The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations
by
Ori Brafman
and
Rod A. Beckstrom
Published 4 Oct 2006
But then along came Pierre Omidyar, a computer programmer whose fiancee couldn't find anyplace to buy her favorite collectible, Pez dispensers. Like Shawn Fanning, the creator of Napster, Omidyar took matters into his own hands, never realizing the massive force he was about to unleash. The service, originally called "AuctionWeb" but soon renamed "eBay," at first glance appeared similar to Onsale. But eBay had what seemed like a radical idea at the time. It allowed users to sell items directly to THE COMBO SPECIAL: THE HYBRID ORGANIZATION each other. It never took control of inventory and never served as an intermediary. After all, there was really no need to have a moneyback guarantee for Pez dispensers. In true catalyst fashion, Omidyar created a network based on trust.
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From the get-go, eBay declared, "We believe people are basically good. We believe everyone has something to contribute. We believe that an honest and open environment can bring out the best in people." Because eBay opened the doors wide and allowed anyone to sell any item as long as it was legal, the site quickly became home to a huge number of listings—from Pez dispensers to laptop computers to rare antiques. Users began flocking to the site, and eBay became the market leader. Trust wasn't just a promotional scheme eBay cooked up to make users feel better about the site. From the beginning, trust permeated the entire company. Even today, when eBay employees consider a strategic decision, they are required to begin with the assumption that people are basically good and trustworthy.
The Inner Lives of Markets: How People Shape Them—And They Shape Us
by
Tim Sullivan
Published 6 Jun 2016
We buy much more than books (both new and used), diapers, and pet food online now. There are thriving online markets for collectibles, Chinese antiquities, and high-end automobiles. (One of the founding legends of eBay, unfortunately apocryphal, is that Omidyar created AuctionWeb to help his then girlfriend find trading partners for her Pez dispenser collection.) At the time of writing, eBay Motors has listings for hundreds of Porsches, including several with registered bids above $100,000. Dozens of Chinese vases on eBay attracted bids in excess of $10,000 apiece. And early doubters notwithstanding, we get heaps of advice—much of it personalized—via the web on what to buy and why, if not in precisely the form that Future Shop’s authors anticipated.
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And as far as we know, none were coined by economists.2 Despite its dubious value, cheap talk is everywhere. Some might argue that most advertising is comprised exclusively of it; there’s certainly no shortage in online commerce: “authentic” and “genuine” are near-ubiquitous descriptors among purveyors of Tiffany jewelry on eBay and in the descriptions of plenty of other items (baseball cards, Pez dispensers, antiquities) where one might have concerns of honest representation (calling yvonne9903!). Why bother to make claims of honesty, love, or authenticity if they’ll be heavily discounted by a skeptical counterpart in business or romance? It’s because that while the upside is limited, the cost isn’t just cheap, it’s nil—so why not give it a try and hope there’s a sucker out there who believes you.
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The market maker faces a delicate balancing act in satisfying the needs and wants of each side. And indeed a platform isn’t much good unless all sides agree to participate. Just as no one would visit a supermarket that stocked only a limited supply of cornflakes, eBay wouldn’t get many visitors if the only items for bid were a couple of old Pez dispensers. Nor would anyone bother to post their surplus Beanie Babies if they didn’t expect it to be seen by a reasonable volume of potential customers. The participants on each side of the market are of the chicken-and-egg variety. This is less of a problem for a one-sided market like a grocery store, which often buys its inventory from manufacturers before putting it up for sale.
Science...For Her!
by
Megan Amram
Published 4 Nov 2014
I’m going to go make myself some throat-soothing tea now! Mmm . . . tea: nature’s coffee! Girls, if you have any boys to set me up with, I’d really appreciate you passing along this cover letter. Maybe you have a cute brother? A single gardener who speaks English? A PEZ dispenser in the shape of a human that I can wiggle so that it looks like a boyfriend? Lady tip: there’s not that much of a difference between a rare PEZ dispenser and a boyfriend! They’re both handsome, worth a lot of money, and spit PEZ at you! FIG. 6.7 Girlfriend Cover Letter To Whom It May Concern: My name is Megan Amram, and this letter is to express my interest in the position of “Girlfriend.”
Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution
by
Howard Rheingold
Published 24 Dec 2011
Although the number of e-businesses has been reduced from thousands to a smaller number of larger enterprises, eBay, the most successful electronic marketplace, combined e-commerce, online affinity groups, and reputation management. Restoring the Shadow of the Future In 1995, Pierre Omidyar created eBay so that his wife could trade Pez dispensers— a form of packaging for candy now valued by collectors. The Omidyars are billionaires now—from creating an electronic marketplace, not from trading Pez dispensers. In 2000, eBay users transacted more than $5 billion in gross merchandise sales. By 2002, eBay had more than 42 million registered users and was the most popular shopping site on the Internet.24 Millions of items are listed for sale on any given day in thousands of categories. eBay offers no warranty for its auctions; it merely puts buyers and sellers together, gives them a place to display pictures of their wares, automatically manages auctions, provides a reputation management system, and takes a small listing fee.
