Disintermediation and blockchain...a little wonky

China Club Discussion February 7, 2018

Digital intermediation

As a conceptual ‘lens’ through which to foresee fundamental changes…or is the future pretty random?

This is to be, hopefully, a ‘beyond Trump’ discussion about the future in the conviction that our country is resilient enough to survive the horror of his presidency...not to digress into the political, of course.

So for our purposes tonight, I want to mean by ‘digital intermediation’: the supplanting of the role of the middleman in economic and social transactions by some form of new digital entity.

‘Middlemen’ were the necessary economic innovation to overcome limitations to interactions created by physical distances, the span of control between business and customer and citizen and government, and perhaps a general philosophical bias toward decentralization. Examples of middlemen are: The local drug store is a traditional middleman between you and the drug manufacturer. Online Internet-based websites offer mail order drugs and disintermediate the local drug store and the local pharmacist.

These ‘necessary’ intermediate entities, while a solution at the time, have often become the sources of additional cost and inertia...they naturally resist change and slow adaptation to disruptive technologies… while, at the same time, often offering convenience and diversity.

But the overwhelming cost and convenience advantages of new digital technology has powered a momentum that often overcomes the inertia of intermediates...hence the advent of ‘disintermediation’ which, in the opinion of most writers that I read, is a positive, technological, innovation, not a ‘luddite’ curse.

But ‘cutting out the middleman’ by automated digital processes often results in uniformity and commoditization. Counterintuitively, digital disintermediation often increases the personalization of a service or product, for example, the website digital process is able to check a new prescription easily against all of a customer's prescriptions to determine if one interferes with another.

I propose this ‘lens’ of dis- and re-intermediation’ as an analytic tool, but I do not pretend that it is some ‘silver bullet’ or ‘fundamental principle’ that explains all and solves all… rather it's a concept that might enable interpretation of the technological trends that profoundly influences the future…

and the idea of intermediation as a tool is not original...the subject is written about widely.

Plus to make such a claim would ignore the wisdom of the old aphorism: “If the only tool is a hammer, then every problem is a nail.”...attributed to Abraham Maslow and sometimes to Mark Twain who often is assigned credit for pithy sayings that he never made.

A classic...and current... example of the ‘removal of the middleman’ or ‘disintermediation’ is Tesla which sells its cars via the internet directly to customers negating any requirement for local sales showrooms. But local dealers also service cars and resell used ones...so Tesla will offer regional service centers supplemented by mobile service vans. Resale will be via the Internet...an example of substitution of intermediaries.

Netflix now produces movies and streams them directly bypassing movie theaters.

Geico and Progressive have made the life of local insurance salesman miserable and often obsolete.

An example of substitution of one intermediary for another is Amazon which offers, famously, its digital commerce Internet-based platform as an alternative to local bookstores and, of course, similarly, for many...maybe most... other products…

ATM’s disintermediated bank branches.

Quicken Loans has disintermediated local mortgage brokers.

Amtrak disintermediates its own ticket counters in train stations through its website.

MOOCs ...massive online courses...... disintermediate campus college courses. However, colleges face a supply and demand problem.

FundRise…...a local DC digital web-based platform, created by a son of Herb Miller, who developed Georgetown Park, facilitates small investments in residential real estate...thus disintermediating REITs.

The ‘Cloud’ is the disintermediation of in-house computer capability...Ross Perot started this trend of computing as a 'service' as early as the 1970s.

Even book publishing has been democratized by disintermediating self-publishing services such as are offered by Amazon.

I’m sure you can think of many more examples. It's hard to think of a collective activity that has not been impacted by ‘digital disintermediation.’

Middlemen who have not been disintermediated might be restaurants...although even restaurants are under attack by disintermediating competitors like Blue Apron, and hyper-locally by, for example in Washington, Via Umbria or Stachowski's or any PIzza deliverer.

