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“Bill Gates Didn’t Think The Internet Would Be Big”

November 27, 2011 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

In his speech, “Libraries: Where It All Went Wrong,” Nat Torkington (not to be confused with Karl Pilkington) draws a parallel between how book-lending facilities were destabilized by the Internet in much the same way Microsoft was. I think Bill Gates had more of an idea of the Internet’s potential power than Torkington gives him credit for, but it’s still an interesting speech. An excerpt: 

“Bill Gates wrote a bestseller in 1995.  He was on a roll: Microsoft Windows had finally crushed its old foe the Macintosh computer from Apple, Microsoft was minting money hand over fist, and he was hugely respected in the industry he had helped start. He roped in other big brains from Microsoft to write a book to answer the question, ‘what next?’  The Road Ahead talked about the implications of everyone having a computer and how they would use the great Information Superhighway that was going to happen.

The World Wide Web appears in the index to The Road Ahead precisely four times.  Bill Gates didn’t think the Internet would be big.  The Information Superhighway of Gates’s fantasies would have more structure than the Internet, be better controlled than the Internet, in short it would be more the sort of thing that a company like Microsoft would make.

Bill Gates and Microsoft were caught flat-footed by the take-up of the Internet. They had built an incredibly profitable and strong company which treated computers as disconnected islands: Microsoft software ran on the computers, but didn’t help connect them.  Gates and Microsoft soon realized the Internet was here to stay and rushed to fix Windows to deal with it, but they never made up for that initial wrong-footing.

At least part of the reason for this was because they had this fantastic cash cow in Windows, the island software.  They were victims of what Clayton Christenson calls the Innovator’s Dilemma: they couldn’t think past their own successes to build the next big thing, the thing that’d eat their lunch.  They still haven’t got there: Bing, their rival to Google, has eaten $5.5B since 2009 and it isn’t profitable yet.” (Thanks Browser.)

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Bill Gates enters the world of Doom, 1995:

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“This Is The Checkpoint Of The Future”

November 25, 2011 in Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Airport security minus pat downs.

“Eventually Kare Earned A Commission From An Arkansas Museum To Sculpt A Razorback Hog Out Of Steel”

November 25, 2011 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

From Steve Silberman’s NeuroTribes post about GUI pioneer Susan Kare, who gave computer code a friendly face, creating many of the iconic images for the Apple Macintosh:

“The challenge of designing a personal computer that ‘the rest of us’ would not only buy, but fall crazy in love with, however, required input from the kind of people who might some day be convinced to try using a Mac. Fittingly, one of the team’s most auspicious early hires was a young artist herself: Susan Kare.

After taking painting lessons as a young girl and graduating from New York University with a Ph.D. in fine arts, Kare moved to the Bay Area, where she took a curatorial job at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. But she quickly felt like she was on the wrong side of the creative equation. ‘I’d go talk to artists in their studios for exhibitions,’ she recalls, ‘but I really wanted to be working in my studio.’

Eventually Kare earned a commission from an Arkansas museum to sculpt a razorback hog out of steel. That was the project she was tackling in her garage in Palo Alto when she got a call from a high-school friend named Andy Hertzfeld, who was the lead software architect for the Macintosh operating system, offering her a job.” (Thanks Browser.)

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“A Robot Is Inherently Unstable”

November 22, 2011 in Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Rezero, the ballbot from Zurich.

“Musk Wanted To Place A Small Greenhouse Laden With Seeds And Nutrient Gel On The Martian Surface”

November 22, 2011 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

The opening of Andrew Chalkiin’s article about Elon Musk’s mission to Mars, in Air & Space magazine:

“You can be rich enough to buy a rocket and still get sticker shock. In early 2002, PayPal co-founder Elon Musk, already a multimillionaire at 30, was pursuing a grand scheme to rekindle public interest in sending humans to Mars. A lifelong space enthusiast with degrees in physics and business, Musk wanted to place a small greenhouse laden with seeds and nutrient gel on the Martian surface to establish life there, if only temporarily. The problem wasn’t the lander itself; he’d already talked to contractors who would build it for a comparatively low cost. The problem was launching it. Unwilling to pay what U.S. rocket companies were charging, Musk made three trips to Russia to try to buy a refurbished Dnepr missile, but found deal-making in the wild west of Russian capitalism too risky financially.

