Ian Vanagas

Money makes games hyper realistic. More real than real. 

In any civilization, an age can be measured by whether or not the best and brightest are applying their talent and wealth to make that civilization work better, to inculcate patriotism, to build and improve institutions, and improve the lives of their fellow citizens.

NFTs provide access to things people want. People value access to scarce resources; therefore, access is worth money. Money has always been traded for access and will continue to do so. NFTs are internet-native keys to access events, communities, identities, future benefits, people and status.

Arcades should help members prioritize their path into a community. It should help them make decisions about where they want to go and what they want to do. If users know what information is important to them, they can make this decision better. The community arcade should give a view into the community from the outside without overwhelming users.

Given these realities, I find the furthest extreme of the free and open source philosophy not only unethical in its own right in that it incentivizes wide-scale consumption over production and thus impoverishes the software world, but divorced from reality in that it misunderstands the economic forces responsible for the production of software (and... See more

For instance, I have been to conferences that have “speed dating” sessions (without the date part, to be clear, and with vaccine and testing requirements) where you meet many people for say two minutes and then move on to the next meeting. This should become a more regular practice. 

The next time you are attending a formal presentation at a conference, ask yourself these questions: Is this better than all of those Zoom calls I am turning down? Is this better than the next best YouTube clip I might be watching? For most people, the answers are obvious. Conference organizers need to be willing to pull the trigger and usher the... See more