The Blog of Burgher Jon

The right question:  Can YOU be an entrepreneur?

There’s been a lot of debate in the last month or so about whether entrepreneurial skill is a function of nature or nurture.  Fred Wilson, Jason Calacanis (speaking to a group of seniors at my undergraduate college, Information Sciences and Technology at Penn State) and Vivek Wadha covered the topic directly.  Between them, the vote comes down 2-1 in favor of nature.  Fred Wilson and Jason Calacanis, both of whom I respect quite a bit said that it doesn’t feel like entrepreneurship is something that can be learned.  Vivek, whom I’m not familiar with yet, offered a well researched and much debated article arguing that entrepreneurial inclinations were rarely learned.  Vivek’s main point was that well trained people (people with Ivy league educations) do better on average then the high school dropout, Bill Gates, “born with it” types.

Mark Suster and Seth Godin also touched on the subject, though more tangentially.  Mark offered a list of characteristics of the “DNA of an entrepreneur” in a great 12 part post.  The 11 traits he identified were, tenacity, street smarts, ability to pivot, resiliency, inspiration, perspiration, willingness to accept risk, attention to detail, competitiveness, decisiveness, domain experience and integrity.  Most of the traits are the kinds of things that are ingrained in people; the kinds of traits you either have or you don’t, but I don’t think there isn’t a single one of those things that can’t be learned with a concerted effort.  Decisiveness for example is something that comes naturally to most people, but also something that can be practiced and adopted (see the Four Hour Work Week).  Seth Godin’s post had more to do with the brain washing that occurs in our society.  The tendency to at some point, accept the cookie cutter life that’s thrown on us.

So what do I think?  I firmly believe that we’re born with a set of tools at our disposal. However, those tools are primitive ones and how we develop them is a combination of how we’re raised and how we direct our own lives. I believe that intelligence, coordination, height/build, appearance, an artistic eye, gender and musical ability are about the only things that one can be born with.  Since a few of those can certainly help an entrepreneur (arguably they all could to a certain degree), I suppose there is some nature involved in an entrepreneur.  However, since none of those are “entrepreneurial ability”, I clearly believe that nurture is the prevalent n-word when it comes to being an entrepreneur.  That’s all I’m going to say about the nature vs. nurture question holistically, because I do honestly believe it is the wrong question.  I’m going to assume that the reason we’re asking the question in the first place is that you want to know if you (or perhaps someone you know or are considering investing in) could develop in to an entrepreneur. Unless you’re a parent, the person in question, the one you want to know whether can develop entrepreneurial skills, is probably too old to discuss “nurture”. His/her development is likely to be self directed.  I think the better question is, can you become an entrepreneur?

Here are the core personality traits I think you need to have to become an entrepreneur.  None of them “born” characteristics, but none of them are easily picked up either.  If you don’t have any of them, I wouldn’t recommend trying your had at being an entrepreneur.  If you have all but one, I think you should look at your current job and find ways that you can practice that skill in your current job:

• I’m going to cop out and just link to Mark Suster’s list for the most basic 11 characteristics.  I think these can be grouped as one core personality trait and called a “skill tool set”.  Things like risk taking, domain experience, perspiration go without saying and aren’t the focus of this post.  If you want to be an entrepreneur, pick a couple of these that you’re weak on and find ways to work on them.
• A dissatisfaction with the cookie cutter lifestyle.  Some people are born with this or have it instilled in them by their parents.  Others pick it up much later in life, but if the idea of working for the same company for 30 years and retiring with a pension has any appeal to you, you better search for some motivation.
• An ability to think introspectively.  I do agree with Jason and Fred that there are some “born entrepreneurs” but I don’t think it happens very often.  If you’re going to develop in to an entrepreneur you’re going to need to be able to identify your strengths and weaknesses and adress the latter.

In Conclusion, do I think you can develop in to an entrepreneur if you want to?  Absolutely, but it’s not as simple as holding your breath and jumping in the deep end.  Watch the swimmers, learn from them, and jump in when you know you can do it.  It’s a process that can take years of concerted self-direction.