On the flight home, he recalls, ‘I was trying to understand why rockets were so expensive. Obviously the lowest cost you can make anything for is the spot value of the material constituents. And that’s if you had a magic wand and could rearrange the atoms. So there’s just a question of how efficient you can be about getting the atoms from raw material state to rocket shape.’ That year, enlisting a handful of veteran space engineers, Musk formed Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, with two staggeringly ambitious goals: To make spaceflight routine and affordable, and to make humans a multi-planet species.” (Thanks Longreads.)

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“Being Able To Display Information And Images Directly Into The Field Of Vision Via Contact Lens Would Be Useful In A Number Of Ways”

November 22, 2011 in Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Computerized contact lenses with display capacity are currently being tested on rabbits in the hopes that versions for humans will be available in the near future. From Discovery:

“Once the researchers had determined that the experimental lenses were safe in the lab, they tested them on live rabbits. After wearing them for a short period, the rabbits didn’t have any abrasions or thermal burning. ‘We have been able to build the whole system and test it on rabbits, on live eyes, and show that this works and it’s safe,’ Parviz said.

Being able to display information and images directly into the field of vision via contact lens would be useful in a number of ways, according to the engineers. The devices could be used for navigation, for gaming, and even as a way to monitor someone’s health and safety. It could also be a super sneaky way to access info while “

“The Complete Operation Could Go Underground”

November 22, 2011 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

From an insane 1955 Look magazine article which suggested that the future of aviation might be subterranean and saucer-shaped:

Future airports built for vertically rising flying saucers would have no need of the long, vulnerable runways today’s fighters require. The complete operation could go underground. Tunnels with take-off shafts set into the ground, complete with maintenance bays, fuel and crew quarters, would be bombproof shelters for a saucer squadron. The shafts would be sealed after take-off for camouflage and protection.•

“The Two Have Already Created A Computer That Simulated The Same Number Of Neurons Found In A Cat”

November 21, 2011 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

From a Time Techland story about IBM’s cognitive computing project with DARPA, which aims at building a “human” brain within ten years, though skeptics think it’s unlikely:

“Not content with building a computer that can win Jeopardy without breaking an electronic sweat, IBM has announced plans to create a ‘cognitive computer’ that will simulate the same number of neurons as the human brain, yet run on less energy than the supercomputer that made Ken Jennings look like an average human being.

The company’s SVP and Director of Research John Kelly explained during a Capitol Hill briefing yesterday that ‘Computer systems are becoming more bioinspired,’ which may also account for the desire to create a supercomputer that runs on less than the 85 KW of electricity that WATSON needed; the human brain ‘runs on 20 watts of electricity,’ Kelly said.

The project, expected to be completed within the next ten years, is being worked on in cooperation with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). The two have already created a computer that simulated the same number of neurons found in a cat.”

“Darwin’s Dice Have Rolled Badly For Earth”

November 20, 2011 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

E.O. Wilson wondered if we’re programmed to do away with ourselves in his 2005 Cosmos article, “Is Humanity Suicidal?” An excerpt:

“Unlike any creature that lived before, humans have become a geophysical force, swiftly changing the atmosphere and climate as well as the composition of the world’s fauna and flora.

Now in the midst of a population explosion, this species has doubled in number to more than 6 billion during the past 50 years. It is scheduled to double again in the next 50 years. No other single species in evolutionary history has even remotely approached the sheer mass in protoplasm generated by humanity.

Darwin’s dice have rolled badly for Earth. It was a misfortune for the living world in particular, many of our scientists believe, that a carnivorous primate and not some more benign form of animal made the breakthrough.

Our species retains hereditary traits that add greatly to our destructive impact. We are tribal and aggressively territorial, intent on private space beyond minimal requirements and oriented by selfish sexual and reproductive drives. Cooperation beyond the family and tribal levels comes hard. Worse, our liking for meat causes us to use the Sun’s energy at low efficiency.” (Thanks TETW.)

