Today office provides you as a way to earn money and also as a social circle of people. That is why HR department of companies invest so much in fun activities like games, team building exercises, in office yoga etc.

In way, office is bundling multiple things - not just work. Its an all-in-one package of work, source to earn money, social circle, friends, etc.

But in the process you lose flexibility.

You are stuck with the colleagues you have, their intellectual levels and their interests

Many people stick to a particular job, which may not be the highest paying as they have found a good set of friends or colleagues

But with the growth of internet and cooridnation costs getting lower - (whatsapp makes meetup planning lot easier, easy availablity of information available on what event is happening where) - this is set to be unbundled. Some companies are now looking to remote jobs as a way to access talent which would otherwise not be accessible to them. Gitlab is a pioneering example of this. They have set up a process on hiring remote people and actively promote remote jobs. Here's their Remote Manifesto.

Of course going to office daily provides you with a set, comfortable routine but it is also stifling.

Now you can do jobs online ( as most work is online anyways - especially in tech) - go to meetups you like (may be Urdu poetry or on art) - and have more meetups with friends at bars/cafes

Though this requires more coordination, it gives you more choice and may be a more optimal value.

You are not stuck with your office colleagues as the only social circle you are part of.

Ego, as defined in Sigmund Freud's psychoanalysis, is generally considered a bad thing in today's society. People reproach others saying he/she has too much ego.

But Ego is the only thing which drives this world forward. It is a result of evolution. It still exists today, which indicates that Ego must have helped human beings in their survival. Evolution of brain led to origin of Ego which can be linked to origin of sconsciousness. Consciousness must have arisen later in human evolution.

If you look at world history, most of the big events (whether good or bad) were led by Ego of an individual. If you look into how Mao's China and its after effects like cultural revolution came into being, its largely due to the ideas which Mao had and his will to act on it. Hitler led to the formation of Nazi Germany.

The society doesn't evolve along normative principles, but what individuals believe should be done and take the risk to actually do it. All these individuals must have a high does of "Ego", as it is used in current terminology, otherwise they wouldn't have led to changes/achievements which they did.

Elon Musk has created a rocket which returns back to the earth after delivering its payload. He is planning a colony in Mars. All this is driven by a human, who thinks of himself as a separate entity - his ego. In words of Elon Musk, he wants to be hopeful about future and thats why he is doin all this.

Ludwig von Mises alludes to this in his book Human Action in which he says that human action (drive to a better condition of being) is the ultimate source of all decisions/"actions".

So, next time when you start criticising Ego, think again and ponder about how evolution of Ego has led to development of our society.

In these series of blogs on Mental Models, I plan to take a model which I think is sufficiently generally applicable and try to get in greater details on them with examples.

One the key question most of us often face is what is the 'right' price of a product. I use the term product here in a broader sense of what can be 'bought' in competitive markets. It could be the price you pay for hiring talent in your company (aka salary), price investors pay for buying shares in a company (aka valuation) or anything else with competitive markets.

What I have observed is that the primary factors determining the price is the supply and demand for the item. It is a concept from ECON 101 but most of the time we don't apply it when thinking about things like salary, valuation, etc. The dynamics between buyer and seller, and psychological factors like FOMO (Fear of missing out) or scarcity become much more important than we would ideally like to think.  

I will explain this in more detail with the following examples.

1. Salary for a job - Most of the time we don't think salaries to be defined by the equations of supply and demand. At least, I used to think that some jobs should be paid more than other or a senior candidate should be paid higher than a junior one for similar roles. But thats not the case.

For example, Hardware engineers in Silicon Valley are paid around 100K USD while Software engineers who have gone through similar training can easily earn 150K-200 K USD. The fact that there are much fewer companies who work on hardware leads to lower demand for such engineers and hence, the companies can pay a lower salary. Software engineers on the other hand are needed by all app/ web based startups. These startups compete with each other to attract good talent and hence bid up the price in order to make their offer more attractive.

Keep in mind that the actual job of the hardware engineer may be tougher and more mentally taxing than those working on software. Though the market doesn't care about this and supply and demand becomes the primary mechanism which determine salary. 2. Bitcoin pricing - Many people had tried to come up with intrinsic valuation model for Bitcoin, but in my opinion most of these are just intellectual exercises to justify price which one is willing to pay. The recent crash of BTC from ~6000 to ~3700 USD attests to the fact that psychological factors like people's expectation of what the future of crypto can look like are much more important factors than what valuation models can spew out.

