July 21, 2015 at 11:48Producer of tomorrow (part 4)
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Interior of the KITT car at the Toronto Motor Show, 2011
Mark Andrissen often mentions Thomas Edison ★ , but never talks about his own family. He grew up in the provincial town of New Lisbon ★ (Wisconsin). Her father, Lowell, was a sales manager for Pioneer Hi-Bred International ★ , agrain company, while her mother, Pat, served customers at the Lands' End ★ clothing store. But all this I did not learn from Andrissen. His close friend told me: “We never discuss his parents or his brother. “They did not love me, I answered them in return” - that’s all he said about them. ”
A number of details led me to conclude that Andrissen grew up in an atmosphere of archaic, superstition, frustration and poverty. “By nature, man is destined to be a farmer, earning his own food. This is exactly the future that was expected of me. ” Andrissen added that he was surrounded by "Scandinavian, tough, very self-limiting people who lived their lives, not hoping to be happy." The telephone line was shared with the neighbors, and the toilet was on the street. Everyone believed in dowsing ★ and weather forecasts from the Farm Almanac ★. Once, in the middle of winter, money was tight, and my father decided not to pay for gas. “And we spent a hell of a lot of time splitting the damned firewood.” The local cinema, through the town from the house, was not heated, and was used concurrently as a fertilizer warehouse. Andrissen watched "Star Wars" in the huge Pioneer Hi-Bred down jacket, sitting on the components of the huge bomb ★ . The nearest bookstore, Waldenbooks ★ , was an hour away, in La Crosse ★ ; its shelves were filled with cookbooks and calendars with kittens. Therefore, subsequently, Andrissen took over Amazon ★as a great achievement in the dissemination of knowledge and progress. “I turned around all these independent books,” he assured me. “Not one was where I grew up. All of them were just next to the colleges, and those who live far away were sent to crush the sand. ★ ”
Andrissen took his vision of the future and the path to salvation from television. “KITT, the car in the“ Knight of the Road ” ★ , was a computer capable of repelling a gas attack. The car was a miracle, but now all this has come true. The new car today is certainly not KITT, but he has all the cards and all the music of the world, and he is talking to you. And if you get the idea of quantum entanglement ★ , then even the transport beam ★ from Star Trek ★makes sense. After all, people are made up of quantum particles, so there must be a way! ”
It seems that the transport beam is still holding onto Andrissen, as if he had just materialized when he arrived from the city at the edge of eternity. He is not very good at everyday affairs: he gets confused in directions, because the roads are illogical, and so desperate in finding his sunglasses that he keeps in the hallway a whole “store with a spare”, which contains nine spare pairs. Perhaps Edison would not refuse to talk with him, since Andrissen is also a jack of all trades, except that instead of a piece of iron he has systems and platforms, and the workshop was located right in his head. He regularly reprograms his appearance and his manners - a sort of user interface - so as to better fit the current role. And friends mention different periods of his life as versions of the operating system: “Mark 1.0”, “Mark 2.0”, etc. Being a charismatic introvert, Andrissen attracts people, but doesn’t really want to see them nearby. And although he has a lively sense of humor, he infrequently launches it at will. He hates being praised, staring at him, or touching him. He finds it funny to wear a T-shirt that says “Don't hug. Do not touch. " He does not particularly adhere to etiquette and does not seek to chat about the issue. It is more convenient for him to receive a written message to which he can reply by e-mail, typing one hundred forty words per minute. He refused to attend the twentieth anniversary of Netscape staring at him or touching him. He finds it funny to wear a T-shirt that says “Don't hug. Do not touch. " He does not particularly adhere to etiquette and does not seek to chat about the issue. It is more convenient for him to receive a written message to which he can reply by e-mail, typing one hundred forty words per minute. He refused to attend the twentieth anniversary of Netscape staring at him or touching him. He finds it funny to wear a T-shirt that says “Don't hug. Do not touch. " He does not particularly adhere to etiquette and does not seek to chat about the issue. It is more convenient for him to receive a written message to which he can reply by e-mail, typing one hundred forty words per minute. He refused to attend the twentieth anniversary of Netscape★ , because of the fatal combination of the two most disgusting things: parties and nostalgic digging in the past.
