Jay Matthews

Any experience of love holds within it a dimension of dependence. In fact, dependence is an essential ingredient of connection. But it’s a producer of terrific anxiety, because it implies that the one we love wields power over us. This is the power to love us, but also to abandon us. Fear—of judgment, of rejection, of loss—is embedded in romantic... See more

Systems where defects are swept under the rug, or “will be dealt with at the end of the project” inevitably gain that unshakeable perception of being “buggy”, which will harm your digital product, no matter how innovative it is.

Modern relationships are cauldrons of contradictory longings: safety and excitement, grounding and transcendence, the comfort of love and the heat of passion. We want it all, and we want it with one person. Reconciling the domestic and the erotic is a delicate balancing act that we achieve intermittently at best. It requires knowing your partner... See more

In fact, one of the things that will not survive is novelty itself: trends, fads, fashions, scenes, vibes. We are thrown back into cyclical time; what’s growing old is the cruel demand to make things new.

Eroticism resides in the ambiguous space between anxiety and fascination.

The currency in a gift economy is relationship, which is expressed as gratitude, as interdependence and the ongoing cycles of reciprocity. Anthropological ideas mentioned in the article point towards this as being a way of sustaining life in various communities.

Musgrave outlines that innovation is often easier to measure which is perhaps why it's easy for it to become the focus—rather than improvement.

The stress of safety, poverty, and loss stops us from seeing and feeling, it leaves us alienated from ourselves and the world. The four levels of alienation mentioned in this talk are alienation from : 1. Our work, 2. Others, 3. Nature, 4. Ourselves.