And writers, athletes, lawyers, scientists, actors,...although animated films seem to me to be a threat..., stuntmen, physicians, ministers, rabbis, priests, and emans...TV evangelists are maybe an exception, and, of course, many people don’t want access to a higher being in any form …

Although many doctors and lawyers are at risk to AI which already reads x-ray images more reliably than a radiologist and certain surgical procedures performed more accurately than surgeons…

and Members of Congress and State Legislatures are intermediaries... perhaps desirable ones... to calm passions and to bring practicality to bear...perhaps not...although State level referenda are becoming a principal means of expressing popular will, prevalent especially in California.

Direct Internet-based voting would be the ultimate political disintermediation.

To create a context for our discussion maybe a paraphrase and shortening of the famous opening sentence of Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens might work: “today..this year...2018.. is the best of times and the worst of times….”

The best of times:

“Every day, the number of people around the world living in extreme poverty (less than about $2 a day) goes down by 217,000, according to calculations by Max Roser, an Oxford University economist who runs a website called Our World in Data. Every day, 325,000 more people gain access to electricity. And 300,000 more gain access to clean drinking water…...” Why 2017 Was the Best Year in Human History Nicholas Kristof in the New York Times

Homo Deus..a Brief History of Tomorrow Yuval Noah Harari

“If I could give each of you a graduation present, it would be this—the most inspiring book I've ever read." —Bill Gates (May, 2017) “Steven Pinker's point is that over the last thousand years, violence has gone down and people have gotten nicer. He sketches out possible causes for this but without ever going as far as saying violence has been conquered or that this or that institution will guarantee peace. Quite the contrary. Violence might return, and it would be foolish to be blind to that possibility. Nevertheless, it would be equally foolish to deny that things really are much better today than they were 100 years ago.“ The Better Angels of Our Nature Steven Pinker

So  the question must be asked: Is intermediation a factor in these ‘best of times?’

Quickly, the answer might be yes, while not digital so much but in general: Increased food production may be attributed to the disintermediation of small farmers and the improvement in world health to the disintermediation that resulted from formation of large agents such as drug companies (Pfizer), University Laboratories (Johns Hopkins), and centralized government support (NIH) and health care ‘insurance’ organizations such as Social Security.

And the worst of times...

Poverty... extreme poverty persists......in a capitalist economy ...is there really any alternative economic system today even contemplated..so don’t we have to deal with capitalism?

A potential advance toward a solution to extreme poverty in a capitalist system is the empowerment... by technology... of every human being in the world as an economic entity and the identification and credible recordation of each human being’s assets as well as liabilities….

Such a scheme is possible using BlockChain technology that disintermediates bureaucracies at all levels and smart cell phones as mobile depositories of identity as well as communication.

Read Hernando De Soto on ‘Dead Capital.’

Inequality of income and wealth...maybe the creation of a ‘birthright’...proportional ownership of the world’s net worth by each individual human being...

maybe something like a small value added tax on an economic activity such as financial transactions that funds ‘birthrights’ in the form of baby bonds that can be accessed at age 18 and used for a limited number of economic activities...to pay for education...a business start-up...a home…’Baby Bonds’ would disintermediate traditional social support programs…

(Baby Bonds are the name given to small denomination bonds that are exchange-traded and often have attractive yields..for example...at 5% yield a baby bond for each child born in the US would require the investment of ~$19K to create a fund of $50K at the end of 18 years.

About 4M babies are born each year in the US…$84B would be required to fund a baby bond for each child born in America that invested at 5% would be valued at $50K for each child in 18 years…$84B is about 2% of the $4T federal budget.

~130 Million babies are born in the world…$2.6T would be required each year to fund 130 Million baby bonds at ~$20K each year. The world’s wealth..that is its net worth... is estimated at $281 Trillion. A value-added tax of 2.6% on the world’s GDP of roughly $100T collected easily by taxing money transfers would fund a baby bond for all children born in the world each year.

Perhaps ‘birthrights’ are utopian...requiring political will never before exerted..but less utopian, maybe, when actual numbers are considered and means of funding identified..then the idea becomes at least ‘contemplate-able.’

Various universal basic income schemes are being tested around the world and it is technology and in particular, disintermediation that makes such schemes practically feasible, if not, in fact, politically adoptable. Practical, feasible implementation of a scheme is, I would argue, a ‘necessary’, if not sufficient, prerequisite to change...hence digital, technological, disintermediation plays a ‘huge’ ‘enabling’ role.

