“People ask me all the time how you deal with complexity,” Padgett said. “It comes down to putting people together and letting them work it out.”

There are two basic models for overcoming this, for learning with whom we should empathize. You might seek opportunities in widespread behaviors that can be reapplied elsewhere, hoping these patterns express some deeper truth about people. Or you might instead seek out the fringes, the so-called edge cases where the future might currently exist as

make you feel good or bad.’”11 Nass liked to point out that our brains evolved to deal with two basic types of experience: the physical world and the social. Computers were a new hybrid of both; since their beginning, we had thought they belonged to the physical world. But because they responded to us, engaged us, aggravated and pleased us, we

design wasn’t just styling—it sprang from a knowledge about how things were made and what was possible.

what we want out of technology is really defined by what we want from each other.

Thrilled by such ease and pleasure, our society is busy putting a Skinner box in every hand by making them ever cheaper, easier to use, and easier to get. But unlike slot machines, our personal Skinner boxes don’t offer the prospect of riches. The market has figured out exactly the bare minimum that will keep us coming back.

less friction means more consumption.

Ever since the beginning of the written word, we’ve told one another stories about heroes who succeed in spite of long odds.

“The best way to anticipate the future is to design it.”