Flutterby™! : Change the laws of physics

How putting $10M into UBeam illustrates everything that is wrong with tech investing today.

I recently had an exchange with someone whose opinion was instrumental in certain technologies you use every day, in which he was talking about mesh networking, I suggested that the famous Gupta and Kumar paper kind of put a damper on that, and his response was to scoff at the information theorists and suggest that some undergrad will come along and prove them all wrong and have I seen what's happening with mesh messaging?

I'm also reminded of the numerous "digital scent" accessory startups we've seen over the years, people claiming that they'll be able to ship peripherals in months when you can talk to any physiologist about scent and discover that, no, we're nowhere near knowing the "primary colors" of scent.

So, yeah, tech investors are gullible, playing for that next big breakthrough, not doing due diligence. Possibly because social media at this point is where the big dollars are, but is clearly headed towards a commodity advertising market, with huge shifts possible (MySpace?) so is extremely risky, and if you're gonna throw that money somewhere, throwing it at other impossible ventures is just fine.