Wednesday, September 10, 2008

imindi (1): it is a fortune Mark Cuban didn't get it

In two posts, I want to tell two things: (1) why we should not listen to Mark Cuban and (2) what Imindi is really about. If you are interested in only one of the topics, please choose it freely.

it is a fortune Mark Cuban didn't get it

What can I say? This morning, I have witnessed some worst time in the history of innovation. Under the stage of TC50, I watched the humiliation towards bright human mind, which I believe, however, should never happen, especially at Silicon Valley---the incubator of innovation. At the TechCrunch blog, it has already an objective coverage of the story. As reader, please make the judgment by yourself.

But I still want to say something. It is not only that I indeed know, support, and even cooperate with the two Imindi co-founders at certain level, but also a responsibility of a normal but tenderhearted person like many of you are and a person who really know the details to stand up speaking about the truth. On the stage, Mark Cuban just had shown his own arrogance, ignorance, and short sight as he used to be.

Mark, if the Internet was already "dead and boring" as you said, why did you come to attend a conference that focuses on launching services on this "dead and boring" Internet? Are you just coming to humiliate the true innovative souls so that you can demonstrate your ignorance? In fact, when you repeated that "The days of the Internet creating explosively exciting ideas are dead for the foreseeable future" in your own post, you had already kicked yourself out of the history of Web innovation, no matter how much contribution you did before the arrogant exclamation.

Hence the following are what I would like to say to the two Imindi co-founders.

Never give up! It is a blessing that Mark Cuban didn't get it. If ever Mark would truly have blessed you, you might not have been the innovators as you are now. There is a quote of an ancient wisdom of China---Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu (about 500 BC), one of the greatest philosopher in Chinese history. The following is a quote from Verse 41, a very famous teaching that has inspired people all over the world for generations.

On hearing of the Way, the best of men
Will earnestly explore its length.
The mediocre person learns of it
And takes it up and sets it down.
But vulger people, when they hear the news,
Will laugh out loud, and if they did not laugh,
It would not be the Way.

And so there is a proverb:

"When going looks like coming back,
The clearest road is mighty dark.
"

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Unfortunately, a number of things when wrong re. this presentation:

1. Like the recent Mike Kelly presentation about the "One Machine" at TED, they talked about the Semantic Web without making a connection to the Semantic Web or Linked Data Web memes

2. Mark and his cohorts (including the panel) take a top down approach all the time. Today they espouse Google etc.. without understanding the bottom-up mechanics of Google and it's resulting market place

The lesson here is that connections are important when pitching. And by connections, I mean connections to prior art and memes :-)

I'll certainly try to make contact with the IMINDI folks :-)

Yihong Ding said...

HI Kingsley,

Thank you. I am glad to watch your comment.

In fact, I was in the conference sharing with some Yahoo people yesterday about how the semantic approach performed by imindi might be a very interesting harmonious complement to stardard Semantic Web approach executed by Yahoo at present. Certainly, I can see that it might be just as well complementing to the approach you are doing.

To imindi, officially I am still just a cooperator (rather than a formal member that type) though they indeed have discussed and consulted many details of the technology with me (probably more than anyone else). But I will certainly pass your message to the two co-founders. Look forward to seeing whether there might be some lights when your two companies may connect the services together. It would be very interesting to watch because I saw two varied but complementary version of Semantic Web approaches.

Yihong

gregory said...

it would have been so easy to tell a story as if around a campfire, with a plot and characters and a challenge. way too intellectual and cerebral, almost to the point where i had to think that even the presenters didn't understand what they are doing ..

and very nice poetry from the tao te ching ...

the reaction of that panel was predictable, other panels over the three days would have been a much better match.

but adam lindemann has to look in the mirror, it was his fault, in my opinion, or, maybe, karma, a blessing in disguise ...

Yihong Ding said...

thank you, greg. I like your comments. I think Adam has learned a lot in just 24 hours. I believe such a failure on the stage would only make imindi stronger, if it could survive from this low (and I believe it will).

cheers,

Yihong

Yihong Ding said...

Polly, thank you for sharing the news.

We look for money to produce more goodness for the world. But we should not trace money just because it is money. I think this is the difference between the dream of Imindi and Cuban.

Yihong