Global warming...the only solution may be a disintermediated global agreement between entities other than or in addition to national governments... when the US refuses to participate. Global warming, a transnational threat, is a classic example of a  free ‘market failure,’

Food availability.. Inadequate food availability has always been mostly a matter of distribution, not availability, but the creation of economic identifies for every person embodied in each individual’s smart cell phone can cause markets to come into being that reduces the distribution problem..

Healthcare….remote sensing and remote diagnosis and remote treatment plans implemented on smart cell phones disintermediates the lack of critical intermediary effects such as government health care support, physicians, and hospitals. Economic identities for individuals enable markets to be created to distribute drugs at affordable prices.

Infrastructure...public-private partnerships..as Trump via Cohen wants to do have some merit. Such a scheme leverages cheap federal money with private incentive schemes ... disintermediates the federal/state bureaucracies but more importantly the Congress...digital mediation enables taxing the revenue or capturing part of the revenue for the public so as to not enrich private companies, but gain the efficiency of private construction and profit incentives to manage well...best when there is a revenue stream earned from infrastructures like toll roads, air and sea ports and intercity train...water and sewer systems ..even schools.

Factory animal farming...The substitution of alternatives to animals as sources of food such as synthetic biology may triumph when compassion for animals has failed. Technology will create synthetic biology's that can be created from readily available local materials. This synthetic food will disintermediate the current system that relies upon ‘factory’ efficiencies to enable cheap food from animals.

Incarceration...the most pernicious of policies...recent data in states indicates crime rates decoupled from incarceration rates...phone apps would enable parolees to be monitored... disintermediating prisons...happy days

Guns...universal registration is easily done technologically..maybe universal gun management education is a more realistic achievable objective..

Syria/Yemen...both of these conflicts have... and will most likely to a greater extent.. become proxy wars...mediated by drones, cyberwar tactics, disinformation...all disintermediating ‘troops-on-the-ground’.

Cyber...all the intermediate computer-based systems that manage activities are vulnerable to criminals, accident, negligence, and state action

AI….the ultimate technology that has the potential to disintermediate humans

Nuclear War...remediation may be in order here..some mechanism between Trump and the trigger.

Gambling…NBA proposing a new federal law permitting gambling which will quickly migrate to the Internet disintermediating bookies etc, generating huge revenues, and enabling easy taxation..a tempting opportunity.

Drugs…If marijuana legalization extends rapidly to more states, interstate marketing of cannabis-based products will occur...already marijuana is packaged in so many forms and other drugs will soon follow. Already ‘Canadian’ pharmacies are disintermediating US controls. But Internet-based marketing is also a technological basis for regulating and taxing the sale of drugs.

National referenda...the ultimate disintermediation...Here’s a discussion. Internet voting which has many advantages is impossible, however, without a means of unequivocally establishing identity. Read this discussion of how a free-to-use universal identity protocol could be created along with existing public protocols.

So I would argue that intermediation..dis and re... may be such a pervasive trend fueled by technology that it can serve as a lens through which we can imagine the future and predict how we, as a species, might confront the ‘worst of times’ as, at the same time, we preserve the benefits of ‘technological progress’ that make 2018 the ‘best of times.’

Some salient realities to consider:

Many private corporations and even individuals have resources greater than many countries…read Roger Cohen on the disintermediation of nation-states by private companies.

The IOS economy.. which is entrepreneurial independent developers of apps for the iPhone... earned $25B last year greater revenue than McDonald's.

Blackrock manages 5.7 Trillion dollars of assets or 2% of the world’s assets...Besos’ fortune has been over $100 Billion...Entities other than governmental are major ‘factors.’

Oxfam says 82% of all wealth created in the last year went to the top 1%, while the bottom 50% saw no increase at all.

The net worth of the world is estimated to be $281 trillion...the population of the world is 7.8 Billion...the NW/person is $36K…..

in the US its $94 Trillion of net worth or $290K/person man, women, and child. These numbers often estimate asset values at book value or original cost rather than current market value...so net worth may be higher at the market.

