Votifi
May 21
xBox One = gamechanger
Xbox One will change the face of home computing. As the home entertainment ecosystem grows simultaneously more simple and more complicated, Microsoft is about to release a product that solves lots of the problems that exist in the disaggregated and fragmented world of home entertainment. Apple has it’s work cut out for it at WWDC in June to announce suitable responses to Google’s swathe of new products revealed at IO and the just revealed Xbox One. Will Apple TV and iRadio be enough?
Via Cult Of Mac:
Microsoft Unveils New Xbox One Console
This morning Microsoft unveiled its newest console, the Xbox One. Unlike previous Xbox models though, Xbox One isn’t just about games, it’s about becoming the one system your living room needs, and it probably means trouble for the Apple TV.
Not only can Microsoft’s latest box play video games with the best of them, but Microsoft has added features to make it the only box your TV really needs by recognizing who you are, what you movies and shows you like, and allowing you to control it all with just your voice.
The Xbox One features a new design that makes it look more like a boring cable set top box, except there’s a optical disc slot in the front that can handle both DVDs and Blu-Ray.
With its new Snap Mode feature, Xbox One can run other apps, movies, or TV on the side of screen while you’re still playing a game. Rather than selling the Kinect sensor separately, Microsoft says Kinect will come with each Xbox One unit sold.
Taking a queue from Siri, Microsoft has added voice controls to the Xbox One as well. Now when you want to pause a movie you can just say “Xbox, pause” rather than fumble around with your controller. Oh yeah, and the controller’s been redesigned too to get rid of the battery bump in the back and better controls.
One of the most exciting features that Microsoft showed off this morning though was the ability to integrate your cable set-top box with the Xbox One. Thanks to HDMI throughput, the Xbox One can display all of your cable channels, and with the new voice commands you can effortlessly switch to your favorite channel straight from a video game. All you have to do is say “Xbox, ESPN” and the console will switch the screen for you.
Microsoft also touted features like NFL Fantasy Football integration, Skype, Smart Glass, and the Kinect’s ability to detect your heart rate. Game discs will only have to be used for one-off installation, but unfortunately the Xbox One won’t be backwards compatible with Xbox 360 games.
It was clear at Microsoft’s keynote that the company doesn’t want consumers to think of Xbox as just a video game console anymore, but just incase anyone doubts the Xbox’s gaming powers they crammed 8GB RAM, an 8-core CPU, 500GB of storage space, USB 3.0, a 1080p camera on the Kinect, and HDMI in and out into the Xbox One. Pricing wasn’t announced at the event, but it’s expected to launch later this year.
With the sheer amount of features that Microsoft has crammed into the Xbox One it’s pretty clear that Microsoft is the company to beat in the living room right now. While Apple TV is a simple and cheap enough solution for many TV lovers, the advanced features in Xbox One make it appeal to both gamers and video content lovers alike.
Hopefully Apple’s got something up its sleeve for Apple TV at WWDC, otherwise it’s going to be impossible for Cupertino to compete in the living room now that Redmond is targeting hardcore gamers as well as average TV addicts.
Read more at
May 03
Why Silicon Valley Is Taking On Immigration Reform
By Nick Davis
Since Mitt Romney’s defeat in the presidential election last November, immigration reform has come to the relative forefront of American politics. The overwhelming majority of Latinos who voted for Barack Obama has left little doubt among many Republicans that some sort of reform needs to be enacted. The GOP has been looking for ways to reach out to Latinos in an effort to reverse a growing trend that sees Republicans having almost no chance to win elections without this important voting bloc in the future.
Democrats have always been a champion of minorities and the middle class where a large part of Latinos reside. They finally see a chance to address a failing immigration system and follow through on campaign promises made by President Obama in 2008 and 2012.
Now that time has ripened in favor of immigration reform, an unlikely player has emerged. Enter the CEOs of some the biggest tech companies in Silicon Valley. The leaders of Facebook, LinkedIn, Google, Microsoft, Intel, and others have joined together to form a new bipartisan coalition to overhaul the current immigration system.
Silicon Valley’s involvement spurs from a lack of a highly educated and skilled labor pool from which to fill a burgeoning technology sector. Much of the debate revolves around the small number of H1-B visas, the “brain drain” that occurs once foreign students graduate from American universities and are forced to go back home, and a system that currently places too high of barriers on entrepreneurial immigrants who wish to create startups here.
