Disqus - Latest Comments for LukeG

Re: Living in a Horror Movie?

LukeG — Tue, 26 Nov 2019 15:23:54 -0000

I think it's a natural reaction: it's a problem so big and so systemic that it feels entirely out of our individual control. From a narrow/individual evolutionary perspective, it probably makes sense for a given individual not to focus on things out of their control in the short term. The flipside is obviously the massive social challenges this causes.

Re: Architecture and Basic Income

LukeG — Tue, 27 Feb 2018 12:31:39 -0000

It's not necessarily what's in the homes (or what powers them), it's how much space suburban/exurban development takes up. Replacing open space (and healthy, functioning ecosystems & watersheds) with low-density housing has a whole host of consequences. There's plenty of research out there; might be interesting to look into.

And yes, sure, there will be some new/re-invented communities. But I don't see how basic income on its own addresses community-level income concentration and the many effects that that concentration has.

Re: Architecture and Basic Income

LukeG — Mon, 26 Feb 2018 11:20:32 -0000

Two quick notes:

1. Suburban (and generally low-density) development has massively harmful environmental impacts. This extends beyond carbon emissions from longer commutes (which hopefully EVs play a major role in reducing), to local and regional ecological harm as well.

2. I don't think that just cheaper housing is enough. I suspect that for as long as we don't figure out how to design desirable mixed-income communities, we will continue to end up with concentrated low-income communities, and the resulting socio-economic challenges and inequality (including of opportunity) that contribute to.

Re: Kin

LukeG — Thu, 25 May 2017 14:44:51 -0000

"They are going to decentralize Kik and use a new cryptocurrency called Kin to build a business model around a decentralized Kik and, hopefully, attract other developers to build decentralized communities using Kin as well."

I had to double-check today's date.

Re: What Are You For?

LukeG — Tue, 25 Apr 2017 14:35:54 -0000

100

Re: What’s Next?

LukeG — Fri, 11 Nov 2016 16:16:47 -0000

Your writing has been a huge help as I try to wrap my head around the scale of this transition. From my angle, the web of economic and cultural effects of the shift from industrial to information economies explains a lot of the last election cycle (or two), at least.

Looking at election numbers, it wasn't just the economy. Suburban and rural whites _across incomes_ voted strongly for Trump. That feels as much about culture as about economics. (And maybe it's not surprising that pluralism and the rise of "knowledge workers" are here together)

In that context: basic income may be the only way to survive the economic transition, but I don't know how well it addresses the social dimension. It's hard for me to imagine two generations of people who have much of their identity shaped by their work suddenly satisfied because they have enough money to pay rent and buy groceries.

And given the tone and language of the man they elected, can you imagine the survival rate of politicians who stood up and said "these jobs aren't coming back"?

Re: What Are App Coins?

LukeG — Tue, 25 Oct 2016 13:43:27 -0000

This makes me think of real estate as the original app coin.

The public good (even if its often not unanimously accepted as such) is transforming a building, a block, community, or city; the private gain comes from appreciation in the underlying asset.

Re: Leaks

LukeG — Wed, 19 Oct 2016 16:45:59 -0000

The top comment on Lessig's post is a good one:

******
I would not be surprised if Lessig published this classy response, then went to dinner with his wife and said "Fuck Tanden, Podesta, and that crew. Scumbags."

And that would be fine, and is still classy. Because we should be allowed to make different statements privately, and publicly. And we should accept that this is not always duplicity. It is just having a working filter. People without filters are sociopaths and Trump.

As humans, we need and deserve separate outlets for our raw anger, and for our rational, thought-out, and public expressions.

- http://lessig.tumblr.com/po...
******

Re: Labor Day: From the Job Loop to the Knowledge Loop (via Universal Basic Income)

LukeG — Mon, 05 Sep 2016 17:52:50 -0000

Agreed — it's been awesome to see your thinking & writing crystallize.

Re: Looking for Interactive Video Artists

LukeG — Fri, 29 Apr 2016 17:22:58 -0000

Another one for you https://www.sfmoma.org/read...

