Given the mini-flap about Joi Ito's blogging about blogging before, about, and after buying into blogging, and a few blog-snits about blogrolls and the like, I deem it an opportune time to make explicit some of the rules I decided to follow when I made this public, which I hope are mostly common sense and decency. So, now, a word from The Management (ahem):

1. You won't see anything here that is the subject of a current legal NDA or the moral equivalent, is in negotiation or litigation to which I am or might become a party, or that would hurt someone that I don't think deserves it. This may keep a few of my Silicon Valley Old Fart tales out of the Internet Archive, which is precisely the intent.

2. VCs don't sign NDAs with presenting startups, but you will never see anything here that came from a pitch, unless it's background information available elsewhere.

3. Some fraction of the material posted here is by-product of due diligence work on industry sectors or specific companies. That's how the blog got started. I will delete details that would unambiguously identify the specific company I'm researching, if any, even if we've dropped the project. (If you're involved in Valley deal flow, you might guess anyway, but why do that? Drop me an e-mail and let's talk deals.)

4. If I mention or plug a portfolio company, I will clearly identify our relationship. In fact, I will gloat about it.

5. If I'm posting analysis or criticism about an industry sector in which we have an investment, or specifically mention a competitor, I will disclose our investment.

6. The blogroll is just the list of sites I visit frequently and has no cosmic or community meaning. If it's over there I probably read it at least once a week and/or link to it often enough to value the convenience. Links come and go as my interests change, and are updated in my Copious Free Time.

That is all. As always, if you don't like it, don't read it. And finally a few words about a few of the things provoking this post:

[rant]
To those worried that Dave or The Prof are somehow annointing an A-list or buggering up Google, I've got this to say: They own their own words, links and servers. If you don't like it, don't read them. Last I checked, Google is a private company, not a public utility, and can run their service how they please. If you don't like it, don't use it. If the idea that some people are more interesting than others offends you, too bad. The 'A-list' is there because they write articulately about interesting lives. Why don't you get one?

To Mr. Orlowski, whom I will not dignify with a link: Since you evidently don't know the difference between a VC, an analyst, an investment banker, and a broker, why not stop trashing on Joi until you figure it out. And if your analysis of the online medium is on par with that on the financial beat, they will both get the respect they deserve.
[/rant]

Update: Richard Bennett comments, and I return fire.
3:01:40 PM    

And while we're on the topic of bio- vs. silico-, here's a story over at Wired in which Marvin Minsky moans that AI has been dead above the ears since the '70s. As the rest of the piece makes clear, that depends on your point of view. Folks like Minsky and Feigenbaum have always been on the 'build a mind inside a computer' path. What I've called the 'replicant' agenda since I first saw Bladerunner. Thing is, progress in that direction has been slow to nonexistent, and a lot of people have quit caring.

What's been going on apace, though, is the track that I call the 'symbiont agenda'. Bits and pieces of technique that were supposed (according to the replicant agenda) to be building up toward a synthetic mind, have instead turned out to be quite useful in building artificial aids for real humans. Neural net credit scorers, belief network medical diagnostics, genetic algorithm chip layout programs, fuzzy logic rice cookers, halting efforts at low rent robots that may be starting to congeal into things that are useable at home, in the hospital, on the battlefield. It lacks the grandeur of the replicant agenda, but it's practical, takes advantage of the Moore's Law phenomenon tracking along in parallel, and is fundable.
12:23:02 PM    

To heck with biomimesis, just use the real thing, in this case, neural clusters from a rat brain, driving a robot. This feels like another instance of something I called 'grubby convergence' at an IFTF nanotech skull session last week: an incremental, hackerish, lifting of useful bits from evolved carbon-life into engineered systems, rather than the grand vision of the replication of life in silico or as self-replicating nano-machines. There's likely an enormous amount of path dependency in which way we go, in both robotics and nano*.
11:32:34 AM    

On the birth of his son, Noah. Ye gods, CTO of a startup, prolific creator of web services, now father of a new-born. Maybe you should put up a tip jar so we can all contribute to your caffeine bill?
11:13:09 AM    

I heard about this at E-Tech but never caught up with the guy who had the goods. A fun WiFi packaging hack from the NoCat guys at O'Reilly. I'm not saying any more here, you have to go see it.
9:42:55 AM