Amsterdam was arguably “the world’s most liberal city”, to quote the subtitle of this well-told history by Russell Shorto, an American writer who lives in Amsterdam. Shorto argues that little Amsterdam “has influenced the modern world to a degree that perhaps no other city has”.
If it is true that the era of collective experimentation online was short lived, then the next interesting question is why. One hypothesis that I’m intrigued with is rooted less in technological changes and more in social ones. Shirky’s dictum that revolutions start from behavioral change rather than from technological change helps us also explain ... See more
Roelof Botha brought up this same topic in a recent Invest Like The Best episode in an even more poignant way: "Imagine the venture business in a decade, and Sequoia is gone. We presided over the decline of Sequoia, this team, the people here in this room, it was us. What happened? What did we not do?"