The only thing that never changes in the Universe is that everything changes

Mi texto favorito de Neruda

Muere lentamente quien se transforma en esclavo del hábito repitiendo todos los días los mismos trayectos, quien no cambia de marca, no arriesga vestir un color nuevo y quien no habla con quien no conoce.

Muere lentamente quien hace de la televisión su gurú.

Muere lentamente quien evita una pasión, quien prefiere el negro sobre el blanco y los puntos sobre las “ies” a un remolino de emociones, justamente las que rescatan el brillo de los ojos, sonrisas de los bostezos, corazones a los tropiezos y sentimientos.

Muere lentamente quien no voltea la mesa cuando está infeliz en el trabajo, quien no arriesga lo cierto por lo incierto para ir detrás de un sueño, quien no se permite por lo menos una vez en la vida huir de los consejos sensatos.

Muere lentamente quien no viaja, quien no lee, quien no oye música, quien no encuentra gracia en si mismo.

Muere lentamente quien destruye su amor propio, quien no se deja ayudar.

Muere lentamente, quien pasa los días quejándose de su mala suerte o de la lluvia incesante.

Muere lentamente quien abandona un proyecto antes de iniciarlo, no preguntando de un asunto que desconoce o no respondiendo cuando le indagas sobre algo que sabe.

Evitemos la muerte en suaves cuotas, recordando siempre que estar vivo exige un esfuerzo mayor que el simple hecho de respirar. Solamente la ardiente paciencia hará que conquistemos un espléndida felicidad".

IF - My favourite Poem

IF you can keep your head when all about you 
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings 
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: 'Hold on!'

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
' Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch,
if neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!

Rudyard Kypling

Our brain is not ours anymore!!

In the beginning, there were very simple elements, they then evolved and increased their awareness of the surrounding world. They became multicellular, springing from the fact that they could reproduce themselves without the need of a mating partner, they grew and evolved and their interaction with the world increased in its intensisty, generating the need to develop a larger and better equiped nervous system. As time passed, their necessities grew beyond living and reproducing and started moving to explore the world in order to be able to extract full benefit from it.

At some point multicellular entities were born in a way in which cells and groups of cells worked together to achieve a common benefit, thus creating beings larger than their own selves. This lead to the springing of aquatic entities which, at a certain point in time, decided to explore the world beyond the waters, fish evolving into reptiles that decided to start exploring the shores thus modifying their genetic codes to slowly include the formation of limbs in order to be able to move around dry land.

Those primitive reptiles had a part of their brain developed to be able to calibrate the information gathered by their senses to be able to efficiently move around and little else.

That is the reptilian part of our current human brains. Those beings were the "embryos" of a wide diversity of species which evoloved from them in order to suit specific needs from differnet living habitats hence creating an incredibly large number of different species and variations of them, birds, fish, mammals, cold bloded beings, etc...

A particular branch of the mammals evolved into pre-men whilst their brain included little by little more and more functions such as memory, the use of tools and so on and so forth, stressing it to its uttermost limits and forcing it to develop new areas which would process all sorts of information in very different ways.

All this went on and on through a myriad of years and thousands of years until the Homo Sapiens first appeared, having the capacity to adapt certain elements of their surrounding world to better serve their needs in the way of tools and gaining consciousness of themselves, which is something no anymal is capable of. In this way, feelings were created, and with them came pitty, love, hate, envy, etc... the need to express those feelings, being them abstract, was impending, but far more complex than dealing with tangible things, thus came the arts to represent worlds, ideas and thoughts which only lived in the mind of the artist, forcing the brain once more to still pursue the path of evolution up to a point in which the human race grew to fully populate the world and make use of most of its natural resources to better suit themselves, specially since the inception of machines that were able to perform tasks in semiautomated and automated ways, leaving enough time for the human being to start enjoying itself and way more time than it had ever had in the history of human kind. This places us in the last 150 years, when artists evolved from craftsmen.

