Clueful

While the mentorship opportunities in recent startup hubs like Berlin and Stockholm have increased dramatically in recent years, the mentors in Silicon Valley are still some of the most experienced and clueful in the world (let's call that factor "X").

It's rare for a television series about technology to get anything right about how computers work, let alone how hackers do their jobs. But in a pop culture landscape flooded with shows like CSI: Cyber and Scorpion, the CBS show Person of Interest stood out as smart, relevant, and mostly clueful about how networked devices actually function.

These kinds of things — the political, social, and institutional changes — are more difficult than the technological challenge. And unfortunately, there is no model, no simulation, and no supercomputer that can show us how to induce today's socioeconomic institutions and their leaders to behave in a more clueful fashion.

As a children's book critic and a fairly clueful Jew, I've been asked several times to read non-Jewish and non-Jewishly-observant friends' book manuscripts to make sure they've gotten the Jewish stuff right before they're published.