Image via tigerprises.com

Being a VC is all about learning to invest in companies that are fulfilling a market need in an innovative way (Ok, part of it is about identifying management teams that know what they’re doing but I’m ignoring that part for now).  How does one go about the skill of identifying the types of technologies that will hit it big?  I see two ways:

1. Jump in and be an investor.  Interview companies, listen to their pitch.  Let them tell you about the niche they’ve identified and how they plan to address it.  Invest a bunch of money and see if you’re right.
2. Be a good early adopter.  Build a suite of hardware and software that you use every day.  Follow a blog like TechCrunch or TechMeme and as new technologies come out decide whether or not they fill a gap in your portfolio.

Both of these give you practice doing a structured analysis of technology tools.  They require not just looking at the pretty pictures on both the website and in the sales pitch, but sifting through the BS to determine what the true value of the product is.  The difference?  You’ll need a couple million dollars in the bank to do the first and you might lose all of it.  Where do you think you should start honing your skills?

I was just perusing the books on social media at the local book store, when I noticed this book.  I was intrigued by the subtitle, “a style guide for the short form.”  My curiosity got the best of me.  How can you have style in only 140 characters?   What forms of English can be expressed in this little form?  What does someone with a grasp of English and a background at twitter think of hash tags?

Dom Sagolla ( @Dom ),  one of the founders of twitr (yes, back when it was still known as twitr) is just such a guy.  He not only lays out a structure or context for thinking of the style behind a tweet, he supplies great tips on how to navigate Twitter.  There are tips on who to follow, applications to use and types of messages to write.

Overall, this is a must read if you intend to market yourself or your company on Twitter and a pretty good book even if you only have a passing interest in Twitter.

The food network made a type of potato skin for each of the NFL teams, guess what’s on the Steeler’s.  You got it!

As I go through the week, I use Twitter to send out little updates and links.  I realize that I do this quite a bit and that not all of you have Twitter, so with that in mind I’d like to take Sunday to do sort of a week in review.  I’ve selected the most useful of my tweets from the last week and placed them in to the categories that I use in this blog.

Personal Technology

• Surprised that only 50% of Twitter Messages are in English.http://is.gd/9vVTp

Pittsburgh

• Good extrapolated wisdom from the great Pittsburgher RT@ThisIsSethsBlog “Losing Andrew Carnegie” http://bit.ly/aKjEqb
• RT@iheartpgh RT @PghZoo: Random fact: The Masai giraffe’s heart weighs 25 pounds. Our Masais are named Mel and Sox.

Sports

• RT @LangoschMLB Bryan Morris throws first-pitch ball for #Pirates to kick off exhibtion game. First pitch I’ve seen since Yanks won WS. Baseball is back!
• Panthers cut Jake the Snake #panthers http://is.gd/9Kvgh
• Crosby has a Cup and a gold, and he’s ours… I don’t mean USA’s… he’s a Burgher and that transcends nationality -@janepitt
• Calling this business of sorting the medals by golds what it is, Hogwash. Canada put on a great olympics, but they lost!

Startups

• Maybe now I want to “be like Mark” RT @MSuster What’s it like to be a VC? http://is.gd/9ST0c

Technology News

• RT@anildash Steve Jobs should be thankful that his third-party liver doesn’t require a new proprietary dongle each year to stay connected
• 10 Billion Tweets have been sent, 5 Billion in the last 5 months.http://is.gd/9NPnR

Other (Mostly Humorous Comments from the Week)

• The CIA should invest in handcuffs that can’t be removed with the parts from a ball point pen. #spymovies
• I’m in Europe talking about how my client provides services to the State of Pennsylvania #ironic.