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By 2002, eBay had more than 42 million registered users and was the most popular shopping site on the Internet.24 Millions of items are listed for sale on any given day in thousands of categories. eBay offers no warranty for its auctions; it merely puts buyers and sellers together, gives them a place to display pictures of their wares, automatically manages auctions, provides a reputation management system, and takes a small listing fee. Omidyar benefited from the power of Reed’s Law (Chapter 2). eBay is a “group-forming network” that self-organizes around shared obsessions; all the collectors of Turkish railway tickets, Dickens first editions, Pez dispensers, velvet paintings, and Ming vases find each other at their appropriate auctions and form their own communities. Surprisingly, eBay reported in 1997 that only 27 out of 2 million auctions over a four-month period were considered to involve possible criminal fraud and that 99.99 percent of the auctions attracting bids were successfully completed.25 “It’s almost impossible to believe that random strangers can trade like this without more problems.
How to Retire the Cheapskate Way
by
Jeff Yeager
Published 1 Jan 2013
Some of the more valuable finds as Marv dug deeper into his barn-size time capsule: a massive collection of Matchbox cars (many in mint condition); dozens of highly collectible metal lunch boxes; vinyl record albums that had never been opened; dolls and other toys still in their original packaging; boxes filled with classic comic books, metal signs, and other vintage advertising memorabilia for everything from Tabasco sauce to Pepto-Bismol; and an entire box filled with nothing but PEZ dispensers. The other thing Marv realized as he stood in the barn one evening staring at boxes still stacked all the way up as high as the hayloft, was that even at the rapid pace he was working, he might not live long enough to see the last box unpacked. So he enlisted the help of one of his daughters who lived nearby—“she knows all about selling stuff on eBay, is that what it’s called?”
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Plus Marv has two other new little income producers: he leases space in the now empty barn to people looking to store their boats and RVs, and he “saved back a few (dozen) boxes of the most special stuff” he and Joan bought over the years, so that Marv himself can now spend some enjoyable summer afternoons manning a sales table of his own at the Shipshewana flea market, making some other young couple’s secondhand treasure hunting dreams come true. LOSE IT IF YOU DON’T USE IT “Not everybody has a barn full of stuff they can sell off,” Marv Johnson openly admits, “but most people my age have a lot more things than they probably realize, and a lot of things they’d be better-off getting rid of.” With Marv and his army of PEZ dispensers as your inspiration, it pays in more ways than one to undertake a thorough decluttering exercise prior to retiring. Experts in decluttering and home organization generally give a thumbs-up to Marv’s “five crates” approach, or some similar system of sorting items into categories, including: “Trash,” “Save,” “Sell,” and “Giveaway.”
Frommer's Irreverent Guide to San Francisco
by
Matthew Richard Poole
Published 17 Mar 2006
Lyle Tuttle, undisputed king of the San Francisco tattoo empire, moved his minimuseum from a seedy location at Seventh and Market streets long after he had already engraved Janis Joplin’s flesh, but you can still see his 109 Outlandish out-of-town archives... Heading south from the city, US 101 is dotted with weird little wayside collections. The first stop is the Burlingame Museum of Pez Memorabilia, not far from the airport. Remember those little candies spit from the mouths of plastic cartoon characters? Since the first Pez dispenser hit the shelves in 1952, hundreds, if not thousands, of models have been issued, and the museum’s collection is exhaustive. Moving right along to the Silicon Valley, you’ll find the perfect antidote to Apple, Intel, and the rest of the area’s high-tech cathedrals: the Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum.
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Tues–Wed and Fri–Sun 10am–5pm; Thurs 10am–9pm. Admission $10 adults, $7 seniors 65 and over, $6 youths 12–17, free for children under 12, $5 flat rate for all after 5pm Thurs. See Map 7 on p. 94. See Map 7 on p. 94. Burlingame Museum of Pez Memorabilia (p. 109) BURLINGAME One of the world’s most exhaustive collections of Pez dispensers.... Tel 650/347-2301. www.burlingamepezmuseum. com. 214 California Dr., Burlingame. Tues–Sat 10am–6pm. Free admission. Cable Car Museum (p. 106) RUSSIAN HILL San Francisco’s cablecar system is still run out of this museum, which also houses the original prototype cable car.... Tel 415/474-1887. www. cablecarmuseum.org. 1201 Mason St.
The Middleman Economy: How Brokers, Agents, Dealers, and Everyday Matchmakers Create Value and Profit
by
Marina Krakovsky
Published 14 Sep 2015
In no place is this more visible than on eBay—where, despite the opportunity for buyers and sellers to transact directly, most of the trading flows through trusted middlemen, those sellers who have built up the best reputations over thousands of transactions. We see in eBay’s early days, for example, the rise of brick-and-mortar services like AuctionDrop and iSoldIt; people trying to make a buck through eBay’s virtual garage sale didn’t list their old Beatles albums and Pez dispensers on eBay themselves but paid these intermediaries a commission of as much as 45 percent to do it for them. Now that eBay has been around for years, thousands of people make their living by buying specialty products and reselling them on the site, the preeminent among them enjoying over $150,000 in sales per month.