Nevertheless, he is energetic and determined, which makes him a valuable adviser. In 2006, Yahoo! ★ Offered a billion dollars for Facebook ★ . Accel Partners Venture Fund ★ , Facebook's main investor, convinced Mark Zuckerberg ★accept the deal. Andrissen says that “everyone on Facebook wanted Mark to accept Yahoo! The psychological pressure on this twenty-two year old guy was incredible. Mark and I held each other very much during this period because I kept repeating: “Don't sell, don't sell, don't sell!” ”Zuckerberg says:“ Mark is convinced that when a company succeeds in successfully following its vision, it can exert much greater impact on the world. And this influence is underestimated. This is not just business, but the disposition of the fate of mankind. Moreover, this is possible only if the company gets enough time for its development. ”And he did not sell the company. Facebook is now valued at two hundred and eighteen billion dollars.
Andrissen draws inspiration from a wide range of sources from Ibn Khaldun★ to South Park ★ . At the same time, he, as if hungry, grabs at any topic, absorbing them one by one. Men's fashion, whiskey making, Congressional politics - will go through everything until he gets the last crumb. When Twitter overwhelmed the storm on the topic of network neutrality ★ , he noted that everyone who expresses a position on this issue should be well-versed in the issues of “history, technology, economics of trunk lines, agreement on traffic exchange, peering ★ , CDNs ★, caching, server placement, current and future business models in the telecommunications and cable industries, including models of capital and operating costs, marginal rates, cost of capital, investment profit, ”and a dozen more complex things. Modestly noting that no one, including himself, understands all this at the same time, he nevertheless set forth his personal opinion on this issue. Andrissen’s education is an alloy from idiosyncrasy to self-education with the thoroughness that programmers call “deep search” ★. “It has always been unbearable for me to not know the answer to the question“ why ”,” he explains. “You need to dig deep to understand how politics began, the initial motivation. I always stop when I get to evolutionary psychology. Well, okay, we are primates, bear the curse of emotions and the ability to think logically. ” He remembers again and again that we are Australopithecus, and continues to try to turn us into Homo habilis ★ : a person using tools, a skilled person.
To this he leads any topic. For example, inferring the dialectic from what Google bought the thermostat manufacturer Nest ★ . “Either 1) Nest is the most amazing of all companies in the history of mankind, or 2) Larry Page ★ hired Tony Fadell through the takeover ★for $ 3.2 billion, and got the thermostat business into the load. ” The synthesis from the above often represents either a simplification of the thesis and antithesis (“Or, perhaps this is all part of Google’s larger plan for household automation”), or a departure from the topic (“Why the hell did he give up. It’s not from us they bought it, well, hell would be with him. ”) He is often so keen on his speech that his cheeks turn red and he has to pause to catch his breath. If you manage to seize the moment to demonstrate a basic understanding of his arguments, he will blur in a smile, say: “Oh-oh-oh!” - and continue to load you with the next piece of information. From the stigma of a pompous know-it-all, only his thirst for communication saves him.
He constantly returns to his theories in the same way an alcoholic reaches for his drink. But Horowitz insists that sometimes Andrissen is ready to “raise all of Wisconsin against you in order to protect his people.” When we studied the topic of Internet pawnshops, people around began to say that it was immoral. Mark then simply went wild: “If you don’t have a damn cent and you have to lay a clock to feed your children, is it fucking immoral just because it hurts the feelings of rich bastards?” He had such a friend who laid his watch, so as not to miss the harvest. Something like that. When he saw “Uber for private flights” ★ or something related to wine ★, he became furious: “We did not create a company so that the rich would buy wine for a hundred dollars per bottle, or that they would fly around on their disgusting private jets!” He reminds Kanye of emotional intensity - his childhood was so terrible that he doesn’t want to return there at all ”▼
To be continued ...
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 ← | Part 4 | → Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8
About the Author: Ted Friend has been a regular contributor to The New Yorker since 1998. The author of a variety of reports and investigations, multiple prize winner in the field of journalism.
