society
The one reveals a subject and the other reveals an algorithm
We live in the aftermath
From consumption to production
Management and manipulation of fear
To create noblemen and kings
Cupcakes and froyo
Consumption
The proponents of technology in the 1840s were very enthusiastic about replacing workers with machines. But somehow I find no indication that they realized that while production could be carried out with few workers and still run to high outputs, buyers would be needed for those outputs. The realization that though the need for workers decreased, the need for purchasers could increase, did not seem to be part of the discourse on the machinery question. Since then, however, technology and its promoters have had to create a social institution â the consumer â in order to deal with the increasingly tricky problem that machines can produce but it is usually people who consume.
Millennials and Gen. Z
I made a prediction on Twitter on February 6th: If Millennials (b. 1980 â 2000) were the premium mediocre generation, Gen Z (b. 2000 â 2020) is going to be the domestic cozy generation.
Premium Mediocre vs. Domestic Cozy
Premium mediocre seeks to control its narrative. Domestic cozy is indifferent both to being misunderstood and being ignored.
Instagram, Tinder, kale salads, and Urban Outfitters are premium mediocre. Minecraft, YouTube, cooking at home, and knitting are domestic cozy. Steve Jobs represented the premium that premium mediocrity aspired towards. Elon Musk represents the relaxed-playfulness-amidst-weirdness at the heart of domestic cozy.
Premium mediocre looks outward with a salesman affect, edgy anxiety bubbling just below the surface. Domestic cozy looks inward with a relaxed affect. A preternaturally relaxed affect bordering on creepy. One best embodied by the rise of the ASMR-like sensory modality (which even the NYT has noticed) that has come to be known as oddly satisfying.
Premium mediocrity is the same everywhere, every patch of domestic cozy is domestic cozy in its own way.
We infantilize ourselves
Here in the US, we expect government and law to be our conscience. Our superego, you could say. It has something to do with liberal individualism, and something to do with capitalism, but I don't understand much of the theoretical aspectâwhat I see is what I live in. Americans are in a way crazy. We infantilize ourselves. We don't think of ourselves as citizensâparts of something larger to which we have profound responsibilities. We think of ourselves as citizens when it comes to our rights and privileges, but not our responsibilities. We abdicate our civic responsibilities to the government and expect the government, in effect, to legislate morality.
The Real World of Technology
AÂ Lecture by Ursula M. Franklin- ââTechnology is a systemââ
- ââFish and waterââ
- ââDefining activitiesââ
- ââHolistic and prescriptive technologiesââ
- ââThat which requires caringââ
This is Water
AÂ Speech by David Foster Wallace- ââEverybody worshipsââ
Man in the Middle: The Designer
AÂ Book by C. Wright MillsThe Waste Land
AÂ Poem by T.S. EliotBuilder Brain
An Essay by Charlie WarzelThe Builder mindset often eschews policy completely and focuses on the macro issues, rather than the micro complexities. It is a mindset that seeks to find very elaborate, hypothetical-but-definitely-paradigm-shifting, futuristic technology to fix current problems, instead of focusing on a series of boring-sounding and modest reforms that might help people now.
âŚThe worst version of Builder mentality is that their dreams become reality, but instead of maintaining their creations, they simply move onto the next Big Thing, leaving others to deal with the mess theyâve made.
evermore, and other beautiful things
An Article by Linus the SephistIf all evidence of civilization on Earth was destroyed, and humans had to re-build society from the ground up, what would be different? Feynman reckons that pivotal scientific moments, like the discovery of the atom, will still happen in the same way. Perhaps mathematics will be similarly rediscovered.
Someone told me once in response to this question, no artwork would ever be recreated. The art we create â music, stories, dance, film â isnât a fundamental element of the universe, or even of humanity. Itâs unique to each artist. If you choose to create art, you leave something in the world that has never had a chance to exist before, and will never again have a chance to exist. There will never be another Beatles or Studio Ghibli or Picasso. Art, in its infinite variations of originality, is cosmically unique in a way the sciences will never be. Art immortalizes human experiences that would otherwise vanish in time.
The Third Way
An Article by Kevin KellyBut all the civilized cities of the world were also filled with third places that people loved. Not quite private, not quite public, these third places were intimate but open to anyone. Like settling down at a table at a cafe. It felt like your space, but you were not the landlord. They were public, open spaces that you could âownâ for a while.
âŚWe need a new third category of work â something between âemployeeâ and ânot an employeeââthat encompasses digital gig laborers. AirBnB is neither a hotel, nor a private resident. It is a third thing, and we need to create a new category to deal with itâŚThis is the era of the third way.