An H1-B visa is a non-immigrant temporary foreign worker program that was created to attract the best talent in the science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields. Once these visas are acquired, workers are able to apply for permanent residency. As the law currently stands, the US government has capped these visas at 85,000 per year. The problem is that American companies applied for 124,000 of those visas in the first week alone.
Because these visas are so difficult to come by, Silicon Valley and its allies contend that we are essentially educating the best and brightest foreign students only to have them take their skills to compete against us abroad. The entrepreneurial spirit that embodies what Silicon Valley is has lost its mojo. In 2007, immigrants made up 52% of startup founders while that number is just 44% today. Additionally, for immigrants to create their own startup today, it takes over a half million dollars and a sponsor.
Mark Zuckerberg, who is spearheading the operation, announced two weeks ago in an op-ed in the Washington Post the formation of his new lobbying group, FWD.us. Pronounced Forward US, the group has a two-pronged approach to solve their labor problems. It initially intends to lobby for immigration reform as a solution for their lack of skilled labor. In the future, it plans to lobby for greater investments in education, specifically science and technology in order to fill their demand for high skilled labor.
It plans to partner with liberal and conservative lobbyists in order to push for a bipartisan solution. Today, it is running ads in eight swing states. They feature Marco Rubio pushing his legislation in the Senate in order to grow popular support amongst the American public. However, Zuckerberg and his campaign have come under fire recently from progressives. In giving political cover for vulnerable Democrats and to gain the support of Republican senators, FWD.Us has found an enemy in environmental progressives. By supporting these politicians, they claim that Silicon Valley is bankrolling the reelection of big oil instead of green energy.
Like so many things in life, money is a key driver in decision-making. While politicians may be approaching immigration reform from a demographic and voting bloc perspective, Zuckerberg and his partners are looking at reform as a means to boost business and the overall economy. When visas are distributed today, only 7% are given based on the needs of the economy.
As debate continues on the Senate floor, it remains to see how effective FWD.us will be. What is certain is that Silicon Valley isn’t going anywhere. The American economy is based on innovation and ideas, and that’s exactly what Silicon Valley hopes to deliver.
Apr 25
Five Things I Learned During My Senior Year Of College
By Nick Davis
I am three weeks away from graduating college and I could not be more excited. These last few weeks have been a complete struggle. Senioritis has hit me like a brick wall. The good news is that I have my immediate future figured out after graduation. Over the course of these past nine months, I’ve learned a few things about myself as well as about the working world.
Get To Know Yourself And Get Specific
I mean really get to know you. You’re probably reading this and thinking, “But Nick, who knows me better than me?” Hopefully, no one. The fact remains that many college graduates still have no real idea of what they want to do. Every political science major out there has some sort of interest in politics. What do you want to do with that? Do you want to work on a campaign? How about for a think tank? Maybe a nonprofit? Within those, is your best fit in policy analysis or in press and communications? The more specific you can get, the better your prospects will be. Truly knowing what you want to do and having a demonstrable passion for it will take you further than merely knowing a little bit about a lot of things.
Most People Have A Jaded View Of A College Education
I would argue that a college education is basically a necessity these days and that it’s slowly becoming the new high school diploma. Some people probably disagree with that statement, but that can be debated another time. With an increasingly volatile and competitive labor market, prospective and current students need to change the way they approach a college education. The norm that I’ve observed is that most people choose a path of study that reflects their interests.
That line of thinking needs to be transformed. Students need to find out what industry fits their interests. Getting to know the industry will help you figure out what type of educational path is best for getting there. By choosing the industry first, you’re killing multiple birds with one stone. You’ve found out what kind of jobs and industry you want to pursue. You’ve hopefully researched the best course of study to take and if you’re early enough in the process, you can pick a school that is excelling in that degree study.
GPA Is Way Overrated
Unless you have scholarship standards to uphold or are pursuing a postgraduate program, your GPA doesn’t mean a whole lot. After five years of college and dozens of interviews for internships and now fulltime jobs, I have yet to be asked what my GPA is. Something that does matter a lot is work experience. Employers want to hire a proven commodity. There’s no better indicator of potential than work experience and references, which brings me to…
Get Really Good At Networking
I’ll spare everyone the very true, but overused networking clichés. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics has estimated that 70% of jobs are filled through networking. That’s a lot of jobs that you don’t have a chance at if you’re relying on your resume alone. That number is almost assuredly greater when it comes to politics and Washington, D.C.
