Spain is going to grant citizenship to 1.5 million grandchildren of civil war exiles. The news came as a surprise. Although I myself am an Argentine immigrant, am in favor of immigration, supported the PSOE in their amnesty and am sure that things would be going much worse for Spain had it not welcomed 4 million immigrants since the year 2000, I believe that this measure is a mistake by the government. There are two main reasons for this: one is the criterion for selection, as only one out of four grandparents needs to have been exiled; the other is the idea itself: welcoming many new Spaniards during a period in which things in general are going pretty poorly for Spain, and it is simply not capable of receiving many new immigrants without jobs and a nationality. Moreover this measure stands in great contrast with other government measures in which residents in Spain are given rewards to return to their country.
Potentially allowing 20% more immigrants to enter the country, chosen because of who their grandparents were, abandons the concept of meritocracy in practice until now, which says that an immigrant has to have a work contract. With respect to immigrants, Spain needs to have a selection criterion that has more to do with who they are today and not so much who one of their deceased grandparents was. There is no doubt in my mind that it was an enormous injustice that so many Spaniards had to emigrate more than 70 years ago. What is not very clear to me is how there is a stronger connection between that – in most cases – already deceased person that had to leave and his or her grandchild than there is, for example, between a current Argentinean resident of Spain and his own family, whom he cannot bring, even though he already lives in Spain and contributes to the country. I understand the concept of citizenship passing from parents to their children, especially because it is about the reunification of family, but passing it from a grandparent to all of his or her offspring is an idea that – although beautiful – ends up producing an enormous pool of possible candidates without job offers whom, at this time, Spain simply cannot take in.
What’s more, if the idea is to link immigration with family, then to me the case of the immigrant with a deceased grandparent who was exiled is much less convincing than the case of a husband or wife who wants to have citizenship and bring his or her living spouse or children now. It doesn’t make sense to think about an injustice that occurred 75 years ago and forget about a current one. In other countries, immigration is seen as a quota issue, and the best way to fill said quota is sought. While I do believe that a tremendous injustice was committed by Franco 3 generations ago I believe that a new one is being made today if nationality is not granted first to those foreigners now working in Spain who are not allowed to bring their loved ones.
2008 3
YouTube: yes to violence, no to nudity
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in General with No Comments
YouTube´s new moral guidelines are suprising. In America, people confuse nudity with pornography and it is unfortunate that YouTube is a global site so we all have to live by American standards. In America, as opposed to Europe, nudity is a no-no. But then when it gets to violence anything goes. I don´t think much should be censored on YouTube. If it was up to me I would territorialize it, not censor it. But if I was forced to censor I would ban graphic violence way ahead of nudity. Seeing people die, people tortured, corpses, real war scenes, shocks me much more than seeing people naked.
2008 3
Why do many in America want to save all of the Big Three?
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Why do the Big Three automakers lobby together and be saved together? If the problem is over investment, or lack of demand, wouldn´t it be smarter to save two out of the three? If one goes under the other two are automatically healthier. And then the opposite is true. Saving three is costlier and more risky so sentiment maybe so negative that then none are saved. That would also be a mistake.
2008 2
BT doubles WiFi usage together with Fon
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Here´s an article describing how BT has double WiFi usage working together with Fon.
2008 2
Facebook: I studied Entrepreneurship with Martin Varsavsky
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Pietro Saccomani, my TA of last year at my entrepreneurship class has started a group in Facebook that is called I studied entrepreneurship with Martin Varsavsky. If you were ever a student of mine please feel free to join. Thank you XL for the recommendation to start this group. In theory there could be over 500 people who have studied with me in the last 10 years at IE. But students are all over the world now and I don´t really know how to reach them other than blogging about this group.
2008 2
Kevin Rose: when your competitor makes you famous
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Image via Wikipedia
I met Kevin Rose co founder of Digg and Pownce a couple of times. I found him smart, funny and engaging. I signed up for Pownce after we met, over a year ago. But now Pownce is shutting down. I just woke up in Madrid with this email from them.