Fundamentally speaking, nothing much has changed in the crypto space apart from SEC getting a bit more stricter. But the fact that BTC didn't stand to people's expectation of 'mooning' caused a much greater effect by reducing the demand than any other rational factor. 3. Startup Valuation- While there are ballpark numbers thrown around on how much a Series A B2C startup be valued for what revenue projection etc, these are mostly exercises which investors go through when they are not keen about a startup. If there is a startup, which is looking to raise funds and is liked by more than one VC, then it mostly becomes a game of who is more desperate to invest. It may depend upon how much dry powder these VCs have to deploy, what do their LPs think about a sector (mostly based on their experience in US or China), and how much FOMO they have. Basically supply and demand.

If there are many good startups in sector which has suddenly become hot, VCs can choose from the platter, but if there are only a few startups which fit their thesis - then it becomes a game of outbidding the other and valuation models or only treated as minor obstructions. Numbers in the spreadsheets can always be adjusted to justify the numbers which investors are willing to pay for.

To summarise, price of an asset depends a lot more on the microstructures of the deal, the buyer and seller dynamics and emotional factors like FOMO, than what we generally account for.  I think these factors become more important in comparatively illiquid markets like job market, private investing, etc. where relatively less number of parties participate and thus price discovery depends a lot on buyer and seller dynamics.

I recently had the chance to attend a talk on Data Driven Disruptions by Anand Rajaraman (ex-Kosmix, Junglee, renowned VC in Silicon Valley) at DocsApp.

Anand is an electric speaker with a deep focus on how technology and data can be used to build new types of products. The core of his talk was this fundamental idea that access to a huge amount of data will lead to the creation of new business models which will disrupt existing players.

For example, Netflix has now started creating serials and movies which are guided by how much time people spend on different types of movies. They have a treasure trove of data which captures exactly how much time people are spending on different videos, where they are dropping off or losing attention, etc. Traditional movie studios can't capture such granularity of data as they don't have control over the consumption of the created movie. But Netflix being a streaming platform has lots of data on consumer clickstreams, time spent, etc. Why does Disruption happen? Another key question which Anand urged the audience to think about was: Whether they should use data to optimize existing products or create completely new disruptors? Though there is a scope for both types of innovation, he advocated thinking about disrupting existing business models by new ways of using data. For example, rather than using AI to optimize revenue for hospitals, can AI and data be used to create a new type of hospitals?

In a way, DocsApp is that new kind of hospital which is accessible to anyone with a smartphone. People from remote parts of India can access doctors and get specialist medical advice for their problems. This creates a new type of business model with no physical infrastructure and not constrained by geographical access. Optimize or Disrupt? Anand also practises what he preaches. In his current firm rocketship.vc they use data to invert the existing VC model. They process data on startups and markets across the globe and reach out to startups which they find interesting. Thus, rather than startups having to reach out to VCs, rocketship.vc proactively reaches out to startups if they match their investment thesis. Rocketship.vc Company Model Though using data objectively in itself is an art. You can use the same data to tell different stories and succumb to the confirmation biases. The key is to have mechanisms to keep such biases in check and let the data tell the story rather than use data to confirm your story.

Someone has rightly said that "Data is the new gold." So, what data-driven disruptions are you gonna create today?

You can access the slides of Anand's talk here

The Dispossesed is a sci-fi novel about an anarchist society formed on the imaginary planet of Anarres. The society has been founded after an anarchist revolution in Urras, which led its government to send the anarchists to an uninhabited Anarres to establish the society of their dreams. The story is told from the point of view of Shevek, who is a physicist in Anarres and visits Urras for furthering his research and collaborating with the scientists there.

The novel is a great exploration of how a society founded in anarchist ideals could actually function. The stark contrast from our established ideas of property, nation-states, marriage, etc. are very interesting and lay bare many assumptions which we make about how a society should be organized.