“The Computer Industry is the only industry that’s more fashion driven then women’s fashion.” –Larry Ellison

Towards the end of last year Larry Ellison sat down for an interview and thoroughly bashed cloud computing.  I’ve included the video, and if you’re a nerd like me you should watch it. Actually he didn’t bash cloud computing, he bashed the fact that cloud’s being used as a buzz word not a concept (Link to a  Good Definition of Cloud).  The enterprise IT industry frustrates me to no end.  I’ve mentioned on this blog before, that there are way to many IT projects and people that provide little value.  Part of the reason for this is that our leaders pass up so many great opportunities to help simplify the landscape.

It’s against that background that I’d like to introduce Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft, and the email and speech he published earlier this week.  In them he outlined “the five dimensions that define the way people use and realize value in the cloud”:

• The cloud creates opportunities and responsibilities
• The cloud  learns and helps you learn, decide and take action
• The cloud enhances your social and professional interactions
• The cloud wants smarter devices
• The cloud drives server advances that drive the cloud

I can’t make this stuff up.  Until the leaders in this industry start to communicate in clear terms with the world around them enterprise IT will continue to needlessly suck resources and talent out of our economy.

I’m so depressed that I have to stop writing.  I think I’ll just dedicate the afternoon to finding a way to “use and realize value from the cloud” by providing it smarter devices.

I saw something in the news from Google today that isn’t getting as much press as it deserves.  I think there are two reasons this news is being overlooked.  First, it’s an enterprise IT announcement and most Google fans focus exclusively on personal computing innovations out of the software giant.  Second, it’s a concept that most people aren’t well versed in.  The news is one of those little reminders of how quickly Google is closing the gap in enterprise (large corporation) technology products.

If you’re not familiar with the expression, “The only way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time” you probably don’t work in Enterprise IT.  In the industry we constantly talk about the edible giants as an analogy to large-scale transformation projects.  Well, yesterday there was news out of Google that they’ve taken another bite out of the elephant that is being a “serious” enterprise IT vendor.  The company announced yesterday morning that all of their Google Apps are now being provided with ZERO downtime disaster recovery.  There are not a whole lot of organizations in the world that can offer that kind of service, and none of them at Google’s price ($50 / person / year).  For the sake of comparison, this number resembles the amount you would pay in 2 months for a similar bundle of Microsoft applications hosted by a low-price provider.

The improvement to providing disaster recovery is critical.  In enterprise IT terms disaster recovery means the ability to recover applications if an entire datacenter (the building where the computers are held) is completely lost, forever.  Many organizations back up their data once a day and if they lost their datacenter they would have to build a new one and recover from these backups, a process that would take months.  On the other extreme, there are a few organizations that could lose an entire datacenter without any noticeable disruption to their services.  Google has published that they intend to fall in the latter category, without increasing their prices.

The reason this improvement is critical to Google’s evolution in to an Enterprise IT Provider is that disaster recovery is traditionally regarded as one of the things that seperates “Enterprise” IT from more makeshift IT.  Companies that have redundant datacenters and the ability to “fail-over” without downtime are regarded as “real” enterprises.  College kids with a handful of servers in their basements, 10 person companies with a half-time IT guy and even medium sized manufacturing companies that only had a dozen PCs rarely had such capabilities and were not considered real “enterprises”.  That all changes with Google’s announcement.  It’s one small step along a long road toward the democratization of IT.

I enjoyed Godin’s Meatball Sundae and highly recommend it, with a few disclaimers.  It is intended for marketers only, not just anyone who’s interested in social media.  It would also be helpful to have a little bit of a background in social media before you read it.

The subtitle to Seth Godin’s book is “Is Your Marketing Out of Sync?”  That’s really what the book is about, Godin points out that the world’s economy has favored meatball producers over the last 50 years.  In this case a meatball is a mass produced item that’s designed to be universally popular.  Ford, GE, IBM even Dell and others have become accomplished at producing these items at low cost.  While there’s nothing wrong with this in Godin’s eyes, the meatballs do not lend themselves well to the new social media and web 2.0 marketing environment (the sundae).  On their own whip cream, chocolate sauce and meatballs are all good things, but they’re not intended to be combined.  Godin suggests ways you can change your company (or start a new one) that’s more like ice cream and fits well under the sundae.