Public entities don’t use double entry bookkeeping so we never see their net worth..that is assets minus liabilities when assets are often enormous but undervalued. The large unfunded debt that so concerns many pales into insignificance when compared to the value of the assets of the US…

For example, the US has about $150 Trillion in assets both private and public or for 340 million population so that’s $441K/capita....a 4% return on those assets would earn ~$18K/year.

So potential solutions via disintermediation and in some case re-intermediation.

Of course, the fundamental, essential, all-encompassing technology that enables disintermediation is the Internet...

But here’s the rub…

“Once the inspiration for utopian dreams of infinite libraries and global connectivity, the internet has seemingly become, over the past year, a universal scapegoat: the cause of almost every social ill that confronts us. Russian trolls destroy the democratic system with fake news on Facebook; hate speech flourishes on Twitter and Reddit; the vast fortunes of the geek elite worsen income equality. For many of us who participated in the early days of the web, the last few years have felt almost postlapsarian. The web had promised a new kind of egalitarian media, populated by small magazines, bloggers and self-organizing encyclopedias; the information titans that dominated mass culture in the 20th century would give way to a more decentralized system, defined by collaborative networks, not hierarchies and broadcast channels. The wider culture would come to mirror the peer-to-peer architecture of the internet itself. The web in those days was hardly a utopia — there were financial bubbles and spammers and a thousand other problems — but beneath those flaws, we assumed, there was an underlying story of progress.

Last year marked the point at which that narrative finally collapsed. The existence of internet skeptics is nothing new, of course; the difference now is that the critical voices increasingly belong to former enthusiasts. “We have to fix the internet,” Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs’s biographer, wrote in an essay published a few weeks after Donald Trump was elected president. “After 40 years, it has begun to corrode, both itself and us.” The former Google strategist James Williams told The Guardian: “The dynamics of the attention economy are structurally set up to undermine the human will.” In a blog post, Brad Burnham, a managing partner at Union Square Ventures, a top New York venture-capital firm, bemoaned the collateral damage from the quasi-monopolies of the digital age: “Publishers find themselves becoming commodity content suppliers in a sea of undifferentiated content in the Facebook news feed. Websites see their fortunes upended by small changes in Google’s search algorithms. And manufacturers watch helplessly as sales dwindle when Amazon decides to source products directly in China and redirect demand to their own products.” (Full disclosure: Burnham’s firm invested in a company I started in 2006; we have had no financial relationship since it sold in 2011.) Even Berners-Lee, the inventor of the web itself, wrote a blog post voicing his concerns that the advertising-based model of social media and search engines creates a climate where “misinformation, or ‘fake news,’ which is surprising, shocking or designed to appeal to our biases, can spread like wildfire.”

If you have the patience to read about and the interest in what I think is the most profound change in technology, read this article in the New York Times Magazine section for January 21st. It’s worth the time...it's the best exposition... that I’ve read... of the issue.

If you would be interested in a little more detail about the fact that while ‘free’ public protocols developed before the 90s are the basis for Internet connectivity, and that these protocols did not include a ‘user identity’ protocol and therefore encouraged the advertising-supported business models that dominate services offered via the Internet today, then read this. These models have enabled the creation of monster companies that profit from accumulated user data. The user is compensated by free services, but the value of the free services is not proportional to the profit from the data. Read here about an idea for remedying this state of affairs.

So the topic of tonight’s conversation is ‘digital intermediation’...is it a useful tool, and, if so, what predictions does it allow us to make with greater confidence, and if not, is there another way of thinking about the impact of technology in the future…..in addition to, of course, Evolutionary Psychology.

see also this discussion of Digital Identity Management

It is clear that I did not succeed fully in making at least 4 topics absolutely clear to everyone's satisfaction. I'll make another attempt by recommending 4 articles:

1. The history and extent and current funding of the Internet... Here is an excellent presentation by VOX

40 maps that explain the internet Where the internet came from, how it works, and how it's used by people around the world

2. Bitcoin....most were convinced that Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are nothing but scams... they may be, or, if not scams, simply fail, as new innovations often do, but the ideas...anonymity, transparency, security, decentralization... underlying Bitcoin, I predict, will survive in some form...again a good piece by VOX

Bitcoin, explained Timothy B. Lee Bitcoin is the world's first truly decentralized payment network, and advocates say it could revolutionize the f...