Class 1 / Class 2 Problems
An Article by Kevin KellyThere are two classes of problems caused by new technology. Class 1 problems are due to it not working perfectly. Class 2 problems are due to it working perfectly.
...Class 1 problems arise early and they are easy to imagine. Usually market forces will solve them. You could say, most Class 1 problems are solved along the way as they rush to become Class 2 problems. Class 2 problems are much harder to solve because they require more than just the invisible hand of the market to overcome them.
...Class 1 problems are caused by technology that is not perfect, and are solved by the marketplace. Class 2 problems are caused by technology that is perfect, and must be solved by extra-market forces such as cultural norms, regulation, and social imagination.
Stepping out of the firehose
An Article by Benedict EvansIn 1800, if youâd said that you wanted something âmade by handâ, that would be meaningless - everything was handmade. But half a century later, it could be a reaction against the age of the machine - of steam and coal-smoke and âdark satanic mills.â The Arts and Crafts movement proposed slow, hand-made, imperfect craft in reaction to mass-produced âperfectionâ (and a lot of other things besides). A century later this is one reason Iâm fascinated by the new luxury goods platforms LVMH and Kering, or indeed Supreme. How do you mass-manufacture, mass-market and mass-retail things whose entire nature is supposedly that theyâre individual?
...we keep building tools, but also we let go. Thatâs part of the progression - Arts and Crafts was a reaction against what became the machine age, but Bauhaus and futurism embraced it. If the âmetaverseâ means anything, it reflects that we have all grown up with this now, and weâre looking at ways to absorb it, internalise it and reflect it in our lives and in popular culture - to take ownership of it. When software eats the world, itâs not software anymore.
The Cycle of Goodness
An Idea by Tadao YoshidaThe CYCLE OF GOODNESSÂŽ is the corporate philosophy established by YKKâs founder, Tadao Yoshida, who believed that âno one prospers without rendering benefit to others.â It expresses the basic belief of the YKK Group. Tadao Yoshida firmly believed that business belongs to society. As an important member of society, a company survives through coexistence. When the benefits are shared, the value of the companyâs existence will be recognized by society. When pursuing his business, Mr. Yoshida was most concerned with that aspect and would find a path leading to mutual prosperity. He believed that using ingenuity and inventiveness in business activities and constantly creating new value would lead to the success of clients and business partners and make it possible to contribute to society. This type of reasoning is referred to as the CYCLE OF GOODNESSÂŽ and has always served as the foundation of our business activities.
Life as Protest
AÂ Fragment by Craig ModIâve written this before but I constantly need to remind myself of it, so, once again: A certain kind of work, lifestyle, mode of living â in and of itself â is protest. That is, work that is curious and rigorous is implicitly an antipode to didactic, shallow bombastity. It is inherently an archetype against bullshit. That to be committed to this work or life of rigor (be it rigor focused on âartâ or, as they say in Japanese, sakuhin, or family or athleticism or whatever), and to share it with the world is to opt-out of being paralyzed by idiocy, and help others who may be paralyzed find a path back to whatever fecundity of life it is that they deserve.
Premium Mediocre
An Article from Ribbonfarm by Venkatesh Rao
Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview
- ââOn Valueââ
- ââOn Businessââ
- ââOn Programmingââ
- ââOn Successââ
- ââOn Processââ
On Value
It was clear that [Hewlett-Packard] recognized that its true value was in its employees.
On Business
How do you learn to run a company at 21 with no business experience?
Throughout the years in business I found something, which is, Iâd always ask why you do things, and the answers you invariably get are âoh thatâs just the way itâs done.â Nobody knows why they do what they do, nobody thinks about things very deeply in business. Thatâs what I found.
Iâll give you an example. When we were building our Apple Is in the garage we knew exactly what they cost. When we got into a factory in the Apple II days, accounting had this notion of a âstandard cost.â Where youâd kind of set a standard cost and then at the end of the quarter youâd adjust it with a variance. And I kept asking, âwhy do we do this?â And the answer was just âwell thatâs the way itâs done.â And after about 6 months of digging into this what I realized was the reason you do it is because you donât really have good enough controls to know how much it costs, so you guess, and then you fix your guess at the end of the quarter. And the reason you donât know how much it costs is because your information systems arenât good enough.
But nobody said it that way. And so later on when we designed this automated factory for Macintosh we were able to get rid of a lot of these antiquated concepts, and know exactly what something costs, to the cent. And so in business a lot of things are what I would call âfolklore.â Theyâre done that way because they were done that way yesterday. And so if youâre willing to ask a lot of questions about things and work hard you can learn business pretty fast. Itâs not the hardest thing in the world. Itâs not rocket science.
