why: The Problem We have two primary and related interests: 1. Finding ways to support technological development (technology is the fundamental driver of growth in the industrialized world). 2. Earning outstanding returns for our investors. From the 1960s through the 1990s, venture capital was an excellent way to pursue these twin interests. From 1999 through the present, the industry has posted negative mean and median returns, with only a handful of funds having done very well. What happened? VC’s Long Nightmare To understand why VC has done so poorly, it helps to approach the future through the lens of VC portfolios during the industry’s heyday, comparing past portfolios to portfolios as they exist today. In the 1960s, venture closely associated with the emerging semiconductor industry (Intel, e.g., was one of the first – and is still one of the greatest – VC investments). In the 1970s, computer hardware and software companies received funding; the 1980s brought the first waves of biotech, mobility, and networking companies; and the 1990s added the Internet in its various guises. Although success now makes these investments seem blandly sensible, even obvious, the industries and companies backed by venture were actually extraordinarily ambitious for their eras. Although all seemed at least possible, there was no guarantee that any of these technologies could be developed successfully or turned into highly profitable businesses. When H-P developed the pocket calculator in 1967, even H-P itself had serious doubts about the product’s commercial viability and only intervention by the founders saved the calculator. Later, when the heads of major computing corporations (IBM, DEC) openly questioned whether any individual would ever want or need a computer – or even that computers themselves would be smaller than a VW – investment in companies like Microsoft and Apple in the mid-1970s seemed fairly bold. In 1976, when Genentech launched, the field of recombinant DNA technology was less than five years old and no established player expected that insulin or human growth hormone could be cloned or commercially manufactured, much less by a start-up. But VCs backed all these enterprises, in the hope of profiting from a wildly more advanced future. And in exchange for that hope of profit, VC took genuine risks on technological development. In the late 1990s, venture portfolios began to reflect a different sort of future. Some firms still supported transformational technologies (e.g., search, mobility), but venture investing shifted away from funding transformational companies and toward companies that solved incremental problems or even fake problems (e.g., having Kozmo.com messenger Kit-Kats to the office). This model worked for a brief period, thanks to an enormous stock market bubble. Indeed, it was even economically rational for VCs to fund these ultimately worthless companies because they produced extraordinary returns – in fact, the best returns in the industry’s history. And there have been subsequent bubbles – acquisition bubbles, the secondary market, etc. – which have continued to generate excellent returns for VCs lucky enough to tap into them. But these bubbles are narrower and the general market more demanding, so VCs who continue the practices of the late 1990s (a surprising number) tend to produce very weak returns. Along the way, VC has ceased to be the funder of the future, and instead has become a funder of features, widgets, irrelevances. In large part, it also ceased making money, as the bottom half of venture produced flat to negative return for the past decade. [2] We believe that the shift away from backing transformational technologies and toward more cynical, incrementalist investments broke venture capital. Excusing venture’s nightmare decade as a product of adverse economic conditions ignores the industry’s long history of strong, acyclical returns for its first forty years, as well as the consistently strong performance of the top 20% of the industry. What venture backed changed and that is why returns changed as well. Not Everything With A Plug Is Technology ... et cetera

thinkcomp 15y ago

It's a good essay. The only problem is that it's Peter Thiel behind it. The problem isn't just that "we got 140 characters." The problem is that Peter Thiel asked for it by investing in and therefore promulgating Mark Zuckerberg's vision of ubiquitous irrelevance. I think he's right that VC is destroying itself by investing in what I have often referred to as trivial nonsense, but he and his firm are part of the problem, not the solution. Just look at the portfolio companies: Winster? Quid? Slide? Path? GoWalla? And of course, Facebook? None of these companies improve my life or the lives of anyone I care about. Founders Fund has 22 consumer internet companies in its portfolio and one or two in the other categories listed on the web site. Furthermore Thiel has stated that he wouldn't bother doing PayPal again if he knew what he knows about the payments industry today. This is of course the space that I'm working in. Bold words, Peter. If only there were more VCs willing to run and hide. Frankly I'm sick of venture capital firms writing self-serving slogans, or in this case, entire essays. Actions speak louder than words. I'm doing serious work and my company has been rejected by sixty (that's six-zero) VC firms in the past five years. It's going to take more than a manifesto to convince me that any investor is serious about the future.

sahillavingia 15y ago
I actually disagree. Facebook has improved my life by a ton.
- rokhayakebe 15y ago
  How?
  - btcoal 15y ago
    Facebook has improved my life as well. I went to high school in one city, college in one 1,000 miles away. Have since worked in cities all over the world. I don't know how I would manage to keep even a tenuous grasp on all the connections I have with people in these different places without Facebook. Admittedly, these are not and never will be deep social bonds I am maintaing, but that is hardly the point. There is value in maintaining a large web of shallow social connections. Facebook helps me do this. Moreover, whether or not Facebook has improved the life of me or anyone I care about is irrelevant to an objective evaluation of the site's value. I could make the same case for anti-malaria drugs.

