The More They Stay the Same

I have had this continuing concern for human isolationism. I observe with so much frequency the noses of us all buried in our iPhones sending and receiving messages to and from anyplace but here. We are physically in the same room but our minds and souls are elsewhere.

I have so many times adjudged our iPhones to be the tipping device that has sent us to a place far away from the way we should be-connected in the flesh. I have wondered why we have suddenly embarked into adjacency and what the magic of the iPhone device may have been.

And then it dawned on me: this device did not cause any sudden metamorphis - we were aleady trying to achieve escape velocity. It is very difficult to change human behavior much less do it en masse. The great popularity of iPhone isolationism can thus only suggest to me that the device did not change human character but rather revealed it. Behavior and the human tendency is magnified. It was something people were already doing but wanted to do better, to do more deeply.

This raises an interesting frame for investment thesis-find things that tap into deep social trends and unleash them. So in a way we [venture investors] would not be technology investors but rather social psychologists that tempt our vices. This actually sounds like it could be a good business.