Charlie Rose

johnsimmons  02/04/2013 05:54 PM Report

You can get a free concise summary of Allen’s 35 minute interview at http://interviewsummary.com/ We offer free summaries for people who’d rather read short summaries instead of watching the videos. Please let us know what you think! http://bit.ly/Y6fsGR

JohnGelles  04/22/2011 01:40 AM Report

I have watched Paul Allen's discussion of ideas and men five times and will watch it again and buy his book as well.

The show last night featured Secretaries of State .Clinton and Kissinger. This week was one of Charlie's finest. Thanks to all -- speakers and staff -- for the some of most profound thinking out loud available to audiences over the air.

SharkswithfrikingLazers  04/21/2011 07:36 PM Report

Paul, were you around for the "Blue Screen of Death" or by that time had you switched to Apple?

We are getting closer to "reliability of electricity" and "safety of a bank" but those early days were sure frustrating.

Many versions of Windows were not stable enough for the public, yet they were sold.

winter  04/21/2011 07:29 PM Report

HeyPaul,

Let Satriani or somebody use that Hendrix guitar for an album ...maybe Vai would be cool. And I want a ride on your boat.

robdverity  04/21/2011 04:19 PM Report

Posters postulate: quality is inversely proportional to their number.

Ricardo_Amaral  04/21/2011 09:59 AM Report

slightly_optimistic, here is why “creation of employment is more important than economic growth”:

The Most IMPORTANT Video You'll Ever See (Part 1 of 8)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-QA2rkpBSY&feature=related

The Most IMPORTANT Video You'll Ever See (Part 2 of 8)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pb3JI8F9LQQ

The Most IMPORTANT Video You'll Ever See (Part 3 of 8)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFyOw9IgtjY

The Most IMPORTANT Video You'll Ever See (Part 4 of 8)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQd-VGYX3-E

The Most IMPORTANT Video You'll Ever See (Part 5 of 8)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-X6EpvWWu8

The Most IMPORTANT Video You'll Ever See (Part 6 of 8)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3y7UlHdhAU

The Most IMPORTANT Video You'll Ever See (Part 7 of 8)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RyseLQVpJEI

The Most IMPORTANT Video You'll Ever See (Part 8 of 8)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VoiiVnQadwE

.

JohnGelles  04/21/2011 09:00 AM Report

..... Disaster and wonder at the complexity of everyday life

Today I switched from DSL to CABLE -- Disaster -- but some of it works.

This IE browser is better than it was. But nothing worked for a while.

Anyway -- Ive been up all night with this toy. So I better quit.

My idea on -- "do I think it is dangerous to concentrate huge wealth into the hands of a few ?" -- Obviously not.

The danger is: (1) poverty suffered by so many, wage slavery, too. (2) pollution. (3) nuclear proliferation. Their order of danger is really 3 2 1 not 1 2 3.

Wealth is only dangerous when power is for sale. Concentration power has to be opposed by a reasonable degree of pluralism, checks and balances, and decentralization.

SharkswithfrikingLazers  04/20/2011 08:14 PM Report

I would have also asked Paul (other question below) at what point does he think it is dangerous to concentrate huge wealth into the hands of so few.

Paul, at what point did you, or would you, have too much money?

Millionaire (6 zeros): about 10 million of these worldwide.

Billionaire (9 zeros): about 1,200 of these worldwide.

Trillianaire (12 zeros): None yet.

Quadrillionaire (15 zeros): None yet.

slightly_optimistic  04/20/2011 04:18 PM Report

Re interesting ideas - in answer to a question at this month's INET's Bretton Woods Conference, one of the speakers commented that the creation of employment is more important than economic growth. Investing in science to improve international competitiveness will in fact create very few jobs. Most of the jobs in our society are emerging from face to face services, Always remember there are about 35,000 people employed by Microsoft, and 1.2 million employed by WalMart. The idea that IT creates jobs is massively overstated.

Ricardo_Amaral  04/20/2011 02:29 PM Report

John, in January 2004 Dylan was 18-months old and he was dying of cancer and he had a very large tumor on his brain, and at that time the doctors gave him at most 2 months to live. He has been taking Protocel since that time and today he is a healthy 8-year old boy.

