innovation culture

To these three, I’ll add my favorite new idea as a fourth: contraptionism. So that’s the 4Cs of the imperative: Courage, Clarity, Creativity, Contraptionism.

The aesthetic and ethos that we need to guide the construction of a new machine is contraptionism . Because any new societal machine will inevitably be a janky affair, not just at inception, bu... See more

4. Ever wonder about the vast universe of critically acclaimed aesthetic masterworks, most of which you do not really fathom? If you dismiss them, and mistrust the critics, odds are that you are wrong and they are right. You do not have the context to appreciate those works. That is fine, but no reason to dismiss that which you do not understand. T... See more

Why is data integration so hard? The data is often in different formats that aren’t easily analyzed by computers – PDFs, notebooks, Excel files (my god, so many Excel files) and so on. But often what really gets in the way is organizational politics: a team, or group, controls a key data source, the reason for their existence is that they are the g... See more

FDEs tend to write code that gets the job done fast, which usually means – politely – technical debt and hacky workarounds. PD engineers write software that scales cleanly, works for multiple use cases, and doesn’t break. One of the key ‘secrets’ of the company is that generating deep, sustaining enterprise value requires both. BD engineers tend to... See more

The combo of intellectual grandiosity and intense competitiveness was a perfect fit for me. It’s still hard to find today, in fact - many people have copied the ‘hardcore’ working culture and the ‘this is the Marines’ vibe, but few have the intellectual atmosphere, the sense of being involved in a rich set of ideas . This is hard to LARP - your fou... See more

Put through that process, reality usually hits like a truck. Many concepts that sound good on paper are infeasible to implement, or simply don’t produce the expected results. It’s frustrating when that happens, of course, but the pace of experimentation and learning at a startup is unparalleled. I think this is an especially important form of rigor... See more

ONE PARTING POINT

I recently watched the film Conclave, about the electing of a new pope. And in the homily before they enter the session there's a really beautiful statement. That the sin the protagonist is most afraid of is certainty because certainty erodes the need for faith. And faith is the critical point of this.

I think the rational SF techn... See more

If you spend a lot of time online or making things, it’s good to find a way to leave these breadcrumbs. The trail of your digital self should be interesting. If you use social media, you should ensure it makes your goals, desires, projects — if not clear, at least worth stumbling upon.

To be curious about that which confuses. Not too rapidly seeking the safety of knowing or the safety of a legible question, but waiting for a more powerful and subtle question to arise from loose and open attention. This patience with confusion makes them good at surfacing new questions. It is this capacity to surface questions that set Grothendiec... See more