What I love seeing is people pointing their attention out into the world and doing things for the world, in service of ideas and not an expected outcome.

To me, the only way to do that effectively is to understand what connects you to the world, what draws you in, what your radar is. This could take a whole lifetime (and ideally it does). In order... See more

There is this tendency to think about software, especially software that is more on the “tool” side as something that augments your ability as a human. What I keep coming back to is that I really don’t want that at all. I like feeling connected to things and unencumbered. I like feeling the humanness of things and my own human relationship to... See more

But if you’re really focusing on the moment, on something you love, on something in the world that feels like it’s made for you, you can’t be thinking about how it will benefit you, or how it will reflect back on you. These two modes are at odds with each other. True attention requires that you don’t view something in the world through the lens of... See more

People have always lived in their own realities. A person’s intuition helps them decide what to pay attention to, how to perceive the world, and what to value. This was true long before the internet, long before television, long before radio or books. Even when one’s own decisions are largely centered around survival, there still exists an... See more

There has always been the type of person who is performative of their own interests or pursues their work because of the kind of attention it will get them. There’s always been the pressure to act upon the desires of one’s own ego. But this mode feels much more pervasive as time goes on. Environments are emotionally contagious, and if the... See more

I like the idea of a person moving through “nodal points” propelled by an innate desire. I also like the idea of foregrounding agency from the perspective of the user or viewer or consumer. People often think about making work as if the person on the other side will have no choice but to enjoy it if the work is “good” enough, but it’s nice to think... See more

I think there are “thing-shaped holes” in each person. Other things might have just as equally filled those holes. There’s an abundance, or nearly an infinite amount of things, which is great.

It’s this idea of your “luck surface” or “serendipity stat” or something. One of the things Are.na is good at is being a place where you will encounter things... See more

information is composable. It’s constantly being combined and recombined into new things. Especially abstract information. Think about music, art, memes, science, technology, writing, language, etc. All of these things are composites of pre-existing pieces of information. All nodal points are made up of other people’s nodal points.

For the 66% of the world’s population that is online, social media has largely made permanent a world of individual realities. But it also underpinned that world with the perspective that the larger structure holding everything together is competition. In order for your reality to be the most real, it has to win.