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“It’s doomsday”:

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“Sony Has Been Trying To Adapt To The Internet Age For At Least A Decade”

November 20, 2011 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Akio Morita envisioned Sony as a way to lift Japan from the rubble of two atom bombs to world business dominance, and he pulled off the unlikely feat. Morita was as important to his company as Steve Jobs was to Apple, but Sony has not been a player in the Internet Age. An excerpt from Bryan Gruley’s smart Businessweek article on the topic:

“There’s more to Sony’s problems than acts of God and currency traders. The maker of the Walkman and the Trinitron hasn’t driven pop culture for years. Sony thrived in an era of stand-alone electronics. When the Internet arose and digital began to mean connected, iPods became the center of people’s entertainment lives, then smartphones and tablets—which Sony was late to produce. Even the quintessential Sony product—the TV set—has become a millstone. Sony has lost nearly $8.5 billion on TVs over eight years and expects to keep losing at least into 2013. Samsung, Vizio, and other upstarts have driven prices so low that one Sony executive says the company charges less for some TVs than it cost to ship them a few years ago.

Sony has been trying to adapt to the Internet Age for at least a decade, yet remains a gargantuan and unwieldy manufacturer, with 168,200 employees, 41 factories, and more than 2,000 products from headphones to medical printers to Hollywood-grade 3D movie production equipment. Jeff Loff, a senior analyst with Macquarie Capital Securities in Tokyo, points out that Sony sells nine different 46-inch TV models in the U.S. and its mobile-phone joint venture with Ericsson offers more than 40 handsets. ‘Can you imagine how dilutive that is to your R&D?’ he says. A Sony spokesman says the number of phones is being reduced, and notes that Samsung has 15 different 46-inch TVs.

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Ted Koppel interviews Akio Morita about Japan’s tech dominance, in 1990, just a few years before Sony was to be eclipsed by U.S. companies:

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“A Year Ago, L. Ron Hubbard Was An Obscure Writer Of Pseudoscientific Pulp Fiction”

November 18, 2011 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

The opening of Albert Q. Maisel’s highly skeptical 1950 Look magazine article about a new pseudoscience, something called “Dianetics,” conceived by pulp writer L. Ron Hubbard:

“A year ago, L. Ron Hubbard was an obscure writer of pseudoscientific pulp fiction. Today he has:

.. Half a million devout followers.

.. A foundation with a chain of bustling branches stretching from Elizabeth, N.J. to far-off Honolulu.

.. The best-selling nonfiction book since Dale Carnegie discovered the secret of success.

.. A swarm of pop-eyed students, who stand in line for the privilege of plunking down 500 bucks for a one-month course which converts them into “professional auditors,” complete with a couch and capable of outpsyching any ordinary psychiatrist.

.. Even larger and faster-growing tribes who pay $200 each for the 15-lecture short course – or $25 an hour to have their ‘cases opened’ by $500 professional auditors.

.. And a small army of associate members, at a mere 15 smackers each, who gratefully keep up with the whirlwind developments of Hubbard’s new ‘science’ of dianetics through the Dianetics Auditors Bulletin.

Dianetics and the Discovery of Fire

Hubbard, you may gather from the foregoing, has discovered the key to success and demonstrated once again that Barnum underestimated the sucker birth rate.

But that, by Hubbard’s own admission, is probably the least of his discoveries.

Unencumbered by the modesty that hog-ties ordinary mortals, Hubbard starts his book – THE BOOK, his followers call it – with the calm assertion that ‘the creation of dianetics is a milestone for Man comparable to his discovery of fire and superior to his invention of the wheel and the arch.’

A few lines beyond, one learns that, with dianetics, ‘the intelligent layman can successfully and invariably treat all psychosomatic ills and inorganic aberrations.’

Farther on, one discovers that these psychosomatic ills, ‘uniformly cured by dianetic therapy.’ include such varied maladies as eye trouble, bursitis, ulcers, some heart difficulties, migraine headaches and the common cold.

But you ain’t heard nothing yet.”

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“Canada’s New Polymer Bank Notes”

November 17, 2011 in Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Currency gone plastic.

“These Cars Come Toward You Very Quickly, So You Want A Sense Of Idenitty”

November 17, 2011 in Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

A brief film about several decades of BMW Art Cars, which began in 1975 with Alexander Calder.

