Thang Nguyen 555

Mr. Malone.

Coming to peace with his past.

Wild ride and wild West. Friend of Ted Turner and Ruppert Murdoch, sponsor of MacNeil/Lehrer Newshour, most of all, escaped a “grisly” death together with Craig McCaw.

Late 90’s saw a media tectonic shift, from analog to digital with Howard Jonas saw VoIP while I was crushed then crawled out from underneath the rubble.

Big difference between 30,000 feet view and near 6 feet under. While he was doing deals – luckily not with AOL – I struggled with job hopping: MCI and ATT, Teligent and Teleglobe. Via Gary Kim, I heard of John Malone. “I wouldn’t bet against John Malone” said Gary at the time.

John loves the outdoors (Colorado) and land conservation through friendship with the “mouth of the South” (and indirectly Jane Fonda).

Now looking back, with Liberty Media track record only surpassed by a very few (Warren Buffett?), he can rightfully and leisurely ride into the sunset, doing what he and his wife love to do.

Information and individuals, like John, want to be free. His love for horses (even one-eye horse could father a lot of good horses) and heritage (Ireland – remember Frank Mc Court’s Angela Ashes) while juggling regulatory, competitors, consumers and stakeholders in the dry air out West.

Another American success story not without sweat and tears, penny pinching and tied knots in the stomach.

High rollers. High rewards. Looking to getting out.

Today’s Big Tech stand on Cable’s shoulders (itself on railroad right of way) streaming and sucking up bandwidth cushioned by Net Neutrality without paying an extra dime (until sued by mass tort) or a/o this edit price increase by Netflix.

Learn to deFAANG (facebook, apple, amazon, netflix and google). Learn from ATT who tried hard to cut the cord, while Apple pushes mobile. It’s much easier to upgrade an app then to yank out all the wires (copper) or integrate cellular, cable and copper into Triple Play package.

Again, at 30,000 feet and global view, what they struggle against is quite different given long context and legacy technology.

Decent folks come across decent despite success and wealth. Born to be wired ends with a note of gratitude to end all notes, a song started out at Bell Labs and closed out at Cable Labs.

This writing, if ever reached your eyes, is transmitted via Spectrum cable broadband upload, once Verizon, once MCI, where Vint Cerf used to mill about. Then off to Google, its “Fiber” is trying to compete with TCI (now ATT) and all the mega mergers – to adapt or die. Like balls hitting and spinning from one another. Some jumped off the “Wall Street pool table”. Greed is good, portrayed by Michael Douglas in suspenders on Stairmaster.

Knowing Tesla himself died an impoverished death, and same as Vincent Van Goh, doesn’t make one feel any better. Back at Chicago World Fair, our ancestors dazzled by AC/DC: “like heaven”. The zeros, the ones, the wavelength and the transmission of wave forms, compressed and multiplexed, booted underground and ballooned up through the tower high in the air. Where are all the satellite dishes today? Long time passing. That Indian chief head TV station used to white balance before show.

More to come for our children’s children with AI’s predictive and suggestive ads (200-year-old advertising industry on 21st-century technology) match.com match-made in the Cloud and Heaven.

With success comes enormous sacrifice and cost (time away from home and loved ones).

I finished the epilogue and bibliography of Born to be Wired on St Patrick Day, quite appropriately, coming away richer (data wise), and a respect for a straight-spoken Irish-root investor who respects OPM.

We all are stewards of our allotted time on Earth. Keep it simple. See through the complexity: Noise vs signal, truth and lies, stove pipe and nuance.

It’s expensive to put down your high-roller chips. It’s also very expensive not to. Time is not on your side, nor mine. Chips, like information, want to be free. Fast.