Monday, June 6, 2016

The Power of the New Engineering Caste

This has been a great read - The Seventh Sense: Power, Fortune, and Survival in the Age of Networks by Joshua Cooper Ramo.  From the book:

"Think of this example from the world of technology.  Maybe one million people can write object-oriented code at a high level.  A hundred thousand of them can shape that code into some sort of innovative data structure.  A few thousand might be able to use it to build a large data center.  But get down to the couple of dozen who know how Google or Intel or Bitcoin really works, the group who can make machines seem to think, who really know and use back doors at the atomic level of hacking - well, then you have a tight elite.  If connections changes the mature of an object, it also elevates those who control that connection to a level of rare power and influence.  Though the networks and protocols and data they control, this group touches more parts of our lives than any group of elites ever has.  That many of them are billionaires as a result should hardly be a surprise."

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