chrismealy 15y ago

Enough with the flying cars! That was never a good idea.

william42 15y ago
Agreed. I'm not a big fan of Twitter, but flying cars don't exist for a reason. Now self-driving cars, those are interesting. Guess who's working on them? Google.
- DannoHung 15y ago
  Self-flying cars?
- hnbla 15y ago
  Self driving cars? Yawn. Try taking a cab ;) Flying cars are way more interesting.
Detrus 15y ago
What about sky cities like the Ultima tower?
anukulrm 15y ago
It seemed to work just fine in the fifth element!
seats 15y ago
Actually flying cars exist now and have been approved for use by all requisite governmental agencies. http://www.terrafugia.com/ http://www.terrafugia.com/

BIackSwan 15y ago

The most powerful minds are the ones that can be changed. I should add ...can be changed after much deliberation.

evmar 15y ago

It's clear whoever put this together put a lot of effort into making the page fancy and there are some nice effects there, but it ultimately harms the message. Here is some concrete feedback: - WebKit lets you make custom scrollbars if that's important to you: http://www.webkit.org/blog/363/styling-scrollbars/ http://www.webkit.org/blog/363/styling-scrollbars/ . Using a real scrollbar means that shortcuts I'm familiar with (e.g. shift-space to page up -- wow, I had no idea how frequently I used this until this page broke it) won't break. - Whitespace is nice, but the double-spaced-feeling line-height combined with the "back to founders fund" heading at the top combine to make it feel uncomfortably cramped vertically -- not enough information density per page. - Similarly, the lines are so wide they are uncomfortable to read. (I actually use a user stylesheet that limits lines to 50em, which makes many sites including HN more readable.) I'm sorry I don't have any feedback on the content, I was too distracted to start reading it yet.

argv_empty 15y ago
And then there's the fact that it requires javascript to just display some simple text.

pedalpete 15y ago

I had heard of Founder Fund before, but I can't say I had any strong conviction as to what made them a special VC, or if they were. Their manifesto makes me question if my current project is thinking big enough (I think it is). I think the problem entrepreneurs who would apply to Founders Fund might have is how to present their idea as being big and bold. Often the big and bold are not understood in common terms, so we dumb them down to something that is achievable in the short term, and seems realistic, while having a long-term goal which only makes sense if the shorter term goals can be accomplished. Facebook would be a perfect example here. They couldn't be discussed as 'world changing' in the early days as they were just another social network. Nothing seemed insurmountable, nothing seemed challenging, even the idea of this 'social graph' probably wouldn't have made much sense until tens of millions of people were using it.

h34t 15y ago

Ways FF should improve the reading experience: - Support normal scroll behaviour (swiping my trackpad scrolls but only very slowly; I can't press spacebar to page down; clicking underneath the scroller should advance a single page, not jump ahead to another part of the document) - Show diagrams by default (no reason to require a click) - Add a place for comments - Narrower line length

cleaver 15y ago

its;dr (interface too shitty; didn't read)

btcoal 15y ago
Well then you may have done yourself a disservice because: a. the quality of presentation of content is independent of the quality of the information of content; and b. text that is harder to read may be easier to remember: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-11573666 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-11573666
GeorgeTirebiter 15y ago
The interface is most likely different from what you are used to, yes?

natch 15y ago

What happened to HTML? If this were formatted with web standards, I could resize the fonts, scroll with my browser's built-in preferred scrolling mechanisms that aren't chunky, laggy, and painful, and I could actually read it. I'm not the only one to comment on this, but apparently whoever did this page is dense enough about web standards that the point needs to be repeated. How do you run a VC and not get this? My opinion of Founders Fund has gone down.

kakuri 15y ago
Click link, see blank page, unblock Flash applet, struggle through reading a single paragraph with eye-gougingly atrocious font and mouse-crushingly stupid scroll functionality... then my head simply explodes from the irony of what I am experiencing and what I am reading. Close window.
- GeorgeTirebiter 15y ago
  Copy/Paste into Emacs. M-x Fill-Region (which breaks lines) Enjoyably read article.
athom 15y ago
No kidding! The best part is, it's all so unnecessary! When I saw the blank page, I decided to have a peek at the source, an lo and behold, there's the essay! Copy it to a text editor, turn on dynamic word wrap, and... enjoy?
- scottkduncan 15y ago
  That's what I did too. Is there a browser this reads well in? Founders Fund should briefly forget about solving more important problems and just stop creating new usability ones.
- dredmorbius 15y ago
  Firefox: view -> style -> No style Disabling CSS dumps the unstructured page. You can also pay it a visit in a console-mode browser. I'm (sadly) finding this to be increasingly necessary to view web pages (as an aggressive user of NoScript).

