Johanna

“I think the idea of air taxis is kind of bullshit,” Carlo Ratti, an architect and urban theorist who serves as director of the Senseable City Lab at MIT, told me. “Technology can change many things, but it cannot change physics. Helicopters are loud and expensive and, for most forms of transportation, inconvenient.” As near-silent electric and... See more

Smartphones provide a nearly endless stream of potential dopamine: a ‘positive social interaction’, or something resembling it, is always but a swipe away. As a result, we’re often mindlessly reaching for our phones without really knowing why and, if we cannot find our phone, we may feel a pang of anxiety.When we sit down to work, our brains don’t... See more

This is a faulty explanation of what’s at stake with the question of work. There’s something deeper at play: work is more than a means for earning money. That’s not just due to “pro-work ideology,” but also to the objective conditions of a society based on a large-scale division of labor in which everyone contributes individually to collective... See more

“Innovation” is more natural in person. It’s better when even the quiet person in the back can pick up a marker and explain something.But once you agree on something it’s about individual performance… This is usually easier remote.

Workers are just inputs to the economic machine. When we create an identity around labor, we’re treating people as mere inputs. But people are more than just inputs. The economy is here to serve us, not the other way around. What matters is what we can get out of the machine. The people’s needs come first. Everything else is secondary. The economy... See more

Now that drugs are illegal, only a small percentage of the population really has reliable access to them — the rich and powerful. This is a problem because drugs only seem to unlock a great creative potential in a small number of people. (...) Not everyone needs drugs to have great breakthroughs. “I do not do drugs,” said Salvador Dalí, “I am... See more