{"id":11495,"date":"2011-10-06T10:23:39","date_gmt":"2011-10-06T14:23:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=11495"},"modified":"2011-10-06T10:23:39","modified_gmt":"2011-10-06T14:23:39","slug":"what-is-a-nontrepreneur","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2011\/10\/06\/what-is-a-nontrepreneur\/","title":{"rendered":"What is a nontrepreneur?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Andrew Orlowski<\/a> posts some of his comments at a recent (British) Conservative Conference Fringe discussion on digital policy:<\/p>\n

\n

You all know what an entrepreneur is. But who has heard of the word nontrepreneur?<\/p>\n

There were amused and bemused looks.<\/p>\n

Well you\u2019re going to be hearing it a lot.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re in an exciting time for the internet. This great wave of utopian rhetoric and getting everyone online, for the last 15 years, has come to an end. Almost everyone who wants to be online is online. Something quite new and interesting has happened in the past three years, people are beginning to pay for stuff.<\/p>\n

The internet today lacks markets and it\u2019s half-finished. The platforms and infrastructure that recognise and create value aren\u2019t there.<\/p>\n

Now words come to define political eras and philosophies, and the last ten years were defined by words like ‘beaconicity’ and ‘targets’ and all these agencies spending other people\u2019s money. I have a horrible feeling that Cameron\u2019s technology policy, despite being guided by people with strong classical liberal instincts, will be defined by the fluff of Silicon Roundabout.<\/p>\n

Silicon Roundabout is, essentially, a prank on the media. Let\u2019s see who\u2019s involved. You\u2019ve got what I call faux capitalists — people who want to be thought of as capitalists but are terrified of risk and don\u2019t back ambitious high-risk ventures. You\u2019ve got entrepreneurs who can\u2019t run a business. And you\u2019ve got programmers who can\u2019t program. All looking for each other. Then there\u2019s a vast army of hangers-on: mentors, facilitators. And they all socialise endlessly, instead of doing any work. The socialising is work.<\/p>\n

This does not create wealth.<\/p>\n

As soon as we start to \u201cun-fetishise\u201d this myth of two guys in a garage, and start to think more seriously about, say, payment platforms or credit systems that make buying stuff nice and easy, as easy as real life, then we\u2019ll create markets. You won\u2019t get this from Shoreditch.\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Andrew Orlowski posts some of his comments at a recent (British) Conservative Conference Fringe discussion on digital policy: You all know what an entrepreneur is. But who has heard of the word nontrepreneur? There were amused and bemused looks. Well you\u2019re going to be hearing it a lot. We\u2019re in an exciting time for the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,28,15],"tags":[86,58],"class_list":["post-11495","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-media","category-technology","tag-criticism","tag-internet"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-2Zp","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11495","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11495"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11495\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11496,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11495\/revisions\/11496"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11495"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11495"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11495"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}