[Brian]

I just finished watching Episode 03. Bill interviewed Bill Joy the author of BSD and co-founder of Sun.

I found this episode very interesting for a number of reasons. Bill is now a partner in the venture capital firm Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers. As you can see in my current signature, I'm listening to eBoys, a book about venture capital firms and how the very important role they play in driving technology and entrepreneurship. It's a real eye-opener, and we really have these entrepreneurs and the venture capitalists who back them to thank for many of the breakthroughs in technology and the internet. As Bill mentions in the interview, the venture capitalists' rolodex is as important, if not more important for startups than the financial backing they provide.

Bill talks about the history of computing, how computers got faster and smaller, and how handhelds and smartphones with small screens and thumboards, have now reached a level of computing power that is significant because you can have a computer with you all of the time.

And the personal computers kept shrinking and/or getting more powerful for very long period, maybe 20 years. And then suddenly what happened was we passed a threshold where the miniaturization allowed suddenly a phone, cell phone had the power of what your computer used to be but now if fits in your pocket and a little tiny keyboard, little tiny screen and is always connected. That's very different. So the computers on the information side are becoming less recognizably kind of morphologically, kind of the same shape just shrunk and slightly altered as they were 30 years ago. They're becoming more invisible. They're having different ways of interacting with them by talking to them or touching them or having them always with you as opposed to something that's in your bag which you don't always have with you.

This discussion leads into Bill's mention of Jeff Hawkins, his book On Intelligence, his theoretical neuroscience research, and how if he is correct, it will be an incredible breakthrough in computing.

Jeff Hawkins has a new book that's very interesting on intelligence and talks about his theory of this and if his theory's correct that would be an advance. But simply having a fast computer doesn't mean we'll know how to make it intelligent. It certainly helps to make a smart computer if it can go faster.

Bob Cringely then mentions James Surowiecki's book The Wisdom of Crowds, another one of my favorite books.

For Bill Joy (a venture capitalist as well as a leader in computing) to mention the significance of smartphones, handheld computing and Jeff Hawkins' cortical intelligence research within the same discussion , it is in my opinion very important.

Check out this episode.