Superphones

So all these computer nerds work out that while the shooters at San Bernardino were on their phones 'tweeting' their allegiance to the Islamic Caliphate, they were also shooting up dozens of people with high powered weapons.

And all the old folk like me, when we hear this, sit around in our armchairs thinking 'ah well, that's a ridiculous impossibility...'

See his phone there?
It's part of the weapons system

But it's not impossible in computer games, though. In fact, it's kind of de rigueur actually.

Which brings me to what I really want to talk about - and that is, the very modern concept of the 'superphone.' The slogan that is used to describe the point of the superphone is: 'everything is connected, connection is power.'

And then in these games that are popular now, they add in that - 'hacking is our weapon.'

In one way it is all wish fulfillment, as the main '3rd-person character' (in the leading example of these simulation games, Watch Dogs, it is a certain 'Aiden Pearce') goes around hacking into people's bank accounts as he wanders through the streets of Chicago, and having the money automatically drain from their accounts into his.

Heh, wonderful. But in my day in Chicago, you didn't need to hack into people's accounts, you just plain robbed them directly at gun or knife-point - although I suppose this was more physical, more honest, a thing to do... 

Nowadays it's a bit different. The superphone is the weapon indeed, as they say in the publicity for the game!

The poor old war veteran has no money!

But this fantasy game highlights something which is really important in money and investing: I have never personally supported the idea about 'risk versus reward' - well at least, not exactly the way it is usually talked about.

Even when I made my first million in manufacturing back in the Eighties, I recall I never thought I was undertaking risk. For me it was 'no risk versus high reward,' and you managed the 'no risk part' as the thing you physically did to steer the money to you.

People think there is no such thing as no risk but that isn't right. Such a large percentage of the official investment world is full of complex risks and complex investment 'products' and 'situations' - these are nothing but ways of distracting people from looking at what they ought to be looking at; which is, namely, the no risk situation.

'Something inevitably will happen' - that's what you need to be looking for. Gold will go up. When the equity markets fly people will buy into flavour-of-the-month. These things are all inevitable. The passage of time going forward is also inevitable but the whole point about investing is 'when,' not 'if.'

Belgrade 24 Hours of Elegance party -
these guys have money...

If the Fed successfully raises, will the market fall catastrophically? Well, not inevitably under present circumstances. So that's not an invest-able risk, IE it's not 'no risk.'

But will some Chinese guy actually invent a real life, real, 'super-hacking' app-loaded superphone? 

Well yes. This is inevitable.