“Those Visitors Had Sexual Intercourse With Our Ancestors”

November 17, 2011 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Erich von Däniken is a shifty, good-natured salesman of horseshit who became something of a sensation in the 1960s when he published the best-selling Chariots of the Gods? and kicked off an “ancient astronauts” fad that posited that it was plausible that extraterrestrials had visited Earth at the time of the dawn of humans and had mingled with–and even procreated with–our ancestors. Each time science pointed out the holes in his “theories,” the author was canny enough to revise and reposition his arguments, changing the shoe size of his Bigfoot, packing a little more powder onto his Abominable Snowman. In 1974, an incredulous Playboy magazine interviewed von Däniken–a “stocky Swiss ex-convict” is how they described him. The interview’s opening:

Playboy:

Since your theories appear to change somewhat with the times, can you tell us what you currently believe?

Erich von Däniken:

I say in my books not only that we have been visited from outer space in ancient times but that those visitors had sexual intercourse with our ancestors. Many scientists reply, “That is damned nonsense, because even if we accept that there are extraterrestrial beings and that they can travel in space, why should they come to Earth, out of all the billions of planets? And why should visitors from outer space look like us and have a similar way of thinking?” This point of view–and it is certainly a serious one–is, in my eyes, wrong. If we admit that the visitors had intercourse with us and altered, by artificial mutation, our intelligence, then it means we are the products of them. A child can never ask, ‘Why should my parents look like me?” There is no other possibility; he came from his parents. This does not deny Darwin and his theory; I fully admit that we came from apes. My question is why and how we became intelligent. To this question each mythology, each old religion gives the same answer: The gods created men after their own image.•

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Robot With Intelligence Of Small Child

November 17, 2011 in Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Remarkably creepy. Thank you, Japan.

“They Wanted Men To Be Busy With Their Front Lawns”

November 17, 2011 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

In HiLoBrow, Peggy Nelson conducts an excellent interview with media ecologist Douglas Rushkoff, which covers currency, corporations and how the word “home” was gradually redefined to have an isolating effect. An excerpt:

“Rushkoff: From the 1920s to the 1970s an iconography was developed that turned corporations into our heroes. Instead of me buying stuff from people I know, I actually trust the Quaker Oat Man more than you. This is the result of public relations campaigns, and the development of public relations as a profession.

Nelson: Did the rise of PR just happen, or did they have to do that in order to prevent things from getting out of control?

Rushkoff: They had to do that in order to prevent things from getting out of control. The significant points in the development of public relations were all at crisis moments. For example, labor movements; it’s not just that labor was revolting but that people were seeing that labor was revolting. There was a need to re-fashion the stories so that people would think that labor activists were bad scary people, so that people would think they should move to the suburbs and insulate themselves from these throngs of laborers, from  ‘the masses.’ Or to return to the Quaker Oats example, people used to look at long-distance-shipped factory products with distrust. Here’s a plain brown box, it’s being shipped from far away, why am I supposed to buy this instead of something from a person I’ve known all my life? A mass media is necessary to make you distrust your neighbor and transfer your trust to an abstract entity, the corporation, and believe it will usher in a better tomorrow and all that.

It got the most crafty after WWII when all the soldiers were coming home. FDR was in cahoots with the PR people. Traumatized vets were coming back from WWII, and everyone knew these guys were freaked out and fucked up. We had enough psychology and psychiatry by then to know that these guys were badly off, they knew how to use weapons, and — this was bad! If the vets came back into the same labor movement that they left before WWII, it would have been all over. So the idea was that we should provide houses for these guys, make them feel good, and we get the creation of Levittown and other carefully planned developments designed with psychologists and social scientists. Let’s put these vets in a house, let’s celebrate the nuclear family.

Nelson: So home becomes a thing, rather than a series of relationships?

Rushkoff: The definition of home as people use the word now means ‘my house,’ rather than what it had been previously, which was ‘where I’m from.’My home’s New York, what’s your home?’

Nelson: Right, my town.