VladRussian 15y ago

the human race will get the flying car and the fusion when it is ready for it ( technologically these innovations, at the level of successful prototypes have existed for last 50 years). What would we do with such technology if it was in widespread use today? Flying car - sprawl development even further. Fusion - com'n, are we ready for a wide availability of a high flux high energy neutron generating devices? We are still can't control ourselves when it comes to the dynamite and the similar levels of energy, and it becomes hysterical paroxysm when the fission levels of energy come into play. The primitive steam based engine was discovered by ancient Greeks and technologically they could improve upon it further. Their slave based society wasn't ready for it. Like Greeks and steam power, today we have the primitive access to space - and surprise!, instead of actively working upon improving it, pouring all our resources into it, we're still discussing whether it has economical reasons, and like in case of Greeks, we can't find much of such economical reasons for it.

fractallyte 15y ago
'If human thought is a growth, like all other growths, its logic is without foundation of its own, and is only the adjusting constructiveness of all other growing things. A tree cannot find out, as it were, how to blossom, until comes blossom-time. A social growth cannot find out the use of steam engines, until comes steam-engine-time.' - Charles Fort, Lo!

david927 15y ago

When you're traveling at 60km/hr and going faster, it's thrilling. You imagine what will come next. When you're traveling at 260km/hr and going faster, it's horrifying. You think of how you can hold on. If you go to Disneyland's Tomorrowland you'll see that we ended dreaming about the future in the 60's and 70's. It was polished metal; a stone's throw from what we had, but within dreaming limits. Now we don't know where we're going, but we know we've never been there before. It makes no sense to dream about "today plus twenty years". It won't be that and we're aware now that it won't. The innovation will happen with or without us as individuals. And it will keep going, hurtling faster into an oblivion which we can only guess at.

jamesbritt 15y ago
TV's Max Headroom intro was prescient in that regard. "20 minutes into the future ..." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rM9BOkcG9M0&feature=player_embedded#at=67 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rM9BOkcG9M0&feature=playe...

nick_urban 15y ago

Thank you for this essay. I understand that it's not, as some have already pointed out, particularly disinterested, but it set me to thinking, which is enough for me. This essay calls for a return to hard problems. The "problem" with hard problems isn't that they're hard. That's actually exactly what we need about them. It the unyielding character of hard problems which makes them worth dedicating ourselves to. The greatest difficulty is not solving the problem (which isn't even strictly necessary to benefit from the investigation), but rather, in giving ourselves to the problem in the first place. How can we choose a problem when there are so many possibilities and we have so little foresight? If we lived in a vacuum, the choice would be impossible or arbitrary. Luckily, our lives are not vacuums. The "real problems" (the things that matter to us, which come into our lives whether we like it or not, and generate actual experiences of significance) provide a point of departure. Real problems aren't technological in nature, but that doesn't mean they don't lead the way towards challenging technical projects. The space race didn't start as an engineering problem. It was the result of the longing of a people, of their hope and anxiety for the future. But as a result of that longing, of that fear and excitement, a lot of smart people dedicated themselves to hard technical problems and produced a huge array of breakthroughs. The trick, then, is to remain attentive to the problems around us, rather than giving into the temptation to ignore or adapt to them. In order to refocus ourselves on the hard problems, it helps to acknowledge that they are what we want -- that we aren't really satisfied with a day's salary and that we want to push forward towards a life's work. Wouldn't everyone prefer to work on something substantial, on a 'hard problem' for the sake of a 'real problem'? I think so, but we often don't know where to start. Can technology help us get started? I don't think "a Facebook" or "a Wikipedia" for hard problems is the answer, although either might help. In order to maintain the kind of excitement and reciprocal encouragement necessary to sustain a culture of hard-problem-solving, you need to put smart people who respect each other into the same physical space. You need to make hard- and real-problem-solving a lifestyle in order to overcome the creeping inertia of the trivial. This is why universities retain their relevance. They're a concentrated mix of intelligence, experience, and youthful idealism. They contain lots of people who think about "hard problems" (science, engineering) and "real problems" (philosophy, history, social thought). Universities have their own issues, of course. They suffer from institutional pressures that have more in common with the banalities of commerce and politics than with any dedicated enthusiasm. Historically they have been very successful, but it may be that the next wave of innovation will come from a less traditional source, perhaps from the real-life communities that sprout up around virtual groups like this one.