On Programming
I think everyone in this country should learn a computer language because it teaches you how to think. Itâs like going to law school â I donât think anyone should be a lawyer, but going to law school could be useful because it teaches you how to think in a certain way. So I view computer science as a liberal art.
On Success
The technology crashed and burned at Xerox.
What happens is, like with John Sculley, John came from PepsiCo, and they at most would change their product maybe once every ten years. To them a new product was like a new size bottle. So if you were a product person you couldnât change the course of that company very much. So who influenced the success of PepsiCo? The sales and marketing people. Therefore they were the ones that got promoted and they were the ones that ran the company.
Well, for PepsiCo that might have been ok, but it turns out the same thing can happen in technology companies that get monopolies, like IBM and Xerox.
If you were a product person at IBM, or Xerox, so you make a better copier or a better computer? So what? When you have a monopoly market share, the company isnât any more successful. So the people that can make the company more successful are sales and marketing people, and they end up running the companies. And the product people end up getting driven out of the decision marking forums. And the companies forget what it means to make great products. The product sensibilities and the product genius that brought them to that monopolistic position gets rotted out by people running these companies who have no conception of a good product vs. a bad product. They have no conception of the craftsmanship thatâs required to take a good idea and turn it into a good product. And they really have no feeling in their hearts, usually, about wanting to really help the customers.
So thatâs what happened at Xerox.
On Process
People get confused, companies get confused. When they start getting bigger, they want to replicate their initial success, and a lot of them think that somehow thereâs some magic in the process that theyâve created. And so they start to institutionalize process across the company. And before very long people get very confused that the process is the content.
In my career Iâve found that the best people are the ones who really understand the content. And theyâre a pain in the butt to manage. But you put up with it because theyâre so great at the content. And thatâs what makes great products. Itâs not process, itâs content.
On Greatness
Whatâs important to you in the development of a product?
One of the things that really hurt Apple was that after I left John Sculley got a very serious disease. And that disease â Iâve seen other people get it too â itâs the disease of thinking that a really great idea is 90% of the work, and if you just tell all these other people âhereâs this great idea,â then of course they can just go off and make it happen.
The problem with that is that thereâs just a tremendous amount of craftsmanship in between a great idea and a great product. And as you evolve that great idea it changes and grows. It never comes out like it starts, because you learn a lot more as you get into the subtleties of it, and you also find there are tremendous tradeoffs you have to make, there are just certain things you canât make electrons do, there are certain things you canât make plastic, or glass, or factories, or robots do. And as you get into all these things, you find that designing a product is keeping 5,000 things in your brain, these concepts, and just fitting them all together and continuing to push to fit them together in new and different ways to get what you want. And every day you discover a new problem or a new opportunity to do it a little differently. And itâs that process that is the magic.
On Teamwork
What Iâve always felt that a team of people doing something they really believe in is like, is like when I was a young kid, there was a widowed man that lived up the street. He was in his 80âs, and a little scary looking, and I got to know him a little bit â I think he paid me to cut his lawn or something â and one day he told me, âcome into my garage, I want to show you something.â
And he pulled out this dusty old rock tumbler. It was a motor and a coffee can and a band between them. And he said âcome out here with me,â so we went out to the back and we got some rocks, just some regular old ugly rocks and we put them in the can with a little bit of liquid and a little bit of grit powder, and he turned the motor on and said âcome back tomorrow,â as the tumbler was turning and making a racket.
So I came back the next day and what we took out were these amazingly beautiful and polished rocks. The same common stones that had gone in â through rubbing against each other, creating a little bit of friction, creating a little bit of noise â had come out as these beautiful polished rocks.
And thatâs always been my metaphor for a team working really hard on something theyâre passionate about. Itâs that through the team, through that group of incredibly talented people bumping up against each other, having arguments, having fights sometimes, making some noise, and working together, they polish each other, and they polish their ideas. And what comes out are these really beautiful stones.
On Criticism
People are being counted on to do specific pieces of the puzzle. And the most important thing I think you can do for somebody whoâs really good and whoâs really being counted on is to point out to them when their work isnât good enough, and to do it very clearly, and to articulate why, and to get them back on track. And you need to do that in a way that does not call into question your confidence in their abilities, but leaves not much room for interpretation.
On Help
Microsoftâs orbit was made possible by a Saturn V booster called IBM.