Photo: Tabercil (Own work) [ CC BY-SA 3.0 ], via Wikimedia Commons
Interior of the KITT car at the Toronto Motor Show, 2011
Mark Andrissen often mentions Thomas Edison ★ , but never talks about his own family. He grew up in the provincial town of New Lisbon ★ (Wisconsin). Her father, Lowell, was a sales manager for Pioneer Hi-Bred International ★ , agrain company, while her mother, Pat, served customers at the Lands' End ★ clothing store. But all this I did not learn from Andrissen. His close friend told me: “We never discuss his parents or his brother. “They did not love me, I answered them in return” - that’s all he said about them. ”
A number of details led me to conclude that Andrissen grew up in an atmosphere of archaic, superstition, frustration and poverty. “By nature, man is destined to be a farmer, earning his own food. This is exactly the future that was expected of me. ” Andrissen added that he was surrounded by "Scandinavian, tough, very self-limiting people who lived their lives, not hoping to be happy." The telephone line was shared with the neighbors, and the toilet was on the street. Everyone believed in dowsing ★ and weather forecasts from the Farm Almanac ★. Once, in the middle of winter, money was tight, and my father decided not to pay for gas. “And we spent a hell of a lot of time splitting the damned firewood.” The local cinema, through the town from the house, was not heated, and was used concurrently as a fertilizer warehouse. Andrissen watched "Star Wars" in the huge Pioneer Hi-Bred down jacket, sitting on the components of the huge bomb ★ . The nearest bookstore, Waldenbooks ★ , was an hour away, in La Crosse ★ ; its shelves were filled with cookbooks and calendars with kittens. Therefore, subsequently, Andrissen took over Amazon ★as a great achievement in the dissemination of knowledge and progress. “I turned around all these independent books,” he assured me. “Not one was where I grew up. All of them were just next to the colleges, and those who live far away were sent to crush the sand. ★ ”
Andrissen took his vision of the future and the path to salvation from television. “KITT, the car in the“ Knight of the Road ” ★ , was a computer capable of repelling a gas attack. The car was a miracle, but now all this has come true. The new car today is certainly not KITT, but he has all the cards and all the music of the world, and he is talking to you. And if you get the idea of quantum entanglement ★ , then even the transport beam ★ from Star Trek ★makes sense. After all, people are made up of quantum particles, so there must be a way! ”
It seems that the transport beam is still holding onto Andrissen, as if he had just materialized when he arrived from the city at the edge of eternity. He is not very good at everyday affairs: he gets confused in directions, because the roads are illogical, and so desperate in finding his sunglasses that he keeps in the hallway a whole “store with a spare”, which contains nine spare pairs. Perhaps Edison would not refuse to talk with him, since Andrissen is also a jack of all trades, except that instead of a piece of iron he has systems and platforms, and the workshop was located right in his head. He regularly reprograms his appearance and his manners - a sort of user interface - so as to better fit the current role. And friends mention different periods of his life as versions of the operating system: “Mark 1.0”, “Mark 2.0”, etc. Being a charismatic introvert, Andrissen attracts people, but doesn’t really want to see them nearby. And although he has a lively sense of humor, he infrequently launches it at will. He hates being praised, staring at him, or touching him. He finds it funny to wear a T-shirt that says “Don't hug. Do not touch. " He does not particularly adhere to etiquette and does not seek to chat about the issue. It is more convenient for him to receive a written message to which he can reply by e-mail, typing one hundred forty words per minute. He refused to attend the twentieth anniversary of Netscape staring at him or touching him. He finds it funny to wear a T-shirt that says “Don't hug. Do not touch. " He does not particularly adhere to etiquette and does not seek to chat about the issue. It is more convenient for him to receive a written message to which he can reply by e-mail, typing one hundred forty words per minute. He refused to attend the twentieth anniversary of Netscape staring at him or touching him. He finds it funny to wear a T-shirt that says “Don't hug. Do not touch. " He does not particularly adhere to etiquette and does not seek to chat about the issue. It is more convenient for him to receive a written message to which he can reply by e-mail, typing one hundred forty words per minute. He refused to attend the twentieth anniversary of Netscape★ , because of the fatal combination of the two most disgusting things: parties and nostalgic digging in the past.
