Judith D

IMAGINE IF YOU COULD TALK TO A BABY in the womb and explain its unity with the mother. How this cord of belonging gives it life. If you could then tell the baby that this was about to end. It was going to be expelled from the womb, pushed through a very narrow passage finally to be dropped out into vacant, open light. The cord which held it to this

You act like mortals in all that you fear, and like immortals in all that you desire.”

Vladimir Nabokov (from “Speak, Memory”):

“The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness. Although the two are identical twins, man, as a rule, views the prenatal abyss with more calm than the one he is heading for.”

Machines for breadth, human intuition for depth

Sean Monahan, co-founder of K-Hole and writer of the 8Ball newsletter, recently argued that, with the advent of AI, the human trend forecaster will become obsolete. I disagree. What I think will happen instead is that LLMs will raise the standards for our trend research. Machine and human

“It is simply a fact that most of the time you can’t find the right words till you know exactly what you are saying, but that you can’t know exactly what you are saying till you find just the right words. The consequence is that you must start by writing the wrong meanings in the wrong words” - Peter Elbow, Writing Without Teachers

Think like a gardener, not an architect: design beginnings, not endings.

Unfinished = fertile