innovation culture
04. The Illusion of Progress : Action Bias leads us to believe that doing something – anything – is better than doing nothing , even when the action doesn’t actually move us forward. We equate busyness with productivity, mistaking motion for progress, and perceive novelty as innately valuable.
Matt Klein • Self-Sabotaging Innovation: The Art of Doing Dumb Shit
This silicon union of intellect and action creates a culture fond of big ideas. The expectation that anyone sufficiently intelligent can grasp, and perhaps master, any conceivable subject incentivizes technologists to become conversant in as many subjects as possible. The technologist is thus attracted to general, sweeping ideas with application... See more
The Scholar's Stage • The Silicon Valley Canon: On the Paıdeía of the American Tech Elite
At work the junior engineer sends you some code to review. The code was clearly written in a first draft, and then just iteratively patched until the tests passed, then immediately sent to you to review without any further improvement. They do not care.
The guy on the hiking trail is playing his shitty EDM on his bluetooth speaker, ruining nature... See more
The guy on the hiking trail is playing his shitty EDM on his bluetooth speaker, ruining nature... See more
grantslatton.com • Nobody Cares
Here is how Plutarch, classical biographer par excellence, described his attraction to the stories of great men:
We may say, then, that achievements of this kind, which do not arouse the spirit of emulation or create any passionate desire to imitate them, are of no great benefit to the spectator. On the other hand virtue in action immediately takes... See more
The Scholar's Stage • The Silicon Valley Canon: On the Paıdeía of the American Tech Elite
The historian and biographer extends this backwards in time. Now youth find models of honor not only among the living but among dead. To study the great men of a community’s past is to study what greatness means in that community. That I think is half the purpose of these biographies of Roosevelt and Rockefeller, Feynman and Oppenheimer, Licklider... See more
The Scholar's Stage • The Silicon Valley Canon: On the Paıdeía of the American Tech Elite
relates to other quote from earlier in the blog
When you read biographies of ppl who managed to be highly innovative for a long time, they seem to very radically not optimize in the short term—forgoing obviously lucrative and high status opportunities to do weird stuff that goes nowhere.
Henrik Karlssonsubstack.comTaste is not some idea of good design and brand. That definition isn’t rooted in a single damn thing.
Taste is that personalizing moment, that got transferred spiritually. It’s Naoto Fukasawa’s idea of embodiment in design. It didn’t come from a vague notion of “being good”. NOOOOOOOOO it came from dropping in on that moment in life, being ready... See more
Taste is that personalizing moment, that got transferred spiritually. It’s Naoto Fukasawa’s idea of embodiment in design. It didn’t come from a vague notion of “being good”. NOOOOOOOOO it came from dropping in on that moment in life, being ready... See more
Reggie James • Product Lost by @hipcityreg | Reggie James | Substack
I propose six significant levels of pace and size in the working structure of a robust and adaptable civilization. From fast to slow the levels are: - Fashion/art - Commerce- Infrastructure- Governance- Culture- Nature