Below are just some of the ideas which I found quite interesting in the book:

1. The idea of Property​

“Oiie was an ethical man, but his private insecurities, his anxieties as a property owner, made him cling to rigid notions of law and order. ”

“I have something they want,” he said. “An idea. A scientific theory. I came here from Anarres because I thought that here I could do the work and publish it. I didn’t understand that here an idea is a property of the State. I don’t work for a State. I can’t take the money and the things they give me. I want to get out”

Anarres being an anarchist didn't have any idea of property. People lived in syndicates, did the work they were assigned by PDC (Production and Distribution Coordination). Hence, Shevek is appalled by the idea of state owning property. Since there is no idea of property, there is also nothing called money in Anarres.

Interestingly, different countries in today's world have different attitudes to property. Property is one of the central pieces of the American legal system and is considered an unalienable right.

From Property Rights in American History

Americans have long esteemed private property and economic opportunity.

Well before the formation of the United States the colonists enjoyed widespread ownership of land and were increasingly receptive to an emerging free market economy based on private contracts.

While in India, the Right to Property is not a fundamental right. By the 44th Amendment Act of 1978, Right to Property was removed from our Fundamental Rights and was made a Legal Right. It expanded the power of the state to appropriate property for social welfare purposes.

Locke argues that

Individuals can acquire full property rights over moveable and nonmoveable parts of the earth in a state of nature, absent government. Our natural rights include the right legitimately to acquire property, and any government must respect natural rights including rights to property.

It is quite interesting to see that though most of us consider right to property as our unquestionable right, the legal foundations of it are quite intricate and vary from one nation to another.

2. Is centralization inevitable?​

“you can’t have a nervous system without at least a ganglion, and preferably a brain. There had to be a center. The computers that coordinated the administration of things, the division of labor, and the distribution of goods, and the central federatives of most of the work syndicates, were in Abbenay, right from the start. And from the start the Settlers were aware that that unavoidable centralization was a lasting threat, to be countered by lasting vigilance.”

Although Anarres society was envisaged to be a decentralised one, organizations for coordination and communication had been instituted. For example, PDC coordinated all the production and distribution mechanisms. There were also institutes like Central Institute of Sciences which controlled most of research and publication.

The key question this raises is:

Is complete decentralization ever posssible or any decentralised organization will develop centers of authority/influence which will control the independent bodies. Is centralization inevitable and the only way to counter it is with being vigilant about such accumulation of power? But if such centralization of power comes about, will these centres want to lose power to enable decentralization?

3. Is "time" just a manifestation of consciousness?​

“It is only in consciousness, it seems, that we experience time at all. A little baby has no time; he can’t distance himself from the past and understand how it relates to his present, or plan how his present might relate to his future. He does not know time passes; he does not understand death. The unconscious mind of the adult is like that still. In a dream there is no time, and succession is all changed about, and cause and effect are all mixed together. In myth and legend there is no time.”

This is a deep philosophical question on the existence of time - Does time really exist? At least physics doesn't agree with it and time is just considered a perception from our existence in the space-time continuum.

4. The survival of the fittest for a social animal?​

“The law of evolution is that the strongest survives!”

“Yes, and the strongest, in the existence of any social species, are those who are most social. In human terms, most ethical. You see, we have neither prey nor enemy, on Anarres. We have only one another. There is no strength to be gained from hurting one another. Only weakness.”

The laws of evolution suggest that the strongest survive. Though recent research on biology has suggested that evolution doesn't care about the survival of the individual - but that of the gene pool(more technically, genome). Sapolsky has a great set of lectures on Human Behavioural Biology where he argues how human behaviours and customs have emerged to accomplish this goal.

Recently came across the news of a friend from college days who succumbed to cancer. He was fighting it for some 2-3 years now and apparently had recovered from it. That's why this news of his sudden departure came as a shock to me.

Discussing this, one of our common friends quipped

In this uncertain life, only death is certain.

This is such a hard truth, yet most of us keep avoiding facing it. In fact, we would do anything except think about our own mortality.

Watch one more cat video. Pick up a fight on twitter. Go have that ice cream. Put fight for that coveted job. Anything except think about what is this all for.

It's like there is a hole in us, which we desperately want to fill. Either through relationships, status games, money or enriching experiences. But we never quite fill it. Never.

There's a story about Alexander the Great, one of the greatest emperors to have walked on the face of the world. On his deathbed, one of his wishes was to keep both his hands dangling out of the coffin. Surprised, his generals asked why such a weird wish. He replied:

"I wish people to know that even Alexander the Great - came empty handed into this world and empty handed he went out of this world."

