Ian Vanagas

You should be able to instantly share a browsing session with somebody and invite them into the rabbit hole.

Framing matters a lot. Spending for the benefit of the group feels a lot better than spending solely for yourself. People ideally want both.

We are in the age of hyper-competition. Being a big spender is a seductive way to make you feel like you belong.

Gamifying of apps means companies can't make products look better, so they are tapping into your human biology and psychology.

Our relation to ideas is an inextricable symbiosis, like that between plant and pollinator, a mutualism in which neither can survive without the other. At the dawn of civilization, a covenant was made between humans and these alien entities that live in our minds—honor and respect each other and all will flourish beyond their wildest dreams.

The personal computing revolution succeeded and we are all miserable. The dream of personal computing as augmentation for the intellect, and the joyful, radical counterculture that arose around the first PC’s has given way to our increasingly dismal present.