First,
we have the news of the acquisition by Berkshire Hathaway of Precision
Castparts for $37.2bn
including its debt — possibly the largest deal in Berkshire’s history. According to the Financial Times, Precision “is an unflashy business run by an
unflashy management, with a dominant position in industry sectors that are not
going away any time soon — short-term wobbles among its energy customers
notwithstanding.” The key, however, is
the FT”s headline this morning, describing Warren Buffett’s “elephant deal” as a “$37bn bet on US manufacturing.”
May
we all shout hallelujah.
Then
we have a fascinating article today by Simon Bisson in “500 words into the
future” regarding the reorganization of Google announced yesterday. Bisson calls the new entity, Alphabet, the “singularity”
company and asks “Could Google's surprise reorganization be the
biggest bet of all: a bet on the future?”
Bisson continues:
"If you look back at my recent list of futurist
SF, you'll find one of
my favourite novels. Vernor Vinge's Rainbows End is a fascinating story of a near
future San Diego on the verge of a phase change in both technology and what it
means to be human. It's a tale of a man relearning his world as he recovers
skills and memory after a receiving an experimental Alzheimer's cure, going
back to school to learn to use the technologies that infuse tomorrow's world.
"Vinge's tomorrow
is a fascinating place, one infused with ubiquitous and ambient computing
technologies, where wearable devices have changed the way we work and play, and
where autonomous and robotic devices are reshaping our homes and cities. It's
also a tomorrow that Vinge puts a decade or so away.
"Perhaps best known
for his original paper on the concept of the technological singularity (the
point where the future is made unpredictable by advanced technologies), Vinge
has been the inspiration for many modern technologists. So it perhaps wasn't
surprising to read that Google was restructuring as Alphabet, making, as Larry Page
notes in his blog post, an "alpha-bet" on transformational
technologies -- the very same technologies around which Vinge structures Rainbows
End."
It never occurred to me to hyphenate “alphabet.” Once again, may we all shout hallelujah.
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