The Online Investing AI Blog

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There’s a killer on the road. His brain is squirming like a toad.
–Jim Morrison

Remember Jim Morrison? He was the Lizard King.

Seth Godin says that being king of your lizard brain is a good thing. For Seth, the lizard brain is that deep, dark shadow of the evolutionary past. It’s the part of the brain that squirms with the fear, fight,  flight, and fornicate responses.

Even though the lizard brain hasn’t been called on to lead us out of sticky situations involving bears and mastodons in thousands of years, our lizard brain still pumps out signals of imminent doom and demise in the form of resistance.

Resistance, according to Godin, leads to compromise and failure. (Steven Pressfield talks about it here, too.) Resistance and compromise have implications in personal finance.

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An interesting debate is percolating about the new book, “Free,”  by Chris Anderson.

I haven’t read it (yet), but apparently Seth Godin and Malcolm Gladwell have. Anderson’s book says that as computing power increases and its cost decreases, information products are essentially going to be free.

In a New Yorker article, Gladwell disagrees with the theory. He, pretty adroitly, brings up reasons why Anderson’s theory will flop: from the inability for YouTube to turn a profit to the failure for nuclear energy to produce super cheap power.

In response, Godin declares a mighty, “So what?” Whatever the price of nuclear power in China is, Godin points out, the digital world is getting cheaper, faster, and more powerful. Whether or not there’s a business model to support it, the info-Singularity approacheth. Godin counters:

The first argument that makes no sense is, “should we want free to be the future?”

Who cares if we want it? It is.

The second argument that makes no sense is, “how will this new business model support the world as we know it today?”

Who cares if it does? It is. It’s happening. The world will change around it, because the world has no choice. I’m sorry if that’s inconvenient, but it’s true.

There’s a similar debate on Automated Trading.

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Seth Godin has introduced marketers to concepts from Purple Cows to Meatball Sundaes. He’s one of the pioneers who really gets online and viral marketing. He’s a marketing action hero.

But, someone needs to introduce Seth to the truth about exponential growth.

In a recent blog post, Seth frets about the Internet losing space and becoming clogged up. He claims that exponential growth will reach a limit. As he puts it:

Nothing can grow forever, and exponential growth is always short lived. We’re running out of disk space, so if you have something left to say, better hurry. Once it’s full, it’s full.

Not so fast, Seth. There are several technologies, including holographic storage and faster routers, that are advancing the ability to overcome this storage-capacity issue. Generally speaking, the approaching memory issue might be just a hurdle. Once it’s surmounted by innovation, it will open up new sources of exponential growth.

Ray! Call Seth!

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