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But although anybody can make a sale on eBay, not everyone can turn a profit, let alone the kind of profit Wood makes. The site started out as a consumer-to-consumer marketplace: like a global garage sale where anybody could sell just about anything to anyone directly. In eBay’s early days, when most sales were through auctions, the prototypical eBay item was a Pez dispenser that one collector might sell to another. Very quickly, though, the site evolved into a place where more and more sales would go through professional middlemen. Some were owners of brick-and-mortar stores wishing to expand their market or people like Mike Wolfe who found eBay so helpful (and time-consuming) that he hired a full-time person to run sales through the site.15 Some were “trading assistants”—companies like AuctionDrop and iSoldIt, that made it easy for occasional sellers to off-load their castoffs without the hassle of going on eBay themselves.
The End of College: Creating the Future of Learning and the University of Everywhere
by
Kevin Carey
Published 3 Mar 2015
The beautiful thing about owning an Internet platform is that other people pay for all the expensive parts of your business. The hardware and software are developed by Apple, Intel, Apache, Samsung, and Microsoft. The telecommunications networks are maintained by Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T. Pez makes the Pez dispensers, Pixar makes the cute cartoons, Penguin Random House publishes the books, and the nation’s aunts make the cat videos. You sit in the middle and take a small percentage of every sale, or charge advertisers for the privilege of marketing their low-profit commodity products to your customers. The key is getting there first, because a platform’s value increases exponentially as the number of buyers and sellers grows.
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Press stores, 163 James, Henry, 32 James, William, 32–33, 45, 47, 250 Jefferson, Thomas, 23, 193 Jews, 46, 53 Jobs, Steve, 126 Johns Hopkins University, 27, 29 Johnson, Lyndon, 55, 56, 61 Jones, Tommy Lee, 165 Jordan, David Starr, 26 Junior college, 55 (see also Community colleges) Kamlet, Mark, 72–73, 251 Kantian philosophy, 251 Kennedy, John F., 165 Kerr, Clark, 53–56 Khan, Salman, 148–49 Khan Academy, 149, 155 Kickstarter, 133 King, Danny, 216, 218 King’s College, 23 Kiva, 133 Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, 153 Knapp, Steven, 43 Koller, Daphne, 153–58, 171 Kosslyn, Stephen, 136–37 Kyoto University, 204 Lancet, 222 Lander, Eric, 1–4, 38–39, 44, 177–78, 221 MIT freshman biology course taught by, 11 (see also Introduction to Biology—The Secret of Life [7.00x]) Land-grant universities, 25–27, 35, 51, 53, 55, 95, 108, 122–23, 168 Learn Capital, 130, 156–57 Leckart, Steven, 149 Legally Blonde (film), 166 Levin, Richard C., 157 Lewin, Walter, 190–91 Liberal arts, 16, 27–31, 237, 241, 244–45 in accreditation standards, 50 core curriculum for, 49 at elite universities, 179 online courses in, 158, 244 PhDs and, 35 rankings and, 59 teaching mission in, 253 training, research, and, 29, 33, 261n (see also Hybrid universities) Lincoln, Abraham, 25 LinkedIn, 66, 217 Litton Industries, 75 Livy, 25 London, University of, 23 Lue, Robert, 178–81, 211, 231 Lyft ride-sharing service, 122 MacArthur, General Douglas, 51, 90 MacArthur “Genius” awards, 2 MacBooks, 132, 144 Madison, James, 23 Manitoba, University of, 150 Maples, Mike, Jr., 128–30, 132 Marine Corps, U.S., 140 Marx, Karl, 45 Massachusetts Bay Colony, Great and General Court of, 22 Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), 37–38, 59, 116, 132, 148, 153, 167–79, 245 admissions to, 39, 161, 212, 214–15, 245 Brain and Cognitive Sciences Complex, 1–4, 143, 173–74 Bush at, 51–52, 79, 125, 168 computer science sequence offered online by, 231, 233 founding of, 29, 167 General Institute Requirements, 14, 190, 241 graduation rate at, 8 hacks as source of pride at, 168–69 joint online course effort of Harvard and, see edX MITx, 169, 173, 203 OpenCourseWare, 107–8, 150, 169, 185, 191 prestige of brand of, 163, 181 Saylor at, 176–90 Secret of Life (7.00x) online offering of, see Introduction to Biology—The Secret of Life (7.00x) tour of campus of, 168, 174 wormhole connecting Stanford and cafeteria at, 174–75, 179, 235 Massive open online courses (MOOCs), 150, 154, 156, 158, 159, 