On Taste
The only problem with Microsoft is they just have no taste. They have absolutely no taste, and what that means is â and I donât mean that in a small way, I mean that in a big way â in the sense that they donât think of original ideas, and they donât bring much culture into their product. And you say âwell why is that important?â Well, you know, proportionally spaced fonts come from typesetting and beautiful books, so thatâs where one gets the idea. And if it werenât for the Mac they would never have that in their products.
And so I guess I am saddened, not by Microsoft's success â I have no problem with their success. They have earned their success â I have a problem with the fact that they just make really third-rate products. Their products have no spirit to them, no spirit of enlightenment about them. They are very pedestrian. And the sad part is that most customers donât have that spirit either. But the way that weâre going to ratchet up our species is to take the best and to spread it around to everybody so that everybody grows up with better things, and starts to understand the subtlety of these better things. And Microsoft is McDonaldâs.
So thatâs what saddens me â not that Microsoft has won, but that Microsoftâs products donât display more insight and more creativity.
On Technology
As we look back 10 years from now, the web is going to be the defining technology, the defining social moment for our generation.
I think itâs going to be huge.
On Tools
I read an article when I was very young in Scientific America. It measured the efficiency of locomotion for various species on the planet â you know, for bears and chimpanzees and raccoons and birds and fish â how many kilocalories per kilometer did they spend to move? And humans were measured too. And the condor won, it was the most efficient. And mankind, the crown of creation, came in with rather an unimpressive showing about a third of the way down the list.
But somebody there had the brilliance to test a human riding a bicycle, and it blew away the condor, all the way off the charts. And I remember this really had an impact on me, I remember thinking that humans are tool builders, and we build tools that can dramatically amplify our innate human abilities.
And to me â we actually ran an ad like this, very early at Apple â the personal computer is the bicycle of the mind. And I believe that with every bone in my body, that of all the inventions of humans, the computer is going to rank near if not at the top as history unfolds and we look back. It is the most awesome tool that we have ever invented, and I feel incredibly lucky to be at exactly the right place in Silicon Valley, at exactly the right time where this invention has taken form.
On Theft
How do we know whatâs the right direction [for computers to take]?
Ultimately it comes down to taste. It comes down to trying to expose yourself to the best things that humans have done, and then trying to bring those things in to what youâre doing.
Picasso had a saying: âGood artists copy, great artists steal.â And we (at Apple) have always been shameless about stealing great ideas. And I think part of what made Macintosh great was that the people working on it were musicians and poets and artists and zoologists and historians who also happened to have been the best computer scientists in the world. But if it hasnât been for computer science, these people would all be doing amazing things in life in other fields. And they brought with them â we all brought to this effort â a very liberal arts air, a very liberal arts attitude, that we wanted to pull in the best we saw in these other fields into ours.
On Expression
There was a germ of something there. And itâs the same thing that causes people to want to be poets instead of bankers. I think thatâs a wonderful thing, and I think that same spirit can be put into products, and those products can be manufactured and given to people and they can sense that spirit. If you talk to people that use the Macintosh, they love it. I mean you donât hear people loving products very often. But you could feel it, there was something really wonderful there.
So I donât think that most of the really best people that Iâve worked with have worked with computers for the sake of working with computers. They work with computers because they are the medium that is best capable of transmitting some feeling that you have that you want to share with other people. And before they invented these things, all these people would have done other things. But computers were invented, and they did come along, and all these people did get interested in them, either in school or before school, and said âHey, this is the medium that I think I can say something in."
On Talent
I observed something fairly early on at Apple, which I didnât know how to explain then, but Iâve thought a lot about it since. Most things in life have a dynamic range in which [the ratio of] âaverageâ to âbestâ is at most 2:1.
For example, if you go to New York City and get an average taxi cab driver, versus the best taxi cab driver, youâll probably get to your destination with the best taxi driver 30% faster. And an automobile; whatâs the difference between the average car and the best? Maybe 20%? The best CD player versus the average CD player? Maybe 20%? So 2:1 is a big dynamic range for most things in life.
Now, in software, and it used to be the case in hardware, the difference between the average software developer and the best is 50:1; maybe even 100:1. Very few things in life are like this, but what I was lucky enough to spend my life doing, which is software, is like this.
So Iâve built a lot of my success on finding these truly gifted people, and not settling for âBâ and âCâ players, but really going for the âAâ players. And I found something⌠I found that when you get enough âAâ players together, when you go through the incredible work to find these âAâ players, they really like working with each other. Because most have never had the chance to do that before. And they donât work with âBâ and âCâ players, so itâs self-policing. They only want to hire âAâ players. So you build these pockets of âAâ players and it just propagates.