His exploration of the concept is interesting.  It reinforces one of the golden truths of technology, “you can’t just add a transformational technology to your portfolio.”  Meatball companies that hire a couple “social media consultants” and build a Facebook page are destined to fail, but their failure is similar to many adoption failures.  The same principle applies to people who tried to virtualize their servers on VMWare without changing how they delivered IT services failed.  The same principal applies to people who try to add a collaboration tool (e.g. wiki or even IM) without changing the way their business operates.  Does anyone know of a book that’s written about this concept?  One that details what makes up a “transformational” technology and a generic formula for how to identify and implement them?

Right up front, I just want to point out:  I would LOVE to see a comment thread form on this post.  I don’t think anyone person can create this report card, so I would love to see your thoughts.

Yesterday I spoke about the debate around the NYC Startup Scene (Link to the Post).  I noted that there are a lot of great things that can be learned from that debate.  First, there is Chris Dixon’s point about what a startup community outside Silicon Valley should be trying to create.  Chris points out that communities outside the Valley should be attempting to create something LIKE Silicon Valley, not something to compete with it.  The second thing we learned in yesterdays post was a list of characteristics that make NYC, Silicon Valley or (by extension), anywhere a good startup ecosystem.

Today I want to extend both of those to create a “report card” for a startup ecosystem.  The first part of building a report card is to determining what to grade.  This, I believe, is based on the list of things identified in yesterday’s post (the bolded items).   As I was copying over the bolded items, I realized that we had a major problem for building a report card, importance.  For example, I had “Local and Locally Cooperative VC Firms” and “Locations Where People Can Congregate”.  Clearly, theses two items are not equally important to a startup ecosystem.

The way I’d like to solve this problem is by dividing the characteristics in to categories and then weighting the category’s importance.  As I looked through the characteristics, I divided them in to 5 categories; funding, talent, direct needs (infrastructure), environmental essentials, environmental factors.  For weighting, I started with the two biggies; funding and talent.  Those two together have looked at as 70% of the total grade.  It is either to hire talent and tell them to move (or work remotely) then it is to tell your VC that you’d prefer to stay put in a far away city, so I’m going to weight these 45% for funding and 25% for talent.  The remaining 30%, I propose we split up 15% environmental essentials, 10% direct needs and 5% environmental factors.

Funding – 45%

• Quality Angel Investors
• Quantity of Angel Investors
• Local and Locally Cooperative VC Firms

Talent – 25%

• Strategic Leaders with advice and connections
• Skill/Expertise of Talent
• Recruitability of Talent
• Quantity of Talent

Environmental Essentials – 15%

• Relationship Based Economy
• Community of Startups
• Outside Organization Focused on Startups
• Strong, Diverse University Environment
• An Environment that Inspires Individual Thought (avoiding a regional or national groupthink)

Direct Needs (Infrastructure) – 10%

• Startup Oriented Advertisers and Marketers
• Startup Oriented Legal Entities

Environmental Factors – 5%

• New Innovators
• Experienced Disruptors
• Great Place to Live
• Locations Where People can Congregate

So, in order to grade a city’s Startup Ecosystem we would start by evaluating each characteristic.  Each category would then get a “roll-up” grade for the category.  Each category’s grade would be multiplied by its weight and then summed with the other categories.  This would give you an overall score.

