Check Your Pulse #55

Love this from Jesse Beyroutey : We’ve found that the primary source for a company’s dominance is whether it designs its product and business model to be perfectly aligned with its customers’ interests. A great test of alignment is whether the company benefits or suffers from increased transparency.

In short, the architecture of digital platforms has made us obsessive documenters and consumers of the present, yet largely indifferent to the archives we create.

The human brain is incredible at uncovering meaning, but is deficient at long-term memory storage. If we forget what we read, we can’t apply the knowledge to the problem at hand. We don’t need to read a long write-up on Figma’s winning strategy on a Wednesday at 11am when it hits our inbox, but we should be able to reference it if we’re building a ... See more

the goal is not to consume more information. The goal is to think better, so we can achieve our goals.

In short, the architecture of digital platforms has made us obsessive documenters and consumers of the present, yet largely indifferent to the archives we create.

The Internet offers us the first major opportunity to introduce new, digitally-native information architectures that improve our understanding of the world through added context and relation.

What’s amazing is how chronological feeds — essentially accidental experiments of digital architecture — have rewired our brains. In the feed, everything is fleeting. This design property means you’re either always on and connected, or you’re off and wondering if you’re missing something important.

The past few years have seen the rise of many knowledge management tools, online communities, and curation businesses. But what’s interesting is how these categories are remixing into new combinations of content, community, and software.

We consume information recreationally, not as a way to achieve our goals.