Constraints give your life shape. Remove them and most people have no idea what to do: look at what happens to those who win lotteries or inherit money. Much as everyone thinks they want financial security, the happiest people are not those who have it, but those who like what they do. So a plan that promises freedom at the expense of knowing what... See more
One of the most interesting things I've learned is how much the twentieth century was the product of centralizing technologies: centralized broadcast media (movies, news, radio) as well as centralized production (factories) of centralized armies (tanks, aircraft, nukes), which were all run by extremely powerful centralized states. It can be said... See more
The incentives we bake into the products we build dictate which human desires we magnify. As we imagine new ways to create, distribute, monetize, and share
information, we’re also revealing what kind of people we aspire to be.
That's what leads people to try to write novels, for example. They like reading novels. They notice that people who write them win Nobel prizes. What could be more wonderful, they think, than to be a novelist? But liking the idea of being a novelist is not enough; you have to like the actual work of novel-writing if you're going to be good at it;... See more