The other person that I mentioned to you had the same type of cancer that Paul Allen had – and in March 2004 he was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and he was classified as stage-4 (terminally ill) and the doctors at that time gave him at most 6 months to live. The non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma had already spread to almost the entire stomach, part of his liver, and the lymph-nodes.

My mother mentioned Protocel to a friend of her who's son had an advanced case of prostate cancer and as a last resort he started taking Protocel. One year later he sent a note to my mother saying that his cancer was in remission.

Two other people that we know took Protocel as a last resort when they had lung cancer, but on both cases it was too late, and both people died.

It seems that Protocel it is helpful just in some types of cancer such as non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, the type of cancer that Dylan had, and also on people with prostate cancer.

I did not send the information to Paul Allen because he is famous in the IT world – I sent it because he had non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, and I thought I could help him with this info about Protocel.

Most likely the gatekeepers never passed the information to Paul Allen, at least I try to let him know that this option was available to him regarding his non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

I was just trying to help him and nothing else.

.

JohnGelles  04/20/2011 05:41 AM Report

The following is the first paragraph of what I got from Bing and the site they recommended:

,

FUNCTIONAL FINANCE AND US GOVERNMENT BUDGET SURPLUSES IN THE NEW MILLENNIUM

L. Randall Wray, Professor, University of Missouri—Kansas City

.

In this chapter, we will explore the nature of “government finance”. The approach presented here is properly called a “functional finance” approach to government finance—an antidote to conventional principles of “sound finance”. Readers will recognize the debt owed to Abba Lerner; indeed, some functional finance principles were incorporated into Keynesian economics—bastard and otherwise—but I believe the full import of Lerner’s principles of functional finance has not been recognized even by followers of Keynes. An understanding of the nature of government finance not only sheds light on “fiscal policy”, but also on the true nature of what is normally called “monetary policy”. We will then move on to analysis of US government budget surpluses at the beginning of the new millenium, and of projections that these will continue into the twenty-first century as the government retires its outstanding debt stock.

============================

Gelles back and talking:

I am a great fan of Wray and his buddy Forstater. I had never read the document I found. And I may become a fan of BING.

More on all of this tomorrow.

Thanks to Charlie, Paul, Randall and Mathew (Forstater) for all these ideas tonight. Would you believe its 2:40 in the am and I'm expecting the Cable Guy at 8 to connect me to the world as Paul had dreamed more than 30 years ago.

JohnGelles  04/20/2011 05:28 AM Report

I'm pleased to say I entered "bing.com" in my address box at the top of my tube. Then I entered "functional finance" in the Bing box in the center of the tube -- looking as neat as a Google box.

Then I received for my effort at or very near the top of its list:

http://www.epicoalition.org/docs/functional_finance.htm

At that address I got a great document by Randall Wray of the University of Missouri Kansas City.

I'll post a sample in a minute.

God Bless us all.

JohnGelles  04/20/2011 05:17 AM Report

You may ask if Wikipedia, Google, Bing and sites like Charlie Rosed Commentary are not steps along the path to the useful spread of ideas that matter to humanity. I say the evidence is that they are very far from enough.

I usually have a Google task bar at the bottom of all I write. It gives me fairly good access to related intelligence. It does connect me better than has ever been done before. But so much remains to be done.

And while we wait for proper advance in the IT Revolution, the onslaught of the garbage trucks filled with nonsense that aims to sell or seduce us into becoming zombies continues at that fast pace we have all come to fear and hate. All but the big brained multi-taskers who may even be working on the problem.

To get back to my obsession: we may not be able to connect every person to what he needs know. But we could connect him to the money (or credit if you like) that would make him the solution not more of the problem. You say we would only cause great inflation.