In our day time, our brain is equipped with several areas which manage different packs of information and concepts, in this way we have the cortex, the frontal lobe etc (I won't list them all and their functions in this article) BUT, at some point, our natural capacity to manage information, as well as the fact that the world was starting to gain awareness on a global scale through telecommunications (telegraph, tv, radio, phones and the like) was fully overflowed by both, the brisk pace of production and information, and the sheer size of the bulk of human creation, becoming all of it too large to be processed by our little brains and be stored in conventional ways. The computer was created.

The computers enable us to store, manage and process incredibly large ammounts of information which have never before in the history of human kind been accessible to anyone. The only basic thought that comes to my mind when I think about this is that, in our capacity to use elements to build tools to better interact with the world, we have outpaced the natural flow of evolution, jumping over the next hurdle of brain development into a world where the next stage of our capacity to manage information has left our bodies to be placed under certain conditions in plastic boxes in our offices, at home, in our mobile phones, everywhere... We have then created the next evolution of humankind in a non conscious way, but giving birth to the "Hommo Computeratus" or whatever you want to call it.

A question then springs, if we have outpaced the natural laws of evolution, what will the next jump be? specially if we take into account that the more evolutive jumps we undergo as a race, the larger the momentum, thus accelerating the time lapse between jumps from race to the next level race.

Which is the next jump, and when will it take place? Any suggestions :)

Corporate Valuation Methods in the XXI century

From my point of view, the world and the ways in which people communicate, interact, live and so on have changed so much, that the ways in which we have traditionally valued corporations and businesses have to change, for they are no longer valid.

Whilst its true that finances thus numbers thus facts probably are the soundest way to measure the "tangibility" of wealth creation, money etc, its no less true that these methods of valuation have, at least, two basic failures given the current state of affairs, in their methodology and approach, which, in my humble opinion render them useless in the XXI Century. These failures can be resumed briefly in; 1) the lack of predictability, 2) lack of intangibility measurements.

1.- Lack of predictability.

Every forecast in itself is a formal prostitution of the perception of future events in the way in which no one is able to predict what is going to happen with any degree of certainty except for basic things such as the sun rising tomorrow, etc... In this sense, its an error to base a metric system on the probability of future events basically because of the fact that the biggest chance of something happening, always goes to that which we can't forecast, therefore making any forecast useless. I do understand that the system upon which finances, world trade, stock investments, bond trade, and in general any sort of financial interaction and/or exercise is based, relies upon the capacity of certain individuals/institutions to compile information and generate reports on the future behaviour of certain elements, such as prices, inflation, consumption and so forth, but its an uncontestable fact that all these individuals and institutions by default, year after year, fail to come even near to a result close to reality, and in spite of this, people, investors, governments etc, yet still rely on the opinions of those which systematically fail to generate credible figures. Now, that leads to a situation in which we have to deploy our moneys following generally accepted systemically failing forecasts, which from my point of view is an absolute disaster, but why does this happen?

I believe that, being the whole world interconnected and having so many individuals access to very large pools of information, only increases the number of actors that can affect the outcome of any prediction. Whilst its true that the larger the universe to be measured the more accurate the median of the behaviours, the system fails to account for some individuals' actions accounting far more than others. In this sense, the multiplicity of the events which derive from the uniqueness of every individual, and the subsequent impact in how they affect the others and the system itself, given the increasing interaction amongst them, within an established system, derives in the generation of so many parameters affecting the behaviour of the system itself that any way to measure the system's future behaviour is by default useless. Therefore, the measurement of the value of a company, activity or whatever can't depend upon the capacity to forecast what will happen, but on the level and depth of interconnection of the actors which directly affect the system.

