Sixian

But I do think work can be a source of real meaning in life. But, we’ll only ever get out what we put in. And in the case of work life, it is kind of a collective decision. Once your neighbor starts signing off Slack at 3:30 consistently, it’s hard not to do the same. If your closest collaborators don’t turn stuff around quickly, why would you? If... See more

You can't do it. You can't collapse these categorizations without some signal loss. The problem is, because the cataloguers assume their classification should have force on the world, they underestimate the difficulty of understanding what users are thinking, and they overestimate the amount to which users will agree, either with one another or... See more

In a 1970 interview, Marshall McLuhan foreshadowed this situation and described what it might do to our minds: “We live in post-history in the sense that all pasts that ever were are now present to our consciousness and all futures that will be are here now. In that sense, we are post-history and timeless. Instant awareness of the varieties of... See more

The Shape of Design is a map of the road where we dance rather than a blueprint of it. It strives to investigate the opportunities of exploring the terrain, and it values stepping back from the everyday concerns of designing. It attempts to impose a meaningful distance in order to find patterns in the work and assess the practice as a whole. One... See more

When Peter Thiel says that he sees a Cargo Cult-like phenomenon play out in startups, he is referring to this kind of metaphysical desire.

James: The power law gets steeper in this case because of the transparency that the internet gives us... And that is affecting people everywhere, as they struggle to realize where they are in the power law of life. It’s not just getting clients. It’s putting out your songs on YouTube or TikTok, just for fun, and seeing all the people who are... See more

The old world was full of gatekeepers to impress.