..... I say not if we (a) indexed savings to prevent inflation, (b) created jobs, work and output to keep supply and necessary substitution of simpler things for missing things, abreast of demand, (c) resorted to price and wage controls and rationing inside the total system -- aimed at scarification of needs not wants, and (d) worked on this money shortage problem as hard as Allen and Gates worked to give give me BASIC on a Commodore when I was young and teaching it in retirement at our local Junior College. Those were the days when I dreamt in BASIC and started to read Abba Lerner on money and taxation and how we need the former and ought to cast aside the latter.

JohnGelles  04/20/2011 04:47 AM Report

Thank you Ricardo, for the comment on Protocel, as treatment for your close friend's child, and as potential help to a very famous Paul Allen. The human dimension of NHL as deadly disease and Protocel as treatment, and your personal attempt to save a famous stranger's life, is moving and is felt by this audience who thank you for it and all future good effect your comment will have.

I was not expecting your anecdote and desire to join your close friend in this work. But, by chance, that anecdote fits in to the discussion I was expecting.

When Paul Allen, and hundreds (now tens of thousands and more software engineers and tinkerers) were launching and furthering the Information Technology Revolution, there was and remains the dream that we connect all people, (especially the common man and the forgotten man,) with each other. If that dream came true, you would have reached Paul Allen for sure. And his decision to use or not Protocel would have been made by Paul himself -- or by an extremely effective Artificial Intelligence agent of Paul.

The AI agent would not have been Paul. And Paul would never have been aware of you UNLESS the agent decided Protocel was so likely to be what you thought it might be, that the agent sent your message on to Paul.

In other words, we know that, say, 5 billion adults cannot send notes to all 5 billion others, and expect to have them read. They can send the notes. But only a few will read them.

This particular comment of mine is an example of such a note. I have dispatched it to the universe of historical people, say far more than all alive who have access to the web today, (because the web lives on into the future), but it will be read by very few beyond myself.

The AI agent would be able to process every bit of intelligence in that universe. And it would be able to match to the need to know of every one of us. It would then, by a matching and filtering algorithm, get my comments to everyone who would want it if they had the choice to ask for it.

So far, Paul Allen and his type, have not been able to design and produce the AI Intelligence Agent I know I need. And that is an important item for this audience to consider. We have created a Tower of Babel, with garbage on the web amounting trillions of tons (googols if you please) of useless nonsense, but we have not yet connected each brain to every other to maximize the times when there is good reason for connection.

And as you know, my field of "money enough to go around", is an area of intelligence that cries out for Allen to give us this agent as he gave us DOS for the PC when he was young.

As it happened, I too am one of his type. I am an Idea Man.

Ricardo_Amaral  04/19/2011 11:43 PM Report

By the way, I don’t have any connection with the company that makes this product or the people who sells Protocel. The only connection that I have with Protocel is the baby that I mentioned above and other people who took Protocel and they still are alive and well. Protocel might be the difference that saved many lives.

Ricardo_Amaral  04/19/2011 11:36 PM Report

Charlie, someone very close to me in March 2004 was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and he was classified as stage-4 (terminally ill) and the doctors at that time gave him at most 6 months to live. The non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma had already spread to almost the entire stomach, part of the liver, and the lymph-nodes.

Then in November of 2009 when I read on the newspaper that Paul Allen had also been diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma then I decided to send him a note about Protocel.

It seems to me that Protocel is keeping a number of people that I know alive after being diagnosed with cancer stage-4 (terminally ill). Here is part of the note I sent to Paul Allen at that time, and I hope the information has reached him.

Paul Allen looks like he is in good health right now, but in any event he might need this info in the future if the problem returns.

November 17, 2009

Mr. Paul G. Allen

Founder and Chairman

Vulcan Inc.

Dear Mr. Allen,

Today when I was reading the news that you were diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma

...non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma a close friend of our family found out that his 18-month baby had a major tumor on his brain – you can read all about his on going story at: “Our Boy Dylan” - http://www.saveourdylan.net/

On his daily journal that my friend posted on his website he said: On January 22nd, 2004, my 18-month old son Dylan was diagnosed with a brain stem glioma, an inoperable brain tumor whose prognosis is dismal…

The father of this baby is the person who did all the research and let me know about a product called Protocel.

