("JP")

The reason I’ve just made you read a thousand words about trees (bet you didn’t think you were going to do that today) is that it illustrates the problems of taking a complex system and applying a simple process to it in order to optimize a single metric.

Which brings us back to business: there are a huge number of complex systems in a business,... See more

To this day, when someone wants to reference the dollar bill in a design, it’s noticeable how certain visual cues remain—even when the medium and the level of fidelity are completely different. Leveraging mental models from previously established fictions helps create a feeling of familiarity, which in turn helps people believe in the new, emerging... See more

There is much evidence on several levels that there are at least two major tasks to human life. The first task is to build a strong "container" or identity; the second is to find the contents that the container was meant to hold.

The insincerity, the rampant performativity, the illusion of urgency, the obsession with constructing futures at the expense of the present – for better or worse, these are all things I associate with being a technologist. And when I speak to my technologist friends, most of them share the same inkling that something is amiss .

Far too many of us... See more

Theres something so amazing about watching someone who is a master in their field, just do what they do. You can see the genius and true skill of what make them so great. Watching Paul with a guitar in his hand or at the piano is like watching Bob Ross paint a landscape.

Karsten Harries, professor of philosophy at Yale University states:

“Like language architecture is on one hand a product of human activity while on the other it helps to create the environment which gives shape to man’s activities. To build is to help decide how man is to dwell on the earth or indeed whether he is to dwell on it at all."

Still, I think something more fundamental has been lost for all of us as social media has evolved. It’s harder to find the spark of discovery, or the sense that the Web offers an alternate world of possibilities. Instead of each forging our own idiosyncratic paths online, we are caught in the grooves that a few giant companies have carved for us... See more