3. Blockchain...this is the public ledger technology that underlies Bitcoin and I think will become the next great innovation that is adopted widely...Take a look here.

Take a closer look at Blockchain technology (Infographic) There’s been a lot of noise recently about bitcoin, blockchain, and cryptocurrency. Some of it is hype, but some...

4. How would a company like Goldman Sachs use blockchain.....and what is this crazy-sounding idea of 'zero-knowledge proof' ...well read this

‘Mind-Boggling’ Math Could Make Blockchain Work for Wall Street Matthew Leising A major breakthrough in cryptography may have solved one of the biggest obstacles to using blockchain technology...

Marian McPartland

She died recently. She must have been in her 90s. I listened to her occasionally on NPR at the obscure hours when her 'piano jazz' show was on...like 3:30 PM on Sunday....or 11:30 PM at night. Here's a review of her music.

But I have a more personal recollection of her:

Shortly after I joined IBM, I began ...around late 1960 maybe...to travel to work at the Time Life Building around 6th avenue between 50th and 51st streets in New York. I was part of a team that developed the first 'autocoder'...a software system that translated an English language-like computer programming instructions into machine readable code...a so-called 'compiler.' 

At night I would wander around, rather than sit in a hotel room, and I landed at the Hickory House on 52nd street where Marian McPartland played regularly... seated at a grand piano elevated above a round bar that filled the entire room. She liked the lights...I learned from a bartender.... bright...so the atmosphere was not like a dark referential jazz club such as Charlie Byrd's...the Showboat Lounge...on Columbia Road in Adams Morgan in Washington, DC where during his sets no one moved ...even the waitresses sat quietly...often taking the time to smoke which was allowed.

Jazz had sort of moved by then originally from Harlem, then down to 52nd street, then on downtown to the village.

I went to the Hickory House often enough that Marian McPartland would recognize me...I went entirely during the week and still early in the evening. I was back home in Washington on the weekends with Katherine and the children. 

I would be conspicuous siting at the bar listening...often the only patron. One evening during a break, she stopped by my stool and said hello and I introduced myself and we talked for a few moments...a few awkward exchanges about how much I enjoyed her music and where was I from...you know the routine.

She was British...and I later learned that she had met and married an American GI musician during the war and had given up a classical piano career to come to the US and play jazz with him and then on her own.

Thereafter on some occasions she would acknowledge me and she seemed to remember my name...at least Jim...because she would mouth 'hello Jim' silently from her perch on the piano stool above me. I stopped going to the Hickory House, of course, as soon as the job at Time Life ran out, and I never saw her again in person, except once, until several years ago when Katherine and I and Judith and Marvin listened to her in the Rotunda of the National Gallery in Washington. I attempted to see her back stage, if I recall, but was unsuccessful.

Katherine and I became fans of Charlie Byrd

while we lived in Washington and listened to him fairly often at the Showboat Lounge. When we went to live in France and I returned maybe twice or three times a year to DC for a few days for business ...and having little to do in the evenings after work, I would call Felix Grant,

 

Felix Grant

who MC'ed a jazz program at WMAL in Washington for years and would often play Charlie Byrd's music, and ask him where Charlie Byrd was playing that evening. This was in the 1970's and it wasn't easy to find out because Charlie often played in some obscure club not carried in the papers.  We started to chat after several calls and he asked what other jazz performers I liked, and I said Marian McPartland.

Charlie Byrd had come under the influence of Django Reinhardt in Paris, during the war, took up the classical guitar and studied with Segovia. He still is my favorite jazz musician. Marian McPartland plays a light, almost classical, melodic jazz not so much in great favor of those who like Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, Mingus, or Miles Davis.

I probably called Felix Grant 10 times over almost 5 years.

In the early 80s, Charlie opened his own club...I think it was the "Byrd's Nest"...in Georgetown. 

I came to town shortly thereafter. Katherine would have stayed in Paris. Lauren was in school at Henri IV and Sloopy...our first Golden Retriever...was with us....Tripp and Chris would have been in college. I called Felix as usual.

