
SoftBank’s Next 30-Year Vision (2010) [pdf] - Artemis2
http://webcast.softbank.jp/en/press/20100625/pdf/next_30-year_vision.pdf
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sifar
Looks like Black Mirror had access to this presentation.

When will people realize that it is not just the number of neurons but the
structure of brain that makes it what it is.

I have often wondered what gives these people (the visionaries with the means,
think Musk) the arrogance to impose their vision on humanity. It is one thing
to work on something you believe and try to bring it in reality, it is quite
another to believe one can lead the world to follow _some particular path_.
They may be working with an incredible tunnel vision or may be I am unable to
comprehend the scale at which they operate.

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adrianN
What's wrong with trying to steer humanity on the path that you think is
right?

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mstade
Who says it's right? An angry moustached guy in the first half of the 20th
century thought for sure there was a master race and that killing everyone
else probably was the right path. Another dude (incidentally also with a
moustache) had this vision that the state should be the end-all-be-all and own
everything, and killed a bunch of people including his own citizens to try to
realize it – right around the same time as the aforementioned fella actually.

I mean, there's plenty of things wrong with trying to steer humanity on to the
"right" path, and at the top of that list is probably the arrogant notion that
you know what "right" is while others don't.

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adrianN
Everybody else is free to try and stop people whose idea of "right path" is
incompatible with theirs. I just don't think that we should generally forbid
everybody from trying to change the world.

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mstade
Well therein lies the problem, doesn't it? The notion that I have to stop
someone just to live in peace. I mean, if people have visions for the world
and think they're grand and all, that's perfectly fine. The problem starts
when you try to impose (or steer, if you will) that vision on others, who may
not be interested at all. Unless it's perennially opt-in, there _will_ be
conflict, and as history proves sometimes those get real ugly.

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coupdetaco
You are a consumer, a borrower, a voter, a worker, et cetera. You have lots of
power.

Regardless of your feelings of not being at peace, civilization is absolutely
a compromise. A world that avoids the compromises of civilization is not one
that will be static and unchanging either.

Society expects less of you than ever before.

And are you not allowed to leave, as Christopher McCandless did (and other
trancendentalists before him, more successfully). Plenty of mountain people
operate under the assumption that they are entitled to be left alone, and they
consider the US flag to be a flag of pirates. We should have room for those
enclaves if their municipalities allow for them, I guess.

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contingencies
I think an interesting point is that, for example in US corporate culture, it
would be unacceptable to have a _non-facetious_ theme of empathy running
throughout such a strategic document. Whereas, it seems to me that the
Japanese management culture truly allows for this sort of thing, compared to
US board rooms. The world needs more of this, so well done Japan!

The money slide for me was the top companies by market capitalization over
time, where you see railroads (old transport and information infrastructure)
ousted by fuel and steel (car infrastructure), ousted by infotech
infrastructure.

~~~
hkmurakami
I don't buy that. It may not be as facetious as in the US, but it's still
facetious. Most manufacturing companies, and all the large ones, have replaced
a large fraction of their fulltime blue collar workforce with temp workers
whose contracts last for 2-3 years. The mothership will _subcontract_ out work
to subsidiary companies (for example, software development work) so that they
can maintain their lockstep pay/promotion schedules in the mothership, but pay
the subsidiary employees less [1]. Companies in Japan are just as profit
motivated as their US peers. True corporate empathy ended a very very long
time ago, if it ever existed (probably existed a few hundred years ago)

It's just a matter of what kind of marketing is acceptable and believable to
the general public.

Also keep in mind that Son Masayoshi is a _master_ PR user. Nowhere else have
I seen someone use PR towards the general public to lobby for things like
wireless spectrum auctions and solar energy government subsidies.

[1] most of the time, unless it's a special case company full of researcher
types.

~~~
contingencies
OK, so you're saying it's just as facetious.

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cjCamel
Much like all CEOs went through a phase of doing a marginal gains
presentation, and some are still probably talking about how the internet is an
opportunity, I suspect we'll see this kind of presentation trickle down to
most orgs that like to think they are innovative.

It's a continuation of some of those mad stream of consciousness presentations
we saw from "digital visionaries" a few years back.

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abrgr
10^60 computing elements (presumably doing some computing that we humans want
done) with only ~10^80 atoms in the universe? I'm as optimistic a technologist
as they come but that seems a bit... extreme

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paxy
I don't think you're comprehending the sheer difference in scale between 10^60
and 10^80.

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abrgr
Our galaxy has ~10^70 atoms. At an atom per compute element, we will use
1/10^10 of our entire galaxy for our own compute? 10^60 is a bit more than the
number of atoms in our sun. Given our sub-exponential space advances over the
last 50 years, it seems... ambitious... to turn our sun into a computer in the
next 300.

If they're saying we'll be an interstellar spacefaring civilization in much
less than 300 years, they really buried their lead :)

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Iv
> If they're saying we'll be an interstellar spacefaring civilization in much
> less than 300 years, they really buried their lead :)

If you think we can't reach Kardashev scale I in 300 years you are really
pessimistic!

We have, right now, the technology to go visit other stars. It would take a
sizable amount of the world's GDP but it is possible. I certainly hope that in
300 years we will have explored other systems!

~~~
xelxebar
Actually, people are already working on getting to Alpha Centauri within a
reasonable timescale and without exhausting the world's GDP [1] !

[1]
[https://breakthroughinitiatives.org/Initiative/3](https://breakthroughinitiatives.org/Initiative/3)

~~~
akvadrako
I'm not saying it's impossible, but I wouldn't trust these guys to do
anything. The funding is basically all from one russian oligarch who probably
does it for fun then gets board. Their last initiative was much less
ambitious, yet after several years the website just says "Details of the
competition will be announced soon."

[1]
[https://breakthroughinitiatives.org/Initiative/2](https://breakthroughinitiatives.org/Initiative/2)

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dkural
This is by far the strangest presentation I've seen by someone who controls
hundreds of billions of assets. It has a surreal sensibility.

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godzillabrennus
How many presentations have you seen from “someone who controls hundreds of
billions of assets”?

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intended
Depending on where you are in finance it’s not an irregular phenomenon - any
ppt from any major wall street bank would also conform.

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par
These VC pitch decks are getting more and more dystopian by the day.

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jannes
I can't tell if you're joking or not, but SoftBank is not a startup

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eungyu
Considering it's 2010, I'll admit there are some good parts. But it's
distracted like hell.

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look_lookatme
I like the part where we get to communicate telepathically with golden
retrievers.

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eecc
It’s a surprising presentation. I might not agree with several assumptions and
implications but I was sincerely put off balance by this mission statement
“Endeavoring to benefit society and the economy and maximize enterprise
value”... quite a difference from the “fiducial duty” to scorch the earth for
a penny more.

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icebraining
Most big companies have similarly lofty mottos and mission statements.

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lovemenot
I suppose this 2010 document could have been an early step in Softbank's bid
to secure the $90B invested funds from Saudi Arabia and others, which was
announced earlier in 2017.

2040 was perhaps the timescale around when Saudi was expecting to need
substantial new revenues uncorrelated with burning hydrocarbons.

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familyit
"Prestige Worldwide"

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0x4f3759df
I wonder how they're doing on the goal of starting 5000 companies in 30 years.

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phyalow
Pretty good -
[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-09-29/softbank-...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-09-29/softbank-
plots-deals-to-build-300-billion-asset-management-arm)

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karmapolic
can someone please breakdown what the vision is? going through the doc was all
too confusing.

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loblollyboy
'extrapolate everything'