185, 204, 255 global demand for, 225 initial audience for, 214–15 providers of, see names of specific companies and universities Master Plans, 35, 60, 64–65 Master’s degrees, 117, 193, 195–96 Mayo Clinic, 242 Mazur, Eric, 137 “M-Badge” system, 208–9 McGill University, 204 Mellon Institute of Science, 75, 76, 229 Memex, 79, 80 Mendelian genetics, 3, 103–4 Miami-Dade Community College, 64 Microsoft, 128, 139, 145, 146, 188, 204 MicroStrategy, 187–91, 199 Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools, 50 Minerva Project, 133–38, 141, 215, 235, 236, 243 Minnesota, University of, Rochester (UMR), 242–43 Missouri, University of, 208 Moore’s law, 176 Morrill, Justin Smith, 25–26 Morrill Land-Grant Act (1862), 25, 168 Mosaic software program, 126 Mozilla Foundation, 205–8, 218, 248 MS-DOS, 87 Myanganbayar, Battushig, 214, 215 NASDAQ, 177, 188 National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), 208 National Broadcasting Company (NBC), 96 National Bureau of Economic Research, 10 National Institutes of Health, 52 National Instruments, 216 National Manufacturing Institute, 208 National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, 208 National Science Foundation, 52 National Survey of Student Engagement, 243 Navy, U.S., 53, 123 Nebraska, University of, 26 Nelson, Ben, 133–35, 139, 181 Netflix, 131, 145 Netscape, 115, 126, 128, 129, 204–5 Newell, Albert, 79, 105 New Jersey, College of, 23 Newman, John Henry, 27–29, 47, 49, 244 Newman Report (1971), 56 Newton, Isaac, 190 New York, State University of, Binghamton, 183–84 New York City public schools, 1, 44 New York Times, 9, 44, 56–57, 107–8, 149, 170 New York University (NYU), 9, 64, 96, 250 Ng, Andrew, 153, 158 Nicomachean Ethics (Aristotle), 17 Nimitz, Admiral Chester W., 90 NLS/Augment, 125 Nobel Prize, 3, 45, 59, 78, 80, 176 Northeastern University, 64 Northern Arizona University, 229–30 Health and Learning Center, 230 Northern Iowa, University of, 55 Norvig, Peter, 149, 170, 227–28, 232 Notre Dame (Paris), cathedral school at, 18 Nurkiewicz, Tomasz, 218 Obama, Barack, 2 Oberlin College, 46 O’Brien, Conan, 166 Oklahoma, University of, 90 Omdurman Islamic University, 88 oNLine system, 125–26 Open Badges, 207 Open source materials and software, 177, 205–6, 215, 223, 232 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, 9, 224 Overeducated American, The (Freeman), 56 Oxford University, 19, 21, 23, 24, 92, 135 Packard, David, 123 Parkinson’s disease, 70 Paris, University of, 18–19, 21, 137 Pauli, Wolfgang, 176 Pauling, Linus, 70 Pausch, Randy, 71–72 Peace Corps, 125 Pellar, Ronald (“Doctor Dante”), 208 Pell Grant Program, 56 Penguin Random House, 146 Pennsylvania, University of, 23, 24, 31 Wharton Business School, 155 Pennsylvania State University, 53 People magazine, 57 Pez dispensers, 146 Phaedrus (Socrates), 20, 98 PhDs, 7, 55, 117, 141, 193, 237, 250, 254 adjunct faculty replacing, 252 college rankings based on number of scholars with, 59 regional universities and community colleges and, 60, 64, 253 as requirement for teaching in hybrid universities, 31–33, 35, 50, 60, 224 Silicon Valley attitude toward, 66 Philadelphia, College of, 23 Philip of Macedon, 92 Phoenix, University of, 114 Piaget, Jean, 84, 227 Piazza, 132 Pittsburgh, University of, 73–76 Pixar, 146 Planck, Max, 45 Plato, 16, 17, 21, 31, 44, 250–51 Portman, Natalie, 165 Powell, Walter, 50, 117 Princeton University, 1–2, 23, 112, 134, 161, 245 Principia (Newton), 190 Protestantism, 24 Public universities, 7, 55, 177, 224, 253 Purdue University, 96, 208 Puritans, 22–24 Queens College, 23 Quizlet, 133 Rafter, 131–32 Raphael, 16, 17 Reader’s Guide to Periodical Literature, 87 Reagan, Ronald, 56 Regional universities, 55, 60, 64 Reid, Harry, 42 Renaissance, 19 Rhode Island, College of, 23 Rhodes Scholarships, 2 Rice University, 204 RNA, 3 Rockstar Games, 230 Roksa, Josipa, 9, 36, 85, 244 Romans, ancient, 16 Roosevelt, Theodore, 165 Ruby on Rails Web development framework, 144 Rutgers University, 23 Sample, Steven, 64 Samsung, 146 San Jose State University, 177 Sandel, Michael, 177 SAT scores, 63, 136–37, 171, 195, 213 Saylor, Michael, 186–93, 199, 201 Saylor.org, 191, 223, 231 Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph, 45 School of Athens, The (Raphael), 16 Schopenhauer, Arthur, 45 Science: The Endless Frontier (Bush), 51 Scientific American, 92, 155 Scientific Research and Development, U.S.
