Hi 'banned',
I read your comment and have often heard similar lines over the years - and I certainly understand how it can easily seem like that from the outside.
Frankly I would probably say the same thing about "that guy Kai", if all I knew was what I read about myself in places like this. But there really is another side to a lot of it. Usually one sighs and goes on, but maybe it is fair enough to try to communicate a little bit.
For one, I surely did not "abandon" Meta, on the contrary. It was a very complex situation, but I left peacefully.
As for the "quick buck" - computing began for me in 1977, the first company in 1982, business graphics and charting, when the IPO happened in 1995 - 15 products later - I would hardly call that quick.
And all that talk of the 'super rich' - it never came from me, those are often implied and assumed, much like in this blog piece, without Jason wanting to do any harm, the language re-perpetuates all those myths.
Meta was great - but I shared with a partner, the employees, the first investors, then Paul Allen as he came in, several company buys and mergers as well as the public : I had under 3% of it by that time. Which was just fine.
And my point: this was not some quick Web IPO as was common then, we had virtually no internet angle yet. There are many multi-millionaires and billionaires in the years that followed, I was certainly not part of that. And no regrets either - it was one heck of an adventure...
Where it gets a bit sad is that mentioning an old friend of many years would be interpreted in such a way. I toured for years with Douglas, stayed in his homes in France and London, did keynotes, conferences, Macworlds in Paris, Tokyo with him, Milia in Cannes, hosted the NewMedia roadshow, had him onstage for an hour as my guest in my last TED appearance - even arranged the dang memorial, sat on the board of Digital Village and had endless discussions and musings about the future of technology, hopeful plans what to do about it... and then the man drops dead at 49. That had a great effect on me in 2001 and I surely did not mean to inject it here as 'name dropping' - it was part of the story on how and why I changed my path from pure software development to the next level of trying to make a difference. And that could not just be "one more PS filter set"...
Not sure you read any of the Edge things, but I realize that one cannot please all readers and if some reject my work as "fancy essays" there is little I can do to un-fancy them.... But the question "what did you DO in the last decade" is answered to a fair degree in those writings.
I never claimed there was "one big secret" or "that mysterious huge project that will change the world" - culminating in "the most mysterious man in the world" now...
all not my words but writers, journalists and often in fair spirit, like Jason, a little tongue in cheek, a caricature of the person -and I understand and respect how that process works.But it takes a life of its own, you see. I literally wrote : "And certainly I am not retired, sitting by some pool with umbrella drinks is just not my thing
and still get the reaction "he is just some retired guy"... I can insist that I rather NOT talk about any of the work and keep it quiet, the opposite of Hype - and still get "he just wants to make himself seem interesting".
Again, you probably -despite your fun 'banned' name
- did not mean to just troll outright for the heck of it. I believe you probably feel in earnest that "that guy is probably like that". And all I can do is to appeal a little bit for some "benefit of the doubt". Kai
