Daylight Cannot be Saved
The real curiosity is that we keep fighting over which flavor of wrong the clock should be, instead of asking whether the clock needs to be wrong at all.
Topic
Books
A collection of 14 issues
What Art is Doing
What art is doing, at this moment, is providing the only space large enough and flexible enough to contain the emotional contradictions of the present.
A More Perfect Union
We can build systems that, at least from the outside, look like flourishing: systems that operate within appropriate constraints, fulfill purposes their design enables, and participate in relationships characterized by reciprocal adjustment — "a more perfect union."
Communication Communicating
Consensus-seeking communication is limited: not because consensus is impossible or undesirable, but because it is costly, and systems that economize on synchronization costs will, all else equal, outcompete systems that do not.
Maintenance: the Mattering Instinct for Engineers
What emerges is a picture of maintenance as mattering made concrete. When I maintain something, I declare through action that it matters, that its continued existence is worth my effort.
The Mattering Instinct
Why do we care so intensely about our own significance? Where does meaning come from? What separates a life worth living from mere biological persistence?
Uncommon Knowledge
Social media fragments common knowledge. When different groups consume different news, share different assumptions, and inhabit different epistemic worlds, the recursive structure of common knowledge fails.
What is creativity?
Csikszentmihalyi's book Creativity is one of my favorite books, and one of my favorite insights from the book is his systems theory of creativity.
Creativity is not a characteristic or trait of an individual person or work. Rather, it is a phenomenon manifest in the incorporation of an
Community in Silicon Valley
I've been thinking about an essay by Chris Arnade called How to build the perfect city for the last few weeks. To sum it up in my own words: Everybody, everywhere wants the sense of belonging that comes from community.
Where is community in Silicon Valley? I have
The Prehistory of Startups
It seems like the common thread that binds together these different cultures is a commitment to finding win-wins through the use of science and technology to build new products and services that give people a new way to communicate.