There’s probably a reason why people are ‘appointed’ to positions and not ‘hired.’ Start seeking out professionals now that you can foster relationships with. Contact family friends. Start a conversation with members of common groups on LinkedIn. Tweet at leaders in your field. Think of questions that you would like to be answered and go from there. Make sure to keep in touch every month or so. Avoid being shallow by directly asking for jobs. If you’re successful at networking, jobs will come to you.
Take The Bull By The Horns
This past spring break, I drove over 1000 miles to Washington, D.C. to interview for positions on Capitol Hill. And guess what; I got the job. That never would have happened had I not contacted the recruiter and literally told her that I was willing to drive out there if she thought I was worth interviewing. My dad was right. The worst people can say is ‘no.’ You haven’t lost anything and any sense of fear or embarrassment will go away knowing that you’ll probably never talk to that person again. Sometimes, you’ve got to make things happen for yourself instead of waiting for someone to open the door for you.
Apr 17
Bitcoin and The Future Of Money
By Ian Rosoff
There has been a deluge of posts about the recent Bitcoin currency crash/bubble, but I’ll add on because it’s important to look at the potential future of money from a political prospective. Here at Votifi, we are interested in the mobile (dare I say it) revolution. Our phones will become our new wallets, we don’t see or hold money in the same way we did even a decade ago. The complexity of financial networks in the Internet age is moving rapidly and at the same time the government is gridlocked and regulation can’t keep up. Which brings us to digital currency and Bitcoin.
Bitcoin is online money - an Internet currency of virtual tokens that can be exchanged for goods and services. Unlike euros or dollars bitcoins don’t have serial numbers and are almost untraceable. Bitcoin has no middleman; payments via Bitcoin are person to person. A process called Bitcoin mining is how users generate new currency and the total number of Bitcoins is capped at 21 million.
The idea of a virtual currency that is both decentralized and vulnerable to hackers is exciting, but last week Bitcoin hit a new high of $260 and then crashed down below $130 the very next day. The discovery of pervasive DDOS attacks were revealed after a user named Bitcoinbillionaire gave away thousands of dollars worth of Bitcoin on the semi-anonymous social media site Reddit. The user commented that he wanted the price to crash. That proved to be more prophetic than anyone would have believed.
The price has settled in at around $100, and many still have faith in Bitcoin. The pros of Bitcoin currency are that is hard to counterfeit, easily stored, and hard to steal. The cons are that it has a finite supply. Without getting into a diatribe on liquidity traps, Bitcoin has a good chance of failure because of this fact. The idea may be the future, and it’s a threat to state backed fiat money.
The consequences that could arise from the erosion of the fiat money system would reverberate across all aspects of the economy. That disintegration is not likely imminent, but the possibilities and questions are fun to contemplate. How much of the government’s power is derived from control of the currency? Ron Paul has long called for a return to the gold standard to usher back an era of fiscal responsibility. Bitcoin also challenges governmental spending habits, just in the opposite way. The privatization of currency and taking money’s value out of the hands of central bankers in particular is probably enticing in Europe these days.
Another question that arises out of Bitcoin is the level of education our politicians have on issues like this. Last year with SOPA and PIPA we learned that many of our leaders fundamentally don’t understand the Internet and other facets of technology. While I don’t demand that my representatives be well informed on absolutely every issue, I do hope they show intellectual curiosity and become informed on issues for which they are crafting legislation. Will digital currency regulation come before our Congress? Probably at some point, and my confidence level with our leaders to figure these issues out is low.
Bitcoin is a harbinger of change in the currency game. If Bitcoin or some future iteration will be how people pay for things in a decade remains to be seen, but the recent events surrounding digital currency are just another reminder that bubbles are looming everywhere in this economy and our politicians are unprepared to help prevent or protect against them.
Apr 15
In Trying To Appease Both Sides, Obama’s Budget Satisfies Neither
By Nick Davis
President Obama released his 2014 budget a few days before Tax Day, albeit about two months late from his required deadline. In an interesting role reversal, Democrats seem to be tearing into the budget more than their GOP counterparts.
Much of the commotion centers on Obama’s proposal to reduce the rate of growth of Social Security payments. He has suggested that payments be calculated using chained CPI, something Republicans have campaigned for in previous budget and fiscal cliff discussions. Chained CPI is a more accurate formula for calculating cost of living expenses and would initially reduce payments by about $2 a month for each person.
Another major point of contention in the President’s budget revolves around $400 billion in Medicare savings over the next 10 years. These cuts would come from pharmaceutical and hospital payments as well as trimming benefits and increasing out-of-pocket expenses for upper income seniors.
