Elena

We no longer look to religious authorities for cutting edge knowledge, and this is a good thing. But we still need elements of magic and spiritualism in our lives. For most of human history, perfume was a way to distinguish oneself as special, and this specialness took many different forms. It was about being pleasing, but it was also about being... See more

A circle of friends, a stable mind and better creative skills are all very useful for a happy life! But happiness consists in taking pleasure from time spent with those friends; from relishing the absence of anxiety that comes with a calmer mind; or from putting those creative skills to use – from cashing in the resources, you might almost say,... See more

Building something new would be “a worldmaking project, aimed at building and rebuilding actual structures of social connection and movement, rather than the mere critique of ones we already have.” In other words, we can’t just rearrange the furniture inside rooms we don’t like the shape of; we have to build entirely new rooms in better shapes.

When you choose whom to follow on Twitter, you’re choosing what types of mindsets and aesthetics to expose yourself to on a regular basis. You’re choosing what types of conversations to have. You’re choosing to be reminded regularly of certain things, and not of others. This is a kind of Programmable attention.

And yet, in so much modern software today, you’re placed in a drab gray cubicle — anonymized and aggregated until you’re just a daily active user. For minimalism. For simplicity. For scale! But if our hope is to create software with feeling, it means inviting people in to craft it for themselves — to mold it to the contours of their unique lives

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Achieving strategic clarity is hard. It takes asking tough questions about tradeoffs, deep concentration to get to the very essence of the issues and real courage to cut off competing priorities. It is worth the effort because with real clarity, people, teams and organizations can fully mobilize, break through to the next level and achieve... See more

Imagine if instead of approaching our computer as a cold, mechanical piece of metal and glass that receives inputs and delivers outputs, we saw it as a relationship with the emergent, ineffable internet mystic that we’re collectively creating.

How might we approach that device differently?