"This time it's different, guys, we have the iPhone!"

I no longer have my copy of Benjamin Graham's "The Intelligent Investor," but at one point he presciently writes, "An asshole is someone who thinks the paradigms of investing can permanently shift." Or something.

The point is, The New York Times' recent story on the "not-so-exclusive" club of billion-dollar startups sounds like a case study in short-sighted investor euphoria.

As Quentin Hardy writes, "Silicon Valley entrepreneurs contend that the price spiral is not a sign of another tech bubble. The high prices are reasonable, they say, because innovations like smartphones and cloud computing will remake a technology industry that is already worth hundreds of billions of dollars."

To which I say: the term "reasonable price spiral" is an oxymoron. The tech bubble will continue to be worth billions of course -- but there will be very clear winners and losers. The pool of "look-alike" companies, most of which deal in cloud/enterprise activities, will separate itself. Every copy-cat firm hoping to make a quick billion will lose innovation steam, or people will just realize there's no point investing in a company with no revenue stream (heya, Pinterest!).

Better hit the IPO and cash out quick, guys -- what goes up in the Valley will come down on the Street.

Except you, Aaron Levie...you're cool. 

Back off, Carina Chocano!

About a week ago, Carina Chocano -- a "self-employed" sort of "freelance writer," if her LinkedIn is to be believed -- wrote a tad-too-touchy piece in the New York Times about Pinterest, Tumblr, and general user-generated content aggregation websites. Only she calls these websites "longing machines," and concludes with an ever-so-melancholy note that the sites define "the life we think we were meant to have but don’t, the people we think we should be but aren’t."

By extension of Chocano's theory, my time spent curating on "The Fancy" is a fruitless pathological pursuit to fool myself into thinking I'm a man of "taste" and "style."

Pshawww...act like you have this kind of taste, Carina.

Personally, I think Carina's essay is about as valid as any journalist cum philosopher can churn out when applying analytical skills learned in their college comparative literature classes to modern technology. RE: It's all wish-wash. Because you're right, Ms. Carina: "People don’t post stuff because they wish they owned it, but because they think they are it, and they long to be understood..." Sounds kind of like the supposedly intellectually untouchable Jonathan Franzen telling the Kenyon College Class of 2011 that the "telos of techne is to replace a natural world that’s indifferent to our wishes ... with a world so responsive to our wishes as to be, effectively, a mere extension of the self." Thanks for the advice, J. Franz! I'll be sure to avoid modern technology from now on!

Sure, people use online profiles -- even Pinterest portfolios consisting entirely of images -- to define how they want to be viewed by the world. But I think anyone who has ever viewed a Facebook profile filled with "deep" quotations and ostentatiously heart-felt status updates can see that these profiles act as more then just, y'know, profiles -- their an outlet for self-expression, self-realization and social understanding. So Ms. Chocano, I'm here to tell you: your behind the times, but not in your use of technology. Your antiquated in your realization that technology is deeply entwined with people's emotions and understanding of themselves. Heck, David Foster Wallace hit on the soul-churning isolating effect of technology in his 2005 Kenyon Commencement address. (On another note: those Kenyon College grads must really be a happy bunch...)

Basically, I find these overly-intellectual technology pieces at once embarrassing (for the writer) and confusing. What exactly does Carina want me to do, once I acknowledge that my "Fancy" portfolio is a web of self-deceit? Stop looking at "Vans California Era Washed Paisley" and "Cheesecake-stuffed strawberries?" Cuz if that's what you think I'll do, Ms. Chocano, then you don't know B.Doyle...

Damn those are sexy...

Am I Fancy?

My trusted friends at Complex recently introduced me to The Fancy...a sight that allows users to sift through a (seemingly) endless catalogue of tastefully exotic getaways, high-fashion shirts and ties, subtly ironic t-shirts (which are also ironically expensive), sexy-as-hell cars, and minimalist, functional gadgets. Basically, it's like Kanye West's wet dream (literally...he helped popularize it). Like Pinterest, but for the hipster crowd.

My biggest complaint so far is the uninspired "Your catalog" function that lets you look at everything you've "fancied." It's basically a list format...shouldn't there be some tool to make a fascinating hipster collage of everything sartorial and artistic that a user fancies? This aside, I spent a not-insignificant amount of time this morning "fancying" items, and balking at various price tags (the site gives you links to buy most items as well).  Window shopping for beach houses and desert boots at the same damn time? What an age we live in!