If you are someone who believes that there is life after death or that you get resurrected, then at least you die with some hope. But what if you don't subscribe to such beliefs. What if after death you are just switched off - like a bulb is switched off. Nothing remains of you. You just cease to exist. How do you reconcile this?

Ernest Becker in his masterpiece, The Denial of Death, propounds that man's refusal to acknowledge his own mortality is at the core of shaping the nature of humanity. Death is something which gives meaning to life.

But, and its a big but -

If all of us eventually die, does it really matter what we do in our life?

In Part 1 of this post, I discussed a particular example - that of decentralised Uber to decipher if a decentralised Uber makes sense, or in general is decentralistion always better?

In this post, we will explore some the theoretical basis of the argument.

Braess's Paradox​

Braess's paradox (often cited as Braess' paradox) is a proposed explanation for the situation where an alteration to a road network to improve traffic flow actually has the reverse effect and impedes traffic through it.

You can find the complete explaination of this example here. I will just suffice to say that the total commute time from Start to End is lower if there is no link from A to B vs when there is. It would be better if a rule is laid down that only a certain number of people are allowed in the road A to B. Keeping it open to independent choices of everyone produces an outcome which is sub-optimal to everyone

Decentralisation is not a value in itself​

I recently came across a very interesting tweet by Simona Pop of Bounties Network.

There is no inherent value in decentralization. What decentralisation enables is of value for some people or in some contexts. Does it make people more efficient? Can theynow do things which government or regulators didn't want them to? Does it give them more control of their lives? These are the questions which actually matter.

Democracy vs Dictatorship​

In context of nations, the tradeoff between democracy and dictatorship is very similar to that between decentralization and centralization.

Though nations have much broader and varied goal, compared to organizations. For example, companies have a clear metric of creating more shareholder value.

What are the metrics on which decentralised organizations should be judged? Is it the value accrued to network participants?

How much value can be assigned to network participants not getting censoured - which is one the key benefits of decentralised orgs.

Countries' metric can be GDP, GINI coefficient or the happiness level ( Bhutan actually uses this metric)

Historically, Decentralisation always emerged as a response to restrictions in centralised systems​

Here's a great post which talks about the rise of decentralization in context of mp3 file sharing. The author points that decentralization always arises in response to the law when a certain use of centralized technology is denied.

A quote from the above post which sums this beautifully

Ask yourself, what can some people not do on centralized systems which they should be able to do? If you look closely, you might be able to spot informal strategies people are using today to get around the rules, and these could help inform what to formalize into a protocol.

What do people really want?​

I think the key question is - What do people really want? Are they OK with sacrificing some privacy and freedom for better user experience and less effort.

If we try to reason with organization of states, most states have high level of centralization. US, China, Russia are some examples which come to mind. Direct democracies in comparison have been few and has only worked for fewer states.

Other advantage of centralization is that it concentrates power on the top layers. These people want to increase their power - leading to more alliances, subjugation or attacks - ultimately leading for the organizations to be more powerful.

Similar dynamics can be seen in corporate orgnizations. The profit motive actually helps them become bigger and concentrate more power. This drive is lacking in decentralised organizations.

Urusula Le Guinn in her book The Dispossesed portrays this beautifully. The book talks about a society born out of anarchism, an extreme form of decentralization. These people establish a society from ground up in a new planet. What was interesting was that even in this anarchist society points of centralization emerged. For example, people were given names by a centralised computer systems. Important people controlled means of production and media. The book is a great portrayal of the dichotomy between centralization and decentralization.

The emergence of miner centralization, high level of control by developers, etc. point to this phenomenon in current crypto ecosytem. It emerges primarily for better coordination and efficiency.

This begs the question:

Isn't the inherent tendency for people to strive for power a deterrent against decentralization? And what has fundamentally changed in the last few years which would tilt the balance towards decentralization?

I often find myself discussing with friends about decentralization and its benefits. Somehow people believe that decentralization is inherently good. Most of us have a meme of evil corp in our mind - and anything which gives us hope of taking down these evil corps seems quite appealing. Most of us hate how these evil corps like Google, FB, Uber, etc. make a huge profit - and potentially by selling our data/time as their key offering.

So something which can bring down these evil corps is good, right?

