Agalia Tan

‘Eno’ Review: Creativity, 52 Billion Billion Ways

It's scary to admit that you can't control the future; it's a lot easier to distract yourself by trying to optimize every decision, no matter how insignificant.

At critical moments in time, you can raise the aspirations of other people significantly, especially when they are relatively young, simply by suggesting they do something better or more ambitious than what they might have in mind. It costs you relatively little to do this, but the benefit to them, and to the broader world, may be enormous. This is... See more

Listening is a neglected social skill. But I know that an even more neglected social skill is candor.

Many good ideas look bad at first.

Great software products aren’t simply a collection of buttons, icons, and menus. They shape how we think and who we aspire to be.

The problem isn’t that machines are becoming more human-like, it’s that humans are becoming more machine-like in an effort to keep up.

There are no shortcuts to hard-won insight.

No one does this in a snap.

But it’s hard to... See more

If we no longer see brands and commodity capitalism as something to be resisted, we need more nuanced forms of critique that address how brands participate in society as creators and collaborators with real agency. Interest in working with brands, creating brands, and being brands is at an all-time high. Brands and commodities therefore need to be... See more