Breaking Smart

In other words, true north in software is often the direction that combines ambiguity and evidence of fertility in the most alluring way: the direction of maximal interestingness.3

In a process reminiscent of the “rule of agreement” in improv theater, ideas that unleash the strongest flood of follow-on builds tend to be recognized as the most fertile and adopted as the consensus. Collaborators who spark the most intense creative chemistry tend to be recognized as the right ones. The consensus is rough because it is left as a

Software possesses an extremely strange property: it is possible to create high-value software products with effectively zero capital outlay. As Mozilla engineer Sam Penrose put it, software programming is labor that creates capital. This characteristic make software radically different from engineering materials like steel, and much closer to arti

As the hacker ethos spreads, we will witness what economist Edmund Phelps calls a mass flourishing2 — a state of the economy where work will be challenging and therefore fulfilling. Unchallenging, predictable work will become the preserve of machines.

While we cannot predict precisely what workers of the future will be doing — what future wants and needs workers will be satisfying — we can predict some things about how they will be doing it. Work will take on an experimental, trial-and-error character, and will take place in an environment of rich feedback, self-correction, adaptation, ongoing i