Chad Aaron Hall

If you write a bad post it won’t get shared and no one will see it. If you write a great post and it goes viral, everyone on the internet thinks you’re a genius. Since content is shared organically, your best work gets way more exposure than your worst. The incentive in these situations is to ramp up variance and do the most interesting writing you... See more

If everyone who posted on social media about “bringing manufacturing back” threw on a hardhat tomorrow, it still wouldn’t be enough to fill the five million U.S. manufacturing jobs lost between 2000 and 2010. Nor would it solve the issue of an aging workforce retiring faster than new recruits can be trained. Right now, more than 800,000 U.S.... See more

While some stations still do sign off, they are increasingly rare in a hyperkinetic, always-open America that has shifted fully into 24-7 mode (indeed, one promise of much-hyped digital TV is that it will allow an individual channel to subdivide itself four or more times). If the test pattern symbolized a moment of silence in the cultural process,... See more

Finally, note-taking is useful as a source of discipline and mental training—and that’s true no matter what the subject is. Even learning to write down a coherent summary and assessment of a lousy TV show or second-rate movie can have value. In a strange way, I’ve learned almost as much from inferior works as I have from superior ones.

By contrast, delivering software is more like delivering a gooey crying baby. It’s alive. Squirming, growing, and changing because the technologies it relies on do too. Physical materials rarely change, but web browsers, operating systems, and servers sure do.