Republicans have mixed reactions to Obama’s modest entitlement reforms. Speaker John Boehner praised the reforms. “He does deserve some credit for some incremental entitlement reforms that he has outlined in his budget.” Others were less enthusiastic about the budget. As can be expected, Grover Norquist shot down the bill due to more than a trillion dollars in tax increases while Congressman Greg Walden of Oregon called it a “shocking attack on seniors.”
Perhaps the most surprising aspect of the President’s budget is the sheer disgust shown by his own party. Democrats have long been the champion of social insurance programs like Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid so any reforms to reign in their impact will be unwelcome by the left. Arshad Hasan, the executive director of the liberal group Democracy For America, seemed to sum up Democratic sentiment best. “You cannot be a good Democrat and cut Social Security.”
Some have expressed concern that if this legislation were to pass, it would leave Democrats vulnerable in the 2014 midterms elections. Representative Bill Pascrell of New York was one of many Democrats to demonstrate those concerns. “Seniors vote in even heavier numbers, proportionately, in off-year elections,” he said. “So just looking at a political standpoint … I would think that this would be a damning blow to our chances of taking back the House next year.”
I disagree. I don’t think Pascrell’s concerns are rooted in any sort of fact or logic. If the people are upset about cuts to entitlement programs, what makes them think that Republicans would be any different on the issue? In fact, I think it’s reasonable to assume that the GOP would cut them even more. At this point, unless the budget actually gets passed without any major overhauls, which seems unlikely, any dissatisfaction with the budget lands on the shoulders of Obama, not his base. Progressive congressman Keith Ellison expressed this same sentiment. “They cannot lay that dead cat at our door,” Ellison said Friday. “I don’t know how it’s going to affect the president’s brand, but it would be completely unfair to affect the House Democratic Caucus brand, because we had nothing to do with it and most of us are affirmatively and explicitly against it.”
Could we be witnessing a shifting strategy from the President towards negotiations with Republicans? Or, has he been liberated to legislate as he pleases since he can’t be reelected? No matter what his motivations are, one has to wonder what Obama hoped to accomplish by releasing this budget. The President released his two months late and the House and Senate already released their budgets. Depending on how much of Obama’s budget is enacted, the only real thing he has accomplished is alienating his base, something that could and should be avoided as the Republicans are looking to unify themselves for 2016.
Apr 12
Saudi Arabian Threat To Ban VoIP Services Highlights Deeper Security Issues Within Skype
By Nick Davis
Skype has yet another security issue to handle. This time, it’s not a demand for more security, but less. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has threatened to ban the service and other Voiceover Internet Protocol (VoIP) applications, similar to the Blackberry Messenger (BBM) ban of 2010. Saudi Arabia hasn’t explicitly stated the reasoning behind it, but many Saudis and expatriates have insinuated that the Monarchy wishes to have more control to monitor communications between its citizens and their cohorts.
This shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone. While Saudi Arabia has typically been an ally to the United States and a respectful government to its people, they have a long track record of quashing civil liberties. What is surprising is that Skype software allows third parties to find and control your IP address through a simple username search no matter what your privacy settings are, and Skype has known about this problem since 2010.
Despite Microsoft overhauling Skype’s online security network from peer-to-peer machines to Linux boxes that are hardened to resist the most common type of attacks, Skype has yet to resolve the ‘digital identity stealing’ that has developed over the last few years. Essentially, according to a Skype programmer, the problem revolves around a catch-22 of speed and security. “One challenge is that the maximum Round Trip Time (RTT) that VoIP users can tolerate is around 300 milliseconds (ms) whereas the propagation delay in a fiber optical cable spanning the circumference of the planet is approximately 200ms. It means that when a user in Germany calls another one in Australia, the proxy service must incur less than 100ms additional RTT.”
Additionally, an Israeli security researcher recently found another bug with Skype and Dropbox. The issue centered around the services’ lack of URL validation which then allowed any private information shared over theses services, like Facebook accounts and passwords, to be recovered by identity thieves. Nir Goldschlager, a founder of the security service Breaksec, responsibly reported the bug, which could have led to more bad publicity for the digital telephony service.
I think its interesting that there is plenty of publicity surrounding the government of Saudi Arabia potentially violating the privacy of its citizens when Skype itself perpetuates and allows hackers to steal private information. There aren’t many things that could dissuade users from discontinuing their usage of the application, but one of those is shaky security controls. Skype has a significant network effect to the extent that most people who use it have a contact base set up. However, with competitors like Google Voice, Apple’s Facetime, and other VoIP services, Skype isn’t exactly running a monopoly.
