("JP")

With Mars as a thought vehicle, we can start to imagine, “Okay, what will we put up there?”, and we can think outside of the systems that really hinder our thinking on Earth. We'll go into a whole set of design principles that we can use for actually building things there. But, ultimately, it's really important to just think beyond our current... See more

While watching Die Hard the other night—easily one of the best architectural films of the past 25 years—I kept thinking about an essay called “Lethal Theory” by Eyal Weizman—itself one of the best and most consequential architectural texts of the past decade (download the complete PDF).

When I listen to this, I can't help but hear James Brown's "It's a Man's World" in those sweet melodic parts. Mehldau's a virtuoso, and I know he can explore the hell out of a piece, but I love when he brings out the sweet. The buildup from the search he begins at 6:00 comes to a beautiful culmination at 6:50 and in comes that wonderful melody... See more

Scott details a pattern of disaster that repeatedly manifests around legibility. His opening example is from the late-18th century discipline of “scientific forestry”.

A natural forest is illegible. A tangle of plants. This is inconvenient from the standpoint of harvesting lumber. How do you quantify yield? Can you even make a meaningful map of this... See more

Eno sought to create music that could be interrupted at any time (for flight announcements and such) without in any way harming the music. Also, since the music would probably be talked over, none of the instruments or frequencies matched the sound of the average human voice so there would be no need to compete for sonic space. He also noticed that... See more

Writing is technology and pens are gadgets.

We have a moral responsibility to shape the world with specific, defensible ideas that we believe in. Call it definite optimism, reclaiming agency, or finding your life's work. Building a great business, rallying a network, fostering a community – they all require redirecting collective attention. The technologist's job is not to redirect worship... See more