Well, the point is that good and bad are just moral standpoints, and society ultimately rewards efficiency.

The general argument is that a decentralised organization needs much less administrative cost as people are aligned based on the incentive structure. So, less number of employees for marketing, administration, etc. and hence lower cost in employee expenses. Also, decentralised orgs don't have a profit motive, so all the value created is distributed in the network.

All this is fine, but we need to ask what are we losing when we remove all these people who essentially help in coordination? Let's examine in more detail.

Let's take the example of Uber.

• The Ops people in Uber ensure that there are enough driver partners on board before launching in a city.

• The Marketing people make customers aware that Uber is getting launched in a city. When Uber is already launched in a city, they keep running campaigns to keep Uber at the top of the mind of people, so that they book an Uber whenever the need a cab.

• The Customer Success team responds to customer queries and complains. If someone was wrongly charged or they lost something in the Uber, they can dial up customer care to register their issue. These people then follow up on that complain to ensure that it is resolved.

• Support for driver partners ensures that they are well trained on etiquettes, traffic rules, etc. so that a minimum standard is maintained when someone starts driving in the Uber network.

• Folks in legal and regulatory department handle any issues which regulatory agencies may have. They communicate with the govt. and policy-making bodies to apprise them of their business and the value it can bring to the people.

• Product people and developers develop and maintain quality mobile apps which work in different network conditions, phone type, etc.

So, apart from the customers and drivers, there are many types of people which form a marketplace company like Uber.

Now, let's see how will these functions work for a decentralised version of Uber - dUber (in lines of dApp)

For simplicity, dUber issues a dUber ERC20 token (The primary construct will remain similar if it's a native cryptocurrency, the gas cost will be replaced by miner fees, or something similar)

So, to bootstrap the network - dUber premines dUber token and issues some in ICO to raise initial funding.

A part of the funding is used to pay developers to get the product made and released - of course in open source. The ICO is run by a team which would say be a foundation with some dUber tokens. They are paid partly in dUber token so the incentives are aligned.

Marketing - For marketing, suppose dUber air drops the tokens to customers. These effectively act as initial free use cards which even traditional startups use.

But wait, who will ensure that there is enough number of cars on the street on dUber? So, somebody needs to introduce this dUber app to the drivers. They can't be just expected to start taking rides through dUber. They need to be handheld.

Ok, so let's say we have a smaaalll team to do ops before launching in a city.

Fine. But still much better than the evil Uber, right?

Wait. What if a rider is charged wrongly for a ride? Or what if he accidentally forgets phone in the car? Who should he call in dUber? Remember, there is no company running it.

Hmm.. maybe we will have few people in call centers to address such queries. But if its a decentralised dUber, will they have a database of which car was last used by this customer? I doubt so. What to do then? Well may be read it from the payment history in the Ethreum blockchain. After all, the driver would have been paid in dUber tokens.

Ok. We can do that. But does the call center guy have the phone number of the driver? Why should dUber maintain a database of phone numbers of drivers? May be it does need to?

Or just warn the riders that you are solely responsible for your belongings. And if you forget anything, dUber can't do anything. After all, we are a decentralised org, for christ's shake.

I wonder how many people will then ride on dUber.

(As a side note : This is exactly what happens when you story crypto tokens in your wallet. You are scared shitless by the wallets that they won't be able to do anything if you lose your private key. This is drilled in your mind again and again. The fact that some people still go through them, is either a miracle or a testimony of what people can do when they are promised riches.)

dUber can decide to have phone numbers of the drivers. But, who ensures that criminals don't start driving on dUber? Well, they need to be vetted by someone. Someone needs to see their ID and work history, and only after that, they can start working as a driver. All these processes need people. Somebody who can be held accountable and punished if needed.

Of course, you can say that this can be done through reputation systems where multiple oracles can push data about the reliability of the driver. But again, running these reputation systems cost money - the oracles need to be incentivised in the right way. Also, there is always a danger of collusion.

I am not saying that a decentralised Uber is not possible. Of course, it is possible. I am only questioning if it would be more efficient than the centralised Uber. Once we start providing services and facilities which are available in today's centralised version of Uber, will the decentralised version turn out to be costlier?