Android Developer Tools Essentials: Android Studio to Zipalign
by
Mike Wolfson
and
Donn Felker
Published 13 Aug 2013
He currently runs the local Google Developer Group, and has been a lifelong supporter of a variety of other group learning activities. He has spoken about Android and mobile development at a variety of conferences and user groups. When he is not geeking out about phones, he enjoys the outdoors (snowboarding, hiking, scuba diving), collecting PEZ dispensers, and chasing his young (but quick) daughter. Colophon The animal on the cover of Android Developer Tools Essentials is a cassowary (genus Casuarius), a large, flightless bird that is native to the rainforests of New Guinea and Australia. This genus consists of three species: one is extinct and the rest are living but endangered.
Dual Transformation: How to Reposition Today's Business While Creating the Future
by
Scott D. Anthony
and
Mark W. Johnson
Published 27 Mar 2017
A dozen years after its founding, Facebook stood as one of the ten most valuable companies in the world. eBay. eBay has one of the best origin stories of the past few decades, although, like many origin stories, the popular version isn’t quite true. The story goes that founder Pierre Omidyar was looking to help his wife sell her Pez dispensers (a collectible plastic device that dishes out not particularly good candy), so he founded eBay. Although Omidyar has since admitted that the story was created largely for marketing purposes, there is no doubt that eBay’s disruptive model of the online matching of buyers and sellers of all types of goods played a major role in disrupting the classifieds industry, creating a booming business that went from first-year revenues of $232,000 (everything big starts small) to $1 billion in only four years.
The Growth Delusion: Wealth, Poverty, and the Well-Being of Nations
by
David Pilling
Published 30 Jan 2018
If oil is money in nature’s savings vault, the Bank of the North Sea is about to go bust. 12 THE LORD OF HAPPINESS A common way economists determine how much something is worth is by applying what is known as the willingness to pay principle. How much would someone be willing to pay for a tangible thing, such as a plastic Pez dispenser, or an intangible one, say an unpolluted bay or more time off work? How much, for example, is the head of Jeremy Bentham, the great English philosopher who died in 1832, worth? This book is chock-full of skepticism about the value we attach to certain things and about the difficulty of pricing things we really should be measuring, like pollution, housework, and nature.
My Shit Life So Far
by
Frankie Boyle
Published 30 Sep 2009
We all kept talking about having an ‘abs challenge’, the idea being that knowing we’d have to display ourselves to the office meant we’d get rid of our bellies. We all secretly knew that our devotion to Nando’s would have made any such contest a blasphemous obscenity. I think Jimmy would win that nowadays as he has lost quite a lot of weight. Sadly none of it off his head, so he looks like a fucking Pez dispenser. Recently, I was doing a guest appearance on a show and ran into one of the guys I’d worked with on Cats. He told me about a joke they’d written about the Special Olympics that hadn’t got in. ‘At the Special Olympics this week, somebody was injured during the hammer throwing. But nobody could work out who it was.’
Start-Up Nation: The Story of Israel's Economic Miracle
by
Dan Senor
and
Saul Singer
Published 3 Nov 2009
He did not look like he had the moxie of even a typical PayPal junior engineer. But Thompson wasn’t going to say no to this meeting, not when Benchmark Capital had requested it. Benchmark had made a seed investment in eBay, back when it was being run out of the founders’ apartment as a quirky exchange site for collectible Pez dispensers. Today, eBay is an $18 billion public company with sixteen thousand employees around the world. It’s also PayPal’s parent company. Benchmark was considering an investment in Shaked’s company, Israel-based Fraud Sciences. To help with due diligence, the Benchmark partners asked Thompson, who knew a thing or two about e-fraud, to check Shaked out.
Lethal Passage
by
Erik Larson
Published 27 Jul 2011
Each clip was long, slender, and gray, with a powerful spring that forced the stacked cartridges upward after the topmost round was fired and stripped away. The clips, also known as magazines or, in gunspeak, simply “mags,” were designed to inject bullets into the Cobray’s receiver much the way a kid’s Pez dispenser keeps presenting new blocks of candy. To a cynic, God may have seemed suspiciously absent from Atlantic Shores that morning. The faithful, however, believe that God did indeed intercede, at the point where Nicholas chose that first clip. Forensic investigators later test-fired Nicholas’s gun repeatedly, inserting each of the six magazines.
