As information and its connected systems grow to fill the industrial core, borders separating disparate fields will fade. The resulting combinations are already underway. This is the subject. Its aspects are broad and multiple. Informed by the author’s experience and investigations in technology and media since the 1990s, with emphasis on recent trends in data, mobile, networks, and the cloud, The Age of Convergence is a summation, through a collection of related essays, of what the author believes to be a major new economic era. An attempt is made to render the abstract in a pragmatic manner and the pragmatic as universally as possible. The aim is to present the material usefully to students and practitioners alike, realizing that these circles overlap, much as they do for the author. From the “Afterword,” page 163: "Pattern recognition, data visualization, information processing are the recounting of stories. Facebook timelines, Twitter streams, LinkedIn updates, Google searches and results, much like reality TV, are stories, too. Stock charts and analyses, financial ratios and credit ratings, research reports, are variations, commentaries, stories about stories, and so on. Journalistic content and entertainment product, often interchangeable, are stories unabashedly, if previously listed examples are maybe less self-aware. When an entrepreneur pitches a venture capitalist, a story is told much like a filmmaker pitching a studio chief. In turn, investors tell stories to explain the risk that’s taken. When we speak about a new era of information, a new economy based on information flow and connectivity, we are speaking about a world of stories." This book contains the story of a pattern that is starting to shape.

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The Age of Convergence
By Dan Ramsden
Copyright © 2013 by Dan Ramsden
Available in paperback & eBook format:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Age-Convergence-DanRamsden/dp/0615894682/
Additional information:
https://www.facebook.com/TheAgeOfConvergence
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by DreamTigerEquities
Corporation, New York. Portions of this work originally appeared in the blog
Discourse and Notes by Dan Ramsden.
ISBN-13: 978-0615894683 (DreamTigerEquities)
ISBN-10: 0615894682
Library of Congress Control Number: 2013951439

2. Synopsis
As information and its connected systems grow to fill the
industrial core, borders separating disparate fields will fade.
The resulting combinations are already underway.
This is the subject. Its aspects are broad and multiple.
Informed by the author’s experience and investigations in
technology and media since the 1990s, with emphasis on
recent trends in data, mobile, networks, and the cloud, The
Age of Convergence is a summation, through a collection of
related essays, of what the author believes to be a major new
economic era.
An attempt is made to render the abstract in a pragmatic
manner and the pragmatic as universally as possible. The
aim is to present the material usefully to students and
practitioners alike, realizing that these circles overlap, much
as they do for the author.
From the “Afterword,” page 163:
Pattern recognition, data visualization, information
processing are the recounting of stories. Facebook timelines,
Twitter streams, LinkedIn updates, Google searches and
results, much like reality TV, are stories, too. Stock charts and
analyses, financial ratios and credit ratings, research reports,
are variations, commentaries, stories about stories, and so on.
Journalistic content and entertainment product, often
interchangeable, are stories unabashedly, if previously listed
examples are maybe less self-aware. When an entrepreneur
pitches a venture capitalist, a story is told much like a
filmmaker pitching a studio chief. In turn, investors tell stories
to explain the risk that’s taken. When we speak about a new
era of information, a new economy based on information
flow and connectivity, we are speaking about a world of
stories.
This book contains the story of a pattern that is starting to
shape.
_______________________________
Dan Ramsden has been active in finance, markets and
strategy, at global institutions as well as boutique firms, for
over twenty years. He has covered the media and technology
segments, through their transformations and transitions, since
the mid-‘90s, and has been involved in private and public,
equity and debt, early- and late-stage, investment and
acquisition transactions, as principal and advisor. Most
recently he established CoRise, a New York merchant
banking platform to participate in the evolution of connected
systems at the intersection of media, technology, and
commerce.

3. Contents
Preface v
First Part
Thesis & Its Elements
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Elementary particles 3
The language of industrial convergence 4
Creative integration as a new invention form 6
“Connected systems” 8
Capital, markets and knowledge exchanges 10
Post-capitalist economics 11
Towards a new economics, cont’d 12
Energy and information 15
Perpetuity and finality in disrupted settings 16
Business models and options: a synopsis 18
A lens for evaluating the bits 21
Concluding and summarizing the argument 23
Words of Encouragement & Caution
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Why and how convergence matters 29
The evidence and news to watch 30
Distinctions in transactional complexity 32
New finance and the lost art of match-funding 34
Corporate finance in the age of options 37
The second way out 39
Signs of age as youth matures 40
When innovation is expected 42
Where integrated systems lead 44
The idea and strategy: a new execution 46
The path of data back to bigness 47
Too deep to fail 49
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Probability and flexibility 51
Adaptation as a specialty 53
Panic and restraint 54
The secret of your success 56
Before invention and execution 57
Rimbaud in Abyssinia: an entrepreneur’s
biography 59
Skin in a portfolio of games 61
Dylan’s playlist and pattern recognition 63
Second Part: Appendices & Notes
Products & Other Enticements
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Customers and code in networks 71
The switches are different now 73
The origins and ends of communities 74
Evaluating a big network, which isn’t a big
product 76
Value and renewal of used assets 78
Information in the physical world 80
The human factor 82
So you wanna be… 84
Of pictures and the true value of pixel sharing 86
The world as will and representation 88
The medium is the new star 90
New Economies & Markets
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The hack, the shakeup, and the flourish 95
How seemingly disparate markets are born of the
same misconception 96
When technical is fundamental 99
An entrepreneur’s guide to the trading desk 100
The next phase to old finance for new media 102
Creative finance in the middle stage 104

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Hyper-ubiquity, cont’d 106
To the rebirth of efficient markets 108
The limits of hyper-data and the limits of
efficiency 111
Crowds and flows 112
The interconnection of market currents 114
Technology, profit and network effect 115
New Labor & New Capital
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Investors in a portfolio of one 119
In a diverse portfolio of mispriced options 120
Arendt’s ingredients of enterprise 121
From speculation to personal equity 123
Of employees, partners, profits and progress 124
Advertiser turned marketer and consumer turned
vendor 126
The R&D department or the bank 128
Of bitcoins, apps and new professions 131
Gravity and grace 132
Woody’s energy and distance 135
Velocity culture 137
Incumbency culture 138
The Digitized Character & Reorientation
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The grandeur of analog 143
The paid and thinning content 145
The possibility of islands 146
Social media and organized self-expression 148
The author’s voice 150
The brevity of our perspectives 152
The big frontier in the space between the bits 153
An app for intuition 155
Truth as technology’s lasting value 157
Afterword 161
About the author 167