cbr 15y ago

over the past thirty years, there have been no radical advances in transportation technology Containerization.

dredmorbius 15y ago
That actually dates to the 1950s and is based on concepts up to a century older than that. Break-bulk has been recognized as a bottleneck in freight transport for ages. It's evolved and become dominant with standardization of container sizes and fittings (by 1970) and with the deregulation of the US shipping industry and introduction of double-stack rail transports (both in 1984). I suspect more significant recent advancements have been in inventory and logistics management (though bar-coding of rail cars was already happening in the 1980s) and overnight air and other rapid freight. Not quite as visible as containers, but vital to keeping the boats, trains, and trucks moving, and with JIT delivery probably accounts for much of the success of big box stores, and now Internet-based retail and shipping.

jfoutz 15y ago

Is this a joke? I have a 3d printer in my basement. Poor little VC, go play with your social networks. The grownups a busy making the future.

minikomi 15y ago
Mid-portfolio crisis, perhaps?

zb 15y ago

> Not all technology is created equal: there is a difference between Pong and the Concorde Yes, Pong was simply a clever design making use of existing technology that made shirtloads of money for a bunch of people and spawned entire industries. Whereas Concorde - a "real technological development" - was a giant money pit fed from government slush funds for decades, punctuated only by occasional lethal consequences for its passengers and bystanders. (Not to mention that it was a technological cul-de-sac.) Remind me, which one was it they want to be investing in? Because it sure sounds like they're saying Concorde. Am I misinterpreting?

temphn 15y ago
Technological cul de sac and subsidized investment, yes. But looks like the Air France Concorde crash was due to debris on the runway rather than the plane itself. Or were you thinking of something else? https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Air_France_Flight_4590 https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Air_France_Fl... A Continental Airlines DC-10 departing for Newark, New Jersey, lost a titanium alloy strip, 435 millimetres (17.1 in) long and about 29 millimetres (1.1 in) to 34 millimetres (1.3 in) wide, during takeoff from the same runway. During the Concorde's subsequent take-off run, this piece of debris, still lying on the runway, cut a tyre causing rupture and tyre debris to be hurled by centrifugal force. A large chunk of this debris (4.5 kilograms or 9.9 pounds) struck the underside of the aircraft's wing structure at an estimated speed of 500 kilometres per hour (310 mph). Although it did not directly puncture any of the fuel tanks, it sent out a pressure shockwave that eventually ruptured the number five fuel tank at the weakest point, just above the landing gear.
- jberryman 15y ago
  > But looks like the Air France Concorde crash was due to debris on the runway rather than the plane itself. Or were you thinking of something else? I know nothing about the Concorde, etc. but that the crash was triggered by debris does not really refute that it was a poorly designed or dangerous aircraft, as that should be a design consideration of any aircraft (I assume).
  - 15y ago

drm237 15y ago

Someone forgot to set their Google Analytics ID. Requirement one to inventing the future: be able to follow instructions.

fuzzythinker 15y ago

Is the use of the "presentation enhancer" to deter people from actually reading it? Because that's it did to me. The font is illegible, scrolling must be done via the bar (otherwise it crawls at ~1px/sec), and turns my cpu fan way up. Is it really still "cool" to misuse technology nowadays?

njharman 15y ago

The answer is largely contained within their goal #2.

robryan 15y ago

Is their really much a technical problem preventing flying cars? I think it's similar to space in that it isn't overly energy efficient as I'd assume withut completely redesigning our cities you would need vertical takeoff. Then there is a lot of safety considerations, I think self driving cars would need to be accepted well before anything could happen with flying cars.

seats 15y ago

Flying cars do exist and can be bought (pre-order) today. http://www.terrafugia.com/ http://www.terrafugia.com/ Unrelated, except to the sub-title. I also posted deeper in the comments, but I think it's a pretty cool project and thought it's worth trying to repost in a more visible spot. The price tag is a few 100k and you only need the lowest level pilot's license to fly it.

mitultiwari 15y ago

Nicely written essay. I would say future is hard to predict. People in 1960s predicted about space travel but did not predict mobile devices like iphones that have so much compute power with so many apps with location, touch, social, communication features. 140 characters may not have great technology but can be attributed to bring social revolution in so many places. Ultimately, need is mother of most of innovations. Need leads to demand, which leads to building new solutions.

jayzee 15y ago

People knock Webvan around but the founder (Mick Mountz), 10 years after that debacle, founded http://www.kivasystems.com/ http://www.kivasystems.com/ where instead of conveyor belts (Webvan) they use robots for managing a warehouse. Seriously cool robotics. Check out the videos on their site. Kiva Systems has gone from strength to strength and is now used by Zappos, Wallgreens and others (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiva_Systems http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiva_Systems)