It's a Podcast Night
Now Playing: Jonathan Coulton - Baby Got Back
From the most recent Podtech.net podcast w/ Steve Forbes of Forbes magazine and Flat Tax fame, an optimistic outlook on the future. Life is too short to be a pessimist or according to Giuliani a month ago, life is more fun as an optimist. Compare that to the crowd's response when Jon Stewart asked that same day what we thought of the future (loud booing which I can only consider a pessimistic response).

Here's the full transcript, below are my favorite excerpts:

"On a global basis, the world is doing better than most people seem to think...perceptions are lagging reality...We are making progress. Things are moving in the right direction."

Five years out:
"...As broadband becomes a common place, full broadband, not what we have now....the possibility of delivery of services, what it means in terms of communication around the world, in terms of creating things that we've never even thought of before, it will be profound.

It?s not just going to be new industries, new services, new products only, it will also be existing companies also will learn how to use this new technology, they?re going to transform themselves and be able to provide traditional services in ways that we can't even imagine today."

"...What the economists call the trend line is profoundly positive. We are living in an era that should be one of the most innovative, inventive eras, an era where the sum of human liberties is going to expand in profoundly positive ways. People are going to look back and say that was a golden age. You never know it was a golden age when you live through it, but looking back it's going to be a good era I think."

Music from last night and today: Broken Social Scene - 7/4 (Shoreline)
Currently listening (hat tip to Fred's Podcast): Jonathan Coulton - Baby Got Back