The only question remaining is, how are each of the categories scored?  For simplicity, I recommend a 4.0 scale for simplicity.  With the following rubric:

• A  (4 out of a possible 4) would be defined as something that is so good that there would be no reason to look in to another ecosystem for it.  For example if your “startup oriented legal entities” were an A, the startups in your ecosystem would be almost exclusively leveraging the services of lawyers in your area (obvious exceptions like family connections, etc..).  By definition if something is not a reason to leave your ecosystem, then it must be as good as anywhere else in the world (including the Valley).  This meets the original goal, building something LIKE the Valley.
• B (3 out of a possible 4) would be defined as something that is good enough that it is a reason for a startup to choose your ecosystem.  For example, if your “startup oriented legal entities” were a B, looking through the yellow pages and calling a couple attorneys would make a startup more likely to start in your ecosystem.
• C (2 out of a possible 4) would be defined as something that is an acceptable characteristic of your ecosystem.  For example, if your “startup oriented legal entities” were a C, a company that wants to start in your ecosystem would not feel pressure to leave because it couldn’t find an acceptable lawyer.
• D (1 out of a possible 4) would be defined as something that is possible to find in your ecosystem, but a company could clearly benefit from finding another ecosystem.  For example, if your “startup oriented legal entities” were a D, a startup that works with a lawyer in your ecosystem would be at a disadvantage because they are not as qualified as lawyers in other areas.
• F (0 out of a possible 4) would be defined as something that is completely nonexistent in your ecosystem.  For example, if your “startup oriented legal entities” were an F then almost every startup in your ecosystem would be seeking legal advice from outside the ecosystem.

So there you have it, a report card for a startup environment.  Over the next few weeks, I’m going to do a little research and will occasionally be offering an actual grade for Pittsburgh on some of these areas.  I didn’t include anything Pittsburgh in this post because I want the input not just of Burghers, but of anyone who has through through what makes a startup ecosystem what it is.  I would love to see a comment thread form on this post.  I don’t think anyone person can create this report card, so I would love to see your thoughts.

I follow a number of prominent NYC entrepreneurs and VCs (more then I follow in California).  The reason I do this, is that I believe NYC has done a remarkable job over the last 10 years building a unique, powerful startup scene.  I think they are several years ahead of Pittsburgh and they are obviously different cities, but there are lessons to be learned from the way that community has grown and the steps and missteps they have taken.  This is why I’ve taken a keen interest in the debate over the past few weeks over just how far NYC has come relative to silicon valley, and why I’d like to share a couple lessons learned from that debate.  Two things appear worth taking away from this debate.  First, what should the goal of a city trying to build a startup community be?  Second, how should the

First, both Fred Wilson and Chris Dixon made a case for how far the NYC scene has come (links here and here and here).   Both Chris and Fred Wilson refer to NYC’s access to quality angel investors, individual investors (sometimes operating in groups) who generally invest between 25k and 150k, as well as access to local and locally cooperative Venture Capital Firms, who generally manage funds that will invest between 250k and 10M in a company.  Chris and Fred point to the VCs in New York City, Chris even pulls in the fact that some Boston VCs are friendly with NYC.

Fred went in to some more interesting points outside of funding.  I think this is important, because funding is something that has to follow great ideas.  A lack of funding is something that can not be fixed directly.  That is to say that New York (and by extension Pittsburgh) can’t extend their funding environment by begging for VCs and Angels.   A list of characeteristics of a good startup ecosystem that are not related to funding is valuable then because it gives NYC (and by extension Pittsburgh)  some things they can improve on that will lead to funding.   This list is He had a list of items (outside of the investment money), I’d like to highlight several of these.:

• A relationship based economy made up of networks that include new innovators and experienced disruptors.
• Strategic leaders who share advice if not connections that extend beyond the local.
• Access to a community of startups that understand the problems and the solutions that are unique to early startups.
• Advertising and Marketing firms and individuals who understand how to work with startups.
• Since many startups are longer on ideas then office space, there must be locations where people can congregate.
• An outside organization focused around the startup scene.
• The city itself must be a great place to live in order to attract top talent.
• Lawyers, Accountants and other infrastructure personnel that understand the need of and cater to startups.  This is not only an expertise, but sometimes means doing things like deferring fees until funds have been raised.
• A strong, diverse University environment.