Thus, how can we value a corporation in the future if we have no idea whatsoever about the parameters that are the pillars upon which any forecasting system is made? Lets not forget that a valuation, roughly speaking, is the prediction of what will happen tomorrow based upon a framework of hypothesys, such as CPI, prices, etc... based on past performance and discounted at a rate based both on current measures and future forecasts. Therefore, its just taking some variables and making them work together as if all of them were solid truths, when none of them in fact are, furthermore, it tends to establish a present value of a future uncertainty which will almost for sure not be fulfilled. Doesn't conceptually work, does it? :)

2.-  Lack of intangibility measurement

There is a second very dark pitfall in all these things and valuations, forecasts etc... Given the fact that in a world where the best marketing campaign is self endorsement, whereby an individual, based upon the relevancy his opinion may have for those with whom he communicates, as well as the perception of one product versus another, I remark, the perception, not actually the real performance of the product itself, and that perceptions are personalised in brands, the actual measuring of the strength of a brand fails to account for its true value, which should be directly related not to how much product or how many services can be sold, but for the level of interactivity it generates pivoting upon itself. This is, its impossible to measure the capacity to prescribe or endorse something, for the perception of the endorsement lever - the brand- will depend and vary according to what individual uses it in an interacting context, in what level of discussion and the ascendency the message "generator" has upon the receiving end of the the discussion.

What I explain in the previous paragraph is little by little shown by reality, although no one has come up with a market-accepted system which will bring the true value of brands to an accounting reality. Trying to illustrate this statement, I will use a current example.

The Armani brand, has just hired Vicky Posh Beckham to endorse its line of underwear for some €25m in a several years contract. This is all very good, but I can bet my fortune (F=€0 :) that the Armani people have no idea whatsoever how the larger exposure of their brand derived from the contract is going to be monnetised in terms of increase in the overall sales figure, profit, products sold, etc... but they, being marketing oriented people are very well aware of the fact that their campaign is something which is going to be talked about in television shows all over the world, internet, printed media, etc... but, how can one measure that impact in what it pertains a higher value of the brand due to its validity and relevance? and, how can that relevance be meassured if it partially depends upon who emits a statement, not so much about the numbers of statements emitted?

Believeing in the above, I think some sort of system whereby the number of times a brand is mentioned within a relevant context, times the relevancy and the ascendancy of the statement generator with regards to the audience, should be taken into account in order to come up with a truer value of a brand, which, at the end of the day, for many, if not for all sectors, is one of the pivoting assets of their balance sheets.

Anyhow, intangible assets relating to a particular activity, organisation etc... are not limited to brands, but to what level of importance those intangibles have in our everyday life, thus how present they are in our "pyramid" of natural interaction. For exmaple, for someone working in the fashion industry the fact that Armani has hired VB is important, whilst for me, I honestly don't give a damn, but ultimately, I also buy Armani stuff. In the thread and weaving of all these interactions and back and forth levels of communication between friends, colleagues, peers, audience, etc... lies the real importance of the recognition of a name, colour, logo, tune or whatever, and not in the ammount of investment accounted for in any company`s books.

From my point of view, the above only comes to show that in the modern world, where we're assaulted and inmersed in hyperinteractivity and an unprecedented free flow of information, we need to adjust the method by which we value things in a way that properly reflects how we perceive it, and not how some try to quantify it!

Preliminary thoughts on internet

Why??

Why are poeple so narrow minded?? 

I have been carefully reviewing all sorts of forums and internet information guides and resources, and have come to a conclusion, people are generally blind. I think not many of the users of internet understand several things which for me are quite obvious, and hereby briefly outline. Anyhow, I still understand I'm in no possession of any absolute truths, but my impression of things relating to the net is made from the melting of information from all sorts of "fountains" and feeds, not just from the Internet related community.