The video service needs to take care of their security issues as soon as possible because it stands to lose over 31 million users worldwide. At the very least, the issue is preventing major corporations from putting their stamp of approval on the conferencing site due to the lack of security. Before we throw the Saudi government under the bus for violations of privacy, we should also ask Skype why it has taken so long to protect its users. They are just as guilty as the Arab country.
Apr 09
Votifi in 2012 - A year in review [INFOGRAPHIC]
After crunching numbers for the poll questions answered in 2012 we came up with this little summary of what Votifites think and do. Enjoy.
Apr 04
Advocates and Opponents Of Gay Marriage Have More At Stake With Proposition 8 Than DOMA
By Nick Davis
The United States Supreme Court heard oral arguments last week with regards to the constitutionality of the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) and California’s Proposition 8. It seems only fitting that the Court would take up both cases at the same time. The part in question with DOMA is simply whether or not same-sex couples deserve the same tax benefits that heterosexual couples enjoy. Proposition 8 actually deals with the question of whether or not individual states have the right to deny marriage licenses to same-sex couples.
No matter which side the Supreme Court falls on, its inevitable that the cultural tide surrounding the acceptance of gays and lesbians will continue to grow. Just like in the 1960s and SCOTUS decisions before that, civil rights supporters were not deterred by legal setbacks, and its doubtful LGBT supporters will feel that sentiment either. Once we get past the usual comparisons to the civil rights era, it’s easy to see that the real meat of debate lies with Proposition 8 rather than DOMA.
This might be one of the few instances where money takes a backseat in any debate. Any culturally aware observer can see that the gay marriage debate is about equality and holding up societal constructs than it is about the tax breaks. The money is just the icing on the cake for LGBT supporters. That is why Proposition 8 is a much bigger deal to both sides. Proposition 8 deals with the fundamental question of whether homosexuals have the right to marry their partner. That principle applies to all 50 states, not just those which allow heterosexual and homosexual marriages.
So, since marriage contracts are currently left up to the states, what is the likelihood that it will stay that way? Excluding any unforeseen outcomes about standing issues, the Court will likely have to determine whether the 10th or 14th amendment takes control here. The former states that any power not given to the federal government stays with the states and the latter states that all people should be given equal treatment under the law. A majority opinion based on the 10th amendment would preserve the status quo while an argument based on the 14th amendment would deliver a landmark decision.
Not surprisingly, it seems that this may be another decision split along ideology. Justices Roberts, Thomas, Alito, and Scalia seem to be in favor of federalism or states’ rights while Justices Sotomayor, Kagan, Ginsburg, and Breyer seem to be willing to decide based on equal protection. As always, that leaves Justice Anthony Kennedy as the swing vote.
Throughout both days of arguments, the Justices and lawyers debated whether the state had a compelling interest in denying same-sex couples the right to marry. Two of the main points revolved around promoting procreation of new life as well as the effects of same-sex parenting. This second point is where Kennedy expressed some concern. “[The] sociological information is new. We have five years of information to weigh against 2,000 years of history or more. On the other hand, there is an immediate legal injury or what could be a legal injury, and that’s the voice of these children. There are some 40,000 children in California, according to the Red Brief, that live with same-sex parents, and they want their parents to have full recognition and full status. The voice of those children is important in this case don’t you think?”
I’m no law expert, but I would be surprised if the Court didn’t strike down Proposition 8 based on the equal protection argument. The American Academy of Pediatrics has answered Kennedy’s questions about the lack of evidence regarding the effects of same-sex parents on children. They endorsed gay marriage on March 21st stating that the AAP “supports pediatricians advocating for public policies that help all children and their parents, regardless of sexual orientation, build and maintain strong, stable, and healthy families that are able to meet the needs of their children.”
Just like in Loving vs. Virginia, the case that struck down bans on interracial marriage, the Court decided that the 14th amendment superseded the 10th because the law had no compelling state interest other than to promote a cultural standard.
On Tuesday, we here at Votifi asked you whether you thought the Supreme Court has the power to influence culture, or whether culture influences the Supreme Court. Of all respondents, 67% said that culture influences the Court while 24% said that it influences culture. What’s interesting is that most of the 67% tended to lean left politically while the 24% happened to lean right. To me, this is not surprising at all. Conservatives have always referred to the Court as ‘activists,’ and here it would be no different.
