Joey DeBruin
@joeydebruin
Helping communities build public knowledge online. Founder @withBackdrop. Past/current product/advisory roles @Benchling @ResearchGate @Forefront__ @SeedClub
Joey DeBruin
On the other end of specificity, idea machines are less broad than paradigm shifts, which are widespread, headless, decentralized shifts in cultural norms and attitudes due to changes in systemic conditions. For example, web3 is a paradigm shift, but it’s too big and distributed to be an idea machine.
Nadia Asparouhova • Idea Machines
I think the mistake too many entrepreneurs make is they start companies assuming they have scale. We’ve seen no scale, we’ve seen hyperscale, and what we realized was what we have to do is we have to start with that utility and the best networks. I didn’t realize Chris wrote that post, but I should maybe in the back of my mind that’s what I was quo... See more
Ben Thompson • An Interview with Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger About Artifact
We are biased to believe that the interim steps resemble the final goal, and use objectives to reach stepping stones that appear to lead to the final destination. However, without knowing the nature of the territory, those objectives may well lead us to get stuck.
Oliver Hunt • DAOs as novelty search engines
Since the scientific interface is not capable of serving the general population, people have to blind trust the institutions who communicate science publicly. When that trust evaporates, people begin to reject the information itself.
Oliver Hunt • Building a 21st century interface for science
Why do some people achieve so many of the things they want, and others not? Do people have a fixed budget of things they can achieve in a lifetime? It doesn’t seem so. Rather, it seems like our achievement budget is a function of the number of priorities we have. Interestingly, it seems to be a nonlinear function. Meaning that if you go from 4 prio... See more
Henrik Karlsson • Almost Everyone I’ve Met Would Be Well-Served Thinking More About What to Focus On
Let's take a moment to compare the beginning and the end of our 336 year journey:... It's hard to ignore that they are shockingly similar. (see image in article of publication from 1700s and today)
Oliver Hunt • Building a 21st century interface for science
Software is expensive to create. You have to pay people to create it, maintain it, and distribute it. Because software is expensive to create, it has to make money. And we pay for it–software licenses, SaaS, per seat pricing, etc. Software margins have historically been an architectural envy–90+% margins and zero marginal cost of distribution.
Software is expensive because developers are expensive. They are skilled translators–they translate human language into computer language and vice-versa. LLMs have proven themselves to be remarkably efficient at this and will drive the cost of creating software to zero. What happens when software no longer has to make money? We will experience a Cambrian explosion of software, the same way we did with content.
the problem is with the interface of scientific literature. We cannot expect the wider population to be scientifically literate if they are not given the capability of understanding the artifacts we use to communicate about new scientific developments.