If it's costlier, what is the new feature we are gaining out of it, by running Uber in a decentralised way. For the case of money, e.g. Bitcoin, Bitcoin has a very unique property which none of the fiat currencies can provide. It is censorship resistant. No government can control it. It is really owned by the person having the private key. As a by-product, it is also free from the whims of central bankers who can start printing money and devalue the currency whenever they want.

So, what unique features does a decentralised Uber provides?

In economic theory, there is a concept of the Theory of the Firm. One of the key questions in it is that of why do firms emerge? Why are not all transactions in the economy mediated over the market?

One of the best frameworks to analyse this is the transaction cost theory. According to Ronald Coase, people begin to organise their production in firms when the transaction cost of coordinating production through the market exchange, given imperfect information, is greater than within the firm.

This is what Wikipedia has to say about this.

For Coase the main reason to establish a firm is to avoid some of the transaction costs of using the price mechanism. These include discovering relevant prices (which can be reduced but not eliminated by purchasing this information through specialists), as well as the costs of negotiating and writing enforceable contracts for each transaction (which can be large if there is uncertainty).

Moreover, contracts in an uncertain world will necessarily be incomplete and have to be frequently re-negotiated. The costs of haggling about division of surplus, particularly if there is asymmetric information and asset specificity, may be considerable.

So, there a reason why firms do exist, and the primary way they are structured today is in hierarchical structures. The decentralised world in which we think individuals can act as rational actors in a market increases the coordination and transaction costs.

This post has already been longer than expected, so I will conclude Part 1 here.

In part 2, I get into the theoretical underpinnings of decentralisation and centralisation and discuss reasons why centralization may naturally emerge.

Below are my notes from the book Underground by Suelette Dryfus & Julian Assange. It's an amazing book if you want to get a glimpse of the early days of the hacking culture. It also explores the culture which created folks like Julian Assange who is a powerful force in the world today.

I mostly focus on the human aspects of the book as the technical aspects are anyways outdated now. But even the human and social aspects throw a lot of light on how these early day hackers used to think.

1. Friendship

When Craig Bowen (aka Thunderbird1) came to believe in 1989 that he had been duped by Gill, he retreated into a state of denial and depression. The PI community had trusted him. He entered his friendship with Gill a bright-eyed, innocent young man looking for adventure. He left the friendship betrayed and gun-shy.

Hackers are after all humans and are driven by a sense of friendship and community. Some people may imagine hackers as people who eat and breath technology, but at some level, the sense of friendship and community is important for everyone. After all, man is a social animal.

1. Hackers would reveal their most prized hacks only to other hackers they trusted the most

The two hackers trusted each other; in fact Gavin was the only person to whom Force revealed the exact address of the CitiSaudi machine.

Even among hackers, there are multiple layers and inner circle and outer circles. You are admitted to these circles once you prove your worth - by hacking difficult systems.

1. Recognition, important for some

Phoenix laughed at how well he had thumbed his nose at Cliffy Stoll. This article would show him up all right. It felt so good, seeing himself in print that way.

1. The High

At home over the next few weeks, Electron struggled to come to terms with the fact that he would have to give up hacking forever. He still had his modem, but no computer. Even if he had a machine, he realised it was far too dangerous to even contemplate hacking again. So he took up drugs instead.

Hacking and owning systems provide a different type of high! :)

1. The motivation

"In your own words, tell me what fascination you find with accessing computers overseas?"

`Well, basically, it's not for any kind of personal gain or anything,' Electron said slowly. It was a surprisingly difficult question to answer. Not because he didn't know the answer, but because it was a difficult answer to describe to someone who had never hacked a computer.

`It's just the kick of getting in to a system. I mean, once you are in, you very often get bored and even though you can still access the system, you may never call back.

1. A clear head

When he was in serious hacking mode, he never smoked. A clear head was much too important. Besides, the high he got from hacking was a hundred times better than anything dope could ever do for him.

1. See and Look hacking as illegal

The Scottish Law Commission issued a 1987 report proposing to make unauthorised data access illegal, but only if the hacker tried to `secure advantage, or cause damage to another person'--including reckless damage.2 Simple look-see hacking would not be a crime under the report's recommendations. However, in 1989 The Law Commission of England and Wales issued its own report proposing that simple unauthorised access should be a crime regardless of intent--a recommendation which was eventually included in the law.