 

Although his was a very popular radio program, he would often be in the studio there alone...maybe with an engineer.. and if you called the right number he would answer. In addition to telling me where Charlie was playing, we would chat for a few seconds and sometimes Marian McPartland's name would come up, although I never told him about the Hickory House.

By this time, he recognized my voice ...we had never met...and instead of telling me where Charlie was playing, he said...I have a surprise for you...Charlie has opened a new club...I was planning on attending after my show tonight...why don't you join us...he has a very special guest.

How could I resist, so I joined him at Charlie Byrd's place.

The surprise guest was Marian McPartland.

After her set, she and Charlie walked out from backstage and sat at what looked like a special "owner's" table...'stampt tisch' as the German's call it... in the club. Charlie immediately spotted Felix Grant...Felix was a well known personality to jazz performers and fans in those days, I recall, and motioned for him to come over.

Felix turned to me and said ...come on with me... I'll introduce you.

We go over to the table and Charlie introduced Felix to Marian... she knew 'of him' of course...and Felix in turn...with a certain satisfied look.. started to introduce Marian to me, when she interrupted him to say:

"Hello Jim...it's been a long time since the Hickory House."

Le Grand Vol

Le Grand Vol
Tu vas bien, Geem!

In the early 1980s when Katherine and I and Lauren still lived in Paris, Tripp was at university in Oregon,  Chris at Williams, Kath and Lauren were away for a week or so, and I was having 'un petit cafe cream tres chaud serré'...and 'une tartine tranchée verticalement'...tartines ...made from baguettes...are usually sliced horizontally... so 'verticalement', that is slicing the baguette to expose in each slice both a top and bottom ...and 'serré'...requesting that the barrister tighten the steel cup in which the ground coffee is contained a notche beyond normal to make the coffee stronger...at Bucheron...a cafe near Saint Paul Cathedral in Rue du Rivoli.

Tartine...'vertical'

Bucheron

I was reading Parapente Magazine to improve my French...it wasn't working... and to fuel my fantasy about parachuting from rugged terrain ...that is 'parapente' ...rather than jumping from an airplane.

St Paul

I came upon an ad in the magazine for a 3-day parapente school in a rural area of southern France somewhat near Avignon. I looked at a map in the magazine and I could see that I could get there by train and bus/taxi. On pure impulse, I got up from the table on the terrasse, paid the bill and found a pay phone booth on the corner and dialed the parapente school telephone number listed in the ad to determine if they would enroll a student with poor French. 

A young woman answered..."Bonjour, c'est Parapente du Sud au téléphone." 

I said: "C'est Jim Ingram. J'appelle de Paris, mais je suis américain. Comme c'est évident, je ne parle pas le français bien. Je voudrais m'inscrire à votre prochaine cours du week-end. Accepterez-vous une demande? 

Pensez-vous que je peux comprendre l'instruction?"

I said all this rapidly without waiting for interim answers, because I had mentally composed in advance and memorized this dialogue, and I was afraid that I would not be able to repeat it, if interrupted.

She said:...in English... with a perfect accent: "There is room in the class and last weekend there was an Englishman who survived."

A French person with a sense of humor...this is good ...and unusual, I thought.

Ok, maybe? Yes!

The class started the next day, so I went back to the apartment, packed a bag, including my new Sony video camera, and walked to Saint Paul to take the metro to Gare de Leon.

The train, after changes, arrived late in the evening at Sault...a really small village somewhere in the area east of Avignon near the Parque Nationciale Luberon.

The parapente school was located 18 kilometers from Sault. I saw a sign upon arrival advertising a hotel associated with the station. So I approached the 'desk' of the hotel ..an older women who probably owned and ran the hotel and served as 'check in' also... attended me...she was suspicious of me, I could tell, when I arrived without reservation or notice, although I would have thought that the arrival of travelers would be a frequent occurrence.

So my task was to book a room and arrange with her to help me find a means to take me to the school and arrive before 7AM ... the starting time for the class.

Seeing me off

Most students, I assume, drove to the school and planned to stay in the dormitory the school offered, after arriving the night before, but it was too late for me to go directly to the school, so I needed to stay the night in Sault and get there early in the morning.