I believe there are some unmoveable truths for me, which I will briefly list here, and in the near future will try to ellaborate:

1.- Internet is the future. Not because it gives us a new way to access information and all sorts of resources on any kind of topic, but beacuse it brings knowledge to basically anyone anywhere. This being so, the uneducated masses - and the self proclaimed educated ones - are free to choose ideas with which they concur from a sounder and wider base of information, thus bringing together the intellectual tools to make people free to choose. This, which is very basic and obvious, has several major implications, such as catalyzing discontent and accelerating political changes towards freedom in geographical areas which up to now have neither had access to non-censored information, nor an effcicient way for individuals to communicate their discontent to a massive audience, which, given strong criteria and freedom of thought, should pool together a large enough number of people to create an unsurfaced current and tide of thought that, at some point, will suddenly emerge bringing change to certain things and places. In this being so, the foundations for a better world are being laid as we speak, based upon the pillars of individual freedom of expression worldwide, unprecedented. The only similarly powerful enough coincidences I can find are the French revolution, the american revolution and the invention of the printing press.

2.- The new anthropology. Being an abssolute thruth that the last 200 years have revolutionised politics, social structures and in general the way in which individuals, countries and institutions communicate and relate to each other, I personally believe this has happened so due to the increasing capacity to send messages, thus ideas to one another. 

There's a certain virtue in the virality of information spreading from one being to another and a certain vice. Ideas are spread wider and faster that at any time in history, but the information going from mouth to ear time and again tends to devirtuate the basic mesaage and the essence of the thought. In this being so, first was the printing press, then was the telegraph, phone, radio, television, internet. We've travelled a long way from the runner of MArathon and the Persian couriers galloping the plains of the Euphrates and the Tigris.

Believing in the above, we now have overcome the shame of speaking in public and expressing our ideas in a coherced way in front of an audience that gives us feedback with their expressions, such as applause, booing and body language, trespassing the frontier to a new world in which we now express ourselves and interact with what we know can be a large and massive audience, generally with no specifically determined profile, through a camera to which we have spoken in the solitude of our room, through a blog of uncertain distribution, or via a profile in a certain network whose information is going to be accessible by lots of  people in places we have never even heard of. Therefore, communication is now both, more and less personal, being this an impossible and unprecedented duality, and also freer, for if someone accessing our thought or message is generally unknown to us or animically vinculated, we won't care what they think about what we say, thus being freer to express the very essence of our ideas.

3.- Geographical erroneous focus. I've been having lots of fun following amazing threads on domaining blogs and articles that talk about how to make money, increase internet traffic, SEO optimisation tips and else, and have come to a conclusion, people are geographically defocused. 

Its quite obvious to me that internet is only starting to impact the world due to one main reason, China and India are only now starting to come online. They are the two most populated areas of the world and thus have the largest potential to "eat" a large portion of the internet "cake" in the mid to long term, with their own proper sense of aesthetics in their own language. There's no easy way to fulfill this fact further than the sheer size of their population and the increasing portability of communication and constant reduction in the price of accessing devices such as micro computers and mobile phones. Being this so, why do most people in the US believe they're going to be ruling the internet in the future? can't they see that even though the major language now is English there are going to be parallel networks that will feed huge pools of people gathering under different "online-universes"? Amazing!! 

4.- The mechanisation of future value. Internet companies can't be valued following commonly accepted valuation methods. This is true due to one major issue, forecasts, in being the commonly used standard (I personally belive forecasts are useless further than being a mere trend spotting option) are subject to such a large number of uncertainties, directly derived from the abnormally large number of individuals than can get to interact, thus an abnormally large number of possible both massive and minor deviations, that the vices of valuations we see in traditional methods and companies are multiplied so many times, that any forecasting of the future behaviour of specific businesses, thus their valuations is perverted in its very essence. We must find a way to value internet companies and in general companies active in what now is the beginning of a new world. Someone, somewhere is going to come up, sooner or later, with a new way to company valuations in a world that still measures wealth and benefits from a very narrow and financially based approach which is basically useless in the XXI century.

Well, this is just a mere very brief and basic compilation of thoughts to start with, a bit blurry, but... will keep on writing, I'm having fun :)