The Joy of Less, A Minimalist Living Guide: How to Declutter, Organize, and Simplify Your Life
by
Francine Jay
We find it hard to declutter these items because of the memories and emotions attached to them—as if parting with them means giving up part of our lives. But we all know that’s not true! Getting rid of your old football jersey won’t make you any less of an athlete, and tossing the leftover favors from your wedding won’t invalidate your marriage. Likewise, selling your collection of Pez dispensers won’t erase the fun you had hunting for them at flea markets. We just have to understand that the events and experiences of our lives are not embodied in these objects. While things can be broken, tarnished, or taken away, the memories they represent persist—with or without them. With that in mind, let’s consider a few categories of sentimental items that can trip us up while we’re decluttering.
Emergence
by
Steven Johnson
The top auctions, the highly rated buyers-and-sellers lists, the user feedback, the communities formed around specific categories like Stamp Collecting or Consumer Electronics, the regional filters, the lists of new offerings from people you’ve bought from before—all of these are attempts to make patterns of group behavior transparent to individual users, the way a city neighborhood makes comparable patterns visible to its residents. EBay’s founder, Pierre Omidyar, originally created the site to enable his wife to trade Pez Dispensers with other Pez fanatics worldwide; six years later the site harbors thousands of similar microcommunities, united by shared interests. If eBay had restricted itself to showcasing the collector’s items that happened to be in vogue that month—Beanie Babies or PlayStation 2—the results wouldn’t have looked all that different from your traditional shopping mall.
JPod
by
Douglas Coupland
Published 30 Apr 2007
Here it is: Ronald was attending his one-billionth birthday party in a suburban basement, handing out little cups of orange drink to churlish brats. He looked up the stairs briefly and saw the kids' mothers in the kitchen, drinking martinis and making jokes at his expense. He abandoned the kids to confront them. "If you've got something to say, then say it to my face." The mothers giggled. I mean, this was a living Pez dispenser suddenly in their faces. "Relax. We were just having fun." "Fun is my business, lady. I know fun. Those cracks you were making aren't fun. There's a sensitive soul beneath this greasepaint." "Were you born with all of that shit on?" Another mother asked, "What do you do when you get home—leave your makeup on and eat TV dinners and make prank phone calls?"
How to Be the Startup Hero: A Guide and Textbook for Entrepreneurs and Aspiring Entrepreneurs
by
Tim Draper
Published 18 Dec 2017
Stick your neck out for issues that you think are controversial, but you know you are on the right side of them, for example, "Why do we trust fiat currency now?" or "Who needs a teacher when you have VR?" Be a continued source of stories. "I bought it on eBay" was the best example of this. The press kept writing stories every time someone sold something interesting on eBay. Stories went out about everything from Pez dispensers to nuclear power plants to houses to cars and eBay kept the stories coming. I remember when I was running the school voucher initiative, an education writer pulled me aside and said, “We can’t really write you a balanced piece because we need the stream of stories that we get from teachers’ unions, and they are clearly opposed to what you are doing.
Work! Consume! Die!
by
Frankie Boyle
Published 12 Oct 2011
Ian Huntley had his throat slashed by another con. Looking on the bright side, he can now wear his tongue as a tie to parole hearings. Prison staff and surgeons did everything they could, but Huntley still survived the attack. Doctors weren’t sure whether to stitch his throat up or fill him with sweets and use him as a Pez dispenser. To prevent Huntley from using his neck to smuggle contraband, surgeons have made it easier to search him. If a warden steps on his foot, then his head flips open like a pedal bin. The man who attacked him was very angry. You know how these environmentalists get with people who choose to fill their baths instead of using a shower.
Reinventing the Bazaar: A Natural History of Markets
by
John McMillan
Published 1 Jan 2002
At the internet auction site eBay, for example, bidders feverishly compete for everything from junk to high art. It all began in 1995, when Pierre Omidyar set up a web site called AuctionWeb for people wanting to exchange information about collectibles and to make trades. Legend has it that his initial goal was to sell his girl-friend’s collection of Pez dispensers. The site’s services were initially offered free of charge, as a service to the public. After six months’ explosive growth in usage, based on word-of-mouth recommendations, Omidyar began charging a fee, a small percentage of the sale price, to cover his costs of running the web site. Payment was left up to the honesty of the seller, but the checks rolled in.
Forward: Notes on the Future of Our Democracy
by
Andrew Yang
Published 15 Nov 2021
The agency is headquartered on two floors of an 1870s town house blocks away from the White House that was once briefly the residence of Theodore Roosevelt. It doesn’t look like a typical government office. It is adorned with crab-themed decorations of the agency’s unofficial mascot, Mollie the Crab, presidential Pez dispensers, and cleverly hidden White House Easter eggs. The “Oval Office” where they have meetings is a storage room in the basement that doubles as a server farm. The USDS members wear jeans and T-shirts, with a button-down qualifying as being dressed up. “We have a much faster hiring process than most federal agencies.
