ValleyZen - At the Intersection of Zen, Modern Life and Technology

Minutes ago, TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington posted a less than flattering post on Guy Kawasaki’s Alltop. (To learn more about Alltop, check out the video interview I did with Guy on the eve of the launch of Alltop beta.) TechCrunch has removed the post, as twitterers and bloggers…

One way of viewing the discussions about content generation at Stanford’s weekend Legal Futures Conference is a struggle between two forces. One force wishes to use technology to make traditional media more productive without disintermediation, substitution or decentralization of content delivery. The other force is attempting to remove the throttle traditional media has on information distribution, while also revolutionizing the content delivery processes, mechanisms and values. The principal factor in this…

Yesterday we attended the Legal Futures Conference at Stanford University. A fiery debate erupted between Prof. Larry Lessig and Andrew Keen about Professional vs. User-Generated Content (UGC). Lessig believes that UGC is the future and that legal changes should be made to facilitate its growth. Open the floodgates and see if old media can compete! Keen argues that UGC produces massive amounts of low-quality content whose credibility can’t be relied on, and it clutters the public domain. Keen is nostalgic for…

Check out today’s satori-inducing video with Fred Turner – Stanford Professor, acclaimed author, and expert in Silicon Valley counterculture. He says, “The distance between the Grateful Dead and Google, between Ken Kesey and the computer is not as great as we might think.” Zen takes center stage as Turner shows its powerful influence from early cyberculture to today’s Valley. Watch Turner trace the Valley’s direct lineage from the cyber-pioneers who were also think partners with Zen…

There have been discussions about Samurai in the blogosphere recently.

Guy Kawasaki, creator of killer site Alltop & blogger and Ego Jeremiah Owyang have become quite “animated” on the subject.
Here’s the response of the 400 year-old Kataoka Samurai Sword…

Today we are releasing the much-anticipated Episode 3 of Tim Draper VC Samurai. Tim Draper gives us a tour of the Men’s Room at DFJ with his famous sheep painting, a DFJ masterpiece. Follow these links if you’ve missed the trailer and Episode 1 or Episode 2…

Zen lessons from a master of the unexpected. Last night I met Werner Herzog, acclaimed German filmmaker, at a special screening of his latest film, Rescue Dawn, starring Christian Bale. In a career spanning 54 films, Herzog has dragged a steamship over a mountain in the Peruvian jungle, hypnotized a cast for a shoot, filmed on a volcano ready to explode, and boiled and eaten his own shoe…

Today we are releasing Episode 2 of Tim Draper VC Samurai. Last Monday we posted Episode 1 and a short trailer of this action-packed interview with Tim. In Episode 2, delve deeper into the Zen world of Tim Draper:

Tim’s Samurai Lessons for Entrepreneurs:

• Freedom from life and death
• Approaching life with wild abandon
• Samurai loyalty
• Discipline and asceticism
• Tim’s tips on how to simplify…

Front row, beneath the podium in the press box, I had a great vantage point to observe Bill Gates speak at Stanford’s Memorial Auditorium Tuesday. The following section from his speech on code simplicity made me think:

“And so you say, what is that explosion of complexity that is expensive, it’s fragile, it’s hard to prove it’s correct? Well, it’s a failure of abstraction. We have not changed that level of abstraction…

Tim Draper, Founder of DFJ, gives us an AMAZING interview. In over 50 minutes of high-energy footage, Tim catapults Drue in the air (literally!), shows his art in DFJ’s Men’s bathroom, and reveals his Zen insights on entrepreneurship, business and life.

For the next 5 weeks, every Monday we will release one of the episodes, about 10 minutes each, of Tim’s irreverent wisdom.

Here is a short trailer, to whet your appetite:

Here is the first episode.