So here's what I formulated in my head and said to her all at once: "Bon soir madame, J'aimerais avoir une chambre pour une nuit. Je viens d'arriver de Paris dans le train. Je suis un American, je ne parle pas bien français. 


En plus d'une chambre, j'ai besoin d'une taxe tôt le matin pour m'emmener à Parapente du Sud près d'ici.

J'espère que vous pouvez m'aider."

It all came to pass. She offered me something to eat that evening...bless her... she woke me in the morning at 5 AM, and she served me coffee and bread before I left ...all in good humor.

I slept fitfully, the sound of locomotive whistles insistent, but I was awake, up, and ready when the 'taxi' arrived right on time...it was rather a bus and I was the only passenger. We drove, the driver and I, in silence, the 18 kilometers to the school and the taciturn driver let me out. Maybe I was not the first to take this trip. The sun was still low... fog covered the ground, no one was around.. was I in the right place?... My impetuousness dawned on me, I wondered what I had gotten myself into, but then I noticed a Peugeot...a cream green...I can still see it in my mind's eye... pulled up with its motor running in the parking lot adjacent to the school.

As the bus vanished around the corner of the entryway, I knocked lightly on the window of the car...the occupant was smoking a Gitane...I could see the package on the seat beside him...and listening to a music station on the radio...a Johnny Hallyday tune. 

I said: "Bonjour Monsieur, Êtes-vous ici pour la classe parapente?"

He said: "Qui, J'ai campé quelques jours avec ma famille quand je me suis disputé avec ma femme."

I said: "Quelle?" wondering at the suddenness of the disclosure...he must have been stewing.

He said:"Oui c'est vrai...alors j'ai décidé que je la conduirais et prendrais la class tout seul"

I said: "Comme c'est évident, je ne suis pas français. Je suis descendu de Paris hier soir."

He said:"Je ne suis pas vraiment ... Je viens d'Algérie."

I said: "Mais vous avez l'air français."

He said: "Je suis français, mais je suis ce qu'on appelle un pied noir. Je suis née en Algérie de parents français."

I said: "OK, je suis Jim Ingram, je suis américain.  Je suis inquiet de savoir si je peux comprendre l'instruction.

He said: "Ne vous inquiétez pas, je parle un peu anglais ... Je vais vous aider."

So Henri...I don't remember his last name...and I became 'buddies' in that we had, at least, this initial interaction in common... whereas among the other students...they were all strangers to each other, as it turned out...the language barrier existed but was overcome with good humor.

Andrei, Philippe, Paul, Erlanger, and, of course, Henri...no women...

The main instructor was Louis...

we slept in bunk beds in a dorm area added on to the side of the main house and had meals in a small dining room ...the openly visible kitchen in the next room...the food was delicious...lots of soups, steak and frites, bread and wine... I remember the glass carafes and the red Rhone Valley wine.

I made it through the end of the second day...I missed a great deal of the class discussion about wind shear near large objects like big trees and barns...I twisted my knee landing awkwardly after a short flight on the practice hill...but I could walk away...I had gotten off the ground on my last practice flights for maybe 100 yards...and I learned to turn and to land...pretty much.

I had learned that on lift off to keep running and then to raise my hands high up...'mains a haute'...the idea was to flatten the wing to quickly move away from a steep rapidly falling away slope....then, after a few seconds, I was to bring my hands to my ears...'mains a oreille' to put curve and control back into the wing and when coming in to land just a few feet off the ground...'mains a la taille' to collapse the wing and eliminate the lift.

so I faced the big day tomorrow when we would finally 'really' fly. 

It was made clear to us that the culmination of the course was the 'grand vol.' This goal ...'objectif'...was used as motivation and a kidding threat. But none of us had any idea of what 'grand vol' meant...big flight yes...but, how big? Grand vol sounded both fun and ominous because the instructors talked about the 'freedom of flight' ...'liberté de vol'... and made vague references to the ridge...'crete'...from which we would launch, but all we could see in the distance were incredibly high ridges a mile or so away and thousands of feet high, when all we had practised on were hills of 50 feet at most and flying off the ground a few yards.