Merchants of the Right: Gun Sellers and the Crisis of American Democracy
by
Jennifer Carlson
Published 2 May 2023
To illustrate just how much they broke the mold of the typical gun owner, he offered this anecdote of an older gay man: “I had a sixty-year-old man [in the gun store] … he’d never seen a gun in his life. A real gun. And he got it on the counter, and for 10 minutes he stared at it, and then he asked me if it was going to go off. And then he wanted to know if it was loaded. And I said, ‘You mean like a Pez dispenser?’ And you know, we kind of laughed, and he actually became a client—he and his husband came out [to train]. So, an atypical population.” Several gun sellers highlighted the increase in women gun buyers. Perhaps this rise seemed particularly palpable to gun sellers because it followed decades of efforts by gun rights advocates to court women60 as gun owners, as well as the increasing space for conservative women to adopt a hardened femininity (think: Sarah Palin’s Mama Grizzly61).
Nerds on Wall Street: Math, Machines and Wired Markets
by
David J. Leinweber
Published 31 Dec 2008
When every other customer complains about meeting a man with a stomach pump, you’re better off packing your own lunch. Markets themselves are a form of collective intelligence (CI), and since transactions occur, they clearly arrive at prices seen as fair by buyers and sellers alike for everything from stocks to Pez dispensers (the first eBay merchandise). A recent book by James Surowiecki, The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations (Random House, 2004) has nearly 300 pages of examples of group wisdom. One such example is the television quiz show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.
Rust: The Longest War
by
Jonathan Waldman
Published 10 Mar 2015
He worried about damaged military equipment, and, seeing a photo of a flooded New York City subway, said there was saltwater in all kinds of undiscovered places—that we’d find out about it years hence. “I just hope they consult us, include us in the contracts,” he said. He carried his things into his Ford Excursion—the V10 behemoth, he called it—and loaded them in the trunk. On his way to Florida, his trunk had been full of Star Trek paraphernalia: a McCoy model, a set of Star Trek Pez dispensers, a door chime à la Starship Enterprise, a big blue foam “live long and prosper” hand, and ten more figurines and scenes and toys from the show. He’d given them all to Stacey Cook for Christmas. Now he had a large 3-D television, for corrosion education purposes, in their place. Dunmire dropped me off at the Orlando airport.
eBoys
by
Randall E. Stross
Published 30 Oct 2008
As the code did the work and the space on the Web server came with his account, it cost him nothing out-of-pocket to provide. He conceived of it as a public service, offered free to whoever wished to use it. Omidyar would later tell feature-story reporters that eBay’s origins were the chance result of a conversation with his girlfriend, a collector of Pez dispensers, who asked him one evening at dinner if there was a way he could set up a website for collectors like her. There is a more interesting story that reveals, in microcosm, the combined elements of business and technology that defined that historical moment. Omidyar’s apartment, with its dial-up connection to the Internet, theoretically could have been anywhere in the world, but in fact, it indeed mattered that it was situated in Silicon Valley.
Unconventional Success: A Fundamental Approach to Personal Investment
by
David F. Swensen
Published 8 Aug 2005
Only if investors generate top-quartile, or even top-decile results do returns suffice to compensate for the risks incurred. The Glamorous Appeal of Venture Capital In September 1995, Pierre Omidyar, a French-born Iranian immigrant, started an online auction site, ostensibly to help his girlfriend sell her collection of Pez dispensers. Even though by late 1996 the business expanded nicely and produced solid profits, the company’s founder decided to seek outside assistance. Two years after the humble beginnings of the company now named eBay, Omidyar invited venture capital provider Benchmark Capital to make an investment and join the board.
How to Murder Your Life: A Memoir
by
Cat Marnell
Published 30 Jan 2017
I was trying not to scream. “The kids’ movie?!” “My grandson and I loved it!” Dr. C. chuckled. “Please,” I begged. “Tranquilizers!” Dr. C. prescribed Seroquel, an antipsychotic, and Xanax bars—those are two milligrams each. I took so many of the latter that I might as well have put them in a Pez dispenser. Combining the two medications knocked me out like a punch to the head and kept me blacked out for hours with my boots on, all the lights burning, and the Dustbuster tucked under my arm. But suddenly getting up in the morning was so hard. My bed felt like a wad of gum. I don’t want to go to work, I’d think as my alarms went off . . . and off . . . and off.
Secrets and Lies: Digital Security in a Networked World
by
Bruce Schneier
Published 1 Jan 2000
Blowing the Death Star to bits (step five) effectively eliminated any chance of retaliation, at least until the sequel. After that, getting away was easy. Our heroes get medals from a rebel alliance whose cash balance was high enough to afford new uniforms, and the universe is saved for a new series of themed PEZ dispensers. Roll credits. It’s not much different to attack a company’s computers via the Internet. Step 1 is to identify the target and gather information. This is surprisingly easy. The target’s Web site will contain all sorts of information, as do various Internet databases like the one run by Network Solutions.
