I got some emails from kids younger than me asking what this means and what they should do. And more problematically from one of them, what my predictions were with Google and cloud computing, an office suite and dark fiber. NONE of that matters.

Google doesn’t even know and that’s the entire point. Since no school is teaching it, we need to focus on learning that:

The successful companies of the future won’t “sell” things, as much as they will solve economic problems and thus create value for the customer. Sometimes those two things are the same, but often times they aren’t.This is the key to understanding the economic future of the world, and why some companies will compete and some won’t. – Tucker

Stuff like, which stock your should buy or short, who will up ruling the internet, all that is irrelevant to us. What we should take from this is confirmation of what I wrote about last week–that when attacked, centralized organizations tend to become more centralized and thus exacerbate their own problems.

Whatever your major is, what kind of grades you get, where you plan to intern, how much traffic your blog gets or which company you have storing your data–all that is piddly, logistical, small picture stuff. What really matters is whether you understand the meta-level change: the shift between value extraction and value creation. Forget ALL the details until you firmly grasp that new paradigm. Otherwise, you’re studying lesions, instead of figuring out the disease.

You can only beat speed with more speed.

You can only beat strategy with more strategy.

You can only beat Google by being MORE Google (i.e., more open, create more value, be even better to people). – Tucker

So fooling around with predictions is fun, as long as you remember that the chances of them coming through are abysmal at best. We don’t know anything. What you can spend your time on today–as you wait for your turn for these things to matter–is learning how to attack strategy, avoid centralization, and to look to the core of things and not their meaningless dressings. Can you do that? If you can’t–or even if you sort of can–then just ignore the Yahosoft merger and focus on what counts.

I would start with:

The Pirates Dilemma–Matt Mason

Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything–Don Tapscott

All Marketers are Liars–Seth Godin

The Strategy Paradox–Michael Raynor

BubbleGeneration (blog)–Umair

And I have tried to touch on it here, here, and here.

“The men in mail were somewhat of an obstacle, as the iron plates did not yield to javelins or swords; but our men, snatching up hatchets and pickaxes, hacked at their bodies and their armor as if they were as if they were battering a wall. Some beat down the unwieldy mass with pikes and forked poles, and they were left lying on the ground, without an effort to rise, like dead men.” Tacticus, The Annals

This is why efforts to be closed, protected, secure and insulated fail in a fluid marketplace. At Platea, a Persia general lay on his back weighed down by armor, impenetrable until a Spartan put a spear through the eye hole of his helmet.

You get the point. It doesn’t work.

There are too many people, they have too many resources and the speed of transactions, iterations and judgments are increasingly fast. So let go, be good and see what happens.

Every few weeks I wake up to something that makes me grin from ear to ear. Like ten thousand uniques overnight, a job offer, an email from an author I read, the front page of Digg, or a reminder of how good I have it. I get so excited that I don’t know what to do. That’s when I remember: “This is why I’m doing this. And I’m doing pretty well too.”

I’ve pointed myself towards a position that allows as many positive life-changing experiences to happen as possible. This is what Taleb talks about in The Black Swan. Is it more likely that an utterly unexpected event will wipe you out completely or put you on top of the world? If it all went to shit, at the absolute worst, I go back to school and start over. I did alright there. I’ll be fine. And no one can ever take away what happened, what I was able to do. The best case is almost too good to quantify.

I keep saying this but it is not easy. Most mornings you wake up and nothing happened. You get The Fear. You hold onto your principles, your faith in yourself contrary to all posted evidence. Sometimes you break down and have turn to some to someone and completely open up: “What the fuck am I supposed to do?” You see people and wonder what obliviousness feels like and maybe wish for it a little. The stress of knowing there is always something left undone, that you’re letting people down, that you got in over your head. The little twinge of accomplishment you feel at people’s jealousy–and the counterbalance of its loneliness. And of course, the Damoclean notion of knowing that others were here too and failed and got fucked. You worry about stuff that a 20 year old isn’t supposed to worry about. Like getting cornered, selling out, or being over exposed. Making sure you don’t spin off the planet.

We can sit here and talk about the strength it takes to push through. No question it is a requirement. Still, it is unrepresentatively glamorous. There is also the numbness. A internalized hardness that keeps the stresses from cracking the core. You need that. But it doesn’t translate well to the rest of your life. Nor is it a particularly pleasant state, to feel cold and apathetic.

Is it worth it? That’s not a question that I can really answer. See, I don’t have another choice. I can’t be anyone else. You’re only fucking fooling yourself if think you do either. Can you find yourself and be happy? Everyday, do you check a few things off that list? Homo faber. Have you positioned yourself for good gains and manageable losses? And then also understand that you still stand the risk of being totally fucked? If you still want to do it then you’re probably onto to something good. As Godin says, the Dip creates scarcity and scarcity creates value. There’s a reason this stuff is hard, it weeds out the weak. And unfortunately, sometimes the sane.