The doctors had given Dylan only a few weeks to live, and in the following weeks I saw Dylan dying a little bit every day.

But to make the story short Dylan have been taking Protocel and still alive 5 years later. Today Dylan is a healthy 6-year old boy and you could not tell that he was dying 5 years ago.

...Enclosed is the information about ordering Protocel and also a booklet explaining how Protocel was developed over the years.

I hope you chemo treatment goes well and you have a speedy recovery, and you are able to live a long and healthy life for many years to come.

Best regards,

Ricardo C. Amaral

.

JohnGelles  04/19/2011 09:40 PM Report

One final note. Few of the very rich actually keep their wealth in money. Not in money as it is, or money COLA'd to protect it from inflation. They keep their wealth in property that goes up and down in value. So many never really rest from from the worries common to more non-wealthy people.

It seems to me the nation might try to sell to the super-rich an investment that allowed them to worry less and contribute more to law and economics in an effort to make some common sense.

JohnGelles  04/19/2011 09:33 PM Report

Of all the billionaires to appreciate, Paul Allen is the best. He is not a person easily spoiled by money, success or tragedy.

His encounter with a fatal illness when he was rich as Croesus makes him the only real celebrity we can listen to and love for God's sake. God or the evidence of good, if you like, would seem to have wanted us to know him as one who prevailed over his immense misfortune such that a great fortune was balanced against its opposite in plain view of a great audience.

Allen was cast in this role and has made more of it,in my view, than any of his peers. In truth he is peerless in this terrible thing named life.

If some day we allow artificial intelligence to recommend prices (to real people as a prize jury) we may find there is more than enough money to go around. At that time to be rich will not be that special. No one will be in debt and none will be poor.

That is actually the way it is for some people today. I want to the see the day it happens for all of us -- like the way it is for most, when it comes to air to breathe for free.

JohnGelles  04/19/2011 09:16 PM Report

These truisms about money are not believed by most people. They believe the opposite. They believe money comes in boxes. They believe you either have a box of money or you don't. People are really crazy on account of their beliefs about government spending and about money being a definite amount -- when it is a functional amount that changes every hour depending what you do with it.

Money is really the opposite of the coin where the coin is the THINGS THAT MONEY CAN BUY. Make the things people would buy if they had the money. Make the money to allow the exchange to take place. Like magic, you have made zillions of dollars to buy another moment of pleasure if you're alive and live in a nice country at a time when things go right.

CarolJ  04/19/2011 09:13 PM Report

To Charlie's web staff: I have been trying to watch the 20 min episode of Martha Stewart which was televised in 2010. It will not run?????????????

JohnGelles  04/19/2011 09:07 PM Report

..... Is it true what Edith Piaf said, "It isn't really money -- til you spend it."?

..... Is it rue what Abba Lerner said and/or implied, "Money is a creature of the law and if it's creation is a monopoly of the nation-state -- and it may be spent without having any in a money-box. How much may be spent? As much as a nations bank or parliament wants to spend on investments. If the PRICE of necessities can be controlled to be affordable by most people, such nation has not spent too much." ?

Abba Lerner recognized that such price would be kept low enough for enormous government spending of money not in boxes. Keeping them low is done by producing necessities in abundance and by having ordinary people SAVE their money instead of spending it. And this saving would be greatest if savings accounts were indexed to protect your balance from inflation.

JohnGelles  04/19/2011 08:54 PM Report

[Please excuse spelling errors -- my speller is lost in cyber-space and my talent for spelling is poor.]

The thought of Allen's billions, as with Buffet's for us oldsters or Zuckerberg's for children, excites our envy muscles -- and our imaginations -- in equal measure.

I for one always come to the same point:

..... Why don't one of these billionaires get into the science of money itself. What is its purpose? Wat is its substance?

..... Is it true what Bernard Schoenbaum cartooned in the New Yorker, "Everybody loves money . Too bad there isn't enough to go around" ?

{continued below -- lest I crash in the middle of of a spell of genius.]

tabs  04/19/2011 08:08 PM Report

From an e-mail to Charlie regarding Billy Gates last visit to the show.

