Disappearing Computer, Older Millennials, Social Media Addiction, Ashikaga

We bring you Walt Mossberg’s final column about the disappearing computer, read about older millennials, social media addiction and visit Ashikaga Flower Park.

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Mossberg: The Disappearing Computer

This is Walt Mossberg’s final column. I think I have read everything this guy wrote, I always enjoyed his take on technology and just keeping up with it. And I think he saved the best for last as he takes us on a journey how we got here from his first column back in 1991. And where we are going with it. Ambient computing, the dark side and more. Must read in its entirety. Enjoy. Oh, you watch the SNL skit with Steve Jobs introducing new Apple products, lol.

Older Americans Are More Millennial Than Millennials

Come again? Fascinating read. The differences between generations has always fascinated me. Especially as I have grown older and see the youth entering the workforce…

By 2024, one quarter of the workforce will be 55 and over—more than twice what the share was in 1994. And as they extend their working years, sometimes by choice and sometimes by necessity, it’s older Americans who are quietly adopting Millennial stereotypes, far more than actual Millennials are.

People over the age of 65 are four times more likely to be self-employed than those under 34, and are more likely to work part-time jobs, too…

Workers between 55 and 75 years old are 70 percent more likely to be in such alternative arrangements than 25-54 year-olds, according to the economist Jed Kolko. According to internal Uber data, half of its drivers are over 40.

One should always be careful not to oversell generations, which are, by definition, extremely broad swaths of tens of millions of people with diverse wealth, education, and living conditions. Still, when economists and marketers want to understand changing attitudes toward work and life, they often focus on Millennials. It’s tantalizing to say that, because something new is happening, the newest cohort must be responsible for the change. But many of the trends ascribed to Millennials are actually better fits for their parents.

Sun Tzu or a Rubik’s Cube

This is about retirement planning. It emphasizes the inherent uncertainty about it all. Some excerpts:

Retirement finance is intrinsically fraught with risk. We can know our enemy well but the main thing we know about that enemy is its uncertainty. We can do all the right things and fail. We can do all the wrong things and succeed.

My favorite example of super-intelligent people creating lovely, complex algorithms that failed miserably is the story of Long-Term Capital Management. This hedge fund, the subject of the book When Genius Failed by Roger Lowenstein, was initially highly successful under the leadership of a former Wall Street bond manager and two future Nobel laureates. Eventually, however, LTCM failed, bankrupted its founders and brought the global financial system to its knees.

Buffett: …It’s…an interesting story…The whole story is really fascinating because if you take John Merriwether, and Eric Rosenfeld, Larry Hilibrand, Greg Hawkins, Victor Haghani, the two Nobel Prize winners, Merton and Scholes, if you take the 16 of them, they probably have as high an average IQ as any 16 people working together in one business in the country…an incredible amount of intellect in that room. Now you combine that with the fact that those 16 had had extensive experience in the field they were operating in…In aggregate, the 16 had probably had 350 or 400 years of experience doing exactly what they were doing. And then you throw in the third factor that most of them had virtually all of their very substantial net worths in the business. So they had their own money up. Hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars of their own money up. Super high intellect, working in a field they knew. And essentially they went broke. And that to me is fascinating…

…But to make money they didn’t have and didn’t need, they risked what they did have and did need, and that’s foolish. That is just plain foolish.”

Your Addiction to Social Media is No Accident

I recently took off all notifications in my cell phone and it is AWESOME, I highly recommend it! Thank the Lord I never got on Snapchat and Instagram. Heck, my blog does not even have a Facebook page yet! There is only so much of this crap a human can take. I look at my daughter and her friends and I swear the kids today live on this online stuff. Huge changes underway. And pretty scary I may add…This attention economy, the click bait headlines, is all too much bullshit. #Resist! Choose quality…choose TBB 🙂

Today, most of us reach for Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter with one vague thought in mind: Maybe someone liked my stuff. And it’s this craving for validation, experienced by billions around the globe, that’s currently pushing platform engagement in ways that in 2009 were unimaginable. But more than that, it’s driving profits to levels that were previously impossible.

“The attention economy” is a relatively new term. It describes the supply and demand of a person’s attention, which is the commodity traded on the internet. The business model is simple: The more attention a platform can pull, the more effective its advertising space becomes, allowing it to charge advertisers more.

…the average millennial checks his or her phone 157 times daily. That’s a total average of 145 minutes every day that we’re trying to feel connected, validated, and liked. [Phucking A…to Z #wow]

100+ Year Old Wisteria at Japan’s Ashikaga Flower Park

This site is pure awesomeness…

And I leave you with this…

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