The Singularity and Facebook

Kevin Ferry
Chief Market Strategist
Cronus Contrarian Corner
www.cronusfutures.com

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In 1993, after digging 22 kilometers of tunnel in Texas and spending $2 Billion in taxpayer funds, the construction of the Superconducting Super-Collider was canceled. Another 62 kilometers and $8B more was needed to take a peek at the beginning of time.

Cern, on the border of France and Switzerland now holds the recipe for God’s primordial soup. Perhaps, justifiably so. In 1989 a Cern scientist, Tim Berners-Lee (not Al Gore), invented a portal for the exchange of knowledge called the World Wide Web. 21 years later, the pre-eminent investment bank in America gave $500 million to a company so teenage girls could post pursed-lipped, peace sign waving photos of themselves into the rapidly crowding cyber-space. That the bank had been rescued from the abysmal black hole of its last infatuation only 2 years prior was not a concern.

The American degradation of the sublime into the irrelevant takes place only slightly slower than the speed of light. Berners-Lee was facilitating an endeavor to explore the possibility of Adam contemplating his navel. What we ended up with is a narcissistic bulletin board for the inane. A $50 Billion market cap FAD. The scary part is not the vast amount of capital the brightest stars in banking are willing to throw at the “Unblinking One.” The horror is the utter vacuousness of the advertising enterprise.

Huxley saw a world where consumption and entertainment numbed society into a false state of bliss. Warhol and Koons exploited the ordinary’s magnetic attraction to fame. Are we to believe the tidal wave of retiring Boomers will be granted their entitlements by a generation of self absorbed Gen-Yers playing Farmville and Angry Birds? The internet is a little slice of serendipity cast off when great men dared to think about heavier things. Facebook is the Dark Matter of the universe.

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Kevin Ferry is the Co-Founder of Cronus Futures Management. He created the company in 2005 with five other traders focusing on fixed income, foreign exchange and equity futures trading in the electronic world. Currently, Chief Market Strategist, Ferry has 24 years experience in futures trading. Kevin Ferry Graduated from John Carroll University in 1983, majoring Economics.