Culture is suspicious of technology. Politics is mostly indifferent to and above it. War-making uses it, but maintains an arms-length separation. Business? It gets into bed with it. It is sort of vaguely plausible that you could switch artists, politicians and generals around with their peers from another age and still expect them to function. But there is no meaningful way for a businessman from (say) 2000 BC to comprehend what Mark Zuckerberg does, let alone take over for him. Too much magical technological water has flowed under the bridge.

http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2011/06/08/a-brief-history-of-the-corporation-1600-to-2100/ (via cdixon)

Scaling is about dealing efficiently with events that occur with a predictable frequency. Hard disk failures are rare catastrophes for individuals. They are an operating condition for data centers.

http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2012/10/15/economies-of-scale-economies-of-scope/ (via cdixon)

We’ve come a long way. Today we understand that a startup is a temporary organization designed to search for a repeatable and scalable business model. And that what we are doing when we iterate or pivot is that we are firing the plan before we start firing executives.

Steve Blank

Vision Vs. Hallucination - The Accelerators - WSJ

3D is antithetical to storytelling, where immersion in character is the goal. It constantly reminds you you’re watching a screen - and it completely prevents emotional involvement. Natural human vision bears no resemblance to 3D in the cinema.

Oliver Stapleton (via mappeal)

Mainly agree.

(via parislemon)

It pays off in your life when you’re in an elevator and people are uncomfortable. You can just say, “That’s a beautiful scarf.” It’s just thinking about making someone else feel comfortable. You don’t worry about yourself, because we’re vibrating together. If I can make yours just a little bit groovier, it’ll affect me. It comes back, somehow.

Bill Murray, Star of ‘Hyde Park on Hudson’ - NYTimes.com (via rickwebb)