Should simple see and look hacking be made illegal? What damage is it causing? Isn't it just like entering a house and seeing things. It is not nice certainly, but is it a crime?

1. Weird is good

Trax seemed slightly eccentric, and possibly suffered from some sort of anxiety disorder. He refused to travel to the city, and he once made reference to seeing a psychiatrist. But Mendax usually found the most interesting people were a little unusual, and Trax was both.

Eccentric people are the most interesting. Homogeneity is a killer of creativity and genius.

1. Many great discoveries are made by just tinkering

Trax made his great discovery by accident. He was using a phone sprinter, a simple computer program which automatically dialled a range of phone numbers looking for modems. If he turned the volume up on his modem when his computer dialled what seemed to be a dead or non-existent number, he sometimes heard a soft clicking noise after the disconnection message.

This is how Trax, one of the pioneers in phreaking discovered a new hack. Many great discoveries are just happy accidents by prepared minds who keep on tinkering.

1. Music

Techno was musical nihilism; no message, and not much medium either. Fast, repetitive, computer-synthesised beats, completely stripped of vocals or any other evidence of humanity. He liked to go to techno-night at The Lounge, a city club, where people danced by themselves, or in small, loose groups of four or five. Everyone watched the video screen which provided an endless stream of ever-changing, colourful computer-generated geometric shapes pulsing to the beat.

Music has a potential to bring people together. A similar observation was made by Tony Hsieh, founder of Zappos, in his book Delivering Happiness. He observed that dancing to techno music with big crowds made him feel part of a bigger whole, part of the human experience.

1. The Will to Power

The desire for power grew throughout Anthrax's teenage years. He ached to know everything, to see everything, to play with exotic systems in foreign countries. He needed to know the purpose of every system, what made them tick, how they fitted together. Understanding how things worked would give him control.

Hackers are driven by their immense curiosity and a desire to control systems.

1. What is power?

Anthrax defines power as the potential for real world impact.

Great definition of power.

China's history is very complex and interesting and developed in a microcosm which was very different from how other countries developed

Wife brought up the husband in early 19th century​

“Following the custom, my great-grandfather was married young, at fourteen, to a woman six years his senior. It was considered one of the duties of a wife to help bring up her husband.”

China had a fractious history​

Many warlords who kept on fighting with each other. Emperor only in name. There was a golden period in Song dynasty (960-1279 A.D) when China flourished. In 1900s, China was ruled by a weak emperors of Qing Dynasty before the establishment of republic in 1912.

In a way, China shows the complete cycle of greatness to abject poverty and then rising to greatness again.

The practice of feet binding​

“But her greatest assets were her bound feet, called in Chinese 'three-inch golden lilies' (san-tsun-gin-lian). This meant she walked 'like a tender young willow shoot in a spring breeze," as Chinese connoisseurs of women traditionally put it. The sight of a woman teetering on bound feet was supposed to have an erotic effect on men, partly because her vulnerability induced a feeling of protectiveness in the onlooker.”

“In those days, when a woman was married, the first thing the bridegroom's family did was to examine her feet. Large feet, meaning normal feet, were considered to bring shame on the husband's household. The mother-in-law would lift the hem of the bride's long skirt, and if the feet were more than about four inches long, she would throw down the skirt in a demonstrative gesture of contempt and stalk off, leaving the bride to the critical gaze of the wedding guests, who would stare at her feet and insultingly mutter their disdain.”

Strange practices which developed. Also as a way for women to keep weaker?

Thats why communist had uniform dressing. Both men and women wore similar dress with shirts and trousers.

Communist were the good people​

The communist revolution was a peasant revolution which promised to get rid of Koumingtang and Japanese.

Interestingly, when Communist came to power they started abusing power themselves. So it can be argued that power is the cause of corruption

Why democracy doesn't work in China​

“The 804 members of parliament had to be bribed. Xue and General Feng stationed guards on the parliament building and let it be known that there would be a handsome consideration for anyone who voted the right way, which brought many deputies scurrying back from the provinces. By the time everything was ready for the election there were 555 members of parliament in Peking. Four days before the election, after much bargaining, they were each given 5,000 silver yuan, a rather substantial sum. On 5 October 1923, Tsao Kun was elected president of China with 480 votes. Xue was rewarded with promotion to full general. Also promoted were seventeen 'special advisers' all favorite mistresses or concubines of various warlords and generals. This episode has entered Chinese history as a notorious example of how an election can be manipulated. People still cite it to argue that democracy will not work in China.”

