Comments on: Silicon Valley VCs don't want Obama's money, think Google is passe

Twelve trends to invest by, if you've got the money, from a passel of tech-savvy types gathered at the Churchill Club.

[ikramerica--2008]

It's not OBAMA'S money. It's OUR money.

He is not King. He is not Emperor. He is the President.

[Kwasiowusu]

"It's not OBAMA'S money. It's OUR money.
He is not King. He is not Emperor. He is the President"

Correct.
But try telling that to the subservient, Obama worshipping clowns who run most of the media in this country. The press in America is a disgrace.
Not to mention obama keeps going to the chinese t9o go borrow money every month(by selling US goverment bonds to them), just so he can squander the money on the vote stealers from ACORN, on abortion and other loony left programs.

[jregan439]

Steve Jurvetson: I don't give a rat's a** about what's on other folk's desktop - when I search, I want answers to _my_ questions - those are rarely found on the ET! or People mag websites. (yeah, that's a dig at what's currently open on others' desktops.) Of course you probably can't monetize my kind of search.

Jason Pontin: Let's see now, HTML (CERN _is_ a government agency of sorts, no?) TCP/IP (DARPA), Mosaic browser (NCSA), AES, DES, GPS....... I'd even have to say that Netscape's development of SSL was probably driven by a government contract!

I don't know what others would call the funding DARPA, the CIA, NASA and the NSA gives to folks to do research and development but there's a whole lot of technology out there that owes its life to that kind of 'vc' activity. Where would the panelists be without those government investments - each investment was driven by the need for solving an existing problem; then others took the results into other areas.

[cvaldes1831]

Real-time search gives you results on what people are looking at this very moment (of value to advertisers, but not so much for the individual as jregan429 points out). However, there is good information and bad information and real-time search does nothing to help people identify what's good and what's bad.

Go watch any major breaking news story. There are tons of flat-out errors, contradictory statements, etc. basically from sources that are supposed to be reputable news sources.

So we have information: good and bad. Knowledge is good information. Wisdom is knowledge plus experience. There is no "real-time wisdom." That's why there are pencils with erasers, copyreaders, editors, peer review, thesis defenses, white-out, edit buttons, delete keys, thumbs-down rating buttons, instant replay, et cetera ad nauseam.

Knowing that a lot of people are searching for "Adam Lambert" or "Memorial Day" right now doesn't make us wiser.

There is a big difference between wisdom and popularity.

[cvaldes1831]

Even the utility to advertisers knowing what people are searching on *right now* is questionable. After all, as far as I can tell, advertisers can't currently purchase ads on a real-time basis.

Perhaps that will change one day; no one can predict what the spot market for real-time ads would be. In a couple of days, something else will be popular, just as Twitter searches for "Carrie Prejean" have dropped off the radar, so will "Adam Lambert" and "Kris Allen" in a couple of days.

This would also force advertisers to come up with successful campaigns and implement them in hours. Go ahead and try to script, book, shoot, edit, and deploy a clever, thoughtful and entertaining twenty second video in two hours.

[stevesancarlos]

Tip #12: Rafe, did you insert that one? It's hard to believe this would have been one of the trends mentioned, particularly when it flies in the face of current reality.

[rafe]

No, that was actually Pontin's last trend. The key thing to recognize here is that "journalism" does not equal "newspapers." There is hope.

[caffemacchiato]

There will always be a need for relatively reliable information.

[pamelarm]

I think that government funding "pure research" has a definite role. This is research where investigation is solely for the purpose of "understanding how something works" or "how to do something". I'm thinking of the research laboratory where I worked when I was quite young - they did pure research on Vitamin D, and they would regularly submit grant proposals to the NIH.

[Sam Papelbon]

if you give people direct influence in how a search engine works, every query will be topped by links to online casinos, porn sites, and online 'pharmacies'. not to mention pages which will throw your computer into a botnet.

also, very few people will voluntarily consent to letting a search engine, let alone any website, keep track of what pages they are browsing. things like that already exist. it's called adware. i don't know if mr jurvetson knows this, but people tend to hate it.

then again, venture capitalist is just another term for someone who is fueled by greed and has no soul. he probably started out investing in spam to get where he is now.

[Kwasiowusu]

From the article:
"11. Washington D.C. will prove to be a poor VC. "

Anyone who is stupid enough to hand over the reigns of their hi-tech outfit to the Marxist dictator like Obama, who is determined to destroy free enterprise and capitalism in this great US of A, would only have themselves to blame.
You only have to look at Comrade Obama's dictatorial tactics on who the next CEO of General Motors should be, and Obama's mafia style strong arming of Chrysler bond holders who wouldn't accept his communist style orders to hand over Chrysler to the Obama backing unions.
Heck even Al Capone will find it hard to top that.
It's not for nothing Obama comes from the corrupt, sleazy fetid Chicago Democratic Party sleaze machine

[spark9991]

#1, twitter is NOT real-time serach. It is search of what people on Twitter are talking about, which is not that broad of topics.

#2. Jurvetson's idea of what's open on browsers is scary. 65% porn is open.

#3. Distributed web is valuable.

#4. Gov't is poor VC? hardly. The worst VC are U.S. venture capital firms -- none of them are embacing risk. How many has Vinod invested in lately? Jurvetson? Doerr? any of them? they are all followers. Not a leader among them. They talk a good talk at a conference but it is all talk. Ask entrepreneurs who have spoken with them...they don't even do their own work, it's done by interns who rubber stamp "no" on everything.

#5. other parts of the world will and are passing the U.S. in tech leadership because these so-called "venture" capitalists are actually just money managers who forgot risk.