From 600+ conversations with the world’s leading thinkers.
The majority of US Equity HFT is employed in the strategy of liquidity provisioning, also known as electronic market making. Historically, such a service was provided by NYSE specialists and NASDAQ market makers but, with the advent of decimalization, human specialists and market makers were no longer able to keep up with the liquidity demands of investors and automated technology became necessary for this function.
I worry that we haven't checked our interstellar mailbox, and so we've missed the letter which contained the recipe for our salvation. Perhaps another civilisation sent us a message with the key to our own survival. Physical objects have a huge advantage over listening for signals – you can encode a lot more into a physical object.
The internet has had a tremendous positive impact because it's the most democratised and decentralised medium ever known. Along comes the internet, and it changes all that, it puts the power of communication in everyone's hand, at least everyone who can afford access.
I think social media is a great example of this. It feels a little bit like social connection, but I often joke that it's the 'NutraSweet' version—it seems good but doesn't deliver the psychological benefit we expect.
I hesitate to respond bluntly but 'design' to many businesses is an invisible element somehow present without effort…like 'free wifi'. And, as my son says, to his generation, 'wifi is like air'––taken for granted and only notable when the quality is bad or (god forbid!) it is not there at all.
Our experience is very limited to the surface of this rock we call home. You cannot show-off in space, we must be humble. The only purpose for us to seek journeys into space is to learn about the unknown. That's a spiritual conquest. Leaving the solar system has no commercial benefits.
I realised that games are a potent medium for crafting artificial experiences, offering an unparalleled avenue for exploration and learning. This realisation cemented my ambition to create games, driven by the belief in their profound capacity to encapsulate and convey experiences.
The block chain or general ledger could be a secure repository of private information, property ownership, and conditional contracts. For example, consider buying a car. The dealership sells it to you and it goes into the block chain. You have a private code that identifies you as the owner.
Technology claims to be showing us a mirror of what was already present in society but in reality, technology is a funhouse mirror with a feedback loop that's engineered to show us the most egregious parts of society that are better at keeping our attention.
The change I'm most passionate about – because of the impact it's had on my own life – is creating a healthy transition to sleep that begins before you even step into your bedroom. I treat my own transition to sleep as a sacrosanct ritual. First, I turn off all my electronic devices and gently escort them out of my bedroom.
Just think about what happens when the next billion people come online, and the next two billion after that. It's a remarkable thing to consider.
It may be an overused phrase, but the only way social media can work is if you are incredibly authentic. If you try and cultivate and curate too much it can be very obvious and transparent.