Rushkoff: Where are you from? Not that ‘structure.’ But they had to redefine home, and they used a lot of government money to do it. They created houses in neighborhoods specifically designed to isolate people from one another, and prevent men in particular from congregating and organizing — there are no social halls, no beer halls in these developments. They wanted men to be busy with their front lawns, with three fruit trees in every garden, with home fix-it-up projects; for the women, the kitchen will be in the back where they can see the kids playing in the back yard.

Nelson: So you don’t see the neighbors going by. No front porch.

Rushkoff: Everything’s got to be individual, this was all planned! Any man that has a mortgage to pay is not going to be a revolutionary. With that amount to pay back, he’s got a stake in the system. True, he’s on the short end of the stick of the interest economy, but in 30 years he could own his own home.” (Thanks Longform.)

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“And now my bags are packed for travelin’ / Glass, concrete, and stone / It’s just a house, not a home”:

“Here’s your ticket, pack your bag / Time for jumpin’ overboard / Transportation is here / Burning down the house”:

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“The Process Starts With The Scan Of An Ear”

November 16, 2011 in Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Dr. Bonassar of Cornell prints human ears.

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“Yves Uses His Body To Steer The Wing”

November 15, 2011 in Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Yves Rossy is Jetman, strapped to a jet-powered wing. His TED talk.

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“The World Sorely Needs Some Kind Of Cosmic Blueprint Going Forward”

November 15, 2011 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Videos | Permalink

For numerous reasons, it seems increasingly unlikely that the U.S. will be at the center of future space exploration. Perhaps China will colonize Mars? Godspeed, Zhai Zhigang. From Dennis Overbye’s New York Times article about the new Museum of Natural History exhibit which imagines the next wave of space missions:

“The idea of the exhibition is to look forward 50 or 100 years, not back, said Michael Shara, the curator of the show. ‘We’re at a crossroads,’ he said. ‘We have to decide what to do when we grow up. Where is the vision?’

In this case, the vision is solely Dr. Shara’s, he admitted, arrived at by picking the brains of space experts. Lest you get too excited, it does not yet represent the official agenda of NASA or any other agency.

The world sorely needs some kind of cosmic blueprint going forward, if indeed we are to go forward and outward, and though one can quibble with many details, this one is as good as any. One can fantasize that this show could have the same long-range impact on shaping public expectations in space as magazine articles and television shows did in the 1950s. In that case, I hope it travels to the other countries that are now flexing their space muscles, like China.

Those who think that human spaceflight is ridiculously expensive, wasteful, dangerous and unscientific — a group that includes a lot of scientists I know — might want to stop reading right here. The exhibition plays shamelessly to those of us who were captivated long ago by science fiction dreams and the notion that humanity’s destiny is somehow tied to the stars. For the most part these plans don’t come with price tags attached nor, for that matter, any indication of what currency the price should be denominated in.

‘Somebody will do these things,’ Dr. Shara said. ‘Maybe not the U.S.””

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Asimo Robot Avoids Bumping Into You

November 15, 2011 in Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Asimo, already good at serving beer, can now alter his walking patterns so as not to bump into others. Still walks like he has to take a leak, though. (Thanks Singularity Hub.)

“The Undertaking Still Bordered On Science Fiction”

November 15, 2011 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

So, this is an interesting find, to say the least. I was looking for something completely different and stumbled across “The Dead Body and the Living Brain,” a 1967 Look magazine article by Oriana Fallaci about pioneering head-transplant experimentation. In the piece, Fallaci reports on the sci-fi-ish experiments that Dr. Robert White was doing with rhesus monkeys at a time when consciousness about animal rights was on the rise. White’s unusual work continued until his death in 2010. The opening:

Libby had eaten her last meal the night before: orange, banana, monkey chow. While eating she had observed us with curiosity. Her hands resembled the hands of a newly born child, her face seemed almost human. Perhaps because of her eyes. They were so sad, so defenseless. We had called her Libby because Dr. Maurice Albin, the anesthetist, had told us she had no name, we could give her the name we liked best, and because she accepted it immediately. You said “Libby!” and she jumped, then she leaned her head on her shoulder. Dr. Albin had also told us that Libby had been born in India and was almost three years, an age comparable to that of a seven-year-old girl. The rhesuses live 30 years and she was a rhesus. Prof. Robert White uses the rhesus because they are not expensive; they cost between $80 and $100. Chimpanzees, larger and easier to experiment with, cost up to $2,000 each. After the meal, a veterinarian had come, and with as much ceremony as they use for the condemned, he had checked to be sure Libby was in good health. It would be a difficult operation and her body should function as perfectly as a rocket going to the moon. A hundred times before, the experiment had ended in failure, and though Professor White became the first man in the entire history of medicine to succeed, the undertaking still bordered on science fiction. Libby was about to die in order to demonstrate that her brain could live isolated from her body and that, so isolated, it could still think.•