Of course, everyone was excited, but spooked a little, by the thought of the 'grand vol.' I was invited by several students to take a ride up to the takeoff area...the ridge ... ...'zone decollage' ...that we would go up to the next morning early by truck and van...the wind is typically down early in the morning...and for beginners 'no wind' is a necessity. We wanted to see where the 'grand vol' would take place, but were apprehensive at the same time.

I think this is it!

So we...Henri, Philippe, Gascon..yes...Gascon... Andrei winded our way up this very steep ridge on a dirt road that switched back on itself several times. Louis had described the parking area and the launch site and we eventually identified the spot....a slight rise to the summit of the ridge in front of us that hid what was beyond.

We got out and walked up the shallow hill from the road to the edge of the ridge.

Oh my God!

As we topped the hill, we peered over the edge down into the valley...far below it stretched for thousands of feet. I could barely make out the fields below... demarcated into geometric shapes by color and border.

I'm not jumping off this!

I said: My god, I can't even see the landing area it's so far down...'Mon dieu, je ne peux même pas voir la zone d'atterrissage si loin.'

I am not jumping off this cliff....'Je ne saute pas de cette falaise'...

I couldn't sleep that night. My knee ached. As soon as it was light, I was up, looking for Louis. I found him getting out of his car coming from home. 'Louis', I said:  'I can't make the grand vol today. I hurt my knee and I can barely walk'...remembering to limp slightly, as we walked back together toward the building.

Louis said: 'Did some of you go up to the ridge last night?' ...'Est-ce que certains d'entre vous sont montés sur la crête hier soir?'

Yes, I said...'Qui'

And without a miss, Louis said: Ok Jim, maybe you'd help me by driving a truck because we need to get all the gear up to the ridge and later several students will want a second flight and need to be brought back up.

I immediately said yes, so relieved that he didn't embarrass me by questioning my courage and honesty and by trying to talk me into flying.

I thoroughly enjoyed breakfast, having resolved not to fly, but increasingly embarrassed as it became known among the others that I was cop-ing out.

But my fear overcame my chagrin, as I recalled the precipitous slope and the enormous height of that ridge above the landing area.

We gathered all the equipment, loaded the van and truck with the chute bags and harnesses and made our way to the ridge.

I helped the first guy to get ready. It was Henri...he was intrepid.

Louis talked to Henri over a radio clipped to his harness. Louis' voice was soothing, talking slowly...focusing on details.. describing the steps... check your harness...pull on all the straps...lay the chute out across the ridgeline... arrange the lines...untangle the lines...identify the control risers...lean against the harness and pull the risers, steady the chute over your head...watch me for the signal...now...run...run...run...voila!

The next three students went through the routine...successfully...a pause occurred as the next person up had to go back to the van for a clip...Louis said to me: 'Jim, I brought your chute...what do you think?'

For whatever reason, I immediately agreed, grabbed the chute from the truck, buckled up, spread my chute along the ridge, leaned forward against the harness and tugged it up overhead, moving slightly from side to side to stay in the middle of it  and balance it, and watched Louis....he looked at the windsock, saw it was limp, said go, and I ran slightly down the hill and then off the edge of the ridge.

Louis

I dropped precipitously just for a moment, then was almost immediately lifted...I raised my hands on high...a haute... I flew away from the ridge...the radio crackled with Louis's voice: 
'Maintenant faire un virage à droite 90 degrés...voilà...

tu vas bien, Geem'

I brought my hands down to my ears, tugged on the right control line slightly, and I soared out over the valley just like a bird.

Nota Bene: On the trip back to Paris my camera and luggage were stolen from the overhead rack in the train. I had foolishly moved to another car without moving my luggage, dropped off to sleep, and when I woke up my baggage was gone...so I had no images of the weekend.

I had to go immediately to the police station in Paris and then the next day to the American Embassy to replace my passport which was in my luggage.

But recently I found a perfect video on YouTube. It is even titled the 'Grand Vol.' If you have the patience look at it...It is almost exactly my story...except the part about my 'chicken-ing' out. It starts toward the end but if you start from the beginning it tells a very similar story.