Arguments about Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) have become almost religious in nature. They shouldn’t be. It’s not a question of if but when, and exactly what AGI will look like when it’s here. To the Tech Bros, and their Amen Corner, AGI means workers can go to hell. Software engineers, writers, artists of all kinds, […]

This should be obvious to everyone. But for those car heads in the back, it needs to be said again and again and again. Bikes do not compete with cars. That’s not their function. They are complementary to cars. Fietsing, which is bicycling for transportation, is a city thing. Let Tadej and Jonas cover the […]

Just one day in the Netherlands and I can already see I was right about some things. E-Transport isn’t coming. It’s here. It started with e-bikes, but it will not end there. I’ve seen it in Maarssen, a suburb 6 miles from Utrecht. There are tons of fat-tired “e-bikes” that go 25 miles an hour, […]

Two men currently dominate American technology, Elon Musk and Sam Altman. They’re going down. Musk took his eye off the ball at Tesla years ago. He let Chinese competitors pass him by and did nothing. BYD now dominates in batteries, which means it dominates in Electric Vehicles. Tesla hasn’t refreshed its lineup in years. Altman […]

The biggest story of a very bad week for tech comes from John Gruber, who eviscerated Apple Intelligence. The “personalized Siri” Apple showed recently was a concept video, he writes. It’s the kind of thing the company did under John Sculley, when it was failing and flailing. This matters because Gruber knows his stuff and […]

The soul of my best friend, James T. (“T” or “Tommy”) Bass, departed his body at 2:28 this morning. Tommy was many things in his life – soldier, hippie, businessman, handyman, webmaster, and my spiritual advisor. He helped run the Magnolia Warehouse, a health foods wholesaler, in the 1970s, and served on the board of […]

I took one last spin through my hometown this weekend, before my coming trip to the Netherlands. I learned a lot. None of it was good. First, about Atlanta’s roadways. They’re in horrible condition, because we insist on hauling everything we have, wherever we go. SUVs, each with a single driver heading to work. Giant […]

Excuse my self-indulgence. But it finally hit me recently. Hard. Over the holidays, the arthritis in my left hip took a giant step forward. I think the cartilage there is all gone. The pain is a constant reminder that the clock is ticking, that whatever is on the other side is getting close. Aging was […]

I have avoided discussing politics here since November, but some things need to be said. A President who has the full support of Congress and the courts is not acting illegally. A minority will not achieve majority support by talking to itself, using only its own language. An AI political era demands an AI cloud […]

Money is like a drug. With proper dosage it can make you well. Take too much and you overdose. Silicon Valley began overdosing in May 2017.  That is when Masayoshi Son and the Saudis’ Public Investment Fund announced the “Vision Fund,” a $100 billion effort to dominate the tech future. It backed a host of […]