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“This Is Not Science–This Is Pinocchio”

November 14, 2011 in Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

The great Karl Pilkington isn’t sure what science is, but he loves it.

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“TV Shopping Is Quick And Principally Easy”

November 14, 2011 in Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Predictions about the year 2000 from 1957 Germany.

“Fire Is A Loss Leader, Meant As A Gateway To Other Amazon Purchases”

November 14, 2011 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

They’ve put the cash register in your pocket, Amazon has, and it is shiny and compact and beautiful. No, the Kindle Fire is apparently not a great tablet, but that isn’t the point. Jeff Bezos’ willingness to sell each Kindle Fire at a loss let’s you know that his goal is to ensure you are able to make impulse buys no matter where you are, that you will always be at a check-out line, that you will load up on media. You can do these things with your laptop or your phone, but no previous tech item has been as aggressive as the Fire in regard to ancillary sales. The razor will be cheap, but the blades will be expensive. From Rebecca J.Rosen’s new Atlantic piece:

“There is one thing, however, that the Fire seems to excel at: Being a store. As Jon Philips writes at Wired, ‘Indeed, the Fire is a fiendishly effective shopping portal in the guise of a 7-inch slate.’ And that’s no surprise, since it’s been known for quite a while that the Fire is a loss leader, meant as a gateway to other Amazon purchases.

But with Amazon as one of only four companies competing in the Great Battle to Rule Our Digital Future (Facebook, Apple, and Google being the three others), the Kindle Fire is our best and latest clue as to what Amazon’s vision for that future is: The Internet as a store — and that store is Amazon. As Amazon continues to increase its offerings beyond Amazon.com, expect those offerings (tablets, e-readers, apps) to always in some way have the growth of Amazon.com’s sales as a fundamental purpose. “

Read also:

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“I’m Not Sure They Could Capture The Complete Horror”

November 14, 2011 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Sports, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

To the avid baseball fan, it would seem Billy Beane has ceased being an elite GM, the architect of Moneyball who could outsmart his peers, mostly because his interests are too broad. Among other things, he’s involved professionally with major-league soccer, computer software and finance. Beane’s restless mind stems in part from being a working-class kid who grudgingly passed on a Stanford scholarship he dearly wanted to accept in order to pocket a signing bonus from the Mets. Simon Kuper of the Financial Times was on hand recently when Beane caught up with author Michael Lewis, the two forever linked by baseball statistics, market inefficiencies and Brad Pitt. An excerpt:

“And so Moneyball became in large part the drama of Billy Beane: the autodidact who gave himself an education. When Beane was 18 years old, Stanford University had offered him a football and baseball scholarship. He and his parents – bright people without much money who had married young and joined the military middle class – were ecstatic. A good college was everything they wanted. But then the New York Mets offered Beane $125,000 to play baseball instead, and he felt he ought to do it. The movie shows the teenager, around the kitchen table with his parents in the simple family home, making the fateful decision. The filmmakers catch the scene well, but, as Beane says, ‘I’m not sure they could capture the complete horror.’

‘Listen,’ he adds, ‘I’m trying not to talk about myself here. I don’t look at life as a bunch of hindsight reviews of your decisions. But that’s exactly what I wanted to do, to attend Stanford University.’

Billy Beane was 18 when Stanford University offered him a football and baseball scholarship, but he went to play or the New York Mets instead

Beane’s life since – his compulsive reading, his discovery of the Moneyball system, his later discovery of soccer – is a long attempt to give himself the university education he never had. Just as Sergey Brin and Larry Page created Google partly because they went to Stanford, Beane created Moneyball partly because he didn’t.”

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