Re: Are We Reaching the Limits of Silicon Valley’s...

LukeG — Thu, 28 Apr 2016 17:57:41 -0000

"So, we end up with today’s VCs running a playbook they didn’t write, investing money they didn’t make, chasing returns they’ll never see." :)

That had to feel good coming off the fingers.

Re: Looking for Interactive Video Artists

LukeG — Mon, 18 Apr 2016 16:55:22 -0000

His work isn't interactive in the sense you mean, but Christian Jankowski is a pretty legendary video artist — he's shown in a bunch of museums, including SFMOMA. I can intro if you're interested.

No recommendations on the Shrike-like work, but, especially if you're interested in commissioning something, I'm happy to ask around (A few years ago I took some time off from tech to help start helloartcity.com, and have some artist network through that and some ~related projects). Can definitely find some great artists who will be interested through the Burning Man arts community.

Re: The Most Important Political Show on TV

LukeG — Sun, 10 Jan 2016 20:48:09 -0000

Zakaria is pretty good (I like his writing), but Charlie Rose is the master. It's not all politics — could be a musician, could be Marc Andreessen, could be Bashar al-Assad — but he has epic guests and gets them to open up like no one else.

Re: Book Update

LukeG — Tue, 15 Dec 2015 13:44:31 -0000

Nice! Where will you be? (We're Delhi > Agra > Udaipur > Kochi, then on to our friends' wedding)

Re: After Paris: Doubling Down on Democracy

LukeG — Mon, 16 Nov 2015 13:18:08 -0000

On the topics of government, transparency, and terrorism, this piece from the Washington Post on the origins and operations of ISIS is interesting and probably relevant:

https://www.washingtonpost....

To what extent are we responsible for the current conditions in the Middle East, conditions which are predictable breeding grounds for militant radicalism? How many of the decisions which led here (and the justifications for them) were remotely transparent?

Re: Transparency and Intermediary Liability: Regulating Networks

LukeG — Tue, 10 Nov 2015 20:11:13 -0000

The Uber and Airbnb examples are informative, and I think both (in practice, if not in legally-binding word) would prefer to be trusted brands rather than transparent networks.

I think I agree that transparency is the (or at least a) basis for trust in networks. Is that what Uber and Airbnb want to be, though? Or is the "network" part of each there because of its leverage as a go-to-market and product strategy?

I think what we see with many companies is the application of the network-that-centralizes-over-time as a strategy. It's hard to want to be decentralized when there's so much potential profit in owning the centralized network/market.

Bitcoin is a helpful counterexample here.

Re: Transparency and Intermediary Liability: Regulating Networks

LukeG — Tue, 10 Nov 2015 13:13:12 -0000

There's significant tension between conditions for a maximally-efficient network and the needs and wants of users of the tool itself. Platform trust is one example. As an Airbnb guest, I *want* to know the place I'm staying is safe. Likewise, Airbnb knows that if I understand that not every place on Airbnb is safe, my trust in the entire market diminishes (and so Chesky's idea about inspections).

I think I understand your argument, but it sounds a lot like most traditional (pre-network) anti-regulatory positions; efficient-network hypothesis as the new efficient-market hypothesis. Might be an accurate model in the Keynesian long-term, but what about lives in the meantime?

Re: My XOXO Talk

LukeG — Mon, 28 Sep 2015 15:26:13 -0000

Community capital :)

Re: Some Big News On CS Education

LukeG — Wed, 16 Sep 2015 15:54:08 -0000

Awesome, but: can't we do this in five years?

Re: bijan sabet — South End, Boston April 2015

LukeG — Fri, 01 May 2015 22:33:50 -0000

Re: VCs as Gas Stations

LukeG — Thu, 09 Apr 2015 16:17:46 -0000

An old friend's dad smuggled watered-down (and polluted) Mexican gasoline across the border and sold it at his own station...

Re: Ways to think about market size.

LukeG — Tue, 03 Mar 2015 00:06:31 -0000

There's a related point that's especially relevant to consumer tech: the most successful products aren't services aren't necessarily planned. Instead, they're often emergent. FB, Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram, Snapchat, et al, were as much discovered as built.

