Dana Blankenhorn

The New Virtual Worlds Opened by eSports

The latest technology trend is right up my son’s alley.

It’s eSports, people playing high-end video games for serious money.

I was somewhat shocked when my son insisted on buying a powerful desktop PC before heading to graduate school. I had failed to understand, from my couch in front of the TV, that gaming is now the tip of the PC spear. (No wonder I got to choose what shows to watch.)

Only video games press the power of the latest chips and systems. Every other application set, especially my own work in writing about technology, or my son’s academic work, learning about how to create new molecules, can be done with relatively low-end gear and a cloud connection.

The Internet of Money

Don Tapscott and his son Alex have been wandering the planet this year, touting something called Blockchain as the future of everything. 

I was skeptical, but now I understand. I hope when you finish reading this that you will as well.

Blockchain is, at heart, an encryption algorithm. A successful encryption and decryption leaves a digital “token” you and your trading partner agree to put a value on. This is “crypto currency.” Blockchain advocates prefer the term “trust units.” 

The best-known implementation of blockchain is Bitcoin. Bitcoin is a marketplace for tokens that are created through decryption. There are only 21 million available answers to the Bitcoin puzzle, thus the “money supply” of Bitcoin is fixed.

Bizarro Carter

What happened last night makes no sense unless you believe, as I do, in the life cycles of history. The only way to accept it and to fight it is through an understanding of economic determinism.

First, life cycles. People believe what they believe for a lifetime. It’s why a set of political assumptions, what I have called a Political Thesis, can hold people even after it no longer works. The Nixon Thesis of Conflict stopped working under George W. Bush, so Barack Obama was elected.

Obama was a Reaganesque figure at a time that called for someone who was more like Nixon. We needed someone who knew their enemies and would be ruthless against them. We should have nominated Hillary Clinton in 2008. Obama was too passive in the face of obstruction, too complex as people came to demand simple answers. He will be judged a failure until someone else makes him a success.

Where Tesla is Wrong

Let’s step away from politics for a week, maybe a year.

Let’s talk, again, about business, about technology and about the future.

Let’s talk about Tesla.

I like Tesla. Most business analysts don’t. But I admire Elon Musk. I even think he’s right to buy SolarCity.

But I think the namesake product has a limited runway. Here is why.

The story of the Tesla car is a three-legged stool.

• There’s the electric angle. Don’t just save the planet, but recycle energy from the Sun, through the battery. Just as important, deliver a car with far fewer moving parts, so it won’t wear out. An electric motor has very few moving parts. A Tesla car is basically a drivetrain. If you replace the batteries, keep the drivetrain maintained, and change things like tires and wiper blades you’re good.
• There’s the performance angle. The Tesla’s electric motor can deliver enormous power to the drivetrain quickly. Its “ludicrous speed” goes from zero to 60 in nothing flat. The sleek design screams sports car. This is a car that has always been compared to high-end luxury vehicles, or sport vehicles, and has won in that niche. It’s had to compete there to justify its price.
• There’s the self-driving angle. Musk promises that you can ignore the car in a few years, and for now just keep an eye on it as you go down the road under the control of your GPS. It will avoid collisions and go where you want it to go.