All the Money in the World
by
Peter W. Bernstein
Published 17 Dec 2008
Millay points to white elephants that sucked up cash, including the Breakers, the Vanderbilts’ Newport summer home, which was sold to the Preservation Society of Newport County in 1973, and the magnificent Biltmore mansion, originally built on 125,000 acres in North Carolina by George Washington Vanderbilt, which survives today as a tourist attraction (albeit a lucrative one) for his heirs. In contrast, Pocantico Hills, the Rockefeller estate in Westchester County, New York, is a mere 3,400 acres—but it remains in the family. * * * 2001 from the pages of Forbes Pierre Omidyar allegedly created eBay in 1995 so his girlfriend could trade Pez dispensers—a story subsequently revealed as a publicity ploy. (2001 net worth: $4.6 billion) Joseph Ricketts of discount brokerage Ameritrade makes annual pilgrimages to the famed Sturgis, South Dakota, motorcycle rally. (2001 net worth: $850 million) Jerral Wayne Jones, Texas oilman and owner of the Dallas Cowboys, claims to have lost fifty-five pounds just by giving up cheeseburgers and beer. (2001 net worth: $850 million) William Morean, whose fortune comes from computer outsourcing, was briefly a bush pilot in Alaska and also swept floors for his dad. (1999 net worth: $1 billion) * * * * * * The Eyrie “Folly” Every summer for decades, the Rockefeller family would gather at the Eyrie, their hundred-room mansion on Mount Desert Island, Maine, less than ten miles from New England’s fashionable Bar Harbor resort and the stunningly gorgeous Acadia National Park, which an ancestor helped create.
Shape: The Hidden Geometry of Information, Biology, Strategy, Democracy, and Everything Else
by
Jordan Ellenberg
Published 14 May 2021
Louis almost never happened, because when Ross learned his panel was to include the Roman physician Angelo Celli, he immediately canceled his trip, to be coaxed back only after being assured by telegram that Celli had been persuaded to withdraw. Ross was knighted, he was given the directorship of a scientific institute named after him, he collected scientific honors like they were vintage Pez dispensers, but the hole was never filled. He spent years, though under no financial strain, publicly campaigning for Parliament to award him a monetary prize for his contribution to public health. Edward Jenner had gotten one in 1807 for developing the smallpox vaccine, and Ross felt he deserved no less.
Valley of Genius: The Uncensored History of Silicon Valley (As Told by the Hackers, Founders, and Freaks Who Made It Boom)
by
Adam Fisher
Published 9 Jul 2018
She’s going through all her stuff that she’s just bought and realizes that she forgot one. She missed one, so she insisted that he turn the car around… Michael Malone: And Pierre said, “Let’s figure out a way to find these things,” blah blah blah blah, “and buy and sell them.” It wasn’t quite a myth—I mean I’m sure there was a Pez dispenser or two in there. Pierre Omidyar: That was part of the inspiration, but frankly it was a small part of it for me… The birth of the idea is definitely a media-enhanced story. Michael Malone: Basically they were just looking at “How do we build a place where you can do auctions?” And once again they weren’t the first.
Moon Oregon Trail Road Trip: Historic Sites, Small Towns, and Scenic Landscapes Along the Legendary Westward Route
by
Katrina Emery
and
Moon Travel Guides
Published 27 Jul 2020
The father of rock-and-roll Chuck Berry himself performed his famous duck walk on the stage at monthly concerts in the 1990s, and these days, several nights a week, the venue still hosts top performers on multiple stages. Grab a bite to eat and enjoy all the pop culture memorabilia in every corner, including PEZ dispensers, jukeboxes, and historical photos. The Muny (1 Theatre Dr., 314/361-1900, www.muny.org, mid-June-mid-Aug., $15-105) is an outdoor theater that puts on a roster of concerts in Forest Park during the summer. Tickets are available online, but if you don’t grab one ahead of time, keep in mind that the last nine rows of the amphitheater are held on a first-come, first-served basis.
Rough Guide to San Francisco and the Bay Area
by
Nick Edwards
and
Mark Ellwood
Published 2 Jan 2009
. *-- 3 (& 1" -B)POEB 4"/ +04& #65"/0 45"5&1"3, 1JHFPO1PJOU -JHIUIPVTF "º0/6&70 3&4&37& -PT"OHFMFT(JMSPZ 1FTDBEFSP 1"$*'*$ 0$&"/ | South along the Bay 4BO(SFHPSJP #FBDI %6 5 "3 The Pe n i ns ul a .POUBSB -JHIUIPVTF 5)&1&/*/46-" 4BOUB$SV[ 4BOUB$SV[ 10am–6pm; $3; t 650/347-2301, w www.burlingamepezmuseum.com), 214 California Drive, home to all 600 or so Pez dispensers in existence, as well as other rare toys and games. The educational Coyote Point Museum (Tues–Sat 10am–5pm, Sun noon–5pm; $6; t 650/342-7755, w www.coyoteptmuseum.org) is located in the large bayside Coyote Point Park ($5 per vehicle) several miles further south, off Poplar Avenue, San Mateo.