People were used to bribe and corruption. The above historical incident was used as an historical example to claim that democracy won't work in China, and to crush any attempts to bring democracy.

Mao made himself God like​

“Mao made himself more godlike by shrouding himself in mystery. He always appeared remote, beyond human approach. He eschewed radio, and there was no television.

Few people, except his court staff, ever had any contact with him. Even his colleagues at the very top only met him in a sort of formal audience.”

Capitalism was villified​

When I was in the boarding nursery and did not want to finish my food, the teacher would say: "Think of all the starving children in the capitalist world!" In school, when they were trying to make us work harder, the teachers often said: "You are lucky to have a school to go to and books to read.In the capitalist countries children have to work to support their hungry families."

Self Criticism​

“Mao had attacked flowers and grass several times before, saying that they should be replaced by cab bales and cotton. But only now was he able to generate enough pressure to get his order implemented but only up to a point. People loved their plants, and some flowerbeds survived Mao's campaign.

I was extremely sad to see the lovely plants go. But I did not resent Mao. On the contrary, I hated myself for feeling miserable. By then I had grown into the habit of self criticism and automatically blamed myself for any instincts that went against Mao's instructions. In fact, such feelings frightened me. It was out of the question to discuss them with anyone. Instead, I tried to suppress them and acquire the correct way of thinking. I lived in a state of constant self-accusation.”

Peasant Revolution​

“The revolution was fundamentally a peasant revolution, and the peasants had an unrelentingly harsh life. They were particularly sensitive about other people enjoying or seeking comfort. Anyone who took part in the revolution was supposed to toughen themselves to the point where they became inured to hardship”

Strict discipline and rules​

“ But he met fierce opposition from my mother's boss, Mrs. Mi, a peasant woman who had been a guerrilla. It was unthinkable for a peasant woman to take a rest if she was pregnant.

She worked right up to the moment of delivery, and there were innumerable stories about women cutting the umbilical cord with a sickle and carrying on. Mrs. Mi had borne her own baby on a battlefield and had had to abandon it on the spot a baby's cry could have endangered the whole unit”

The communist revolution was a bottoms up revolution, and the party members expected everyone to go through the same hardships which a normal peasant would go through.If somebody considers himself better, then he was frowned upon as "capitalist"

What was Mao's philosophy?​

“In the days after Mao's death, I did a lot of thinking. I knew he was considered a philosopher, and I tried to think what his 'philosophy' really was. It seemed to me that its central principle was the need or the desire? for perpetual conflict. The core of his thinking seemed to be that human struggles were the motivating force of history and that in order to make history 'class enemies' had to be continuously created en masse. ”

Programmed Lives?​

“The Chinese seemed to be mourning Mao in a heartfelt fashion. But I wondered how many of their tears were genuine. People had practiced acting to such a degree that they confused it with their true feelings. Weeping for Mao was perhaps just another programmed act in their programmed lives.”

Social conditioning

Use of disinformation and control of media​

“In reality, Mao turned China back to the days of the Middle Kingdom and, with the help of the United States, to isolation from the world. He enabled the Chinese to feel great and superior again, by blinding them to the world outside. Nonetheless, national pride was so important to the Chinese that much of the population was genuinely grateful to Mao, and did not find the cult of his personality offensive, certainly not at first. The near total lack of access to information and the systematic feeding of disinformation meant that most Chinese had no way to discriminate between Mao's successes and his failures, or to identify the relative role of Mao and other leaders in the Communists' achievements.”

Thought Control​

“Many people had been reduced to a state where they did not dare even to think, in case their thoughts came out involuntarily. Even if they did entertain unorthodox ideas, few mentioned them to their children, as they might blurt out something to other children, which could bring disaster to themselves as well as their parents. ”

Creation of myths and models​

“In the learn-from Lei Feng years it was hammered into children that our first and only loyalty should be to Mao. A popular song went: "Father is close, Mother is close, but neither is as close as Chairman Mao." We were drilled to think that anyone, including our parents, who was not totally for Mao was our enemy. Many parents encouraged their children to grow up as conformists, as this would be safest for their future.”