"The supreme technocrat capitalist of the western world wants to be Mother Theresa by applying his technocratic acuity. Mr Gates surely knows how the mechanisms of the system works but it remains unclear whether he knows why the system works the way it does. One thing is very clear and that is all that money don't buy change and thus sainthood."

SharkswithfrikingLazers  04/19/2011 06:57 PM Report

Charlie, you look much better now. Your health was in question after that "special assignment" to Asia and you presented as having something wrong. Now you look much healthier. This is good news.

By the way, where are the transcripts? Check out how CSPAN does it: http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/EthicsinPo

One of many questions I would have asked Paul Allen is about Malcolm Gladwell's theories, "Superstars don't arise out of nowhere, propelled by genius and talent. His book says, "they are invariably the beneficiaries of hidden advantages and extraordinary opportunities and cultural legacies that allow them to learn and work hard and make sense of the world in ways others cannot."

What hidden advantages did Paul Allen have? What extraordinary opportunities did he receive?

Bill Gates mother should probably get more credit than Paul Allen. Getting in the door is the toughest part. Ask any waiter who wants to be an actor.

Mary Maxwell Gates (July 5, 1929—June 10, 1994) served 18 years (1975–1993) on the University of Washington board of regents--computer advantage here. She was the first female president of King County’s United Way, the first woman to chair the national United Way’s executive committee where she served most notably with IBM's CEO, John Akers--HUGE advantage here--and the first woman on the First Interstate Bank of Washington's board of directors.

Her IBM connection opened a door--THE DOOR! Bill Gates then had to lie and say he had an operating system. Then go buy one for $50K and make it his own. Paul Allen did know where to buy the operating system for $50K so there is that. Both scoundrels but not yet dirty rotten scoundrels.

Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer became "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels" with Paul Allen's story of their talk to dilute his shares. This by the way, is a major plot point in "The Social Network" and makes one wonder if the Harvard tag should actually mean, "incredibly smart but morally bankrupt".

REMant  04/19/2011 04:24 PM Report

I endured Couric's White Houe-prompted, feminist insinuations to watch him on 60 Mins, where, incidentally, he said he was anything but logical in line with the title of the referenced tome, as well as this interview, but I really have little to say about it, except to point out that nothing Microsoft and Google ever did in their respective garages was at all new. And tho software was to lead the market, the machines, themselves, deserve the credit for the personal computing revolution. Still there were other ways that it possibly could have been done, in which direction, in fact, we now seem to be heading. I would hazard a guess that PC's and their software will be seen as something of a digression in the eventual scheme of things, which is more and more based on the use of computing for individual tasks. This should not be surprising, since like many inventors, programmers IMHO have never been able to figure out how their creations can best be used, M$ more than most. I nevertheless find it sad since it also discourages the do-it-yourself experience, and threatens a loss of freedom.

Indeed I find how M$ ended up on top of the heap somewhat puzzling. What I have never liked about the company is exactly what Gates has seemed to me to always exemplify, made clear on Sunday nite, i.e., his obvious mercenary orientation. If Bill is a saint, he's in Carnegie's pantheon. Someone said there's nothing stupider than a 55-yr-old who's held positions of progressively greater scope and responsibility (or whatever), but self-indulgent is more what I'd call Mr Allen. I don't know what the fascination is with sports franchise ownership either, however, I think it must lie somewhere other than in community spirit. I noticed that both of these guys express themselves similarly, but I'd say they also have more money than brains, so maybe it's a good thing they're giving it away.

I've been giving Bing a trial run, because I've noticed Google was not giving me results I expected, but find it still far less comprehensive, sometimes even comical, and I detect a not unexpected business, puritan, or DMCA-bias, even when you select no filtering, a process BTW I find a pain since I delete all cookies when I close my browsers and have to reset the preference each time. BTW, I use Opera, which most ppl are unaware of tho it seems to be the sector leader and I noticed the new Firefox apes it considerably. I would not use Chrome unless you enjoy lack of privacy, for, if anything, Google is more profit-centered than M$.