Apr 01
A New Business Model
I was working on a paper for a history class over spring break and the topic was anarchism. In sunny California there were distractions at every turn, and for somebody from Michigan if I went outside the paper would never get finished. So I tried procrastinating in a less distracting way. There was a Portal video game poster up on the wall of the friend who I was staying with and I’d heard great things about the game so I went to Steam (the best place online to buy videogames). Then just as I was about to download a game generally accepted as truly addicting, inspiration struck and I knew how to finish my paper.
If you’re not a gamer you might be wondering what do Internet videogames have to do with anarchism. My paper was on Joseph Proudhon who is widely regarded as the father of anarcho-syndicalism; and Valve, the company that created Steam, is operated on an anarcho-syndicalist model.
The founder of Valve, a man named Gabe Newell was a top programmer at Microsoft before he cashed in his shares and started a videogame company. He created a corporation while throwing out all the rules about how to structure a corporation. The organization would be completely flat. That is to say if you work at Valve you are your own boss, work on what you want, and are free to move from project to project as you please. Here’s more on what it’s like from a Michael Abrash who has observed Valve from the inside.
Valve is a cool company, but it is also fascinating from an economic and historical standpoint. They may be the most successful example of anarchy since the Paris commune, and that only lasted a few months. Valve is almost two decades old and growing steadily. This company is successful because the employees are working on their passions, and their compensation is based almost exclusively on peer reviews. Abrash writes:
If most of the value is now in the initial creative act, there’s little benefit to traditional hierarchical organization that’s designed to deliver the same thing over and over, making only incremental changes over time. What matters is being first and bootstrapping your product into a positive feedback spiral with a constant stream of creative innovation. Hierarchical management doesn’t help with that, because it bottlenecks innovation through the people at the top of the hierarchy, and there’s no reason to expect that those people would be particularly creative about coming up with new products that are dramatically different from existing ones – quite the opposite, in fact. So Valve was designed as a company that would attract the sort of people capable of taking the initial creative step, leave them free to do creative work, and make them want to stay. Consequently, Valve has no formal management or hierarchy at all.
Now all this is interesting for my paper perhaps, but does the success of a company like Valve mean anything in the big picture. Will companies start to emulate them? Can they? The first question is easy, other software companies and tech start-ups are already copying Valve. For example Madison based Epic, a medical software company has adopted the flat structure and has become an industry leader, they employ mainly young people who work in small teams, with little corporate structure. And this isn’t some small start-up, Epic did $1.2 billion in 2011.
But the second part is tricky, can these models be realistically emulated? Because Valve has the luxury of being a billion dollar company, with around three hundred employees to share in the spoils, it’s easy to be an anarchist when that much money is on the table. The model would also break down in many other businesses, imagine an anarcho-syndicalist hospital? Disaster.
Employees can hide in this flat structure. It’s hard to fire people, and hard to tell if someone is slacking, but it simply doesn’t happen often at Valve where you get to work on exactly what you want to. Still employees at companies adopting the flat structure may not be as motivated as those at Valve, especially if the field isn’t as interesting as video games. Valve trusts that employees will care what their coworkers think about them, and without the traditional hierarchy mutual respect is easier to achieve among the staff. Some argue that maybe this is just the brilliance of Valve and can’t be copied.
The work environment provided by Valve is something to be envied, they have a massage parlor, and what young person wouldn’t want to work somewhere like that. I do. People who work in an environment where the work place politic is anarcho-syndicalism are inevitably and perhaps subconsciously going to change their political beliefs in regards to government. That’s not to say companies with no rules and lots of amenities are locks to succeed. The opposite tends to be true, but the perks at a place like Valve or Google or Facebook mean employees tend to spend more time working productively.
The Valve formula breeds creativity and hard work from employees, and amazing services for consumers. It is less costly to run because there are less managers and it’s inherently more efficient. Communication is better and everyone can make decisions so the occur more quickly, making the company nimble and able to pivot at any moment. I’d be surprised if more corporations don’t start trying to implement certain parts of the anarcho-syndicalism model into their business, in particular branches of those companies that must innovate to succeed. I’m not suggesting that all or even many companies adopt the Valve model, but its success is a sign that the traditional corporate model is not the only way.
Mar 27
1776: The Second Wave of the Internet Revolution
Great interview by Evan Burfield on Bloomberg TV this morning about the DC startup scene and how to harness Washington DCs unique characteristics to promote entrepreneurship. Watch and learn: