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“A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they shall never sit.” - Greek Proverb

The catch is that it’s incredibly difficult to assign comparative value to those things to which we are emotionally connected. What monetary value would you assign to your closest friend? The question feels absurd because you cannot put a value on something you are unwilling to part with. The things we are unwilling to part with are often those... See more

Software for Your Mom

Situated software isn't a technological strategy so much as an attitude about closeness of fit between software and its group of users, and a refusal to embrace scale, generality or completeness as unqualified virtues. Seen in this light, the obsession with personalization of Web School software is an apology for the obvious... See more

Compared with the fragmented, D.I.Y. Web I knew, social media felt strangely predictable. User profiles on new sites like LinkedIn or Flickr were templated and surrounded by ads. They offered preset options from categories and drop-down menus—age, location, institutional affiliation—and quantified influence through friend and follower counts. The... See more

Innovating within an existing platform is always a challenge, because as media theorist Marshall McLuhan argued decades ago, ‘the medium is the message’. TikTok and Twitter/X have short-form content built into the design of the platform, which prevents depth. As I explore in The Bigger Picture, this also leads to what philosopher C. Thi Nguyen... See more

There 2 ways your brain remembers things: One is countless repetition. And the other is if the event is highly emotional. This is science. This is why you are able to remember your first kiss so well, even though that moment occurred only once. This is the reason why you're able to remember that one time you almost died. It's also the reason why... See more