The middle of a revolution
I saw a short interview yesterday online with a very smart guy named Peter Thiel. Thiel practiced law for a few years after graduating from Stanford, started a hedge fund, then founded PayPal with a friend and sold it to eBay. He then invested half a million early on in Facebook which is probably worth a billion dollars now. I also think it's cool he's a chess master and writes learned articles for the Hoover Institution.
In the interview, Thiel mentions that the current technology revolution "is so big, we don't even realize how much it is changing the world." It's true--here I am in Hungary receiving calls routed from my Oregon cellphone so that the callers typically don't know we're outside the US. Yesterday, I knew that Obama was speaking in Germany and was bummed we didn't have a tv. It turned out that CNN streamed it live via the internet and the quality was quite good. I've been chatting, emailing and video-skyping with friends and family across the world and I would have been forced to send postcards instead just a decade or two ago.
It seems pretty clear that as worldwide communication becomes increasingly easy and inexpensive, the business opportunities involved in connecting people who provide intellectual--communication-intensive--services will continue to grow. If I'm wrong, our current business will probably go down in flames. But I don't think that will happen and am optimistic.