There was a response to all of this love for NYC.  One writer in particular, Matt Mireles of the Silicon Alley Insider (also Venture Hacks and Metamorphosis), published an article “Face It: NYC Is Not The Best Place for a Startup”.  Matt didn’t dispute that there are Angel Investors in NYC, but argued that the quantity of Angel Investors was too low.  He argued that leads to some companies not being funded and that those that are receive low valuations and slow deal cycles.  The rest of his argument (which I find very weak) centers around recruitable talent.  On the one hand he argues that the great talent in NYC gets sucked up by high-paying Wall Street jobs.  On the other hand he argues that there isn’t any specialized talent.  To my mind, you can’t have it both ways.  Almost every city will have either heavy competition for talent or a lack of talent.

To this point, the argument of the last week over the strength of the startup ecosystem in NYC was conventional.  There is some great content from some real experts, but it’s the same old stuff funding, talent and the things that make them tick.  The responses to Matt’s argument brought in some more interesting debate.

Caterina Fink (Co-Founder of Flickr and actually born and raised in Pittsburgh!) positioned three arguments in the defense of NYC.  First, she claimed that startups and Wall Street recruit from entirely different talent pools (she actually believes that hiring away from Wall Street is a bad idea).  Second, she engaged in the typical funding debate (pointing out another Angel Group).  Lastly, and most interestingly, she positioned that there is an advantage to being away from Silicon Valley (clearly there are disadvantages).  She attributed this advantage to the avoidance of a “sort of groupthink” that pervades The Valley.  Pointing out that Flickr was established in the startup hot bed of Vancouver (that’s a joke btw).  I’m going to call her last point an environment that inspires individual thought.

Chris Dixon (remember that he was one of the original NYC supporters) also responded to Matt’s article.  In his article, he restated that he doesn’t believe that NYC is better then Silicon Valley for a startup.  In fact, he says that his aspiration for NYC is to produce another ecosystem like the Valley, not to compete with it.  I really like this point.  I believe that if the nation as a whole is going to become more innovative through startups it will be by building “silicon valley like” communities in many cities (like Pittsburgh maybe?).  Chris acknowledged that Matt may be better off moving to California to start his company and that’s ok.  I would hope that once NYC is mature, some companies originally conceived in the Valley would be better off moving to NYC to startup (and once Pittsburgh’s mature…)

So there’s the summary.  I think the takeaways are two-fold.  First, there’s the list of bolded characteristics of a good startup ecosystem.  Second, we can take away from Chis Dixon’s post a realistic goal; producing an ecosystem like silicon valley, not one to compete with it.  Look back here tomorrow, I’m going to take a cursory look at how Pittsburgh stacks up next to this list of bolded characteristics.  Check back tomorrow same Bat Time, same Bat Channel.  I’ll be taking a cursory look at what Pittsburgh’s strengths are in some of the “characteristics of a good startup ecosystem.”

***Note: One additional link is Roger Ehrenberg’s response to Chris’s last post.  It’s an interesting read about the East Coast’s practical tendency and the West Coast’s “change the world” tendency.  It’s worth a read, but not a big part of this particular discussion.

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I am pulling out my soap box to address one of the public policies related to technology, the gap between the computer literate, the not-so-much and the not-at-all.  I’m addressing it right now for two reasons.  First, there have been a number of stories in the news that impact it.  Second, I believe there is a fundamental misconception about what the risk of this gap is.  In case you’re a skimmer, I will call out these articles and the misconception in bold, as I run through my position on the topic.

First, to clear up a little vocabulary. In the case of a technology gap, I’m referring not referring to technology generally, but “publicly useful” technologies.  These are the technologies that are designed to be used by as large an audience as possible.  For an example, email, where everyone who uses it has access to a tool that everyone left behind does not.   For a counter example, Sony Playstation, where those who use it get something from it, but those who don’t aren’t losing anything.  I have found that, generally, discussions of this topic do not draw this very important line.  Not every technology that you do not use puts you at a disadvantage, but SOME DO.

