Let's hope for the sake of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers' limited partners that new partner Bill Joy hasn't been put in charge of meetings. If his discussion at the AlwaysOn conference is any indication, they would be esoteric, long and boring affairs with few decisions being made.

Amidst the blarney, he espoused his interest in energy technology startups, but when pushed by moderator and Draper Fisher Jurvetson managing director Steve Jurvetson about it, he refused to discuss specifics because he said that all of Kleiner's investments in the area are still in stealth mode. He also professed an interested in material sciences startups, but again, provided no detail.

Instead of practical information, most of the time was spent defining the "Six Faces of the Web". The first is "near", the second is "far" and the third is "now". Then it got weird. Literally. The fourth face of the web is "weird". The fifth is "peer to peer" and the sixth is "device to device." I have no idea what any of this means. Surrounding it all, were the use of advanced words such as modality and consilience, as well as references to Aristotle, and other hard to digest gems such as:

*     "The world is an embedded sensor net"
*     "Predicates are better than categories"
*     "Cells are marvelous molecular assemblers so we're made of them essentially"

Before conference host Tony Perkins advised bulletin board participants to "be kind", observers razzed Bill Joy on the online bulletin board with comments such as:

*     "Bill, a mind is a terrible thing to lose"
*     "Bill must be really fun at a dinner party"
*     "This is clearly a Bill Joy imposter, talking to his shoes"
*     "I'm still processing the Aristotle comment - not sure I would agree with his interpretation"
*     "Bill's aim is clearly to get to the bar ... been at it a bit too much, it appears"

To be fair, some people enjoyed the talk. Chris Heuer, for example, wrote to the hecklers on the online bulleting board, "If you listen and think about it instead of ranting, you might find the relevance."

After all, Joy is a great innovator and visionary. And maybe that's just it. Maybe, that explains why he is the way he is. — Joshua Jaffe

alwayson2005

Go to Jurvestson's blog
Read InfoWorld's account of the Joy talk
Go to Denise Howell's photo album of the AlwaysOn conference
Go to the AlwaysOn webcast

Video of Joshua Jaffe's interviews from the conference (Mouse over thumbnail images or double click to watch):