Nevertheless, he is energetic and determined, which makes him a valuable adviser. In 2006, Yahoo! ★ Offered a billion dollars for Facebook ★ . Accel Partners Venture Fund ★ , Facebook's main investor, convinced Mark Zuckerberg ★accept the deal. Andrissen says that “everyone on Facebook wanted Mark to accept Yahoo! The psychological pressure on this twenty-two year old guy was incredible. Mark and I held each other very much during this period because I kept repeating: “Don't sell, don't sell, don't sell!” ”Zuckerberg says:“ Mark is convinced that when a company succeeds in successfully following its vision, it can exert much greater impact on the world. And this influence is underestimated. This is not just business, but the disposition of the fate of mankind. Moreover, this is possible only if the company gets enough time for its development. ”And he did not sell the company. Facebook is now valued at two hundred and eighteen billion dollars.
Andrissen draws inspiration from a wide range of sources from Ibn Khaldun★ to South Park ★ . At the same time, he, as if hungry, grabs at any topic, absorbing them one by one. Men's fashion, whiskey making, Congressional politics - will go through everything until he gets the last crumb. When Twitter overwhelmed the storm on the topic of network neutrality ★ , he noted that everyone who expresses a position on this issue should be well-versed in the issues of “history, technology, economics of trunk lines, agreement on traffic exchange, peering ★ , CDNs ★, caching, server placement, current and future business models in the telecommunications and cable industries, including models of capital and operating costs, marginal rates, cost of capital, investment profit, ”and a dozen more complex things. Modestly noting that no one, including himself, understands all this at the same time, he nevertheless set forth his personal opinion on this issue. Andrissen’s education is an alloy from idiosyncrasy to self-education with the thoroughness that programmers call “deep search” ★. “It has always been unbearable for me to not know the answer to the question“ why ”,” he explains. “You need to dig deep to understand how politics began, the initial motivation. I always stop when I get to evolutionary psychology. Well, okay, we are primates, bear the curse of emotions and the ability to think logically. ” He remembers again and again that we are Australopithecus, and continues to try to turn us into Homo habilis ★ : a person using tools, a skilled person.
To this he leads any topic. For example, inferring the dialectic from what Google bought the thermostat manufacturer Nest ★ . “Either 1) Nest is the most amazing of all companies in the history of mankind, or 2) Larry Page ★ hired Tony Fadell through the takeover ★for $ 3.2 billion, and got the thermostat business into the load. ” The synthesis from the above often represents either a simplification of the thesis and antithesis (“Or, perhaps this is all part of Google’s larger plan for household automation”), or a departure from the topic (“Why the hell did he give up. It’s not from us they bought it, well, hell would be with him. ”) He is often so keen on his speech that his cheeks turn red and he has to pause to catch his breath. If you manage to seize the moment to demonstrate a basic understanding of his arguments, he will blur in a smile, say: “Oh-oh-oh!” - and continue to load you with the next piece of information. From the stigma of a pompous know-it-all, only his thirst for communication saves him.
He constantly returns to his theories in the same way an alcoholic reaches for his drink. But Horowitz insists that sometimes Andrissen is ready to “raise all of Wisconsin against you in order to protect his people.” When we studied the topic of Internet pawnshops, people around began to say that it was immoral. Mark then simply went wild: “If you don’t have a damn cent and you have to lay a clock to feed your children, is it fucking immoral just because it hurts the feelings of rich bastards?” He had such a friend who laid his watch, so as not to miss the harvest. Something like that. When he saw “Uber for private flights” ★ or something related to wine ★, he became furious: “We did not create a company so that the rich would buy wine for a hundred dollars per bottle, or that they would fly around on their disgusting private jets!” He reminds Kanye of emotional intensity - his childhood was so terrible that he doesn’t want to return there at all ”▼
To be continued ...
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 ← | Part 4 | → Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8
About the Author: Ted Friend has been a regular contributor to The New Yorker since 1998. The author of a variety of reports and investigations, multiple prize winner in the field of journalism.
Photo: Tabercil (Own work) [ CC BY-SA 3.0 ], via Wikimedia Commons