Re: IPO or M&A? Here’s exactly how large companies exit

LukeG — Wed, 04 Feb 2015 13:12:59 -0000

Interesting. What happens when you start to segment by industry, even just "consumer vs. enterprise"?

Re: In Defense of Global Thought

LukeG — Tue, 03 Feb 2015 11:40:16 -0000

We don't and shouldn't tax for taxes' own sake (though some folks need to be reminded of this). We tax to share the burden of what should be the greater good.

One way to lower personal and corporate tax rates is to effectively tax negative externalities that aren't captured in market prices. C02 is one example, sure, but there are plenty of negative social externalities — e.g. the effects on families and communities of below-living-wage jobs, or social outcomes related to concentrated low-income housing — that we talk about less often.

Re: W. A. G. E. Against the Machine: Art and the Business of Gettin’ Paid

LukeG — Thu, 30 Oct 2014 16:13:35 -0000

Hi Christian,

Thanks for continuing to advocate for artists and the arts. I think it may help to provide readers with a bit more context about the Art City Project and Way Out West.

At the beginning of 2014, the Art City Project raised a modest amount of not-for-profit funding from a small group of donors. That seed funding was enough to launch Way Out West, our first public art exhibition. We had to buy the advertising space we used: 11 billboards, four bus shelter ads, and three full bus takeovers, and we didn't have enough funding to both purchase the space and commission/pay artists to produce work for it. There was no “buy space and commission artists” option; it was “either, or.”

So: we bought the advertising space for the artists. They did their amazing work, which they still own (the ad spaces used reproduction prints taken from high-res images). Participating artists also had the opportunity to make a series of limited edition prints with Magnolia Editions, an engagement that otherwise could have easily cost individual artists thousands of dollars out of pocket. Finally, we helped artists sell both originals and prints. These art sales were less successful than hoped: thousands of dollars total so far, not tens of thousands. This is indicative of how hard it can be for many artists to sell work in the Bay Area.

While we didn’t have the funding to commission work, we did try to create as many marketing opportunities for participating artists as possible. Some examples: Jen Stark’s piece was in the New York Time’s style blog. Andrew Shoultz, Pakayla Biehn, Alia Penner, Alicia McCarthy, and Dave Schubert were in the Chronicle. Casey Gray was all over. Anthony Discenza, quoted in your piece, saw his work featured on CBS Evening News, in local media including the Chronicle, KQED, and the Bold Italic, and in arts publications including Juxtapoz and Hi Fructose, to name a few. He’s also using a photo of his awesome piece from Way Out West to help market a salon-style event this weekend (which everyone should buy tickets to).

Much of this coverage was from mainstream media that too often pays little attention to artists and to art. It’s not an end-all, be-all solution, but it’s a contribution.

The Art City Project is not in "the Business of Gettin' Paid." Starting a public arts organization is not something you do for financial motivations. We worked long and hard for little because we believe it’s important to bring artists and their work to new and broad audiences. We produced Way Out West — and hope to help create more public art exhibitions in the future — because we believe that these projects are Good Things.

Raising money for arts initiatives through traditional channels is very, very hard for most of us, and we’re constantly looking for new revenue sources to support art and artists. One idea we had is to facilitate paid installations and artist-in-residency programs that could also help connect artists with new collectors and patrons. We’ve done this once so far (with a private family) and the artist in question earned more than 75% of the revenue. Everything we've learned in the last year+ suggests that experimenting with new and creative approaches to fundraising is a necessity. The Lab's Kickstarter and upcoming 24-hour telethon is a great example. (Support the Lab, too!)

The Art City Project is a brand new arts organization, and we’re still figuring much of this out as we go along. We're here to try to find ways to support the arts and to bring art to the public. We believe that getting more people seeing and talking about art is a promising way to grow engagement and funding for the larger arts community; we're looking for ways to grow the pie for everyone.

Best,
Luke Groesbeck
Founder, The Art City Project

http://helloartcity.com