The African Enterprise (Books, Behavioural Marketing, The first Death of Distance)
Hi friends,
Greeting from Abuja.
Here's a question for you, what do you think about note-taking software?
I saw an interesting conversation on note-taking that was based on its use as a ‘starting point for writing. For me, note-taking software isnt much for writing, but actually a store of ideas. Going back through my notes from months ago, I find ideas that excite me as much now as they did when I first came across them.
When I came across a note about the future of capital, I moved it to a separate notebook because I am interested in learning a lot more about that topic and hopefully get to aggregate all of it into an essay. I also dove into my unfinished essays notebook that contains outlines for essays I never finished. It's a bit like having a barn for my yams.
Here's what I want to share this week:
Get off your Island: How you think, the opinions and views you hold, how you see the world, and your perceptions are all your Island. Every one of us resides in these mental Islands. While Island living can be picturesque, It can also be insular. According to Robert Pirsig, We take a handful of sand from the endless landscape of awareness and call it the world. Once we have that handful of sand, a process of discrimination goes to work on it.
In essence, what you see of the world is only based on what you can see on your Island. Your view of the world is limited to the binocular's field of view.
Getting off your Island is exposure to a world far from the scenic insularity. It's exposure to other points of view, other ways of thinking, the actions of others, other contexts, and experiences that might challenge the views and opinions you currently hold.
Coolest things I learned this week
Books were once a Luxury item
In 1440, Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press — sparking the original revolution in information technology.
Books, before this invention, were a luxury item mostly possessed by nobles; produced one copy at a time by scribes. Reproducing a single manuscript cost about one florin (a gold coin worth about $200) per five pages. So, reproducing a 500-page book would cost about $20,000. This $20,000 book would also most likely contain several errors because it would be a copy of a copy of a copy where errors have been amplified and multiplied.
Hence, before the printing press, only the rich could possess the kind of knowledge now commonplace in the world. This made the accumulation of knowledge for regular folks out of reach and a lot of the knowledge was lost over the years.
But post-1440, the cost of reproducing books diminished, and accessibility improved.
This figure shows European book production before and after 1440.
From Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver.
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Behavior and Marketing
Patience is a virtue. Especially when shopping.
According to a study of behavior at breakfast buffets, the first item in the buffet was taken by 75% of the diners (even when the order was reversed). Also, two-thirds of all the food taken came from the first three items, regardless of how long the buffet is.
Marketers take advantage of this behavior in selling their wares. They put the things the items they want to sell most first. And in keeping with a deeply ingrained behavioral bias, we pick it up first.
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The first Death of Distance
British Economist, Frances Cairncross, coined the term death of distance to describe how telecoms, the internet, and wireless technology were overcoming geography as a barrier to communication. This death of distance is emphasized, more than anything else, by pandemic life.
And again, with the rise of borderless decentralized financial technology as well as concepts like the metaverse, the substratum of global connectivity have been further reinforced. All these will usher in the next phase in the death of distance.
But, what was the first?
The first death of distance started with Ben Franklin who showed that a current can go as far down a wire as you want and very fast. With that, Samuel Morse had an idea: perhaps the arrival of the current at the far end of a long wire could somehow bring a message: 'if the presence of electricity can be made visible in any desired part of the circuit,' he wrote, ' I see no reason why intelligence might not be transmitted instantaneously by electricity.'
This ushered in the development of the electric telegraph.
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Natural Maniacs
In Elon Musk's opening monologue at the SNL, he said:
Look, I know I say or post strange things but that's just how my brain works. To anyone I have offended, I just want to say I reinvented electric cars and I'm sending people to Mars on a rocket ship. Did you think I was also going to be a chill, normal dude?
This statement reminded me of a part of Morgan Housel's Natural Maniacs where he wrote:
No one should be shocked when people who think about the world in unique ways you like also think about the world in unique ways you don’t like.
That’s it for this week.
If you have any thoughts or questions, hit reply and we can have a chat. And if you enjoyed it, share it with friends.
Till next week,
Kelvin