A complex social system… really is made up of a set of complex and interconnected forces that both affect each other and the things that… Read More »Rob Ricigliano on the murky unpredictability of complex systems
This extract is from one of the best interviews with Kevin Kelly I’ve heard, on David Perell’s The North Star podcast. It covers a lot… Read More »Technology (8): Kevin Kelly on finding jobs for infant technologies
I was a clipboard person… for registering people to vote. And one of the things you learn when you do this is that you’re actually… Read More »Margo Aaron on Copywriting: Right Person, Right Copy
Does Not Compute These pairs have been on my mind recently. Some are ridiculous, others productive only in tension. Technology is killing us | Technology… Read More »Binary Oppositions
On the Hook Here’s the promised graph, explained below: Fishing for Complements Robert Solow (1987) pointed out that “a technological revolution, a drastic change in… Read More »Technology (7): Solow-ng (and thanks for all the fish) – Brynjolfsson, Rock and Syverson on intangibles and the Productivity J-Curve
You can see the computer age everywhere but in the productivity statistics. Nobel Prize in Economics winner Robert Solow, in 1987 (quoted everywhere but it’s… Read More »Technology (6): How did we sink Solow? – true ubiquity, clotheslines and switching costs
What stops good things from happening? I came across this paragraph in The Counter‘s recent article on lab-grown meat: David Humbird, the UC Berkeley-trained chemical… Read More »Trees of No; or, Fractal (im)possibilities
I can make a reasonably sensible filing system, but tend to fall down when it comes to the practice of administrative maintenance. Like personal hygiene,… Read More »Design Matters (8): Where’s that file?
DriverlessCrocodile on Oliver Burkeman Warning: “Recovering perfectionist” Oliver Burkeman is about to be everyone’s new favourite (anti) guru. With apologies (to you and him) for… Read More »Reading: Oliver Burkeman on information overload, big rocks and the British Library
…minor and major contributions… fluctuate together. Those periods in a creator’s life that see the most masterpieces also witness the greatest number of easily forgotten… Read More »Mass production: quality as a function of quantity