Glenn Beck, Peter Thiel, and Disruptive Innovation

"No one sews a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment; or else the new piece pulls away from the old, and the tear is made worse. And no one puts new wine into old wineskins; or else the new wine bursts the wineskins, the wine is spilled, and the wineskins are ruined. But new wine must be put into new wineskins."
Mark 2:21-22

Peter Thiel, founder of PayPal, early player in several other well known technology companies, and author of the new book: Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or how to build a future sat down with Glenn Beck the other day to discuss several topics:



Highlights:

• Out of the box thinking in a world plagued by conformity.

• If there's another terrorist attack on the U.S., our civil liberties will go out the window.

• The government is much more abusive than Google.
• "Google doesn't have guns."

• "It feels like the system is on Autopilot."

• Tech, as an industry, has been lightly regulated.

• The culture of D.C. and Silicon Valley are radically different.

• Most members of Congress "are in the middle ages" re: Science and Technology.
• Author's Note: Then there's Lamar Smith....

Highlights:

• Silicon Valley -- Generally "politically quite naive."
•  Instincts libertarian, but become liberal because it's cool.

• As soon as the establishment says "don't read that," it's cool again.

• The Hippies took over the country at Woodstock; 3 weeks after moon landing.

• Believing a better world is possible is radically countercultural these days.

Highlights:

• Reforming systems from within hasn't worked.
• Create empowering pathways

• Most people are scared and when you're scared, you retrench.

• If you're a slacker with low expectations, you will meet them.

• We're going to get to Mars in 20 years.

• Computers haven't been regulated while everything else has been.

• Eventually, the old crony system falls apart
• But when?!?

• "What FDR did in the New Deal, I don't think you could do that today."

Highlights:

• "You want to do one thing where, if you didn't do it, it wouldn't get done."

• Apple had "an incredible run of innovation under Jobs."

• "It's hard to maintain innovation once you get past a certain size."

• Innovation frequently dies with the Founding generation.

• Monopolies are bad when they're protected by government, in technology they go away over time.