We are sad to announce that Pownce is shutting down on December 15,
2008. As of today, Pownce will no longer be accepting new users or new
pro accounts.
To help with your transition, we have built an export tool so you can
save your content. You can find the export tool at Settings > Export.
Please export your content by December 15, 2008, as the site will not
be accessible after this date.
Please visit our new home to find out more:
http://www.sixapart.com/pownce
Our thanks go out to everyone who contributed to the Pownce community,
The Pownce Crew
Pownce was supposed to be a “better Twitter” but Kevin, founder of Pownce has become extremely famous on …Twitter. To me that is as if Steve Jobs used Blackberry as his main communication platform. Not good. Because as raw communication power goes with over 75K followers on Twitter (I only have 2500) Kevin is a walking PR machine. This ranking will give you a sense of how famous Kevin is on Twitter. He is only second to Barack Obama! Pity he could not use that power and the promotional tools of Digg (Diggnation) to make Pownce the success it could have been. And Twitter itself, as popular as it is, still needs to achieve two milestones: one is to get out of the geek community itself and truly go mainstream, and the other is to find a way to charge for its services. Charging for sending SMS would be a start. As the financial crisis continues and VC´s stop funding fame and finally seek fortune, Silicon Valley´s new motto will be “earn or die”.
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2008 1
Casavars, my home in Madrid
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For those interested in architecture….
2008 1
Aura Biosciences moves in!
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I am pleased to announce that Aura Biosciences a US/Spanish biotech company that is developing ground breaking nanotechnology for the targeted delivery of drugs has moved to the offices of Jazzya, my holding company. The company was founded by my former student Elisabet de los Pinos and has developed the Nanotsmart Technology. Aura joins mobile internet start up Tooio who just raised 1.5 million euros in spite of extremely adverse market conditions and is also at our offices.
Nanosmart uses the advantage of viruses that can cross the membrane and deliver the therapeutic load into the cells. Unlike other technologies which use full viruses with their genetic material which is a big bio-safety issue, the Nanosmart structure is a hollow nanoparticle that resembles the viral shell but does not carry any viral genome making it a safe and disrupting technology for the delivery of a wide array of drugs and novel molecules like siRNA and microRNA.
In the field of Oncology Nanosmart enables the selective delivery of classic chemotherapy drugs. Chemotherapy drugs have been selected for their activity against proliferating cells but they do not discriminate between normal cells and tumor cells undergoing rapid division; this drugs cause unspecific damage (hair and nail loss, nausea, vomit and ulcer) side effects which can be life threatening. Nanosmart allows the chemotherapy to target only tumor cells thus enhancing its efficacy and reducing the side effects due to its systemic exposure. Chemotherapy drugs represent a market of 9.6 billion USD in the seven major markets and it is expected that this products will lose patent protection within the next five years.
After founding Medicorp Sciences while at school in 1985 but having been out of the company for many years now it is great to be back in contact with the sector and be able to help Aura put together their business strategy.
This is a video showing how Nanosmart works:
2008 1
FON Maps for the iPhone
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FON has a great web application called FON Maps that lets you search for bars, restaurants and other FON Spots in your neighborhood or in the city you are visiting. FON Maps on the web are great when you can plan your trips, but many Foneros asked us about ways to access FON Maps from their mobile phones, to find the nearest FON Spot when they really need it.
Today I’m happy to announce FON Maps is now an iPhone application that lets you see on a map all the Fon Spots near you, so anytime you can quickly know where to go to enjoy free WiFi. You can get it on the AppStore.
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2008 1
Outdoor Foneras under development
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Here are a few pictures of a ruggedized Fonera for outdoor deployments. We built it with one of our Asian partners and we are now testing it. This is not a product announcement. As my readers know this is my blog and I share R&D projects as they evolve. But we have had a lot of requests for outdoor foneras and we are working on the concept.
