("JP")

We realised that the tools we have created to master the world are re-mastering us. But more importantly, it became evident, that the desire for mapping, tweaking and ultimately, controlling, deeply complex systems is hubristic. As Tega Brain writes in her exceptional essay “we must acknowledge how deeply entrenched we are within a computational wo... See more

The Liminal Web is how do we combine the yang of systems change with the yin of interbeing. How do we simultaneously let go of control whilst also growing into our capacities as cultivators of a world more curious and kind.

The best founders have figured out that owning their narrative gives them meaningful leverage. Founders and companies can increasingly communicate their narrative in a direct and compounding way to investors.

McLuhan once said, “We don’t know who discovered water, but we know it wasn’t a fish. A pervasive environment, a pervasive medium is always beyond perception.” The big point to McLuhan is this: the messages that these media of written language are sending to us go far beyond the actual content or subject matter of the thing that’s being written abo... See more

Maybe this is all taking me back to Annie Dillard, my first writing teacher, whose influence on me abides, and who famously and reassuringly once wrote, “You don’t run down the present, pursue it with baited hooks and nets. You wait for it, empty-handed, and you are filled. You’ll have fish left over.” In other words, the empty-handedness is import... 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 t... See more

Reclaiming Attention

But do remember, it’s the same thing! It’s the same thing, forever and always. Look at this:

Houllebecq - value detaches from human experience

Dostoyevsky - rapid progress can fracture human psychology

Philip K. Dick - our struggle to distinguish reality from simulation

Kurt Vonnegut - automation would both solve and create problems... See more