It has been more than seven weeks since I have written a blog post. I have several draft posts but haven’t been able to devote the time and energy to complete them. I miss the time I spend writing this blog, but I have been very busy. The transition from living in Tel Aviv – which I think is the most exciting city in the world – to our home in the wine country of Sonoma is really a shock to the system.

Please forgive the unstructured nature of this post it is just my way of saying hello to you, and to give you a preview of posts to come.

Time for myself
The time difference between Tel Aviv and the USA (7-10 hours) worked well for me. When I got up in the morning, it was night on the east coast and late evening on the west coast. This made it easier for me to devote dedicated time to my music and writing. I have to regain this balance now that I am back in the USA. I continue to work with my life coach, it has been a very good process. I like to joke that retirement is when you no longer enjoy doing the things you are good at doing and you are not good at the things you enjoy. While there is truth to this, my struggle to find balance has more to do with the weak voice of my own needs. It is very hard for me not to help someone who has a problem that I can solve in order to devote time to writing a piece of music that may never be performed.

Apple Watch Review will have to wait
Many of my friends have been asking me to give my take on the Apple Watch – which I have been wearing for more than a month. I would like to do that, but I am taking my time to slowly explore its capabilities. I can say that I am pretty positive about it and have worn it every day since I had the wonderful experience of unboxing it.

Steve Jobs
Some of you have complimented me on my last post which dealt with my personal reaction to Steve Jobs over some 35 years. The comments I have gotten have encouraged me to write more “from the heart” as they say.

Intel Founders
I just read the biography of Gordon Moore. Now that I have read the bio of Bob Noyce, Andy Grove, and Gordon Moore, I am considering writing my own take on these three remarkable men whom I had the privilege of knowing at Intel and the company they created. It was interesting – but in retrospect not so surprising to see that each biographer positioned their subject as the most important member of this triplet.

Middle East
I continue to think about the situation in the Middle East and, of course, Israel, the country that I love so much. My head spins when I think about all the possible scenarios for the region. It saddens me to see such a lack of leadership in the world and to see so many people suffer. I may have a solution.

The End of the Human Race as we know it
The world is about to go through some big changes. There are two major technical waves that will change everything. The first is driven by our understanding of genetics and our ability to engineer genes. The second is artificial intelligence (hate that phrase) and the development of robots. What I am thinking about these days is the convergence of these two powerful capabilities. Ray Kurzweil discussed this in his book ‘The Singularity is Near.’ I am not a big Kurzweil fan (maybe it is all the self-promotion or perhaps I am just jealous) but I think he is correct in general. Kurzweil seems to be driven by his desire to achieve immortality which is the greatest expression of hubris I can imagine. In my opinion, the human race as we now know it will not survive in its current form more than 100 years and maybe less. This century is the last century and there are people now alive that will make the transition into whatever the next phase of consciousness becomes. However, I should also acknowledge that we might not survive in any form.

The Current Tech Bubble
This is the fourth tech bubble I have experienced. My good friend Bill Janeway, (the former Vice Chair of Warburg Pincus and head of their technology practice) and I recently had a discussion about good bubbles and bad bubbles. Bill explained  the difference which was very interesting. In good bubbles, Value is created even though many investors experience great losses. Tech bubbles are the good kind because these bubbles fund innovations that would normally not be funded by rational investors. An example of a bad bubble is the real estate bubble that lead to the 2008 meltdown. As someone that is still engaged in early-stage tech investing (both money and effort), I don’t want to be the ‘greater fool.’ Fortunately, I am not that involved but it will be a painful car wreck to observe and I don’t think we have more than twelve months left in the current cycle. You might be interested to know that I sold all my tech stock back in March of 2000 (the height of the dot-com bubble). Forbes even put me as number 8 in the Midas list of the top venture investors because of this.

Ok, I better stop so I can start writing some of the blog posts I just promised.