Every time technology advances it leaves a few people behind.  Because the pace of technical innovation is increasing, the pace of people getting left behind has become an area of concern.  I have struggled a little bit to put together a list of innovations that fit in to the category of “publicly useful” technologies.  Here’s what I have so far in order from first to last, feel free to discuss in the comments:

1. Internet connectivity for basic communication
2. Email
3. Using the web for research (What’s the capital of Arkansas?)
4. Using the web for news
5. Broadband/Continuous Internet
6. Real-Time information (sports scores, stock quotes, etc…)
7. Using the web for shopping
8. Smartphone for email
9. Using social media to connect with friends/colleagues
10. Using social media to collaborate
11. Smartphone for real-time information
12. Using the web exclusively for video entertainment

Some of these are not yet universally used, and therefore do not provide much of a disadvantage to those that don’t use them.  However, all of them are on the immediate horizon, certainly by 2020.

I live and work in technology and most of my friends/family/etc… are middle class.  So as I looked at this list, I assumed most of the US was somewhere in the 7-9 range; with as many people above that range as below it.  I was wrong.  However, I saw something the other day that has me quite scared about the technology gap.  The first article in the past couple weeks appeared in Newsweek last week. It says that, according to the FCC, 1/3 of the US population does not have high speed internet.  Not only that, but the FCC has a goal of getting 90% adoption of high-speed internet by 2020.  By deduction of course, 10% of the US won’t have high speed internet in 2020!!!

So we’ve established that there’s a problem.  Your next point is, “But Jonathan, I do 11 or 12 of those things.  I suppose I feel sorry for all of those people that are so far behind, maybe I’ll donate to a charity so they can get better jobs and live fuller lives.  At the end of the day though, this doesn’t really affect me.”  I knew you’d say that, so here comes the fundamental misconception.

You’re wrong, the technology gap affects you very directly.  In fact, it may well affect you more negatively than it affects the people who are computer illiterate.  I’ll say that again, because it bears repeating.  The fact that much of the US (and even more of the world as a whole) uses only 4 of the technologies mentioned above is worse for the computer literate then it is for the people who aren’t computer literate.  I’ll give you three reasons why:

1. The first is an obvious point.  Society is the sum of its parts and the fewer parts that are enabled by the best tools available, the worse off society is.  People who are lagging on technology not only can’t get access to the best tools to be productive (4, 6, 8, 11) but also the means to share the ideas that make them a societal asset (9, 10).   Think how much better the blogosphere and twittershpere would be with them participating.This isn’t just true of individuals either, it’s true of companies and even charities.  There will be companies founded today that will not be as productive or as capable of spreading the word as they should be.  They will be less effective because while they are good at what they’re doing, they are behind on the technology curve.  Anything that creates inequality like that is terrible for a market economy.  Some of these companies will fail in spite of the fact that their idea would have been good for society.
2. The next reason that computer literate people need to be concerned about the technology gap is related to another article that’s been in the news in the last week. An Italian Judge convicted three Google employees over a video of an Italian kid being bullied.  The Google employees didn’t post the video.  In fact, they took it down about 3 hours after it was flagged as inappropriate.  This clearly is the result of a Judge that does not understand the power and necessity of the real-time web.  If the people in power don’t understand technologies 6-12, then they will not protect them.  Want another example from just the last week?  Here’s another link:  The UK is on the verge of creating a privacy law that will basically outlaw public WiFi.
3. The last reason that the computer literate should “mind the gap” is a little bit greedy.  Those of us who rely on numbers 5-12 for our day-to-day lives and business could benefit from some economies of scale.  How much lower would your internet bill  and smartphone price be if the market was 150% of what it is now?

In conclusion, we need to find a way to close the gap in technology.  That’s actually not specific enough; what we need is a way to make sure that the computer illiterate among us get on board without stifling new innovations.  I’ll save it for another day, but I think the key to that will be finding new applications of the current technology that appeal to the portions of the population that are not leveraging these technologies.  I.e. You don’t get senior citizens on twitter by cramming it down their throats, you get senior citizens on twitter by making sure that there is a reason senior citizens would WANT to be on twitter (does AARP have a twitter account?)

</soap box>